Then the group was asked to return.

Five students and two school employees leave today to join other students in helping Obama and celebrity chef Rachael Ray harvest and prepare food from the garden.

Washburn — among three districts picked to join two D.C. schools in the efforts — was chosen for its “robust” garden programs and its use of produce in its school cafeteria, said Deborah Kane, national director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm to School program...

...That honor is bringing pride and validation to educators and kids in the little community on the edge of Lake Superior in Northwestern Wisconsin, where 560 students attend its schools. For several years the district has invested in and sought grants for sustainability and agricultural teachings, resulting today in a monarch butterfly sanctuary, vast vegetable gardens, an apple orchard, a 40-acre school forest, an aquaponics lab, a pollinator garden, a high tunnel and a bioswale, which removes pollution from runoff surface water; an important feature for a school that sits on a hill that slopes to Lake Superior...