Critters in the School Garden

So you have a school garden.  You grow beautiful fruits and veggies.  Great!  Now what?  Once you've mastered your "green thumb" and want to try the one of the next steps in school gardens, many programs are having success with raising chickens (and other "critters") in the school garden.  

We talk with Sam Ullery from Washington DC's Office of the State Superintendent of Education, as he was the first person to explore the legal and safe way to do this at a state agency level. 

Show notes and much more will be available later this week on our Oregon State University hosting site.  Get there by searching "Farm to School Podcast OSU." 

Transcript

Critters in the garden

Transcript

00:00:05 Michelle

Welcome to the Farm to School podcast, where you will hear stories of how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we grow, cook, and eat delicious, nutritious local foods and schools.

00:00:15 Rick

We're your hosts. I am Rick Sherman.

00:00:17 Michelle

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

00:18 Rick

Hey, Michelle.

00:00:22 Michelle

Yes, Rick, what are we doing today?

00:00:23 Rick

You know what we're doing today? I'll give you a hint, OK. We are doing critters in the school garden critters, meaning specifically chickens. This time there are a lot of critters and things in in the garden.

00:00:37 Michelle

OK.

00:00:41 Michelle

Do lots of people have chickens in school gardens?

00:00:43 Rick

We're gonna find that out. I know in our state we keep track of that. And last count we had over 40 schools that had them and it didn't not. Yeah. And it didn't always used to be that. And so I reached out to my good friend and counterpart on the other side of the country.

00:00:52 Michelle

That's amazing, just in Oregon. Well, a lot of people also want to keep chickens out of their garden, right? Because don't they? And they get all over the place and eat plants and..?

00:01:08 Rick

They can.  They can tend to destroy a garden, and if left, if they run amok and matter of fact, it's really good to let them out when your garden is done for the year cause they till they till it and they fertilize it. If you know what I mean.

00:01:12 Michelle

OK. I do.

00:01:23 Rick

But yeah, it's best to keep them in a run or a coop and run. So they're kind of contained, away from predators, but we'll get into that. So this guy I talked to, he's my good friend Sam Ullery from Washington, DC and it's he's my counterpart. It's not the Department of Ed there. It's the office of State Superintendent of Education. And fun fact:

00:01:47 Michelle

I love fun facts.

00:01:48 Rick

Did you know of our audiences? We have, I think our first our biggest audience is Portland OR followed by Seattle and then our #3 is Washington, DC, it's. And so, unbeknownst to me, did you be know that I didn't? Had I been known, be-known that? No. Had I been be-known that it would have been, I would have marketed more. But I don't need to because they're already here and listening. So, hey, DC, how you doing?

00:02:06 Michelle

I did. I did not be-known that.  Well, I think it's all those national downloads. And then our friends in DC are posting at other places.

00:02:22 Rick

I hope so.

00:02:23 Michelle

What are some other critters?

00:02:26 Rick

Ducks, ducks are ducks are a good one. They're a little different. You just need a little pond for them to like a kiddie pool for them to be in.  And they're just different. They don't destroy gardens though, but they give you eggs, and then there's some gardens and farms, school farms in Oregon that have bigger critters. Like you said, goats, cows, things like that. Pigs. Yeah.

00:02:53 Michelle

When I worked at Sterling College, we had Turkeys. Oh yeah, that we had for Thanksgiving fees, we had cows for milk and meat. Yeah, we had sheep for wool.

00:03:04 Rick

Yeah. We have a lot of wild turkeys here in Oregon. I see them all the time. They get there in the road and you have to kind of drive around and.

00:03:12 Michelle

Wild turkeys in Berkeley, too. Have you seen that? Berkeley, yeah, downtown Berkeley, CA. It's like, run amok with wild turkeys.

00:03:17 Rick

No, I I did not know that I did not be=know that. That was, unbeknownst to me!  

00:03:25 Michelle

Unbeknownst alright, that's the word of the day is Unbeknownst. let's how many times we can use it.

00:03:27 Rick

OK. Sounds good. Well, anyway, let's get into it. Let's talk to Sam and we'll see you on the other side.

00:03:36 Rick

With me is Sam Ullery. He is actually my counterpart in Washington, DC with the Office of State Superintendent OSE Office of State Superintendent of Education. Did I get that right, Sam?

00:03:51 Sam Ullery

You are correct,  It's a mouthful.

00:03:54 Rick

It is.

00:03:54 Sam Ullery

It’s the Office of the state Superintendent of Education. Yeah, Washington DC.

00:03:56 Rick

Why don't you guys just call it the department of Ed?

00:03:59 Sam Ullery

Because this is a weird place or, you know, it's not a state we don't have a department of AG..

00:04:05 Rick

Yeah, it it's not a state. It's a big city, but it's its own. It's its own thing.

00:04:12 Rick

You've been a pioneer in the in the school garden world for a long time. It's kind of strange. I was talking to you right before this and we've kind of had a parallel path. We both started about the same time. When did you start in this job?

00:04:27 Sam Ullery

I started in 2011. OK, so I've been there for.. I've been in this position for 13 years.

00:04:33 Rick

OK, when I started a year later in 2012, there really wasn't that many positions like we had. How did you discover it? What were you doing at the time? Let's step back and our way back machine to a young younger Sam younger Sam Ullery.

00:04:52 Sam Ullery

Well, I was teaching high school environmental science at a charter school in Washington, DC and was really already into getting kids outside learning. There was a large grass field next to the school and I was able to get a group of students together and we built a school garden at that high school. And it was it was a pretty incredible experience because in 2010, DC was considering a new piece of legislation called the DC Healthy Schools Act. And they were, you know, like any piece of legislation they were inviting the public to come testify, and I brought some of my students to down to City Hall.  And they testified in front of council to allow, you know, pass this legislation. And part of this legislation was creating my position, my future position. I didn't know it at the time. I actually was there to promote healthy eating in schools and reimbursing for locally served, which was also in that legislation. But it got passed.  And the job posting came out and I applied and they hired me.

00:06:16 Rick

I imagine things were so new with you, you had to kind of create your own way as well. Is that right?

00:06:21 Sam Ullery

Yeah, I've looked at my job description a while ago, I was just curious and remember back the you know there was so little known about the state of school gardens in DC at the time. And one of the expectations that's in my job description is that I was to maintain all of the school gardens. Well, we found out pretty quickly that that was there were over 100 school gardens in DC, so that was not gonna be something that I was going to do, right.

00:06:51 Rick

You better get busy, man. Yeah.  Well, that's a lot of weeding.

00:06:59 Sam Ullery

Yeah, a lot of the early days was just figuring out what was going on. What, you know, where the gardens were, what the needs were, what type of supports we could realistically provide and all that.

00:07:12 Rick

Now, even before that, you kind of had a love for all things environmental-ish and stuff. You were in the Peace Corps. Is that correct? Well, OK. Can you tell me about how, when did that happen and where did? Where did you go to serve for that?

00:07:22 Sam Ullery

Ohh my gosh, you're going way back. OK, here we go.

00:07:29 Rick

I told you I we're going in the Wayback Machine.

00:07:32 Sam Ullery

So yes, after I graduated college, I joined the Peace Corps. And for those of you that for everyone who's done the Peace Corps, you don't really get to choose where you go. I was very lucky. I was assigned Vanuatu, which is in the South Pacific.

00:07:52 Rick

Yeah.

00:07:52 Sam Ullery

It's between Fiji and Australia. One of the projects I worked on was a chicken project with the community. So we got a grant and we built a chicken business. So we got about 50 hens and started selling eggs and that was one way for them to generate income in the community and that's where I think I kind of got my love of chickens.

00:08:21 Rick

I'm a big fan of the show Survivor, and I know they've been there too. That was kind of kind of fun to see, you know, like they're very isolated away from everyone there, but a very tiny couple little islands there. Yeah. Oh, that must have been a really neat experience for you. Well, good for you.

00:08:35 Sam Ullery

Well, the best part about Peace Corps was I met my wife there also.

00:08:44 Rick

And so you got back graduated from college, you got your Ed degree again, just like me. Got my Ed degree. Although I never taught. I just went into the food service realm. I saw you taught at Thurgood Marshall. That that's that charter school you talked about, right. High school. Correct?

00:09:04 Sam Ullery

Yes, I taught. I taught. So I got my masters in teaching at Teachers College in New York City. And then taught in the part of that program, it was actually a Peace Corps program where, you know, you, you go to school in the evening and teach during the day. So it was really difficult. I was teaching high school, also high school environmental studies and Earth sciences. And another charter school in the Bronx and did that for four years while I was getting my Masters and then moved to DC and taught us at the Marshall Academy

00:09:38 Rick

OK. And so,  I'm sure it's the same for you, but when I got in my position I found out really quickly, there was a lot of roadblocks like ohh we don't recommend schools serve garden produce. And so I had to figure out a way to do that to make it safe and getting to the subject of this this show. Ohh, we don't recommend that they keep chickens at schools. There's just too many things that go wrong. So I'd like trying to solve for a problem. Well, how can we make it safe? So they can do that. And so I know you did the same thing. So and you, I think you beat me to the punch there.  I think you were the first program that actually had a protocol, and I still refer to your website and your thing that you created about how to go about raising you know the steps to raise chickens safely at schools can you tell me how you kind of stumbled into that whole subject and why chickens? Why in schools?

00:10:52 Sam Ullery

Yeah, well, the as I mentioned earlier in the first couple of years in my position, I was really trying to figure out, you know, which schools had gardens and what and how they were using their gardens. And what I found out was that there were some schools that had chickens and I thought that was really cool as I did some more digging. It became apparent that while those schools had chickens, there was no system in place to really monitor the health of the hens and also the people. So these were very ambitious educators that, you know, they were doing what? They were getting chickens in their schools because you know, it was a really cool thing, but there was no process in place to ensure that that was being done in a safe and healthy way, and I know you understand like some of the things that could happen with having any animals in schools and chickens and especially consuming aids, so that's really where I got into.. it was because there was… It was already happening in some schools and I wanted to make sure that something you don't want something to happen like you know, someone to get sick and then it squashes the whole, you know, you get yourself set back for 10 or 15 years and it makes it very difficult. So I wanted to put some processes in place. It was also not necessarily legal to have chickens the at the time there was legislation that didn't allow backyard chickens. It didn't say anything about schools, but because…

00:12:48 Rick

Locally, locally in DC. Correct right?

00:12:52

00:12:53 Sam Ullery

Yeah. Locally in DC. And so that was another concern that if chickens in weren't allowed in people's backyards in DC, then most likely they weren't going to be allowed in schools.

00:13:06 Rick

I found that out too in and I made sure I jumped in and said locally there, because in the state where I live in it's all based on municipalities and like in my little town that I live in, you can have a flock of up to 12 chickens in your backyard and Portland OR I mean that's a really big popular place to have chickens urban-ly, if I can use that term. And so there's it just depends on the town you live in. I I I've yet to hear of one that has not allowed them, but there's usually restrictions on roosters or like, they don't like loud animals like barking dogs, although you know really. In my town, nobody does anything about them but it, but it's there in the town ordinance that you shouldn't have roosters in city limits.  Although a couple of neighbors of mine have them and I live in in a in the city limits of a town and I don't mind. I like I get up early anyway and I kind of like hearing them go off in the morning, but I you know, I'm I guess I'm the exception to the rule. I don't. I don't mind. It just reminds me, you know, being back on the farm or whatever, you know. So even though I was never on one but, but if I wish I were on one or whatever, I can pretend, but so. So that's important. But I always found too that, OK, you've mastered school gardens. You're doing everything right. You've, you know, you get bored with the school garden. What's the next step in the process?  And that whole animal husbandry thing is pretty cool. And especially once people figure out that raising chickens, it's easier to do that than raise cats or dogs, you don't really have to train them. They do. They take care of themselves. I think the biggest thing for us living in a rural place.

00:14:51 Sam Ullery

Yes.

00:15:11 Rick

You know, not in a big city is you have to worry about predators. More like coyotes and things like that. So you have to build your run and your coop like, you know, pretty fortified and stuff. And make sure they can't dig in and you know, but the things still happen. Have you heard of, like, scary stories in DC of chickens or anything like that happening?

00:15:37 Sam Ullery

Yeah, I have not heard of any scary stories with chickens part of… Well, first I'll say that I agree with you about chickens being kind of the 2.0. I guess for school gardens, if you kind of get like you're ready for the next step. I also have seen this kind of also the gateway for a lot of students that may not want to get their hands dirty or they don't think throwing things is their jam, but the chickens are interesting to them, so that's how they kind of get into the school garden and then the same with the community too. There might be folks in the community that have had chickens growing up, they're not really interested in growing tomatoes, but they'll come and, you know, clean the chicken coop on the on the summer break. So it's another element that just diversifies the school garden and gets more people involved. Yeah. And you know, so part of our process that we created is to make sure that we don't have these scary stories and probably the last person that people would tell these scary stories to because, then you know I'd have to probably tell DC health. Yeah, but I don't think any of that. We do have predators in DC. I mean, we have big birds, we have foxes. We have things that would love to eat chickens. And then there's also that just get curious about curious about people or the chickens. So but our process, we have a couple of inspections and the first inspection is to make sure and then this is the inspection that DC health does, they come to the school before the school purchases chickens, to make sure that the site is safe, but also a good place for chickens and people.

00:17:35 Rick

Oh, that's cool.

00:17:35 Sam Ullery

So they'll say, OK, this this courtyard or this part of you know, the school grounds looks good. You can move forward. And so then once they get the OK, the school gets the OK. They go and they build or they buy the run the coop and it does need to be fully enclosed. That's part of the requirement and then you see how it comes back and checks that that coup meets all the requirements. And then they can get their chickens and then DC health comes back at third time just to see that everything is in place. So there's a lot of and these aren't like and this is more from we're here to help you. We're here. We're here to support you. Not like we're here to get you. You know, there's a lot of back and forth between myself, DC health in the school just to help them get to where they need to be so that they can have A successful program.

00:18:30 Rick

Now is there a cost associated with those visits for the Health Department?

00:18:35 Sam Ullery

Essentially, the school has to get a permit. And that that's all part of the permitting process.

In addition to that, they have to submit a plan, a management plan and that template, as well as some examples or on our website. There's no cost to any of that. So that's all there. There is a cost though, which is one of the big downsides of I think one of the barriers of having chickens in DC and and that's the cost of, well, all the stuff like buying the equipment and the chickens and you know the croup, the run, the feed, the food. But more than that, it's that in order to get a permit, schools have to have a health certificate for each individual chicken on their school grounds, and in order to get a health certificate, that chicken has to be has to be looked at by a veterinarian and so that is the biggest barrier because veterinarians cost, money. It can be quite expensive. I've heard anywhere between 80 to $100 per chicken each year. Wow. To get them to get them into their health certificate. So for school, I mean, they're not gonna have a bunch of. They're not gonna. Typically they have three or four.

00:20:02 Rick

Yeah.

00:20:08 Sam Ullery

10s but that adds up.

00:20:09 Rick

Yeah, and probably I'm guessing the vet would probably come to the site rather than putting them all in pet carriers and bringing them into a a vet, I'm guessing.

00:20:23 Sam Ullery

OK, So what used to happen, what we used to have was this business called rent-a-coop. Ohh, and they're still in business, but they're no longer servicing Washington, DC they changed their model. They're working more in the suburbs like Virginia and Maryland, but in the early days, we were working closely with this company, rent A coupe and this made it very easy for schools to get homes because rent A coop did isn't what it describes, it's rent A coupe so schools would pay for everything.  We need the chicken, the coop, the food and it would all be delivered to their school and they would have it for a period of time. I think it was like 6 or 8 weeks they could decide and then rent a creeper, come pick it up and take it away. And that dealt with a lot of the obstacles, because at their farm at the rental Coop farm, they had their whole flock inspected and they had, you know, 11 inspection for the flock. And then it was taken care of. Now we don't have that. So we have many, many fewer schools that are having chickens just because it's more difficult to do the annual health certificate.

00:21:50 Rick

Wow, I did not know that about, you know about that process that you'd had. And I think you're pretty unique there, but I would say I like it because what happens in most places I'm guessing and what happens here is people just do it and if they have problems. They have problems and they deal with it and they move on, but your way, it actually forces people to get them to do a plan, which I really like, you know, rather than just go into it and try to figure things out and make mistakes, if you have a plan, you will avoid a lot of the mistakes anyway, so I really like that. I like that piece and that's a good lesson learned for other states. And I'm curious for other states. I would really like to know what do you guys do in your states. Drop me a line if you go to farm to school podcast, OSU. If you Google that go to our website and there's a little button that says send us you know an Email. You know, I would really like to hear what other states do in in their school gardens, especially to see to see that. But yeah, I imagine that's kind of a barrier for some schools to do that. They just don't want to deal with the hassle of the regulation, I guess.

00:23:12 Sam Ullery

But it's still worth it, yeah.  If you can, if you can swing it and there's some really creative ways to raise money.  I've seen a school that I work with raised enough money to pay for the program, so all those fees I just talked about by doing a silent auction at their school to receive naming rights for the chickens so people were putting up money to name the chickens now. Chickens got crazy names because the kids got to name them, but they were able to raise enough money for the whole program. So there's some ways to make it work. You just have.

00:23:39 Rick

Oh yeah. To be creative, just to see the kids care for the chickens. And there's that. That's a whole it's amazing to see kids get their hands in the dirt and care for the planet and figure out how to grow things, but then when they add that care of caring for an animal and stuff, it's it can be really special and this we see the chickens are so resilient, they get used to kids. They're they don't really freak out when they get at an early age, when they get picked up and stuff. Ohh and I wanted to talk about that so. So I noticed in your protocols you pay special attention like when you do raise chickens and when you go in there you know they carry a lot of bacteria that causes listeria and salmonella. So you always say you know you should wash your hands afterwards, obviously. And there's some you have some protocols about dealing with the eggs. Can you tell me about that?

00:24:48 Sam Ullery

Yeah. So the eggs, I think first and foremost, people ask most often, can we sell the eggs or what do we do with the eggs because of health code? Often in DC they are not allowed to sell the eggs, but they can give them away for a donation or use them in their cooking class or in their club or whatever. For and they can eat them that way. So yeah, I mean, these eggs are not like the eggs that we buy in grocery stores. They don't need to be refrigerated.

00:25:31 Rick

Yeah, they have what you what you call a bloom on them that kind of protects them, but they can get dirty, right? They can. You know, they come out of the same place where the eggs go or the chickens go to the bathroom so they can get dirty. And I know you've talked about cleaning them and stuff like that before. So..  In in our state, we have some of the same issues with. You have to have inspection by USDA to sell legs, but I think you can sell eggs a little bit easier in our state at like a local farmers market. But you still have to go through some hoops to do that and like you said, you can donate them or use them in your cooking class too with some tip steps, but I would encourage people just to look at the local regulations at your in your state on that. So every state is different. 

00:26:28 Sam Ullery

Yeah. And I would say that when I was initially researching, you know what was already out there when we realized that we had schools with chickens, but no process there was not a whole lot about a program you know, developing a district wide program, but there was a lot of safety information and one I I did find some great information on egg safety. There's an egg council. And as you said, there's local jurisdictions that all have health safety rules. But one of the things that I learned about eggs that I didn't know that I was fascinated by is, the egg shell is permeable and so if you wash your egg, when it's got some dirt on it, you could actually get the dirt inside the egg, because that egg shell is permeable and it can get the dirt gets sucked into the egg. So your our recommendation is to dry- soft brush the dirt off of it and actually not wash it. Just get the dirt off if there's. If it's really gross then.  You just keep, you know you can get running water over it, but don't like soak it in water. Just have the water running over it.

00:27:45 Rick

Yeah, I know. I've seen some other people that that do soak it in vinegar and stuff, but yeah, and there's a temperature thing. But like, the easiest way to do it about the safest way is probably what you're talking about, especially the ones some of them come out very clean. And those are those are the great ones. And I think one of the keys also is keep really clean nesting boxes. And so like with pine shaving or something like that, a lot of fresh pine shavings. And then then, then then they'll come out cleaner too. And then I found two like, there's so much help out there. If you go to backyardchickens.com, that's a really good resource for anything like, yeah, there's literally thousands of sortable subjects. Like, I had a chicken in my backyard pretty much explode on me for some reason. I have no idea why, and I got in…

00:28:28 Sam Ullery

100% yeah. That's a great site.

00:28:41 Rick

Into the backyard chickens. And like what? What's going on there? And there were so many people that gave me help and from just different, very specific problems with chickens to general ones to coupe designs. There's pictures, different breeds. It's just you can spend hours going down that rabbit hole, so pretty cool.

00:29:04 Sam Ullery

And I did.

00:29:06 Rick

Yeah, right. Well, Sam, I thank you so much for being here and on the show. And it's always a great pleasure to talk to you.

00:29:17 Sam Ullery

It's a pleasure. Thank you so much. It's been great. Thanks for talking about chickens, alright.

00:29:24 Michelle

Thank you so much Sam for sharing your story with us and thank you everyone for listening today. We really appreciate you.

00:29:29 Rick

Yeah, it was so fun talking to to Sam's farm to school was written, directed, and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Marcus Stein with production support from LeAnn Locker of Oregon State University. Thank you, LeAnn!

00:29:42 Michelle

And was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.  The content and ideas of the Farm to school podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, Oregon Department of Education, or the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA, Oregon Department of Ed and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:30:02 Rick

Do you want to learn more about Farm to school? Check out other episodes, show notes, contact information and much more by Googling Farm to school podcast, OSU.

00:30:12 Michelle

Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. Please stop by farm to school. Podcast, OSU. And leave us a note or just say hello or give us an idea for a new episode.

00:30:22 Rick

Thank you. We'll see you next time, everyone. Bye.

00:30:24 Michelle

Bye Everyone.