Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com>]

May 13, 2007

Local Food 101, With a School as His Lab

By GERRI HIRSHEY, NEW YORK TIMES

BLOOMFIELD

TALL, bald and of robust appetite, the chef Timothy Cipriano is casting an appreciative eye at the young free-range chickens clucking in their moveable, open-air run outside the Agriscience and Technology Center at Bloomfield High School. "By fall, I can give you three dozen eggs a week," predicts Joseph Rodrigues, the agriscience teacher who oversees greenhouses, raised-bed gardens and a set of big, burbling aquaculture tanks.

"Fantastic. We'll do frittatas," Mr. Cipriano murmurs.

The two men are amiable and enthusiastic co-conspirators. Mr. Cipriano, the food service director for the Bloomfield school district, is also a committed activist for the Connecticut <https://owa.blmfld.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/connecticut/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>  Farm-to-School program, which advocates serving students fresh, locally grown and sustainable food. He is clearly delighted by Mr. Rodrigues's next promise: "We'll be raising tilapia. It's a good, mild fish the kids like. I'm hoping to give you a couple of decent harvests."

Having cajoled a few students out of study hall, Mr. Rodrigues has set them to transplanting heirloom tomato seedlings in the greenhouse. He walks between potting benches reciting tomato varieties: "Moskovich. First Ladies. Juliets. The Great White ... ." The crops also include snap peas, leeks, broccoli rabe, carrots, herbs, lettuce, arugula, okra and squash. Crews of volunteer students will tend the beds over the summer, with early harvest going to a local food bank.

Students also test recipes, from watermelon gazpacho to Mexican pizza, and Mr. Cipriano has gathered the favorites in a self-published compendium intended for the delectation of "Not Your Average Lunch Lady." His most popular dish is Squapple Crisp, a toothsome bake of winter squash, apples, cinnamon and brown sugar topped with crushed cornflakes. Has he had some losers?

"Kale with carrots," he admits. "Hey, kids are kids. You can't push it too far. And their tastes seem to change overnight." His own children, ages 5, 3 and 2, are crazy about asparagus and anything spicy, he says, "at least for now."

At the beginning of the fall term, Mr. Cipriano, also known in these parts as the Local Food Dude, will feed some of the fresh bounty from the agriscience plots to his students, who already enjoy Connecticut-grown fare from local farms in the cafeteria. Classes in the culinary vocational program just up the hill will get baskets of produce to experiment with.

At 35, Mr. Cipriano bears a physical and spiritual resemblance to that legendary evangelist for basic, homegrown American cuisine, James Beard. He says he left restaurants and corporate food service to enjoy more family time on the same schedule as his wife, who is a teacher. He was middle school chef at a private academy in Cheshire before he came here to head the kitchens last July.

Though Mr. Cipriano has brought his "eat local" message to all the district's schools, the cafeteria of the 700-student Bloomfield High is his main laboratory. Beneath posters of Serena Williams <https://owa.blmfld.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/serena_williams/index.html?inline=nyt-per>  asking "Got Milk?" students are enjoying a "brunch for lunch" of scrambled eggs, French toast strips and a tasting of four locally harvested maple syrups.

There is also an Asian stir-fry station with jasmine rice and a counter serving favorites of the area's large West Indian population. Last growing season, Michael Buchanan, a local farmer and Jamaican immigrant, grew callaloo, a leafy vegetable also known as pepperpot, and students made short work of that taste of home. Mr. Rodrigues's classes are also growing incendiary Scotch Bonnet peppers, a Caribbean staple, to keep dishes lively in the fall. Mr. Cipriano has noticed the added benefit of cultural commingling at the steam table as students try different cuisines.

"Food is a great teaching tool," he says. "It touches so many areas - agriculture, the environment, different cultures. It's immediate, it's fun and they almost forget it's good for them, too."

In the busy kitchen, a chef, Solomon Johnson Jr., is recalling the day last fall when Mr. Cipriano floored his staff by unloading several bushels of fresh Connecticut corn. Long accustomed to simply reheating the canned version, the kitchen workers were aghast. "We steamed it and put it out there," Mr. Cipriano says. "The kids shucked it themselves and went crazy for it. We ran out halfway through the first shift."

Mr. Cipriano says he has had consistent support from school administrators, who enjoy school-catered wraps and snacks at meetings, and the district is building an early-childhood magnet school with a farm theme and hands-on greenhouses.

This summer, Mr. Cipriano has another job as manager of the new Litchfield Hills Farm-Fresh Market, which opens at Center School in Litchfield on June 30. The Food Dude will be out there every Saturday, invoking the market mantra ("Be a vocal local, buy local food"), sampling new produce, grass-fed beef and organic dairy products - and developing more recipes. "And come September," he says, "I can't wait to feed it all to my kids."

E-mail:conn@nytimes.com

Timothy Cipriano
Food Service Director
Bloomfield Public Schools
1133 Blue Hills Avenue
Bloomfield, CT 06002
860-769-4207
www.blmfld.org <http://www.blmfld.org/>

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