{"id":101977,"date":"2018-01-09T20:35:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T03:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-ranch-helps-supply-durango-farm-to-school-program\/"},"modified":"2018-01-09T20:35:26","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T03:35:26","slug":"mancos-ranch-helps-supply-durango-farm-to-school-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-ranch-helps-supply-durango-farm-to-school-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos ranch helps supply Durango farm to school program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Dave
Dave Workman with Kennebec Construction looks over the walk-in freezer of the food distribution facility at Durango High School in August 2016.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A year and a half into its existence, Durango School District 9-R\u2019s food distribution center is thriving and has allowed the district to expand its offerings.<\/p>\n

The newest addition to school menus is local beef, and it\u2019s produced in Mancos.<\/p>\n

The school district purchased four cows from rancher Walter Jones in Mancos and began serving them in December after having them slaughtered at Sunnyside Farms, said Julie Popp, spokeswoman for the school district. The beef will last the schools for half a year.<\/p>\n

The cows were grass-fed and grass-finished, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of times, before cows go to slaughter, they take them off the grass \u2026 and put them on grain or corn or something like that to fatten them up and prepare them for the slaughter,\u201d she said. \u201cGrass-finished, they have the highest nutrition value all the way up until the end of their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The distribution center aggregates fruits, vegetables and meat from local farms for 9-R and other nearby school districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe provide the infrastructure that some of the smaller school districts do not have,\u201d said Krista Garand, the district\u2019s coordinator of student nutrition.<\/p>\n

Each district orders food directly from the farmer and is invoiced individually, she said. The distribution center, located at Durango High School, holds the food for the other districts. Providing a single pick-up and drop-off point, however, is helpful for the other districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s often what smaller school districts struggle with and why they can\u2019t do farm to school,\u201d Popp said.<\/p>\n

The majority of the food 9-R brings in through its farm to school program comes from La Plata and Montezuma counties but also as far away as Delta, Garand said. The steadiest suppliers include Fields to Plate Produce and Adobe House Farms of Durango, Mancos\u2019 Mountain Roots and Mattics Orchards in Olathe.<\/p>\n

Garand said the distribution center allows 9-R to buy larger quantities of food, handle them more safely and manage the food better, resulting in less food waste.<\/p>\n

In addition to bringing in foods, the facility keeps certain foods separate, Popp said. For instance, it allows 9-R to run a gluten-free bakery.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf children come in with a doctor\u2019s note saying that they have celiac disease (an autoimmune disorder that prevents a person from digesting gluten), then all their food will be produced in that cafeteria and delivered to the school every day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The facility has also improved District 9-R\u2019s bottom line, Popp said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a while there, we were paying $300,000 above and beyond our reimbursement from the state to maintain our farm-to-school program,\u201d she said. \u201cParticipation rates have gone up \u2026 and we\u2019ve brought in other elements, so our extra costs have gone down. We\u2019re probably only pumping in $120,000 extra now.\u201d<\/p>\n

ngonzales@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

improves affordability, safety of cafeteria food<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101977"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}