Ford students learn healthy eating in their own backyard

LYNN – Fourth-grader Rauliz Tamarez gleefully plunged his hand into a pile of cold dirt filled with squirming brown worms.He pulled one up by its tail, pinching the flailing worm in his thumb and forefinger for all his summer classmates at the Robert L. Ford School to see.”Mine’s a daddy,” he said.The group of students were in the process of learning how these slimy creatures help create some of their favorite foods – waffles, pizza and even tacos – at a Friday class in the community garden that has sat at the base of the Ford School for several years.View a photo gallery.Andy Harding, a service member with the nonprofit Food Corps, led the class, which happens at least three times a week during the summer and much more often during the school year. During the school year almost every student in the mostly low-income neighborhood has a chance to get their hands dirty, he said.”Food Corps’ main goal is to educate the students and produce healthy food for kids,” Harding said. “It gives them an opportunity to not fall into a childhood obesity trap.”Harding said the students learn about fruits and vegetables growing in the garden – tomatoes, squash, herbs, strawberries, grapes, sunflowers, flax seed, broccoli, lettuce – as an alternative to eating store-bought processed food.Especially in the Highlands neighborhood, he said, “The food they have access to isn’t healthy food, it’s the cheap food.”On Friday, the students carried their new slithering friends to an open spot in the busy garden, where they helped Harding get the soil ready to plant a batch of swiss chard.Fourth-grader Jose Castillo said that’s one of his favorite parts of gardening. He’s new to the school and has only become acquainted with the garden over the past year.”I get to plant stuff because it’s fun,” he said. “We have a lot of fun inside but coming outside is more fun. You get to eat grapes.”Fifth-grader Bryce Whitcomb agreed. He loves when Harding and the other caretakers of the garden, many from the neighborhood Highlands Coalition, let him and his brother, Nathan Whitcomb, take home produce.”I like the garden because there’s lots of fruits and vegetables you can pick,” he said.The students also learn tools for creating gardens of their own. Harding said he knows many of them don’t have the space for a full-fledged garden, so he shows them creative ways to plant things.On Friday he led them to a cloth shoe rack that had been nailed to a board along the school’s brick wall.In it, chives were sprouting.”How many of you live in apartments?” he asked the group. More than half raised their hands. He explained the apparatus and what chives are used for.”All you need is three nails and you just hang it on your porch,” he said.The Ford School garden has spurred fourth-grader Natalie Noesi to start one of her own. She said her landlord cleared out a spot in her parents’ apartment for her to grow tomatoes and grapes.”Since I’ve been coming to the garden, I’ve been eating more healthy food, not eating junk food,” she said.The students also learn to cook the food they’ve grown. In past classes, Harding said the students have cooked strawberry pancakes using freshly picked strawberries.He said the entire process opens the children’s eyes to food they might otherwise consider yucky.”It’s a feeling of ownership and a feeling of pride,” he said. ” ? It’s kind of, you planted a seed so you want to heat the fruit that you bear.”Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].