As if they didn’t have enough on their plate, students from College of the Ozarks have one more thing to keep them busy. KSMU’s Chasity Mayes tells us how an on-campus garden is improving the taste of four-star cuisine.
It’s the agriculture and landscaping students at College of the Ozarks who will be tending to the campus’s garden, but they’re not the only ones getting their hands dirty. Dobyn’s Dining Room is a four-star restaurant located in C of O’s Keeter Center. Fresh produce from the garden will be picked and delivered to the restaurant, and then students will be putting those fresh veggies to work.
“Oh, I think it’s definitely going to increase the quality.”
Robert Strickland is the executive chef at the Keeter Center. He says the food doesn’t get any fresher than this.
“I mean it gets picked out of the garden in the morning and we serve it for lunch that same day. So, the freshness is [incomparable],” says Strickland.
Although Strickland thinks the art of cooking with fresh produce is an important one, he says there is another important lesson to be learned by his students.
“You know, I think often times especially with some of the younger generations, they maybe don’t realize where tomatoes come from. You know, they think tomatoes come from the store. They don’t realize that it actually takes water and sunlight and that someone has to pick it, clean it, [and] cook it in order to use it,” says Strickland.
College of the Ozarks used to have a garden that supplied food for the students. Any extra food was canned and sold. But with an increase in the number of students, and the cost of modern agriculture on the rise, it was deemed cheaper to buy crops rather than grow them. So the college stopped taking care of that garden. This time around the university says it’s about more than the money.
Elizabeth Andrews is the director of Public Relations at College of the Ozarks. She says the garden is a win-win for everyone involved.
“Students [will] have some hands on experience of growing their own vegetables which is maybe becoming a lost art. And secondly, it will bring value to our dining room. It will just make the food taste better, and I think that our guests will notice that and will appreciate that,” says Andrews.
Currently the college is growing Blue lake Bush Beans, Celebrity tomatoes, and Juliet salad tomatoes because they appeal to customers and are disease resistant. The crops have already been used in Dobyns Dining Room.
The college says the only drawback to the garden is the increased workload for the landscaping and agriculture departments.
If the garden continues to be successful, plans are in place to triple the garden’s size by the beginning of the 2011 school year.
For KSMU News, I’m Chasity Mayes.