When Podcasts Collide: The School Garden Podcast Crossover Event

Today we’ve got a special treat sprouting in the studio- the brilliant, dirt-under-their-fingernails crew from the School Garden Podcast!

That’s right! It’s a full-on garden geek crossover episode. More stories, more laughter, more accidental loofah explosions… and probably at least one debate about which state grows the sassiest school gardeners. Grab your trowel, hydrate, and settle in, this episode is about to bloom in every direction.

Transcript

When Podcasts Collide: The School Garden Podcast crossover event

Today we’ve got a special treat sprouting in the studio: the brilliant, dirt-under-their-fingernails crew from the School Garden Podcast!

That’s right — it’s a full-on garden geek crossover episode. More stories, more laughter, more accidental loofah explosions… and probably at least one debate about which state grows the sassiest school gardeners. Grab your trowel, hydrate, and settle in — this episode is about to bloom in every direction.

Transcript

00:00:05 Rick

Welcome to the Farm to School podcast, where you will hear stories of how you thrive and farmers prosper when they learn how to grow, cook, and eat delicious, nutritious local foods and schools across the country…

00:00:17 Michelle

And the world!  We're your hosts. I'm Michelle Markesteyn.

00:00:20 Rick

Hi and I’m Rick.  Morning, everybody.

00:00:21 Michelle

And today is crazy. Today, the farm to school podcast.  Hey,  it's a mashup. Mashup crossed.

00:00:30 Rick

It's a crossover event. So yeah, so feel free to introduce yourselves. Mary Jo, please introduce yourself.

00:00:46 Mary Jo Greene

Hi. So thanks so much for having us. So my name's Mary Jo Green and I'm a school garden educator based here in Fort Worth in North Texas. And so got I have got into a school garden about 10 years ago when I arrived in the in the United States, when I moved here from England with my family. I was heavily involved in school garden movement back in the UK, having been educated through in school gardens through my own education and come from a country that just gardens all the time. It's a very, very kind of, you know, cultural thing to do. So I arrived in Texas with my own two children, my own 2 elementary aged children, and expected just to kind of slide previously into the school gardening scene. That was really bad. So that kind of starts and my journey into school gardening. And here in Fort Worth.  So then I've kind of about 2017, so about 88 years ago now and actually started made Green School Garden Services, which was a little business put together to help schools with their school gardens. Be it farm building there be it from using them, be it from kind of rebuilding gardens that were once there before, but anything school. That's where you can find me on earth.

00:02:00 Rick

Well, I love your last name. How it's tailor-made for school gardens “madeGreene” and Mary Joe Green that that works well.. I’m jealous.

00:02:04 Michelle

Come on.

00:02:08 Anne Santana

I know.

00:02:09 Mary Jo Greene

Exactly. So it's so funny. The kids always laugh about it when we teach them. And I just said, well, this is Green spent money a year searching for them right now, man. Because you have to have the right name and then you go.. Mr. Green said no, Mr. Green has a very boring job and sits at his computer and sends email.

00:02:35 Michelle

That's our job.

00:02:39 Mary Jo Greene

And then so they love that they love that kind of like little story and they go, Mr. Green, sending emails all day and we get to be outside in the garden.

00:02:49 Michelle

And Anne, will you introduce yourself for our listeners?

00:02:52 Anne Santana

Sure. My name is Anne Santana and I have been a school gardener since 2021. I spent a nice career in the museum science field and had a pivot during COVID and a job opened up at a school and schools opened back up to do outdoor learning at a school part time job that was just lovely and so I started school gardening with that new school as they went back in the session, and Mary Jo and I met through a committee and the rest is history. But my love of gardening started in Springfield, OR actually because my grandfather converted his whole backyard into a garden. He was a farmer here in Texas, but he converted his entire backyard. And Springfield is just the most glorious place to grow. So I attribute some Oregon rates to my love of gardening.

00:03:43 Rick

Well, thank you for that. Yeah, Springfield, just an hour South of us here in the valley.

00:03:47 Michelle

We're like Oregon, Texas.. It's just a great connection there. We love it.

00:03:54 Mary Jo Greene

Exactly. I kind of feel quite a kinship with kind of Oregon, really. I think it's got really similar kind of British kind of weather. And you know, the greenery and things like that, I really do. I kind of feel that might be a little spiritual home at some point for me, I don't know. Yeah.

00:04:11 Rick

Actually we have super nice summers. We don't like to let that get out because we're jealous. We're jealous of our. But no. But now around, I don't know. October, mid-October or Halloween time, it's like a Switch gets thrown and it's going to be Gray and drizzly for 10 months. But then we have beautiful summers, but yeah, it it's A and. And this is a good kind of segue into the whole country and stuff. And we talked about like, Oregon and Texas, but in in Oregon, actually, we have every climate in the world here almost of the way of the Mediterranean climate. And on the coast and the…

00:04:33 Michelle

That's our kinship, yeah. The roses.

00:04:51 Rick

.. the Coast Range and we have a High Desert Eastern Oregon that's very, very dry desert and we have mountain range down the middle of the state to cascade. And so we have like so many different growing regions and where when we live in the bread basket in the Willamette Valley, which they, it's one of the places where they grow specialty crops around the country, right, Michelle?

00:05:14 Michelle

And so Rick is saying all of this because, OK, so my husband actually lives in Dallas area and yeah, we were all connected and I'm like, How the heck do you garden there? Like, what do people, what do.. you know? You're in a school garden, and..?

00:05:31 Anne Santana

It looks wonderful, has our fall and winter design gardens are flourishing. We can do broccolis now we've got carrots and we've got beets. We do potatoes in February. They're ready in May. We do. We grow really well from fall through spring. Yeah. So the growing season is here so perfectly.

00:05:52 Mary Jo Greene

It’s into the school timetable into the school schedule. You know, by the time school gets back in August and it starts to cool down a little bit September. We go into this glorious fall season which fits perfectly into the kind of semesters that we have, you know. Then, during the winter we start potatoes and onions that's coming January, February time and then we can go into the spring gardening a shot of kind of seeds. And if you like, you know, kind of shorter growing things or if schools are prepared. And they're able to. Then that kind of takes them nicely into planting right the way through to the summer, bring it back to fall again when the schools go back so we away. Yes, it's as hot as like, Oh my gosh, sometimes there are no words. There are no words that actually the word at the school, the way that the school sessions files fits perfectly with the two seasons in the three grand seasons. I'd say that we have here, so actually no excuse.

00:06:49 Michelle

So, are you planting peas then in August, when the kids come back to school?

00:06:53 Anne Santana

Yes, We had two weeks ago we had kids design trellises, group of kids next week, built them and their kids planted peas. And they are coming up nicely.

00:07:04 Mary Jo Greene

Yeah. So we get this gorgeous thing. My peas. You do really well in more, colder, right and kind of temperatures and then the beans like the hot. So we can do both here really easily and quite clinically too. So yeah, I mean really it's just yeah everybody thinks like ohh everything just ultimately goes so hot. But you're like, actually, It's miserable.

00:07:27 Michelle

Gardeners know.. 

00:07:30 Mary Jo Greene

I'll say who knows the most kids know. They just have this intuition. Don't remember like falling temperatures and you know, being outside, you know, they're the ones they're the real barometers for us. I feel so. So yeah. No excuse.

00:07:47 Rick

Well, and not only that, I think it's even if they don't know, it's OK to fail like you know, like so many. So many adults are afraid of gardening where the kids have No Fear. You know, they're just like, let's do this and. And so it's it's great to get them at an early age, right?

00:07:52 Anne Santana

Yeah. Oh, we do. Oh yeah.

00:08:03 Mary Jo Greene

Totally, and I think it's one man and I will we hold our hands up all the time and say we fail a lot you know, because like everyone in the weather's weird, you know and we are, you know, growing in the elements and in a school where watering isn't necessarily as available or you know working or whatever. So there's a lot of variables that can lead to its failing, but also stuff fails, and one of the benefits we find is really that resilience and actually getting children to not cope with it, but just kind of like learn to rule with the disappointments, you know, and it's it's great, isn't it?

00:08:42 Michelle

So are you doing mostly raised beds then?

00:08:45 Anne Santana

Yeah. In Texas, we do tend to do raised beds. The soil is really clay.

00:08:55 Mary Jo Greene

OK, it's OK. It's clay. It's very cloggy and heavy, isn't it OK, right?

00:09:00 Michelle

So you're doing mostly raised beds.

00:09:02 Rick

So you have to make your own soil, do a lot of composting and things.

00:09:05 Michelle

This is the “Michelle learns how to garden in Texas.”

00:09:07 Mary Jo Greene

Yeah, if we can.

00:09:08 Michelle

In Texas podcast.

00:09:11 Mary Jo Greene

And there is that element as well is that we work, we really work kind of very sympathetic. We work very closely with the school districts, you know and the school districts like it when we do raise beds, you know, you know sometimes we do in ground if it's kind of prepped, you know in certain circumstances but usually the operations departments that we work in much prefer raised beds. So we kind of do that.

00:09:40 Michelle

So we all have we all share a love of gardening and food and gardening with kids. And podcasting, tell us, tell us about your journey towards that. How did you get into it? How's it going?

00:09:53 Mary Jo Greene

Yeah, so fun. It's honestly, it's so great. So, we started in January this year, which is January 2025 for anybody listening to this in the future and you know and it was so the way that our jobs work is that well, the way that I do is that I partner with quite a lot of organizations so made green and supports maybe about 30 school garden campuses, through a variety of partnerships with them, different organizations and schools and school districts. So we support maybe over 150 school garden educators directly, you know, and that's just becoming more and more and.. it's just you know, we just wanted to be able to than to get information more readily and you know, it was just another method and another means to get some information across quite a few of the teachers have suggested, hey, you guys should do something like it's not necessarily what was a podcast and people have suggested that we do like tiktok videos or we do something like that, you know? So really. But Anne and I, we just really like the thought of the podcast, didn't we?

00:10:59 Anne Santana

And I really did, because so often the teachers we work with, we might work with them in February. I'm going to plant something until March or April. Yeah. And if we do a podcast episode on it, they can listen to that on their way to school, in the car, and have everything ready to go, you know, and it's when they need it. And so it gives us a way to archive the ideas and the things we share over time. But it also makes it readily available to them for their needs and not on our schedule. But it's on their schedule.

00:11:28 Mary Jo Greene

Yeah, it is. And it's been so well received and which is kind of an endorsement, is really but also, I just really like to catch up. Yeah, you can totally tell that you two love a good get-together and a good chat and one we get to do one we get to do this inside.

00:11:46 Rick

Not only that, but like I always tell the story and there's many reasons why we started our podcast. Yes, but one of the one of them was like, they're at the time there wasn't any farm to school podcasts. And I wanted to listen to one. And so I wanted to interview amazing people and get them on our show and start the ball rolling for us. But hey, I did notice, like, I found you guys. I think you just showed up on one of my list serves or feeds and I was like pleasantly surprised. So I know of four so far. And did you know, like, you know what the most popular kind of podcast is? Can you make a guess what that is? And it's not School Garden podcast.

00:12:30 Mary Jo Greene

What genre? Genre?  I'm going to say true crime.

00:12:36 Rick

Ding, Ding. OK. And do you know how many there are? There's 23,000 of those podcasts. I just googled it.

00:12:37 Anne Santana

Could you imagine 23,000? Oh my gosh.

00:12:47 Rick

So google is never wrong, so I I'm going to go with that. So my point is when I heard that, and like first of all, there's another farm to school podcast. There's the New England Farm to School Podcast.  So we were going to have them on the show with you today and talk to you all at the same time, but they had a conflict. We'll do a separate show with them. But my thing is the more the merrier. The more this stuff gets out, it will be more of a household word. And I can't wait. So if you're out there thinking, Please wait, make another one. We'd love to.

00:13:13 Anne Santana

Agreed.

00:13:20 Rick

We'd love to have more, more the merrier. So there's a school garden podcast. There's a school garden with ease podcast, which I have not talked to that individual yet, or heard her podcast yet, but I plan to. And then there's the New England from the school podcast. We'll leave all links to all of them in our show notes, and you're already listening to this one.

00:13:40 Mary Jo Greene

Definitely. Is this this so funny? Rick? Cause Anne and I have been together before talking to you this morning, working on some bits and pieces and. And I think I said that, you know, we're talking about that. Just about like, the more people that come into this world and you know, or come into this kind of, you know, network and the more the better and I think I said something like rising tides raise all boats or something like that, you know? You know, floating. Exactly.

00:14:15 Anne Santana

But you know, I really do think that would allow that and also you know for school garden like you just talked about is just you know the different climates you know and that's all really everyone has state would be wonderful and also you know just once they've just got a different slant on things. If you just want to talk about just about curriculum.

00:14:33 Rick

There's so much.

00:14:33 Mary Jo Greene

You have to talk about the nutrition. There's so much depth and so much scope on this. And I need to listen to a few more.

00:14:42 Rick

You know, when Michelle and I first started this three years ago for us, we started brainstorming like how many things can we talk about? And I wrote down 60 things and I think we've had just over 50 episodes so far and there's probably 50 more things that we need to get to. And then you meet more people or you go to a conference and you go, oh, I have to tell this story of these people. And so there's just so much more relevance I I've was asked by my bosses when I first started this like oh, you guys are done now. You've done this, right? You've gotten everything you've made. I was like, no, one subject brings 10 more things to mind usually. So yeah, there's a lot to go around, lot to share.

00:15:26 Michelle

And I'm curious, you started with your audience of the teachers, the 150 plus locations where you are, and yet people do find you. What are you finding out about your audience at this point in time?

00:15:27 Anne Santana

Absolutely. So what we find is there, gosh, I don't know, we have no clue. We really were like, Oh my gosh, people in Australia are listening to us. Oh my goodness. People in Germany and, you know, and how bizarre, you know, so that some kind of worldwide which is so funny and quite a lot of people in California too, a lot of people reach out from California. So I think that we noticing that we're noticing that gardening in gardening schools and gardening education happens everywhere and that really cheers me up. You know, I mean, I kind of like that all that people are interested in us and want to garden with children that they are listening to a podcast. And right Brit and a text worth you know, it's just it's just so nice, isn't it, to think that somebody's actually taking that time to kind of like, learn something, listen to something and maybe then just go and, you know, shake their practice. So go and do something. So I think that's what it is. I think it's the worldwide thing, it's just like the analytics part of what doing podcast is really interesting to go look at this, there is this person. 10% of our audiences from Britain and I'm sure that's up because of Mary Jo’s connections. And so is there with family and friends and gardeners. So it's fun to watch the patterns of how things disseminate overtime.

00:17:01 Rick

It is. I know we geek out about the data all the time. We use a service called buzzsprout for us and then it pushes it out to all the platforms. So like we're on 40 platforms, but bus route when I'm this is in a commercial for them, but they give us all the data and then it was really fun to see like oh, I I'm in all states but Wyoming, you know, like we got to get somebody around and listen to us and then we got that and then it was like now we're like at 50 countries. And like, oh we have to get Africa and Australia now.  And it's been fun. Now we got them all. You know, we got. We got them all. So now it's been fun to watch that grow and the different devices and some people are watching on a smart TV. Some are. Most are on an iPhone or it's fun to geek out and all that. But one of the things we that helped us.  Speaking of England, OK, we got Jenny on from our UK farm to school and we had an episode with her. And so when that happened then then our English viewership would just boomed, you know, then the other thing is like,  we're an audio-only one. We do have the camera equipment, but I haven't been able to figure out, nor have I wanted to do that. But I guess the big thing is like if you go to a lot of big mainstream podcast, they'll do the video version now where we put them on YouTube, we have our podcast on YouTube. If people don't know, but it's just audio-only. It's just another way to get on. But we found like the viewing part, it's a different audience for us and maybe it's like, you know, like for the audio, you could be working out, you could be at the gym, you could be driving. But to be sitting in front of the computer watching, it's kind of a different audience. We haven't done that yet, have what have you guys thought about?

00:18:55 Anne Santana

We haven’t done it either. We did the same thing you have. We put things on YouTube, but we just haven't made that investment into the equipment. And the right spot, there's just so many variables that we follow. Yeah, if our goal is teachers on their way to school, that's what we find. Yeah, they don't need the video option and that I think I'd go down a rabbit hole and they did not work because I've got a picture of this, this plan, and we need to be sure to us doing this. And I would make it miserable for Mary Jo.

00:19:27 Rick

No, I just love the conversation. That's great.

00:19:28 Mary Jo Greene 

And I would just nod a lot. She wouldn't make it miserable, I'd just nod. I'd go Yeah, OK. Yeah, yeah. We do, yeah, we do. But I think we did a little bit of a poll, didn't weigh about how, how and where people listen to us. And it was a lot of people that listened while they were watering in the garden or driving to school or on their way to school or in between gardens, we found as well. Also, I think for the moment because we do this kind of in addition to a very busy kind of gardening, gardening, teaching schedule, you know, exactly same as you too. And it is just you know it's time, isn't it? It's the time and again, learning it too well for and to learn it and the need to nod. That's a lot of my time. And as well. So yeah, but I think you know we're happy to go organically, come across these things. You know, we don't have lofty goals of any of that doorway. But you know, as long as people are enjoying and listening and we are somewhat helping, I think when it comes.

00:20:27 Michelle

I had heard of tractor-time. I've heard people listen to podcasts and tractor time. I love the watering time. Hey, Anne, I'm really curious of all your episodes and things, the one I could picture the photos of potentially is that lore of the loofah. Where did that come from?

00:20:49 Anne Santana

You know, I learned about Loofas from Mary Jo as we started this job and she's like, you got a grow loofas. And I'm like, I don't even know what that is. And she's like, it's that.

00:20:57 Rick

Can you tell our listeners what they are?

00:20:58 Anne Santana

Well, it's the sponge that you wash, you know you can use in the shower you can.

00:21:04 Anne Santana

Use them in the kitchen.

00:21:04 Rick

You can exfoliate with, right?

00:21:08 Anne Santana

I thought they came from the ocean, as did every other teacher we've ever talked with.

00:21:10 Rick

No.

00:21:13 Mary Jo Greene

Surprise.

00:21:14 Anne Santana

And it is a mammoth plant and every teacher that we ever worked with, every kid we've ever worked with find these huge cucumber looking things until they dry. Fascinating and. And they're so easy to grow. It takes 2 seeds. Last year I grew 2 plants and I got 50 loofas from it. So there's a great math connection there.

00:21:35 Michelle

Well, there's a business.

00:21:35 Anne Santana

So I just thought.But Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, just on the farmers market, drive one of these out and the farmers market, they're 10 or $12.00, you know, right. And so they're so prolific. And they really are something that can cover up a huge fence or something that just needs no watering. It makes more false. And all that. But yeah, but it is. But it's something that, you know, when people go mind alone and they do that thing with, the mind is blown. This loofah is a mind-blown kind of kind of concept to people. This is fantastic.

00:22:09 Rick

I think it's perfect for like something different, like we're always looking like, OK, we've mastered something in our school garden, peas and green beans. And this isn't a food that is still a thing you can grow and sell at farmers markets and it's a great thing to teach a teachable moment for kids. And I actually tried to grow them this year and my never came up, but I had a friend on Facebook in Texas, and she grew like from a few seeds a few hundred pounds..

00:22:35 Anne Santana

You need heat, I think.

00:22:36 Mary Jo Greene

You need real heat.

00:22:54 Rick

She goes well, everyone's loofas for Christmas. That that's for sure. But yeah, it was amazing. So I might need more, some more heat. OK, got it.

00:23:05 Anne Santana

We plant them in April and then they don't flower or fruit until August, September, October. So it's a plant that the kids see almost the entire life cycle.

00:23:12 Michelle

Oh.

00:23:16 Anne Santana

With and, it's a great pollinator at a really bad time of year for a lot of pollination. Yeah, the pollinators around these plants are phenomenal, and so if it's hot enough where you are, you've got to grow loofas.

00:23:30 Mary Jo Greene

And the other thing about loofas too is that it's a real kind of cultural talking point as well, because if you meet anybody from India, or from Thailand is that they actually eat them when the squashes are very juvenile, when they're very small, before they get too fibrous, all woody and things like that. So we do the professional development with a bunch of teachers that happen to come from Thailand and they were from India and they were walking past and it was early on in the season where the squashes were tiny, weren't there? The loofas were small. And they're like gosh, you know, we have permission to kind of cut them and they were going to go away and make all these curries and things like that. So I thought that was quite interesting. So with the conversation, you can have that in certain cultures, particularly I think during the depression in the states, they were, you know, they were there, you know, there was some not a great deal of calorific and as you know, nutrition to it, but they were able to feed people. So again, so much education, so much scope and so much conversation around them fears.

00:24:36 Michelle

OK, total non sequitur. My job in college, I never told Rick this or anyone. My first job was I worked at the Missoula Historical Society and Museum Sciences, and I was like, Anne, can we talk a little more museum science?

00:24:55 Mary Jo Greene

Ohhh my gosh, you got to! Oh my gosh.

00:25:03 Michelle

And I was going to say and I'm curious. Well, you already have some thoughts like where does it intersect with school gardening? And we've made some new friends with the Henry Ford the museum. And they're doing, you know, they're exploring farm to school across America and at the time of this recording, they just came out with a new documentary and uplifting stories. And I'm just really wondering, and what? What are you thinking about this whole space?

00:25:35 Anne Santana

You might think science museums are so great at just encouraging students to use those skills that they're going the rest of their lives to observe carefully, to ask questions, to predict, to hypothesis guys, you know, we've heard those things all our lives, but science museums do a beautiful job of bringing that to life. And I see that playing out in the garden in so many ways that you're all about just carefully watching what happens with these plants. If there's something we wonder about, can we do an experiment with those? And I think science museums particularly are great at that informal learning. Learning happens throughout your entire life. And you do it all over the place. So let's do it in a garden as well. And so a lot of the work that I did with teachers was around this idea of inquiry based learning, where your curiosity takes you wherever you go. And that, I think, is what gardens are for us as adults. And we want to make that be that for kids. And I think also since you started your career, that nonprofit, you know how hard you work in a nonprofit for very little money. And for the love of what you do so that, that also helps as we move through this career in school gardening, so many of the school gardeners we work with, they're doing this because they love it. They don't get a stipend for it. And we want to make sure that in the work we do with them, we honor their work and make their lob just a bit easier.

00:27:00 Mary Jo Greene

Yeah, definitely. And I just think just the experimentation, I mean, there's always costing all about gardening, just being 1 great big massive experiment and that's it. And that lends itself so perfect roller science concepts, really, you know, and intuitively for kids, kids are intuitively scientists. They're natural Scientists. So the garden is just them with perfect laboratory for that to carry on.

00:27:26 Michelle

It sounds so amazing. Follow your curiosity and engaging teachers. But what does that actually look like? I mean, how would they operationalize it and put that those big ideas and juicy concepts into practice?

00:27:39 Anne Santana

The lovely thing about being a school gardener, is you get to take the kids out of their classroom so their teachers don't have the pressure to meet a certain standard or to make sure this 45 minute lesson looks like all the others. So operationally, it's really great to physically take them out of their classroom. And even doing that is sometimes a big barrier and to create just a quick 45 minute experience where they go from the beginning to the end. For example, we might have a day where we go through our site, our compost and some kids are sitting compost and other kids are taking that compost and sprinkling it on plants where they're doing the actual work in a garden, but it fits in this nice little package of time and we had the great freedom to go in this package of time I want to teach them this. Because we're really free from a lot of the curriculum expectations, so operationally, I usually go outside. I break my kids into three teams and I have three, many activities that go along with our theme for the day and they move through those experiences and I try to have one of those stations being you may be a gardener and go look for what is interesting to you. And then the other two stations are more focused on suit this compost. But this compost here… So that's one way to operationalize that. Does that kind of hit what you wanted, Michelle, or hit what you were thinking?

00:29:05 Michelle

Absolutely. I just wanted to bring it to life for all of us. What does this look like?

00:29:11 Mary Jo Greene

And then you know the other side of that too is that you know more often than not, we just give them the freedom to go out there and see teachers and the administration trust us and our practice that will be hitting a lot of learning, you know, but maybe there are some teachers that maybe struggling with some things in the classroom area. Winter is always one as me. And yeah, in math 4th grade, 3rd grade. They always really struggle with it and we can really, really get some hands on kind of exercises and activities around them, you know, measuring the Rose beds, looking at the area for that, the debt, you know, capacity, that kind of stuff without them even really knowing that. That's the math they're doing inside. You know, and they're not even kind of putting the connection together. So as much as we, you know, what we really love just the freedom of being out there, we do. And coming leaves quite closely with the teachers and say, hey, is there anything that you'd like us to concentrate on, anything that there's, you know, anything that you can journal about, anything that you've done that the kids have spark their curiosity this week that we can maybe look at outside too. So is that relationship, and we really enjoy it as well and quite a lot of our schools, the classroom teacher, will come out with the student.  Some schools we don't, we're just taking the kids out. Some schools, the teachers are coming with them and really we feel because we arrive with everything, everything's organized, all the materials are there and the student becomes the sorry. The teacher becomes the student as well, you know, because we find that a lot of teachers are a little bit embarrassed, but a little bit conscious that they don't know gardening or this outdoor learning kind of processes and things like that because they haven't been trained like that. You know the training is all about keeping kids inside. So it's a wonderful opportunity for us to kind of pour into their professional development really and helping them develop just a few extra things to pop in their teaching tool kit. You know. So yeah, we are very lucky in how we're able to. Yeah, we kind of go about gardening with kids. I do funny addition. We did area and perimeter yesterday with the 5th graders. You and I had them do it with centimeters.

00:31:20 Anne Santana

Not a good idea. Too many other numbers. But there was one student that was able to get like 667,007 meters and I pulled out my calculator and he was right and I thought, all right, we need to learn our lesson that we learned about centimeters that day. So wow. Yeah.

00:31:45 Mary Jo Greene

Which is a good point. This is really funny because, this is like last week I had a conversation with a kid and it was about the metric versus the imperial. You know, the feet and inches versus the…

00:31:54 Michelle

Classic, classic argument.

00:31:56 Mary Jo Greene

..It's a classic a classical argument that I will stand by for the end of time. Let me tell you as metric the math that makes sense, and this kid was going on about arguments about it was quite interesting but yeah. So I know I have to learn how to learn.

00:32:18 Michelle

And now and math is, you know, math science, even writing and art. We even had a Goat poetry journaling.

00:32:33 Anne Santana

I think we love that.

00:32:34 Michelle

One thing we're seeing more of is social emotional learning related to the food production, and I'm just curious what your all experiences are.

00:32:39 Mary Jo Greene

Oh for sure.

00:32:45 Anne Santana

You know, at one particular campus I work with the school counselor, I've got almost weekly. I see him in the garden walking with students, or the students will come up with me, come up to me and say I went to the garden to pray. And so I noticed. And I think that Alice Carlson as well another school. And work with that. The counselors recognize that power of an outdoor quiet space that becomes their own is really important.

00:33:14 Mary Jo Greene

It's an incredibly neutral space, isn't it? You know, it's not the principal's office. It's not your classroom. It's not the whole ways that, you know, those kind of you defined areas within the school. You go into that space, kids and students feel a real sense of ownership. Once they've done a couple of lessons in the garden too, you know, it's a place where people can talk and we are finding that, I mean the school district where we work in the most and you know they've added another 20 minutes to the day this year. You know, this day is getting longer and longer. The recesses and opportunities to be outside a shorter and shorter, you know, so taking kids outside even for, I mean, just to take a book outside and read it. It is genuinely, really, you know, about that sense of well-being and you know, just give us some good, some daylight fresh air, you know, and just the opportunity to see the sky.

00:34:09 Rick

I think that's really important and especially we've been talking about the school garden and actually the physical thing of gardening and can be intimidating for some people. But like you're saying, if you just get out there and do all the things we're talking about, we've, we've had that happen so much in some schools where it's transformed to school. Once they get to that in kind of a mind change of just do what you're doing in the classroom, but do it out there, you could. Do your journaling. You could do your reading. And it gets a little trickier for us in the Northwest this time of year. Like we said, when the when the weather starts turning. But we've, we've seen some schools, there's one down the road here where they spend a little money and they put some pavers in and some boxes to sit on. And it was in an unused part of the school and now this The classrooms are clamoring to get out there. They have a sign up and there's the garden is used every bit of the day by classrooms. So fun, yeah.

00:35:03 Mary Jo Greene

That's great.

00:35:06 Michelle

The heart of the education.

00:35:13 Mary Jo Greene

Just along those lines too. I think that you know we've been doing this for kind of like 8 years now, haven't we and really and you know and I think we're getting more and more into the kind of the professional development of the teacher, you know, and it is really about, you know, making them feel confident about taking a group of students outside because it's very scary. You know when, when all they're told is keep kids safe, we lock these doors. We do this and then asking them to take a bunch of kids outside it's kind of for them it it's kind of a frightening prospect so we do a lot of training around. That and keeping it simple, right, you just go and take a walk around there for 10 minutes. You know, you don't have to go out with a fully fledged 45 minute lesson but just start to you know, build that space into your into your school day, you know, and that's it. And like you said before, you know it, it's the busiest place in school. 

00:36:06 Anne Santana

Exactly, that's our hope.

00:36:06 Michelle

And on that note, how about we all go get outside? We appreciate everyone for listening and we appreciate you too for being on the podcast. But yeah, we gotta get out and harvest some persimmons, actually.

00:36:19 Mary Jo Greene

Yeah. You know what? Yeah. And we just want to say that myself and we are. This is our first group.

00:36:19 Rick

Thank you so much.

00:36:29 Mary Jo Greene

I'm sorry, I think we just want to just wanted to say that we're like really big fans of yours? It was a genuine threat for us to be here.

00:36:37 Michelle

We found one. We found one.

00:36:39 Rick

Yeah, these are our listeners, yeah.

00:36:42 Anne Santana

Genuine, genuine fans of your Podcast.

00:36:46 Rick

Back at you.

00:36:46 Mary Jo Greene

So what a treat an an honor. It is for us to get to talk to you today.

00:36:49 Rick

Thank you, Mary Jo.

00:36:50 Michelle

Thank you, Anne. Really, really appreciate you taking the time to chat.

00:36:55 Michelle

OK. And thank you everyone so much for listening today.

00:36:59 Rick

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

00:37:13 Michelle

The content and ideas on the farm to school podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, the USDA, and the USDA and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:37:29 Rick

Do you want to learn more about Farm to school? Check out yes, we always say that of course we do. Check out other episodes, show notes, contact information and much more by searching farm to school podcast, OSU.

00:37:42 Michelle

And you can listen to the school Garden podcast as well, and we will make sure that we have links to Anne and Mary Jo's podcast along with your notes

00:37:52 Rick

And thanks everybody. Stop by the website where we just mentioned to say hello and give us an idea for a future podcast and we'll see you next time.

00:38:01 Michelle

Yeah. Thank you both so much.

00:38:03 Michelle

Thanks, Ann and Mary Joe, thanks guys. Happy growing.