Harvest Festival celebrates Boulder’s Food-To-Table program

BOULDER, Colo. — Mark Guttridge, of Longmont's Ollin Farms, handed out yellow, purple and orange carrot sticks on Sunday at the Boulder Valley School District's inaugural Harvest Festival while talking up the freshness and quality of local produce.

Ollin Farms is providing carrots, sweet pepper and tomatoes to the district for its school lunches this year.

"You get a lot better quality if you source from local farmers," he said. "We wanted to partner with Boulder Valley because we want more people to learn about healthy food."

The Harvest Festival, held at Boulder's Casey Middle School, was one of several Boulder Valley food activities held this month through a a $98,000 USDA Farm to Table grant. Other activities included a field trip to a farm and demonstrations by local chefs of a roasted squash recipe.

Boulder Valley is using the grant to pay for an intensive marketing and education program aimed at creating a 20 percent increase in consumption of locally sourced natural foods in school meals. The district also wants to increase local purchasing to 46 percent of the annual food service budget.

At Sunday's festival, attended by an estimated 300 to 400 people, the emphasis was on community outreach and support and getting kids to try everything from purple carrots to roasted spaghetti squash to grilled chicken.

"For us, what's really important is for the kids to eat the food," said Boulder Valley food services Director Ann Cooper. "Here, they can taste the chicken, they can taste an apple, they can plant a seed."

Kids also could make their own trail mix, create spiders out of brownie bites, pretzels and candy, and hang out with three goats from Boulder's Mountain Flower Goat Dairy.

"One of our big goals is to connect with kids," said Taber Ward, the dairy's founder and executive