Postville Community Schools

Connecting kids to their food

Postville is the six Farm to School pilots for Allamakee County .   This page highlights some of their projects and activities.

Videos from Postville:

Postville Hosts Family Night

(9/26/11) Leaders from the community and school planned a meal for National Family Day.  Over 170 people attended the event and enjoyed local pork sandwiches, a cole slaw made with local cabbage, local apple slices and homemade applesauce.  The Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative had a booth sampling brownies made with pumpkin and zucchini bread. Parents could select Pick a Better Snack recipe cards and kids were excited to take home Pick a Better Snack erasers and bookmarks.  Kids also enjoyed writing their names on Postville's graffiti pumpkin, which stayed at the school to decorate the cafeteria.

Local Youth Host FEEST in Postville

On a Sunday afternoon, the Postville FEEST filled the kitchen of St. Paul Lutheran Church and created a variety of dishes from donated local foods including stir fry, vegetable frittata, fried green tomatoes, roasted green beans, steamed purple cabbage, caramelized apples and squash, baked butternut squash, and tomato bruschetta with homemade tortilla chips.  Read more.

Cooking School for School Cooks

Postville school food service staff are sharpening their cooking skills by attending 5th Season Workshops hosted by the Northeast Iowa Food & Fitness Initiative Farm to School program.  At one workshop, guest chef and author Monique Hooker from De Soto, Wisconsin showed food service workers how to prepare and store fresh local produce to be used throughout the school year by creating a vegetable dish called ratatouille. A 5th Season Workshop is designed to teach food service staff how to prepare and store local foods from farmers or school gardens.  As the name implies, the fifth season is when you utilize local foods that have been preserved by a variety of methods in meals. Read more.

Postville Teens Install Frisbee Golf Course

Have you checked out Postville's new Frisbee golf course?  The course is set up at Lull Park around the Butterfly trail area.  This course was a project of the Engaging Youth Serving Community teen group, and with additional funds from Postville supporters.  Read more.

FFI Team members flex dodge ball muscles!!

Advisor time at Postville High is now dodge ball tournament time that promotes school-wide bonding with student and staff exercise.  The dodge ball tournaments started in January and concluded in April.  The whole high school student body watched two days a week as two homerooms battled each other.

This was just one of the many projects Postville completed with their mini-grant money this year.  Schools who attended the FFI Fall Conference and nurtured high school teams received funds to increase access to local food and opportunities for physical activity.

Postville used some of their FFI funds to test the student body for diabetes and were happy to report that 177 students tested below the normal range.  The students also supplied nutritious snacks to their classmates during Basic Skills testing.

One person from each grade (6-12) was randomly selected each day to wear a pedometer and to keep track of their steps. Each participant received a water bottle and the student with the most steps received a "blinker."  The top winners for the school year received free subs. Cici Mueller reports that this program has made students aware of their activity and they work hard to move more.

Cross-age teachers trained

High school students participated in a training to prepare them for their role as cross-age teachers in the Farm to School program which will begin in January.  The high school age team teachers will facilitate Farm to School lessons with second grade students once a month using folios developed specifically for northeast Iowa.  The folios feature a different local food each month and provide information for parents and students. (Read more)

School Food Service Workers Complete ServSafe Training

School food service employees from five school districts participated in a day-long food safety in-service taught by Iowa State University Extension specialists Cindy Baumgartner and Jill Weber.  The training was part of the Farm to School project in northeast Iowa.  ServSafe® is a program of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation.  Participants learned about prevention, regulatory requirements, and how to improve food quality. (Read more)