PARIS — Students at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School are crazy about green beans.

Freshly picked green beans, that is.

“They love the canned green beans. They don’t like frozen. But the kids are going crazy about the green beans,” said Food Service Director Martha O’Leary of the green beans students at Streaked Mountain School have harvested from their garden. They have also delivered to the high school cafeteria six pounds of tomatoes, two pounds of broccoli and six pounds of cucumbers.

“No one expected this much,” student Mike Barrucci of Oxford said Friday as he and fellow students Nick Allen of West Paris, Whitney Chamberlain of Norway and Katrina Tetreault of Bryant Pond picked dozens of ripe cherry tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli and other vegetables. They constructed the garden last spring on the Fair Street side of the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.

Students at Streaked Mountain School, located in a former one-room schoolhouse in Norway, constructed 12 raised gardens as part of a yearlong study. It began with a visit to the LolliPapa Farm in West Paris, where the students learned to prepare the ground for planting, tend the plants and harvest the food.

Don Baldridge of LolliPapa Farm in West Paris, whose daughter Vanessa Greeley teaches in the classroom with Jason Trask, also became involved with the project as a longtime advocate of growing food locally. Others helping were Barbara Murphy of the Master Gardeners Program, and Kate Goldberg and Ken Morse of Healthy Oxford Hills. Seeds, lumber, compost and other necessities were donated.

This month, the students began to harvest the vegetables and fruits.

Tetreault, who volunteers at a food pantry in Bryant Pond and tended the garden all summer along with 12 other students, said she enjoyed learning about the plants and being able to contribute some of the vegetables to the food pantry.

In addition to the many pounds of cucumbers, carrots, Swiss chard, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and beans that have been distributed to the high school, the students have sent vegetables to the Good Shepard Food-Bank,  which allowed workers there to distribute 25 pounds of vegetables to needy families.

The students said 15 pounds of lettuce was sold to Cafe Nomad in Norway, 12 heads of lettuce to the Progress Center and nine heads of lettuce to pedestrians just passing by the garden. Additionally, the Learning Opportunities for Our Kids harvested five pounds of lettuce and two pounds of cucumbers to make a salad at a community lunch.

O’Leary said the vegetables from the Streaked Mountain School garden, combined with some brought in by high school students Emma and Ruby Day Branch from the Alan Day Community Garden project on Whitman Street in Norway, have provided the cafeteria with many options.

“It’s been very successful,” said O’Leary of the use of the vegetables.

“The (cafeteria) girls have been very creative in coming up with ideas of how to serve the fresh vegetables.” One day, she said, they made a casserole using zucchini summer squash, a button squash and corn bread stuffing.

“That went over really big,” she said.

The students will be returning to the LolliPapa Farm this school year to continue learning. They hope to eventually do some baking in the updated LolliPapa farm kitchen.

While the students are excited about their bounty from the first year’s harvest, Greeley said they need to sell more produce to finance the continuation of the garden project.

Anyone with questions or who would like to donate to the project may call the Streaked Mountain School at 743-5264. Donations may be sent to Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in care of “Streaked Mountain Garden Project.”

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