Featured Programs & Activities
Blue Earth Farms

Blue Earth Farms, an educational working farm in Lewis County, was launched in 2007 to assist the community in exploring and implementing healthy lifestyles with a focus on organic gardening, nutrition, and environmental sciences. To realize these goals, Blue Earth Farms identified opportunities to work with local schools, families, and small-scale farmers in the community including:

• Working with schools to bring in healthful, local foods through farm-to-school and school-yard garden projects. Gardens have been developed at head start programs, elementary schools, and other sites across the county. The farm also provides educational outreach and online learning resources for schools.
• Offering a community garden and nutrition and healthy lifestyle-focused workshops and newsletters for families.
• Participating in the Lewis County Healthy Family Coalition and partnering to identify and address barriers to accessing healthful foods in the county.
• Creating a farmers' co-operative and building a commercial greenhouse and commercial processing kitchen to bring new market potential to local small-scale farmers. In addition to providing additional educational opportunities, revenue from the greenhouse and processing kitchen will contribute to the sustainability of the farm's programs.

Partners

Blue Earth Farms partners with many organizations including the Lewis County Healthy Family Coalition, Lewis County Health Department, NW Pediatrics, Centralia College ECEAP Program, local schools and Head Start programs, and the Lewis County Economic Development Council. Blue Earth Farms also engages parents and community members as volunteers in the school and community garden projects.

Evaluation

Through participation in the Lewis County Healthy Family Coalition, Blue Earth Farms is engaged in county-level efforts to assess community health indicators and barriers to accessing healthful foods. The farm also tracks program participation and measures outcomes such as as the amount of food produced in the community garden.

Featured: Spring 2010

Target Audience

Children, families, small-scale farmers

Region

Lewis County