From farm to the cafeteria table at Coloma Community Schools

This fall Coloma school students have been served fresh fruits and vegetables as an integral part of the school meals. In a recent interview with Coloma Community Schools food service director, Shelley Mazi-gian explained how Chartwell/ Coloma food service entered into a partnership with Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC) to pro-vide “local fresh produce from local farmers.”

Joshua Bartz from KVCC shared that the Valley Food Hub originated in 2015-2016 as a place where food from local farms could be collected and redistributed to institutional food services such as Coloma Community Schools, while providing training op-portunities for culinary arts students at KVCC. In the spring of 2023, Coloma Community Schools’ food service began the process of investi-gating, visiting, and implementing the program at KVCC for the stu-dents in Coloma. Coloma places or-ders to the food hub and receives a new delivery every two weeks. Al-though the growing season for fresh produce is almost over an ample sup-ply of the farm produce has been frozen or preserved for use through-out the school year.

Coloma school students have been enthusiastic participants in having fresh fruits and vegetables such as peaches, plums, and nectarines for lunch instead of the commonly served canned peaches and fruit cocktail from sources unknown. Now students in the Coloma Com-munity Schools have the opportunity to eat and appreciate the produce grown in the area.