Week three is complete for Region 20! We hope everyone had a relaxing Memorial Day weekend that carried on those same feelings through this past week. It was another busy (but exciting) week for us! Tuesday was a day filled with preparation for our local foods presentation and activity that we presented on Wednesday and Thursday for the final days of the SWITCH celebration. The fourth and fifth graders loved the activity of the local food which consisted identifying where the fresh produce came from by looking at food labels and then placing stickers of the food items on a giant world map so everyone could see the origin of their foods. After our presentation and activity, we spent the rest of our Wednesday and Thursday helping out where necessary and taking photographs of students’ excitement as they participated in the SWITCH celebration at the Rec Center. There was a total of 84 students on Wednesday and another 120 students on Thursday, which can probably imply how exhausted we were by Thursday evening.
Although we were tired from all the excitement with the kids, our Thursday was not over yet! Jamming to some tunes, we pumped ourselves up on our drive over to the Jefferson Street Farmer’s Market in Burlington. We were thrilled to present our sample tasting of local French Breakfast radishes and a veggie dip that we prepared at our first farmers market. The tasting was a huge success and everyone seemed to love it! We even had one girl say “I don’t even like vegetables, but this is so good!” Along with the samples we handed out “locavore” stickers, EatFreshSEI.org reusable shopping bags, and produce basic sheets from the “Spend Smart. EatSmart” website. We ended up running out of our food samples, so we would definitely call our first farmers market a success! We were able to share information about ISU Extension and Outreach as well as promote local foods as we connected with the farmers market’s visitors. We look forward to these interactions with the Southeast Iowa community as we present more tastings at upcoming farmers markets.
