Throughout the school year, the Island Grown Schools Harvest of the Month program highlights a locally available crop at all seven of our K-12 schools and at six preschools, in school taste tests, on cafeteria lunch menus, and in partnership with Island grocery stores and restaurants.

During the summer, while IGS staff, parents, students and teachers volunteer to maintain our 13 school gardens, students from the regional high school are keeping the Harvest of the Month program alive.

Robin Forte, Island Grown Schools’ Harvest of the Month guest chef for the Edgartown School, moved through the lunch room with a tray of asparagus roll-ups for students to try. As she moved from table to table she saw a pattern emerging, one that has become familiar through the course of this first year of our Harvest of the Month program. The children at first would politely say “No, thank you” to the taste test. Then one student would venture, “I’ll try it,” and then each person in turn around the table would say the same thing.

Spring is here at last, and Island Grown Schools celebrates the appearance of the first spring greens in school gardens across the Island.

We dedicated April to greens in our Harvest of the Month program, with taste tests at every school and school meals featuring local and regionally grown greens at least twice throughout the month.

As we wait for the first crops of the new growing season to appear in school gardens, Island Grown Schools’ Harvest of the Month program celebrates winter squash, one of the best storage crops to help sustain us through the long months between fall’s bounty and the first crops of spring.

“What is it?” a student asked at an Island Grown Schools taste test this month. “It’s a potato,” said the IGS school coordinator, who was giving out little samples of roasted potatoes with rosemary for the students to try. “A what?” asked the student. “You know, French fries are made out of them,” said his friend standing nearby. “Oh, French fries, I know French fries,” the young student said. “Would you like to try it?” asked the coordinator. “No, no,” said the student, shaking his head decisively.

On one of the calm, unseasonably warm early December days we had last month, my husband Isaac took our three-year-old son Emmett and me scalloping