10/24/2006

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Students dive into their work at Food for Thought, an Honor canning company.

Students get to the core of the matter with apple jam

BY CHRISTINE FINGER

cfinger@record-eagle.com

HONOR — Local students traded the classroom for the canning room to put their stamp on a product that will hit the shelves for a good cause.

About 30 students from the Traverse Bay Area Career-Tech Center and the Grand Traverse Academy spent Monday morning peeling, coring and slicing more than 1,600 pounds of organic apples at the Honor-based canning company Food for Thought.

The fruit will be the main ingredient in Get Jammin' Apple Jam, a new product that students will market and sell. The project is a joint fundraiser for the schools and the Fresh Food Partnership, a nonprofit group that purchases locally grown fruits and vegetables and delivers them to people in need.

Laura Otwell, program coordinator for the Fresh Food Partnership, said the project provides schools an alternative to traditional sales of candy or gift wrap and offers a chance to support the local economy.

"I think it will be more fun for them to sell a product they helped create," Otwell said. "This is a community effort as well as a learning experience for students."

Stephanie Kite, a senior at Kalkaska High School, joined a team of agri-science students from Career-Tech learning to use a hand-powered contraption to prepare the apples. By the end of their three-hour shift, they'd packed a pile of fruit away into tubs to be frozen.

"They just showed us how to do it and told us to go to it," she said.

Benzie County farmers Bruce Walton and Bruce Holland-Moritz donated the locally grown fruit. Food for Thought founder Timothy Young explained to students how employees will cook the jam in copper kettles before packaging it for sale.

"We have tours all the time, but it's the first time we've done something like this," Young said.

In addition to the apple jam, students will also help market Food for Thought's Get Fresh Cherry Marinara Sauce. Volunteers from The Leelanau School picked the tomatoes for the sauce earlier this year.

The products will be on sale for $5 each at Oryana, from students at Grand Traverse Academy at the Career-Tech Center, and at the Fresh Food Partnership Web site, www.freshfoodpartnership.org.