World's Largest Student Farmer's Market

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Transcript

World’s Largest Student Farmer’s Market Transcript

00:00:10 Michelle

The farm to school podcast, where you will hear stories of how you thrive and farmers prosper when you grow, cook and eat. Delicious, nutritious local foods and schools.

00:00:19 Rick

We're your hosts. As always, I'm Rick Sherman.

00:00:22 Michelle

And I’m Michelle Marksteyen and we are farm to school coordinators for the state of Oregon.

00:00:28 Rick

So Michelle.

00:00:29 Michelle

Yes, Rick, you've been out. You've been out and about.

00:00:32 Rick

In the world I did, I was on assignment. It's like we like to say. And I guess in our podcast world I was on assignment in Nevada outside of Las Vegas for two events. And this first one we're talking about today, I was invited to see the world's largest student farmers market.

00:00:52 Michelle

OK, that is, because you know, usually here back in the days when farm to school was getting going, I knew Nevada was one of the last states we officially had farm to school on the map.

00:01:04 Rick

It's actually Nevada. They get, they get offended if you say Nev-ah-da, just on the little Insider Info, Nevada, it's not, it's like Orygone. Yeah, right.

00:01:10 Michelle

Nevada. All right, well, most it's like saying Orygone. All right, fine. I grew up in New York. I get a pass, sorry if I offended you..

00:01:19 Rick

Well, it's even worse than that. And we talked about this in the episode, but when we were actually it's in Las Vegas. And So what do you think of when you think of Las Vegas?

00:01:20 Michelle

Not farmers markets.

00:01:32 Rick

Not farmers markets, I think of maybe Elvis, maybe a lot of casinos.

00:01:36 Michelle

Let alone in the world's largest youth-run farmers market. That's incredible.

00:01:40 Rick

Exactly this you will be blown away by our next two episodes because this was this was the brainchild of a nonprofit called Green Our Planet and they sought out to make this farmers market and to do it in all 50 states. So I talked to them about maybe bringing this idea to Oregon. So that's something we're percolating on. But this student farmers market was in the suburb of Summerlin, Nevada, which is like, on the outskirts of off the lot, far away from the strip.

00:02:15 Rick

And it had fifty, It represented 50 schools and 500 elementary age students, in all selling their wares, they were selling fruits and veggies. They were selling little garden knickknacks that they made 500 little salesmen running around and grabbing you and bringing you to their booth and showing you all they had. It was just. It was a wonderful thing. Now I was able to interview two groups of elementary students from a couple of the schools.

00:02:49 Michelle

I'm so inspired by that entrepreneurship and leadership. They did, and I can't wait to hear about it.

00:02:55 Rick

Yeah. Well, let's get into it. Let's listen to it and enjoy the episode.

00:03:04 Rick

I am with three very special guests. Today. I'm with Rico. I'm with.. Say hi, Rico. Hi. I'm with Carter and I'm with Amalia. OK. And we are in… 

00:03:13 Carter

Hi.

00:03:18 Rico

We're in Summerlin right now.

00:03:19 Rick

Summerlin, thank you very much because I forgot actually I really did. It's a suburb of Las Vegas. And we're with Green Our Planet. They have the world's largest student farm stand farm farmers market.

00:03:32 Amalia

We have seen like a video of it before.

00:03:36 Rick

It's I guess, do you know how many years this has been going?

11 years. That's really good. So 11 years, this is my first time here. But how about you, Amalia? Have you been here before? Is this your first time?

00:03:49 Amalia

This is your first time.

00:03:54 Rick

Yeah. How many years have you been here?

00:03:58 Rico

Just right now. I’ve seen videos, really.

00:03:59 Rick

Just OK, just OK videos.

00:04:02 Amalia

This is all our first time me, Carter and Amalia.

00:04:05 Rick

OK. All right. So I guess there's 500 kids here from about 50 schools. And if I could, we're not on YouTube or anything, but I could paint a picture. There's all these tents and everybody is selling stuff they made or stuff they grew in their gardens

00:04:23 Amalia

Yes. I'm seeing lots of handmade stuff by students and they look really good. Yeah.

00:04:28 Rick

OK. Yeah, really cool. It's. It's so nice and it's like 85° down here today, which I'm from Oregon and it's freezing cold back there. So Carter, can you tell me what school do you go to?

00:04:40 Carter

I go to Kenny C. Guinn.

00:04:43 Rick

Can you say that again?

00:04:45 Carter

Kenny C. Guinn

00:04:46 Rick

Kenny C Guinn?

00:04:47 Carter

Yes.

00:04:48 Rick

OK, OK. How about you, Rico?

00:04:51 Amalia

I go to Kenny C Guinn as well.

00:04:53 Rick

And Amalia, do you too?

00:04:55 Amalia

Yes.

00:04:55 Rick

Ohh, all three of the same school. OK, so you guys know each other. I was just assuming we're going to be pulling kids from different schools. So this is really good. So the school. So are you guys in the same class?

00:05:07 Amalia

Me and Carter have the same first period. I have not seen Amalia before though.

00:05:14 Rico

Carter's in my 5th, 6th period.

00:05:16 Rick

OK. Hey, Carter. What, what grade are you guys all in?

00:05:20 Amalia

6.

00:05:21 Rick

You know in 6th grade, OK, so going into middle school next year or?

00:05:25 Rico

We are in 6th grade right now, middle school.

00:05:27 Rick

That is middle school. OK, that makes sense. OK, alright, 6/7.

00:05:31 Rick

OK, great. OK. So, Amalia, tell me a little bit about your school garden.

00:05:37 Rico

Our school garden, since we don't really have that much room right now, we use hydroponics, which is growing things inside with water and it's great whenever you don't have any room you.

00:05:43 Rick

Mm-hmm. Yes. What are some of the things you grow in your hydroponics?

00:05:54 Rico

We grow kale, squash, radishes, alfalfa.

00:05:59 Rick

OK, alfalfa. Hey, Carter, can you tell me what, what do you do with some of that produce that you grow?

00:06:06 Carter

We either sell it to the staff.  We have some students bang it up or right now while we're doing, and we also grow red and mustard.

00:06:16 Rick

Ohh. Red mustard. Nice. Is it spicy?

00:06:20 Carter

I never tried it.

00:06:21 Rick

OK, OK. Rico, is this your first year doing stuff with your school garden or did you do it as a fifth grader or earlier?

00:06:31 Amalia

So back in fifth grade, we used to have a garden outside that we take that we took care of sometimes with my class, although I never really went on any trips to sell it or anything. So that's my first time.

00:06:38

Yeah. Ok.  Do you want to do anything with gardening, like at your home?

00:06:51 Rick

Or after middle school. Have you ever thought about doing anything else with gardening?

00:06:57 Amalia

No, but my sister is actually thinking trying to get my parents to put take out the rocks from my backyard and put some gardening soil in.

00:07:09 Rick

It. Yeah. Yeah, I know. For me, I've been down here before and it's so hot for me. And it's really tough, like I can be in my garden in Oregon. I could leave for a week and not water it. And I can come back. It's fine. I don't think you guys can do that down here. Like, you know, the sun will just go “scorcho” on everything and just destroy everything. It's pretty hot down here to garden. Isn't it, Amalia?

00:07:36 Rico

Yeah, it is.

00:07:38 Rick

Pretty hot. So, and that's OK. You just, I've noticed you guys, really.

00:07:45 Rick

Take care of your gardens really well. You really realize you get after it and you have to water and shade things and make your own soil because the soil is really hard and clay-like. Is that right?

00:08:01 Amalia

Yeah, but we use hydroponic system.

00:08:04 Rick

That's true. I keep forgetting about that.

00:08:06 Amalia

A hydroponic system. It flows water through, so it has like 3 levels each with like little spots for a plant and the system pumps some water with a solution through that has nutrients in it, and it works better than standard gardening, and it uses 90% less water. Nice, which is really, which is really good considering that only a small percentage of the water of natural water on Earth is actually.

00:08:39 Rick

Drinkable. Ohh. My gosh, thank you so much for that. You guys are so sharp. I can't believe it. So Carter, about how big is your hydroponic system? Does it fit in a classroom pretty well? Do you know? Is it a size of a refrigerator or a car?

00:08:58 Carter

A refrigerator?  I haven’t really seen them.

00:09:00 Rick

OK. Yeah. And Carter, how quick do the things grow in there about a week? OK, OK, that's. That sounds great. Do you have any questions for me?

00:09:05 Carter

A week.

00:09:12 Amalia

This isn't your first time being on the podcast?

00:09:14 Rick

No, Sir. Not my first rodeo. No, no. Alright. Do you have any question? Yeah, go ahead..

00:09:20 Rico

What do you grow in Oregon?

00:09:23 Rick

Thank you. That's a good question. Probably a lot of the same plants we grow here, we seem to do, we grow specialty crops because the seeds we don't want to cross pollinate with other crops because things can go kind of sideways and weird when they do that.  So we grow lots of, oh, tomatoes and green beans and cucumbers and just veggies, veggies and lettuce. We used to grow mint in my town. I lived in, used to be the mint capital of the world, but now a lot of the mint is grown in China. I understand. So not so much anymore, but we used to fun fact- when I used to go to bed at night, I'd wake up feeling like I was chewing spearmint gum because all the mint in the air and stuff, it'd be, it smelled really nice. It was really cool. So Mint was a big thing.

00:10:14 Amalia

I can honestly relate to that because back when back in California we had a mint plant inside the house and whenever I woke up, I my mouth would always feel like, so minty. Then when I go to drink some orange juice it.

00:10:27 Rick

Refreshing! That's a neat thing about gardening. I've a lot of things you grow you don't normally eat, right and you grow in in a school garden. You could try it and go home and tell Mom and Dad about it. Rico? What's your favorite thing to grow in the school garden that you like in your Hydroponics lab?

00:10:48 Rico

Favorite thing to go on the school garden definitely has to be the cilantro because cilantro is used is used in so many different dishes that I've tried before and they're all just amazing with the cilantro. I've tried them without the cilantro and it does not taste the same at all.

00:11:02 Rick

OK, that's good. How about you, Amalia? What's your favorite thing to grow?

00:11:10 Amalia

I would say the kale and the radishes.

00:11:12 Rick

Kale and radishes. They grow pretty quick. Those radishes too, huh? Carter, same thing for you. What's your favorite thing to grow?

00:11:18 Rick

Cilantro. Cilantro. OK. Cool. I love cilantro too.

00:11:22 Rick

I want to thank you guys so much for stopping by. Make sure you listen to the podcast and share with your teachers and all your classmates, OK?

00:11:33 Amalia

OK, we will definitely not a doubt.

00:11:36 Rick

All right. Thanks you guys. Bye bye.

00:11:38 Rico

All right.

00:11:40 Rick

I am back at the world's largest student farm stand in Summerlin, Nevada and I have I have 3 wonderful young ladies with me from well, I'll just let you guys introduce yourself, Emma.

00:11:58 Emma

We are from Roger Bryan. I am 10 years old and I'm in fourth grade.

00:12:01 Rick

Ohh OK and 4th grade. OK, alright, good deal. And yeah, so that that was Emma. And you are?

00:12:10 Jayden

I'm Jayden and I'm the same age as Emma and I'm also in fourth grade.

00:12:16 Rick

Our last wonderful young lady, yes.

00:12:18 Haley

My name is Haley and I'm also 10 years old and a fun fact about me is that I played piano.

00:12:25 Rick

You play piano. Ohh very cool. Can you do any tricks or anything like that?

00:12:30 Emma

I'm a gymnast, but I switched from gymnastics to ninja, but I still do a little bit of gymnastics.

00:12:37 Rick

I didn't know being ninja was a thing like you can switch from gymnastics to ninja. That's really cool.

00:12:43 Emma

Well, basically what?

00:12:44 Emma

You do is like if your class gets like to a short amount of people, they can change your class to a different class and they add you to a new class to change that class.

00:12:52 Rick

OK.

00:12:54 Rick

OK, that works. And then Emma, same thing for you.

00:12:56 Emma

I'm. I'm from gymnastics and here I do dance dynamic.

00:13:01 Rick

So we're here today to talk about your school garden. So, Jayden, can you tell me about what happens at your school? Is it only hydroponics? Do you have outside school garden. What?

00:13:14 Emma

We have an outside school garden and we also, the garden is planted by colors, so all the different color plant like different rectangles that have the plants in them, have different colors painted on to them. Some of them are just bricks and some are actually painted.

00:13:37 Rick

Ohh I thought you were saying when it's color you planted by color like you planted all the purple things and but it's yeah but it's decorated and really pretty. Yeah. OK, I get that.

00:13:46 Emma

Like the red, the red one has all the leafy greens like celery and yeah. And we act and also we actually noticed that almost a lot of our plants haven't grown yet until like normally till like December or July. And we're really excited for May because we're going to have another farmers market. We don't know if it's going to be here like at a different actual field trip or at our school?

00:14:17 Rick

OK. That's really good. Good. You guys can do that now. It's so funny you said. Ohh, we can't. We gotta wait until December. I'm from Oregon and in Oregon we have snow on the ground and we cannot grow anything until at least may. And we are through our hot summer months when it's 75 or 80 or something in June, July, that's when we grow and then by September, October, we're done. But it it's so nice here. You have, like a year-round growing season.

00:14:47 Emma

Yeah.

00:14:47 Rick

That's really cool. So, Haley, tell me a little bit. What is your favorite thing to grow in your garden?

00:14:54 Haley

I like growing sunflowers.

00:14:58 Rick

Oh.

00:14:58 Haley

Because you can also cut the dead ones off and they're really beautiful.

00:15:02 Rick

Yeah. Do you do anything with the seeds?

00:15:06 Haley

Uh. I don't think so.

00:15:10 Rick

So you don't you don't roast them or just feed them to the birds or??

00:15:14 Haley

Yeah, I just feed them.

00:15:15 Rick

OK, that's that sounds really good.

00:15:19 Emma

We also sometimes what we do, we actually have for what we're selling right now. We have these little like flower wreaths made of plastic bottles. And we cut them and then we're actually, I think there's like seeds on top of them. So basically, they're also bird feeders.

00:15:32 Rick

Oh wow. Ohh are they in your booth today? Do you have them in your booth? Yeah.

00:15:37 Emma

Yes, I think we might have almost sold out, but we still we should still have a couple.

00:15:40 Rick

Yeah.  I can't bring any on my plane anyway. But yeah, it I've seen amazing stuff over here too. So, Emma, how about you? What do you like about your school garden? What do you like to grow?

00:15:54 Emma

Uh, I like to grow celery and Rosemary and sunflowers, but, since we don't have that many sunflowers, but somehow we are growing some wildflowers, and they're really beautiful. The most part I like about farmers market is where you get to communicate with all kinds of people and convince them to sell your products.

00:16:11 Rick

Yeah. You guys are aggressive. Let me tell you. I mean in a good way, in a good way. You're like, hey, hey. And you're marketing and selling and showing your stuff. It's really fun to go walk around here and see 500 kids here today. Wow.

00:16:35 Emma

Yeah, it's really fun. And we also get to hang out with friends that we don't get to hang out with during the day, like we don't get to hang out with Emma or my friend Amelia, who isn't here right now.

00:16:41 Rick

Yeah, yeah. Are are you in the same classroom or school?

00:16:47 Emma

We're actually with one of our teachers here.  Her name is Miss Derby.  And our friend Amelia is actually at Wilson. So...

00:16:55 Rick

Yeah. OK, OK. Has this gardening peaked anything in your interest? Do you want to keep doing it after you're in middle school? You get in middle school and high school or would you like to, you know, work in in a horticulture field or anything like that?

00:17:16 Emma

I think I love this doing what I do. I like helping people and convincing them and selling. So I think I want to do it from middle school and high school, but I don't think.

00:17:16 Rick

Go ahead, Emma.

00:17:29 Emma

About with the other thing you said.

00:17:31 Rick

Yeah, yeah, like as a career or anything.

00:17:34 Emma

As career no for me, I'm thinking of being an artist for me, for being an artist. I still do farmers market, but help little kids like elementary and just put up signs from my drawings. 

00:17:47 Rick

That's perfect. That's perfect. And that's a good lesson that you can teach anything in a school garden. And what Emma said is perfect. Like, well, I like art and I like to do art in the school garden, and you can take that knowledge and go with it. So great. It's it. It all works good. Thank you so much for stopping by and seeing me. This has been great to get to meet you and good luck with you and your guys and your school garden. OK.

00:18:13 Emma

Alright, thanks. Thank you. Bye.

00:18:13 Rick

All right. Bye bye.

00:18:20 Michelle

I'm passion and knowledge is just so inspiring. It makes me want to do more. Thank you Rick for interviewing them.

00:18:20 Michelle

Gosh, listening to those youth talk with such.

00:18:30 Rick

Yeah, they're tomorrow's leaders in the farm school world. Definitely. I agree. Thank you, everybody for listening too.

00:18:36 Michelle

Yeah, farm to school was written and directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Marksman with production support from Leanne Locker at Oregon State University Extension and was made possible by a grant by the United States Department of Agri.

00:18:48 Michelle

Culture.

00:18:49 Rick

The content and ideas on the pharmacy school podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, Oregon Department of Education, and the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA, Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:19:07 Michelle

Do you want to learn more about Farm to school? Check out other episodes, show notes, contact information and much more by Googling Up Farm to school podcast, OSU, and that'll take you to our site.

00:19:18 Rick

We would love to hear from you.

00:19:19 Rick

Stop by the website Michelle just mentioned. That's farm to school podcast OSU.

00:19:24 Rick

And say hello and give us an idea for a future podcast.

00:19:27 Michelle

Yes, we'd love to hear from you. See you next time. Bye, everyone.

00:19:31 Rick

Bye.