Ronan schools serve up local cuisine

RONAN — Homemade whole-wheat buns, Montana ground beef and locally grown carrots and apples are items you would find on a high-priced menu, but in honor of Farm to School month local food was the highlight of lunch trays Monday in the Ronan cafeteria.

“Local and scratch-made food is better for the kids,” Marsha Wartick said.

It’s hard to get kids to eat their vegetables and Wartick is on the front line of the battle. As the food service supervisor for the Ronan School District, she struggles to get students healthy, nutritious food they will eat.

Wartick said she began incorporating whole grains, fruits and vegetables long before there were requirements to do so. While most of it has been an experiment she said, she has found some items student really like, such as a salsa with corn and black beans.

On top of that tall order, Wartick and other Lake County school districts have been working in conjunction with Nicki Jimenez, a Food Corps service member with Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center, a program of Lake County Community Development Corporation (LCCDC), to incorporate locally grown food into school menus.

Jimenez said her role is to facilitate relationships between school food service and local farmers.  

By doing that, she said the goal is to build the economy by creating new markets for Montana farmers to sell their crops.

Jimenez said the close partnership with the Western Montana Growers Cooperative (WMGC), a collective of 38 growers from the region, makes it feasible to acquire the amount of food schools require.  

“Without them it would be hard to get [food] at the volume and scale that schools need,” Jimenez said.

The carrots and apples that graced the trays on Monday were sourced from WMGC, the beef came from White’s Wholesale Meats in Ronan and the wheat came from Wheat Montana in Three Forks.

The struggle comes down to the matter of cost, which both Wartick and Jimenez can attest to. Wartick said while she weighs options for local fruits and veggies for the better price, she always buys flour made from wheat grown in the Treasure State.

Jimenez said part of her work is to make local food affordable for schools.

“A lot of times they’re forced to buy whatever they are able,” she said.

Jimenez said the way to begin getting local food into schools is to utilize programs that have more budget flexibility, such as snack programs, and leveraging those dollars to go toward local food.  

Jimenez said this year she was impressed when Wartick initiated the conversation about Montana Food Day. She said it shows growth for food service facilitators to make local foods part of their everyday operation.

Wartick said she couldn’t do it all without the help of her excellent staff.

Wartick said she likes to feature local foods in the elementary classrooms of Pablo and Ronan, such as fresh fruit or veggies as the student’s daily snack.

Currently, she said the program includes one local food item each weekly.