Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
Kelly Cummins, 43, a volunteer and WIC recipient, works in the garden amid the cilantro Wednesday. Cummins learned some gardening tips from Kim Kirkbride, a WIC garden coordinator for the Floyd Health Department in the organization’s garden.
Radishes are harvested, along with dozens of other vegetables, from the WIC garden at the Floyd Health Department.
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Kale could be the superhero.
The leafy green vegetable shunned by many has become the early star of a new public health program aimed at encouraging healthy eating habits among low-income families.
“They loved it, they begged for more,” said Kelly Cummins, 43, of Floyd, recalling how her two foster children consumed mass quantities of the nutritious kale after being introduced to it last month.
The children, ages 4 and 5, had joined Cummins at a new garden started by the Floyd County Health Department. There they helped pick the big leaves from the plants growing in the garden.
Then, with a recipe supplied by the health department, Cummins and the children went home to make crispy kale chips. The children tore the leaves. Cummins tossed the pieces of kale in oil and baked them in the oven for about 10 minutes.
The snack was a hit.
“I had never had kale before,” Cummins said. “Before, I wouldn’t have known to make this. Now we’re going to have to buy it at the store when we can’t get it here. They’ll demand it.”
The garden is a pilot program for the Virginia Department of Health’s New River Health District and aims to educate and feed participants of the Women, Infants and Children nutrition and health program. WIC is a federally funded program designed to support low-income pregnant, postpartum and breast-feeding women, as well as children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk.
With an extra $5,000 for supplies from the state, and donations from Floyd’s farming community, the garden’s 24 beds were established earlier this year, said Dr. Molly O’Dell, director of the New River Health District. So far 22 varieties of plants and herbs have been planted.
The garden was conceived when O’Dell met McCabe Coolidge last year and the two talked about the role of fresh food options in meeting the health needs of the community. Coolidge is a founder of the grass roots Floyd organization Plenty!, which runs a community garden and delivers free local produce to low-income, isolated families.
Faced with an adult obesity rate in Floyd and throughout Southwest Virginia that is above the national average — nearly a third of Floyd adults are obese compared with a quarter of the country’s adult population — O’Dell’s goal is to reverse the trend by targeting the young families. But simply telling people to eat five fruits and vegetables a day wouldn’t produce results, she said.
“Part of the problem, is WIC is a supplemental food program,” O’Dell said. “It doesn’t cover everything and the allocation for fresh fruits and veggies is minimal.”
Families get between $6 and $10 a month for fresh, canned or frozen vegetables.
That’s two bags of grapes, O’Dell said.
If every superhero has an unsung assistant, then this kale’s is Kim Kirkbride, a graduate of Virginia Tech with a degree in biology and a history of working on farms. Kirkbride was hired part time in April to run the new WIC garden. Her marching orders are getting Floyd’s 213 WIC families excited about the fresh produce coming from the organic garden.
The Cummins family’s newfound love affair with kale is the precise outcome Kirkbride is eager to cultivate.
“Mothers of young children have incredibly busy schedules,” Kirkbride said. “My goal is to get people wanting this food so badly that they want to put in the time and schedule to come and work in the garden. I think it is a lack of experience with fresh vegetables that is the problem and I think once they are exposed to it they will want it.”
Initially Kirkbride intended to give the harvest to those who volunteered to work in the garden.
Cummins, however, has been the lone volunteer.
Quickly Kirkbride changed course and began giving the freshly picked veggies to all WIC families.
Everyone wins
WIC participants are required every three months to come to the health department for education and to pick up their food supplement checks.
A few weeks ago, when the kale was ready, Kirkbride handed out pounds of it to anyone who would take it. They could take as much as they wanted. Aunts and grandmothers encouraged the younger mothers to try it.
“They said, ‘I’ll show you how to cook it,’ ” Kirkbride said.
And Kirkbride, whose boss, O’Dell, had questioned the popularity of kale, wrote the kale chips recipe for the superfood that is rich in calcium, iron and antioxidants.
“Kale chips are going to save the program,” Kirkbride told O’Dell.
She also included directions for her favorite way to eat the leafy green: kale slaw.
By the next WIC appointment day, held last week, more vegetables were ready. Kirkbride handed out spinach, radishes, green onions, cilantro, parsley, beets and a lettuce salad mix to about 50 families.
Again, she included a list of how to use the food. Mix spinach with eggs and cheese for an omelet, she suggested. Roast beets at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Dip radishes in ranch dressing for an easy snack.
“Talking the families into actually engaging in the garden, that’s our real challenge,” O’Dell said. “The challenge is not the garden. Our edge is going to be in how we engage the families.”
For Cummins the attraction is threefold. First, she has already noticed how the food from the garden is supplementing her grocery shopping. But she also came to the garden wanting to improve her own eating habits and to teach her two children, and the children she fosters, about healthy eating.
Finally, she has seen the value in learning how to grow her own food, and the foster children have enjoyed the experience of tending to the garden, she said.
On Wednesday, after harvesting radishes, lettuce, basil, kale, dill, zucchini and parsley, she left the garden with two packed bags of food and plans for large salads.
“I can learn, the kids can learn, and we can eat well,” Cummins said. “That’s a win-win-win.”
O’Dell is already thinking about next year and bringing gardens to other New River Valley communities.
“I know where we can put a garden in Giles, Pulaski and Montgomery,” O’Dell said. “If we can really integrate this as part of the WIC food supplemental package and get the community support that we had in Floyd, I think we can make this work.”
To see the recipes for Crispy Kale Chips and Kale Slaw visit plateup.roanoke.com.
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