Growing 'farm to school' movement serves up fresh, local produce to kids

Hanmei Hoffman and her husband Derrick Hoffman farm in Greeley, Colorado, where most of their produce is sold to schools. Here she's moving boxes of cucumbers from a refrigerated container and loading them onto a waiting truck to deliver them to schools along Colorado's Front Range. (Rae Solomon/Harvest Public Media)

On a hot, buggy morning in mid August, Derrick Hoffman poked around a densely packed row of bushy cherry tomato plants, looking for the ripest tomatoes.

Hoffman and a handful of farm hands were looking for the ones already deepened to the just right shade of red. "Or light orange," Hoffman said. "Because once you put a red one with an orange one, they all turn red."