DENVER — Colorado's largest school district is feeding far more of its students than ever before with food grown right on campus.
One Denver Public Schools employee, known fondly as "Farmer Mike," has made it his mission to help grow healthy students.
“There’s land, so why not use it, right?” said Mike Fedison, a farmer with DPS.
He's more than happy to put the eager elementary schoolers at Bradley International School to work learning to farm from the ground up.
"Sometimes, teachers want their kids to burn off a little energy, so we have a giant pile of woodchips and a fleet of wheelbarrows. And actually quite a number of the kids have helped to mulch all of our walkways here," Fedison said.
The thousands of squash and radishes growing here will feed students in more than 200 schools throughout the district.
“Probably all of these we’ll pick next week," Fedison said, gesturing to the crop of watermelon radishes behind him. "And then, at the end of the week will be on the lunch line.”
Inside the cafeteria, Farmer Mike's produce is producing adventurous eaters like fifth grader Van Harbuck.
“They have watermelon, grapes, sometimes they have blueberries. They have cantaloupe. They have a lot of things," Harbuck said. “I tried tomatoes. I tried lettuce. I’ve had bell peppers."
“They literally say, 'oh we’re going to have the melon today! Oh this came from outside!' And so they get really excited about it," said Kevin McMinn, Denver Public Schools Food and Nutrition Area Manager.
McMinn said they don’t just encourage trying new foods, they require kids take a fresh fruit and vegetable with every school meal.
“It’s so important because they might not get that nutrition at home. That’s why we concentrate that here. At home, your dinner might consist of a piece of pizza and a Pepsi. Here, if you get a piece of pizza, you are getting fresh fruits and vegetables on your tray and making sure you have it. That way they get that nutritional value every day," McMinn said.
And that school rule has kids looking forward to hearing that lunch bell ring.
Being able to feed thousands of kids nutritious food every day has Farmer Mike hopeful that every harvest he's here for will be more bountiful than the next.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why I do this, actually," he said.
Last year, Farmer Mike grew 17,000 pounds of produce at DPS's farms. The district's greenhouse yielded another 21,000 pounds of food.