Bartels Lutheran Retirement Community becomes first nursing home to participate in local Farm-to-Fork initiative.
Bartels Lutheran Retirement Community becomes first nursing home to participate in local Farm-to-Fork initiative.
2 Pages1 In 1997 the University of Northern Iowa partnered with the Leopold Center at Iowa State University to create a local food project to connect buyers to locally grown foods. The participants included local restaurants, hospitals and local growers. In February 2000, Bartels Lutheran Retirement Community became the first continuing care retirement community (CCRC) to join the project. Bartels’ initial objective was to purchase 10 percent of its total food from local growers. By the end of the 2001 growing season, Bartels’ Nutrition Services management team had developed relationships with many of the local growers by visiting all of their farms. Due to an expansion of facilities, the Nutrition Services department moved into a new state-of-the-art kitchen. The new kitchen was almost three
