MARK BRODIE: James Beard Award-winning chef Charleen Badman founded the Blue Watermelon Project a decade ago as a way to address many things: childhood hunger, poor diets, a lack of knowledge about how our food grows. And she started it at Echo Canyon School by planting a garden and cooking with the kids.
She was their first chef in the garden, and she still cooks with the kids there today. She knows their names, their stories, the recipes they’ve liked the most. But this week was their last time cooking in the garden together.
While the Blue Watermelon Project has expanded to more than 50 schools across the state, Echo Canyon is closing its doors, the latest in a string of school closures happening here and across the country. The students will be going to new schools around the Valley, and the gardens and orchards that Chef Char, as they call her, and a team of volunteers and students have cultivated for years could just dry up…