Student "Farm Stand" Makes Windrush a Fresh Produce Hub

Every Wednesday during school lunch break, a handful of children at Windrush School voluntarily rush to help fill yellow plastic boxes with produce from local farms.

“I get to be oranges," one called out.

“I get to be pears,” another exclaimed, as the children rushed excitedly to what the school calls the "Farm Stand." Unlike a typical farm stand, however, it's not a place to buy fresh local produce on the spot.

The boxes that are filled by the students go to about 75 food-box subscribers, largely families whose kids attend Windrush. The project is a community supported agriculture program in which buyers pay a regular fee for a weekly box of fresh produce largely from regional farms.

The progressive K-8 private school also benefits, bringing in about $10,000 a year from the project. Farms that supply the produce include Full Belly and River Dog, weekly vendors at Berkeley farmer’s markets.

The farm stand's founder and organizer, Lucy Aghadjian, is no stranger to ordering bulk produce. She is deeply involved in the local California farming community, having run her own catering business in Berkeley, where she lives, for fifteen years. Her son has attended Windrush school since kindergarten and is now in seventh grade.

Aghadjian came up with the idea for the Windrush farm stand in 2007, when trying to find a way to experiment with things that would involve the children and their parents and benefit the school at the same time.

“The concept was to figure out a fundraiser for families and for school that was in line with what the school had value for – to sell something to the parents that we want them to have, to make money doing it, to have the whole system be healthy and then of course to jam as much real food into the children and their consciousness and their experience at the same time,” said Aghadjian.

The produce is purchased at wholesale rates and a mark-up is added, with the resulting price of $12 per box on a par with the prices found at local farmer’s markets. Typically each box gets 10 types of produce, five vegetables and five fruits.

The children volunteers take their duties seriously, quickly packing each yellow box with their assigned fruit or vegetable. One child at the end of the assembly table grabs the finished boxes one by one and carries them to the shed, where they are stacked for delivery.

“I like it when it starts to go fast. It’s like a race,” said student Shelby McDonald. 

In the beginning, the children and parent volunteers simply used cardboard boxes to pack the produce. But, said parent volunteer Leslie Tyler, “we were always running out of boxes.” Aghadjian decided it would be better to ask the parents to purchase yellow plastic boxes for the school, just as people purchase Giants' seats at the stadium in addition to their season tickets.

After the boxes are filled, they go into the brown farm stand shed – a relatively new addition to the school.  

“We also have a learning garden,” said school representative Samantha Worthington. The garden, which has been integrated into the science class and other parts of the curriculum, sits near the location where the boxes are filled.

Henry Sehuin, a produce clerk at the Monterey Market in Berkeley, arrived with grapefruits, oranges and other produce that could not be acquired from local farms during this season.

“Lucy has a big idea about how seasonal fruit works in California and she’s going to share it with the community," Sehuin said. "I help suggest what’s good, what’s in season, and what will help.”

When it comes to choosing what goes into the boxes, Aghadjian said, “We try to do normal stuff.” Instead of adding produce people might just let sit in the fridge and go bad because they don't know what to do with it, she favors more familiar items, such as spinach, broccoli and beets.

Cost too is a factor in the selection. "We’re trying to get things that are affordable,” she said.