Spotlight on PAGE’s Farm to Table Food Program in Mountain Xpress
By the third week of June, most public schools in Western North Carolina are already joyously vacated for summer break. But on a particularly warm, rainy Monday this summer, the cafeteria at Madison Middle School was humming with the din of a few dozen young teen girls eating lunch.
The girls are students in Madison County’s Partnership for Appalachian Girls’ Education program, which just completed its 10th season in July. The meal they sat down to that day was not your typical school cafeteria fare. The plastic trays were heaped with veggie lasagna and salad made with fresh greens, squash, zucchini, peppers and other vegetables grown just a mile from the school at Highgate Farm. On the side were generous chunks of richly textured whole-grain focaccia baked in a wood-fired brick oven by Walnut Schoolhouse artisan baker Brennan Johnson just down the road in Marshall.