Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Apple Seeds plants, grows hearty ideas about healthy eating
When speaking of the history and development of Apple Seeds — the Northwest Arkansas nonprofit with a goal to inspire healthy living through garden-based education — it’s nearly impossible to avoid the use of garden metaphors. The organization started 10 years ago as a seed of an idea, tiny but strong, nurtured within the walls of Ozark Natural Foods, where volunteers presented juicing and smoothie workshops to young people in the area after the school day. Once it had grown a bit, it was transplanted to land next door to ONF, where Apple Seeds’ dream of planting a teaching farm first came to fruition. And just in time for it to really bloom and outgrow that plot of land, Apple Seeds entered a partnership with the city of Fayetteville to take on two-plus acres of land within Gulley Park. The land came with a house that is used for administrative offices, and a large barn-like structure is currently under construction that will eventually house a teaching kitchen large enough for several classrooms worth of children to watch as healthy recipes are created right in front of their eyes.
It’s a heck of a way to start the 10th year of Apple Seeds’ service.
“Now we can make sure that every kid that visits us can harvest something out of the garden,” says co-executive director Mary Thompson as she shows a visitor around the ample grounds. A multitude of colorful fruits and vegetables — including raspberries, blueberries, watermelons, pumpkins, corn, peppers, okra, kale, squash and zucchini — flourish. In another section, apple and pear trees grow tenuously out of the ground, soon to become a lush orchard. “We have this wide open space, and we have a farmer who can take it the whole 10 yards. The kids get this novel experience when they come out here.”
And come they do. Co-executive director Kyra
Ramsey says that the organization partnered with some 60 nonprofit organizations and schools last year. Apple Seeds can visit the partnering organizations — for cooking demonstrations, consultation on school gardens and to help host school markets — or it can host the students at the teaching farm, where kids can harvest food, plant seeds and assist in cooking a healthy, plant-based meal that they come together to eat at the end of the session. The organization reached 7,000 kids last year.
And it’s not just the students that are getting the healthy eating message. Ramsey says Apple Seeds has evidence that the students are taking what they learned back home and sharing it with their families.
“The program that we had today is called Farm Lab, and the students made a very simple snack,” she says. “It’s a dip, and it’s made with yogurt and herbs and garlic and lemon juice. Very simple and affordable. It’s supposed to be a good, easy alternative to what they might be eating after school. We do track how many students go home and
make that snack, and I think last year, with 1,100 students, around 55 percent of them took the recipe home, encouraged their parents to get the ingredients and then made it in their kitchen.
“At our Farm to Table class, we send produce home with the students regularly. Students that have been in our programming regularly can come on Saturdays and harvest food and take that back to their families.”
Both women say that they have watched as kids’ curiosity for what’s happening
in the garden translates to a new willingness to at least try vegetables they may not have been exposed to before.
“There’s a large disconnect over the last couple of generations, where you’re so far removed from where your food comes from that you lose that excitement about it,” says Thompson. “We see kids pull a carrot out of the ground, and they’re just blown away by it.”
“If you harvest it yourself, you’re so much more curious to try it, and then it tastes so much better to them,” says Ramsey. “We create the space and the environment and the recipes and the curriculum, but by and large, especially with the cooking classes, we try to let our kids really do the work, so that they’re part of it. And then they start talking with each other, and a lot of the excitement comes from them talking to each other. And we kind of back away, because we know adult influence is not nearly as positive and strong as peer influence.”
Brittany Berry, the Environmental and Spatial Technology (EAST) coordinator at Helen Tyson Middle School in Springdale, has been partnering with Apple Seeds for five years, starting with the creation of a school garden. This
summer, around 20 Tyson students participated in the summer Food Ambassador Program at the Apple Seeds teaching farm.
“Right now, our kids are doing taste tests with substitute foods — instead of beef burgers, bean burgers, instead of french fries, roasted sweet potatoes — they’ll serve the options to their peers and then collect the data for our cafeteria and help institute change in what our kids are eating on a regular basis.”
Berry says that while Apple Seeds has the quantitative data that shows that the programming is helping students make healthier choices, she has plenty of qualitative data from interactions she sees every day.
“We did a garden market two weeks ago, and for the seventh graders to walk up to the table of sixth graders and say, ‘Oh, there’s kale! I love kale. When are you going to make kale chips again?’ is amazing. Now it’s normal for them to try to convince each other to try vegetables. We don’t have to beg them anymore.”
The organization’s fourth annual Farm Dinner on Saturday — where a bountiful harvest from the garden will be used to prepare a five-course plated meal prepared in front of the guests by Chef Case Dighero of
Crystal Bridges and Chef Jerrmy Gawthrop of Greenhouse Grille and Woodstone Pizza —is sold out. But those that are curious about the working farm can attend a special celebration from 10 a.m. until noon Oct. 28. Ramsey and Thompson say they’ll be honoring the memory of Fred and Floy Gulley by serving popcorn and pumpkin pie, foods traditionally given out by the Gulleys every Halloween.
That date also marks the end of the harvest season, which will eventually be extended when the plans for high tunnels in the garden are realized. Thompson and Ramsey can’t wait until their programming can stretch past the fall months and start earlier in the spring. After all, in a state that has the third highest adult obesity rate in the nation and a nearly 34 percent obesity rate in kids ages 10 to 17, there’s a lot of work to be done.
“It’s important to me to raise my kids in a culture that has more positive effects on eating behaviors,” says Thompson. “To me, that’s one of the most moving things about Apple Seeds.”