From a 6×6 Bed to 8 Acres: Natural Farming in School Gardens

0:00 Donna Mitts: School garden breakout and panel discussion. My name is Donna Mitts. I'm with the Kohala Center and mostly I focus on the School Garden Network. I do help out with some other programs, SNAP-Ed, being one of them. For the last seven years I've been working with school gardens. Before that, for the previous 10 years, I was the garden coordinator at Paʻauilo School, a small school on the Hāmākua Coast. And I wanted to show everybody the website, because there's a lot of resources here.

0:40 But basically the school garden network was started, I want to say in 2003, the Rocky Mountain Institute did a report, a deliberate report that was commissioned by the Kohala Center to establish where we could improve on sustainability issues for our island. and one of those areas was to develop school gardens. So they started by making phone calls to all the schools on the island to find out who had a garden program. And lo and behold, even though most of the people thought they were the only ones doing it, because we were kind of isolated,

1:26 we found out there was actually a number of school gardens that had been developed in varying degrees at some of the schools. I don't know what the initial number was. Anyway, we just started with making connections, finding out where each garden program was at, what the teachers or the volunteers were doing. And we started from there. We started offering free workshops for professional development. Currently, we have over 60 school garden programs on the island. And they're, again, all varying degrees.

2:14 It may be a teacher that has a small garden area that she's, you know, using as an outdoor classroom with her students. There are a few that even have large areas in our food production. So as you can see, we're focusing on nutrition and teaching the keiki how to grow food. and the teachers are learning to incorporate the garden-based knowledge into the classroom. And it's been fabulous actually working with the folks that are involved in school gardens

3:04 because it's near and dear to my heart. And I love that the natural farming aspect is coming in and helping with soil fertility. and there's a lot of ways to connect garden-based learning in the classroom. So this is our website for School Garden Network, and in particular the resources section here, School Garden Resources. I just wanted to point that out. you can click on that. For any teachers, we have, and then click on School Garden Curriculum.

3:51 If you guys can't see back there, you can go a little bit forward. So scroll down just a little bit. can see we have science standards and benchmarks, K-8, health standards, and if you click on one of these grades you'll see an array of curriculum. I'm sorry. Anyway, that's okay. So now you know where the website is and that there's, we've worked hard to gather all the

4:36 curriculum that we have here. Just another note, the Kohala Center is the state, we house the FoodCorps for Hawaiʻi State. We're their host site. And the FoodCorps, I think there are 13 service members this year statewide. They're on Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Maui, our island, I think there's one online here. But anyway, so they're at the schools helping to connect nutrition, and they work with the teachers directly

5:25 and have their students out in the garden. And they've been a great asset to the FoodCorps program. So I think now there's numerous studies show that learning gardens improve academic performance in a wide spectrum of subjects, fosters positive attitudes toward learning, bolsters health behaviors and nutrition, and promotes cooperation and teamwork, and instills children with pride in their work and the food that they grow. And we also have had three cohorts of a program called Kū ʻĀina Pā, which is a year-long garden-based

6:07 training for teachers and that has been great it's been a fabulous program and they're currently working on a curriculum mapping project to learn based learning and anyway just a little bit about what we've been doing through the Kohala Center so it's my pleasure today to introduce some of our teachers that are using garden-based learning with their students and we'll start by having them introduce themselves and each of the teachers will share a little bit about

6:53 their program. So why don't you start with yourself?

7:05 Drake Weinert: Aloha. My name is Drake. I'm born in Puna. I've lived on the Big Island the majority of my life. I went to school at Montana State University and I got a degree in computer science and I always wanted to kind of help the world and make the world a better place so came back to Hawaii after I got my degree and got into politics I thought so silly that there's that we can't get along in politics seems so simple right so I ran for office wrote this platform got into the community started to really meet people you know born and raised in Hawaii but still you know like there's

7:52 neighborhoods that never been to so I really got in got to meet the people really realize that these it's not politics and like this and that it's what are you gonna eat tonight and so it really grounded me into like this reality of like what are we gonna eat time and so training in computer science think you know with this pink robots and all this kind learned about exponential growth and all that affects our resources and all this ended up getting into agriculture and really realizing probably one of the best investments I can make is for the keiki, to the kids,

8:29 you know that that's i want to live in hawaii my whole life and live in a neighborhood with people that i like and care about the you know share values with me of the environment of growing food, of knowing skills yourself to take care of living life type stuff. So from that path, I ended up getting involved with Let's Grow Hilo, and one of the guys that helped me plant the first [unclear] is here today, which has a big impact. The school saw that project that I did volunteer, said we want that at our school. They hired me after school to run a little program, K through 8.

9:10 started working that way. Didn't really have much teaching experience with children before that. I had been teaching natural farming to adults for a little while but got in and started learning about teaching keiki. Much different process. Eventually worked there for a couple years. They created a position to hire me on as an intermediate agriculture instructor. And I guess I'm the school garden coordinator for the school too but it's you know there's a lot of people involved along with me I now have had the ability I've been teaching there

9:49 two years now as the after school part excuse me as the in school part so now I was able to hire an assistant to help me because managing keiki in the garden can be you know it's a lot so I've really this year worked on my program while bringing natural farming in. Because that's, you know, but there's so much in the school system that I end up doing in the garden of just helping to heal the kids, helping to ground them, helping them to just, like I watch them come out at recess and they just scream and run. And they go onto this blank field. That's crazy. You don't see kids come out and like,

10:28 oh, kumu, here's this whole [unclear] that I made. And like giving gifts and walking to each other and being like, oh, there's [unclear] over here this recess, and we're going to harvest that one. And like, that's keiki I want to be around. That's a school system. That's an environment. I want to live in. But they come out of that terrorized. They come into my class. So I sit. One class period, I sat there the entire class. Didn't say anything. It sat there like this. My class, da-da-da-da-da. Because what do we do in the beginning? We sit quiet. Da-da-da-da-da-da. All class. Bell rings.

11:02 They all think they're going to get up. I go, ah! Sit down. And I took five minutes of their time and made them all sit quiet with their eyes shut. And I was like, this entire time I sat here waiting for you, setting this example for you to be. And this entire time, no one took the initiative. So I worked with them and just, look, it's about gardening. This is about grounding kids in, connecting them to living life, to, you know, you got this stimulus coming in. What are you going to do with that? Are you going to react? How are you going to think? How are you engaging in this?

11:36 So a garden becomes this multi-faceted environment that I teach way more than natural farming because it's a lifestyle. I love it. I work with my kids. They're happy. That's the thing. I have so much joy. I used to get frustrated my first year and be like, come home, think all weekend about grinding on these ideas. Now I've gotten to the space where I'm peaceful and happy. I come home and I'm like, oh, how can I give more positive support to this keiki? How can we find what engages them in the garden? Because it's a dynamic space. There's something for everyone.

12:15 You like shoveling rocks? Cool. You like pulling weeds? Cool. You like spreading microbes? Cool. You like looking through the microscope? Cool. You like updating our website to put our harvest? Cool. There's something for you in our garden. Lowest technology, to the [unclear] thing I was talking about yesterday to the highest technology of you know teaching kids how to launch servers on Amazon and pull up web space and route the internet through my garden because the fungus is on network just like the computers and if you can learn one part of that through the garden

12:49 everything else opens up to you because so just connecting the kids slowing down bringing them into this space creating a sanctuary for them to feel safe so they can expand in a vast majority of what i do i love it i can't believe they pay me to do this but I'm glad they do because it has given me the stability from this job to then do whatever else I need. So it's been such an honor and blessing to be in the school in a way that is just a positive light that brings the kids want to come to the rest of class because agriculture is going to be there

13:28 and we get to eat the food right from the garden. I love talking about this. I know we have others that want to share the same world and story. So mahalo and thank you for having me.

13:46 Robert Kobayashi: ...natural resources program. Before teaching I was a full-time automotive technician. I started as a dad in the shop. He was always an automotive technician growing up. So I've always been around him. I was good at it. My dad still was a jock, but he and I don't have the same goals and the same values. So it was a better relationship if we didn't work together. So, we had to see how can I not compete against him. You know, there were many arguments, I'm gonna open up my own shop. I'm gonna do whatever. But the reality was, I couldn't do that to my dad, right?

14:34 You know, without him. So how could I support him and move everybody forward? and move everybody forward. So I went and tried teaching. I started as an assistant. I liked it. I got my degree in vocational education. The only spot that was really open was Waiākea High School, and it was a half-line. So I taught automotive half time and then I taught natural resources half time. The reason why they got me into natural resources is because I did have a passion and I did have some experience in natural resources.

15:22 I do have a small farm of my own. I have cattle. So it seemed like a fit. The agriculture program was the previous teacher retired. It was kind of in a tailspin, so didn't necessarily want to take it over. It was comparing the two, automotive and agriculture. It is a very big, very big task. When I close the shop, it stays the same way. When I walk away for a break, which you can't really walk away, things just keep on happening or need to be done.

16:09 So it's a very, very involved task. So I ended up running it anyway. But I didn't want to see the program fail. I didn't want to see it fail. So, took the reins and then I currently still get teaching half and half. However, the only growing program in our whole CTE department, which is career technical education, is the natural resources program. It's the only one that has been able to sustain the numbers because it is an elective in our public school system. It's the only one that was able to grow and is still yet growing. So that's a good thing.

16:50 So, other than that, I try to give them experiences that do believe in diversification, having many abilities. Drake's over here telling you that he started in computer science. I started in automotive. Many of you guys have started someplace else and yet changed into maybe now into agriculture. So diversification is big. Crazy kids is another reality we're talking about. So, other than that, yeah, just happy to be here. Happy that I, yeah, Donna helped me big time too.

17:38 A lot of resources we have to do out there too. came by. You see a lot of friendly, helpful faces there. So I'm just happy to be here and listen to what everybody else has to say too.

17:59 ʻIwalani Haia: I am ʻIwalani Haia. I teach at Kamehameha Schools. I came from, raised on Maui, graduated from Kamehameha High School. And then I moved here for college. For me, I graduated with my BA in Hawaiian studies, monitoring the culture. So what I do at Kamehameha Schools is basically teaching culture. We have a garden, or our mala, and we apply all those different cultural aspects into the mala. And that's really our textbook and our classroom.

18:37 I also work with Keliʻi Akina, who's the, he's the, he actually kind of trains me with most of those natural farming stuff, but yeah, he's a big help and he'll tell more about our program.

18:50 Keliʻi Akina: Hi, I'm Keliʻi Akina. When I was in school I wasn't a computer science major or a mechanic, but more like a brocanic and a computer hacker. I actually started at Kamehameha about 10 years ago as a Hawaiian culture teacher, social studies, and it was boring. So that's how we got into the mala. Told all the kids bring in one stone from your house and we're going to make a garden. Bang! 600 pounds of stones later we have a mala. The school gave us an area that basically the school just pushed all the rocks from the side

19:29 and they made these big berms around the whole school and they compacted it and drove over it and made it into a road. And they said that's your mala. So we started there. We got into natural farming. Actually, I watch this post a lot. Anyway, we got into the natural farming because one, we was poor. Coming to my school, there's no ag program. There's no money for that kind of stuff. So we had no funds, or no funds, let's just say. And then we didn't have any dirt, so we had to figure out how to grow things with no funds and no dirt. So you take all the shred paper

20:04 from everywhere else and the scraps and you learn how to make [unclear], and bang, you got life. So that's kind of how it started. We went from a six by six bed to now eight acres over 10 years. Last year, the school has actually been investing money into the program now. Now that it's been growing, they're like, we're gonna bring some more. So I took a break for three years. My first year back in class. Kumu ʻIwalani actually took over for me. I took a break and went to the computer side of the school. So I was a community technology-born research teacher guy.

20:39 Now back into the dirt, so it's fun. We went from nothing to food and our whole thing is not really about agriculture, it's about cultural views and perspectives and food is a big part of that. And a lot of the cool concepts that we learned from natural farming are the same concepts that our kūpuna did, which they call natural farming. They had other things, and so we looked at the cultural aspects and it aligns great into what's going on in natural farming, so that's where it kind of just evolved into that. We are not an elective, we are mainstream class, so

21:14 so every kid goes to the program, so 100% of our students in the high school, all with the mala, all touch dirt and work and all those things. We're bringing back our pigs. Last year they got loose and they were running around. So, thanks to Mike, we are, the kids are now constructing their own natural farming piggery, which we kind of cheated and built it on a hill and dug a big four-foot puka. But you can't tell when you drive by, because we don't have a permit. Anyway, we're working on that right now. If you come to our farm tour tomorrow, you'll see it.

21:48 Big giant puka, we're filling it all up. [unclear] in the ground and biochar. We thought we were burning down the school. So all kinds of cool stuff. We have chicken coops. We got the souped-up hubble bubble that we kind of pimped out, and it's a little bit more than a hubble bubble now. But anyway, we've had chickens for a few years. Our aquaponic tanks are coming up. pigs are coming back, we have goats, we have paddocks with all these goats pooping all over to get all the fertilizers. And then we don't use any other stuff, there's no outside fertilizers or anything like that.

22:23 We don't even buy chicken poop because we grow our own. I just kind of cheat off of Greg's website and take all their cool ideas. It's really inspiring. The kids love it. People say, Kamehameha Schools, oh, your kids are the cream of the crop. Really, it's the same kid from Keaʻau, we just put a uniform on them. So it's the same kid. We have cowboys and all those kind of kids, and people bringing stuff, and we have low, high poverty rate in some of our families. So when they go home, they eat eggs, they can make something. They can do water-soluble calcium, they can burn their chicken bones.

23:02 So we try to teach those things in there. The last couple years, it's been kind of growing. And thanks to Kamehameha Schools and what they've been giving to us, we've got a lot of funding in the last two years that's kind of helped our program and where we could get aquaponic tanks and things like that. But the best part of it is that we're teaching kids how to do things that they can go home and do on their own without any money. You know, and go steal vinegar from tacos, or whatever, and make something. And so that's kind of what we're here to share about a little bit

23:36 But yeah, so that's us. Mahalo.

23:42 Jenny: Hello, my name is Jenny and I am the Farm to School Coordinator at Laupāhoehoe Community Public Charter School, and I get to sit next to these two handsome brothers over here. Mark is [unclear], he'll introduce himself. But I feel lucky to have this many people that I get to work with. We are a Farm to School school. In 2012, we received a Farm to School planning grant and that allowed us to fund a position and to really begin the Farm to School work. Farm to School is bringing locally or regionally produced food into cafeterias. That can come from our garden, it can come from our community,

24:20 it can come from anywhere that we define local, so the state of Hawaii. And our, yeah, so Farm to School was in relation to the high rates of diabetes in children and also other health related problems. So Farm to School began nationwide, this movement. And our school at Laupāhoehoe is a beautiful school that overlooks the ocean. We have a 34, 36 acre campus. And we're K through 12. So we began an ag zone near the piggery next to the school orchard. We have a garden, a greenhouse, and so forth. We'll probably talk to you more about that.

24:56 But yeah, it's been really awesome to see the growth of school gardens and now people putting their grown food into their cafeterias and trying to change children's eating habits. Because when students grow the food and have their hands in the dirt, they're more likely to eat it. There are other programs out there, if you are a [unclear], like the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, we can buy all local food and feed them four days a week, five days a week. And those are some programs that we do at the school. We try and slow change, but it's been really awesome. Thank you.

25:37 Mark Fontaine: My name is Mark Fontaine. I'm a teacher at Laupāhoehoe Community Public Charter School. I was born and raised in Honolulu. I went to ʻIolani School and I went to University of Hawaiʻi. I got a degree in religion, a degree in philosophy, and then I went into special ed. I was here on this island in the 90s down in Kaʻū. Then I moved back to Honolulu, got a master's in history. The title of my thesis was Two Views of Ancient Hawaiian Society. Then I moved back here to take the position at Laupāhoehoe and it had just converted to charter.

26:20 I met Lou and Jenny up there, fantastic people to work with and we had the agricultural initiative going. I was mainly interested in our piggery. Lou took the lead on that for a few years. We built up, painted it, we put a panel, yeah, we built it with the kids, with the older kids in it. And then Lou just left to go to HCC. He's running an ag program there. I'm trying to continue the piggery.

27:09 Student interest is not quite there like how it was, but we are proceeding. Hopefully we can get a pig in there this year. That's our first goal. That's our first goal, to get a pig. I'm just going from there. Thanks.

27:35 Lou: Hi, my name is [unclear], former head custodian at Laupāhoehoe. And when I took that job in 2012, when I toured the campus before you know the school started I saw a unique opportunity to turn this school into an ag school. Being [unclear], I think, gave me a leeway in what I could do and you know what I could help these two teachers with. I've had a lot of ag experience. I could do construction and production so yeah I took it upon myself to do whatever I could to get the infrastructure in first first thing we did was probably

28:25 rebuild the chicken coop, and we got four little chickens in, laying hens, and then Jenny got that big grant, so we started actual construction, but the main thing was you know getting administrative support I think that's one of the greatest things you guys gotta pursue you've gotta have this support from the top, or else, you know, what you can do, all the things you want to do, you can get all the things in place but you cannot move forward in the production side so I think before I left maybe a month and a half ago, I took the job at HCC to teach their ag program.

29:10 But it's, yeah, we got to a point where we had pretty much the infrastructure in, but we ran out of support from the top. So when you run out of that support, you run out of money too. So that's when it gets tight and you kind of just make do with what you got. That's why the piggery was finished after the first year. We had it done, but we couldn't proceed any further without some real help from administrators. That was the [unclear] we were faced with. It was an honor. If you ever have a chance to go up to that school, you've got to go to that school.

29:58 It's the gem of the Hāmākua Coast. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful, beautiful school. It's got a lot of tradition, a lot of history. I enjoyed my three years there. But part of my ATC mandate, I have to do public service, so I will be back out there to help them finish their projects and get this thing going with whatever my students or myself can do. So I promise that before I left. Thank you.

31:10 Audience: A quick question in the meantime. Do any of the school programs take the produce from the school garden and take it into the school kitchen and prepare it for the students?

31:26 Keliʻi Akina: We don't necessarily take it into our kitchen because we're [unclear] school and there's like a thousand red tape things, but all the produce that we create we actually incorporate into our classes. So we share about some of the foods that we make, laulau and pound kalo and do all those things. So everything we grow, the kids eat, but we can't necessarily put it on the line just because it's crazy. For us, it's just a crazy thing. Most of it is like snacks. The kids will come and pound out the sugar cane and different things.

31:59 But we haven't necessarily ventured into the part where we can take the food and replace something. So our school said yes, they'd like to do that. But for instance, like lettuce, they go to 70 cases, 70 pounds of lettuce per meal, per day. So in order for us to take that over, we have to be able to provide that on a consistent basis without failure. And so right now we're not at that level, but someday we hope to be. And just like [unclear], our school doesn't serve poi or kalo on the line because it costs them about $800 per meal.

32:35 Because of the amount they have to feed, so we have to provide that much. So we do supplement, like there are days, events in school that we supplement our kalo, our poi, and that kind of stuff the kids make. goes onto the lunch line, but as a consistent basis, not yet.

32:49 Jenny: We have been able to incorporate our produce into the cafeteria because we are a charter school, which is different than a DOE school. We have our own food authority. Yeah, we have our own school food authority, which makes it, which we're allowed to either donate it, most actually even with a DOE school you're allowed to donate food if they're willing to take it. And there is food safety issues, but right now we don't have a food safety law or the Modernization Act that has been in place so hallelujah we're not worried you know that will allow us to

33:20 we get that that will hold out and change a lot of things for schools but um yeah right now we're doing as much as we can um we will help this about hydroponic lettuce we're trying to supply our cafeteria and all the things that we need for ourselves so things like that so i guess it's

33:36 Robert Kobayashi: I think Donna and guys are trying to put that school-to-table things together. So there's definitely hoops to jump through, more than what I'm probably willing and capable to do at this point. They're taking a lead on that, it's wonderful. But we do, like Kamehameha here, they do get to take home their produce. We do give it to the culinary. So the way that we get food to some of the kids, we give it to the culinary department. And then they process it. So, yeah, that's how we kind of like. And I'm pretty good friends. being in my position and natural resources slash agriculture teacher I

34:28 found it important to make friends with the head cafeteria manager so I talked to her about about food not even much as providing food but she's saying that even the local farmers cannot keep up with what she would need so it's not even just at the school level. Even the Big Island in general cannot give her that steady supply, like how they're talking about.

34:56 Audience: I'm obviously picturing a much smaller school. The first garden, as I understand it, was started by a lady who was a nutritionist and a chef, and she encouraged the children to grow the food so they could take their own food one day a week and have it prepared for them, and that's spread in our area, so every one of those small schools has got a garden following a similar program.

35:29 Donna Mitts: So let me explain something. Public schools, they are not their own school food authority. The charter schools are; each charter school is its own school food authority. We are working with the charter schools. We've created something called the Charter School Food Working Group, where we have a meeting coming up actually in October where we bring together people from Child Nutrition Services, DOE, and charter school representatives. I'd just like to point out Kona Pacific Public Charter

36:03 School is doing an amazing job. They started the year before last serving, now they're not growing all their own food, but they are sourcing locally through Adaptations, and they started free breakfast in the classroom for every student, and they are developing a big program with a certified kitchen,

36:26 and they'll actually be preparing food for other charters as well. So there is work on this. But it's tricky with the public schools, because of the thing about that: a school would have to be not only food safety certified, but there's this weird rule that says you have to be able to provide enough for the entire, well, for 100,000 meals a day. Yeah.

37:02 It's not feasible. The scale that the school gardens are at, they couldn't even provide their own school, most of them. So the charter schools are smaller. They have more flexibility. And it is something that we're working on. I think what they're trying to do with these food working groups is have charter schools sit at the table and try to form a buying group, so that we can buy from more than one, let's say, sweet potato producer, and then we can buy 2,000 meals, so the price goes down. And we can kind of provide a model for DOE schools to hopefully do that one day. But the way that the...

37:33 The way that their policies are made is really hard because of that one rule. It has to be, yeah, you have to be able to meet the whole standards for every single school, every single school.

37:48 Robert Kobayashi: And so I don't know if they've looked at this here, but I've been talking with actually Derek Kurisu and Brandon Bartolome, Hilo Produce. A roundabout way that they had suggested was they carry the liability. So not just a direct way to the kitchen, but sell it to Hilo Produce, Hilo Produce sells it, they carry the liability. Same thing with KTA, you sell it to KTA and they provide it to the public. And I don't know if a quick supplementation way can maybe get friends with with the head custodian. I'm not testing this guy. By the way, I like that.

38:34 This guy's perfect for the job. The head cafeteria manager, I don't know how much he or she would be willing to stick their neck out, even in a supplementation level.

38:49 Jenny: Yeah. It's a lot more work, I think, for cafeteria managers to either pop in chicken nuggets in the oven and cut Chinese cabbage and vegetables and make a beautiful stir fry. Right now, their job is all they have to do is prepare what the menu says that they have to do. And if they've been in there for 30 years or 20 years, it's hard to change that mindset, especially when it comes around to food. Everyone has different beliefs of food. So it's such an interesting thing, because some of us see that the nutrition really needs to go up, because students are not, they're hungry nutritionally.

39:23 There are so many studies that say that if they don't get the right nutrition, they're not going to do good academically. So I'm hearing what we have a lot of interesting levels of where our academic rates are. So it's a real hot topic, and this is, yeah.

39:40 Audience: Question. When, where, I have a couple questions. When and where is that meeting for the charter school?

39:47 Jenny: It's October 13th at Laupāhoehoe.

39:49 Audience: Yeah, where?

39:50 Jenny: Charter school. From 10 to 1.

39:53 Audience: Laupāhoehoe, 10 to 1?

39:56 Jenny: Yeah.

39:57 Audience: Are all charter schools on the island represented there? I'm wondering if my charter school is represented.

40:03 Jenny: What's your school?

40:04 Audience: HAAS.

40:04 Jenny: Yeah, I believe the woman who writes your grants was at the last meeting.

40:10 Audience: Yeah.

40:11 Jenny: And your finance manager, Gail.

40:13 Audience: Okay, great. We work next to each other. And do you, I don't know if you know or not, but if our school receives 100% free, reduced lunch and breakfast, free and reduced meals, Where does that land us in terms of being able to provide food from our garden? Because we do have a school garden. We're nowhere near being able to provide anything substantial to supplement that at this point in time. Hopefully, my and other people's involvement, we're here at this symposium also, we're gonna get there. But what does that do? Because I know that that was a big effort for our administration.

40:52 hey, we got 100%, you know, we've got free lunch, free meals for our kids now. And, you know, quality issues aside, I just want to know where does that land us in terms of being able to provide food?

41:06 Jenny: I see some head shaking. So the free and reduced for public schools, that is how you get the funding. And when you get that funding, you have to abide by national standards of what they say. So that means like the nutritional guidelines. So if your chef or your head cafeteria manager is making like salad, the best way I would tackle it is to see what Sherry makes and see maybe what you can supplement. Like you could put parsley or some beautiful flowers into the salad. There isn't any rule yet on charter schools that we have to be food safety certified.

41:39 There isn't that rule. But that being said, there's rat lungworm, there's all these things you have to be super, super careful with but yeah there isn't that rule yet so I think you can serve your food even if it's just a little bit you can have a sign on the window that says you know just come to my garden yeah I don't know if that answers the question. So essentially just produce what we can get in touch with the kitchen manager see if they are willing to go for it and if so then bring what you can.

42:09 Yeah and before that like I was going to go through the presentation in the form of a committee of people that can help you with this whole initiative so it's not just you. And then also have a real, if you can contact the UH Rat Lungworm Project, they can help you. I don't know if they're working with you already, but that's something you've got to be really careful with. Just make sure your food safety is all the way, you can make sure it's going to happen. Thanks.

42:36 Drake Weinert: In high school we just eat out of the garden. I educate the kids how to be real safe, how to look inspected before you eat it. But basically what I'm planting in my garden is designed to be centered around smoothies. So you plant bananas and sugar cane and make just the most best smoothies you could ever get. And that's sweet, it's something that kids are drawn to that they want to eat. They love the blender, the whole process. You know, on a hot day, it's a cold smoothie and that's where it's at. So I'm trying to introduce kids that way, you know, that I'll throw basil into the smoothie.

43:25 You know, like what does this taste like? And get them to try all kinds of weird stuff that way. And then I just got a solar oven so I can cook with the sun, trying to educate the kids about that. Also just got a propane grill, or like a burner thing so we cook sweet potatoes that way.

43:42 Donna Mitts: It's actually easier in some ways to introduce the food to the students in the garden away from the cafeteria because they have an entire set of rules and regulations that are still there to have. But we should probably move on and start. We'd like to take a view of some of the program, some of the details, what everybody's working on.

44:12 Drake Weinert: Well, yeah, because I already got this up. I had a website, uluae.com, I accidentally deleted it. I was trying to clean out a bunch of hacks, my server, all my servers got hacked, so I was trying to clean it out and I deleted it. But I still have this one up, this one's a little bit less updated, but it shows more of the beginning. So, Kalanianaʻole School Garden. The name is Ulu Aʻe. Ulu is to grow, aʻe is to sprout, So it's to grow and overflow. This is the garden. So if you just want to scroll down, I'm just going to show you some pictures. So just kind of scroll down.

44:49 So just keep scrolling. That's kids making IMO. This is where we first started a couple years ago. Neil Abercrombie visited me. We used to make huge compost piles. I don't do that so much anymore. But I work with the kids, teach them natural farming. This is making lactic acid bacteria here. We made it from chocolate milk. Huge compost pile of paper waste recycling off from the school. I use weed mat to kill the grass and then start to plant things in. I use natural farming so my kids can get soaked in the stuff. It's totally cool.

45:30 They love being out, even little girls, digging holes and getting into it. We harvest a whole lot out of there. Terrible. I try to grow things that when you're not there, they're cool. The taro can handle by itself for a month or two. This now, getting down here, this area, I really worked this into a permaculture area. I just kept expanding the garden, kept expanding it. My old banana plantings. But I don't really have pathways or anything in my garden. It's really unconventional. Now I have nice wood pathways through,

46:06 but in the beginning I just planted everywhere and then we just kind of where you would walk we just made pathways try to bring as many logs as possible into my garden logs fungus prime but the kids love it they run through you know they're happy to be there I work with young and old kids, that's just building a little mobile chicken cage, and complaining about something we mulch all kinds of stuff try to teach the kids how to turn waste into a resource I love getting wood chips. If you know a wood chipper, tell them to drop it off at my school.

46:41 Growing everything, sweet potatoes there. I got a nice greenhouse. I don't use it very much. My assistant and I are starting to get into it, really. You know, having two people in a garden. This is what it used to look like, lots of grass in there, some metal beds. I have a pretty nice space and they've been really generous to me in terms of the custodian. It's just like my beard, it's kind of like, you know, people are like, can't you just trim it up? And I'm like, nah. But you see this area, I was talking about the permaculture, cassava is a great crop to throw in the ground, starts to grow.

47:21 This is us harvesting cassava there. One plant is 60 to 80 pounds of most dense starch you can get. They loved it, you know. Growing bananas, basil, it's really... See now I'm starting to get paths into my garden. So now I have paths through there and lots of wood chips. It's really evolved into a jungle these days. But just so rich.

47:50 Audience: And the quality of your soil is amazing.

47:52 Drake Weinert: Yeah, if I go to pull up grass it just pulls out of the ground so easy because the microbes have aerated the soil. And I try to, you know, we don't use poisons. The custodians are really nice to me and they don't poison my area. We do, you know, we weed stuff. Put lots of logs in there and yeah, in general, I mean, I think you got a pretty good idea of what we do, you know, just traditional crops, plant close permaculture, try to make it as low maintenance as possible, because if I have to take the kids and work on something else, or whatever comes up, I try to be really flexible on this.

48:37 Yeah, we harvest things all the time. I put tons of stuff on Facebook. I've really been pumping the social media. If you ever follow, add me as a friend or something, you'll be like, oh man, too much positivity. But I just try to load that thing up and be like, look at the good we're doing, because this, like, it's contagious. The good kids get into it, and when you show these pictures, it ignites a possibility of, like, knowing that that's out there. This was the end of last year, and I got them all to smile. We were in a music video for Nahko and Medicine for the People, all of us.

49:15 I believe in the good things coming. So, you know, bringing famous rock stars into the garden, and teaching the kids. Someone was walking around the classroom the other day and the kids had no idea there was a famous person. But yeah, I love it. So I think that's enough for me. I don't want to... But yeah.

49:38 Donna Mitts: Beautiful. Thank you, [unclear].

49:42 Audience: What's the website?

49:44 Drake Weinert: I have two websites. This one here is naturalfarminghawaii.net. And then the other website I have is UluAe, which is U-L-U-A-E dot com, but that one I just deleted. I'll put it back up pretty soon. But that's the garden blog, and that's the technology part that I'm bringing in. I have iPads, and all these pictures I took with my iPads, the kids took it. I really try to make that technology loop, so they're not just wasting time and using it as a creative tool in the garden. So I love it. And sharing with the web. The kids can reach Obama from here.

50:24 They can be anywhere in the world. Put their website up and there's a potential he's going to watch your video. And that's what I told him. This is unreal. Let's do more of this.

50:32 Audience: The website again, Natural Farming Hawaii?

50:36 Drake Weinert: Dot net.

50:37 Audience: Dot net.

50:38 Drake Weinert: Yes. And that's on my business card too.

50:46 Robert Kobayashi: Yeah, once again, Robert Kobayashi, Waiākea High School, Natural Resources Program. I inherited an agriculture program that was already established. It was an awesome program, awesome teacher. Very, very adamant about putting all the time in. However, it was a little bit dated by the time that I got in there. Things were falling apart. So we spent a lot of time repairing a lot of things. Shade house, aquaculture tanks. So it's a constant battle. It's something that becomes a job. Always repairing, always maintaining, and always trying to build for the future.

51:35 Trying to progress. So we are part of the Career and Technical Education Department, which our focus is to get students college and career ready. You know, this agriculture program is such a, and any other career and technical education program, it's sad to see the demise of so many of those programs. You know, everybody is pretty much going to work somewhere. and it's nice to see that the kids, I might have a little bit more of the kids that are standing there, one kid wants to grumble, one more, yeah, I'm not expecting all of them.

52:22 I've been around young kids and everything, they're just so positive and moldable and then when they get to high school they're using their technology for in fact a lot of these pictures I got from them because I'm not really technology savvy so some of these pictures came from them. But yeah, so we try to meet the soft skills, the work ethics. We do have advisory boards that we pulled in from the industries come in and talk to us what are they needing. So besides the state agriculture, they're looking at soft skills. A lot of you probably can identify the generation that we have now.

53:11 They kind of like want things done for them in a way, or they're not really... It's different than what, you know, I'm looking at this scope right here, and I think the state is seeing this as well. The average age of the farmer, you probably all heard of that, what the age is. It's just older. So, I'm going to try to embed that in our program where we can try to, like that salinity thing, I'm going to have to use that. use that. Grow the numbers, grow the exposure. But anyway, so you want to build soft skills.

53:51 You want our students not only to be interested in the subject area, but good workers, good solid employees. So we follow, we do unfortunately follow this Hawaii State programs of study where they dictate this is the order you need to follow. You need to follow this sequence. As I said earlier, natural resources is the program that we're under. However, we do try to embed agriculture and its attitudes as a main vehicle of getting that natural resources curriculum forward. We do look at past, present, and potential natural resources issues.

54:39 And we do try to offer as much professional development opportunity as possible. Future Farmers of America, FFA, is a huge thing in the mainland. In Hawaii, as a state, if you haven't heard of FFA, it's a professional development program. There's a lot of them in the trades, or career technical education. There's SkillsUSA. There is DECA, there is HOSA, FCCLA, very good programs. They're extracurricular. Some of them embedded into their programs, but it takes not only the subject or content

55:25 area, but it asks these guys to be leaders and professionals in that area. So FFA is one of ours and we're starting to get up and running again with that. This year will be the second year and that number has grown as well thanks to some very supportive and I guess go get it type of students. But we had a group of five last year and now I think we've got 16. So everything is starting to branch out. So Future Farmers of America, internships and paid work studies. The state does, you know, and they're saying, who was saying earlier about the administration,

56:10 I think it was Mr. Lou there in the end there about administration. We have an awesome administrator, principal. The whole administration is supportive of our CTE program. You can see that by the amount of career technical education classes that we have. We have automotive, we have woods, we have culinary, we have business, we have electronics and robotics. So we have the whole array supported for more full development. So it all has to do, a lot of it has to do with the administration. So the state does give us some money so we do hire some students too that are interested

56:54 in the and can display I guess purpose and potential in the in agriculture. And we have to prepare the whole individual for a diverse, ever-changing and interconnected world. As you guys all know, it's always changing. That's one thing for certain. That's one thing for certain, this is going to change. So, alright, next clip. We do have large class sizes, like I was saying, it is growing. We do have the addition of inclusion. If you don't know what inclusion is, it's special ed students coming into the classes now. It is, there's different types of inclusion.

57:37 One of them is, some of these kids are challenged. They don't have all of the academic skills. Some of them are great workers. They're the best workers. What you want to do, they're like those young kids. They'll just get in there. They'll be major motors for your program. Then you have the ones with the behavior problems, the ones that they have issues that they have to deal with, genetic, environmental, social, we have those ones as well. So we do have large class sizes, that's some of the challenges. So we do have to, one of the things that we try to combat

58:22 that is giving our real opportunities and experiences like Drake was saying, some kids want to do the shoveling, some kids want to do the digging. So we try to find ways that, how things support them, what's their interest. Let's see here, wide range of content areas, repairs, maintenance, and progressive future, I talked about that as well. We do try to spread the experiences around an approach that was maybe this much about gardening, different types of gardening. So yes, we do hydroponics, which you'll see later, but we try to spread it out.

59:02 You know, many different choices and they can choose and gain experience in. This is what I talked about a little bit earlier, coming with students lacking knowledge, abilities, and attitudes, symbol of the times, I believe, the social settings, and how we've seen agriculture kind of like, well, I don't know the latest numbers, but according to about two years I talked to this guy, I know it was 2% about 2000 of the population of farmers. I don't know for sure but I've heard that it's gone down to 1.5% of the population of farmers. So it's a symbol of the times that we live in.

59:45 And so, you know, I used to, I don't know if it was on purpose, but my parents used to tell me, tell me come home before dark and you go out and you play and you make forts and you rig up your bike and do all kinds of things and eat guavas off the trees and go to the river with no supervision. I mean there's a lot of things that could have went wrong and you know to some degree maybe we shouldn't have a little more supervision but that's that's the time that I grew up in and so it's different yeah we do have to compete for enrollment because we are an elective

1:00:33 class so basically with the Common Core standards and all the other policies and these testings that's coming out sometimes students are having to or and they're pushing the curriculum forward. So before, maybe the math level that they had to take but they graduate now and they have to pass it in ninth grade so they double up in math, they double up in English, they double up in social studies. So we're having a competition with, and luckily for Natural Resources, our enrollment's growing. I know the other CTE departments around the state, they're having to combat that competition.

1:01:15 Natural resources is glamorous, but agriculture is sweaty. That's what I deal with in my students. Natural resources, when they move to natural resources, it's kind of a good thing in a way. I like the services, whoever's interested, whichever students are interested. But when we change to natural resources, I see a different clientele of students that came through. You got your environmentalist, you got your forestry, and wildlife type of students. Versus ag class was maybe looked at as, I want to go pakalolo later. Or I got chickens I want to fight or whatever.

1:02:04 So a small kind of narrowing down. But, so yeah, the agriculture is still sweaty though. So some of them, I have a lot of those kids standing over there saying, oh really? But I got agriculture second period of the day. I don't want to be sweaty all day. But so it changes a little bit. I think their attitudes and their goals when they get up to that age, but we still try to push forward. Operational monies, like you were saying earlier, it's not easy to get the monies that you want. Administration support does help big time.

1:02:51 Continuously changing DOE and federal standards. It's funny how it seems like a pendulum back and forth or a circle, whichever way you look at it and did some studies on it where they see a problem with students not being able to get into the workforce and now they're seeing a problem with students not being academic enough and so something is going to probably circle back around to students are not dealing because we've got advice reports and we talked to them and said you know they can go to college they can go to school but when they

1:03:27 come to my my workplace I wanted to work I wanted to have these these work ethics show up on time be an honest worker give me my eight hours that I'm paying for so a lot of those things is that the number one topics that we talk about even that panel that they had the agriculture panel so many years back I don't know if you guys went to that the state was trying to do a study forget what it was called but that was pretty much the topic of the conversation and we're talking industry people whether coming from all different department of agriculture from

1:04:07 state put it on that was a big a big big thing they wanted to get across work ethics soft skills it's just immense amount of logistical things that you got to do being a teacher and that I didn't realize before I got into teaching I was an assistant teacher and yeah it's crazy yes yes yes basically too little time too little money too much competition too much work the page there try to fit in where we can do what we can that's a picture of their FFA they get to you know certain students are interested in

1:04:52 taking a leadership and professional level this is a massive last year we sent the student that to Washington DC and it's shots there they've got the all the centers in Washington DC from Hawaii mostly gathered. Field trips, you know where this is? It's not on the island by the way, it's in Oahu. Big machines, corn. It's like the Kauaʻi IMO field, or the GMO field. But yeah, Monsanto, that's where that is. So we toured there.

1:05:37 My job is to give them experience all around, and I do that to decide my personal opinions or whatever I think, and it's my job to show them the different types of agriculture that there is. They had some interesting facts, interesting things that they were willing to share, so our students got to experience that. I think it was in the Kunia, Jeff Norrell showed a picture of where their seed production companies are. Okay. They get to go on some field trips. We write grants, so we write for monies, and some of them is associated with FFA.

1:06:23 Agriculture is getting a push forward right now through the state because of the self-sustainability, recession and stuff like that. It really opened up the agriculture importance. Some more landscaping, try to show them different types of landscaping ideas. There are many different ranges of occupations that are associated with agriculture. I'm learning with large livestock. I'm fortunate to have small ranch to have cattle. I bring at least one to two a year. The one on the right is a older one.

1:07:12 And the goal between, he's an intact bull, the one on the left is as well. The one on the left is younger but he's a little bit bigger to start training. So he actually, that day he flew me about 15 feet. So they get to work with, so Bubba's on the right. The goal is to teach them to work with nature then against it. If I can teach the bull, I can teach the herd. And I know that I can use the bull as a means to eat grasses around. I can separate it without having an interior fencing. So anyways, and the older bull will teach the younger bull how to pack. Because he is the bull, yeah?

1:07:57 So he sets the tone. And it makes teaching the younger bull faster and easier. That's a cattle roundup. Bring them to the place. So learning the small livestock. So called Donna up. Didn't know how to milk a goat. She helped us out. She's like real big into making cheese and milking goats and stuff like that. So we had a goat kill her babies. And saw the opportunity to try to milk her. We made a milking stand after that, but we had to do it like that at first.

1:08:43 So Mike DuPonte, super helpful. I started out with artificial insemination and it grew from there. Korean natural farming, I mean this thing is awesome, this Korean natural farming pig pen, and that's another thing that I have to highlight is that there's so much things that you're trying to do and get along you have to find the easy things, the easy and good, and that's a win-win situation it's easy and it's good, not to the point that I'm going to be licking a... you guys were here yesterday, that was amazing I don't remember. I had a conversation with a lady.

1:09:30 She was saying that I should heat up the... Because I want to now get to the point where it's been like three years since we had our Korean natural farming pig pen. Four years, actually. And it's built up. It's built up all the waste. And now I want to use it in the garden. So taking Mike's lead on that, he was saying that, throw it right in. And then I was like, okay, you're the man, I listen to you, this is how you do it. Someone had mentioned to me that you should heat up the waste and kill any kind of pathogens in it. And then I see Drake over there, [unclear], you know, he's here today.

1:10:11 So if that was a call out, and you equalize on me, whatever, then I'll do it. I'm going to spread it just as it is on the ground. So yeah, we do have a Korean natural farming pig pen. It's super awesome. So we have other types of animals. We do free-ranging chickens and ducks. We are working this year, I'm sure later, but Mike is going to work with us, Keala is going to be working with us, doing a Korean natural farming chicken coop. I've seen them before. I like it better than the traditional chicken coop, but for our setting it has to be easy, so I'm trying to see if we can

1:10:52 bridge it where we throw the we have a free range during the week and on the weekends go into it into the they don't pick up everything that the things can pick up whatever and this is we have with the chickens because they're too small to escape from our our pig pen so I kept them with the stuff and they will So not only the feed that you make out there, but feed that they toss out, that the chickens and ducks will clean it out even more. They have small little specks. So yeah, they're free ranging, they crap all over the place, they eat our vegetables. So we have to find a way to try,

1:11:32 and that's what we've been trying to do, finding a way to get this whole diversified, and polyculture ecosystem thing. So there's problems. Doing sheep. That was just the other day. So that was kind of nasty but we had to dehorn the sheep. Use a sawzall to cut it off. Spray it and it survived. It was to the point where it was in that sheep up, sheep roundup, that we noticed that one of the sheep's horns were growing into the actually into the eyes so I thought that one was going to definitely lose an eye and if you didn't catch it maybe a week later it would die guarantee because it

1:12:21 was starting to have maggots and stuff like that. So we saw his eye off, treated and it's doing good right now. hydroponics, talked to Lou the other day, the week here about it. I was concerned about the magic blue crystals. You remember that thought there? Yeah. You put magic blue crystals in water and some salt and then you get plants growing out, right? I'm eating the magic blue crystals. That's what I call it. So, at the point of that, it was a good point that in agriculture, you can do the one that throws it in the ground.

1:13:08 You can spread this all over the place and only a certain percentage of that fertilizer will make it to the plant. A lot of it will filter into the ground to your water table and so forth. However, hydroponics is contained and it will take you at a slower rate and a smaller rate and you use less of it. So, and this is all in the lines of diversification, that's the theme of our program, is to be as diversified as possible. Maybe not the master in everything, because I'm not, and just expose.

1:14:12 Aquaponics, or aquaponic system. We have a fish tank, this one is in a state of repair. We've changed it over from a conventional rotating biological contactor filtering system into a water catchment type of system where we actually eliminated any types of filters. So there's pretty much no electricity besides the air. So we do all kinds. Yes, yes, sorry.

1:14:28 Donna Mitts: That's okay. We will go a little bit over time. You can keep going.

1:14:42 Robert Kobayashi: We have different tasks we try to make. So, [a student] is supervisor today. We try to mimic that occupational setting. We find out that being a supervisor is kind of hard. It's hard to do that. So this is interesting. Some people might want to try and do this open aquaponics irrigation. You give new water to the fish, why would I water that plant there? They're going to want to get water with fish water. So if I just had myself a bigger small tank, I'd give the fish the new water, and I'd give the fish wastewater to a plant. And that would be like a simple open aquaponics system.

1:15:31 That's an old tractor, 1980s, everything's like 1980 in there. We have to repair it a lot. Having a mechanical background, we have to change a lot of things on that tractor to get it going. Small repair. We do try to sample our foods and do some other food projects. This is big too. We try to inspire as much young people as possible, so we hold a lot of small, younger generation type of field trips. Last year was our most ever and it was just getting to a point where we had to cancel some of them because it was, it's just I can't do everything and reach as much, you know,

1:16:25 have tours. So, but it's really growing really good. Everyone. And these are projects that we're going to do this year. Natural farming chicken coop, Korean natural farming chicken coop. Our third design, chicken tractor. the big one is going to be solar system Alright. I'm sorry for taking so much of your time.

1:17:00 Audience: I love the large animal portion of your program. Yeah. There's not many places that you can take them. Yeah.

1:17:27 Robert Kobayashi: We don't have enough grass there, so we can tie them up. I can tie them up and they can mow down a bank or something

1:17:49 Audience: I have a question just really quick. Sure. Do you guys have to get extra sort of legal help for releases and extra kinds of insurance to cover your program outside of the school? I mean, maybe not if you're a public school, but if you're a charter school.

1:18:16 Jenny: When I did a bee program where kids would go into the beehive, I had this huge liability. I would make them sign the liability form that I had help with a lawyer to form. And then that should cover me as long as the parents are involved. Yeah, yeah.

1:18:32 Robert Kobayashi: I've used two. One for the school and one for the program. It's the school, the general one. one, and then they have the school one where, and there's a lot of safety training, so the documentation, and you got to show you've done this, and then so if I'm going to have the kids use the weed whackers or lawn mowers, then I have to send them a permission form that has to come back with the kids.

1:19:00 Donna Mitts: We have a sample permission form at the Kohala Center school garden website.

1:19:09 Keliʻi Akina: This is just projects. If you want to know more, come tomorrow. We'll be there, so if you want to check us out, there's pictures of the kids, where we make play boards, we make [unclear], we do rock wall building, traditional style, dry stack, plus we do garden stuff, natural farming. All our inputs are made in big five- gallon buckets because we don't use little glass jars a lot of stuff that we got to spray, projects that we need to grow every year, the kids have different projects. So come tomorrow you'll see a 40 by 40 rock wall structure. Everything in that mala area, that

1:19:45 [unclear] was built by students, mostly freshmen and seniors. So we do all our own building, our own cutting, we chainsaw, we do all the crazy stuff. We have a waiver that says you can [unclear] a finger off if you're involved in those kinds of things. We talk about [unclear], and we talk about traditional practices. Most of our gardens have run off of our moon calendar that we combined. And so when the kids come out, they know what night it is, they know what to plant, how to plant, when not to plant. Those kinds of things. We make laulau, traditional foods, we do imu.

1:20:14 We have our own imu stone, the action is there. We grow some more lao lao, some more things there. This is us actually, we did a fire ant workshop, because they love to take over our areas. So that's another big thing that we always got to worry about, is fire ants, and having proper PPE or equipment as they work too. So you hear we whack them and chainsaw them, and our boys, they get all hunky and they [unclear] the shirt and go inside the coconut grove and bang, fire ants! So those kind of things. We like to collaborate with as many different people as we can.

1:20:47 Just because I know nothing, again, I still everything can drink. So this is different projects. We do our IMOs, we have different service learning projects. Talk about different ways of, this is like planting, and make our own ghetto shade houses, [unclear] permits, A lot of car tents that we make, you know, different stuff. All of our structures are legal, except for one. And this is our hubble bubble, which you can see right here. Tomorrow you'll see the [unclear], we put an extra four foot roof on it and all this kind of fancy stuff.

1:21:19 We use recycled rubbish because I'm chang. So, not Kim Chang, but [unclear] chang. We don't have that much trees or anything else. Everything is recycled stuff from the school. That's a tire that I stole from my daughter's bike. And we made our own [unclear]. So everything is pretty hands on. Like I said, the last few years we've been getting funding. So we have cooler tools and real goggles and safety glasses and those kinds of things. We have multiple different types of hammers, before we had one. We've had ponds, we've had all kinds of things.

1:21:50 Every year our seniors do projects, so we have at least 20 to 30 projects per year that go on just in this environment. From solar panels, to robots, to roads, aquaponics tanks, weird tanks, growing frogs, and I don't know. So if you want to see more, come tomorrow.

1:22:14 Drake Weinert: So just, I just got word here, we have a few more minutes to wrap things up here. Then we're going to meet down on the lawn there. We're going to pule before we eat. So take our time here. Yeah, well, I just, it's all for the morning. Just keep going. But if you are hungry, then.

1:22:56 Keliʻi Akina: Can I say one more thing, too? I know they mentioned about administrative support. When we started this project, zero admin support. Okay, my policy is we go forward and we apologize after. You can say sorry. They're not going to let zero people support you and forget it's not going to work. Just do it, the kids see, they're like, the work is getting late, and then they support you. That's just kind of how we work.

1:23:19 Jenny: I'll be really quick, because I know we're all hungry. So am I going forward? So, Farm to School, I'm sorry, it's basically bringing locally produced foods into cafeterias, providing hands-on instruction, like gardening classes, nutritional classes, culinary classes, and anything food related. If you are a school and are interested in opening a Farm to School program or anything like that, there is grant opportunities on the USDA Farm to School website. We received a planning grant and that really helped us. It gave us the funding to start the program.

1:23:55 We recently applied for an implementation grant and we're waiting to hear specifically about that. So we have next slide. One of the first things you can do, I've already said this, if you want to create a Farm to School program, is to create a committee of a diverse group of stakeholders: administration, cafeteria managers, parents, community members, nonprofits. So that you have a group of people who will have your back and a lot more can get done. Or you can create a subcommittee of the wellness, if you have a wellness committee at your school.

1:24:28 and yep it's really good to establish clear goals like we're going to make a garden by the end of this year we're going to get the piggery done in 12 years eventually okay next slide I really like the easy way to break down Farm to School is the 3 C's by Vermont FEED and it's the cafeteria, classroom and community so that's the aspects that we try to affect next slide Farm to School in the cafeteria, we try to host a Farm to School lunch every month. We did that for the last two years, it's kind of dying out now. It's up to the cafeteria managers to step it up and take that responsibility.

1:25:08 But the Farm to School lunch looks like, we highlight what you're serving. That's our salad from our garden last year. And yeah, it's been a real hit to have these things. You invite parents, invite anybody, tell your teachers, you know, this is what's happening. it's usually they're really delicious when there's more fresh food involved in the lunch.

1:25:27 Audience: Like a councilman?

1:25:28 Jenny: Yes, like a councilman [unclear]. This is an example of our snack program where we offer four days a week. It's 100% local, so I order directly from farmers, from mostly distributors, like Adaptations and [unclear]. And they've been able to supply us 100% local for the last three years. It's been awesome to have steamed broccoli and fresh ʻulu, so many amazing things to eat on this island. It's incredible. We feed 150 kids. This is an example of our garden. We have, I don't know if it's a 160-foot fenced-off area, because we have pigs that would come in.

1:26:12 So the first thing was to fence off the site. It was just grass. We till it. We till it actually kind of regularly, because it gets really hard compacted, and a lot of weeds. We're trying to do it as organic as possible. And with IMO, because this is an IMO conference, what we've recently done is we weed-mat one half of it, another for a year, and then flip it over. And because Uncle Lou told me that all the beneficial bacteria die, you want to introduce that back after you pull the weed mat off, just to get that back into the soil after we till it. So this is something that we practice.

1:26:50 Yeah, we try to do more conventional style farming as well. Next slide. And yeah, that's just some of the stuff that we have to do for our garden, and on to the next slide. Yeah, so I mean, all these gardening teachers here are agriculture teachers. I would say that having a school garden or having any kind of experience where they're connected to the ʻāina is such an incredible, it's what changes lives, it changes lives. These are our students, our second graders harvesting their first carrots, some purple carrots. I mean, it was like the best day of the world for them.

1:27:25 Like, yes, we get to harvest the carrots. How do you wait three months? every day they're like, can we harvest them yet? No, they're not ready. Can we harvest them yet? And that day was just really, really exciting. Next slide. And we are really lucky to have some funding for our culinary class. We have a professional chef who comes every week and does a high school culinary class. And she does everything from crème brûlée, we have that last week, and we do vegetarian stir fries and taro burgers and so forth.

1:27:58 Yeah, and just really involving the community into the Farm to School philosophy and explaining the healthy eating habits, you know, they've got to be reinforced with the families as well. So, it's a fun thing to tackle and yeah, the impact is huge because like on this island, especially with food security and you know, the reality that we import 80% of our food and the children hopefully can be the first people to, you know, start that change with feeding them first on such a large impact, it's like, let's figure it out. I think it's a good way to start. Okay.

1:28:38 Donna Mitts: Thank you. Thank you to our panel today. They are doing amazing work at raising our next generation of food producers. If you have any questions, if you wouldn't mind, you can ask them while they're eating. I think they're starting to do it again. Thank you very much. Thank you.