When Boston-area native Clare Columbus moved to Salem 31 years ago with her husband, she came without a driver's license. She’d never needed one back home, where public transportation is the norm rather than the exception.

Columbus and her husband moved to Gervais for a couple of years so she could take a job with the Gervais School District because she didn’t drive. Now licensed, she's been driving from West Salem to Gervais, where she served as Nutrition Services Director since 1992, and has played an integral role in connecting local farms with students and employees.

About three years ago, Columbus learned that Bend-area schools were getting involved in the farm-to-school program and were relying on Willamette Valley farmers for Oregon-grown produce.

To Columbus, it didn’t make sense that farms in the Gervais area were feeding children in Bend and not in Gervais; the Gervais School District includes 65 square miles of prime agricultural land. It didn’t take long for her to start speaking with local farmers or for Gervais schools to be serving local produce.

“I mean, if you can, why not buy local?” Columbus remarked.

Farm-to-school programs are cropping up all over the country and the Oregon legislature has been considering farm-to-school implementations since 2007. It’s somewhat ironic that Columbus, a city girl, saw the benefit of partnering with local farmers even before farm-to-school efforts became popular in Oregon, an irony that isn’t lost on her.

“All of a sudden, I’m watching the weather forecast [to see how crops might fare],” she said.

Columbus has mainly partnered with Jones Farm Produce in Salem and Happy Harvest Farms in Mt. Angel although there is a handful of other farms that bring her various ingredients. Some of her connections she affectionately calls “benevolent brokers” because if they don’t grow something she wants, they find her someone who does.

This past school year the Gervais School District participated in the “seven cents per meal” pilot project, a project funded by the Kaiser Permanente Community Foundation through a grant to Ecotrust which reimbursed the district seven cents for every meal they served using local foods. Participating in this project involved a “harvest of the month” such as melons, winter squash, berries, pears, sweet corn on the cob, green beans, cherries, and asparagus. This allowed Columbus and her staff to not only introduce new and healthy foods to kids but to focus some effort on showing schoolchildren where the food comes from. In fact, Columbus has tried to involve the children whenever possible.

“It is important to involve them [children] as much as I can,” she explained. “The after-school program even husked corn for us.”

Her efforts, while local, have had an influence nationwide.

In March, she participated on a panel for the national “Farm to Cafeteria” conference held in Portland, and in 2007 the National Food Service Management Institute at the University of Mississippi featured Columbus and the Gervais School District in their Cooks for Kids series noting the farm-to-school partnership and the unique way the schools are preparing and seasoning fruits.

The 2009 Legislature had the opportunity to pass a bill, House Bill 2800, that would have directed the Oregon Department of Education to provide reimbursements to school districts that serve Oregon food products but the bill did not make it out of committee. While disappointed that the bill did not succeed this session, Columbus plans to continue what she’s started.

“We are proud of what we do and we will move forward,” Columbus said. “We feel committed to the program and the kids have come to expect it."