School Garden Sustainability: Kelly Douglas

Join us as we interview a  School Garden Coordinator, who transformed a high school in an underserved community by raising $30,000 to not only establish a garden, but create a garden club that had 75% of the student body participate in it! Kelly will share details of how she won a prestigious award for this work, as well as lessons learned when it all went away! 

Transcript

Transcript: Kelly Douglas

00:00:10 Michelle

Welcome to the farm to school podcast, where you'll hear stories of how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we grow, cook, and eat delicious, nutritious local foods and schools.

00:00:21 Rick

We're your host, Rick Sherman.

00:00:22 Michelle

And Michelle Markesteyn. And we are farm to school coordinators for the state of Oregon.

00:00:27 Rick

In this episode, we're exploring school gardens, sustainability for those of you who do not know what that means, it means how to keep a school garden going even without a paid position.  You are so lucky. Today everybody out there in podcast land are going to experience the phenomenon of Kelly Douglas! Kelly, welcome to the program.

00:00:52 Kelly

Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here today to talk about students and dirt.

00:00:59 Michelle

We love dirt.

00:01:00 Rick

Michelle and Kelly and I go way back. I've been in my position for about 12 years and I think I met Kelly right about when I started at the Department of Education in my state.

00:01:15 Rick

Kelly, do you remember where it was that we met?

00:01:19 Kelly

I believe it was someplace in Portland, but I don't remember exactly the location.

00:01:25 Rick

There was a school garden certificate training that we used to do in person. I think now it's online

00:01:32 Michelle

It's available from Oregon State University, online School, Garden certificate community program.

00:01:36 Rick

Yep. And anyone in the country can take it, and it's where you can go and take a week's worth of curricula and become certified as a school garden coordinator. But I saw Kelly there and she, Kelly has so much energy and I knew that I had to bring her into our life at in, in this school garden arena in Oregon.

00:02:02 Rick

As a speaker or whatever she she was just awesome, but I remember I was talking at my whole spiel. I was doing garden food safety and I talked about the fact that we in Oregon had at the time 499 school gardens and you lit up.

00:02:22 Kelly

I did because we had the opportunity to create Oregon's 500 school garden right at the very edge of creation, you said “Kelly, We have 499. I'm tracking them. We're keeping track of school gardens”

00:02:23 Rick

Why? Why is that?

00:02:38 Kelly

And I said, well, get ready because we are designing and manifesting this amazing in school garden at Molalla High School and we did, we ran with it, you and I, that's when we started, I remember.

00:02:51 Rick

And let me tell you, everybody, if you want to figure out a way to to do a school garden, don't just do one. I mean, have a big deal. I mean, Kelly, she if you today, if you go down the hall in Molalla School District, it's painted on there, it says welcome to Oregon's 500th School garden as you entered the atrium.

00:03:13 Rick

And yeah, it was just amazing how we did that. And we'll get, we'll get into that. But I I kind of want to we'll we'll get there, but I want to talk about today. And Kelly, what are you, what are you doing? You're not doing that today. You're not a school garden coordinator anymore. What are you doing?

00:03:30 Kelly

Today, I believe I'm always going to be a school garden Coordinator in my heart, I always, always have the foundation to stand upon of the certificate from OHSU being a school garden coordinator, nobody can ever take that away from you. And I'm very proud of it and and I proudly say that that that is who I am. And I had another opportunity, though, that led me away from Molalla High School. And so right now I'm working over at West Linn, Wilsonville School district and I am the executive assistant to the Superintendent and school board secretary.

00:04:06 Rick

Oh, wow. So what are some of the things you do there ?

00:04:09 Kelly

Over there, it's different. My my classroom isn't students any longer. Now my classroom are principals and administrators and assistant superintendents, so I support them and support the school board.

00:04:22 Michelle

So thinking about the Molalla High School Garden, let paint us a picture of what is Molalla like, what's the community like.

00:04:30 Kelly

Molalla is a small town. It's a very rural town.  When you give students rides home and they say, yeah, I just live up this road, you're gonna go 20 minutes one way. And those roads crisscross all over up there and all the students come down to the heartbeat of the city, which is the high school. And so mellow was just a a good Old Town with the river running through it with not a lot of things to do, not a lot of opportunities to do things in Molalla. And so when we started thinking about a garden and started thinking about things that we could have our students do that would keep them out of mischief. It was a very popular idea and a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon and a lot of belief in it. But Molalla is just a working town, very small population for our high school, I believe is about 1000.

00:05:22 Rick

OK, I was gonna ask you -. So when you how and you what was your main job at the high school before you started doing the school garden there?

00:05:32 Kelly

I was at Molalla High School for 17 years and I was the textbook coordinator and one of the librarians there and it was a unique opportunity because I wasn't in the classroom it, you know, it is Bell instruction. But when you're in the library you have a little bit more opportunity to connect with students. And I noticed a void. I noticed that our students needed to have a little bit more structure in their free time, and the idea of the garden and the open space that was in the middle of our school really looked really inviting. And that's where that came from.

00:06:11 Michelle

So if that void was the seed for the garden, what are the things that helped it grow?

00:06:20 Kelly

The garden is a magical living heartbeat pulse entity. The garden started very small with the idea, just an idea. Just the seed of an idea. And as we realized that more and more students were interested in talking about tomatoes and cucumbers and kale. And they kept coming to the meetings that we'd have at lunchtime just to percolate the idea and see how many students were interested. It started growing more and more people were interested. And so we thought with the space that was outside and in absolute partnership with OHSU, we could not have done this without OSU, with OSU's partnership, we were able to step forward and create the garden out there.

00:07:08 Michelle

So OSU and who are the other people, students that attract it because it gardens a lot of work, especially when everyone else already has jobs and things going on?

00:07:16 Kelly

Jobs and yes, the life of a school garden is generally 3 to five years and then it's dead. And so we knew because the mom that has the enthusiasm.

00:07:24 Rick

Why do you say that?

00:07:29 Kelly

And the time and energy follows her child as the child grows and leaves that school.

00:07:35 Rick

Well, I think. And what you're saying too in your situation. It was all a volunteer thing, so that's probably really important to point out. There was no paid school garden position there, so a volunteer, it's like whoever had the urge to do it, that's great. But if that person's gone or the parent leaves, we hear this all the time across the country.

00:07:42 Kelly

Everything is volunteer.  It was part of our training. It was part of what we learned when when I received my certificate for School Garden coordinator and part of what OSU taught us was that it will end if the person that hasn't that leaves the person that starts it, if they leave the program, will do. And we truly wanted to make sure that this program lived. We called it a living legacy. We wanted the students that were involved in the school garden program. We wanted their younger siblings to be excited and to have the communication at their dinner table and to continue that. And sadly, when I left the program, when I left, a lot of the program also left.

00:08:39 Rick

So, so Kelly, you talked about starting the garden and then having this magnificent thriving garden. So what happened in between those two events that mobilized your students? What do you think was the the the?

00:08:57 Kelly

#1 faith. Faith, you have to believe in the vision. If you believe it.  Truly, truly, believe it. You can make anything happen, but you have to have the vision.  The belief, the belief that build it and they will come and then we had every color in the school join us. We started with a dozen, we got 25, we got 30, we got 40, we got 50. As it grew, we would meet at lunchtime the entire special Education department joined all of every student.  He became Big Brother, big sister. It was absolutely amazing.

00:09:39 Rick

So it was centered around food and growing the food and eating the food out of the garden, and it became a school Garden Club. And what did you call it?

00:09:49 Kelly

The students came up with it. It's called Culture Club.

00:09:52 Rick

And I remember when you said that, I thought, and I thought you were joking because I'm a child of the 80s and I thought you mean like Boy George? Well, no. And and tell and you had A motto and everything.

00:10:03 Kelly

Yes, we had. We had, we have a model. It was just amazing these students, the program that grew and the experience that these students had is a lifetime experience that instilled with them the foundation that they can feed themselves. They learned how to feed themselves as powerful. And so we started up with this Culture Club. We even had our own hand signals. Their hand signs kids would flash it. The kids designed their own T-shirts.

00:10:33 Rick

I remember you telling me about the hand signs because at the time there were issues and “hand signals” were expressly forbidden. But you got that OK’d.

00:10:45 Kelly

We got it okayed by our principal because we got pictures when the legislators came to visit us. We had pictures with the legislators and our principles doing the Culture Club sign and and just taking photos and proud just to say I belong and the kids would wear their shirts every Thursday. And one of the teachers let me know when I see a student in my class with the Culture Club shirt on. I expect more because I know that that student is involved in Culture Club. They're involved in the school garden program and they are instilling kindness throughout the entire school. It's not just when you're out in the garden, it's an entire school.

00:11:20 Rick

And so how many students ended up participating in that program in one form or another?

00:11:29 Kelly

I would say well, for the club itself, we had over 150 students that participated in the clubs out of 1000 students, yes, but we had over 75-80% of the school that was involved in the garden itself.

00:11:34 Rick

Out of 1000 kids.

00:11:43 Kelly

We had reading rocks because reading rocks. It's so cool. So we had giant boulders out there that the kids. We’d sit in and Jackie and I went up to the quarry and went and sat on the boulders to make sure that they were reading ready, and then they delivered them. They donated them to these giant huge boulders, so we had a reading rocks place for the class to go out to. The kids could go out and do poetry and Shakespeare out in the middle.

00:12:09 Kelly

The kids on the wrestling team would go out and snack and graze through the garden as they were waiting to go on to their practices. We also had a micro enterprise business plan after school where the kids. We would pick all of the the teachers would put in the order dollar 25 a pound. The kids would go pick what the teachers ordered, deliver it. They would learn the money handling everything that they needed and deliver. And then that money we reinvested in the seeds for the next year. But the kids also pushed around a cart after school. They made their own promise. And so we wrote a grant. We bought a giant Vitamix and Bob's Red Mill donated all kinds of beans for us. And then the kids started making hummus. And so they would make it and put it in four ounce little packages. And we would have fresh vegetables from the garden, along with the pita for $1.50 and we will push it on the cart around because there's no live food.

00:13:07 Kelly

Campus kids are waiting. They're going to practice. They're doing games, there's no live food. But here comes Jose and Janet pushing, pushing the veggie cart for $1.50. And if you know somebody didn't have have the money, we just gave it to them. But the kids learned this micro enterprise business plan. They learned how to participate using the food from the garden to turn it around and earned the money for the seeds for the next year. But it also instilled in them a sense of pride because they were the ones growing the food that they were selling to the teachers.

00:13:37 Michelle

What other kind of changes did you see in the students? What are the most profound?

00:13:43 Kelly

Noticing was that our incidents of bullying and harassment went down 66% with the inclusion of the Culture Club we had students see what happened with culture clubs. Is it collected all the students that were idle, that didn't have a place to belong if they didn't belong in sports or they weren't in choir or the play?

00:14:05 Kelly

And they just were milling around after school. And so when I noticed all of that milling around, I thought those kids could put that milling and elbow grease into the dirt. And we can do some fantastic things. And So what we did is we scooped up all those kids that didn't have a place to belong, and we gave them a home. We gave them a home within culture.

00:14:25 Kelly

And this is our motto. I'd like to share our motto with you. Molalla High School is our lake of Knowledge Culture Club. Is the Pebble dropped in the middle and the ripples created are Culture Club students spreading kindness, tolerance, understanding and positive energy throughout campus.

00:14:43 Kelly

Powerful. I would challenge the kids every day if if you are in a group and somebody's talking something, maybe a little negative or maybe it's something that just doesn't feel right, challenge you to change the subject and if you can't say oh, excuse me and step away because you're taking your energy away from that.

00:15:02 Kelly

And soon, if you do that two times a day with 150 kids, how many times have you expelled negative energy and thoughts and gossip? So this is something our students were really working towards with the kindness. It wasn't just a gardening club. It truly was a way for students to find a home, a place to belong.

00:15:21 Michelle

Yeah, we hear too.  Thank you for sharing that mission Statement it is incredibly powerful.  We hear, too, about school gardens being able to cultivate the whole child. So like you're talking about a lot of that social emotional development. How about also physically?

00:15:38 Kelly

Physically, yes. So physically, who talk about sweat, you know, we built our garden in 12 hours, 12 hours, 12.

00:15:46 Michelle

What and what size was your garden paint us a picture.

00:15:50 Kelly

We had 16 raised beds.

00:15:52 Kelly

8 on each side, and then we also had a raised beds in the shape of a four. Excuse me, stand up beds over on the concrete so that disabled students and community members that came to the garden with us during lunch didn't have to wheel out onto the grass. So we had it in the shape of a four.

00:16:12 Kelly

And and H because we were a 4H club, we were working very closely with them and large large. I don't I'm not sure the the full size of it but.

00:16:26 Rick

So Molalla, it is an affluent community, they can afford that? It costs a lot of money to do a garden that size correct?

00:16:33 Kelly

And so we had absolutely zero funds, zero funds. We got our first $100 grant from Figaro's Pizza. We asked them if they could please donate $100 to us for paint and poster paper and and a few paint brushes. And that's what we did. And we actually got in the newspaper with that one and we we made some signs and we asked people if they wanted to join the club and that's how that started.

00:17:01 Rick

Then what? What was your next step?

00:17:04 Kelly

Then we asked the community, we we had a a groundbreaking ceremony. We first of all, we went to our school board.

00:17:12 Kelly

Because we needed permission from our school board to allow us to use the inner part of the school. So we gave them a fantastic, amazing presentation and they were inspired. They were impressed. The high school students were doing this because school gardens are generally at the primary level. And so the fact that we had high school students willing to get dirty get sweaty, be out there together after school on their own time and through the summer. Because the summer garden still needs to be tended to, even though school is closed. And so we were able to have all of those students really excited and participate. So the way that we were able to generate income is we wrote a multitude of grants. I love writing grants because the best part of a grant is the story. You need to have the story for the buy in for the community because grants are about the community. It's to start with a little bit of money, but who else going to participate with that money?

00:18:11 Kelly

And so we wrote a variety of grants through Clackamas County. One was for a refrigerator, huge giant refrigerator, because I found an old coffee cart stuck in the back somewhere, and I pulled it out and we renovated it. So the kids and Culture Club also had their own coffee cart to raise money for the club. And that helped to pay for the T-shirts for the garden. And so we had approximately $12,000 in grants. And then I went knocking on doors and I went to the local hardware store and asked them if they could please donate some shovels and some wheelbarrows and in turn we would get permission slips signed by the parents and the students for pictures. So it was free advertising. So Ace Hardware had a picture of a student using Ace Hardware, wheelbarrow and and shovel, and so we promised them that we would trade them and give them the publicity because they're helping our local community. We received the boulders, giant boulders were delivered, we received I would say at least 15 loads of gravel and that was for The Walking paths through the garden. We also received probably 5 truckloads of dirt that was donated. Seeds were donated.

00:19:27 Rick

How much was that in in in-kind donations?

00:19:30 Kelly

In-kind and grass was donated and paint and stain for the fences I would say in in kind we had $30,000, that was that was donated for students, but also the largest. I want to be sure to give respect for the largest in-kind that was donated to us was the construction, and that was from I and E construction. They're located in Wilsonville. They came, they donated it. We built the entire garden in 12 hours. We had a whole team cooking for everybody that was building. And so when we paused for lunch.  The whole cooking team came out and fed everybody, but I have an amazing PowerPoint that I can share with you and Jackie held the clock at the same place on the hour every hour so we could show you what we do.

00:20:19 Rick

Can I share a story with everybody about about Kelly? I want to. This will kind of bring it home. What type of a person, Kelly, when she gets her mind set on something? No, is not an option. Would that be safe to say, Kelly so.

00:20:34 Kelly

Absolutely, absolutely.

00:20:36 Rick

She had a groundbreaking, after everything was done and we had the welcome to Oregon's 500th School Garden celebration and she invited 2 legislators to the to the garden to kick it off, Brian Clem and Vic Gilliam..  and I remember you talking about your fundraising story, how you didn't take no for an answer. You just knocked on doors and you finished that by looking Mr. Clem right in the eye and saying “and how much are you going to give me today?” And she and I remember Brian said, I'll give you 500 and so will Mr. Gilliam. So I mean, just that story of like, if you don't ask, the answer is always going to be no, so you might as well ask and you never know what.

00:21:30 Kelly

Will happen absolutely, and in fact, we invited the local woman women Gardeners Club. They came and had lunch with the high school students. Everybody opened their little black book and donated. And just from that lunch.

00:21:44 Kelly

For having them come over that we earned 127 dollars that day and you know it it every bit went back into the program and the students were so involved with every aspect of the club, the garden and the program itself that they knew they knew what their efforts were doing. So they knew where to put their efforts.

00:22:06 Michelle

And while a lot of people donated to you, I also read how much the garden donated and added to the community. So during the summer garden students took vegetables home to their families. 

Kelly

There's over 100 lbs of produce donated to Meals on Wheels in Molalla, more than 100 lbs to the state fire evacuees.

00:22:25 Michelle

What are some other community impacts that you saw because of the school garden?

00:22:33 Kelly

Let me share a story with you. One of our students was homeless and he was staying in an extra room with one of our other students. He was one of the kindest souls, I'll just always wanting to help out. Always staying late, always asking. You know, Mrs. Douglas, what can I do? Is there anything else I can do?  Well, this young man called me. It was late on a Saturday night. It was really late and I thought ohh what you know what's wrong? Why is he calling me so late? I'm so worried. Well, he wanted to know how far apart to plant the tomatoes because we this young man called me to find out how far apart to plant the tomatoes because he wanted to thank the family that had been feeding him, he didn't have any money to thank them, but he had hard work. He had energy, and so he was out there in the dark after his homework was done planting tomatoes for this family just to grow them some food to thank.

00:23:35 Kelly

Just one small story, but the community impacts. There are so many. Excuse me, there's so many little pockets of love out there that were generated because of the garden. So many beautiful stories and so many visitors to the garden and it's just an honest place. No technology was ever allowed in the garden. If you were in the garden, there was no phone. If you were in the garden and out in the vicinity, you were with Mother Nature and one another.

00:24:05 Michelle

So the garden really fed people's hearts. And what about their stomachs? Were kids eating differently because of the gardening?

00:24:12 Kelly

We entered into a research project with OHSU and it was really fun. We got permission from the parents and what they did was they weighed and measured the students, and then they gave them surveys on what type of vegetables and foods they were already eating. And then as we entered into the growing season and the things that the students wanted to try to grow or try to taste from other school gardens that we traded with.

00:24:39 Kelly

They became interested in learning about childhood obesity, and so we always used our motto. Another motto was fighting childhood obesity, one tomato at a time. And so we just kept growing tomatoes. They they were just used like cucumbers and tomatoes and so when we made it with the lettuce that we grew, they were thinking that we made it wrong, but then we had our some of our other Asian students and they're like, no, no, you need to slice up all these onions too and put it in there. And so it was just so powerful to see them tasting different foods, trying different things.

00:25:16 Kelly

One night we didn't have a lot of money, and so all of our Russian students baked bread in the cafeteria in the kitchen. In there, they baked bread. We did maybe 2025 loaves of bread, and then we made a giant pots of soup. And the soup was just vegetables. It was just from the garden.

00:25:36 Kelly

And so we had soup and bread, and we watched Finding Nemo and everybody bought blankets and pillows, and we did it in the library and just coming together, breaks down barriers. It gives you a sense of belonging, a safe place to be, and it's all because of dirt. It's all because of the magic of dirt and students and no technology. When you get students out there with no buffer and they're just working, it breaks down any preconceived notions that students may have about one another, when it gets down to the hard work.

00:26:10 Rick

Wow, that is so powerful. What you just told me and all of the impact you made in at Molalla and really changing, changing the culture of that school really, I happen to know you were. You were recognized for it. Do you want to tell me about that?

00:26:29 Kelly

Oh my gosh. Well, the most amazing thing happened. Most amazing experience of my life. I get a phone call from my friend Rick telling me that he nominated me for the Billy Odegard emerging Genius Leader Award by the Oregon Public Health Institute for my work fighting childhood obesity with Culture Club and the students. Rick nominated me and I won. Then they want to recognize it. They only give it to one person in the state of Oregon each year, only one person. And they give it to me!

00:27:06 Rick

Well, they did one person and then they did a group of kids and yeah, you're right. I'm guilty. I  led you into that. But I did nominate you for that. And I when they called me to tell me that you won, it felt like I won. I was so excited as like, ohh somebody I nominated one and they really haven't done it since. I've gone on their website. I think 2016 was the last time I did it, but they called me. 

00:27:37 Rick

And just to let you know, I think I've told you this before, but they said, OK, so we're going to have Kelly go on 1st and then we'll have the group, I'm like, oh, that's a bad idea. You don't want to do that. And they were, like, what? And I'm like Well, how many people are gonna be in their room? And they said like 300 some people, I go. Well, they'll all be up on their feet, cheering, screaming and clapping at the end of Kelly's talk. And then they're these poor kids are going to come on. And they're like, really? well, OK, I'll take it on faith, you know, I'll, I'll believe you. And they put the kids on 1st.

00:27:57 Kelly

Yeah, yeah.

00:28:14 Rick

And the kids went on. And it was like a little polite golf clap. Thank you. And then Kelly came on, and it happened exactly like I said. And I remember seeing the kids. And they're like, what did they say? They said “man, I'm glad we went on first”  They said that. But anyway it was just so awesome to see you get recognized for all the work you do.

00:28:37 Kelly

Thank you. Thank you. And and what I shared with our eleven officers in culture club.

00:28:42 Kelly

I shared with them that this is their award. I was the adult that led them and and guided them, but it was their work. It was their award. And so we got a field trip going and those kids came with me. All eleven officers came with me and they.

00:29:01 Kelly

Each spoke at that event we had standing room, only clapping and whistling. We had people in tears.

00:29:09 Kelly

Just so proud of these high school students that are willing to come together and work on their own time after school, cross cross cultures and really make a difference for their community and for their school.

00:29:22 Rick

And you're too kind. But they were so proud of you too. As the catalyst for all this. So I just wanted to say that.

00:29:29 Kelly

Thank you..

00:29:31 Rick

So now, you're not there anymore. You're gone. Tell me what? What does the garden look like now in Molalla? Let's, let's get into it.

00:29:36 Kelly

I'm not. I'm not.

00:29:42 Kelly

OK, one of the lessons learned as we went through our experience was that you really need to have plan B. Plan A is the ideal state where everyone's involved. The longevity is there. The garden is growing, you've got your summertime watering your summertime harvesting, everything is planned, everything is vibrating and going along good.

00:30:09 Kelly

But then I left. I had another opportunity and and I was able to to grow it was it was a step up. I was able to go. It was very difficult to leave if the if this opportunity didn't come up, I would not have left because of my devotion to the students and to what we were growing, what we were growing.

00:30:27 Michelle

Well, the Culture Club and the garden sounds phenomenal. It would seem like if that was going on, every single school would want to be doing that.  So is the garden thriving and alive? And what's happening now?

00:30:42 Kelly

The garden of Molalla is no longer. The sprinkler system that was donated was gone. All of the tools that were donated were gone. It just disappeared.

00:30:57 Rick

So, Kelly, this this didn't happen on your watch. You had you had another opportunity to leave, yes? And what then? Such is life. Things move on. You had another opportunity. You. Yeah. And you left. But so this happened after you left. There was nobody there to carry the torch anymore.

00:31:15 Kelly

Correct, correct. One of the teachers tried to take it on just as, like a National Honor Society club, but we already had the National Honor Society club partnering with us. Every club on campus partnered with Culture Club in the garden every single club and so we were hoping that somebody else would really push up their sleeves and dig into it and take over and keep the children that were involved, the students that were involved.

00:31:40 Kelly

That was their home it was their belonging, and sadly, they lost all of that. And then, you know, they just graduated out. And then when the younger kids came up, all they see is just the empty, hardened beds out there and really nothing is happening. I believe that one of the special education classes wanted to use one of the beds and so I believe that they were doing that, but the entire program and the entire garden is no longer in existence.

00:32:08 Michelle

So the point about garden sustainability is a big one. And when we think a lot about and I'm curious what are some lessons you learned from that experience?

00:32:18 Kelly

The lessons that I learned I would say that before. I really believed that it would. It would continue. I really believed that it would because it was so amazing and the students thrived mentally and physically and emotionally and as well as eating better. They just had more opportunities for live food and it we really believed that it would continue. What I learned is time. Time is your most priceless commodity and you can't buy time and people if they're not passionate about it. Their time is not going to be devoted there, no matter how many students look and say can we build a garden? You have to have that adult. And so if I would have known that the garden would go by the wayside, I would have invested more time in securing the other clubs, more participation from the other clubs and being able to hand it over to them.

00:33:14 Rick

Having a dedicated person truly. That's good, you know, and it's not all doom and gloom, though.  Yeah, when I look at Kelly and I, I don't know if we led into this, when we, when we first started this interview. But just because you're not in a farm to school coordinator position at that high school anymore. You're still in farm to school, even though you're in another position. I was looking. Kelly gave us her resume, and there are about 8 opportunities I've dragged her along to Oregon School Board associations annual convention three times, where her and I have done. She's one of my go-to people like whenever, like, we want to talk about advancing student achievement through school gardens and like “How do you increase your graduation rates and decrease discipline problems?” We get lines out the door for that by listening to this story, you've been a keynote speaker a number of times. This OPH Health Genius award.

00:34:18 Rick

Your kids and you have spoken on Capitol Hill and the Oregon Assembly to to tell that story of how impactful the the Garden Education program is. And so you are just you're you're never far out of it. And for that you're invaluable, and you will never leave our side.

00:34:40 Kelly

Thank you. I live and breathe public education and I live and breathe students and the magic of dirt. Because once you get kids out there with no technology, it's stripped. It's just them. And then when you show them, look, the seeds are popping. Look, we can plant the seeds. Look. Pretty soon we're going to be eating the ground cherries. 

00:35:00 Kelly

The ground cherry so many people did not know what a ground cherry was and they were the most popular. Every time that we would go visit other schools, we would always take buckets of ground cherries to give them. We did a lot of field trips because other schools wanted us to come and visit schools.

00:35:16 Rick

I had my first ground cherry at your school. They taste like little pineapples.

00:35:16 Kelly

Yeah, It's natures candy and it's on natures little wrapping. They're phenomenal. And so we traveled quite a bit. The students I was so proud of them and I have to tell you, the first time we went to the capital at the eleven officers, we wrote a grant to the local phone company for 11 laptops. Because we had kids stay, they were out in the garden working in in teleconference anymore. And then I'd drive them all home, but they had homework. But these are poor students. They didn't really have home computers, so we wrote a grant. So we got 11 laptops so that our officers could do their homework at night and so that they could donate their light day, their time in the daylight, to the garden. But these eleven officers went with me on the bus to the Capitol and these are students that come from poor families, and the black Sharpie markers that were on their shoes. They were covering up the scuff marks on their shoes. They were trying to cover up holes here and there. Whatever they could do. One kid had one black shoestring and one white shoe string. So the whole trip he covered his shoe string with a black marker because he wanted to look good, walking into walking into the capital. And these are students that that never had an opportunity like this before and here they are, testifying about the importance of a farmed school grant about the importance of having the opportunity to harvest vegetables for their peers so that there's live food on campus between practices instead of just chips out of the locker.

00:36:57 Kelly

These are kids that want to talk about putting lemon in the soup because they learned it from their friends. So with them when they're in class the next day, they had the soup together and there's not as much friction between the two of them. And so even though I'm not currently in the position of a school garden coordinator, I stand firmly on that foundation of what we gave those students while they were there.

00:37:20 Rick

And you know, I think it was a sign of the times back then. Back in 2012, we did our first school garden survey and we surveyed everybody and there was only 10% of all schools surveyed that answered that had a paid position or part time position at all. And the last time we did it in 2019, that jumped up to 50%. So it was about 10-15% were full time.

00:37:46 Rick

Of the of the amount of people that replied and the other 35% was at least an hour or two a day that the principal said. You can teach a horticulture class or something so, it's good news that the needle is moving that direction where we're getting those paid school garden positions. That way, if somebody leaves, it's like, well, there's an opening.

00:38:09 Kelly

Correct, correct. But I also have to say that the experience that the students had, even though the program isn't still alive, they have that reflection, but they can do anything. They can do whatever they set their mind to because they saw a blank open space of.

00:38:26 Kelly

Us our community came together with $30,000 in donations. We wrote grants that we received $12,000. We had communities, community members that just wanted to stop by and see what I hear this what's going on? Who are you? What are these high school students doing out there and knowing that parents knew that the children were in a safe place. The parents knew all the kids are in the garden.

00:38:51 Kelly

That's OK. And if they wanted to know where their child was, they could drive up Outback and honk. But the children were in the garden. It was a safe place. And the kids always had food, you know, was wonderful to see packs of students walking home, eating lemon cucumbers, you know, munched on ground cherries. But even though the program, let's let's say that a school has a program and students experience it for a few years, and then it's over. Yes, it's sad, but it's invaluable. It's invaluable the time that they had together and the skills that they learned.

00:39:25 Rick

Not only that, but when you would go up to one of their kids.. and it wasn't a kid. It was a young adult that would look you in the eye and they had skills like they could. I've been on Capitol Hill and spoke and testified and they had No Fear in going looking at an adult's eyes shaking my hand and telling me about their garden and that really showed.

00:39:50 Kelly

Thank you. We practiced working the room. Because when these students were out in, in these events representing the garden, there were people with pocketbooks, and so the students would go and introduce themselves and say, you know, would you like to donate? You know, we we need wheelbarrow, we need this. We need that or, you know, would you like to donate $25? And so the students were very, very good at asking what someone had or bartering. We love to barter.

00:40:22 Rick

Well, Kelly, are times getting close to the end? You were telling us when we when we said hello to you before we started rolling here. You're you're doing another thing. You're doing another thing on the side. Would you care to tell us about that a little bit.

00:40:37 Kelly

I would so I live out in Mount Angel and I have 13 acres. We have 5 different types of hazelnuts and an acre and a half of walnuts and a beautiful Creek out back. I just spent last week digging out back there in the Creek bed and I found some amazing million year old fossilized petrified wood, which was fascinating.

00:40:59 Kelly

And you know, one of those things that you think in your spare time, I think I'm going to go rock digging. I did. It was wonderful. It was amazing. But I'm always looking around at my farm thinking, what can I do with that pine cone? What can I do with this? What can I do? Nature has given me all these nuts. What can I do? And so my spare time. I create sweet little gifts.

00:41:20 Kelly

Made with all natures crystals and gemstones and pine cones and bark, and I make little fairy homes and gnome homes.

00:41:29 Rick

And Kelly brought us a couple as gifts, and they're amazing.

00:41:37 Michelle

We'd like to thank everyone listening for tuning in today and thank you Kelly. Thank you.

00:41:42 Kelly

Thank you. Oh my goodness. I have truly enjoyed this. I hope I get to come back again and talk about students.

00:41:47 Rick

And you are welcome anytime. And I think there's going to be some people around the country that want your contact information. I'm going to go ahead and put that in the show notes if that’s ok.

00:41:56 Kelly

Please do, because as adults, it truly is our responsibility to lean in and create the venue, create the space, create the experience for our students to get their fingernails dirty to really have no technology between each other and get out there in the school garden. Let's see what we can do do this.

00:42:17 Rick

OK. Thanks again. The farm to school podcast was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn and was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:42:28 Michelle

The content and ideas presented in this program do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, the Oregon Department of Education, or the United States Department of Agriculture, the USDA, Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University are Equal Employment Opportunity employer.

00:42:44 Rick

Want to learn more about Farm to school? Check out other episodes and find show notes and much more at rootopia.com.

00:42:55 Michelle

Or do you have an idea for a future episode of the Farm to school podcast? Send us an e-mail at info@rootopia.com.

00:43:03 Rick

Well, that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you.

00:43:06 Kelly

Bye bye.