A dream of kids and garden
Brian Stewart - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Metro
Anne Coatar loves to share the produce she grows in her garden - and she hopes to share it now with local kids.
Coatar, a UI English major and a small-garden farmer, wants to create a program that would allow children in the Iowa City area the opportunity to participate in the growing season at her rural Johnson County home, with the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"I wrote my grant to say it would be an edible school yard where the kids come to farm," said Coatar, who will learn in March if she will receive the grant.
Two growing seasons ago, Coatar and her partner, then One Twenty Six co-owner Derek Perez, planted organic produce - tomatoes, squash, potatoes, okra, snow peas, arugula, lima beans - for Perez's restaurant.
"I fell in love with it," said Coatar, a native of Olympia Fields, Ill., who came to Iowa in 2000.
She began selling some of her produce at the Iowa City and Sycamore Farmers' Markets last year as a part-time vendor.
Now, hoping to receive $6,000 funds from the Agriculture Department to help kick off the project, she is planning an extracurricular-type group that would bring students out to her farm to do everything from planting seeds to pulling weeds - while keeping it fun, as boring and tedious as removing weeds may be, she said.
The program, which would operate on roughly six days during growing season - between the end of April and October - of "just talking and things and learning" about the gardening process.
"And part of whatever we harvest, they would take home," Coatar said. "That's the whole idea."
She said she was inspired by similar ideas in California - including celebrity-chef Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation implemented in the Berkeley Unified School District, in which students bring the harvested food back to their school to prepare for lunch.
Coatar said she has also flirted with the idea of creating a kid-friendly cookbook, filled with raw recipes that would require less parental involvement - "you don't want kids sautéing spinach," noted Coatar, who has a 3-year-old son, Julius.
Hoping to increase interest in her idea, she has met with a local group of parents aimed at improving the Iowa City School District's lunch program. She would eventually like to gain the support of the district, she said.
Initially a free program, Coatar said, "it's definitely a not-for-profit scenario."
In the future, she said, she plans to turn her current garden into a community-supported agriculture enterprise in which residents become a shareholder and receive harvested foods in return.
Regardless, she said, she hopes she can turn her farming into a full-time career or "at least give it a shot."
"I just really love being outdoors, and I think it's nice to work for yourself," Coatar said. "But I have a lot to learn."
E-mail DI reporter Brian Stewart at:
brian-stewart@uiowa.edu
Coatar, a UI English major and a small-garden farmer, wants to create a program that would allow children in the Iowa City area the opportunity to participate in the growing season at her rural Johnson County home, with the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"I wrote my grant to say it would be an edible school yard where the kids come to farm," said Coatar, who will learn in March if she will receive the grant.
Two growing seasons ago, Coatar and her partner, then One Twenty Six co-owner Derek Perez, planted organic produce - tomatoes, squash, potatoes, okra, snow peas, arugula, lima beans - for Perez's restaurant.
"I fell in love with it," said Coatar, a native of Olympia Fields, Ill., who came to Iowa in 2000.
She began selling some of her produce at the Iowa City and Sycamore Farmers' Markets last year as a part-time vendor.
Now, hoping to receive $6,000 funds from the Agriculture Department to help kick off the project, she is planning an extracurricular-type group that would bring students out to her farm to do everything from planting seeds to pulling weeds - while keeping it fun, as boring and tedious as removing weeds may be, she said.
The program, which would operate on roughly six days during growing season - between the end of April and October - of "just talking and things and learning" about the gardening process.
"And part of whatever we harvest, they would take home," Coatar said. "That's the whole idea."
She said she was inspired by similar ideas in California - including celebrity-chef Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation implemented in the Berkeley Unified School District, in which students bring the harvested food back to their school to prepare for lunch.
Coatar said she has also flirted with the idea of creating a kid-friendly cookbook, filled with raw recipes that would require less parental involvement - "you don't want kids sautéing spinach," noted Coatar, who has a 3-year-old son, Julius.
Hoping to increase interest in her idea, she has met with a local group of parents aimed at improving the Iowa City School District's lunch program. She would eventually like to gain the support of the district, she said.
Initially a free program, Coatar said, "it's definitely a not-for-profit scenario."
In the future, she said, she plans to turn her current garden into a community-supported agriculture enterprise in which residents become a shareholder and receive harvested foods in return.
Regardless, she said, she hopes she can turn her farming into a full-time career or "at least give it a shot."
"I just really love being outdoors, and I think it's nice to work for yourself," Coatar said. "But I have a lot to learn."
E-mail DI reporter Brian Stewart at:
brian-stewart@uiowa.edu
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