Embracing their rural characteristics, the San Miguel and Shandon school districts are the only ones in San Luis Obispo County that enjoy a campus-based wheat mill.
“We were the first district in California (maybe even in the USA) to have a wheat mill in our kitchen,” Gelene Coelho, Shandon Joint Unified School District’s food services director, said via email. “South Monterey County Joint Union High School District has a mill. There are other districts in California doing the California Wheat Commission’s Wheat 2 School Program, but do not have mills.”
The Wheat 2 School grant project aims to provide curriculum for free to any teacher so they can educate kids about healthy eating habits that include whole grains. It’s funded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Farm to School program and its federal counterpart.
In 2021, both school districts and the California Wheat Commission received $20,000 from the CDFA’s Farm to School Incubator grant program.
The wheat commission used the money to get a mill from the New American Mill Company in Vermont. Over the past four years, Coelho has put the mill to work for the Shandon school district’s kitchen to process wheat for the two school districts. The wheat—all procured from California farmers—is used to make fresh baked goods for the districts’ students.
Lauren Thomas, the food services director of San Miguel Joint Unified School District, told New Times that the districts have received the grants every two years since 2021. The school districts just completed a $150,000 grant cycle.
“We are required to serve whole-grain enriched products, breads, and grain products as part of our meal program,” she said. “We did a lot of different trainings on how to utilize and make 100 percent whole wheat products for schools that kids would like. That 100 percent whole wheat is key because we’re required [by the state] to serve 51 percent or more.”
The school districts source heirloom varieties of grain like Sonora, Patwin, and durum, starting with a Sacramento area farmer called Jon Eck of Eck Farms.
District students also learned about the life cycle of wheat through an agriculture elective for middle schoolers who planted the crop, harvested it, and processed what they grew with a small tabletop mill.
Students in both districts enjoy whole wheat chocolate chip muffins at breakfast, whole wheat cornbread, and even the occasional pizza made in the San Miguel district’s Ooni pizza ovens.
A pasta extruder purchased with grant funds is on hiatus because of how many students participate in the program. Instead, the district now serves Paso Robles-based Etto Pasta.
The San Miguel school district’s wheat garden program is still running though the Shandon school district’s lessons are temporarily paused.
“Cal Poly actually has another plot behind ours; they have students come and they’ve been doing different testing on where in San Luis Obispo County wheat grows best,” Thomas said. “They’ve done some work with us.”
Earlier in 2025, the school districts received another $200,000 from the CDFA Farm to School program, which Thomas said would eventually be used to set up an outdoor learning center with a teaching kitchen and garden at Lillian Larsen Elementary School.
A bee program is also in the pipeline for kids to work with local beekeepers and learn how bees live and how honey is made.
While wheat production on school campuses is unique to Shandon’s and San Miguel’s school districts, San Luis Coastal Unified also benefited from the incubator grant.
For a little more than $22,600, San Luis Coastal partnered with One Cool Earth to maintain school gardens and provide garden lessons, and got food from local farms and school gardens to add to recipes for the school meal program.
“Both of our school districts and almost every school district in SLO County worked together to purchase a lot of local produce,” Thomas said. “And by local, we mean California-grown but also San Luis Obispo County-grown. … So those grants have also allowed us to support more farmers and expand our farm-to-school networks.”
Fast fact
• Halloween festivities will return to the Downtown SLO Farmers’ Market on Oct. 30. The Trick-or-Treat Trail will be open from 6 to 8:30 p.m. The costume contest will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., with check-in and registration from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Register online for the costume contest at downtownslo.com/halloween. In-person registration for the costume contest will take place in Mission Plaza before the contest begins. Also sign up on-site to compete in Krush 92.5’s annual karaoke contest at the intersection of Chorro and Higuera. ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 16-26, 2025.