Did you spot the Wall Meat Processing truck making its way through Belle Fourche the first week of October on Monday morning, October 9th? Over the summer, Belle Fourche School District joined the Beef to School program to help provide locally produced, better-quality meat to the lunchroom tables for our students for greater meal options with the help of Wall Meats Butcher Shop & donations from local livestock!
Spearheaded by BFHS teacher & FFA Leader Austin Bishop, Chad Mackaben, and BFSD School Board Present Scott Reder, along with the collaboration with BFSD Superintendent Dr. Willard and Business Manager Susan Proefrock, this great program to help nourish our hardworking Bronc students first began over the summer as the BFSD team met with Lunch Time Solutions to see what actions and how much beef would be needed to make this dream a reality for the Belle Fourche School District!
After it was determined that the school district would need roughly 14,000 pounds of burger to be supplied through a full year – equating to roughly 28-30 head of livestock – to achieve their goal, Belle Fourche School District’s team worked on contacting a variety of people before soon providentially meeting Ken Charfauros at Wall Meats Processing from Wall, South Dakota. Ken generously agreed to have Wall Meats line up four butcher dates with 28 slots (head of cattle) for Belle Fourche School District, and both Belle Fourche and St. Onge Livestock rose to the occasion to help us in this endeavor by agreeing to hold the cattle for us until delivery times for each slot so that we would have enough donated beef!
On October 9th, Belle Fourche High School FFA members, Belle Fourche School District faculty, administrators, local producers, school board members, and Wall Meats delivery driver and business development manager Kevin Larson, all came together at Belle Fourche Middle School for our first delivery, where over 120 boxes of beef were delivered to be stored at our schools – which is roughly 5,4000 pounds of burger!
It was such an exciting time to come together to see everyone face to face who had been helping to make this fantastic program a reality, and there were plenty of smiling faces, helping hands, and lots of good energy to go around to get all those boxes of donated meat out of the truck and into storage!
Now, a week after getting and storing our kindly donated beef, the Belle Fourche School District’s Lunchtime Solutions staff put all that hard work into real culinary practice by using the first of our donated beef for a delicious taco meal for Bronc students to enjoy for lunch on October 18th! It was a time of celebration for the gracious first donations from the Beef to School program, as the school cafeterias posted signs on their lunch menu at the schools to give credit our Beef to Schools donators & collaborators who helped make our taco meal healthier, tastier, and oh-so especially meaningful!
Celebrations did not stop there either: Our Lunchtime Solutions staff dressed for the occasion and Angie Bohm of the team spread the cheer by visiting some of the schools in costume to meet with the Lunchtime Solutions staff in the kitchens to elevate the celebrating mood and to help get students aware and excited for our yummy community collaboration!
Here in the Belle Fourche School District, we are so very thankful for everyone who has worked with us so far to make this momentous project come to life! With the assistance of so many in the surrounding local people and companies within and outside of Belle Fourche, we are so excited to be able to use what we are saving from Beef to Schools donations to be put towards purchasing a better variety of healthier food options for our Bronc students.
We hope to make this inspiring Beef to Schools lunch program a perpetual and sustainable project for the long term here in the Belle Fourche School District, and we are very much looking forward to our second delivery, which will take place after the last harvest date of December 28th!