Lettuce alone in Swampscott

SWAMPSCOTT – Tater tots, sloppy joes … or fresh local mesclun mix with a vinegar herb dressing? It was the latter at Swampscott High School Thursday, as the second annual Salad Day offered students fresh veggies, a cooking demonstration and a lesson in local food.”We’re trying to find ways to integrate our outdoor classroom and garden into the curriculum,” explained Brandy Wilbur, the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) coordinator at Swampscott High School. “Last year we piloted the program, and this year we wanted to try and kick it up a notch.”Salad Days is a collaboration among Wilbur and her students and Maureen Kellet, the director of dining services at Swampscott Public Schools, in an effort to bring more fresh food into the cafeteria.Kellet works for Chartwells, a food service company that emphasizes local food and is participating in the state’s farm-to-school program. The program selects a different food each month – June is strawberries, September is tomatoes – to emphasize in their dishes.But the most local farm for Swampscott High School is in the courtyard, where Wilbur and members of the school’s Garden Club, members of the STEM Academy and biology classes have constructed eight 4-foot by 12-foot raised garden beds.Wilbur planted seeds for a spicy mesclun mix and sweet mesclun mix in several of the beds in April. Students helped weed and tend the beds, and Wilbur harvested the greens for Thursday. Small salads awaited students as they entered the cafeteria, while Kellet demonstrated how to make a quick dressing using fresh herbs and garlic and oil and vinegar.”It’s a good salad,” said sophomore Annie Norton.Junior Cameron Rogers agreed.After lunch, Amy Camire and Lauren Skelton’s freshman biology class stopped by the booth to discuss the economics of food.Wilbur described her winter garden options – $7 for organic greens that will feed her family for about a week – and her summer garden options ?a trip around her yard to pick lettuces and herbs from various beds and window boxes from $7 worth of seeds she plants.”A lot of people think eating fresh is more expensive,” Wilbur told the students. “But you can keep it simple, local and a lot more fresh ? and cheaper.”The lesson will continue today at Swampscott Middle School. With the guidance of Gail Anderson, a reading enrichment teacher, a project to beautify the school courtyard turned into a garden club that has constructed and tended raised beds (donated with money from Chartwells and much help and many supplies from local businesses), forced bulbs to decorate the school in late winter and planted pots of annuals that the Beverly Parents/Teachers Organization used for centerpieces at an event.”We had five or six of us, including fifth grade girls, using power drills to put together the beds,” Anderson said. “A science class shoveled all the dirt and moved it around, and we’re harvesting the first lettuce (Friday).”Both middle school and high school gardens will next be planted with fall vegetables; and various community and student groups have committed to maintaining the beds during the summer vacation.But the salad day made an impression. Rogers stopped Wilbur in the hallway to thank her for the fresh meal.”It was so green and vibrant and so freshly green,” Rogers said. “It tasted like grass, and I like grass.”