WATERVILLE, Maine — Thieves in Waterville stole 100 onions from a middle school garden.
Fifth-graders at the Albert S. Hall School are harvesting vegetables planted by last year’s class.
“You could make more than one french fry out of this,” student Jacob Luff said, holding a large potato.
But when Mary Dunn’s class went to dig up a bed of yellow onions last week, they were all gone — all 100 of them.
“Well, it’s kind of depressing,” student Ashley Harwood said.
Dunn said students and parents watered and weeded the garden throughout the summer.
“This was different, because this was the first time some of the produce was going to go to the homeless shelter,” she said.
The rest was headed to the cafeteria to be used for school lunches, thanks to a program cultivated by Dunn and supported by the community, over the past five years.
“They need to know where their food’s coming from and what they’re eating,” Dunn said.
Eating healthier helps kids learn better, she said, and these days she’s incorporating the garden into the curriculum.
“One classroom grew basil because they read a book about basil,” Dunn said.
Right now, it’s science. The kids are learning how to turn cucumbers into pickles.
Students explained how they filled a jar with cucumbers, water, vinegar and salt. On Friday, they’ll get a taste.
The onion bed may be empty, but it’s still giving food for thought. Dunn is teaching her students about making mistakes, taking responsibility and coming together when things don’t go as planned.
“Some life lesson,” she said. “We got a phone call this morning from a man in Liberty who’s donating onions.”
It means the homeless shelter will get onions.
“That’s very generous,” Harwood said.
Dunn hopes the unfortunate theft will turn into more community involvement.
“It’s like a ripple effect,” she said. “You put the seed out there and slowly it expands to others, and that’s our goal.”
Dunn said Fedco and Johnny’s Selected Seeds donate materials and Inland Hospital donates money each year, but it is expensive to run the program.
She said she’d love to have more people to help with planting, weeding, bringing food for kids to try or even donating a bed in their name.