7th Ward Elementary thrives with Ag Center’s school garden program

The LSU AgCenter is instituting school garden programs across southwestern Louisiana to teach youngsters where their food comes from and how to make healthful choices in their daily lives.
Seventh Ward Elementary school in rural Vermilion Parish is surrounded by crawfish ponds and sugarcane fields. But the students may not relate the area’s commercial agriculture crops to the foods they eat daily.
School garden projects help students see exactly where their food comes from, said Anna Barras, a family and consumer sciences agent with the AgCenter in Vermilion Parish.
“This is a rural community. There is a lot of food being grown around them, but a lot of kids don’t grow up on farms, so they are not all sure how it comes about,” Barras said. “We are doing our best to show them where — at least — their fruits and vegetables come from.”
Marlene Primeaux, principal of Seventh Ward Elementary, said the program is more than just an opportunity for the students to expand their nutritive culinary options. It serves as a way to teach them that there are healthful, frugal food options that the students can grow in their own home gardens.
Barras said one of the goals of the school gardens is for students to bring healthy habits back home.
“Most of the kids don’t get to try things like this at home if their parents don’t buy it,” Primeaux said as the students sampled fresh green beans, bell peppers, squash and cherry tomatoes. “By exposing them to the different things that Anna brings, maybe, they can ask their parents to buy those things.”
Physical education teacher Leisa Lee said the students have become more aware of the school garden especially when it comes to weather patterns. Lee pointed out to the captivated youth that one of their squash plants produced a double squash, possibly caused by over- or underwatering. Lee told the students that watering the raised beds posed a challenge but will be adjusted for future crops.
“This was all an experiment,” Lee said. “As the years go by, we will hopefully get better at it.”
The three, 3-foot-by-3-foot raised beds that compose the entire school garden could not produce enough produce to feed the whole school. So, Barras carried grocery bags full of fresh vegetables so that all the school’s students could sample the same produce growing in their school garden.
While some schools have plots of land set aside for their school gardens, not all facilities can meet that demand. At Seventh Ward Elementary, local farmers and Vermilion Parish Farm Bureau pitched in to provide the material and manpower to construct the three raised beds where the students witnessed seeds turn into food.
Barras instructed the students on proper planting and watering techniques while the students monitored their crop’s progress. The small bounty they produced included tomatoes, green beans, bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, basil and other herbs.
Barras said the school gardens became the Vermilion Parish FCS agents’ Healthy Communities project. In 2019, when fellow Vermilion Parish FCS agent Mandy Armentor linked up with the schools for the Healthy Communities project, they began with playground stencils to promote physical activity for students.
This year, the advent of the school garden came as Seventh Ward Elementary was the last school in the district that did not have a garden of its own.
“Every year, we are trying to add something to give the school more access to healthy foods, to teach the kids where their food comes from and to promote physical activity,” Barras said.