This Farm Tour and Kitchen Skills Workshop allows farmers and school nutrition directors the opportunity to spend a day networking and learning about the environments in which the others work, with the intent to build on-going relationships that will allow farms to access institutional markets and school nutrition directors to feature more Washington-grown produce.

Participants will start by visiting two farms that use diverse production methods to grow a variety of crops, then they'll share an on-farm meal made with farm-fresh produce, and then move to a school district kitchen to complete the hands-on work with Washington-grown foods.  At that point farmers and nutrition staff will divide into two break-out groups:  one for farmers, focused on market access and development; and the other for nutrition staff to prepare a series of recipes that comply with USDA standards for school lunch menu planning, and feature farm-fresh Washington-grown produce.

The workshop will close with a shared tasting of the recipes the nutrition staff have prepared.

Participants will gather at a central location on the I-90 corridor to begin the tour, where they will board a small bus which will take the group to each location and return all to the starting point at the end of the day.

The Washington State Nutrition Association approved this workshop for 6 CEUs in the Key Area of "Operations".