Teton Valley Community School - Victor, Idaho by Diane

Friday, August 17. The Teton Valley Community Center is located in Victor, Idaho, a small town on the Idaho side of the Tetons. First, I have to say, if you’ve never heard of or seen the Tetons, you really must try to experience them firsthand. Breathtaking sheer rock jagged mountains that jut up to the heavens – they literally can take your breath away (well, so can the altitude, which you’ll read happened to me….)

But first the Community School. The school teaches K-5 and is an independent school with one room for the pre-K and kindergarten children, and another for 1-5. The evening we visited, the children were hosting a fundraiser for their school, which includes a sustainable garden, small high tunnel (would that be a low tunnel) to grow some vegetables indoors, and chickens.

They prepared appetizers like mozzarella, tomato and basil served on bread and walked around the house and grounds serving them to the 50 or so adults that attended. It was so adorable to see 6 year olds walking around with serving platters overflowing with food.

We were honored to get a tour of the grounds by Adriana, one of the students. She took us to meet the chickens – she even caught one for us and let us pet her. (It’s the first chicken I’ve ever petted – they’re very soft!....) We also saw the tomatoes and basil growing in the low tunnel (it’s not a hothouse exactly – but it’s a plastic enclosed building where plants grow.) - that’s where our appetizers came from. We also toured the garden where they grow a wide variety of vegetables, from broccoli to carrots to kale. This is such a great way to introduce children to food and farming, and I’m sure it has a lasting impact on all the students.

Sue Muncaster from www.ecogastronomy.org and Slow Food The Tetons was our host. (She also has a daughter in the school.) I’m pasting our press release for the event below because it has some great quotes from Sue. She’s one of the new faces of food – young, vibrant, energetic – who are making real changes in the way people eat in her area.

The embarrassing moment of the evening was when they asked me to say a few words. I’ve been giving little talks here and there so didn’t think anything of it. I walked up ten or so steps to look over a balcony to greet the crowd. What I didn’t realize was that we were over 6,000 feet up. Being a sea level person, I found that I couldn’t catch my breath as I spoke, so it was so embarrassing! I ended up cutting my talk really short and came down, asking what height we were at. When they said over 6,000 feet, I realized it was altitude, but I seemed to be the only person affected. (Actually, when I went walking with Dawn, one of our other bloggers who’s on the road with me right now, she had trouble getting up a simple hill.) It’s amazing how much altitude can affect a person.

The evening was a total success, and even though we had to leave a little early to get over the pass through the Tetons to make it to Jackson and didn’t want to do it in the dark, we got to meet some amazing children and see how a small school in Idaho is connecting children with the land.

Here’s the press release for the event:


Denise Hughes at 917-549-2621,
or Denise@creative-connectors.com or-
Alex Raksin at 323-301-8205, or
AlexRaksin@sbcglobal.net

Teton Valley Kids to Share Bounty of Food and Thought
As The Eat Well Guided Tour of America rolls through Idaho

August 15th—Victor, Idaho--All summer long kids in an evergreen valley on the Idaho side of the sharply ridged Teton Mountains have been planting, weeding, and harvesting crops, as well as cooking dishes and devouring European folktales about food like "Strega Nona," an Italian tale where a grandmother teaches her devoted granddaughter that all great food recipes have a “secret ingredient”: they are made with love.

On Friday, August 17, the children—all participants in Teton Valley’s “seed to plate” summer education program--will share their bounty of both knowledge and food at a Harvest Garden Party at the Teton Valley School on 192 Birch Rd. in Victor, Idaho.

The party will also celebrate the arrival of the “Eat Well Guided Tour of America,” a 38-day bus trip from California to New York.

The trip was organized by Sustainable Table, a New York-based nonprofit program led by Diane Hatz and dedicated to helping both small farmers and consumers establish community-based alternatives to industrial-based agriculture. Hatz--a sustainable food advocate as well as the Executive Producer of “The Meatrix” an award-winning series of short films that comically exposed many unsavory truths about factory farming—began the trip on August 2nd in West Hollywood, California and plans to wrap up the tour at the September 9th Farm Aid concert at Randall’s Island in New York City.

Anyone with a computer can join the adventure by visiting the tour’s interactive site: http://www.sustainabletable.org/roadtrip/home.php.

"We knew we had to include the Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming areas on our tour because we've heard a lot of good things are happening with sustainable food here. And we're excited to visit the Teton Valley and meet some of the leaders in this area's food movement, people who are connecting food producers and consumers to create and enjoy food that is wholesome and healthy."

One such leader is Sue Muncaster, a Teton Valley resident who helped pioneer the “seed to plate” program. Muncaster says she began learning about “the pleasures of the table” from her aunt, “who loved to cook.”

“Right now we aren’t doing too well,” Muncaster says. “The United States suffers from being a fast food nation and taking the time to sit down with family and friends to enjoy a meal has become a four-time-a-year, holiday occurrence. Even the farmers who have lived here in the Tetons for generations can no longer afford to farm and are selling out to developers.” Meanwhile, in what was once a self-sustaining community, we can no longer buy local milk from the cows we pass on the road and all our organic produce comes from Los Angeles.

“If we don’t change the direction we are going, we might just end up where we are headed.”

The solution, Muncaster adds, “seems so simple—by going back to growing food to buy and sell locally, the farmland and lifestyle that makes this place so beautiful is preserved, the environmental impact of food distribution is mitigated, and we have better taste and health.” But Muncaster says her hopes extend far beyond the Tetons.

“My dream is that consumer power generated from informed, caring individuals will cause every food producer in the world to change the way they do business. The result will be more people reconnected with nature, the seasons, their family and their local community. What’s left of ethnic traditions, artisan foods and cultural identity will be preserved and celebrated. Questionable artificial ingredients, growth stimulants, antibiotics and synthetic chemical residues will cease to flow through the bodies of our children. People all over the world can feed themselves nutritious sustainable foods and receive a fair price for their labors.”

Muncaster at first thought that kids would never relate to the worldly and soulfully mature aspirations behind the “sustainable food” movement.

“I’d seen the photos and read the stories of the kids eating the collard greens with skepticism- it’s a nice idea but is it lasting? Can you really keep their attention and commitment to the hard work of gardening? Do they really get it? Can it happen here?”

But she made up her mind to support the Teton Valley’s “seed to plate” initiative just after she had “one of those trying days” with her four-year-old daughter. Her aunt healed the two of them as if “by magic by cooking the most incredible meal ever.”

“I knew my 5-year old daughter ‘got it’ when we were driving down the road in Teton Valley this spring and she shouted out the window a greeting to the fresh soil and later helped me out in our strawberry patch by identifying just which weeds we needed to pull out.”

“And as I’m sure we’ll all see at Friday’s garden party, all of our kids get it. After all, school’s out, the sun is shining, and summer is in full swing. There is no better time to teach kids a reverence for fresh, local food, how it grows, and just how good it tastes.” Hatz suspects that all of the kids she’ll meet at Friday’s garden party will “get it.” “For despite all the negative news about food, we’ve seen incredible enthusiasm for sustainable food at every stop on our Eat Well Guided tour of America so far. People just seem to know that the more they support their local farmers and food systems, the better off their communities will be.”

- The Tour will also stop in Jackson, WY on Aug. 18th at the Chef’s Table at the Jackson Hole Farmers Market. This event is being hosted by Slow Food.

Morning (8-noon) – We’ll be visiting with a local sustainable chef at the Chefs Table http://chefstablejh.com/ in the Jackson Hole Farmers Market, www.jacksonholefarmersmarket.org/ to prepare and hand out food samples. We’ll also participate in a pie contest!

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