Crazy Sexy Life

Photo by Lindsay Morris

One of the most inspiring elements of the food renaissance underway on New York’s East End is the viral spread of edible schoolyards. From Sag Harbor to Amagansett, and from Riverhead to Southold, teachers, concerned parents, farmers and precocious students are erecting greenhouses near playgrounds, bringing food into the classroom and putting gastro-literacy on equal footing as reading, writing and arithmetic.

The pioneering Ross School in East Hampton has been serving its students mind-blowing farm-to-table meals for years. Some people still think it serves the best lunch in the Hamptons. And the Hayground School in Bridgehampton had integrated cooking into its curriculum even before it built its urban-rustic part-cafeteria-part-classroom in honor of restaurateur and school founder Jeff Salaway.

Photo by Lindsay Morris

But now a growing number of public school districts on the East End are following the lead. A network organized by Bridgehampton School district teacher Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz meets monthly to share ideas. In attendance recently were several farmers, a local greenhouse manufacturer, several school administrators and the local coordinator of HealthCorps, Dr. Mehmet Oz’s health and nutrition activism group. It seems great minds think alike.

“Kids will learn about food from the perspective that it’s the central part of the planet,” said Tim Bryden, director of Project MOST, an after school program in Springs and Amagansett that supports the Seedlings effort. “And to be respectful of things that grow.”

Longterm chef Bryan Futerman, whose daughter was enrolled in Project MOST, sees a foundation and a way to create jobs in the community. “It’s a Victory Garden, really,” Futerman said, referring to millions of small plots that sustained America during World War II, but which make similar sense in a shaking global economic climate.

Brian Halweil is the editor of Edible East End, and publisher of Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan. He writes about the things we eat from the old whaling village of Sag Harbor, New York, where he and his wife, yoga instructor Sarah Halweil, tend a home garden and orchard.

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