Teen Grows Fresh Foods For His 30 Day Backyard Eating Challenge

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After learning about local agriculture five years ago from his local community farm, Noah Kopf, a 16-year-old teen started a challenge to eat only food he could grow and produce for 30 days.

Kopf called it the “Homegrown 30”, inspired by a month of what he calls backyard eating.

Years ago his interest began in farming after volunteering at his local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, then Kopf later worked at a youth farm, called The Farm Project. While in High school, he also farmed with his school’s farm in Newton, Mass. After thinking about how much produce the farm was providing, Kopf started wondering if he and his co-workers could live solely off the farm’s produce for a month.

Testing his theory of living off the farm, Kopf harvested food from the school farm and learned how to make new foods from a book called, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kopf learned how to make salt, crackers, and even peanut butter. He now aspires to keep eating locally and sustainably and incorporating local vegetables and produce into his life long diet.

Experimenting with fresh fruits and vegetables through school farm settings may help increase awareness of healthy foods and encourage fresh produce into Latino kids’ diets, who are less likely to have access to healthy foods.

Kopf continues in his efforts to inspire more people to eat local fresh produce in creative ways by working with the school’s farm to incorporate a new way to share produce with teachers that sign up for fresh vegetable deliveries. Providing resources to teachers and students through growing foods in schools is one way to help build awareness about healthy foods and increase access to local fresh produce for Latino communities.

“It’s good for communities and the health of individual people — I think it’s just an enjoyable thing in general to try to eat local. And cooking food when it’s local is fun, too,”  Kopf stated in a recent article.

To learn more about Noah Kopf’s challenge, click here.