SEQUIM – Two days past Valentine’s Day, Kia Kozun and Arturo Flores will deliver their sweetest goods to Sequim kids.
We’re talking red and orange, burst and snap, straight from fertile Dungeness Valley fields.
Feb. 16 is to be Local Food Day in Sequim’s school cafeterias, with raspberries from Flores’ Graysmarsh farm and carrot sticks from Nash’s Organic Produce, where Kozun is the marketing manager.
District food service director Laurie Campen is delighted – but Robert Converse, who’s led the charge to get locally grown food into local schools, is beside himself.
“We made history today,” he said Monday after meeting with Flores and Campen to plan the local-food event.
Last year, Converse formed Olympic Harvest, an organization promoting Peninsula food producers, and began talking with officials from Sysco and Sodexho, suppliers of cafeteria fare.
Certainly local organic produce is more expensive than the commodities and mass quantities those companies distribute.
But Converse is seeking grants and nonprofit status for Olympic Harvest, in hopes of subsidizing local growers who sell their produce to schools.
Meantime, Converse also sought to pique the interest of school officials and parents.
He’s father to a Helen Haller Elementary student, and said he’s heard from others who want their children to try locally grown foods.
During Monday’s meeting, Converse and Flores held a tasting of Graysmarsh berries and Nash’s veggies.
They must have been good.
Two weeks from Friday, Campen will spread them out on the offering bars at Helen Haller and Greywolf elementary schools, Sequim Middle School and Sequim High School and watch what happens.
“They all eat carrot sticks, and I think the berries will go really well,” she said, adding that as the price of California oranges rising higher than ever, Flores’ raspberries appeared in the right place at the right time.
As she mapped March’s menus on Tuesday, Campen planned berry coffee cake with Graysmarsh fruit, and two more local-food days on March 2 and March 16.
At the offering bar, “we won’t change the price at all,” Campen said.
She also plans to add cookies from the Live Bread Shoppe and Sherry Fry’s Blyn bakery to the choices at the Sequim High School cafeteria.
The cookies, which feature organic chocolate, cane juice and freshly milled buckwheat, will stand out due to their size and price.
Campen said she’ll pay 95 cents and charge students $1.50 apiece.
“We’ll see how it goes,” she said, “and we’ll go from there.”
