November 2025 Newsletter

This fall, our educators welcomed 971 students to the farm to listen, observe, touch, taste and smell all that the fall harvest has to offer! 

• Students in our Digging Deeper School Partnership program worked together to assemble and eat 1000 farm-fresh pizzas and 465 bowls of Rainbow Soup!

• 257 pumpkins were harvested by students participating in our Fall Exploration field trips at The Farm at Southern Oregon University!

• 358 students had the opportunity to explore our new farm site at the Southern Oregon Research & Extension Center, in partnership with The Family Nurturing Center. 

October was a busy month for our procurement team!  Apples aplenty made their way to kids’ stomachs across the valley through Tasting Tables and our new Tastebud Trekker program, inspiring some schools to purchase even more apples to feature at mealtimes!  We sourced Golden Delicious, Maigold, and Matsu from Green Ridge Farm and Granny Smith and Gala from Fox Run Farm--when you have visions of apples, do you see green or red or multicolored, or are they already processed into warm apple pie!? Shout-out to the Boys and Girls Club in Grants Pass for making a huge order from 4 different farms and spending 75% of their NCRG award in one go! Rogue River School District is also steadily eating away at their award and getting lots of fantastic feedback from their kids and staff about the local goods getting onto their plates. And that's just what Rogue Valley Farm to School has assisted with-many schools are beginning to have or continuing to foster direct relationships with local producers and purchasing away!

 I will miss fresh tomatoes and crisp cucumbers but pot roast, roasted veggies, and stewed apples are some of my favorite foods and wouldn't you know that they taste better as the weather gets cooler and the days darker. Even though we're at the tail end of the harvest season, purchases of local beef and storage crops will really see the schools through fall and winter and the Josephine County Farm Collective is finding creative ways to process leftover crops into ready to eat or easy to prep foods, check out their marketplace for items like freeze-dried potatoes or frozen apple slices and more! Phoenix Talent School District will be using 150 pounds of ground beef from Plaisance Ranch for the most awesome of nacho bars the first week of November.

 Last but not least, this month we'll be relishing Cranberries from Black Moon Farm in Bandon for our Tasting Tables in the form of a delectable cranberry applesauce! 

October 23rd marked the statewide CRUNCH through the Oregon Farm to School Network

The Oregon Crunch-At-Once is a joyful, synchronized moment when students across Oregon bite into locally grown apples, carrots, or other crunchy produce all at the same time. This collective crunch creates a powerful statement about the importance of local food and agriculture education in our schools. 

Rogue Valley Farm to School took it to the next level!  Students from Orchard Hill Elementary came on a Harvest Meal Farm field trip at the Farm at SOU.  They got to harvest veggies to make a salad and pizza and they harvested Kohlrabi to crunch on.  A weird alien-like crunchy veggie that few students had ever heard of let alone eaten.  What do students have to say about Kohlrabi? "It smells like the sea, salty", It smells peppery, "it's like a radish, but more sweet" "Can I keep eating it, it's so crunchy".