Lunch Across America

From museum magic to school lunch makeovers, this episode dishes up a coast-to-coast journey with The Henry Ford’s Spence Medford and Christy Sherding. Discover how a historic innovation hub is shaking up school meals, spotlighting edible education, and launching a national movement—complete with chefs, students, and a documentary premiere. Hungry for change? Grab your lunch tray and tune in! 

Transcript

Transcript Lunch Across America

00:00:07 Michelle

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

00:00:17 Rick

And the world, hey, everybody, My name is Rick.

00:00:20 Michelle

And this is Michelle. And we are super excited today because we are talking about farm to school, lunch across America with our special guest Spence and Christy. Hey, team!

00:00:34 Rick

We’re here with Spence Medford and Christy Sherding with The Henry Ford, and first of all, let me just say Spence, you have a very Oregon name. We're recording this from Oregon, our end. I don't know where you are right now, but Medford is a very, you know, we have a big town. You know, 

00:00:52 Michelle

I think it's a farm to school hotspot.

00:00:53 Rick

It is, it is Spence. We'll start with you. Where are you located? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

00:00:55 Spence Medford

So, Rick, Michelle, it's an honor to be here on the program.  I’m Spence Medford and I’m the Vice president, Chief Advancement Officer of The Henry Ford. I'm broadcasting from my office in the clock tower at Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, MI, right outside of Detroit.  Interestingly enough, yes, my last name is Medford. I knew about Medford OR, and there's also a Medford, MA, I believe. And I have not visited either city, but I do want to.

00:01:37 Rick

Yes, probably give you the keys to the city if you show what I'm just saying.

00:01:40 Michelle

I lived in Medford. That's where Tufts University is. My address was Medford, MA.

00:01:48 Rick

OK. How about you, Christy?

00:01:52 Christy Sherding

Hi, Rick, Michelle. Such a pleasure to be on with you guys today. Thank you for inviting Spence and I to join your program. As you mentioned, I’m Christy Sherding, I am our Director of Donor Relations and Engagement at The Henry Ford. And I wear many hats. And one of the other hats I wear is I oversee our edible education initiative, under which our farm to school lunch across America program, which we are here to talk about today is a program with. So I can't wait to share more with you guys.

00:02:25 Rick

Well, the first question, maybe a lot of our listeners have is right away like what is The Henry Ford? Well we know probably everyone if you ask them what Henry Ford means to them, they're going to go, oh, yeah. He was the guy that was behind the automobile. Right, with the Ford, you know? So... But when you say The Henry Ford, maybe people might not know what that is. So what does that entail?

00:02:40 Michelle

Innovation!

00:02:53 Spence Medford

That's a question that we get every day. It's a very good question. So maybe I should start and tell you who we’re not. So company we share, the same founder Henry Ford, who founded as a school in 1929, so The Henry Ford, and again, we're not the Ford Foundation. We're not Ford Motor Company, that Henry Ford is the umbrella organization. When we originally thought of us as the Edison Institute, as a school that's still uh as a nonprofit through the Edison Institute, doing business as The Henry Ford. So our umbrella organization has five new venues. So we're we have Henry Ford, Museum of American Innovation, which is a 12-acre museum focused on some of the most iconic stories of American innovation in our history we have 26,000,000 artifacts in our collection. We collected 63 thematic areas including agriculture and the environment.  We have a Greenfield village which is our outdoor history complex where we have 82 historic structures that will move from all over the country to our campus. So we have, for example, we have the Wright Brothers Cycle Shop, we have Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory that was moved here in New Jersey. We also have 4 working farms. We have Harvey Firestone's family farm that was made here. We have real Merlino sheep, sheep. We grow crops and Henry founded this institution really as a place for hands on learning. So, you know, education really is at our rate. And we had a Research Center, Benson for Research Center. We run the educational tool for the field, a huge factory will be Ford F100 is made.  And we have a charter high school on our campus, Henry Ford Academy, now in its 28th year. So we, we cover 250 acres, but we're uh, we're a nonprofit. It's a big operation. And so anything that we do that is I call it the force, the work that we do to impact being a force for good, to impact the  community like a program like farm to school, lunch across America, we have to raise dollars for that. We would love to have you come visit our campus.

00:05:53 Rick

Well, I would to do that too. It sounds like you're saying it's almost like a museum. You said a display of innovations, right?

00:06:02 Spence Medford

Well, we are museum complex, right? So we have 26,000,000 artifacts in our collection. Everything from the Rosa Parks Bus and Kennedy limousine that Abraham Lincoln share the, you know? But then we have, you know, they're working farms on our campus. So it it's, uh, it takes several days to really explore and experience at The Henry Ford.

00:06:32 Michelle

Well, and as a museum and a living education laboratory and a working farm like you are farm to school.

00:06:43 Spence Medford

Yeah. It's funny. So that Michelle, one of the things that our one of our close advisors like, say, founding advisor on our Kitchen Cabinet Alice Waters and I've talked about this, but when you think about Greenfield village itself are 95 acres in Greenfield village. and are working farms. We have the ultimate edible schoolyard. You know, we're asking you take a chemistry class and on a farm that has history connected to Harvey Firestone or a class on the lawn of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park. So we've got a very unusual campus. That's very inspiring not only to our own only Ford Academy students, but we get over 200,000 school children a year that come to our campus on field trips and we want to see more of.

00:07:44 Rick

OK, so Spence as you know, this is our farm to school podcast and we like to have this podcast and get the word out to people about teaching children about where their food comes so, so that was that was my question. When Michelle introduced me to you both was how does The Henry Ford fit into this film school thing as a as a whole picture. So can you tell me about that?

00:08:13 Spence Medford

Yeah, I'd be happy to. You know, I think it's important to maybe roll back the clock a little bit and go back in time, give you a little perspective to before we kind of launching into what farm to school lunch across America is. And I got into it. So you know our founder Henry Ford was rooted in agriculture. He had one foot in agriculture, 1 foot in industry. So we've always been about agriculture at The Henry Ford.  In 2003, when The Henry Ford rescued the original vegetable shed of the Detroit Central Market, one of the oldest urban farmers markets in the country that  really I would say..  really, our edible education journey really began. So in 2003, we rescued this market. We were able to rescue 80% of the structure. And we got a generous planning grant to take the structure carefully apart and put it in storage and we have plans to bring it back to life in the central part of our outdoor complex Greenville village, everything is important to understand that everything we do, new exhibits, acquisitions, programs, we have to raise the money first before we can bring those structures or programs back to life. So in the 2000s, in the arts and we got, you know, getting to 2008 with the economic downturn, other funding priorities, quite frankly the support for the market just was not there and it did and it's where it stayed in storage. Fast forward to 2019, and we began to reimagine what that market could be. That market could be a place for convenience. It could be a place to have important conversations and educational programs around food, agriculture and the environment. The slow food movement, the connection to food to agriculture and the environment, and donors began to understand that and see the importance of that, and we got a wonderful challenge grant. And so by the end of 2019, we were close to raising the funds we needed to bring the market back to life. And we had two volunteers who said, look, we're going to help you finish raising the rest of the funds you need to bring this market to life, and we're gonna, we're gonna host a farm to table fundraising dinner for you in the spring of 2020. And we said and I said wow. That's great. That's great. That sounds like a great plan.

00:11:03 Christy Sherding

Kind of a bummer.

00:11:05 Rick

Good timing. Tables 6 feet apart.

00:11:08 Spence Medford

And we all know what happened, right? We you know, we know what happened March of 2020 shuts down our we you know we closed our doors for several months. And we really, you know, Christy and I were kind of scratching our heads thinking, OK, we have a challenge going down the line. How are we going to bring this market back to life and go back to our volunteers? And we said, you know, let's try a farm to front door dinner fundraiser. And that was before anyone was doing virtual fundraising. And what ended up happening is we ended up meeting a whole host of new people, philanthropist advocates, people thinking about the connection to food and health and the environment locked away, you know, on zoom cameras and all of a sudden, we decided here's an opportunity to create an entire society dedicated to food, agricultural and environmental education at The Henry Ford, and let's use this opportunity to honor 2 pioneers. And then in this movement, George Washington Carver, by the way, we had George Washington Carter's cabin on our campus.

00:12:32 Michelle

Oh my gosh.

00:12:33 Spence Medford

And Rachel Carson. And so we created the Carver Carson Society. So this group had a goal, they surpassed their fund raising goal three by three times threefold, and by August of that year we had more than enough funds to bring the market back to life, but we also had an opportunity to really double down on this idea of edible education and where could The Henry Ford be as a museum? As an educational institution, to really connect the dots for people to get those connecting what that connected tissue is around food, agriculture and the environment and so Fast forward to 2023. The market has been built. It is at the center of Greenfield village, where under the stars we have a stage we have our inaugural event, with Alice Waters. We have environmental activist Jane Fonda and historian Douglas Brinkley on stage.  Having a conversation about school, supportive agriculture and how food one plate at a time and support the local economy. It can support good food, can support better health for the students, and there's a connecting point of addressing climate change by working with the general farmers supporting that school meal. So, at that event, we said, Yep, you know, we're going to start here at home with our own schools and referred Academy. We're going to make a commitment to self fund this, raising endowment to fund those schools. So that every school child that comes through our campus now and forever, they'll have access to a scratch kitchen. locally sourced in season meal and possibly working with the general farmers, we're on that journey. We're not there yet, but we're working on it and we're going to make that new free for all students forever. And it wouldn't matter, who you know was in charge in Lansing and what was because right now Michiganders got free lunch and free breakfast and. And that's a good thing. But we want to make sure that this kind of school lunch should be accessible forever. And so we wanted to endow the program and we said, you know what? I think we can use this platform to do more because we know there's good work going on around the country around farm to school, and so the leisure of communities just not doing it or not knowing how to do it. And so could we create an experience during national fund the school month? We're able to go and see schools and highlight and and tell the story of what's working in this in this schools and other agriculture space. So we want something called Farm to school lunch across America and that's where Christy, I think you could probably talk about what we did last year and where we're going.

00:16:04 Christy Sherding

I would love to, Michelle. Rick, did you want to ask a question or do you just want me to go?

00:16:09 Rick

Well, I would I just there was so much to unpack with Spence when and circle back to launch into it.

00:16:09 Christy Sherding

Yeah, that's a lot.

00:16:14 Rick

And we were writing furiously when he was doing that and for sure what I want to get to Christy. But I did want to say like a few things that resonated with me. Like you said, like all this we try to… And I'll paraphrase what you said, but seeing the message of what from the school, it and people don't get what it is and it's like, welcome to our world. That's why we created this podcast and it sounds to me that the a place for innovation to showcase that and your place when Michelle and I are always about like what haven't we done yet in Farm to School?

00:16:37 Christy Sherding

Right.

00:16:48 Rick

We created videos, we created a podcast. We started getting people like, we've also talked to Alice about a couple months ago at the at the risk of being a name-dropper and stuff. So getting people on to tell the story about farm to school. And so I love the idea of like having a place that's something new that hasn't been like a place for innovation, for family school and like a museum like you were saying there were. 

00:17:21 Spence Medford

I was just going to say I'm glad you said that because one of the one of the things that you know, we were scratching our heads a little bit pristine you and I were talking about this the other day and that you know we have this incredible kitchen cabinet of advisors, Michelle and we're grateful we've done of.. Yeah, but you know, we get around the table with some of these amazing people and amazing organizations and say, why are people coming together? We're just, you know, we're The Henry Ford here in Dearborn, MI, why are all these institutions and these great people that are doing this work? They're actually the experts in this space. Why are they coming to the table and one of them? None of our visors said. You know, I think it's because you're in a museum. It's unexpected. No one expects an A museum to be in this space. This kind of isn't your lane, but the fact that you're convening and that really, you know, at our core, we're storytellers…

00:18:14 Michelle

Yes.

00:18:28 Spence Medford

..that all of a sudden now we have a venue where an A platform where those listening in and you share that are doing this work. Well, now we have an interesting platform that is neutral, but a place of learning that is unexpected. So maybe we can help kind of cut out the noise that maybe might distract some of the conversations and what other it takes because we think the work is so important it. But it certainly is mission fit for us. And so if this is unexpected that I'm using them to be doing this nation all the better.

00:19:21 Michelle

Well, thank you for putting in that context. One of the many reasons I joyfully accepted your offer to join the Kitchen cabinet was that, you know, hearing the museum, The Henry Ford take this on, you know, I remember when we were in rooms in meeting places around the country, arguing over what does farm to school mean, you know it's before the USDA existed. It's before we had state agencies that they had positions and different things. And here's this… you know, the epitome of innovation saying talking about from the school too. It was so validating and encouraging. I was just like, Oh my gosh, what can we do with this? Where is this going? Well, thank you both.

00:20:15 Christy Sherding

Oh, that's so nice to hear.

00:20:15 Spence Medford

Thank you.

00:20:16 Michelle

And then, Christy, I'm so curious like so now from the school across America. What does that mean?

00:20:23 Christy Sherding

Right. You know, and wonderful question, Michelle. I'm happy to elaborate. 

00:20:30 Michelle

I'm picturing like the Oscar Meyer Wiener bus, but like a giant cornucopia, like a giant school lunch tray going around America.

00:20:37 Christy Sherding

Wonderful visual. Not what we're quite doing. But that would attract attention, which we love, right, because we want all the attention we can get around this. This way of really leaning into school supported agriculture. I do want to just add just a little bit of color to what Spence is saying about us getting involved in this initiative. You know, we have a turtle high school on our campus that funds mentioned and it's 9th through 12th grade and our employees and our employee dining room eat lunch with the 9th graders. They rewind back to, you know, 2022, before we really got into this space. We were eating lunch and seeing what the students were eating every day, you know, and a lot of it is prepackaged and also processed. And you know that to us was really a driving factor and a motivator to reimagine our school lunch because, you know, these kids.. we have to advocate for them and so really that that became a really important and driving cause for us to move this initiative forward. So us going into reimagining our school lunch program, we needed to do research. And so you know as we see them. We would lean out to subject matter experts and industry experts and people just started connecting those with other fantastic organizations doing work in this space and the IT was inspiring to be on phone calls and learn what other places across the country were doing in farm to school lunch and also school supported agriculture. So I think we were in a unique position at that time as we were moving our own school lunch program forward. We kind of paused and we're like, huh, there's something here there was all these places, these people, these organizations, doing really cool work in this space where traditionally I mean, I’m a mom of three, I've got 3 kiddos. They go to public school and I see what they're being fed. Right. And so when we talk about school lunch, it's just got such a negative connotation immediately. People are like ohh awful.

00:22:59 Rick

Right. And so again, welcome to our world. I was a food service director for 32 years, so…

00:23:05 Christy Sherding

And thank you guys for the work you do. I know Spence and I are probably going to say that multiple times over the course of this, this recording and podcast, but truly it's you guys who have, you know, started this movement and we're just really trying to help advocate.

00:23:21 Rick

But, but it's true, there's truth to what you're saying. It can be like that, but it doesn't have to be. And there's plenty of examples we like to share with people that, oh, my gosh, there's so many people that are doing such fabulous things in their work. Go eat a school lunch with your kid, your grandkid or whatever and discover it, you know, but continue, please.

00:23:45 Christy Sherding

You know, actually, I mean you're 100% right. It's until you're in the classroom or the one room or whatever, and you see that these students are eating, I mean, it's easy to put it out of your mind, right? I mean, here in Michigan, it's free. That doesn't mean it's the best. And so we really are leaning into with this farm to school lunch across America program. We want to lean into shining a light, being a cheerleader, really highlighting those schools that are doing work in this space and we're doing it right and they're doing it well and they're doing it within, you know, the USDA guidelines and funding and all of that. And so in 2024, we had an opportunity with our partner, Ford Philanthropy, who's our funder for our pilot program, we launched this initiative that we're calling farm to School lunch across America. And what we ended up doing was we literally did go across America, but we with the partners that we met in the schools that were doing really unique and fantastic work in the school, supported agriculture space. We went into those communities and schools, what we were calling or what we call intact experiences and we partnered with local chefs, summer celebrities, which was really cool. I need to name drop. I'm going to piggyback off of what you guys said earlier, we partnered with celebrities to really bring attention to the schools we had Chef Rick Bayless and chef Paul Kahan in the ChicagoLand area is a partner.. where we went to two schools in the ChicagoLand area and when we were in these schools, we were doing cooking demonstrations and school assemblies to really advocate not only for farm to school and highlight the work the schools were doing, but also, I mean we can talk about making sure that we get, you know, the right food and those lunch trays with students. But we also want the students to understand why they're being fed that meal. And so, as Spence mentioned earlier, we are an education institute at The Henry Ford at our core.  And so really making sure that we could teach the students where their food came from and why, and then not only having an opportunity for them to be introduced to a really cool sauce, but also introducing them to the farmers that grow the food and how, you know from start to finish, it's this full cycle moment so that it's really impactful for them. And so when they go home, they can share that with their family. And then as a part of our program, we went one step further. I want to throw a party so we did community events after I know who doesn't love a party, but we did after school community events to invite the community in those grandparents, those parents, the caregivers that are feeding the students outside of school because, as I mentioned, I'm a parent. My kids can learn 1000 things at school throughout the day. If I don't know if they're learning and I can't reinforce it at home, then you know... It's on them to, you know, continue to move that way of thinking forward. And so we just thought it was important not only to educate the students, but to share resources with their family members as well.

00:27:25 Michelle

I Love that. So then I'm going to pause.

00:27:28 Rick

So Christy, so bear with me here. I'm a genie now and I'm going to grant you a wish- anything you want. Money is not an object. And then the catch is it has to do with The Henry Ford. And what could you do to, you know, to move this? And what would you see it going to in the future if money was no object or whatever? What would you think would be the ultimate? And for this or little or whatever. Well, where do you see it going, 

00:28:03 Michelle

You should do that question over.

00:28:05 Rick

It’s fine.

00:28:08 Christy Sherding

Such a big question, and now I gotta think for a minute. let me let me pause and think about my answer because there's a lot of ways I could answer this if I had your genie and I could have anything I want, I would. I would want farm to school, lunch in every classroom, in every school across the United States, I would I would want it to not be an issue right to get kids this this way of eating school separated agriculture is such a fantastic way and not to make sure that students are getting in the way food in their body, but also it's great for the economy. It's great for our local farmers. It's great for, you know, all the way around. It's wonderful for the environment and we're sourcing from regenerative farmers. So it's a win-win. But you know it's tough because it would be great to have also I can ask for anything, right? Right. Would love for schools that don't have kitchens to have them, because that's a huge challenge or roadblock with a lot of when we talk to people and they'll say, Oh well we have a microwave in school and we can't do this because it's difficult. It's really like I would love to remove all those barriers and just open up the possibility to really move this initiative forward. I don't know. Spence, do you have any answer? I know you probably got one.

00:29:34 Spence Medford

I would say you know, if you resources they're no issue and you know the Sky's the limit that we could build this initiative in such a way where we could fan out across the country and no communities, what's possible and what communities decide on their own if they may like what they're doing and may not need change or want change, but they may see what's happening in Dearborn, MI or Richmond, CA, or Minneapolis, MN. For Portland, OR and say. I would like a little bit of what they're doing and maybe I'd like a little bit of what's going over here, but I don't know where to start. My community doesn't know where to start and my school Superintendent doesn't know where to start. My food service director and my and, you know, and I have a regenerative farmer in Kansas who routes to figure out how to keep their farm sustainable and moving forward, but doesn't know how to get on that procurement list so that that the idea of the of the school lunch budget could keep that farm going. If I could lose diet, we would have the resource tools, the availability… The educational resources to connect all of those communities and all of those people and all of those different players together to say, here's how you do it. Here are the resources to do it. And if you wanna do it. For your own community for your own school, for your own students.  We're here to help you make that happen, and it wouldn't be it would be a connected through line or for anyone that wanted to be part of that process and at the end of the day, we will be addressing food insecurity.  Making sure that every school child in America has access to the best food, the best ingredients and those local dollars going right back into their local communities, supporting those local farmers and local food producers. And that, by the way.. There's added incentives if they're if they're regenerative farmers, they're taking care of the land. So we're addressing climate change, one school more at a time. That's a lot, but since there is since the sky is the limit and the genius giving me a wish that would be my wish.

00:32:32 Michelle

I feel like you're making so many of those dreams come true. Already spent, I think.

00:32:36 Rick

You're on your way, so you have to have a goal like you said, right?  Unless you have a genie or no genie, you just have to set a goal That’s the first step.

00:32:52 Michelle

Well and you two just launched a huge dream. Tell us about the documentary and the trailer that wil link through what's going on?

00:33:02 Christy Sherding

So thank you for bringing that out and giving us a chance to talk about that. We, as part of our journey last year and when we piloted this program in October 2024, we visited 7 communities that are doing farm to school in cool and unique ways. They're all kind of like a thumbprint. They're all different, and so to Spence’s point. You know, there's really no one size, that's all what works in Chicago may not work in California. Obviously, we're in Michigan and we have a very different growing season than California. But there are schools right here in our backyard that are doing farm to school and you know, we were in California last year and reading farm to school so, all that to be said, we worked with this fantastic documentary crew last October and they followed us around to all of these schools from right here in our backyard in southeastern Michigan to Chicago, to Minneapolis and then out to some communities in Northern California. And they we met with the all the people that are involved in making that farm to school supported agriculture, logic happened and we found it. and it was. We thought we were a little naive. We thought Ohh, we'll make this some content that we'll put on YouTube and it'll be great. We'd be like a short little epic. Well, we didn't know what we were getting into in a good way because we collected such beautiful, rich content, but there was no way we could pour it down. So what we did end up doing is taking a little bit more time and we now have a 45 minute documentary on our journey around for him to school, yeah. I’m so excited if you can't hear it in my voice. It's been a long time coming but I get really excited, but so we're premiering our doc at the end of this month, at The Henry Ford on our campus.

00:35:08 Michelle

Which it’s October 2025, National farm to school month. You are launching the documentary. Amazing.

00:35:08 Christy Sherding

And that was a part we are so we are kicking things off for our phase two of our farm to school lunch across America and we are starting things with premiering adult at the end of October 2025.  And then we are going to take the dock on the road and we are in addition to doing some new impact experiences and collecting stories in new communities about the work they're doing. We're also going to premiere, we're going to screen that doc rather in our participating areas from last year. We're in Chicago, Minneapolis, Northern California, and we're going to host panel discussions and it's going to be free. We're going to invite the community in and we are going to show the doc and then have a panel discussion with industry experts to really continue to advocate for.

00:36:08 Rick

This this way of thinking and this this idea that we can really make change by activating people who are passionate to see the change happen or like how you opened up the whole discussion with you said what would work in California doesn't necessarily work in Michigan and you could also say what works in Detroit or Lansing doesn't, you know, might not work in the Upper Peninsula or very remote areas. We get that a lot. You know, like those tiny schools make up most of our state.

00:36:38 Christy Sherding

You're right.

00:36:42 Rick

And they're like, we have an eastern part of our state, Eastern Oregon that's high desert and it's really not on the distribution lines for a lot of things. And it's hard for them to get local food unless they're resigning. They want to find it. So I just wanted to throw that little wrinkle in there. It's like there's so many people and I've used the analogy before. Sometimes the cook is also the sensor destructor of the generator and the Superintendent in the school, you know? Sometimes. 

00:37:14 Christy Sherding

So yeah, the Jack or Jane of all trades.

00:37:14 Rick

Can be. It can be tough.

00:37:17 Michelle

And coach, yeah.

00:37:20 Spence Medford

You know, I think that's important point when we think about how this program has been successful and how I think it's going to be successful going forward, our approach has never been to say, well, this community over here is doing it right and this community over here is not doing it right. Not at all it it's going, it's going to say hey, this is what's going on. We're just sharing what's happening this and you might see something over here that you love, or you may say, look, I don't. I don't want a school supported agriculture in my area. I want, I think our school lunch is just fine in our community and that's fine too. But we think if communities, one community at a time and that's why we really want to.. we really want to democratize this, this documentary and take it not only into the communities that we were in, but into new communities to say, hey, you know, this is a conversation starter, this is this is, this is the beginning of something. This is going, we're going to be on the road with this and having these conversations in communities across the country those years to come. But we are hopeless that each community will look at their own needs and their own values and say there are things that may be working over here that that we'd like to apply in our own community and we didn't. We didn't know that we didn't know what was possible until we were introduced to that by from the school lunch across America that that to me is if that happens, we've done our job.

00:39:05 Christy Sherding

Yeah, yeah.

00:39:09 Rick

OK. You see a question coming from Michelle, Hang on here.

00:39:12 Michelle

That was such a powerful ending. We, Rick and I were like should we wrap it up? Should we just like cut?. Queue to the intro music, but I did want to ask is there anything else you wanted us you wanted to say?

00:39:29 Rick

This is a good episode, by the way, guys, this is, you know, it's like your kids, your last one is always your favorite episode anyway. So yeah, this is.

00:39:42 Michelle

The sign literally says this is good.

00:39:48 Spence Medford

We like that. We're not getting that this is bad.

00:39:53 Rick

Who are these guys? Who invited them?

00:39:58 Rick

Thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.

00:40:00 Michelle

But is there, is there anything else?

00:40:01 Christy Sherding

No, thank you guys. Spence, I think I think you guys first of all again thank you for the opportunity to have this platform to talk about the work we're doing. And thank you for the work you guys are doing for the past 20 plus years. I mean, we wouldn't be here if not for troubles like you. And I'm not just saying that. So you make us appear really good on this podcast. I think we touched on everything and Michelle. I really appreciate you mentioning the doc.

00:40:36 Spence Medford

I think I would just, I would just you know this is, you could just… everything we do takes partners and we this whole program that we launched we launched with you know, initial seed funding grant support from Ford Philanthropy. And again we're, you know, we have to go for support for grants to corporate partners, foundations, funding, other pills, just like any other non profit. But for this program to be sustainable in the future, you know, we need to grow our support and so if you know people want to be part of this, that they want to be part of The Henry Ford. So you know it takes a it takes a community, it takes a community, a philanthropist and generous partners to help power this work. And I say that also because a number of our kitchen cabinet partners are nonprofits themselves and that really brings joy to us is to see through this movement. Other nonprofits in this space meeting other funders that can help advance and power through their work. And we want to see more of that.

00:41:51 Christy Sherding

Yeah.

00:41:55 Michelle

It really is strengthening the ecosystem of farm to school and the webs that connect us.

00:42:01 Rick

Yep. Thanks for that. That's a good time for everything we've talked about today.

00:42:07 Michelle

Really appreciate spend some Christie you 2 making the time to come talk to us this afternoon. Thank you guys.

00:42:14 Spence Medford

Thank you. Yeah, totally.

00:42:17 Michelle

And I really thank you all for listening today.  Farm to School was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Marqueston with production support from Leanne Locher of Oregon State University, and was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:42:33 Rick

The content and ideas of the following school podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University or the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:42:50 Michelle

He never said that before. Do you want to learn more about Farm to school? Who doesn't? Check out our other episodes, show notes. We'll have a link to The Henry Ford trailer about farm school lunch across America and so much more by Googling up farm to school podcast, Oregon State University.

00:43:08 Rick

Yeah, we would love to hear from you. Stop by the website Michelle just mentioned and say hello or give us an idea for a future podcast, and we'd love to see you see, you see, you hear hearing you and you can hear us. OK. Alright.

00:43:18 Michelle

Yes, we see everybody, honestly, Spence and Christie.

00:43:25 Rick

Thanks everybody. Thanks and Christine.