BERNE — The Berne-Knox-Westerlo School District may soon be the source of freshly grown produce.

The district’s Parent-Teacher Association has been setting up a community garden over the past few weeks, said board of education member Nathan Elble. Elble has been helping with efforts to start the garden, but at a meeting on April 12, Jessica Barcomb volunteered to spearhead the project. She had first raised the idea at a visioning session last year.

“It’s more of a school garden,” said Barcomb, although she added it would be open to all community members for use.

Barcomb said that there have been attempts to set up a garden at the school before, and there was even a much more expansive garden at the school in years past. But this garden comes at an opportune time, with students at the secondary school able to take courses in agricultural science next year. She floated the possibility of having these students help younger classmates work on the garden as part of their coursework.

“That is our hope, that it will be a school-wide thing,” she said.

There are currently four 4-by-8 foot and one 4-by-4 foot raised beds behind the elementary school where crops will be grown.

Barcomb said that the raised beds are easier to maintain in terms of weeding and pest control. She mentioned that a school custodian had said rabbits can’t get to plants in raised beds as easily. The beds are located near a water spigot, she said.

In the week following the meeting, Elble and Martin Szinger both worked together to build two of the larger raised beds. Szinger and Elble are both running for school board, with Szinger as a challenger, in a five-way race for two seats (see related story).

Alexander Gordon donated manure for the garden as well, said Barcomb.

“It’s pretty exciting; we’re pretty much ready to go,” she said this week.

Nothing is growing in the beds currently, but Barcomb said there are plans to begin planting this week. The first batch would be springtime crops like kale, snow peas, spinach, bush beans, and lettuce as well as flowers. Elble said the hope is to have produce ready for picking by the end of the school year.

Although volunteers will be planting these first items, Barcomb would like to get tomatoes for students to plant as it becomes warmer.

This summer, Barcomb plans on presenting a sign-up sheet for youth groups like the Boy Scouts of America or the 4-H club to use the garden this summer.

Barcomb said that extra produce could go to the Hilltown food pantry, and Elble mentioned the Regional Food Bank's backpack program, which provides food to needy students when they are not in school. But Barcomb would like to see most of the crops supplement BKW’s lunch menu. She suggested growing easy-to-pick items to add to a meal, such as herbs or cherry tomatoes.

The PTA is holding a meeting on May 10, said Barcomb, and she is hoping to further involve people, in particular school faculty, with the garden. Setting up a garden club would be dependent on faculty involvement, she said, and a club would make it accessible to all students in the district.

Elble noted that teachers could keep plants in their classrooms and allow the plants to grow during the winter or early spring and then be transplanted outside when it’s warm.

Barcomb said that the garden will not only help students understand science and nutrition, but also mentioned studies which show children are more likely to eat produce when they have grown it themselves.

A study sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture conducted in the spring of 2012 at an Upstate New York high school found that the percentage of students selecting salad for lunch increased from two to 10 percent after it was made up of greens from the school garden.