Silos, Soil, and Storytelling: Phyllicia Moore of Houston ISD on Reimagining Farm to School

Join us as live from the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference in Albuquerque, as we meet Phyllicia Moore from Houston ISD—an educator, agriculturalist, and idea-generator transforming farm to school at a massive scale. From 176 school gardens to a districtwide “farmer and chef for a day” experience, Phyllicia shares how Houston is growing connections between academics, agriculture, and community. It’s authentic, inspiring, and full of big ideas taking root.

Transcript

Transcript “Silos, Soil, and Storytelling: Phyllicia Moore of Houston ISD on Reimagining Farm to School”

Join us as live from the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference as we meet Phyllicia Moore from Houston ISD—an educator, agriculturalist, and idea-generator transforming farm to school at a massive scale. From 176 school gardens to a districtwide “farmer and chef for a day” experience, Phyllicia shares how Houston is growing connections between academics, agriculture, and community. It’s authentic, inspiring, and full of big ideas taking root.

00:00:05 Rick

Welcome to the Farm to School Podcast, where you will hear stories how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we learn how to grow, cook, and eat delicious, nutritious local foods in schools across the country and the world.

00:00:18 Michelle

And we're your hosts, I'm Michelle Markesteyn.

00:00:20 Rick

And I'm Rick Sherman still… Still.  Hey, everybody!

00:00:25 Michelle

Have you ever thought of changing your name?

00:00:30 Rick

When people found out I was Richard Sherman, football fans lost their minds because there's a Richard Sherman football player. And I got a million Facebook requests, friends requests. And I'm like, I'm not that guy. But..

00:00:46 Michelle

Maybe you are. You're a pretty big deal.

00:00:49 Rick

Well, not in the football world, but not that guy. But no, I'm happy with my name.

00:00:55 Michelle

I know nothing about that. Well, I'm really excited, Rick, for you to meet someone, a new name, who I didn't know prior to going to the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference put on by the National Farm to School Network. Thank you very much, team, for hosting an incredible event in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And we have, we often talk about the cafeteria, classroom, and community, and really cool things people are doing. And this is Phyllicia Moore from Houston Independent School District who has done something extraordinary. She's located within nutrition services and wait till you hear what she does with curriculum.

00:01:36 Rick

Well, and how serendipitous was this, that there's a, again, a random person walking by pretty much and said, hey, hi, I'm Michelle. And tell me your hopes and dreams and your life story. And I think you made a lifelong connection and you're going to be friends for the rest of your life, right?

00:01:54 Michelle

I hope so. Phyllicia, you don't know that yet, but This podcast is my request. Can we be friends? I just really admire her. I admire you, Phyllicia, as an extraordinary educator and just full of heart and soul and amazing skills. Can't wait for everyone to meet her.

00:02:12 Rick

And again, this was recorded live at the time at the Farm to Cafeteria conference in Albuquerque in December 2025. And we had a wonderful guest host, Christy Sherding, from the Henry Ford.

00:02:26 Michelle

Yes, thank you, Christy. So you're going to hear a lot of background noise, probably. And that's its charm.

00:02:31 Rick

We call it a din.

00:02:33 Michelle

Oh, a din. Is that a technical term?

00:02:35 Rick

No, it's just like this, it's more authentic, I think.

00:02:39 Michelle

It's authentic.

00:02:39 Rick

Yes, yeah. It's just, it's more real.

00:02:42 Michelle

We should charge extra for that.

00:02:45 Rick

We don't charge anything for this, by the way. It's free, free podcast. So you're welcome. There we go. Okay, let's get into it and listen to Fellicia Moore from Houston ISD.

00:02:58 Michelle

Fellicia, it's so nice to meet you.

00:02:59 Michelle

Welcome.

00:03:00 Phyllicia Moore

It's nice meeting you guys.

00:03:02 Michelle

Hey, so Christy and I are at the 2025 Farm to Cafeteria National Conference, and we just ran into each other. Would you mind introducing yourselves and saying what brings you here?

00:03:14 Phyllicia Moore

Phyllicia Moore with Houston Independent School District. This is going to be a mouthful. I am the cross-functional team member of the Food and Agriculture Literacy Program. That's A lot.

00:03:26 Christy Sherding

Okay.

00:03:27 Michelle

Sounds amazing. What is that?

00:03:29 Phyllicia Moore

Super fancy. So I'm going to break it down to you. The Farm to School Education Program Manager with the Farm to School Program.

00:03:38 Michelle

Okay.

00:03:40 Christy Sherding

You unpack that nicely.

00:03:41 Phyllicia Moore

Thank you.

00:03:43 Christy Sherding

You're welcome.

00:03:44 Michelle

So what does that actually mean? What's a typical day in your life look like?

00:03:49 Phyllicia Moore

So a typical day in the office is lots of meetings, lots and lots of meetings. But the meetings are with...

00:03:56 Christy Sherding

I was just going to say, who are you meeting with?

00:03:58 Phyllicia Moore

Yes. So the meetings, usually Mondays is like meetings all day. I hope coffee's there. It's a lot of coffee. So we, Mondays are a day of nothing but meetings, and Tuesdays is half a day of meetings. But Monday and Tuesday is meeting, meeting, meeting. And then Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you have to try to figure out how to make this work so that you can be prepared for Mondays meeting again all over again. So, but we're, right now we're meeting with the academics department.

00:04:33 Michelle

Okay, for the whole district?

00:04:34 Phyllicia Moore

For the whole district.

00:04:34 Michelle

So paint us a picture. What is Houston like? How big? What are we talking about here?

00:04:38 Phyllicia Moore

Houston's huge. Houston, Texas. We are about 2.3 million people in Houston. That does not include the surrounding suburban areas. That is the metropolitan area.

00:04:53 Michelle

It's like more than our whole state of Oregon.

00:04:54 Phyllicia Moore

Oh, I'm so sorry. Well, it's a lot.

00:04:57 Michelle

It's a lot.

00:04:59 Phyllicia Moore

Our School district has 169,000 students.

00:05:03 Michelle

Wow, how many meals are you all serving up a day?

00:05:06 Phyllicia Moore

Let me, I cannot quantify that for you because I do not know, but... A whole lot. We cannot farm enough food to produce for our entire school district because it's 274 schools. But out of the 274 schools, 176 school gardens.

00:05:30 Michelle

Wow, that's amazing.

00:05:35 Phyllicia Moore

It is very amazing. I'm so glad y'all think that. It's amazing.

00:05:40 Michelle

It's a lot of upkeep.

00:05:41 Phyllicia Moore

It's a lot of upkeep. So we put the work on the schools. That's what I was wondering.

00:05:46 Michelle

So the school, each individual school is responsible for maintaining the garden?

00:05:51 Phyllicia Moore

Yes.

00:05:51 Michelle

Does that mean custodial?

00:05:54 Phyllicia Moore

No, that can be anyone.

00:05:55 Michelle

Is it volunteer, paid group club?

00:05:58 Phyllicia Moore

It's all of that. So we don't, we don't, it's not us because we're a small team. The farm to school team is a team of nine right now.

00:06:08 Christy Sherding

For 274 schools?

00:06:10 Phyllicia Moore

I know, right?

00:06:10 Christy Sherding

But that's a lot. I mean, in the trying to do the math. Grab the calculator.

00:06:15 Phyllicia Moore

The math is not mathing. It's not going to math.

00:06:18 Michelle

But in the history of farm to school, like many districts never even had one farm to school. So this is what you're showing off is the evolution. Nine people on a farm to school team is pretty remarkable.

00:06:30 Phyllicia Moore

Yes, but that's we need nine people to make that work. If I can have a whole lot more, I would. So the history of Houston is that the school gardens were PTO.

00:06:44 Michelle

Parent teacher organizations. So basically volunteer. Okay.

00:06:49 Phyllicia Moore

Those moms came in there and found the money and raised the money and put them at like all those elementary schools.

00:06:56 Christy Sherding

Women are a theme today with people we've been talking about.

00:06:58 Michelle

I'm pointing at Christy.

00:06:59 Michelle

I'm like, I think you're one of those moms.

00:07:02 Phyllicia Moore

I was one of those moms. Yeah. Man, my daughter's school is trying to get me to do it.I'm like, I don't know.

00:07:08 Christy Sherding

Let's find some other parents. You just recruit the new, you don't recruit the parents.

00:07:13 Phyllicia Moore

I was like, let's find some other parents.

00:07:15 Michelle

Although if your daughter asks you to do something.

00:07:17 Christy Sherding

Kind of hard to say no.

00:07:18 Michelle

Like ice skating or something.

00:07:21 Phyllicia Moore

Yeah, she's not asking for that. She's asking for robots. So luckily I can get away with it for not doing it right now for her school, but it's coming, because the counselor knows me.

00:07:33 Michelle

So, okay, so there's a menagerie of ways that these gardens are run and maintained, but is school counselors one of them?

00:07:42 Phyllicia Moore

School counselors are one of them.

00:07:44 Michelle

How does that actually work?

00:07:45 Phyllicia Moore

Anybody? So what I do is I have come to create a school garden handbook. So it's in my head and in my notes. It is not fully fleshed out all the way. So bear with me.

00:08:01 Christy Sherding

It's a work in progress, though. I love this.

00:08:02 Phyllicia Moore

It's definitely a work in progress.

00:08:03 Michelle

So we put it in the show notes later.

00:08:05 Phyllicia Moore

Yes, please, later. But also, Houston has had a lot of transitions. If you haven't paid attention to national news, we were taken over by the state. And so in the process of us really pushing and running and running positively and really growing, we went from a professional development for educators, from 30 educators being at a PD to 97. And then TEA took over and we went down to like 15 people showing up to a PD.

00:08:38 Michelle

And PD is a professional development. And then TEA is Texas.

00:08:43 Phyllicia Moore

TEA is Texas Education Agency.

00:08:47 Michelle

So, and so they took over in last year, right? 2024, 2023.

00:08:52 Phyllicia Moore

2023, yes.

00:08:53 Michelle

2023, OK, 2022023.

00:08:58 Phyllicia Moore

It's been a long day.

00:09:00 Michelle

It kind of is. It's a great conference, but it's a long day. And so there's all these gardens. You're responsible for interfacing with them. But now you're also telling us about you're with the academic.

00:09:14 Phyllicia Moore

So we're, so here it is, the handbook that's going to come together.

00:09:21 Christy Sherding

Supermom pulling it together.

00:09:23 Phyllicia Moore

So we have it where you have garden champions. Anybody can be a garden champion, parent, teacher, custodian, food, a service attendant, anyone in the school that's there at the school all the time can be a garden champion. But my request is that you get two more people to help you with that because you can't run a school garden alone. That is a massive, even if it's like 3 garden beds, that's a lot of undertaking to do by yourself. So usually if you get the custodian in, they go out there in their spare time and they take care of it. I love the custodians. Every time I walk in, I say, depends on what school I'm walking in. Hey, this is what I put in the garden. And I'm like, yeah, thanks.  I appreciate that.

00:10:10 Michelle

They know what's going on.

00:10:12 Christy Sherding

I love that the secret success. Gardeners are the custodians. I love that for them.

00:10:18 Phyllicia Moore

Yes.

00:10:18 Christy Sherding

They're kind of the do it all, you know?

00:10:20 Phyllicia Moore

I have a school that the principal did not want a school garden and the custodian's like, I'm keeping this garden. And she's taking care of the whole thing.

00:10:28 Christy Sherding

Oh, I love that.

00:10:29 Phyllicia Moore

I was like, okay, I love it. She needs some seeds. What does she need? Some soil.

00:10:34 Christy Sherding

What kind of seeds do you give them? Do you guys provide them the soil and the seeds and things like that?

00:10:39 Phyllicia Moore

We do provide them. We don't provide them with soil because that is a procurement process that we have been going through for about 3 years now, because procurement looks at soil as dirt. And they're like, it's already dirt there, just use that. So we have to, it's a long process of explaining it's not.

00:10:58 Michelle

That's really interesting. It's under procurement.

00:11:00 Phyllicia Moore

Yeah. So seeds were, we get those donated because procurement does not like seeds either. I don't understand them. So we're in a procurement process of trying to procure vendors for soil and seeds. But we have seeds donated to us. And so we would give them out to the different schools that needed seeds or if someone had plants. We have a new farm production manager because we have a six and a half acre farm that we use for field trips. And the kids come. They do a little, they are a farmer for a day and a chef for a day.

00:11:37 Christy Sherding

Cute.

00:11:38 Phyllicia Moore

Yes, they are a farmer and a chef for a day, so they get to figure out how to farm. They learn about environmental sustainability and stewardship at the same time. And then they take their harvest to the chef and they curate a sample of some sort.

00:11:55 Christy Sherding

Like farm to, it's farm to table.

00:11:57 Phyllicia Moore

It is literally farm to table.

00:11:59 Michelle

And is it every student or a particular grade?

00:12:02 Phyllicia Moore

No, everyone.

00:12:04 Christy Sherding

Wow.

00:12:04 Michelle

Every student in the district.

00:12:05 Phyllicia Moore

Pre-K through 12th grade.

00:12:06 Christy Sherding

All the kiddos.

00:12:07 Phyllicia Moore

At one point. We are a title one sponsored school field trip. So everyone can come to the field trip free of charge.

00:12:15 Michelle

That's amazing.

00:12:17 Michelle

That's fantastic. So they're a farmer for a day.

00:12:20 Christy Sherding

Chef for a day.

00:12:21 Michelle

And so that's like a big one-time experience. And then are you also working with, I don't know how Houston does it, like is there a curriculum development committee or okay?

00:12:34 Phyllicia Moore

Not a committee.

00:12:35 Michelle

Okay.

00:12:35 Phyllicia Moore

We're 1 1/2, two people ordeal working with academics. Okay. So the academics department tells us this is what we're focusing on for alignment for the state test. And we are saying, okay. They said, you can only have certain grade levels come out to the farm. We're like, okay, now we have some stipulations. 5th grade and 8th grade can only come out. So we have to create programs around 5th grade and 8th grade science and math TEKS.

00:13:07 Michelle

Okay.

00:13:08 Phyllicia Moore

And TEKS are Texas, Essentials, Knowledge, and Skills. That's our standardized alignment, educational alignment.

00:13:19 Michelle

So that's so neat. So the district is actually helping you prioritize what the standard is to focus on the farm day.

00:13:29 Phyllicia Moore

That has been a two-year process, though.

00:13:31 Michelle

That's amazing.

00:13:32 Phyllicia Moore

And I think people should know that, in order for you to get academics to work with you, it is a two-year process, one to two-year process, because you have to be nice and bait them in and say, hey, I need your help. So yes, there's a curriculum around it. And then we have now, because new programming, we have garden educators at the schools now, elementary and middle school. And they are contracted. So that worked out perfectly for us. That's part of the things that was taken over by the state. And so we give them professional development. And they are working with third graders, 5th graders, and 8th graders in the garden. And so we give them the curriculum that we curate specifically around the garden. So yeah, it's pretty fun. And we also work with producers as well.

00:14:33 Michelle

What's that look like?

00:14:34 Phyllicia Moore

Working with producers, I actually prefer that better. That's so sad. I'm an educator. And I really am an educator to the core, but I'm also an agriculturalist. So my major was agriculture in college. So I prefer to be out there on the farm.

00:14:53 Christy Sherding

Getting your hands dirty.

00:14:54 Phyllicia Moore

Getting my hands dirty.

00:14:56 Phyllicia Moore

And I prefer the animals over the vegetables, but I can farm both. So working with the farmers, we are… we get to go to their property. And we've partnered with Texas Farm Bureau, Texas AgriLife Extension Services, Prairie Views Extension Services. And so we work with them to help us find all of the farmers. And we get to go to their farms and see what they're doing. And the farmers get to come to the schools and talk to the kids.. kids as guest speakers. We had a panel last year with Texas Farm Bureau for the high school students of nothing but farmers and ranchers. And they got to talk to the high school students that were in ag. And I was like, this is amazing. We got to keep this going. So we have little pockets of programming that we're trying to make one massive program. That's A lot.

00:15:55 Christy Sherding

I think you're doing a fantastic job. It is a lot, but it's amazing. And it sounds like it's all coming together.

00:16:00 Phyllicia Moore

Thank you. Thank you so much.

00:16:03 Michelle

And since we are at this conference from the National Farm to School Network, like why did you choose to come here and be part of this network?

00:16:12 Phyllicia Moore

I've been trying to come here for two years now. This is my first one.

00:16:18 Michelle

We're not recording. I mean, we are…

00:16:22 Phyllicia Moore

But, these are my people. Yeah. I feel completely grounded and connected here. And hearing what other people are doing across the United States and sometimes internationally, I feel like, okay, I'm not crazy with the ideas that I have going on in my head. What I'm trying to do in Houston is not, it's not impossible. It's very possible for us to, you know, make this farm to school program work. It just feels like every time I get here, I'm able to breathe a little bit and I'm able to just be like, okay, now let's take all the information in and let's make it all work and put it all together. And my supervisor can tell you, actually my team can tell you when I'm here, I have a million and one ideas going through my head and I'm usually texting them the ideas. And then I come back and they're like, so how many more ideas did you come up with?

00:17:18 Michelle

You are the idea generator. What's an idea that you've picked up so far being here?

00:17:26 Phyllicia Moore

Hold on, my phone. What do I have here? I have some notes.

00:17:32 Michelle

Yes, we're checking the notes.

00:17:35 Phyllicia Moore

And in the notes, it was, we needed to be more cohesive in our program. It feels a little bit silo-y. And there are no walkways in between the silos. And we needed to create the silos and bridge those connections. So I'm trying to figure out how to bridge those gaps in between. And one of the main things that I am really interested in here was the data storytelling and participatory evaluation. And we need to tell our story because no one has seen it or heard it. So that's what I'm really interested in, trying to figure out how do we tell our story so that everyone can see what we're doing and mimic it. Yes.

00:18:23 Christy Sherding

Me. We... I was like raising my hand. You can't see me because I'm just talking and not on film. So I work for an organization called the Henry Ford, and we're based in Metro Detroit area. And it's a cultural institution, a museum.

00:18:41 Phyllicia Moore

You know Benny Wiggins.

00:18:42 Christy Sherding

We, girl, I just met her this morning. I fangirled big time. But yes, we talked for what? I don't know, it felt longer.. 30 minutes maybe podcasting, but probably 45 by the time I let her go.

00:18:52 Phyllicia Moore

It's a separate episode. It has to be.

00:18:55 Christy Sherding

I was like, you are so you're like the godmother, right? So no, she is amazing. But we have an edible education program on our campus. And one of those initiatives is a program called Farm to School Lunch Across America. And it sprung out of the fact that we have a charter high school on our campus for 9th through 12th grade students. And we wanted to reimagine their school lunch program because we eat lunch with them, our 9th graders, every day in our employee dining room. And Michelle's heard this story like 7 times, probably today alone. But that being said, as we were doing that, we were learning about all the great things that people are doing, like yourself. And so last year during Farm to School Month, we hired a doc crew and went to six different schools and filmed them, but not just the school staff. We talked to the kids, we talked to the parents, we talked to the farmers, growers, and producers they were working with. I mean, all the layers to the onion that makes up that robust farm to school program. So I'm like getting chills because I told Betti earlier, I was like, I want to come see your farm. I want to come see your garden.

00:20:03 Phyllicia Moore

The gears are moving.

00:20:04 Michelle

I can actually see them. The eyebrows have raised several times. Wait a minute.

00:20:09 Christy Sherding

I was like, maybe, pick me.

00:20:13 Michelle

So the different silos, am I hearing you in saying that the storytelling you think is one of the ways to bridge the different silos?

00:20:22 Phyllicia Moore

Yes, we have, because we have three different components, actually 4 now, we have nutrition education, we have a farm, and we have garden-based education, and then we have environmental stewardship. And it's just like, okay, we're slowly integrating everyone into everything that we're doing instead of us, okay, I have this, you have that, you have that. Let's all work together to bridge this or put this onion back together. Instead of making onion rings, let's just make one giant onion ring.

00:20:59 Christy Sherding

Onion is my term of the day.

00:21:02 Michelle

As long as it's not an onion smoothie, that just looks… Yeah, I'm just, I'm just so curious of how to do this because it's constantly our ongoing area of growth, right? Because we have agriculture and education and public and private organizations that are all working on different funding and project deliverable timelines and everybody reports something different to everyone else. So I'm like, how are you doing this?

00:21:31 Phyllicia Moore

I don't know how I'm doing this.

00:21:33 Michelle

Because you're about 20% of the size of our state. So I feel like if you can do it in Houston, maybe we could do it in Florida.

00:21:40 Phyllicia Moore

That's what I keep telling my supervisor. And so just an FYI, Betti Wiggins is my boss. She's going to get mad because I said boss and she's she doesn't like me calling her my boss. She is my boss. She comes to my cubicle quite a bit with her with her ideas and says, hey, make this work. And I'm like, I know, I have enough projects, don't add another one.

00:22:04 Christy Sherding

Well, you're an idea generator and she's coming with more ideas. Double trouble.

00:22:08 Phyllicia Moore

Yes, it is. But it's also fun. It's fun to have her there. But for us to make it all happen, it's great to have her there because she helps us tell the story because she's done it before. And so she's helping us figure out how we can tell the story. And then on our level of us being so large, she's done it before in Detroit. She understands the policy and she's like the little godmother. She's the godmother.

00:22:36 Christy Sherding

She's the fairy godmother.

00:22:37 Phyllicia Moore

She's the fairy godmother, like guiding us on where we need to go to make this program successful before she retires. And so what we're doing is that we're in the mindset of we need to make this magical and tell this story on a granular level because somebody out there wants to know how to do this. And we can help guide them how to do it. If we can do it on a very massive level and go through all of the millions and trillions and billions of red tape that we have to go through, then we can guide someone on a medium and smaller level and say, this is how you can do it. You don't have any red tape, just go for it, you know.

00:23:20 Christy Sherding

Oh, a world with no red tape.

00:23:24 Michelle

Imagine all.

00:23:25 Christy Sherding

I was just thinking cue music.

00:23:31 Michelle

I don't know, in the interest of cross-pollinating ideas that we're doing here at the national conference, one of the things we piloted in Oregon this year was a different way to tell the story. I was just rendered speechless on a podcast. Thanks A lot. Okay, love you. Oh my God.

00:23:50 Christy Sherding

Keep that in, Rick.

00:23:53 Michelle

Oh my God, that just blew my mind.

00:23:56 Christy Sherding

The look on your face was priceless.

00:23:57 Christy Sherding

It was so good.

00:23:58 Phyllicia Moore

It was wonderful because I was like, who is that? I know.

00:24:00 Michelle

It was Cecily Upton. And actually, this really shows you that we really are at a conference and we're in a hallway and people are walking past us. We're meeting so many new people and running into friends from literally 20 years ago. We've been doing this. So as I was saying, in the interest of cross-pollinating ideas, so what we did in Oregon, we piloted, is we partnered with our local broadcast television station, ABC. And people say, who watches television? Turns out a lot of people.

00:24:30 Phyllicia Moore

I do.

00:24:31 Michelle

Yeah. And people watch it because in the morning, they listen to the news and look for the weather.

00:24:37 Phyllicia Moore

Yes.

00:24:38 Michelle

Right. And then they go home and then they listen to radio or Spotify or something else. 

But usually on the drive home, right, you're listening to radio or whatever your podcast is. I'm sure everyone's tuned into the Farm to School podcast.

00:24:49 Phyllicia Moore

Obviously. Yeah, I am.

00:24:51 Michelle

And the Farming Ugly podcast, of course. So we did in our morning talk show, our farm to school grantees, we did a story.

00:25:00 Christy Sherding

That's an awesome idea.

00:25:01 Michelle

So a three to six minute television show every other week. And we kicked it off with an hour long television special with our governor and people from all over the state. And then our role is getting folks comfortable on camera. So people from all different walks and talks of life. So nutrition service directors, farmers, a lot of kids, legislators.

00:25:23 Phyllicia Moore

So I'm going to cut you in right here. We have our own communications department within nutrition services.  And if I go and tell her this, And she is going to run with it because we just got a videographer.

00:25:37 Michelle

That's amazing.

00:25:38 Phyllicia Moore

And he is phenomenal.

00:25:40 Michelle

That's amazing.

00:25:41 Christy Sherding

Oh, I'm seeing magic happen right here.

00:25:42 Michelle

We just posted them all.

00:25:44 Phyllicia Moore

I'm full of chills and excitement right now because I'm going to run with this.

00:25:48 Michelle

Yay, this is fantastic. And we just posted many of them on the new website, Farm to School Counts. So farmtoschoolcounts.org is where Oregon, the state of Oregon, hosts its ambitious 10-year vision for where we're going from now until 2035.

00:26:09 Phyllicia Moore

2035. Okay, I had to do the numbers. I had to do the numbers in my head. Okay.

00:26:13 Michelle

I have a hard time with that. So yeah, so at the bottom of every goal, we have become bright spots, but there really are television segments and podcasts and other ways of telling our bright spots.

00:26:24 Phyllicia Moore

Okay, I'm going to reference you when we do all of this because we're going to do this. 

It may not be until another two to three years, but we have it right here documented that we're going to do this because we need to make our story told. But I also want to hear the stories of what's going on at the school. It's so many schools and it's hard to find what's going on. Like I have some phenomenal schools. I have one school with just, it's nothing, a school of girls and they're all engineering. And they have hydroponics in the classroom.

00:26:58 Michelle

Amazing.

00:26:59 Phyllicia Moore

They're engineering and computer science students.

00:27:01 Michelle

It's incredible.

00:27:01 Phyllicia Moore

And they're doing hydroponics. They have different types of hydroponic systems. They're doing comparative analysis on all of them. And they're naming all of their plants because it's a girls school and they have to name the plants. Of course. Yes. Makes sense. You 2 are girls.

00:27:17 Michelle

I'm a double boy mom. You don't name anything. I get no hearts. I get no rainbows. I get none of that.

00:27:23 Phyllicia Moore

I have a girl and a boy, so.

00:27:25 Michelle

You get some of that.

00:27:25 Phyllicia Moore

I get a little bit of both.

00:27:27 Christy Sherding

I get a little bit of dirt. I have one boy and two girls, but there's lots of glitter in our house. Drives my husband crazy. But yes, all the names, all the names.

00:27:37 Phyllicia Moore

So, yeah. And then I have another school where it's a high school, where the teacher turned the entire classroom into a CEA. Controlled Environment Agriculture. So the classroom is sits.

00:27:53 Christy Sherding

I've never heard of this before.

00:27:55 Phyllicia Moore

Okay, so the classroom, remember, I'm an agriculturalist. The classroom sits in the middle of a hydroponic farm. She turned her entire classroom into a hydroponic farm and the classroom sits in there and they also sell their salads to the students at the school. So this is like phenomenal things that are happening at different schools. And we have schools that I have another high school that's growing the seedlings. And then there's another high school that's like doing deer processing. And then I have middle schools that are learning how to cook. And so we have all these different things going on. I can't get all the stories fast enough.

00:28:35 Christy Sherding

You just told us six different stories that you already have, like, scanned and almost ready to go. You just need to, yeah, I get it.

00:28:43 Phyllicia Moore

We just need to document it.

00:28:45 Michelle

What about a student-run Houston funding to school podcast? You could put that in your notes app.

00:28:55 Phyllicia Moore

I am. As soon as I walk away from here, I'm not even going to my session. I'm going to go sit down. I'll probably go to my room and put all these notes. I have to unpack all of this.

00:29:05 Michelle

Well, thank you for coming by. This was really generous of you to step out of a session to meet with us.

00:29:10 Phyllicia Moore

This is amazing. I literally listen to y'all almost once or twice a week and try to catch up on everything.

00:29:17 Michelle

Thank you.

00:29:17 Phyllicia Moore

I'm excited.

00:29:18 Michelle

Well, and we're going to do our episode together now. And then in two years from now, I want to do another episode with you. Yeah, what are the stories and how did it, where did it go from here? That's amazing. And I'll listen.  Take care. Bye.

00:29:30 Phyllicia Moore

Thank you.

00:29:30 Christy Sherding

Bye.

00:29:34 Michelle

Thank you for listening. Thank you, Phyllicia, for sharing your incredible story. There's so much more to dig in there. And thank you, Christy Sherding from the Henry Ford for being our amazing guest co-host.

00:29:48 Rick

Farm to School was written, directed, and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markeston, with production support from LeAnn Locher and Lauren Tobey of Oregon State University. The podcast was made possible in part by a grant by the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:30:01 Michelle

The content and ideas on the Farm to School podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University or the United States Department of Agriculture, which both USDA and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:30:15 Rick

If you want to learn more about Farm to School, check out other episodes. We can't get through an episode without interjecting that.

00:30:22 Michelle

Why wouldn't we like want to learn more about Farm to School? I've done nothing else with my life. This is like the best.

00:30:27 Rick

It's not in the script, folks, but it always ends up there.

00:30:31 Michelle

We want to learn more from you too. So please come by Farm to School Podcast at Oregon State University. Just Google that up and you'll find us. There you go.

00:30:40 Rick

There you go. We'd love to hear from you. Stop by and say hi. Give us an idea for a future podcast. Thanks everybody.

00:30:46 Michelle

Cheers.