COMING SOON! We’re taking Farm to School home to families and communities across Illinois through our Illinois Harvest of the Month (HOTM) program!
Our At Home and In
Community Farm to School Toolkit (ATIC) provides adaptable resources for your whole community within four primary connects:
Home Connect
- Educate and share ways to grow, prepare, and preserve garden and local foods at home with resources you can share in backpacks, in after-school clubs and programs, during online lessons, at early care centers, your local library, and at grocery stores and farmers markets in your community.
Community Garden and Local Farm Connect
- Are you a community garden or child garden program in Illinois? Share Harvest at Home resources, activities and simple techniques to grow food for families at home in, and outdoors. Connect your families to a local farmers market, or an area farm by providing education and information about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares available in your community. Share information about EBT purchases at the farmers market to connect all of your families to local food.
Healthy Community Connect
- Create a connection to local hospital health programs, Produce RX or Veggie RX programs, your local health agency or other nutrition and health related organizations through partnerships Share Harvest at Home resources to teach families about healthy foods, growing food, and to educate parents on the benefits and “how-to” elements of cooking and preserving fresh healthy foods for their children.
Food Pantry Connect
- Help local pantries increase health outcomes for their clients by sharing healthy recipes, easy preparation techniques, and insight for donated, or gleaned local produce items by providing Harvest of the Month home recipes, Fun Fact Friday, and Harvest at Home shares and resources.
The At Home and In Community Farm to School Toolkit will go live in 2022. Watch for an announcement in our newsletter!
The Illinois Great Apple Crunch is an annual celebration of fresh, local apples on the second Thursday of October, during National Farm to School Month. The Illinois Great Apple Crunch is part of the Great Lakes Great Apple Crunch, which is also celebrated in the neighboring states of Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Schools, early child care facilities, and other child education programs across Illinois can participate by serving local apples on the lunch tray, or in the classroom and ‘crunch’-ing into them together all at the same time.
Connect Families at Home!
Families, and neighborhood groups at home can now register for the Crunch and celebrate alongside schools, early care and garden programs across the state. Participating feeding and garden sites will create a louder “Crunch!” in their community when they send promotional materials home with their students to encourage increased exposures to fresh, local apples at home. Watch for the Community and Home toolkit coming in 2022!
Registration goes live in August (here) for the 2022 Crunch!