Bridgette Brick-Wells, founder of the Healthy Lunch & Lifestyles Project working in Shasta, Tehama and Butte Counties; Gina Sims, Garden Coordinator at Chico Country Day Charter School and also working with the Center for Nutrition and Activity Promotion at CSU, Chico; and Debra Abbott, School Garden Educator in the Chico Unified School District as well as with the Chico Area Recreation District (CARD), all joined me for special one-hour live program on Tuesday October 19th from 10 am - 11 am. We discussed how school gardens, farm-to-school connections and healthy school lunch options are sowing the seeds for better life-long physical, cultural, environmental and economic health throughout our region. Photo: Kids in a young gardening program at Chico Christian School in Chico. (more…)

It is now officially Autumn and the length of our days diminishes a little with each circle of the planet. In the edible garden, harvesting has gone on for some time as spring crops moved over for summer crops and - lucky for us here in northern California - in many cases they have been replaced with fall crops, some of which are up and going strong, and our winter crops have gone in or are going in. Even if by “crop” I just mean a few rows of beets or carrots in the raised beds out back. Just as for the squirrels and the acorn woodpeckers, perhaps more than any other time of year, Autumn compels us to store up against the cold and the dark. It brings out our instinctive desire for some level of self-sufficiency. Photo: Cattle grazing, and honeybees working on the drive into Chaffin Family Farm - a model for the integrated family farm ideal - below Table Mountain in Oroville. (more…)

“We had to use all those words,” Kristen del Real explained to me, “Each one was really important to our mission with this project.”

Eat. Learn. Grow.

Together these words are part directive and part blessing - which in many ways is what Chico. Eat. Learn. Grow. is. A hoped-for directive and a blessing for the Chico area, where del Real and Laurie Niles and others working on the initiative saw a strong “need for our area’s food to be more present in our children’s lives, especially at school” where “if a child is on free or reduced fee lunch, they may eat two to three meals at school,” del Real told me. So if school provided food is not particularly healthful, then those children might never eat healthful food. Photo: Kristen del Real (front), co-coordinator of Chico. Eat. Learn. Grow., introducing Bridgette Brick Wells to a recent presentation on the program ot interested community members. (more…)