Southern Tier Area
Southeast Area Dagele Farm Visit
CHAPTERS
CHAPTERS
SAMMY THE Sloth A SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL NUTR IT ION PROMOT ION
CORTLAND
CHENANGO
TOMPKINS
SCHUYLER
STEUBEN
Pictured: Lauren Burr showing the field of green and red lettuce
TIOGA
BROOME
CHEMUNG
SOUTHERN TIER
BY DEBRA DONLEAVY SOUTHEAST AREA DIRECTOR
BY PATRICKWALSH, SNS SOUTHERN TIER AREA DIRECTOR With the holidays coming up, I would like to wish you and yours a fantastic new year! The Southern Tier Region was not able to hold our annual holiday Chapter meeting and dinner this year. We use the proceeds to fund a bus trip for staff to some shopping outlets and a casino a few hours away. We hope to get back to our normal soon. One exciting development is we have had some sightings of Sammy the Sloth in our area, wait you mean you never heard about Sammy. How is this possible? Let me bring you up to date. Sammy has been seen hanging around several of our districts. You never know where Sammy will show up or make an appearance. He was able to visit all of our districts and even made a stop at our Food Service offices to let us know about the National School Lunch Week and all the great things that are going on within our building to promote school meals! Sammy has brought a smile to the faces of all the people who have the chance to find him as he moves thorough out our buildings at a sloths pace, always turning up somewhere unexpected waiting for someone to find our friend and tag Sammy in a photo. Sammy is becoming quite a celebrity locally. “Sammy” is the brainchild of Molly Jean Henebury our dietetic intern. She has been working with Julie Raway in the fast-paced world of school food service. We will wish her well on her future endeavors and hope she keeps a spot for school food service in her plans for the future. We wish you the best Molly. As spring approaches, we hope to hold some event to get our staff together and also look forward to the possibility of having a Southern Tier Area Workshop in some fashion, stay tuned for more information to come.
InEarly September the Food ServiceDirector of the Enlarged City School District of Middletown, Debra Donleavy, and their Assistant Food Service Director, Lauren Burr, visited Dagele Farm in Florida, New York for a back of the house tour of the farm. It was day full of new experiences! The Dagele Farm is over 500 acres in size. The farm was established by Frank Dagele Sr, in the late 1800’s when he arrived from Poland. Frank raised his children on the farm and his son is expecting to carry on the family farm. The Dagele Farm supports School Meal professionals throughout New York. He supplies many NYS items including fresh eggs, fruit and vegetables. He grows many items on his farm. The Dagele farm has invested in ideas that would support sustainability. When they visited they were able to see the cool down chamber. The unit looks very much like a shipping crate, and works like a chill blaster. When fruits and vegetables are harvested in the hot months, the product is hot from the sun rays. The cool down chamber is used to bring the items to a cool temperature that helps create a longer shelf life. We also witnessed the washing system used for green leafy items. During their visits, they were processing kale. They were most interested in seeing how the individually wrapped items were created for our new Fresh fruit and vegetable program. The Dagele Farm invested in a conveyer system that is used to wrap apples, peaches and pears. The items are fed through the conveyor and a single flat sheet is folded over the product and sealed in three locations. The finished product has a pillow like resemblance and this
helps to keep bruising down. We were able to see pears and apples get individually wrapped. Frank took them out to the field during our visit. He showed them how lettuce was harvested by hand in the field. Lauren is showing us the field of green and red lettuce (Pictured Above). Over her shoulders is our school district. He showed us another piece of equipment that had 6 seats in it used for planting. This piece of equipment is moved through the fields by truck, but the plants are manually fed in the machine. They visited one of the three onion houses. WOW, a lot of onions. Their visit to a local farm was a great way to start the new year! Reach out to a local farm near you it could be a great experience to see what is really happening behind the scenes to fully understand certain processes!
Patrick Walsh has been working in food service for over 20 years. Patrick is currently the School Lunch Director for Broome Tioga BOCES. He started his career in school lunch 13 years ago. He has enjoyed learning and growing with the recent changes of the last several years. Patrick enjoys the outdoors and spending time with his family as much as he can! PATRICK WALSH, SNS • Southern Tier Area Director
Debra Donleavy is the Director of Food Service for the Enlarged City School District of Middletown! Debra is currently the 4th generation in her family to work in School Lunch. When she isn’t running around with her 6 grandkids she is taking care of her 30 chickens and 30,000 honeybees! DEBRA DONLEAVY • Southeast Area Director
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FreshBites
WINTER 2022
FreshBites
WINTER 2022
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