SBS Students Learn About Food & Sustainability

SANBORNTON, NH – Students at Sant Bani School in Sanbornton have been learning about food production and how local food is more sustainable. Educational goals of the program include awareness of how food makes it from its source to the dining table, studying how locally grown food reduces energy waste and strengthening the school’s connection with local community farms.

Master gardener Susan Dyment, permaculturalist Kirsten Wilkinson and gardening enthusiast Maya Hardcastle, along with other faculty members, have been sharing gardening techniques with the students. They have been preparing for Sant Bani’s Food Day celebration, a school-wide, faculty- and student-prepared feast made up entirely of food grown on the school campus or from nearby farms, by digging potatoes, pulling carrots, onions and beets and cutting cabbage and squash. They have also been learning about vegetable preservation, using recipes with winter storage crops and visited a nearby farm to see their food storage systems.

The Food Day event will take place on October 22 and is the pinnacle of this program. The menu will feature many items with products grown right on the Sant Bani campus, including apple and blueberry cobbler, butternut squash soup, coleslaw and homemade bread baked by the School’s baking club.

Rosi Kerr, director of sustainability at Dartmouth College, will be a special guest at the event and will talk to Sant Bani students about how local food production is more sustainable. Kerr is also founding executive director of Gray is Green, a non-profit that engages people 65+ in environmental sustainability, and an energy advisor at Juice Energy, a NYC-based renewable energy supplier.