Live Oak’s school farm gains momentum with $125K matching donation and spring fundraising dinner

The idea to create a school farm for Live Oak School District on an unused baseball field in the corner of the Del Mar Elementary School campus has gone from vision to reality, thanks in part to new support from an anonymous donor. 

Three years ago, a team of educators, farmers and activists, led by Kelsey Perusse, the district’s nutrition director, launched an effort to transform the field into a working farm. The site would grow a regular supply of food for the district’s nutrition program and be delivered daily to the central kitchen, located just a few basketball courts away. The farm would also educate students on agriculture and food production, and serve as a community hub.

This year, Perusse and her team are preparing for their first dinner at the farm this spring, and planning for an influx of vegetables later this year to the school kitchen, which provides meals for more than a thousand elementary, middle and high school students at all six schools in its district, plus two nearby schools that purchase their meals from LOSD. 

A leafy cover crop of hairy vetch currently blankets the farm for the second year in a row, adding vital nitrogen to the soil. Underneath, the underground irrigation system is in place. Full-time farm manager Geoff Palla, who was hired in September and spent 13 years working for Berkeley’s famous Edible Schoolyard Project, created a crop schedule for the coming school year and is preparing for the first planting in May.

Starting this fall, all of the carrots, broccoli and kale used at the central kitchen will come from the farm. They’ll also plant other crops like red kuri squash, butternut squash and tomatoes. 

Once it’s fully operational, it will be one of only four school production farms in the state, joining Manteca Unified School District, Rio School District in Ventura County and Santa Clara Unified School District, where Perusse previously worked. 

A new partnership with Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, a nonprofit organization that helps fund philanthropic endeavors in the county, has helped bring the project closer to reaching its funding goals. Perusse met with Susan True, the chief executive officer for the foundation, just before Thanksgiving. Less than a month later, the foundation connected the project with an anonymous donor who promised to match $125,000 of the farm’s $250,000 startup costs.

That initial investment would cover all of the infrastructure for the farm, and also fund the first year of a “Summer at the Farm,” an agricultural-based science camp during the summer of the 2025-26 school year. Admission to the camp will be offered on a sliding scale to families in the Live Oak community. 

“I cried when I read the email,” said Perusse. “This has been such a big dream in our department, and I just know what this space can be for our students.” 

On May 2, community members will have the opportunity to see the space in person at the nutrition program’s inaugural farm dinner, a fundraising event at the farm. The four-course meal, priced at $100 per person, includes a grilled spring antipasti, green pozole soup, squash agnolotti, short rib barbacoa or a leek and fennel terrine, plus a salad, dessert and appetizers. All of the proceeds will go toward the farm’s fundraising goal, and will be matched by the donor. 

The event serves a dual purpose as a way to engage the community and bring the community to the farm, and to serve as an educational opportunity, said Perusse. 

The entire meal will be prepared by high school students from neighboring Cypress High School enrolled in Food Lab, an elective class that teaches students about food preparation through creating meals in the school’s cafeteria. Each course will be prepared by two Food Lab students, and students from Ocean Alternative School will serve the meal. 

“Our awesome Food Lab students have been working to learn to cook and different culinary skills, so they’re going to be the chefs that night,” said Perusse. The students worked with nutrition program chef Scott Felgner to create a menu based on experiences they’ve had throughout the school year in the Food Lab class, like making 2,500 dumplings for Lunar New Year. “They’re kind of geeking out on it.”

By the end of the evening, Perusse hopes to fully fund one important item: a $20,000 wash and pack station to clean and sort the vegetables after they’re harvested, before they’re carried over the kitchen: “As the produce is coming off of the farm, we want to make sure that we’re safely processing that produce so it can come into the cafeteria.”

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