Health/ Fitness
by Rick LaFrombois
From farms
to lunch trays
More families and restaurants are getting food directly from
local farmers, and schools are beginning to get in on the act, too
Touted as a tastier, healthier option
that better supports local economies and
the environment, the buy-local food movement has manifested on many fronts, the
latest of which is on students’ lunch trays.
Here’s a sampling:
• At the UW-Stevens Point, the 3,000 residence hall students in the past year gained
access to hormone-free milk and local
greens grown inside mid-winter — all produced within 70 miles of the university.
• In the Athens School District, some 500
students now munch on locally grown apples, fruits and vegetables and the occasional chocolate zucchini cakes baked fresh by
head cook Nancy Ellenbecker and her staff.
Ellenbecker picks up most of the food from
within a few miles of her kitchen.
• In the Colby district, which serves about 900
students, food planners this year hired an
AmeriCorps worker to research the availability of locally grown food and make
arrangements for the 2010-11 school year.
• The Wausau School District also has hired
an AmeriCorps worker with grant money
to implement a Farm to School pilot program to teach students — currently just
those at the Wausau Area Montessori
Charter School inside Horace Mann —
through in-class and hands-on learning,
about agriculture, the environment, nutrition and sustainable food production.
Roxi Sladek, the district’s food services director, also is researching the possibility of purchasing and preparing locally
grown food for some 6,000 students.
Providing farm-fresh foods throughout
a school year is not without challenges, especially in this northern latitude. It’s possible, though. Blaine Tornow of Moonshadow Farm, located west of Wausau, offers a
monthly 3-lb bag of salad greens combined
Fun, Laug
hte
r
&
Gr
ea t
with beets, carrots, garlic, onions, potatoes and winter squash in his winter food
share, or CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share. He’s been growing greens
year-round for six years using a modified
greenhouse method that requires no manmade heat.
Heath Farms of Coloma offered to grow
salad greens this winter in two of its 12
greenhouses for UWSP students, a partnership that went so well that the farm is
willing to ramp up production for next
winter, says Mark Hayes, university dining services director.
Bringing locally grown foods to lunch
trays, though, is not the end game. Developing sustainable agriculture practices that
build community is.
Most organic farmers — Wisconsin has
the second most in the nation — will tell
you that sustainable agriculture is essential
to preserve soil for future generations and
encourage eating habits that contribute to
good health. When people are committed
on a financial, emotional or social level to
eating real food, that leaves less room for
the unhealthy junk.
“All those things in boxes in the supermarket aren’t what human beings are genetically engineered to run on,” says Dave
Peterson, 67, a certified organic farmer in
Elderon. “The good Lord knew what he
was doing… there ain’t a Twinkie tree.”
Peterson is thrilled that schools are tying
local food partnerships with curriculum.
Farmers who practice sustainable agriculture, such as Kat Becker and Tony Schultz
of Stoney Acres Farm in Athens, see education as a key element of their operations,
whether it is through providing information
to their customers via a weekly newsletter,
farm visits and grassroots marketing.
New Friends!
Square Dance
Classes are held every Tuesday
D.C. Everest Jr. High Cafeteria
1000 Machmueller St., Schofield
Call 715-848-0238
Co-sponsored by the Everest School
District & Merry 8’s Square
Dance Club
First
Class
FREE!
Over the years, public school kitchen
staff hours and positions have been cut because food service operations — run independently of district budgets — have
turned largely to pre-processed and packaged foods purchased from distributors
such as Sysco, a global food service giant
with record net earnings of $1.1 billion.
continues on 10 t
Friday & Saturday, February 25th & 26th ONLY!
❰ Couples, Singles & Families Welcome ❱
Series Begins April 13, 2010 • 7-9 PM
athon County last month organized a
forum, at which a panel of growers, scholars and scientists talked about the opportunities and challenges that consumers
and producers face.
First off, they say, sustainable agriculture is about building a better relationship between people and their food. One in
five meals today is eaten in a car, says Eric
Boos, an assistant professor of philosophy
at UW-Fond du Lac who also is an organic farmer. There’s a disconnect — some
would argue contempt — between people
and their food.
Why do we need farmers when we have
supermarkets? is the attitude of many consumers, says Craig Carlson, a forum panelist who owns a family farm in Hamburg
raising mainly livestock. He invites people
to visit his farm, including one young mom
who brought her daughter to pick out the
grass-fed steer that her family would eat.
Carlson, Peterson and the Schultz family
are just three of a growing number of farmers
supported directly by the people (and some
restaurants) who buy and eat their food.
About 500 families around Wausau and
Central Wisconsin now participate in local
CSAs, or community supported agriculture, in which customers pay a farmer upfront for a weekly box of produce during
the growing season. That figure doesn’t
include the untold number who also buy
much of their meat, pork and poultry directly from farmers, or who make regular
shopping trips to the farmers market.
Demand for organic and locally grown food
has allowed small farms to again become profitable, Schultz says. “People are looking for
it. I hope it’s not just a trend or a fad.” Stoney
Acres provided 135 seasonal food shares last
year to families largely based in Wausau.
Schultz aims to provide even more shares
this year despite the economic downturn.
FIRST ANNIVERSARY SPECIALS
Classes for New Dancers
Put a Little Life in Your Step!
Sustainable agriculture is so topof-mind these days that the UW-Mar-
24/7 GYM
PERSONAL TRAINING
TANNING SALON
NUTRITION CENTER
404 S. Second Avenue,Wausau
715-845-6750 or 715-432-0356
$15
a month
with 1-yr. contract
or
$1250 a month
with
18-mo. contract
Offers valid for first-time members only.
Buy 10 Tans or More
for $2.50 each,
RECEIVE ONE BOTTLE
OF LOTION
FREE!
City Pages v February 25-March 4, 2010
9
Health/ Fitness
s continued from 9
Those foods — bought with federal/state
dollars and with revenue from paying students — often cost less and need only be
heated, not prepared. Using locally grown
fruits and veggies means the staff in Athens needs to “peel it, dice it and slice it,”
Ellenbecker says. “We can just push a little
harder to get it done. But it tastes a lot better. So the kids like it.”
Food service directors, such as Laurie
Hefgard in Colby and Sladek in Wausau,
need to operate under financial constraints,
so price often is a consideration, along
with quality, kids’ tastes and availability.
But going local and fresh isn’t automatically more expensive. The hormonefree milk from Red Barn Dairy now being
served at UWSP costs less than the milk
previously served, says Hayes, director of
the university’s new, self-operated dining
services. Farm-fresh greens purchased this
winter were a bit more expensive, “but I’d
rather get something from 36 miles away
than from 2,000-plus miles away in California,” he says.
Other items, such as local cage-free liquid eggs and organic meats, cost more than
double the eggs and meat that are available
from larger distributors, so the university
plans to offer those perhaps once a week.
Think “cage-free Friday,” Hayes says.
The university has made a conscious decision to purchase local foods from within 100
miles, whenever possible, he says. “Piece by
piece you build your local program.”
Farm to School programs, such as the one
taking root in Wausau, “have so much potential because it reaches kids from every social class,” says Kat Becker, 30. The USDA
encourages the program with monetary incentives, in part because many families cannot afford fresh, locally grown food, instead
choosing “industrial” food subject to high
doses of sodium, refined sugars, preservatives and genetically modified organisms.
There are 206 bones, 650 muscles and more
than 230 joints in the human body ...
It’s not easy, though, to fit fresh foods
into a food service budget. “I’ve tried
personally to get local produce into the
schools. When it comes down to it, the
budget is the bottom line,” says Tornow of
Moonshadow Farms, who’s also co-owner
of the Downtown Grocery in Wausau.
Building capacity There’s also the legitimate question of whether local farms can
provide sufficient food to feed more than
10,000 students in the Wausau area.
In the past 15 years, sustainable food
production has dramatically increased in
the Dairy State, which was home to more
than 1,200 certified organic farms in 2008,
the latest year USDA data was available.
That’s second in the nation only to California. Farms on average are smaller, though,
so the state ranked sixth in total organic
sales — two-thirds of sales coming from
cow milk, one-fourth from crops and the
William J. Jarvis, MD
Orthopaedic Surgeon &
Sports Medicine
Bone & Joint has grown to become one of the
James R. Messerly, DO
Orthopaedic Primary Care
and musculoskeletal care in the region. At our
new Wausau-area musculoskeletal and surgery
center, you’ll experience the exceptional
Lester A. Owens, DO
Physical Medicine &
Rehabilitation
Daniel D. Priebe, DO
Orthopaedic Surgeon &
Sports Medicine
orthopaedic and musculoskeletal care needs.
Bone & Joint at Wausau
Musculoskeletal &
Surgey Center
5200 Hummingbird Rd
Wausau, WI 54401
715.359.6442
800.445.6442
Bone & Joint at Merrill
100 Eagle Drive
Merrill, WI 54452
715.536.7181
800.445.6442
Bone & Joint at Medford
724 South 8th Sreet
Medford, WI 54451
715.748.2663
800.445.6442
Stoney Acres Farm – Kat Becker and Tony
Schultz (Athens) • (715) 432-4683 • Starts
June 3 • Full Share $460, half share $300.
Also has worker share and “share a share”
programs.
Sunny Sky Farm – Mark Anderson (Amherst
Junction) • (715) 824-2697 • Starts June 3 •
Full share $475 or extended season $610.
care you’ve come to know, along with the
convenience of one location for all of your
McDougal Farms – Gerald & Maydene
McDougal (Antigo) • (715) 627-4418 • First
week of June • Full share $395, half share $265.
Moonshadow Farm – Blaine Tornow
(Wausau) • (715) 675-6588 • Starts early to
mid-June • Large share $565, standard $385.
Spring greenhouse & winter storage shares
also available.
E. Lawrence Markey, MD
Orthopaedic Surgeon
most comprehensive providers of orthopaedic
Malek Family Stewardship Farm – Chris
Malek (Rosholt) • (715) 340-5366 • Starts last
week of June • Full share $500, half share $275,
also has worker shares (payment plan available
upon request).
Maplewood Gardens – Dave Peterson (Elderon)
• (715) 454-6609 • Starts June 1 • $30/week
(half down initially, remainder on July 1).
Benjamin J. Hackett, MD
Orthopaedic Spine Surgeon
is here to care for you?
Wausau/Central Wisconsin
CSAs
By purchasing a Community Supported Agriculture farm share, you pay for a season’s
worth of vegetables in spring, which then get
delivered fresh weekly to a drop-off site in a
neighborhood near you.
Bone & Joint
Providers
Pamela E. Glennon, MD
Orthopaedic Surgeon
Isn’t it good to know
rest from livestock and poultry.
Retail sales nationwide have followed
suit, booming from $3.6 billion in 1997 to
$21.1 billion in 2008.
If demand for locally grown food were
to suddenly spike, though, Tornow suggests Wausau area farmers at first wouldn’t
be able to provide adequate supply. In
other parts of the state, such as in Madison,
where the buy-local food movement caught
on years ago, in-place infrastructure is
more likely to meet an increase in demand.
The UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, or CIAS, is helping farmers “scale up” to meet demand
for local food, says Kat Becker. CIAS has
done case studies to determine how small
sustainable farmers could source meats and
produce locally to retailers such as a pizza
chain or grocery store.
Whitefeather Organics – Tony & Laura Whitefeather (Custer) • (715) 252-2051 • Starts last
week of May • Full share $460, $160 storage
share delivered week before Thanksgiving.
Thomas G. Staysniak, DPM
Podiatrist, Foot / Ankle
Surgeon
GIRLS’
Paul T. Strobel, DPM
Podiatrist, Foot / Ankle
Surgeon
Scott D. Stuempfig, MD
Pain Management
OUTINGS
GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT
March 10th • 4-7 pm
PAMPERED
COFFEE KLATCH
March 16th
9:30-11:30 am
Visit our website for monthy specials:
www.dayspringhealthspa.com
For Health. For Life.
www.bonejoint.net
10
City Pages v February 25-March 4, 2010
William E. Wessels, MD
Orthopaedic Surgeon &
Sports Medicine
715-849-D’SPA (3772)
WASHINGTON SQUARE
300 Third St., Wausau
(Adjacent to Jefferson Street Inn)