Planting the Future: From Seedlings to Systems – Inside One State’s Farm to School Institute

What happens when school teams, cafeteria leaders, teachers, and students gather in a botanical garden to grow more than just vegetables? Welcome to the Oregon Farm to School Institute — part summer retreat, part action-planning bootcamp, and all heart. In this episode, we dig into how this unique two year-long program is sprouting real change across the state. You’ll hear from the program’s director, a passionate educator, a thoughtful student leader, and more — all working to root farm to school deeper into culture, curriculum, and community. From hydroponic lettuce to high school leadership, this is farm to school like you’ve never heard it.

Transcript

Planting the Future: From Seedlings to Systems – Inside One State’s Farm to School Institute 

What happens when school teams, cafeteria leaders, teachers, and students gather in a botanical garden to grow more than just vegetables? Welcome to the Oregon Farm to School Institute — part summer retreat, part action-planning bootcamp, and all heart. In this episode, we dig into how this unique two year-long program is sprouting real change across the state. You’ll hear from the program’s director, a passionate educator, a thoughtful student leader, and more — all working to root farm to school deeper into culture, curriculum, and community. From hydroponic lettuce to high school leadership, this is farm to school like you’ve never heard it.

00:00:04 Michelle

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

00:00:15 Rick

And the world. Hi, everybody. We're your hosts. I'm Rick.

00:00:17 Michelle

And I'm Michelle Markesteyn.

00:00:19 Rick

And today we're at the what we call the farm to School Institute of Oregon, the Oregon Farm to School Institute.

00:00:27 Michelle

In the Amazing Oregon Garden, an extraordinary location.

00:00:30 Rick

Yes, it's our.. It's State Botanical Garden here in Oregon. We've had many, many meetings here, but.. A farm to school institute. You might think you know.. those of you listening across the country and across the world. What is that? 

00:00:44 Michelle

We have great guests to tell us exactly what that's all about.

00:00:46 Rick

Exactly. And we have Melina Barker. And we have Sarah Neelon.

00:00:53 Michelle

Yes.

00:00:54 Rick

So, Melina, I'll I'm going to, we're going to start with you. We're going to say hello. First of all, say hello, what's your role? What is your title? Let's start with that.

00:01:05 Melina Barker

OK. Hi, I'm Melina Barker. I'm the director of the Oregon Farm to school now, which hopefully folks who listen to this, know about and if not they should check us out and join our network. And we are here at the summer retreat, which is the kick off for the farm to school institute here in Oregon and the farm to School Institute is a year long professional development opportunity for school teams or district teams to participate. So they get paired with a coach, they build a team, the team has administrators, child nutrition educators and community partners, and they come to the summer retreat to get started. It's a three day intensive where they get to build an action plan and a vision that then they'll work with their coach throughout the year to implement at their school or district.

00:01:55 Rick

So there this started somewhere else. Could you tell us a little back story on this?

00:01:59 Melina Barker

Absolutely.  This model started over a decade ago at Shelburne Farms, Vermont Feed.

00:02:05 Rick

Yeah.

00:02:06 Melina Barker

Yeah, and it has been so successful and had such an impact that has grown from Vermont to New England across the country now. So the USDA actually invested in Shelburne Farms and Vermont feed offering a program that they're calling “The Adapters” and they really help state teams adapt the Institute to their state.

00:02:27 Rick

And you went there and went through this process?

00:02:29 Melina Barker

I did. I did.  A couple of years ago. A-Team. Actually. A joint team from Washington State and Oregon State went together to get trained in the institute model and talk about how we would adapt it here in the Pacific Northwest because it hasn't come to the Pacific Northwest yet.

00:02:47 Rick

OK so my next question I'm and trying to lead into this for other states. Do they still do this in in their farms for other states?

00:02:56 Melina Barker

Yes. They do. You can apply to become an adapter and you can go and spend a week at Shelburne Farms and you get to experience what their summer retreat looks like, but then you get some extra days to get specific training on what happens in the behind the scenes for putting on an institute.

00:03:10 Rick

And so then you can recreate it in your local area like what you're doing here.

00:03:15 Melina Barker

Yeah. And it's really about adapting it. So there's core elements to an institute that you wanna keep as like the foundation. But we have done some adaptations here in Oregon, specifically, we've separated early childhood education from K12. So we actually offer two different institutes.  And we're alternating years. So this is a K12 year we're at the farm to School institute summer retreat next year. It will be the farm to early childhood education, summer retreat, launching that, and that model is a lot different because it's just different needs of that community.

00:03:48 Michelle

And it's so magical to be here with folks, but I'm wondering what is the power behind this model like why is this? Why is this different than other trainings and things we do?

00:03:59 Melina Barker

Yeah. Well, I can say why I brought it to Oregon and what I think about it. And then there's some other folks that I hope you'll hear from. But really, I feel like the power behind the farm to School institute is that it's really about integrating what we refer to as the three C's. I'm guessing you've talked about that on your podcast before, but it's the cafeteria, classroom and community. And farm to school works best when those things are all deeply integrated into a school, school culture and integrated with each other, like across the cafeteria, classroom and community. So that's the foundation for why the institute was designed the way it was designed. And I'm sure you've talked about it with your listeners before, but Oregon is a leader in farm to school. We have done phenomenal work in providing like what I would say is a great breadth of support for our farm to school communities. So like we have non competitive reimbursement grants that give schools and CFP's money to buy local food. No other state has that.

00:05:02 Michelle

That's fancy words for you actually have to opt out of getting state funding.

00:05:06 Melina Barker

Yeah. You don't have to apply. You get that money. So breadth, right? Yeah. But we don't have as much depth in terms of, like, supporting people to layer in that support for local food with what's happening in the school garden with what's happening in the classroom and community. And so I think the institute is just like the next layer of what the support that we want to offer the farm to school community.

00:05:27 Michelle

They're amazing.

00:05:28 Rick

And you've done this. This is your second year doing it here. So you have what you call seedlings. Can you tell about that?

00:05:35 Melina Barker

Yes. So we added an element this year called the ceiling program, which is for folks who wanted to participate as an institute team, but couldn't quite have all the components there to build a full team for their school or district, so this ceiling program is for individuals or pairs from a school or district so that they can understand the Institute better and make a plan for building their teams so they can participate in future years.

00:06:04 Rick

Michelle see what they did there?   Seedlings. Pretty awesome.

00:06:07 Melina Barker

I have to I have to give props to Wren Huff, our operations manager for naming that program.

00:06:14 Rick

I would just like to claim that I hired Wren initially for my team and gave her to Melina, so I you should be forever indebted. She's wonderful.

00:06:17 Melina Barker

OK.

00:06:24 Michelle

Rick follows every HR rule.

00:06:25 Melina Barker

Yeah, I am deeply intended.

00:06:29 Michelle

And we're fortunate today to have one of the first cohorts of seedlings here and we want to introduce you to Sarah. Sarah, will you tell our listeners who you are, some of your background and what's your experience so far?

00:06:40 Sarah Nealon

Yes. We were just saying that we go back way back from when I was a FoodCorps Service Member in 2014/2015.

00:06:49 Michelle

Which, at the time of this recording is 10 years. Thank you, Sarah, for your service and all the extraordinary things you've done in the meantime.

00:06:52 Sarah Nealon

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So I am here officially as a CTE, a sustainable agriculture teacher representing my school, McDaniel High School in Portland, Oregon, so a PPS school. But like in those ten years, I've kind of worn a lot of the different hats of the at least the classroom, the educator, part of the institute. So I've been a garden educator. I've been a curriculum consultant for Food corps writing, the Food Corps, lessons with Erica Curry and Whitney Cohen. And so it's kind of a cool place to be, like to be a seedling, like a little wee seedling. And then also though like, be here with kind of a lot of the background, you know, I was on a panel and I just like holding both of those roles because I that way.

00:07:38 Michelle

So what does that mean in your experience to be a seedling within the institute model?

00:7:45 Sarah Nealon

Yeah. So my colleagues, so we have at my school, we have 1 1/2 FTE for sustainable agriculture. So we teach intro to food processing, intro to sustainable agriculture and then urban farming anyway. So we're a CT program. My colleague is with me, Kelsey Madison. So we were lucky enough to be here. And to have the opportunity to be seedlings because we weren't like able to sort of sufficiently prod our admin, I mean, Kelsey, I think made a good faith effort when the application first came out to be like, hey, hey, you want to do this? And our cafeteria manager was like, yeah, sure. But you know admins are busy and we didn't kind of necessarily follow up with them. And so we were like, Oh well, oh, cool. OK, another time I guess and yeah.

00:08:29 Rick

Well, it's a commitment, isn't it? I mean, it's not just like, oh, come to here, cheat and have fun. There's like, there's you have to commit to doing stuff that's weird and reporting back and…

00:08:42 Sarah Nealon

Yeah, but we're hoping, I mean now that we've been here, we already have like all of these people that we're like. But you know, they've expressed interest in our program and you know, I mean, as far as like power educators and there's one vice principal that we have our eye on that we're like… He supported us enough and he cares enough that I think now that we've been here and like seen, yeah, what? The other established programs or programs are doing.

00:09:03 Rick

That is so important, like I've seen programs fail, that has an on fire school garden coordinator, And so if you have a whole team, if you have an admin there with you and they're all building together, your chances of success are so much better, I think.

00:09:22 Sarah Nealon

Yeah. So. I mean, it's pretty cool that. Yeah, I think we're an institute. We're, like, institutionalized in the sense that we literally are FTE like educators, right? And so we have that part kind of down. But it's kind of it feels like one of those things where everyone's like, OK, cool, you're doing that. And so we don't even have to worry about it necessarily. Like there is no farm to school sort of culture at our school, and especially as a high school, I think it's kind of different vibe, but to be part of the seedlings is really cool because we're kind of sitting. It's honestly it's. I'm happy that you all asked me to talk about it because it feels like such a special little thing and it's burgeoning infancy. And to be a part of it, like right now, feels really special because you know, it's all of these different people from different geographic places in Oregon and wearing all the different hats. And so it's really cool to be sitting next to like a Wellness coordinator at our table. And you know, like a food systems something or another, you know, like all these other people that play different roles, because what we're doing is kind of just talking to each other about how to activate once we get back to school as opposed to making our plan, you know, like, we're not making the plan without the other key stakeholders. But hearing the pitfalls and the roadblocks for other folks, it's just like, really illuminating. In other words, like we had, you know, we hear we hear someone saying and then there's that random high school that does AG stuff. And I just need to connect with them like a district person. And it's like ohh wear that. Like wear that. Except we need to get our district person to pay attention to us. Like we can see it's like almost like seeing the other perspective of like why we're not all necessarily connected yet.

00:11:01 Melina Barker

Yeah, I think you know the one of the foundational pieces of the institute model is building what they call a cross-sector team, right, that admin child nutrition education perspective. So you have all those 3C's at the table and when folks are interested, but they weren't able to build that team, we really decided to focus that seedling program on giving them ideas and tools and a plan so that when they go back to school, they can start building those relationships so they have a team maybe in future years to come to the institute. So curious how that feels for you, Sarah?

00:11:38 Sarah Nealon

Yeah, I think it feels... It really definitely feels so much more doable. And I think that we're, I mean today is like one of the like, we haven't done sort of our key like now make your action plan for next steps. But we've been like in doing all of the sort of idea-ing and brainstorming. And so I'm yeah, I'm feeling super hopeful that we can be here. Fingers crossed next year as a, you know, whole team.

00:11:59 Rick

That leads into what I was just saying, OK, she's a seedling. Great. She's going to come back next year. What's the fancy term that she's going to be next year, if she's?

00:12:07 Melina Barker

Not a seedling. Well, she'll be an institute team and she can come as a school or a district, probably for a big district like PPS, you'll come as your school.

00:12:11 Rick

OK.

00:12:18 Melina Barker

And with your smaller rural district, then you can come as a whole school district.

00:12:24 Rick

Just a word of advice, I think you need to work on the catchy title. Seedling is cute and then institute team like…

00:12:30 Melina Barker

You think they should be like?

00:12:32 Michelle

We're all about branding.

00:12:33 Melina Barker

Transplant?

00:12:36 Sarah Nealon

Anyway, I guess I'm a CSA box. 

00:12:40 Michelle

It's a subscription.

00:12:40 Sarah Nealon

Gonna be, I don't know.

00:12:42 Michelle

But I mean, I'm really fascinated by this. Because like what here in Oregon, we've been working for 20 years to institutionalized this. And the idea was to connect the cafeteria, classroom, and community to institutionalized it. But now we're talking to someone who is institutionalized. She's actually an educator doing exactly it. Do you really need and the cafeteria is doing its thing. I mean, Portland Public Schools Nutrition services is knocking out of the ballpark local procurement and promoting it. And there's lots of social marketing. And I mean, do you actually need a team to do any more?

00:13:20 Melina Barker

I mean, I think I'd love to hear what Sarah has to say, but I think the idea of the Institute is integrating more what's happening in the classroom with what's happening in the cafeteria with maybe what community partnerships are happening. Like, if there's farm field trips or, you know, connections with community partners. So not just institutionalizing, like you're saying, Michelle, where there's a position like Sarahs, which is a huge success, but also building that school culture around how everything is connected and part of the like value system of the school or school district.

00:13:55 Rick

I'd like to throw in. Like the at the local level like you mentioned, Michelle, like Portland Public, does a great job with institutional food purchasing and stuff. But on the local level, at the school level, like the school garden and things like that, we're still missing the boat. I think statewide and that's where we need to integrate.

00:14:15 Sarah Nealon

That, yeah. And I think so, and just to kind of promote what we do, but also kind of pitch to what we need like at my particular school, it's like we have this amazing garden, we have a greenhouse, we have 1 1/2 FTE devoted to food and garden education. So amazing, it feels like such a… But then you know, I'm first and foremost a classroom teacher that has to focus on my students, like education and well-being, you know, attending IP meetings, etcetera, etcetera, to have more people like holding this really important work and to have more people investing in it. And like in other words, we have a wonderful relationship with Chris Walters, our cafeteria manager. He's awesome I can be like, hey, we're gonna harvest lettuce later on. Can we bring some? And he'll put it on the salad bar. He'll make his own little, you know, flyer about it, but it's always just so kind of last minute or hectic or so anyway. So it's just kind of like to have spaciousness to actually sit down with Chris and be, like, these are our goals. Like what if we had a weekly something or you gave us a list and we could actually grow, where you know, like, honestly, just to have the spaciousness with Chris would be like, well worth it to be a team. But then to have our one of our VP's and like for them to just like again spaciousness to talk about this stuff and be like oh, that harvest fest that the RJ coordinator's been trying to put on like why don't we you know, like, make that a more and I think there's just like there's so many little points where I feel like we could really like lift up this work. And so that's my pitch for it.

00:15:39 Melina Barker

And there's a reason that we call this the summer retreat as the kickoff to the Institute. It's not a traditional conference like it's  like we have some skill building workshops. We have some field trips, but, we have a lot of time for teams to work together with their coach to actually have those conversations and build their action plan. They are doing work here in a supportive, beautiful, you know, environment where they can feel inspired and work together in a way that they cannot do usually during the school year, OK.

00:16:10 Rick

OK, so we've heard about those teams and we've heard from Sarah and a seedling point of view, but wouldn't it be great if we had some more people like in their second year they could say, OK, we were a seedling and now here's what we've done. And wouldn't that be cool?

00:16:27 Melina Barker

Yeah, I mean, you won't find people who are seedlings. This is the first year. We've done it, but you have teams that have participated in our, you know, our first ever farm to school institute here in the Pacific Northwest and you can talk to them about the impact that it's had at their school or district. So there's a couple I think here that are excited to talk to you. 

00:16:44 Rick

All right. OK, well, thanks, Sarah. So much for joining us. We really appreciate you making the time.

00:16:49 Sarah Nealon

Such a pleasure. Thank you.

00:16:51 Michelle

Happy growing!  Well and we do we have two folks from a farm to school institute team. Could you please introduce yourselves and tell us where you're from?

00:17:00 Asher Guile

I am Asher Guile. I'm a student in Mapleton High School, kind of closer to the coast. I work in the garden. I'm now a senior. But I've been working in the garden since for two years. I just play a role in helping water and helping plan a lot of the stuff that goes on in the garden.

00:17:26 Michelle

And so you're a team member of the Institute. What is your experience here so far here?

00:17:35 Asher Guile

We're just being on the team. It's different.   I've learning a lot here. Actually a lot of different stuff and a lot of different like plants and ways to teach actually that like not a big teacher, considering the fact that I'm still a student, but a lot of the younger kids do look up to me and I would imagine a lot of the younger kids are going to be going into the garden.

00:18:01 Michelle

And who else is here to join us?

00:18:03 Stephanie Grijalva

I'm Stephanie Grijalva and I am a teacher in the Mapleton School District.

00:18:13 Rick

What do you do there? What do you what do you do, what do you teach?

00:18:14 Stephanie Grijalva

Well, we have.. Our district is really small. We have about 150 students K through 12 and so almost all the teachers wear a lot of different hats. So primarily I'm an art educator, but I'm also teaching English with the talent and gifted coordinator. And then the.. my connection here to the institute is that I teach a culinary project based learning class. It's a 70 minute block of time in the afternoon and so I'm here wearing my culinary hat.

00:18:40 Rick

Ohh. So tell us more about that. Do you work in any of the Farm to School stuff in the culinary program?

00:18:47 Stephanie Grijalva

That was part of our goal setting for last year and we're getting, we're definitely getting closer. One of the things that we did this year is we hosted to community dinners, students designed the menus they added in produce from our garden. They served cooked, did the whole thing and then we were able to get a lot of feedback from the community. Some of our families like 15 families at a time, and that's something we're going to continue into next year. So it's a way like creating community is a really big piece of what we're trying to do at Mapleton. And so you know, the culinary is just one part of the program as you're represents the gardening side and the Farm School Institute is a really beautiful way to kind of integrate all those different paths.

00:19:31 Rick

OK.

00:19:33 Michelle

So can you paint a picture for us of what is it like to be at the Institute?

00:19:40 Stephanie Grijalva

Well, this is my second year and I came with our very supportive Superintendent Sue Wilson. And so we have that admin support and we have several new team members. So this is a really beautiful way to recenter ourselves, look at our goals again. Develop our action plan and also acknowledge our successes and our growth. We did the rubric for the Institute kind of shows in those three C's how you're growing are you developing? Are you emerging? Are you, you know, getting closer to 3?  Moving and what was really cool this this institute is we were able to really see that we have measurable progress. Last year we were developing emerging in almost all areas and we saw growth across the board just in one year of working with the Institute. And so this this provides us a space for all of us to get together and reevaluate our goals. Create a new action plan and pull in our new members so that everybody's kind of on the same page as we move forward into the school year.

00:20:44 Michelle

Can you provide us with an example of what does growth within the cafeteria?

00:20:50 Asher Guile

Like in the cafeteria like is or garden food getting into the cafeteria? Well, we have our hydroponics in our school. Like hydroponics in each classroom. And one big one, like in the hallway of the school. So there's always like salad and stuff growing in the hydroponics. So kids always have access to salad and stuff, but we are still working on like getting our garden produce into our cafeteria right now. Some of it's getting into the culinary class. I'm pretty sure, which is just big step itself, you know, and then, with the community dinners and stuff.. or shoot. Never mind. I don't know where it's going there.

00:21:36 Michelle

Well, actually, I think you were going with my next question, which is because I was like, well, what about the others? Like what is examples of growth in each of those areas?

00:21:45 Asher Guile

For the community dinners, I think that's big part cause getting the community together and them all seeing how it's growing and though the community all wants to be a part of it, whether it's like distributing stuff for the garden or whatever. You know that that's big part. Yeah, no, the community is really cool in Mapleton, they all want to come together to help the school grow and their kids to learn.

00:22:18 Rick

How big of a community is Mapleton? Is it, you know, how do you have one stop light?  00:22:25 Asher Guile

One store, 1 gas station.

00:22:27 Rick

OK.

00:22:31 Asher Guile

We got a church, a library, the school and then like.

00:22:34 Rick

Sounds very small, yeah.

00:22:38 Asher Guile

Florence is how many miles? That's where.

00:22:41 Stephanie Grijalva

15 or so.

00:22:42 Asher Guile

Yeah.

00:22:42 Rick

OK. And you're about 45 minutes from Eugene. Yeah. OK, so the big city, OK.

00:22:50 Rick

All right, so I'm just trying to get a picture. So yeah, when you talk about community, it's, you know it's a small little community that got it.

00:23:00 Michelle

And Asher, I think you're one of the only high school students I have seen on a team.

00:23:04 Asher Guile

Yeah, I noticed that I'm the only kid I've seen here.

00:23:10 Michelle

What's that like being in this setting for you?

00:23:13 Asher Guile

I mean, it's kind of different. It's not a big deal. I like learning, so that's cool. I've learned a lot of different stuff. I'm sure I already said.. So since I've been here but yeah, it's definitely a big learning experience and it's kind of different. I  don't really travel too far away from my hometown I like kind of staying in my own little area, you know? But. No, it's big learning experience.

00:23:40 Rick

I was going to say you get out of school, but it is summer. I keep reminding myself it's summer break now. So bummer. You're kind of back in school. Sorry.

00:23:49 Stephanie Grijalva

I think I think like we really advocated for Asher to be a part of our team because part of our philosophy at Mapleton is that all of our experiences should be student Led, student centered and so you can't make the decisions you're making at the Institute without Student Voice. And so having the ability to have a student here, one of our leaders, I think is really powerful because they can take that information back with them and.

00:24:00 Rick

Yes.

00:24:16 Stephanie Grijalva

We're providing them with agency and our program has more sustainability. I think if it's in the hands of the students.

00:24:23 Rick

Thank you for providing that. I think I think that's a great model and especially when you have a student voice like if you have a school board presentation, they don't want to hear from adults. They love to hear from a kid anytime you bring a student, no matter what age you want to talk to the school board, they, they're all ears and they really like listening. So it's really valuable.

00:24:45 Michelle

And what are some other ways of that? Your district is lifting up youth voices, student voices?

00:24:53 Stephanie Grijalva

I think I mean like we see that with each of our project based learning units like we have construction and gardening and culinary and business and media. So the really cool thing is that the Farm School Institute provides a link for us all to kind of plug in in the same. In the same way, and the students really are the leaders like in project based learning, you really want students at the center. So all of those areas have their student leaders and they kind of push the program together and forward.

00:25:26 Asher Guile

All of our PBL's kind of do plug together in a way like where there's media taking pictures of our garden and the growth in our garden and culinary taking whatever foods we grow and or or can give to them and construction they help out with a lot of the materials to build planter beds or whatever you know. So kind of just all goes together and where we're going to try getting our business PBL, and to helping us well. What were we planning?

00:26:03 Stephanie Grijalva

The business people will help us get like marketing plans and you know, the idea that we're hosting a farmers market for the second year. And so the idea that the business students could create an action plan for how we sell our produce or how you know how different artists in the community can come together.

00:26:23 Michelle

Pricing, marketing. Yeah, probably. Distribution. Oh, that's so neat. I'm just.

00:26:27 Stephanie Grijalva

Exactly.

00:26:30 Michelle

Your community seems small. That's what I'm hearing. And tight knit and very supportive. And you work really well together. I'm curious. What's the benefit then of coming to an institute like you all had to travel really far. You stay overnight.. what would be the benefit of this model for you?

00:26:51 Asher Guile

Uh, well. A lot of it would be just us all coming together like, and talking about it or our team here or Mapleton team all coming together and talking and I we haven't really all got together like this and I mean, maybe sure separately like just me and Sue or whatever, but not all of us together yet and that that helped us out seeing all of our opinions and…

00:27:26 Stephanie Grijalva

And I would add to that that you know if we're interested in sustainability and we need to have a really clear action plan and the Institute provides that framework for us to create really clear goals and work toward those goals with. With check-ins throughout the year to make sure that we're all on the same path still, or what challenges are we facing? And so it's a system and a structure that allows for greater success.

00:27:54 Asher Guile

That's the words I was looking for. Kind of just a bigger view of what's going on, you know.

00:28:00 Michelle

Is there anything else you'd like to tell our listeners that we haven't asked about yet?

00:28:04 Asher Guile

Keep on gardening!

00:28:07 Michelle

Yes.

00:28:08 Rick

Yeah, I can't wait to see what the future holds for you guys and invite us down when you have a farm to school event or something, we'd love that.

00:28:16 Stephanie Grijalva

OK, awesome. Thank you.

00:28:18 Asher Guile

Thank you guys.

00:28:21 Michelle

Stephanie Asher, thank you both so much for joining us today.

00:28:24 Stephanie Grijalva

Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

00:28:27 Rick

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

00:28:39 Michelle

The content and ideas of the farm to school podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University or the United States Department of AG. The USDA and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:28:52 Rick

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

00:29:01 Michelle

Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. Stop by that website and just give us a hello or an idea for a future podcast. Thanks again. Stephanie Nasher. Thank you.

00:29:10 Rick

Thank you. And thank you Melina and Sarah too, thanks. we'd like to thank all of our guests.

00:29:15 Michelle

Keep on growing.