Students create lunch from seed to spoon"What's in this soup?" Alfred Jacob, Cultivating Community’s Program Educator, asked a group of excited Portland, ME kindergarteners. “Carrots!” they replied. "And, potatoes, onions and beets!"“Who grew them?" "We did!" For many children, learning where a potato grows, how a strawberry flowers, or how a garden-fresh purple carrot tastes is a new experience.· And, for students at a city school where approximately 75% of the students depend on school meals for much of their daily nutritional needs, the availability of fresh, healthy produce at school is vital to keeping them healthy.

This fall, 11 classrooms of K-4 students at East End Community School in Portland, ME read the fable Stone Soup, a story about a hungry village with nothing to eat and only a big empty pot and a single stone.

In the story, bit by bit, each person contributes a little something, until they’ve made a steaming, savory pot of soup that feeds the whole village. And that’s what these students did too! They started by harvesting produce, including orange and purple carrots, potatoes, onions and beets, from the garden behind their school that they had planted the previous spring.· The students then helped prepare their own version of stone soup, featuring the freshly picked produce from their garden.

“When students are able to grow, harvest and cook their produce, they become invested in the food they eat, said Alida Payson, Youth Programs Manager at Cultivating Communities.· “They also gain an understanding of how the earth sustains us and that food does not grow in the supermarket or at the corner store.”
Cultivating Community, a Portland-based nonprofit, works with teachers and schools in the city to create vibrant school gardens where students can learn, cultivate and taste where food comes from.· The organization is dedicated to strengthening communities by growing food, preparing youth leaders and new farmers, and promoting social and environmental justice. The Stone Soup Project was part of the Maine Harvest Lunch, an annual September event that celebrates Maine foods with special, local menus at public schools around the state.