Michael Bennet Touts Importance of Healthy Foods at Student Garden

Denver -- Michael Bennet showed off his green thumb and joined students from Fairview Elementary School to learn more about their student-run garden, and how they use the produce grown in the garden to prepare healthy meals.

With slim options for healthy food choices and an appetite for change, students in the Fairview Elementary School neighborhood work to cultivate their community garden as a way to promote positive eating habits.

Michael Bennet has been a strong advocate of the importance of childhood nutrition. Earlier this year, he pushed for passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which will improve access to nutritious meals for kids in Colorado.

The Denver Post has more on Michael’s visit to the student run community garden:

Students from Fairview Elementary School have tended a community garden for nine years, and a few years ago, the students decided to start selling their produce.

"My job is selling stuff, to make sure there are customers," said Eliasz Ulrich, 10. "And to make sure customers are not mad."

Eliasz, other students and volunteers sold tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs and onions from the garden on Sunday as they launched this year's harvest.

Because they are still growing their crops, they also sold vegetables from neighbors' gardens.

Eliasz got involved this year. He helped prepare the lot for planting, he spread some seeds, and he does a lot of watering, he said.

"The kids are aware that they had nowhere to buy fresh, healthy food other than this one corner store, so it was their input to contribute that way," said Judy Elliot, education coordinator for Denver Urban Gardens.

The farmers market at the Fairview Elementary School also has started accepting food stamps.

For the summer program, children apply to work in the garden. If accepted they work a few times a week and receive a small stipend.

Sunday, the students running the farmers market at the school had a special presentation from chef Andrew Nowak and had the company of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

Nowak and some of the children, including Anne Bennet, 5, daughter of the senator, cooked a stir-fry using fresh vegetables.