Submitted by Rene Carroll
Thanks to the generous community member Nicole King, the Washougal High School Intro to Culinary and Advanced Culinary students will have some amazing, locally harvested produce raised on school grounds to use in their cooking classrooms next fall. Career and Technical Education teacher Chef Brenda Hitchins connected with King, who had raised a number of starts that she didn’t have garden space to plan. Chef Hitchins took the starts and nurtured them for a bit, and they have been planted in the raised garden beds at the Excelsior Building on the WHS campus.
Students in the WHS Metals and Woodshop program created raised beds, composting bins and signage to identify the items being raised. Chef Hitchins will work to care for the plants during the summer, and students will carry that work forward into the fall, when produce will be harvested and used in cooking assignments.
The harvest will include tomatoes, zucchini, tomatillos, arugula, basil, parsley, and spinach, which will be featured on the class menu as students learn to create healthy, balanced, and very tasty dishes with produce they can grow themselves. This farm-to-table approach is part of the real-world, hands-on experience that WHS students can experience in our Career and Technical Education programs, which works with industry leaders to identify skills and experiences that students need to enter the workforce ready to contribute to their community.
