EATING THEIR VEGGIES.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

LORANE - Fifth-grader Lianna Spangler was up to her elbows in the gooey guts of a butternut squash Monday morning. But that didn't curb her enthusiasm for a "Farm to School" lesson at Lorane Elementary School.

"It's really cool to finally look at the inside of one of these," she said of the bell-shaped vegetable. "Who knew it would look like a pumpkin?"

As Lianna and her classmates chopped vegetables, two boys worked with an Oregon State University nutritionist to make teriyaki sauce to serve over the harvest bounty. A rich aroma filled the room as students took turns stir-frying a colorful tumble that included carrots and bok choy, snap peas and kohlrabi, squash and leeks.

"It smells like the stuff that gets my eyes wet," said Austin Schultz. His appreciative tone suggested he saw the payoff for some unpleasant moments chopping the latter ingredient a bit earlier.

Students in the rural Crow-Applegate-Lorane School District are pioneering a program that teaches them where food comes from, how to grow their own and the benefits of eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Along with students from their sister school, Applegate Elementary, the Lorane fifth- and sixth-graders have made field trips to two nearby farms. They have worked with School Garden Project coordinator Jared Pruch to plant and tend their own plots. And on Monday, they prepared a Harvest Day meal.

Thanks to the field trips, the students have come to love even little-known vegetables.

"Kohlrabi! Yessssss!" Applegate fifth-grader Shari Russell exclaimed as Megan Kemple, Farm to School program coordinator for the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, held up one of the green bulbs. Shari first tasted the crunchy cousin of broccoli at nearby Sweetwater Farm.

"We picked it and cut it right up, and I really liked the taste," she said.

At Laughing Stock Farm, students collected eggs still warm from the hens that laid them.

"The chickens, like, flew around you when you were trying to grab the eggs," said Keegan Anneker of Lorane.

His teacher, Nicole Olson, said it's fun watching her students learn the nutritional and taste advantages of fresh food.

It's a timely strategy, Applegate teacher Robin Chinburg agreed.

"With all the news lately about how we're raising a generation of fat, inactive kids, it's exciting to be doing something about it," she said. "I'm amazed how excited the kids are about eating vegetables.

"When I was their age, if someone held up a squash, I would have said, `Yuck!'?"

Kathi Holvey, principal of both schools, said linking students with local farms "just makes common sense."

"When we educate our students and their parents, they support the local farms, which in turn support our schools," she said.

Kemple said the Applegate and Lorane students are part of a regional trend.

"People in the Northwest are becoming more interested in purchasing food grown close to home, for a variety of reasons," she said. "It tastes better, it's fresher and they want to reduce their carbon footprint - right now, the average fruit or vegetable consumed in the U.S. travels 1,500 miles from farm to table!"

With the success of the Crow district pilot effort, the nonprofit group plans to expand its educational program to Eugene's River Road and Cesar Chavez elementary schools this spring.

It hopes to add other districts in the future, Kemple said, and to bolster a more ambitious "Farm to Cafeteria" arm.

"The goal is to get local foods into the meals served as part of the national school lunch program," she said.

In an age of privatized food service, centralized school kitchens, districtwide menus and packaged foods, that's a tall order.

"There are a lot of challenges to bringing locally grown food into our school cafeterias right now," she said. Among them: Most schools don't have kitchen staffs or facilities to chop up and prepare fresh fruits and vegetables anymore.

In the Eugene School District, the effort has begun with a "Harvest of the Month" program, in which the district's cafeterias serve a featured Oregon-grown fruit or vegetable every Wednesday.

To go beyond that, Farm to School organizers may look again to smaller Crow-Applegate-Lorane for leadership.

"We are beginning a conversation with the kitchen staff here," Kemple said.

If student enthusiasm is any incentive, the rewards could be great for the district's cafeteria staff.

They might hear more comments such as those of Lorane's Lianna Spangler, upon tasting her class' harvest stir fry Monday morning.

"Even the carrots are good!" she said. "I'm amazed - I'm not really a big fan of carrots. But it's cooked enough with the rest of the stir fry to have a bit more flavor."