Job Farm to Early Care Profile: MetroWest YMCA

The MetroWest YMCA Early Learning Center provides care and early education services for around 140 toddler to preschool-aged children in the Framingham community. In speaking with Maggie Lynch RDN, LDN, the Director of Nutrition Services at the center, we learned more about the efforts at the MetroWest Y to educate children and their families about nutrition and agriculture, the local foods available to them, and the ability to grow food in their own homes!

Program & Procurement

The educational portion of the program consists of nutrition and gardening lessons twice monthly with Danielle (Dani) Newland from Little Sprout Gardens; educational sessions introducing new foods and a tasting of and craft related to this new food; and after hours programs for kids and their families to try new foods, prepare familiar food in new ways, and make healthy meals together!

Maggie is very passionate about sourcing the majority of the food eaten at the center from the garden beds at their center, as well as local Massachusetts farms. She hasn’t reached her goal yet, and is finding creative ways to source local food. She has rescued apples from Carlson Orchards (Harvard) and Lovin’ Spoonfuls, saving over 5,000 pounds of food monthly! They currently source produce locally from Stearns Farm (Framingham) and Fresh Box Farms (Millis), as well as hydroponic salads from Little Greens, and produce from Wegmans in a new partnership.

Headed by Maggie Lynch and Karley Doray, the Director of Nutrition Education, with support from dietetic interns, additional farm to school activities at the center, include “Cooking with Littles,” lessons to involve caregivers and children together in the preparation of nutritious food at home and weekly lessons out in the raised bed garden which was installed last summer.

Promotion

The center sends a newsletter home to families providing lessons, activities, and information about local farmers markets, specifying those that are SNAP/WIC eligible! They also promote farm to school activities by demonstration. They have tower gardens growing herbs and lettuce year-round in the lobby. Additionally, they host events like their Summer Kickoff last year where kids decorated plant pots and planted them with cucumbers and peppers to take home and grow with their families. The MetroWest Y team is passionate about teaching families that they can grow at home regardless of potential space limitations.

Karley and the team also have plans to go to libraries and other community settings to teach preschool aged kids in the wider community about nutrition and cooking in a program they are calling, “Nutrition for Littles.”

Advice & Looking Forward

The Y works with a lot of partners to get seedlings, produce, tips for optimal growing, and lessons for their students. These partnerships make it possible to do what they do, because, while they have a lot of amazing in-house staff to handle programming, they cannot do it all in isolation. This is especially key for those working with limited space or resources.

The team at the MetroWest Y ELC believe that Farm to School programming is important in Early Care and Education centers because good habits start young. The more we introduce kids to healthy, fresh, local foods and the idea of growing their own food, the more excitement we can generate around the idea and increase the normality of it.

For those interested in implementing Farm to School programming at their Early Care Centers, Maggie suggests careful planning and determination! Take time to consider what you want to plant, how you plan to cook it, and what lessons you can teach about it. Looking forward, she is excited about opportunities to do more gardening in pots or in the center’s entryway, and to have their raised beds fully in place. She is anticipating the growth of their programs with more outdoor education, especially throughout the whole year and not just in the summer.