Roots to Harvest Case Study: Outdoor Food Literacy deemed an “Essential Service” during COVID-19

AS: From September 2020 to January 2021, Roots to Harvest reached 474 students, with 62 classroom visits and a total of 148 hours spent on food-focused, hands-on experiential lessons in schools. 

Roots to Harvest’s school programming shifted to follow the health and safety protocols set out by the TBDHU and LPSB, meaning that during Quadmester 1, programming focused on outdoor cooking experiences with students, which was really well received by both students and staff. Then in Quadmester 2, we were allowed to be in classrooms to deliver in-class experiences, but we also continued the outdoor cooking.

AS: We don’t charge the schools at all, so a lot of our support comes through fundraising in the community, donations and grant writing. And some of our staff are funded through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC). The big money and consistent donors are important, but we also focus on smaller pockets of funding, like the one we received in 2020 from the Thunder Bay Community Foundation and Thunder Bay Rotary Club.

As one example, we received a small amount of funding ($3,000) to purchase the following outdoor equipment:

• Outdoor portable propane griddle and stand
• Outdoor 2 burner propane stoves (2)
• Outdoor portable fire pit 
• Outdoor tables (3)
• Outdoor wash station (soap, paper towels, water containers)
• Outdoor cooking equipment (pots and pans, utensils, mixing bowls, measuring cups)
• Fire cooking equipment (cast iron pans, dutch ovens, fire cooking tripod)
• Fire extinguishers and fire safety gloves 
• 30 tripod camp chairs
• Take away containers (Lots!)

I can’t say enough about relationship building. Relationships are key and help build the support for future funding.

AS: It was pretty easy for us to jump into this outdoor programming because of our long-standing relationship with the school board and health unit. We’ve built these relationships over time and that’s what made this year run so smoothly. Our experience with the pandemic would have been fundamentally different without our existing relationships with teachers, administrators, communities and agencies. 

For example, Roots to Harvest has worked with some of the foods-based courses and teachers in Thunder Bay for years and so we trust and recognize each other’s work. With a relationship at our foundation, Roots was able to experiment with these teachers and classrooms during the pandemic, knowing that everyone would uphold a standard of safety. 

Likewise, Roots to Harvest has been working in partnership with other Northern Indigenous communities and Indigenous-led organizations and have been able to foster creative solutions and programming in communities. For example, Roots was hired to be part of a program to subsidize student education in a northern community when a school program was established there rather than having students attend school in a nearby town. Weekly, facilitators would drive 2 hours to the community to attend and deliver food education programming, as well as to provide a weekly snack and breakfast food bag (through funding from the School Nutrition Programs) for kids and their families during a stressful and difficult time. The community trusted Roots to Harvest to help provide a meaningful program for students.

AS: The Thunder Bay District Health Unit’s (TBDHU) schools team decides what is allowed with things like mask wearing, eating in cohorts, etc. For instance, the TBDHU has said that we could cook the meals on school property, but not eat it there. So we’ve had to build food skills through the cooking process and then portion the food into containers for students to take home.

AS: We have a fire permit with the City of Thunder Bay to build fires at schools, and of course there are guidelines to follow like having a concrete pad and water buckets on hand. The fire department is very supportive and we regularly communicate with them to let them know when we’re having fires on school property. 

Cooking over a fire has been a huge hit with the students – they often want to linger and tell stories with each other (while safely sitting 2m away from each other).

AS: Our biggest concerns were tied to environmental and policy factors, such as weather, COVID outbreaks, and the rapid changes the school board was making to COVID protocols.

When we moved to purely outdoor initiatives, we needed more preparation time and equipment to make sure that students had positive, memorable and safe experiences. Thunder Bay gets cold, so during the winter months facilitators needed to take extra precautions with outdoor cooking. Proximity between students was always on facilitators’ minds and they regularly reminded students about the larger perspective of the pandemic.

Finally, the Roots to Harvest team was in constant communication with teachers, administration and other relevant institutions to make sure that outdoor cooking would be possible (for example, informing fire departments that an outdoor fire would be present on school property).

AS: In fall 2020 our work with schools was outside at our portable outdoor classroom, and later on in the fall we began running programs inside schools in the classrooms. During this time we followed all the new school safety protocols for COVID and food safety. Currently, as of March 2021, Roots to Harvest is not running any programs indoors as we are in lockdown state and students are not in schools. We anticipate being back in the schools when students go back to in-person learning.

AS: Students really enjoyed cooking and being around an open fire. There’s a communal element to gathering around fire — conversations happen while cooking, preparing and enjoying foods. The fire went well with outdoor pizza baking too, where students prepared doughs and sauce from scratch and assembled their favourite ingredients to be fire-baked in an outdoor oven. 

Students also enjoyed a lot of food processing, such as filleting fish outdoors, or processing apples into a freshly pressed cider. 

Ultimately, a highlight for many students was the recognition and practice of turning a food from its source into an enjoyable meal.

AS: One big learning was to have a clear and concise policy & procedure for Roots to Harvest staff to follow that addressed concerns and put practices in place to ensure the health of everyone involved.

Facilitators and teachers also shared realistic expectations and concerns surrounding outdoor food programming to students. This let everyone understand upfront what was and wasn’t safe or possible. The transition was also easier once we had established a few favourite activities, gotten familiar with equipment and organized that equipment. 

Finally – we know that COVID-19 has been hard on everyone, and many students have been stuck on screens for online learning for days on end. Simply having a chance to do something hands-on, tactile and generally enjoyable through food was what allowed us to be flexible and adaptable and make these in-person workshops work with our partners.