Food for thought

Rows and rows of six-foot-high cornstalks stretch over the valley, silhouetting a cloudless, crisp blue sky not yet touched by the sun.

The sounds from within hit the senses first: rustling underbrush, distant laughter, yelled commands and squishy, squeaking rips - like pieces of styrofoam rubbing together - of corn separating from stem.

Then you see them: heads bobbing through the foot-wide rows, disappearing and reappearing every few seconds.

Six workers in rain overalls shuffle back and forth among 3 acres of corn at Heron Pond Farm in South Hampton, N.H., dipping to pick, then dropping the cobs into large plastic buckets. As they work, dew-covered stalks leave scraggy, muddy fingerprints on their legs.

After 45 minutes of culling, the men accumulate a mound of corn that will later be distributed to area schools through a "Get Smart, Eat Local" Farm to School program facilitated by the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Through the initiative, Heron Pond regularly provides produce to 27 schools - comprising 15,000 students - in Portsmouth, Exeter, Newmarket, Hampton, and Hampton Falls, N.H., among others. Somersworth-based Saunders Fruit Co. distributes most of the vegetables, which so far have included zucchini, corn, summer and butternut squash, tomatoes, potatoes, and spring lettuce.

"It's basically a farmers' market for the schools," UNH Farm to School director Nathan Duclos said during a recent event that literally followed vegetables from field to cafeteria.

The program is a boon to small farms like Heron Pond, which these days have to fight against the ever-growing disconnect between food sources and the dinner table; much of America's food comes from wholesale conglomerates or industrial farms thousands of miles away.

"It's always been difficult to farm," noted Andre Cantelmo, 38, who runs the Heron Pond operation and lives there. Hands tucked into his orange, mud-splattered rain overalls, he called farming a difficult, get-your-hands-dirty kind of job - and also an uncertain one. "In some ways, it's like legalized gambling," he said.

One recent day at the farm began at 8 a.m. As the sun rose over the trees in the east, workers culled a type of corn known as Delectable, filling plastic buckets and periodically emerging from the stalks to dump their pickings into a wooden wagon. Two dogs nosed along with them; one of them, a white cockapoo named Cooer, was muddied from ears to tail.

Later, Cantelmo loaded the corn into bushel baskets and onto an idling truck, where a driver then headed off down the country road straight for Maple Wood Elementary School in Somersworth, N.H.

Thirty-five miles north, students ate halved, buttered corn cobs - from a different day's crop - with pasta salad, pear halves, and cheeseburgers on whole wheat buns.

Food service director Chris Faro, watching pupils from the kitchen doorway, noted that in some school systems, if it doesn't come out of a can, it isn't served.

Maple Wood, though, incorporates locally grown potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn a few times a week. "Not quite every day," said Faro, wearing a traditional white chef's jacket matched with a colorful hat, "but we'd like to do that soon."

That enthusiasm pleases Duclos. This year, the pilot year of the program, is very much about building the distribution network, learning to coordinate crops and deliveries, establishing prices, and educating school administrators about the growing process. (Example: They can't just order butternut squash whenever they want, as different produce has different growing and maturity times.)

Once the initiative is streamlined, Duclos plans to create a detailed guide to distribute to other communities.

"People like New Hampshire the way it is: a rural state. But if we don't support our local businesses, it's not going to stay that way," he said. "If we can replace even 10 percent of [school cafeteria food] with local food, it would make a big difference."

It already has for Cantelmo. Farm to School accounted for about 20 percent, or roughly $25,000, of his business this year, he said.

The program has provided him with a more solid backing, he said, and has enabled him to grow extra crops. Lettuce, for example, has never been a huge money producer for him - he hasn't been able to sell it at a competitive price that would also make money - but next year, he plans to grow significantly more of it because several schools are requesting the leafy salad staple.

In the future, he hopes to do school orders at least twice a week, he said.

Besides Farm to School, the 220-acre operation - comprising 90 acres of trust land and roughly 125 of the farm proper - runs a stand, sells wholesale to restaurants, and participates in seven farmers' markets.

"It's maximizing the time money stays in one place," Cantelmo said of buying local, a dirtied white baseball hat shielding his eyes as he stood in Heron Pond's dusty parking lot. " 'Cause once it's gone, it's gone."

Also, buying from area farmers keeps land undeveloped, and the food is similarly fresher "and frankly, tastes better," he asserted. Once people eat fresh produce, he said, they'll be turned off from grocery store food.

School officials note the difference, too.

"You can just taste the crispness in that apple when you bite it," said Mary Borg, food service director for the Hampton, N.H., schools. "It has that snap to it."

Fresher food also better retains its nutrients and vitamins, she said, and lasts longer than produce trucked in from 3,000 miles away. "You can't get fresher than that," she noted, "when it's delivered from your backyard."

Many officials involved with the program hope students can adopt such an appreciation for farm-fresh, healthy food. To raise awareness, some participating schools have held taste tests for students, pushed eating healthy and local in the classrooms, and had monitors in cafeterias urging students to pick up local fruits and vegetables with their lunch.

"We have a whole generation of adults who don't really know where their food comes from," noted Portsmouth, N.H., schools nutrition director Patricia Laska. "There is so much to learn about food."