Tomatoes and lettuce line the fields at Mike Pearl’s farm on a windy day in Parkville, Missouri. Now he has plans to plant even more.
“We’re gonna have a lot of the usual suspects, if you will: the watermelon, cantaloupe later this season. You know, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes,” Pearl said.
Despite the wind, he said, this year’s crops are off to a good start, and they’re for some very special customers: local students. Pearl said he’s excited about these customers since he never grew up eating produce like this for lunch.
“I’m not gonna tell you how old I am, but I can’t imagine in my school cafeteria eating quinoa, or, I don’t know, fresh kale greens,” Pearl said.
This is Pearl’s first year working with the KC Food Hub to provide produce to local students. And this year’s going to be a busy one.
This fall, the food hub will be serving 38 schools across two local school districts. Katie Nixon, the food hub’s president, said that’s a jump from the six schools they started with last fall.
She credits that increase, in part, to the pandemic — when suppliers suddenly couldn’t get schools the food they needed.
“So that’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?’ And then they start thinking outside the box,” Nixon said.
