Farm to Early Care

Farm to Early Care (F2EC) supports Head Start success! Head Start offers vital, high quality early care and education opportunities to low-income families across the country. Farm to early care and education offers benefits that align with Head Start priority areas, including an emphasis on experiential learning, family and community engagement, and life-long health and wellness for children, families, and caregivers.

Farm to early care is a set of strategies and activities that offer increased access to healthy, local foods through local procurement, gardening opportunities, and food and agriculture education activities to enhance the quality of educational experience. The same core elements of farm to school adapt well to all types of early care and education settings. In addition to promoting health, wellness, and high-quality educational opportunities, farm to early care and education also expands healthy food access, encourages family and community engagement, provides additional market opportunities for farmers, and supports thriving communities.

Our classroom staff also utilize a Farm to Early Care curriculum in the classroom. This includes a focus fruit and vegetable each month, activities that can be done in the classroom, a list of books pertaining to fruits, vegetables, agriculture, gardening, etc., taste-testing outlines, health information and a healthy recipe which incorporates the focus fruit or vegetable for the month.