By KATE POSS

Special to the News-Times

The community is invited to support the Coupeville Farm to School program in its fundraising campaign for building an outdoor pizza oven.

The program is part of the Washington Gives statewide effort to raise funds for its member nonprofit organizations. GiveBIG 2025 is scheduled for May 6 and 7. The campaign has already begun.

With a goal of raising $7,500, the Coupeville farm program looks to expand its curriculum focused on learning real life skills.

Its GiveBIG campaign webpage notes, “An outdoor pizza oven would allow us to expand our Sustainable Skills curriculum to offer more cooking lessons and would allow more room for student input on farm crop planning. An onsite oven would also allow us to share our mission, goals and food with our community.”

The Coupeville Farm to School nonprofit group — or CF2S — promotes students’ interest in eating healthy foods, teaches them to grow their own food in an outdoor classroom and raises their awareness about the local food system.

The farm-to-school program dates back to 2014. Then, parents, teachers, school food service staff and local food advocates collaborated to develop a plan, raise funds and begin to create curriculum based on local food and agriculture through garden-based education.

“We are our own separate nonprofit and celebrate our 11-year anniversary this year,” said Anne Harvey, one of the founders and board chair of CF2S. “We have gone from hiring someone to be a half-time contracted educator to now having four staff. It’s a rock star team.”

The program dovetails with Coupeville’s School Farm, created in 2020 with a two-year, $93,000 USDA Farm to School Implementation Grant. A school field was transformed into a two-acre educational farm for all students and has been growing thousands of pounds of produce each season that is served in the schools’ cafeterias. The school farm was supported by Washington State Outdoor Learning Grants and through the district’s ongoing partnership with CF2S.

“It’s confusing — who funds what?” Harvey said. “We fund four staff. We provide funding for the school farm with tremendous community support. The USDA grant enabled us to start the farm with a farm manager, which was a critical step in our growth. That grant served its purpose to launch the school farm.”

Program Director Paige Mueller enthused about the CF2S middle school tutorial classes she teaches four half-hour periods a week, along with an after school program, “Cultivating Company,” on Wednesdays.

Mueller is a fourth-generation member of the Bell family, which used to run and own the popular Bell’s Strawberry Farm.

Giving homage to her grandmother Evelyn Mueller for sharing life skills of growing food, preserving it, raising sheep for meat and wool and infusing her with a love of the farmer’s life, Paige Mueller teaches students what she learned while growing up. While in her classroom, she pointed out recipes her students have made using the school farm’s ingredients: rosemary shortbread cookies, red lentil dahl and Irish colcannon — using farm potatoes, kale, chard and onions.

With the help of Farm Manager Arwen Norman and Educational Coordinator Andi Kopit for the elementary school, the program includes tutorials on farming, fiber arts, cooking with food grown on the school farm, pollinators, indigenous foods, marine biology and participation in community festivals. CF2S programs also provide cooking classes for elementary and middle school students during the winter.

Kopit draws from the “13 Moons Curriculum” developed by the Swinomish tribe as part of her approach in the classroom.

During the past year, CF2S has expanded its programming to include a garden and outdoor classroom for middle and high school students, a weekly adaptive garden class for life skills students in elementary school and a “Wolf Patch” garden run by high school Career and Technical Education students.

The School Farm website notes the cafeteria’s transition of serving “heat and serve” meals to preparing locally sourced food — salmon from the Lummi Nation, for instance, lamb made into a curry from Mueller’s sheep and produce grown on the school farm.

Harvey said the program’s success is due to the collaboration, hard work and support on many levels

“The staff is exceptional,” she said, “and the CF2S board is a dedicated, energetic group that combines a variety of talents and experience with a commitment to growing incrementally and ensuring that funding is in place to support all aspects of the farm and educational opportunities for students. Community support, involving many individuals and community groups, has been key to the accomplishments and steady growth of CF2S.”

The school district’s cooperation is another key to the program’s success.

“What has served us well over time has been developing strong relationships, working with the schools to ensure that every elementary school teacher is on board with our gardening class,” Harvey added. “They make a commitment to their students to learn in the garden or in the classroom cooking as seasons provide. As a local nonprofit we collaborate with the Coupeville School District and Connected Food programs. The team of folks providing lunch and breakfast for students sources locally as much as possible — scratch cooking. We’ve been really fortunate to have that shift take place.”

According to the district’s webpage on child nutrition, “the Connected Food Program is committed to serving scratch-made, healthy, delicious food to help all our students thrive.”

Meanwhile, a second annual CF2S Sustainable Skills summer camp is planned this year. Campers learn sustainable skills in agriculture and cooking using local produce. Visit coupevillefarm2school.org for more information.

An annual fundraiser for CF2S is planned Sept. 20. It’s the organization’s largest fundraiser and will be held at the Nordic Lodge this year.

“We host an amateur cooking contest with prizes, live music and an auction,” Harvey said. “Fabulous food made by amateur cooks provides the meal. Last year, local chefs also contributed dishes not included in the competition.”

To contribute to the GiveBIG CF2S pizza oven campaign, visit wagives.org/organization/CF2S.