Yolo Farm to Fork's Garden-Based Learning Plants the Seeds for a Healthier Future.

What can a school garden teach us about community health and education? On this episode of the Nonprofit Podcast Network, I am thrilled to welcome Salvador Ramirez, the inspiring Executive Director of Yolo Farm to Fork. Salvador's journey from an agricultural family background tied to the Bracero Program, through an enriching Peace Corps service in Kazakhstan, to his current leadership role, is nothing short of remarkable. His dedication to improving education, nutrition, and leadership for underserved children in Yolo County shines through as he discusses the 12-year evolution of Yolo Farm to Fork and its mission to integrate garden-based learning into STEM education and combat childhood obesity.

The conversation dives into the operational heartbeat of Yolo Farm to Fork, covering the maintenance of school gardens and a community farm in cities like Clarksburg and Winters. Salvador emphasizes the invaluable contributions of UC Davis and Sac State interns, who bring a wealth of skills to the organization, from marketing to administrative tasks. He shares insights into the importance of school district support, and how the collective efforts of staff, interns, and volunteers are key to the program's success. Salvador also highlights the life-changing skills children gain through hands-on farming experiences, which go beyond the classroom and into their daily lives.

Finally, we explore the diverse funding landscape of Yolo Farm to Fork, likened to a pizza with slices representing grants, donations, foundations, and sponsorships. Salvador paints a vivid picture of what could be achieved with unlimited funding, such as creating a culinary makerspace for children to explore healthy cooking. The episode wraps up with a thoughtful discussion on how garden education fosters better dietary habits, reduces anxiety, and encourages healthier lifestyle choices among the youth, ultimately benefiting their families and the wider community. Don't miss this enlightening episode that connects the dots between education, health, and community through the power of garden-based learning and true collaboration. 

You can learn more about the organization by visiting the website: https://www.yolofarmtofork.org/

Episode Highlight Timestamps
(00:03 - 00:26) Exciting History Introduction
(08:35 - 09:56) Building School Gardens Through Community Support
(13:55 - 15:17) STEM Lesson Inspires Student Activism
(17:35 - 19:27) Yolo Farm to Fork Geography
(21:37 - 23:00) Practical Skills Learned Through Farming
(24:32 - 26:00) Sustainable Community Partnerships With Volunteers
(26:41 - 28:59) Relationships and Sponsorships for Funding
(30:51 - 34:12) Culinary Makerspace for Food Education
(41:51 - 43:17) Empowering Youth Through Education and Gardening

Chapter Summaries
(00:00) Garden Education in Yolo County
Salvador Ramirez's journey to becoming Executive Director of Yolo Farm to Fork, promoting education, nutrition, and leadership through garden-based learning.

(17:11) School Garden Management in Yolo
Yolo Farm to Fork manages sc

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Transcript

00:00 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Salvador Ramirez. Welcome to the Nonprofit Podcast Network. 

00:03 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Thank you, happy to be here. It's an honor. 

00:05
We're excited to have you. 

00:07 - Jeff Holden (Host)
First thing I have to ask is you have a pretty interesting history. How did you end up at Yolo Farm to Fork? 

00:14 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Well, that's a great question. So not the traditional straightforward path to being an ED for a nonprofit lots of turns and winding to get here. But come from a family that is, you know, we traditionally cook food together, celebrate food with each other, and that comes from my grandparents traveling from Mexico to the US through it's called the Bracero Program, and so it was a visitor farmer program, and so farming is in my family's bloodline, you can say, and didn't think I would end up doing work that leads farming efforts. But so let's say, the first sort of foundational moment for me that led me to think that I could be of service in this capacity was when I was serving in the Peace Corps and I was teaching English as a second language, fourth grade through university level, families that were farmer families themselves and they were struggling to learn because they couldn't think and they didn't have proper nutrition. And I realized this when I noticed they were stealing my lunch. 

01:34 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Oh jeez and so that was Because it was a better lunch than what they had. 

01:39 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Exactly, exactly, and so I realized, even though I was a volunteer and I was still having so many more resources compared to what they had, I had to give back, in a way, kids and nutrition and making education and leadership foundational for kids that just do not have those resources and opportunities. I did Peace Corps one month after graduating college. 

02:16
Yeah, and when I came back and was working on the East Coast and trying to figure out what to do next, peace Corps actually was a great help to me to fund my master's. And while I was doing my master's I pitched my story of my Peace Corps experience to a publisher in New York and that's the story I published about my Peace Corps service. 

02:40 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Okay. 

02:41 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
And where did you do? 

02:42 - Jeff Holden (Host)
your Peace Corps service. 

02:43 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
I was in Kazakhstan, so it's Central Asia, they call it the steppe. It's just flat, flat as woodland, sort of desert temperature, and the main things that were grown there were rice and wheat. Okay. 

02:56 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Yeah. 

02:58 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
And I was not ready for the 30 degree below winters. 

03:04 - Jeff Holden (Host)
That had to be an amazing experience, but what an experience in terms of service to bring back now into the community. 

03:11 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yes, it's almost a holistic thing. 

03:13 - Jeff Holden (Host)
You know, you come from a farming, agriculture, family, big cooking, and then you go over and do the service part in Kazakhstan. And here you are now back at Farm to Fork, yolo, farm to Fork. 

03:28 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
 Yeah, exactly. And so when the opportunity came about to throw my hat in as the executive director for Yolo Farm to Fork, I lunged at it because I wanted to work with this population. I wanted to work with kids in schools coming from schools that were Title I schools, so disadvantaged schools, and I wanted to also include an element in the education piece of garden education, something that could allow these kids to have not just the foundational practical learning they need but the opportunity to bring life, so create life, and that comes with responsibility, that comes with leadership. There's so many fringe benefits to garden education, much more than just having proper nutrition. 

04:25 - Jeff Holden (Host)
And you're starting to get us into the organization. A little bit Tell me about the organization it originated and its purpose. So you're in the Yolo area. You predominantly serve Yolo County, correct? Yes, okay, and predominantly in school systems, yes, yeah. 

04:42 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So about 12 years ago, a group of really involved community leaders and educators felt that there was an opportunity, through some grants that came from USDA, to root the elementary education in garden education as the basis for starting to ameliorate the problems that they were seeing at that time, which was obesity rates were up for kids and low scores, specifically in STEM, were abound. And so this group of community leaders and educators got this grant, started this work and were able to figure out curriculum that used STEM. So a hypothesis and watching, testing your hypothesis and seeing how it works out. Hypothesis and watching your testing your hypothesis and seeing how it works out with the children. And the program just grew and grew and grew, so, so smash cut to. Now we are 12 years into doing this program and the kids are doing much more than just putting their finger in the soil planting yeah putting their little tiny fingers sticking the seed in, patiently watching the produce grow. 

06:06
We build on that now and do cooking in the garden. So the kids are actually harvesting food that they watched for weeks to months grow and then they're learning life skills in the harvesting piece, the prepping piece and the cooking piece, because they can go back to their families and their friends and actually show them how this very, very small seed is now something that is keeping them all happy and healthy and alive. So we've really expanded on where we began 12 years ago and it's a great, I think, comprehensive and robust program that we have going now. 

06:48 - Jeff Holden (Host)
So it's a formalized curriculum and you go into the schools. How does the garden look at the schools? I'm sure it's varying by size, based on the size and the facility of the school, what kind of land they have. 

07:01 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yeah, so essentially the easiest way to describe it is the range goes from. A school might have as little as two garden beds all the way up to I think one is up to 20. 

07:16 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Oh, wow. 

07:16 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
And that, as you said, it depends on the size of the school. Each one of those schools serves a different type of population. Each one of those schools serves a different type of population. So we craft and tailor those garden programs to the kinds of demographics for those schools, and so one I can call out in Woodland is called Dingle Elementary, and that one is the only elementary school in all of California that actually grows wheat. There's five different kinds of wheat growing and the kids plant, harvest and then now cook various things with the different kinds of wheat. And so the first partner, jennifer Siebel Newsom, came out two years ago to visit that garden and just was blown away by the work that these little kids were doing. 

08:02 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Do they make bread out of it too? 

08:04 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Do they get all the way to oh yeah, bread pasta and even making the base for dough to have pizza dough made out of wheat. So you know that school is plugged in. They all know what they're doing at this point. 

08:21 - Jeff Holden (Host)
They can actually go all the way to a pizza, because then they can grow the tomatoes and some of the spices that go in the sauce. 

08:28 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
They could do a veggie. Yeah, not the meat. Yet that's okay, we don't even grow in cattle and pork. But so to get to your question, so we, in these 12 years that we've been in operation, have built 68 school gardens and now we are in the process of wrapping up our 69th. Congratulations. 

08:50 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Thank you, that's a lot of work. 

08:52 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So we rely heavily on donations. So we have people that we go to to source the lumber, source the mulch, source the compost and then where the school district can come in to help with retrofitting, you know, certain, certain parts of the infrastructure like irrigation, that's always helpful. But if they don't, we come in and do it. And at this point, with all the school gardens we've established and the ones we are continuing to forecast that we will be working in throughout Yolo County, the number is large of the kids that we serve. So at this 68 garden number, we have served 10,000 kids. 

09:36 - Jeff Holden (Host)
That's amazing. 

09:37 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So it's great for the small team that we have to be able to do that, but it is part and parcel because of the amazing community engagement and the organization we put behind making those resources funnel into the areas that we know that those schools need. 

09:57 - Jeff Holden (Host)
So, getting back to the classroom situation, is there a grade level that you work with? 

10:03 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yeah, so we primarily work with elementary school-age kids. So in Yolo County there's obviously different cities. Within those cities there's a different school district. So some school districts will name elementary as K through 6. Some will name it as K through 7. So yeah it depends on which one's the district we're in. 

10:26 - Jeff Holden (Host)
How about the teachers? What's the feedback that you get from the teachers and the kids' experience in the whole process? 

10:39 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Oh yeah, how we are building up teachers when we newly establish a garden, to be naysayers, to now then being the huge advocates for the program Because they love being able to nestle in so many pieces of curriculum that they have to hit to meet the standards in California the teaching standards into the garden programming. So I'll give you an example. If one school all of a sudden has a bunch of kale that's growing and it's, let's say, first graders who don't want to eat kale, are not interested in kale, the one teacher in particular told us okay, we had all this kale, we didn't know what to do. We found recipes for making kale chips and making kale chips that were flavored differently, and the kids loved it, especially because now they learned vocabulary on describing the different tastes because of the different seasonings, and they, in conjunction with us, built such a great you know bevy of recipes that we were able to share with other schools and how they injected in all of this vocabulary that they needed to teach anyway. 

11:54 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Sure. 

11:54 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Just from having kids harvest the kale. 

11:57 - Jeff Holden (Host)
And that's just in vocabulary. I noticed on the website that there's really some STEM activity going in here in a pretty big degree, especially upper classes, with the science and the technology of the watering and the process. And how are you going to fertilize, or what do you use for fertilizer I'm sure all organic and how do you make it grow better? And tell us a little bit about that. 

12:23 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So one of the things that I think is super interesting about how we sort of ramp it up at the age increase so, like fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, we really are using what was foundational for them in the younger years when they had exposure to the school garden. Now they're doing stuff that is just a little more sophisticated. So the stem piece when I was mentioning the hypothesis, so one that always gets these kids is when they have a hypothesis on how they think the carrot will grow, and then they're testing it out and then they actually harvest it especially the fifth and sixth graders they A will be super happy or super confused or kind of upset. And I'll tell you why some of them are upset because what they thought would look like what they see in the grocery store did not come out. Oh, those carrots come out looking real different. 

13:23 - Jeff Holden (Host)
They look crazy sometimes. Did not come out. 

13:24 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Oh, those carrots come out looking real different. They look crazy sometimes and that's part of the things that I love about the STEM piece to this education is that not always in life will things science and how you use that science to inform your life. It starts at that carrot lesson. Yes, with what do I do when faced with being completely upset or confused and even feeling bamboozled that it didn't come out how they thought? So they could be upset or they could learn to persevere through it and ask the questions did this grow this way because there was a deficiency of nutrients in the soil? And then keep on investigating Did this happen because there wasn't enough water? Did this happen for A, b and C reasons? 

14:32
And one fourth grader is in a particular school is coming to mind right now was so just like activated by this particular carrot lesson that he went and spoke at a PTA meeting and then went and spoke at a local elected official meeting to say how upset he was that there wasn't the proper shade, there wasn't the proper infrastructure at the school to do this, for him to see the carrot grow the way that it was supposed to. So these kids really get like pumped up and you wouldn't necessarily think that when you're creating a STEM lesson for carrots. But this is what happens, sure. 

15:19 - Jeff Holden (Host)
And I like the analogy to life. It's not always going to turn out as you think. It should or would or could yeah. 

15:25 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
It's all social emotional learning that gets nestled in, because it's much more than just growing food Right. 

15:33 - Jeff Holden (Host)
What are some of the challenges that you have in the process? 68 schools is a lot of schools to stay in touch with, but overall, what are some of the challenges that happen and occur in just the overall process of farming in 68 different locations? 

15:50 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, so that number 68, so that represents the school gardens we've established. It doesn't represent the number we are currently in. 

16:01
Got it Okay, so the way that we sort of work is that when we've gotten those schools ready with their garden beds, fully ready with you know all the teacher lessons, and now they have agency over their garden and their lessons and what they want to do, when they're ready to take it over and say to us, you did a great job of rearing us, now we're ready to be adults, we say thank you for telling us, call us if you need help, because sometimes that happens. So as a nonprofit, you know one of the things to think about, especially in a leadership role evolving your, your mission. But the thing is, with what we do, the mission rooted in garden education will always be beyond what we established in the beginning. We're making those gardens in all those schools that are there now. Once we do that, it doesn't mean our nonprofit stops. It means we now move on to the next thing. We evolve to build and enhance what we created years ago. 

17:11 - Jeff Holden (Host)
How many gardens do you actively manage, then, in any given point in time? 

17:17 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So in this we're doing summer camps now and we're managing those. In this coming school year we will be at 12 gardens and one community small farm. That seems more manageable to me. Especially given the size of our team. 

17:32 - Jeff Holden (Host)
And we're going to get there in just a second. So your Yolo Farm to Fork. What is your geography? What Is your northernmost, southernmost, eastern-western boundary? 

17:43 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Sure, so all of Yolo County is. I'm not sure if you visited or any of the listeners have visited, but it is a very rural area spotted with an amazing research institution, UC Davis. Uc Davis and a beautiful, small but mighty and growing West Sacramento to sort of bookend the region. So we are in, we've done school gardens in all cities, in all of Yolo County. 

18:16
So some of those cities that people might be familiar with Clarksburg, where all people go to enjoy the wine. Bogle Winery is there. Bogle Winery is there. Bogle Winery is there. They're amazing, and Winters is another one that is a small and growing region and we, like I mentioned before, we tailor the types of gardens to the region. 

18:41
we're in based off of you know what the parents do. So, for example, in Woodland, a lot of the parents in the Title I schools are either migrant farm workers or come from farmworking and ag-specific industries, and so we know that the kids already know the basics, they already know the tomatoes and cucumbers and all that. So we try to get funky things. We'll do the okra, we'll do the things that they just probably have not seen yet. One example is there's a purple tomato that has now been making its way around and that's one that we're excited to try out with the kids. So, yeah, the whole region of Yolo is where we operate in and I think I mentioned before, primarily in elementary schools. 

19:28 - Jeff Holden (Host)
So one of the things that we talk about in every episode is the ability to collaborate. And, yeah, you have a monster university in your backyard that happens to be agriculturally oriented, world leader in so many developments in UC Davis. How do you work with the university? 

19:49 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Well, so UC Davis is an amazing resource for us, and part of our capacity is built on our use of college core interns. The majority of our college core interns come from UC Davis and a small portion of them come from Sac State. And the interesting thing about every year, when we put a call out for interns through College Corps again a majority coming from UC Davis we don't limit the majors that these kids are allowed to apply to us from, so we'll take someone who's from a marketing study and use them to not only learn the same things the other interns are doing farming and what have you but using their skills to help us. 

20:47
So we just launched a lavender run. One of our interns that came from the region through College Corps was a marketing intern and she was taking a class in visual communication. She created all of our collateral material for the lavender run and helped us launch this huge, massive effort and did an amazing job. And so we see that there's a huge benefit from those institutions of higher learning around us and not limiting them to their focused area of study being only in ag. We want everyone because, you know this is. 

21:26
It mirrors what the kids also have interest in. They might not have cared about ag in the beginning, but we surely get them excited by the end of the year. It's the same with our interns. 

21:38 - Jeff Holden (Host)
And they can see things. They see things differently by an exposure to all the business elements that you're dealing with oh yeah, you know, if you get little t-shirts for them, or if it's pins or stickers or whatever it is, that's the marketing piece of it Exactly and you know I mentioned this a little earlier on. 

21:54 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
There's practical life skills that come about with farm work and it's sort of a it's a dying skill. There are not to get political, but there are so many places around the US that are cutting arts and enrichment to this day, and so we are so lucky and privileged in this part of the world to be able to have the buy-in from the school districts to be able to continue this type of work. That can't really happen with a normal traditional classroom. 

22:33 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Yeah, traditional classroom, it's just too much. 

22:35 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
That we see it today, and so this is a great way to retrofit that. And I was saying this because the interns are also learning those practical life skills, the common sense stuff that people just don't get if they don't do farming. 

22:49 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Right. I mean, if you don't get your hands dirty, you're never going to know what it's like, and you have to have an appreciation for that, because that is a requisite part of agriculture. Yeah, let me ask you about the operation itself how many employees do you have? 

23:05 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So we, small but mighty, just like me. So we have two full-time, we have three part-time, and then we have a bevy of interns and volunteers. 

23:19 - Jeff Holden (Host)
I was going to ask how many do you have roughly in terms of the interns? 

23:23 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Sure. So for college core we are looking at getting seven for this coming year. 

23:30 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Wonderful. 

23:31 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
And now we're also going to be doing what's called climate core and climate core. So the difference. I'll just briefly give you the difference. So college core kids are undergrads that have dedicated 10 hours a month to a nonprofit and they get. You know, they have a certain number of hours they have to meet by the end of the year, so that's great. We can plug them into the school gardens, the Climate Corps. Those are 40 hours a week and they can do much more beyond just some of the day-to-day things that we have our entrances, so they're allowed to do some of the administrative pieces. So it's more of a job readiness. Wow, 40 hours a week, Uh-huh, for Climate Corps. Good for you guys, yeah. And so, coming from the world of working in the Corps so I did Peace Corps I saw the amazing benefits of that. So using AmeriCorps volunteers, which are the College Corps, and then Climate Corps it's volunteers, is how we run everything here. 

24:44 - Jeff Holden (Host)
That sounds like it because you are lean, very lean. 

24:48 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yes, and then we also have made an effort to establish our relationships with all of the service oriented organizations throughout Yolo County. So you know, kiwanis Rotary, what have you? We go to them when we know that we're going to build a new garden and they're looking for a project. We make it work, we plug it in. We go out and ask corporate sponsors at times, for you know, maybe a sponsorship for something like the Lavender Run, and they might say or maybe a sponsorship for something like the Lavender Run, and they might say, well, we're tapped out for the year, but we can send volunteers on a monthly basis to a school garden right by our facility. So we make it work and we don't turn down help. No, I would imagine not. 

25:39 - Jeff Holden (Host)
You're doing so much with so little. That's amazing. And you have a sustaining element to it too, because the schools don't drop off once you've left them to their own devices so to speak. And you still have this integration in the community. That would stay in touch as well, I would imagine, throughout the course of that garden, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about funding. Sure, how are you? 

26:02 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
funded, so it's a nice combination. We were talking about pizza earlier. I look at it like a pizza, so You're making me hungry. 

26:11 - Jeff Holden (Host)
We were talking about fruits and vegetables and stuff coming out of the ground, and carrots, which I love. 

26:17 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Well, it's also lunchtime. For the listeners it is. People don't know. 

26:19 - Jeff Holden (Host)
We're recording this between 11 and noon, and those kale chips sounded great too, by the way. 

26:24 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So all right. So picture a pizza. So one quarter of it is grants. Then we got a couple of slices through foundations. We're funded partly by individuals and businesses, but the donations and sponsorships piece is sort of like the biggest chunk of it. So we are always trying to. You know, I mentioned before those relationships that we have. We're always trying to make sure that they don't stay static relationships, which is hard to do Because because at times a business who's a corporate sponsor might have shifting priorities. 

27:12
And that might not align with what they were currently doing to help support our efforts, and so in that you know we don't take for granted the sponsorships we do have. We don't take for granted the sponsorships we do have. 

27:23 - Jeff Holden (Host)
We actively look for more sponsorships because we think that our mission is vital to be amplified in other channels that these sponsors can share about the work that we're doing, and also a great thing for them to also put out into the world that they are mission aligned with this, so it's a win-win Well there's no better place than to start with the children, because the children take it home, yeah, and then the parents see it, and whomever those sponsors are, it's a good feeling, and if they have a tangible product or service that the community can use, it tends to be engaged by those families who want to give back to what the sponsor has been giving to their kids? 

28:05 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Oh, absolutely. So we appreciate all of that and we love that the kids become authorities on. You know tomatoes or something that we all as adults are like, okay, relax. But this is like the first time as adults, like, okay, relax, but this is like the first time and it's through those corporate sponsors and other sponsors that that reality is able to exist. You know, making those kids excited is thanks to them, yep. 

28:32 - Jeff Holden (Host)
So I can only imagine the thrill from a sponsor's perspective as well, because we've all been in those situations where you're helping somebody, either at a school or a school district or your own kids school. 

28:45 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Just seeing the kids engage and understand is so rewarding, oh, absolutely, and one of the things that we like we listen to what we hear our sponsors tell us about. You know, hey, have you considered something that might teach the kids about their climate future? Or have you considered something that might teach the kids you know much more beyond how to grow a salad, but how to expand it to do all of these other? 

29:18 - Jeff Holden (Host)
things. 

29:19 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
And so we listen to it, we incorporate it and we report back to them and we say, hey, that was a great suggestion. These are the results, this is what we got, and when you look at the test scores related to what it was you were just suggesting, look at their understanding here. Thank you so much for even starting that dialogue and that conversation piece, for us to then expand it and iterate on it. Because you know we can't. We're not naive enough to think that we are the authority on garden education. 

29:53 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Right. 

29:54 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Other people can teach us stuff too, and you have to have an open ear to it, Including those children. 

30:01 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Absolutely, If money were no object, right? I love this question and it came to me from somebody that I recently met with. She goes this would be a great question. I said you know you're right, If money were no object, what would it look like to you? What would the organization look like? 

30:15 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So definitely securing long-term funding would build capacity and allow us to expand beyond. You know, I mentioned before we're teaching the planting, we're teaching the harvesting, we've introduced the cooking element and that's a great capstone piece, but there's so much more to this. This is just like scratching the surface of garden education. So long-term funding for stability would be amazing, just to be able to grow our programming and have that longer runway to do this important work. But while we rely on volunteers, I think that even more volunteers would be great. There's never enough volunteer help that any organization could say turn them away, for you know, even if it's a huge nonprofit, the the power that bringing on volunteers does for sharing your mission and extremely blowing up and amplifying. You know that work that you're called to do, a big piece of it is through the volunteer help, and so we would. We always welcome more volunteers. 

31:33
And then, if there's really no, you know money, we're no limit. It would be kind of interesting to see what a culinary let's call it like a culinary sort of hub spot or culinary maker space might look like for garden education in Yolo, because I don't know if a lot of the listeners know this, but Yolo County is where a majority of the food that is eaten in Sacramento is grown, and so to lean on the fact that this region is not just somewhere that is exporting food out, but if there's a way to involve kids in some capacity where they're trying new recipes out, trying all of these like creative channels to make these meals that we all need and love and enjoy, how amazing would that be. 

32:40 - Jeff Holden (Host)
To come from a kid and to come from an area where here in the Sacramento region it's mainly eaten, but it's actually now connected to the sister county- that would be amazing to see as we go, because I think it's a fabulous idea a culinary makerspace for kids where they get to play and experience and try all these different things and really enjoy the cooking process, realizing they're doing it with great food, healthy food and healthy food yes, and it's not chips and drinks and processed stuff which so many of our children especially in those schools, because the parents just don't know any better either. And it has to start someplace. 

33:29 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yeah, and the access to is a big thing. I mentioned that many of the kids in the Yolo region come from families that work in agriculture. Not a lot of those kids actually eat that food their parents are growing. 

33:45
And so then you look at there's areas that have food deserts. There's not places where these kids could go to and their parents could go to in a way that is not cost prohibitive for them to have access to this food. So having a culinary makerspace sort of institute for the kids where it's like carte blanche, they can have fun, get dirty and literally throw spaghetti at the wall, Right. I think that that would be amazing. 

34:12 - Jeff Holden (Host)
I do too. Great idea, now back to reality. Yeah, what is the? 

34:17 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
greatest need that you see? Sure. So what I was mentioning before with securing long-term financial stability, that is something that obviously we, for the reasons said before, we would love to have that through. We've piloted this program through the Charlie Cart Project, where we're able to bring these mobile kitchen apparatuses to the garden, so the kids? 

34:50
can actually do the cooking in the garden. We know that to get even more buy-in. So we have great buy-in from school districts, but we want more buy-in from businesses, local leaders, research institutions, institutions of higher learning to see that what we're doing with these Charlie carts in these schools is having such an impact that it would be not smart to not pour some of their resources into the work that we're doing. So for us, one of the ways that I think we can get to securing the long-term financial stability is actually getting Charlie Kars in those schools that we are working in, because we need to prove through. You know we piloted this program. We need to prove now through doing that. You know, over this many years, this is what we can now effectively say. This is the impact that these have had on the kids. 

35:55 - Jeff Holden (Host)
I would imagine at some point you'll see these kids coming up through our restaurant system too in the greater Sacramento area, and they can reference this. 

36:06 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
So just for the benefit of the listener, explain the Charlie Cart, because I'm sure everybody understands Sure. So to do that I have to explain who started the Charlie Cart project. So Alice Waters is a foundational piece to the whole food movement, the whole food space, about really they call it now the slow food movement, and it's about sourcing your food locally, taking your time in the preparation so that builds the appreciation of what you're about to eat and making sure that it's all healthy. And so that was Alice Waters' whole ethos, what she did Of restaurant fame. 

36:46
Yeah, of restaurant fame, chez Panini shout out to Berkeley. And so actually that restaurant if you've never been, if the readers or the listeners and readers have never been, it helps fund the Edible Schoolyard Project which is in Berkeley and also in Stockton and that is the basis of our program in doing garden education. 

37:10 - Jeff Holden (Host)
We don't have a restaurant that we then you know, We'll get that maker space going. 

37:15 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Maybe that'll be the next step right, but we've picked the pieces of the Edible Scoreyard project to inform how our nonprofit work is going to then use that as a baseline to operate from. And so Alice Waters, in all of this amazing work she's done with the restaurant Chez Panis, with the Edible Scoreyard project in Berkeley and in Stockton then was one of the founders for the Charlie Cart project. So, bringing it now back to what we're hoping to do with our work, is introduce these Charlie Carts into the schools we work in. So the Charlie Cart itself comes with 50 different curriculum that help the teachers immensely. Because there's not enough time. 

38:02 - Jeff Holden (Host)
They don't have to plan it, and they don't have to plan it. 

38:04 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
It's right there and it couples nicely with what we do, because we then create the crop plan for their school. If they want to do these lessons, great, we'll make sure that you have what you need to actually do that. 

38:18
And many of the schools in the region are not just English-speaking. There are dual immersion schools, and so we've translated those curriculum into different languages to then help actually make it culturally specific to those school children. And then the other amazing part that the Charlie Cart project enables us to do is each Charlie Cart itself. It's mobile, so it moves around in the garden. It comes with everything that you can think of you would need to actually make food. So it's got a blender, it's got a burner, it's got all the cutlery is child safe so the kids can cut the carrots and actually prepare these amazing meals, fresh right there, ready to go. And all the lessons can be done in under an hour. So it's an amazing quick thing. We love it. We piloted it with our field trips in the spring, we're doing it with our field trips now in the summer and we're going to continue doing it in the coming academic school year. 

39:27 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Wonderful. I love the concept and it's kind of a cute little name. When you think of kids and students, it's the Charlie Cart. Where's their Charlie Cart? And you try to explain that at home when the student comes home and the child's explaining to mom with the Charlie cart mom we need it. We need a charlie card. Yeah, I'm sure it is part of that conversation at some point once they're exposed to it. How many do you have? 

39:50 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
so we were able to get our first one in february. 

39:53 - Jeff Holden (Host)
We're, we're almost really new to you. 

39:55 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Congratulations we got our thank you. 

39:57
We got our first one in february and that was thanks to the rayleigh's Foundation. 

40:02
We applied for a grant for them to help us fund doing our field trips, so that it's no cost to the schools. 

40:10
And the amazing part of this grant through them was they not only helped fund 10 school trips, they got us our first Charlie cart. And so the Rayleigh Foundation, which we call our Rayleigh's family, is amazing because we were able to then, in piloting during the spring, the use of the Charlie cart in the field trips, build our field trips to not just be in our small community farm but then to take the kids after the morning portion into a Raley's store, go into the back room, learn about how all the meat is prepared, how all the food is packaged, how to read the labels and nutritional labels which is key and then now have an understanding of. Well, you knew that food was here ready for purchase, but in the morning you just learned how it gets there, Right, Because you planted the food yourself and you harvested it, and now you see it sold and it's a perfect capstone piece which we love that Raley's was able to provide that opportunity for us. 

41:17 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Well, they're fabulous community partners in so many ways. We had Chelsea Minor on here talking about food for families? 

41:23 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yeah, and I think Zoe Edwards and Zoe Edwards, yes. 

41:26 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Yeah, they did a fabulous job, just a really really good job, yeah, well, that was a great explanation all the way around and I really I can see the enthusiasm for what you do in the conversation. I know you got your hands full. Yeah, and it's a. You know it's a process. But you know I personally am a proponent of health. I really want to see everybody take care of themselves and present. It just prevents so many things. But that doesn't happen without education. 

41:54
And it has to start with the education first, and you're kind of tying the two things together in so many ways at youth. 

42:01 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yeah. 

42:02 - Jeff Holden (Host)
So maybe we can course correct this direction. We've gotten off tangent on with sugars and fats and too much consumption of the wrong things by educating those students and then seeing them come into the community and seeing them grow up and have an expectation that's different than the previous generation. 

42:23 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Yeah, and what I love is also being able to take these new batch of kids coming out of the pandemic and reintegrate them into socialization. Reintegrate them into it's okay to make mistakes and get those anxiety levels down, because many of those kids were just learning from an iPad. Now they're learning from the garden. 

42:46 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Oh, it's a whole different thing to get your hands dirty than to see a picture you just don't realize you just don't realize. 

42:53
Sal, I think the work you're doing is really incredible and it's unique. It's not the same as some of the food services that we've seen, all providing for the community, but very, very different when it comes out of the ground, through the student to the family and then back into the classroom to where they can have a conversation about it and learn about it in so many different ways. So thank you for what you're doing and I'm starving. 

43:23 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Everyone go out and eat some healthy pizza after this. 

43:25 - Jeff Holden (Host)
That's right yeah. 

43:27 - Sal Ramirez (Guest)
Well, it was an honor and you asked some great questions, so thank you for having me and allowing this platform for me to share Yolo farm to Fork's work. So thank you. 

43:35 - Jeff Holden (Host)
It's our pleasure, thank you.