Larry Anthony was featured in Hudson Valley Magazine for bringing local, farm-fresh food to students and staff in the Rhinebeck Central School District.
“I always had an affection for the local farms and improving school meals that way,” said Rhinebeck’s food service director since 2014. “Being in this geographical area, it seemed easy. There are thousands of acres of local products here.”
Anthony is purchasing products for Rhinebeck that are grown and produced in New York such as milk, eggs, beef, chicken, rice, fruits and vegetables, cheese, yogurt and grain. He receives help in communicating with the local farms from Katie Sheehan-Lopez, regional farm to school coordinator for the upper Hudson Valley at Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Anthony also purchases products used in district lunchrooms from Hudson Harvest in Columbia County, which sells New York State products such as fresh pasta made from New York grains.
“I can’t stress enough the support we get from the administration, the principals and staff. It’s a community thing,” he said.
“The students are receptive and they do enjoy it.”
Anthony is getting some help from Rhinebeck students and their hydroponic gardens on campus.
“It’s been such a fun learning experience planting and caring for the hydroponic garden,” said junior Amaia Hayes. “It’s also really exciting when you see food, like lettuce, that you helped grow on the lunch menu!”
Additional interest in purchasing local products was sparked by New York State’s 30 percent initiative that started in 2018 and increased the reimbursement schools received for lunches from 5.9 cents to 25 cents per meal if a district purchased at least 30 percent of the ingredients for its school lunches from New York farms.
Anthony is now putting together New York in November, a lunch menu that will feature all New York grown and produced products for the entire month. He began planning this in July.
“For me, it’s challenging,” he said. “We like projects and challenges. We want to expand our menu options; we have a huge diverse crowd of folks we are feeding.
“It exposes students to different foods in a lot of cases. Some they are familiar with but they will not typically see in school. It checks all those boxes I want to do and it keeps me entertained as well as it keeps my staff entertained. I need my staff’s support and I can’t do it without them.”