In his previous career, Farmer Jesse was a high school science teacher. He found that he wasn't able to offer his students the kind of supportive and differentiated learning material within the constraints of his classroom. As a result, he chose to begin educating students at his farm, giving them the opportunity to learn about regenerative farming and how to grow sustainable food for their community.
It was an absolute pleasure to have this conversation with Jesse. He is a true advocate for children with varied learning needs and he has been a real beacon of hope for families around the Hunter Valley.
In his previous career, Farmer Jesse was a high school science teacher. He found that he wasn't able to offer his students the kind of supportive and differentiated learning material within the constraints of his classroom. As a result, he chose to begin educating students at his farm, giving them the opportunity to learn about regenerative farming and how to grow sustainable food for their community.
It was an absolute pleasure to have this conversation with Jesse. He is a true advocate for children with varied learning needs and he has been a real beacon of hope for families around the Hunter Valley.
Hey there, Emily here with an episode of The Mummel Road podcast. You've probably heard terms such as regenerative farming, organic practices and pest free fruit and vegetables. However, do you really understand what these terms mean? And have you ever visited a farm where these products are grown? My next guest is Jesse, Jesse runs the Phoenix Park farm in Morpeth. This is a farm where fruit and vegetables are grown in a regenerative manner. They're organic and pest free. These fruit and vegetables are sold to our local community in boxes. Another part of Jesse's business, however, is engaging in educating children on what these practices and terms mean, and how important it is for them to understand how pest free and organic fruit and vegetables are grown. Jessie was a terrific person to chat to his conversation really opened my eyes to the importance of allowing children to explore farming and growing vegetables and offering them that opportunity to get their hands in the dirt. I know you'll love this conversation. I can't wait to hear feedback. Enjoy. Hi, Jesse, thanks so much for your time today. How are you today? Well, thank you, Emily, how are you? Good, good. I'm really excited about having you on my pod series. We I've seen your work at the farm from a distance. And it's I'm really really honoured to be able to have some time with you tonight. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I'm always keen to talk about what we're doing. Yeah, I bet you are. It's amazing. So before we get right into exactly what you're doing, you and Carly are the faces behind Phoenix Park farm. Can you tell us about your farm? What is it about give us a bit of a rundown as in how how you guys even came about doing what you're doing a bit of a background story behind you guys. So just in terms of the farm, so we're on our on my parents property, Phoenix Park near Maurepas. So right about 50 acres, and we're on really flat floodplain countries. So absolutely beautiful soil, right on the river. So we got views onto the river. So it's absolutely an amazing place to come in to live. We're very lucky to live here, but also just an amazing place to grow food. We lease a section of the farm from my parents and the old man still playing along in the in the paddocks farming for the rest of it in the rest of the farm. But here, our section what we do is grow like a heap of different market vegetables. So we have a weekly or weekly box and you get your mixed seasonal veggies. So yeah, we have some really good subscribers that every week we have the same customers, they come out and go about boxing, which is not only is that a really good thing for us in a business sense that we are able to plan, how we're planting and selling and our income and all that sort of stuff. It's really good for community because we now know these people who are our customers, and they're now you know, our friends, you know, we have a chat when they turn up. We recently had them out for them all out for a bit of a potluck lunch, potluck dinner. So yeah, that part of the farm is really great to have that sort of sense of community. The other big part of what we do here is run education programmes for kids. And that has been really, really popular. And I'm sort of loving it more and more, the more I do it. So yeah, we have kids come out and we teach them all about farming. Basically, we give them a plot of land where they can grow their own veggies, I go through the whole process of growing things from start to finish. And then we look at farming from a sort of a holistic, holistic point of view as well. Look at all those little bits and pieces that sort of feed into regenerative and organic agriculture, whether that's you know, caring for insects or whether that's the weather or whether that's caring for the soil. So we're looking at sort of all aspects of farming. And yeah, I just really enjoyed the kids absolutely love getting out and getting the hand steady, you know, beating the chickens, meeting bury to go. Just any of that sort of stuff I absolutely love. That's amazing. I am exhausted stood even thinking about your work. And your life, you and Carly do such a terrific job balancing all the needs of the farm. And I keep thinking about the saying never work with children, or animals and you're doing both and then fresh vegetables. So you guys are truly truly, really remarkable people. With that, I know that Carly now works alongside you at the farm. How's that guy? Has that always been the case? Probably started working full time. We've asked, we've made two weeks before the last lockdown. So what was that September or August or something like that last year. Prior to that, she's a dietician by trade. Then she went back to uni and got her master's in community development. So she was working community developer roles for a couple of years with with a couple of councils. So since Yeah, since August, she's, we've been working full time, and she has just done an amazing job. Basically, getting the business together, you know, making sure that people understand what we do, and putting our website together. And she's been fantastic to sort of reinforce a lot of those community things that without, for example, with our big box customers, because that's something that's her huge passion is community and food. So it's sort of like a really good, good mix of things going on. But between our two skill sets, and our two and our passions, it's amazing. It's your it's a perfect combination of skill set. And she she brings such a great side to your business. So Jesse, with with specific regard to you, you've you've got a real interest in supporting children who are homeschooled, or may have just not found a suitable learning environment for them yet. Can you give us a bit of a background about your philosophy, you've mentioned that you have kids come to the farm, can you give us a bit of a background of your philosophy generally, when it comes to educating children about vegetables growing, farming, and where that interest came about, and how you how you give that information to the children. Just I should have mentioned this earlier, I used to be a teacher. So I used to be a science teacher working in high schools. And yeah, most of my career was spent in the hospital system. So worked as a teacher for about eight or nine years, and mostly worked in pretty low SES schools, really enjoyed working with kids loved the subject science, and always had that sort of farming in their family. So I suppose yeah, working working in low SES schools and in mainstream classes that sort of highlighted for me that if you if a kid doesn't want to learn, you can't make them learn is one thing. So in the classroom would always try and to do have as many different learning activities in the hope that one of the one of those activities would suit, they can they're learning things from multiple different angles and approaching them multiple different ways. And trying to be as engaging as I could in terms of trying to do things which interests me and I think that's something that's really important for as a teacher that if you're interested in the kid is going to be more interested. But also, I just sort of realised that a lot of kids are just like the mainstream classroom with 30 kids. And the bells going every 60 minutes, don't, that doesn't suit a lot of kids. So not only do I think that, you know, you've got to find different learning activities to engage kids, I think we've got to find a different learning format to engage kids. And for some kids that might be you know, on the sporting field, or a work experience or work environment, or maybe it's art classes, or just in a small group setting where they've got lots of support. So that was a that was a big thing for me what I actually left teaching, and I just felt like the system that I was working in when the constraints I had weren't really conducive to learning for a lot of kids. So yeah, that was one of the one of the reasons why I left the school system. But I think in terms of my philosophy, and like the driving force behind how I try and teach it, I'd say it's high expectations is probably fewer if you needed to sum it up in two words. You know, I always try and support kids to do their absolute best And if it's not their best, then I wouldn't say that I'm harsh about it, but I let them know that they can do better, and that they can do better. And that doing better is is different for every kid like every kid has unique challenges and, and talents. So what I tried to do is look at, okay, encouragement and support and say, Yes, you can do this, yes, you can do better. And what I try and do is think about, well, what support do they actually need? And where are they? Where are their talents? So how, where can I offer support to reach out to overcome that hurdle? Or how can I harness their talents to reach a goal? So yeah, that's something that every kid that I, it's sort of, at the back of my mind, when I'm teaching a class or talking to a kid, I'm like, Okay, where do they need help? What are they good at? Where do we need to go? So, coming onto the farm, and having those sorts of thoughts in my head, it just seems to, to click so well, just seeing the kids and how they, how they work on the farm and how they interact with each other. I don't know. They just seem to approach like activities and learning in a different sense than I've ever seen in the in classrooms. What you've described it so well, especially the the expectations on the children and so many people could think that that that could stress children out or stress parents out, but the fact that they come to your farm, and they know that they are going to be provided with an opportunity that suits their needs, and they can achieve and it's amazing. I've seen it myself with my own eyes. I've seen you in action. It's amazing. I just on that note of a guest the importance in showing children that they can see they can succeed in this space. I know that you and Carly are working with the growing free future farmers programme to educate young children about possibly becoming farmers about food production about food growing. I wanted to hear your thoughts specifically on that. And that you and my i are collaborating on this to support children with additional needs to learn about farming. And I wanted to hear about this particular initiative, the growing future farmers programme. Could you give us a bit of a background about that programme? Yeah, sure. So the drainfield farmers programme was something that I sort of came up with with my brother in law. So Carly's Carly's brother, and Josh, he has got his own, edgy, edgy tech company, that he works a lot with schools and helps helps kids with technology and helps teachers implement technology into the classroom. So we work together. And he sort of prompted me, when I first when I left teaching was just working on the farm to think, ah, to think about doing something in the education space, you know, we'd always talk education, when we sort of got together at family events or whatnot. So we worked on this, this programme together and sort of came up with the concept of a programme which gives kids responsibility, and ownership and connection. So and that's where the farm jobs come into play. And that's what we were really trying to do is give kids responsibility for looking after things, whether that's the animals or whether that's their own veggie garden. And I feel that is super important for for kids to give them responsibility. And give them that ownership something they can be really proud of that something that you know, whether that's the carrot, They've just grown and pulled out of the ground. Yeah, that's something they should be proud of, for doing. And you know, that that sort of responsibility and care for suddenlink, which is sort of a bit more vulnerable than them like the animals I think is super important to to show kids that no matter no matter who you are, you can always look after something else. And I think that's sort of empowering the kids. And I think just having having kids out onto the farm and, and having a connection to the outdoors and to the environment into the farm is super important. I think we all like no matter what age we are, I think we all want to have that connection to the environment and to nature and a lot of kids don't have that connection, because they're living in suburbia or they're in an apartment. So we wanted to be able to bring kids out for them to really experience that. It's completely different experience to when I go into a school for as opposed to them coming out to the farm. And I suppose those were the, for us, I think the whole idea of bringing them out to the farm was I mean, there's so many different learning experiences, but I think most of most of the, our discussions were around sort of the well being issue. And you know, how important it is for kids to have those connections and responsibility and, and, and feel empowered. So that was a big driving force of force for us is that sense of well being. But then, you know, tacked on to that is just the huge amount of learning that goes on at the farm. So me as a science science teacher, I'm just looking around the farm thinking of all these super cool things that we can go and learn about. And all the times I was sitting in a classroom when I was a teacher thinking about, Oh, geez, I'd love to go outside do this, this and this, well, now I can actually go and do it, which is really cool. Whether we go out and hunt for bugs, and learn about the different insects on the farm. Their body shapes what they need to eat, and whether they're harmful or beneficial for our pet our veggies, whether we go and look at the frogs, and at the moment, there's just like, a crazy amount of frogs around around the farm, which is really cool. And one of my favourite animals. Yeah, looking at soils and soils, I'm a bit of a soul nerds I love when we go in with the kids, we do soil testing. So I suppose in a nutshell, if I had to sum it up, we'll the ground future farmers programme, we would bring in kids out to the farm to have that sort of connection, responsibility and empowerment. And then when they're not looking, we're getting him hooked on science and the environment and farming. Because, yeah, I think this is the best place to learn about all those things. That's excellent. I love that you said when they're not looking, I think that's the incidental learning and the incidental lessons that children can learn in your environment on the farm is amazing. And I love the idea. In fact, I just saw it today you showed me your your frog Hotel. Is that what it's called? I loved seeing that. I did for the listeners, I peered down into Gesine collies frog hotel. And sure enough, there are a whole bunch of these beautiful green tree frogs staring right up at me. And I could have stared at it all day. It was fascinating and matches one of the features of the Phoenix Park Park farm. And what makes it so amazing, I guess for you, for you guys in terms of grazing farmers for our the the health and the well being of our country as well. Do you hope that the children become future farmers? Yes and no. Yes. Because it's it's definitely a career that we need. We definitely need fathers and no doubt about that. And no, because it's just such a hard job. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I suppose I yes, there's definitely those kids who are who are going to pick it up and run with it, which is, which is really heartwarming. There's a little girl, especially on one of my groups, she, she loves science, and she loves farming. And then the other day, she said to me, I want to be a scientist and a farmer just like you. So that was like, super sweet. And I, you know, constantly getting constantly getting feedback from from parents once they're finished. And maybe they go back to school or something like that about their kids who are now growing veggies out and out in the backyard. And so yeah, I had hoped that I had hoped that I do get some farmers, some people, some kids who want to pursue a career in organic agriculture. But I suppose for most kids, what I'm really hoping to get to instil in them is just a love of the environment, love of growing things, love of good food. Because I think I think having that that love but also those skills, to be able to connect with the environment connect with good food in some way is going to be beneficial to them in the long run, you know if they can grow their own food, or if they can recognise what a healthy a healthy meal is. They can look after the environment around them or look after those people around them. I think that's, yeah, that's a big thing that I would hope that I'm instilling on my junior farmers. It's awesome. So we're in in the coming weeks in the coming months. I'm really excited that we're actually going to be working alongside you to support children with disabilities and additional needs from the Hunter Valley to experience your farm life, and it's such an honour to be in that position. How are you excited about that prospect about extending this opportunities to such a broad range of children with such diverse learning needs? Yes, yeah, definitely. I think, yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. You know, I think, I mean, really looking forward to working with you, Emily. I mean, for one, I just want to have as many kids out here on the farm experiencing what we've got it as possible, I think that's only going to be beneficial for everyone involved and the environment and community. But I suppose, because the other thing, which I'm really looking forward to is just being able to support those kids with additional needs better, you know, we get a huge range of kids participating, whether it's mainstream primary schools or preschools, or high school students, and we also do a lot of work with Homeschool families and sort of in conversation with them, a lot of their families are choosing to homeschool because they haven't had the best experience with with mainstream school. And a lot of them, a lot of the kids coming out actually have autism spectrum disorders, or they have some other special learning needs. So as a, as a trained teacher, trained and experienced teacher, I feel like I'm sort of I can do a reasonable job that supporting those kids. But I feel like sometimes I can't do a good enough job to support those kids, with their with their additional needs. So yeah, really looking forward to being able to work with someone like you, Emily, who has those skills. I'm hoping that I can learn something from you that I can use in my teaching, but looking forward to be able to offer that additional layer of support and that additional experience for those families who need it. With you delivering the grog feature farmers programme, so yeah, really looking forward to that for a couple of reasons. Yeah, I'm super is super pumped, I am hoping myself, I get to, I can bring this educational support knowledge, but I'm hoping to upskill my farming knowledge. So we can look both learn something from each other. Exactly. I think for the listeners, I think we should redo this podcast in a couple of months and give everybody a bit of a rundown on how it's going and and to share that I'm sure it's gonna be a really positive experience. And I really want the listeners to have an updated version of this. To understand the benefit that we've we've created for the children with disabilities in the Hunter Valley. And your what you've done in this space is just incredible. So I guess for my I'm a parent of a child with a disability, and I'm an educator in the field. And I guess on behalf of all parents, I feel like we we want to all give you a big cuddle and just say thank you, because really nobody else is working in this space like you. And certainly not without the passion. And I think that that it's it's, it's amazing to see the work that you're willing to do and that you are doing. And so a huge thank you from all the families here. It's a cyber hug. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate that. It's, I don't know, I it's just a joy. I think you know, working with working with kids on the farm and seeing them, especially I think with with kids with with a disability, just being able to see them overcome whatever that little berry is off. I just get such a kick out of it. So, yeah, it's a pleasure. Really, it is. Awesome. Well, look, thank you again for your time, Farmer Jesse, I know that you're tired. And it's been a very busy day, and we really value your time. So thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for having me on the podcast and I look forward to seeing you out on the farm soon. Yeah, me too. I can't wait farm Emily here. Thanks so much for listening to that conversation. It's a really important topic because it sheds light on how we can engage children with farming practices that are regenerative and farming practices that produce fresh fruit and vegetables that are good for their bodies and the environment. I'm so excited about working alongside deci in the coming months. Together, we're going to be offering children with discipline bilities the chance to come to Phoenix Park farm and grow their own fruit and vegetables and interact with the farm animals. This is a terrific initiative. I can't wait to show you what we do together. I'm going to be popping photos up on our social pages. Keep an eye out and I'd love your feedback. Remember, every road starts with small steps. I'm Emily from mumble road. Bye for now