Collard greens, kale and winter squash were just some of the local produce offered through the Town Farm Project that Peterborough mother of five Sarah Hamlin just didn’t know how to cook or prepare for her family.

Hamlin was not alone. When River Center staff were asked by project volunteers to distribute produce this summer to River Center clients, they found that most people were so unfamiliar with some of the produce that they couldn’t really benefit from it.

“Over the summer we did deliveries,” said Kelli Tourgee, a River Center parent educator and home visitor. “We’d show up with kale and people would say, ‘Okay I’ll take it but what do I do with it?’ ”

So the River Center created the Farm to Table program, which is run by Tourgee and Wendy Hill, clinical supervisor of the River Center’s Home Visiting Program.

Hands-on approach
The women started the program this fall with a group of parents and children that were already meeting for a family program on Thursday mornings, they said.

It’s a hands-on program during which parents and children learn recipes and prepare and cook meat, eggs, milk and produce donated from local Sunnyfield Farm and other local farmers as part of the Town Farm Project.

Dan and Ruth Holmes of Sunnyfield Farm on Route 136 first approached Hill about the Town Farm Project, which was started by the Peterborough Grange last year.

“They wanted to be able to support people eating good healthy organic food,” Hill said.
Local farms are donating the food right now, however, the plan is to eventually pay the farmers for the food they are producing, she said. “The vision is that the farmers that contribute will be reimbursed for the food they grow.”

Because the Farm to Table program requires a kitchen, the River Center rents the Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church kitchen Thursday mornings for the cooking sessions. So far, the families in the Farm to Table program have learned how to prepare salsa, kale chips, potato fries, stuffed squash, apple crisp and beet greens.

There is an emphasis on learning about the produce that is readily available from local farms, Tourgee said.

“What’s the difference between a buttercup squash and an acorn squash and a butternut squash? What are the differences and what do we do with them?” Tourgee asked. “It’s being exposed to how to cook it and being familiar with how to handle it and use it in a way that is fun and not intimidating.”

From youngest to oldest, the group works in the kitchen learning the recipes. Hamlin brings her three-year-old daughter Alyssa to the cooking sessions.

“Everyone can be involved, whatever age,” Hamlin said. “We love going. My daughter loves getting involved.”

Christine Mackensen of Temple attends the Farm to Table program with her one-year-old daughter Chloe while her older daughter Adeline, 4, is in pre-school.

Bringing the recipes home to her family, including husband Christopher, has had a positive effect on their home life on many different levels, she said.

For one, her daughter Adeline went from hating squash to loving it, she said. “There have been times I’ve bought squash and thrown it away. ... She really wouldn’t eat squash and vegetables. She’ll eat them now.”

Mackensen said she has learned news way to prepare squash that her husband and children love. One recipe involves diced squash and sausage, she said. “It’s really yummy, really tasteful.”

A money-saving idea
It also turns out that cooking local food can save families money. “I learned how to actually make new things for our house on a cheaper budget.”

And for the first time, Mackensen said that she and her young children are cooking together.
“I find that if she helps us prepare the food, she eats more of it and if she helps us she’s not under my feet, bored, screaming, ‘I’m bored mommy. Mommy I’m bored!’ “ Mackensen said of her daughter Adeline. “It’s a family activity, which I never thought of doing before the program. ... It’s teaching her how to cut and prepare her own food.”

Hill said the Farm to Table program is also a great forum for parents to discuss the challenges they face. The parents get a chance to talk with each other and the children get a chance to play together.

“We’re focused on the food and how to cook the food, but it offers an opportunity to visit with each other both individually as well as with the group,” Hill said. “And we’re always working on parenting. Helping people through challenging times as parents.”

Part of the class is sharing the food. After cooking the group sits down and enjoys the meal together.

“That’s big. That’s really big. Sitting down and having a meal together and everyone is so busy,” Hill said.

Hill added, “There’s something magical about working together. There’s something that’s intimate about it. Like picking tomatoes seeds off of someone’s sweater.”

As one little girl put it, Tourgee said, “I came. I cut. I ate. I’m leaving.”

The program recently took another direction when personal chef David Brann of Peterborough offered to teach the families how to prepare cuisines from around the world.
Brann said he was drawn to the group because of its focus on local and organic food.

“The theme of that is really important to me,” Brann said.

And the parents are using the opportunity to get back to their cultural roots.

Hamlin, whose two oldest children are half Dominican, asked for a lesson in Dominican cooking. So Brann taught the parents how to cook a traditional Dominican meal of fried plantains, rice and beans and braised chicken thigh. Brann said he chose chicken thighs because it is the cheapest part of a chicken to buy and he wanted to show how delicious braising it could make it.

“You would have thought it was the most expensive part of the chicken. It was so tender it was amazing,” Hamlin said.

Mackensen, whose father was Polish, asked for a lesson in Polish cooking. So Brann taught the group how to cook and prepare stuffed cabbage, pierogies and cucumber salad.
“I’m Polish but I didn’t know how to make these things. ...It was kind of nice to have my culture back again,” Mackensen said.

When Grange members started the Town Farm Project a year ago, one of the first things they did was partner with the three community suppers in town, project volunteer Abby Holmes said.

“The church suppers are already in place and we thought that was a good start,” Holmes said.

The project received a $500 grant from the Unitarian Church to supply the church suppers with locally farmed goods.

Healthy and nutritious meals
“To date, the Town Farm Project has been supplying healthy nutrient dense protein and produce to all three church sponsored community suppers,” Holmes said.

Organizers of the Tuesday night community soup and salad supper at All Saints Episcopal Church asked for chickens, Holmes said.

“That’s what made the most sense for them,” Holmes said. “They wanted chickens and we contracted with local farmers to produce those chickens and they bought them at cost.”

The spaghetti supper at the Unitarian Church chose to receive grass-fed organic ground beef from Sunnyfield for the supper’s meat sauce.

“Definitely the quality of the food should be going up as local food is incorporated,” Holmes said.

The Town Farm Project is working to raise money and acquire grants to continue to support the partnership with the church suppers and the Farm to Table program at the River Center, Holmes said.

Through the Town to Farm Project the Peterborough Grange hopes to connect farmers to the community for the nutritional benefit of the community and to also create more commerce between the community and local farmers, Holmes said.

The Town Farm Project has opened up a dialogue between farmers and the local community. “It also helps farmers to plan a bit if they know they are going to have a market for, say, 50 growing hens,” she said.

Holmes said another aim of the Town Farm Project was to build relationships with local food banks. In its first year, the project provided the Peterborough Food Pantry with produce that otherwise would have been discarded.

“They have been the recipients of the food not specifically requested, but farmers had excess of, and we wanted to make sure it went to a great place,” Holmes said.

Sometimes this worked out well and at other times not so well, she said. Such as when the Project donated 300 pounds of pattypan squash. A lesson from the Farm to Table program on how to cook and serve pattypan squash was sorely needed in that situation, Holmes said.

The Town Farm Project is now looking into the possibility of contracting with local farms to produce on-demand food for local food banks, Holmes said.

“That’s the whole idea, they get the food that they want or what their clients want,” Holmes said.

The Town Farm Project plans to hold a ham and baked beans supper fundraiser at the Unitarian Church on Saturday to continue supporting the Farm to Table program at the River Center. The supper costs $15 per person. Children under 12 are free.