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Farm to School Fellow
Senior Community Food Systems Manager
Institute team members prepare to participate in cooking and gardening workshops.
Take a look at the second retreat of the Farm to Early Childhood Education Institute program: A gathering focused on skills building and activities for each team to increase hands-on gardening and nutrition experiences for the youngest members of our communities.
All photos are by Jason Hill.
A video recap of the Farm to Early Care & Education Institute 2025 Winter Retreat. Jason Hill
This past February, the seven participating teams of the inaugural Farm to Early Childhood Education (ECE) Institute of Oregon and Washington gathered at the Redd on Salmon Street. These teams include both single-site providers (such as family child care, in-home, and community-based organizations) and multi-site providers (such as Head Start), with each team supported by a coach through the year-long program.
Farm to ECE programming targets a critical learning period for very young children, ages 0-5: the time to build their taste buds and familiarity with nutritious foods. Additionally, ECE creates opportunities for young children to explore seasonal, local produce; experience belonging and exploration through culturally relevant foods, and to gain more support for learning other skills like vocabulary, math, literacy, fine motor, science, teamwork, and culinary arts. Building on the momentum from the Institute’s Fall Retreat in October, this second retreat focused on learning hands-on skills and activities that team members could take back to their sites.
Morning workshops centered on gardening and cooking with young kids. Amoreena Guerrero and Kim Deras from Growing Gardens led an interactive workshop on integrating gardening into student learning experiences. Team members explored the benefits of gardening for early childhood development, built a mobile garden, and practiced gardening techniques for working with toddlers and pre-K students.
Amoreena Guerrero explains how to create a mobile wagon garden to attendees.
Team members participate in a seed sorting game during Growing Gardens’ gardening workshop.
Meanwhile, other teams were cooking in the Redd East’s Community Kitchen with Leika Suzumura from Nourishian for Life. In this small-group workshop, they practiced knife skills and different cooking techniques which they can use in their own programs.
Attendees explored winter vegetables and how to prepare them to satisfy both students’ palettes and federal child nutrition program meal requirements. Small groups cooked one of six recipes from Seattle Farm to Preschool’s multicultural recipe collection: roasted vegetables with chermoula, three sisters hash, lumpia, atakilt wat, beet chocolate cupcakes, and yachaejeon. The whole group then came together to eat and discuss routines for tasting new foods in the classroom, cooking with young children in their programs, and connecting with families through food and nutrition.
Francia Yera prepares to flip the Korean vegetable pancake yachaejeon that she made with another retreat attendee.
Retreat participants prepare root vegetables for roasting which they paired with chermoula, a condiment originating from Morocco.
Participants enjoyed the hands-on focus of the retreat workshops. Carlos Zuleta from Awesome Blossom Child Care highlighted that the “hands-on portion for making food [and] incorporating fresh produce was helpful.”
Lunch was catered by Salsas Locas, a Portland-based Mexican eatery that also makes tamales for 10 Oregon school districts. The owner Lucy De León joined attendees at lunch to share about Salsas Locas’ history and her experience selling to and working with nutrition staff. In an interview with De León in March, she explained why it is important for her to produce food for local schools:
“That’s super important because of that connection of having kids connect with their food, what they’re used to eating at home… It’s just so important for them to have that meal. And it’s good for the brain to concentrate and do well.”
In the afternoon, team members deepened their Farm to ECE knowledge through a series of four 15-minute workshops. Each session gave participants a taste of an activity or skill they could implement with their students. Attendees learned how to felt wool around soap, sharpened their knife skills while learning how to regrow vegetables from scraps, explored a menu planning activity, and made fresh corn tortillas. These stations provided team members with a hands-on opportunity to learn new skills and bring back lesson plans and resources to support their programs.
Lulu Cerna from the Adelante Mujeres team co-leads the tortilla-making workshop.
Southern Oregon Head Start coach Abigail Blinn explains menu-planning resources to team members.
Wool and fiber art books for the felting workshop.
Team members measure water for their vegetable end starts during Adelante Mujeres team member Francia Yera’s knife skills and vegetable end starts workshop.
The last activity of the day was Kitchen Table Conversations. Teams had the opportunity to present an aspect of their Farm to ECE action plan to the group and receive feedback related to its strengths and challenges. Groups offered alternatives to consider, resources, and other personal connections to help strengthen the team’s Farm to ECE action plan.
At the end of the retreat, attendees expressed how much they enjoyed the hands-on activities and various workshops. One team member noted that they were “grateful for the protected time to focus on a goal we have had for a long time.” Ksenia Khokhlova from Suncatcher Forest School appreciated the opportunity to attend the retreat, reflecting that they left with “new ideas and understanding of our accomplishments.”
Thank you to Luis Acosta from Acosta Services LLC, who provided live Spanish translation for both the Fall and Winter Retreats and translations of the retreat materials and forms.
Thank you to the many local food producers who kept us nourished throughout the retreat, including Shop Halo Halo for breakfast, Salsas Locas for lunch, Oblique Coffee Roasters for coffee, PSU Farmers Market vendors, and Hav Paj Garden and Evans Farm for the dried floral decorations.
Along with Adelante Mujeres, Child Care Aware Northwest / Opportunity Council, City of Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning, FoodCorps, NorthEast Washington Educational Service District 101, Oregon Farm to School Network, Prevent Child Abuse Oregon, Shelburne Farms Institute for Sustainable Schools, Washington Farm to School Network, Washington State Department of Agriculture, Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Washington Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—Education (SNAP-Ed), and Zenger Farm, Ecotrust this past fall launched a year-long professional learning experience for early childhood professionals to grow comprehensive farm to ECE programming in both states. Adapted from a model developed by Vermont FEED and Shelburne Farms, this multi-state Farm to ECE Institute is the first of its kind between Oregon and Washington.
Blog
PROGRAM UPDATE | Explore the first-ever retreat for the Farm to Early Care and Education Institute in Oregon and Washington states.
Press release
Portland, OR — November 29, 2023 — Ecotrust and a group of regional partners are excited to launch the Oregon and Washington Farm to School Institutes Project to grow comprehensive farm to school and farm to early childhood programming in both states.
Blog
Meet the six Farm to Early Childhood Education advisors educating children ages 0-5 in the garden, at the table, and in the classroom.
