We are a very small rural community, Venables Valley, and our students (enrolled through SCIDES distance education) get fresh-made lunch daily. We have been working towards making these lunches as locally comprised as possible, with the students directly involved. Due to our short Northern growing season, we first made a winter greenhouse, which is passive solar heated:

We also planted fruit trees. Here we have a cherry, apple, and apricot tree:

The students have been cooking there own lunches twice a month, using food they grew:

However, we needed to seriously explore food preservation (freezing, canning, and drying) in order to avoid a feast or famine scenario. So we decided we need a freezer would allow for us to save some produce from harvest time and use it throughout the winter. Farm to School made that possible:

We also added a thermostat that scan switch it between a fridge and a freezer instantly, and also a food dehydrator. We are super excited about what this will do for the school lunches next year!