It’s a jungle over at the Greenfield Elementary School Cafeteria. New cafeteria manager Jane Thomas and her friend Bev Allman  who teaches at  Salem High school painted and decorated the cafeteria to look like a jungle. Replete with a giant giraffe menu display at the line entry, the bright colors really appeal to both the young and adult alike. Made of wood, the giraffe has a dry erase board and is painted very happily in spots. Thomas’s husband Lonny made the giraffe.

Large tropical flowers grace the window area of the serving line, monkeys sit among greenery above the serving line, a big Toucan perched on the wall at the end of the line and a wooden monkey behind the exit wall really stir the imagination. Even the window curtains to Thomas’s office are leopard print!

The students said they liked the new look as they filed through the cafeteria line. A new milk contract with Southeast United Dairy Association has milk in recyclable bottles in chocolate, whole and vanilla milkshake flavors. With a generation of American children showing symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency, lots of milk is flying from the container holder at the elementary school!

“All of this is part of a green movement,” said Nutrition Specialist Chris Morris. As children dispose of trays they stuff the milk bottles into the artistic recycling container. Indeed Greenfield is living up to its name!