A Problem We Can Eat Our Way Out Of

In this episode, we head to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where an ecological crisis has sparked one of the most creative—and delicious—farm to school innovations we’ve ever seen. Caroline County Public Schools and their partners at Real Good Fish are tackling the Chesapeake Bay’s invasive blue catfish by literally eating the problem. From kid‑approved fish cakes to the soon‑to‑be‑iconic “surf dog,” Beth Brewster and Holly Nuss walk us through how they turned a 100‑pound predator into a nutritious school meal, a sustainability lesson, and a community movement. Along the way we learn how a mobile farmers market bus, summer meal creativity, and a whole lot of local ingenuity are feeding families, supporting watermen, and restoring an ecosystem—one fish cake at a time.

Transcript

A Problem We Can Eat Our Way Out Of 

In this episode, we head to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where an ecological crisis has sparked one of the most creative—and delicious—farm to school innovations we’ve ever seen. Caroline County Public Schools and their partners at Real Good Fish are tackling the Chesapeake Bay’s invasive blue catfish by literally eating the problem. From kid‑approved fish cakes to the soon‑to‑be‑iconic “surf dog,” Beth Brewster and Holly Nuss walk us through how they turned a 100‑pound predator into a nutritious school meal, a sustainability lesson, and a community movement. Along the way we learn how a mobile farmers market bus, summer meal creativity, and a whole lot of local ingenuity are feeding families, supporting watermen, and restoring an ecosystem—one fish cake at a time.

Transcript

00:00:05 Rick

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 foods in schools across the country...

00:00:16 Michelle

And the World!  We're your hosts, Michelle Markesteyn.

00:00:18 Rick

And I'm Rick.

00:00:19 Michelle

And this is going to be one of those special episodes with our other special co-host, Christy Sherding from The Henry Ford. Thank you, Christy, for joining us on this one. And it features, farm to school innovations happen everywhere, all around. And one place in particular, Caroline County Public Schools in Maryland, they have got it going on. They have so many initiatives. They have a show-go-mobile. It's literally a mobile farmer's market inside of like a small bus. extraordinary. They have a youth culinary program. They have a backpack program. They have hydroponic tower gardens. Their summer meals even has local foods in it. And then they even do sustainability on composting.

00:01:06 Rick

They do got it going on.

00:01:08 Michelle

The one you're going to hear about today is Bay to Tray. Now, seafood in schools or boat to school, bay to tray. it's been something people have looked around. I know some schools have mixed experiences serving seafood. And in Oregon, when I was at the Department of Agriculture with the Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center, we even worked with like the Potato Commission and Whiting.  some food folks trying to come up with little nuggets wrapped in potatoes. But it's all been fits and spurts, but wait till you hear what they are doing.

00:01:41 Rick

Well, not only that, like we talk about, like usually I don't have an idea of what each of these episodes are going to be called until we do production. When I go back and re-listen to it and think about it, and then think about it and what's a catchy name for a title? This one, Michelle and crew came up with like a lightning bolt. It's like, here's the thing.  They found a product, like she was saying, bay to tray. And like we talked about whiting here in Oregon is a, it's a surplus project product. And if you have a surplus product and there's no market for it, it's like, what do you do with piles of this stuff?

00:02:16 Michelle

Well, and you're going to learn about how they are approaching significant ecological crises caused by an invasive species through feeding kids really delicious, nutritious foods. So enjoy.

00:02:34 Christy Sherding

Hi, Michelle. We're back at it. I just saw a friend kind of scamper by here. It's been so amazing sitting in this hallway. You never know who you're going to see. And I think we ran into what I would maybe say as a celebrity here.

00:02:46 Michelle

I just heard someone was on the Today show this morning.

00:02:49 Christy Sherding

Beth and Holly, welcome, welcome.

00:02:52 Michelle

Could you introduce yourself and tell us what you're up to?

00:02:54 Beth Brewster

My name is Beth Brewster. I'm the food service supervisor for Caroline County Public Schools. We're on the Eastern shore of Maryland, middle of farmland. And yesterday we were featured on the Today Show with No Kid Hungry and Citibank to promote community and feeding our people.

00:03:11 Christy Sherding

Congratulations.

00:03:12 Beth Brewster

It was a great segment and really showcased the need for our kids. One in six of our kids are hungry nationally. One in four in our county alone. So rural America has a hard time getting food, which is crazy, isn't it?

00:03:32 Holly Nuss

I'm Holly Ness, and I'm with Real Good Fish.

And we're partners with Beth, and we're partners on a project to eradicate the blue catfish from the Chesapeake Bay. It's a huge issue, an invasive species. And so we've partnered with them and a few others to try to eradicate this problem. And we like to say we're going to eat the problem.

00:03:54 Michelle

Well, could you draw the connection for me? I'm hearing like school and hunger and then an environmental invasive species. Like, what's the connection here?

00:04:04 Beth Brewster

So it's about feeding people, right? So we talk about our farmers. But we don't talk about our watermen. And they are another part of food resiliency is seafood, particularly when you border Chesapeake Bay. And it's become a huge problem. So my chefs designed a fish cake, blue catfish cake, that has USDA compliance to it so that we can serve it into the school systems. So yes, eat our way out of the problem, as Holly said. So it's a delicious fish. Blue catfish is not a bottom dweller. So it's not murky. It's almost like a tilapia. So we're really trying to mark it so that people know that it's nutritious and delicious. So interesting, the fish can grow up to 100 pounds. And it eats everything. So that's why it tastes so good, because it eats crabs, it eats striped bass. You name it, eats it. So what do we do? We try to eat our way out of the problem. So getting to school foods is big. getting it into other seafood markets. it can be used as a, the larger ones as a fertilizer. It has, it's great for nitrogen. So there's a lot of solutions for this. So we want to be known as the home of the blue crab, not home of the blue catfish. Home of the blue crab.

00:05:25 Christy Sherding

I, Holly just showed me a picture and isn't it.. That's a big boy.

00:05:29 Christy Sherding

It's a blue catfish.

00:05:31 Michelle

Is almost as large as my large 16 year old son.

00:05:37 Christy Sherding

So what it's an invasive species. So what is the specific problem that it's causing?

00:05:43 Beth Brewster

It's eating everything else. So it's just eating up all the ecosystem. So it does eat, it eats baby crabs, it eats striped bass. They found a wood duck in its stomach one time. There's A scientist, Dr. Noah Bresman, down at Salisbury University, who was looking at the contents and the evolution of the blue catfish. So interesting, it was put into a river in 1974 in Virginia for.

00:06:23 Christy Sherding

This is how it started?

00:06:24 Beth Brewster

Yes, and then seemed like a good idea at the time. Yeah, it did. It did. So, people went out to fish to get a 100-pounder. It's hard to reel them in. So in 2018, there was a lot of rain and the bay became very brackish and it went into all of the tributaries. So now it's about 70% biomass in most of our tributaries is the blue catfish.

00:06:46 Christy Sherding

My gosh.

00:06:46 Michelle

We all have wide eyes. And I'm sure you listening have wide eyes too. That's A 70% one. Okay, so I've seen boat to school efforts peppered around the state. And in Oregon, when I was at the Food Innovation Center with Oregon State University, we actually tried to do like a whitefish breaded and potato breading. But there was all these challenges around acceptance. So going all the way through the system, one, even getting the product, two, the product in a shape that schools could use, or a processor with bread, and then the school's students' acceptance. So I would love for you two to break down that whole process. How are you getting the product? How are you getting it in what form? And then how are students accepting it?

00:07:37 Holly Nuss

You want me to take that one? Okay. Although Beth is the expert on this.

But yeah, I mean, we're partnering with the fishermen first and foremost to eradicate the blue catfish and to catch it and then developing recipes that are kid-friendly and kid-approved. And so Beth has done a great job of working with us and working with the fishermen to develop these recipes and make sure that they can serve them in the cafeterias. We're also formulating new ones all the time. We're working on a new catfish recipe for like a fish cake that's gluten-free and that's kid-approved. And also working on some catfish nuggets, other things. We also have a hot dog that's now made out of fish that we're hoping that actually to do with the catfish. So there's a lot of things we can do with fish that don't actually taste like fish. I was surprised when I tasted the dog, we called it a surf dog, that it didn't taste like fish.

00:08:34 Michelle

New term, right here.

00:08:35 Holly Nuss

New term, surf dog is the biggest thing I've ever heard.

00:08:38 Michelle

I want a sticker. Surf dog. I'll put that on.

00:08:41 Beth Brewster

So we've been trying to do the education route with it and teaching the kids when we're doing tastings about sustainability. It's probably one of the most sustainable fish in the United States. So we've been really trying to teach them about, you know, why we're eating it and that it is nutritious for them. One of the, I think the biggest things that we did was during the pandemic was to keep our watermen fishing and working was all we could get at the time down on our, in the pantries was deer meat. That's the only protein we could get. So we finally convinced the government to give funding to the food banks to purchase blue catfish to put down into the pantries. Because it is a delicious protein source, full of omega. So it's just a very universal fish. It can be used in a lot of different ways. It can feed a lot of people. So that's my thing, is talking about food resiliency and educating our… when we educate our kids, we're educating our parents about choosing the $9.99 blue catfish a pound versus a striped bass that's $28 a pound.

00:09:59 Michelle

What are some ways of communicating with parents that you've found successful?

00:10:04 Beth Brewster

Social media has been huge. We did a little Buster the blue catfish. It's animation. And it kind of like documents that it like it lays 20,000 eggs and like all these facts about. Fun facts.

00:10:24 Michelle

Fun facts.

00:10:24 Beth Brewster

Things you remember.

00:10:26 Holly Nuss

It's a really cute song.

00:10:28 Christy Sherding

He sings a song. Oh, I feel like that needs to be in the show notes.

00:10:31 Michelle

Yeah, we're going to put this in.

00:10:32 Beth Brewster

Yes. And just, yeah, social media has been really huge for us.

00:10:37 Michelle

What kind of platforms?

00:10:39 Beth Brewster

He's just been going through our Facebook and Instagram through the school system.

00:10:44 Michelle

Okay.

00:10:44 Beth Brewster

So, Maryland has done some… We just wrote a really cute little story about how he's lonely and singing the blues in the Chesapeake Bay because he has no friends. Nobody wants to see his friends because now we're going to eat them. We made him a likable villain. So I have a great team. I have this fabulous team that I, with food services that actually two of my ladies wrote, actually wrote the story. So now we're looking for an illustrator. So we're putting it out to our youth artists.

00:11:27 Christy Sherding

Call out to illustrators.

00:11:29 Michelle

I love illustrators.

00:11:30 Michelle

Yes.

00:11:31 Michelle

It has made all the difference working with youth illustrators, like with our Rotopia vegetables and stuff, having students and then doing that. I'm still stuck on the product formulation. So you have great ideas. It sounds like you're crediting through USDA menu.

00:11:47 Beth Brewster

Child nutrition label.

00:11:48 Michelle

Child, okay, doing the CN label.  Who's actually making it? Like, are you able to make it in your kitchen or is someone else manufacturing this for you?

00:11:57 Beth Brewster

We actually haven't manufactured. It's actually the processor is down in Tillman Island. So he's local. And then the product goes to a company that's in Pennsylvania, and they've been manufacturing the blue catfish cake. So we've been doing tastings in a lot of the other counties in Maryland, Virginia. I'm looking at North Carolina as well, but hopefully it'll be nationwide.

00:12:25 Michelle

I was just wondering, like, could we get it?

00:12:27 Christy Sherding

I was just thinking the same thing. That's fascinating. Pennsylvania is where it's coming from then, or the food processor, you said?

00:12:34 Beth Brewster

Yes, to the food processor, the blue catfish processor. Because interestingly enough, blue catfish has to have a USDA inspection.  It's the only species of fish that has to have it.

00:12:47 Christy Sherding

Really.

00:12:50 Beth Brewster

There's a whole political thing behind that.

00:12:52 Michelle

We're all looking at each other like, I don't know. I just learned surf dog and that.

00:13:00 Beth Brewster

I'm learning a lot right now. So I'm telling you why you have a nice bun with hydroponic lettuce and some remoulade sauce. Those kids love it.

00:13:08 Michelle

They love it. Oh my gosh. So it sounds like each of the steps you really have figured out so much. How about on demand side? Like are more nutrition services wanting to buy this?

00:13:20 Beth Brewster

We're starting to get there, yes.

00:13:22 Michelle

How are you capturing sales and drumming up demand for it?

00:13:27 Beth Brewster

Going out and taste testing.

00:13:28 Holly Nuss

Yeah, a lot of it is just getting out in the market.

00:13:31 Christy Sherding

Like with the kids, you're like with kiddos tasting it.

00:13:33 Beth Brewster

Go right into the right in and do it in the cafeterias. do a lot of advertising beforehand about the fish, the educational piece. And then they kind of just say they like it, don't like it, not their thing.

00:13:48 Christy Sherding

Has anyone said for something really funny when they've tasted it? Or like, I'm just curious, kids say the craziest thing. So I'm trying to picture my kiddos, what they would say.

00:13:57 Beth Brewster

Surprisingly enough, no. But we always talk about don't yuck my yum, right? Yes, That's true.

00:14:04 Christy Sherding

Yes.

00:14:07 Beth Brewster

No, it's been quite a journey. If you would have asked me 10 years ago about blue catfish, I'll be like, what? And then all of a sudden, my frustration became my obsession with the blue catfish.

00:14:16 Christy Sherding

Is that how it happened? Do you just like got, like how did it, what was the catalyst for you?

00:14:22 Beth Brewster

Maryland Department of Agriculture came to me before the pandemic and said, hey, here's a case of blue catfish. It's invasive. we like to get into schools, can you work with it? So we, my chefs put together the blue catfish cake and we did a tasting for farm to school week and all my kids thought it was a crab cake. So anyway, there we go. And it was, and then I took it back and I said, hey, here's the recipe, USDA compliant. My nutritionist been through it.

00:14:55 Michelle

And now your national news. 

00:14:58 Christy Sherding

The Today Show!

00:14:58 Michelle

Sorry, I cut off the whole, and then the pandemic hit. I didn't mean to, but why not? That sounds great. The lost years.

00:15:06 Beth Brewster

The lost years. So here we are. We're back in this great group of Bay to Tray. There was significant impact on the West Coast and now they're on the East Coast. So we're super excited to be working with them.

00:15:21 Michelle

And Holly, that's part of, is that part of a coalition that you did...

00:15:24 Holly Nuss

It's actually a program that was started by Real Good Fish to bring fish into schools and sustainable fish. We are one of the only companies or the only company that does only sustainable fish. And so we decided to bring it to school districts. We started in Monterey, California, and then started to expand it across the state of California. And then now we're expanding nationally, especially on the East Coast. So I'm based on the East Coast. So I'm focused. I was really obsessed with sustainable fish, and I was in regenerative farming. And then when I heard about the blue catfish, I was sold. I mean, I couldn't believe that this was a problem that we could eat and that no one was talking about it or do anything except for Beth. So here we are.

00:16:04 Michelle

I know.

00:16:07 Christy Sherding

Saving the Chesapeake Bay one cake at a time. One fish cake at a time.

00:16:12 Michelle

Let them eat fish cakes.

00:16:13 Christy Sherding

Let them eat fish cakes.

00:16:16 Michelle

It's been a long day.

00:16:17 Michelle

A good day.

00:16:19 Christy Sherding

A wonderful day. This has been fantastic.

00:16:21 Beth Brewster

But there's great recipes. If you go to chesapeakebluecatfish.com, there's great recipes for it. And it tells you a little bit about the history of it.

00:16:32 Michelle

We'll make sure that's in our show notes. And we are here at this very special conference, the National Farm to School Network Conference that hasn't happened in five years, and it's the 10th one. I'm curious, what brings you to this exact event and how's it going?

00:16:47 Beth Brewster

So I had FOMO. So we were on a call, virtual call, and they're like, oh, we're going to a conference. I'm like, what conference you're going to? And they're like, farm to cafeteria. I'm like, I want to go. Just last week. I didn't even know about it. So, and we're my county's huge farm to school proponents, huge. Yeah, we did a whole, we do an ag day. We have farmers come in, we do tastings. We freeze about 10 to 15,000 pounds of produce in the summer when it's actually. 

00:17:27 Christy Sherding

In season, yeah.

00:17:28 Beth Brewster

So my lunch ladies, who are a lot are the working poor, gives them more hours into the summer. And then my kids are eating corn on the cob in January.  It's amazing. So we take, buy uglies and overages, you know, things that they wouldn't necessarily be able to sell on the market.

00:17:44 Michelle

Uglies and overages.

00:17:47 Beth Brewster

Yep, because we, you know, we'll make tomato sauce. We'll make, you know, it doesn't have to be pretty for us.

00:17:52 Christy Sherding

It's innovation in food though, like that's a really smart way to approach things.

00:17:56 Beth Brewster

Yeah, until we get a farm, we always talk about that we need aggregation centers set up throughout the states with processing so that we can use them to the school system. So it has come to us processed.

00:18:10 Michelle

And did you plan your, did you plan your trip?

00:18:12 Holly Nuss

I did. I planned my trip to learn everything I could.

00:18:15 Michelle

More than a week ago.

00:18:16 Holly Nuss

Yeah, I mean, I only started in this role like a month ago.

So it's a new thing. And so then, yeah, I wouldn't like to do anything. Oh, I immediately said, Beth, you're not going. You have to come with me. We're going to have fun.

00:18:30 Michelle

You do seem like a great team.

00:18:32 Beth Brewster

Like you have to figure this out. We met like two weeks, three weeks ago.

00:18:36 Christy Sherding

Wait, you just met?

00:18:37 Beth Brewster

Yes. And it was like, and it was like, then this is Me and Christy too. We just met yesterday. And then it was like this, I don't know, it was like this synergy. So it's been, it's been really fun.

00:18:47 Christy Sherding

I was going to think that you guys have been working together for like 10, 15 years. You just met that. Yeah, it's palpable.

00:18:53 Beth Brewster

Well, we would have been 12. I'm just saying.

00:18:56 Christy Sherding

Obviously. From middle school times. That's right.

00:19:02 Michelle

We are so excited that you're at this conference and thank you for bringing your ideas. My mind is blown and I'm really excited to be sharing it.

00:19:14 Beth Brewster

Make sure you watch the Today Show segment. No Kid Hungry. It's Giving Tuesday.

00:19:20 Christy Sherding

Did it air today? Actually, was it today? Yes, yes.

00:19:22 Michelle

And we're going to, we're totally putting it on.

00:19:24 Christy Sherding

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025.

00:19:27 Beth Brewster

Yeah, Giving Tuesday.

00:19:30 Holly Nuss

And you'll get to see this amazing bus that she has.

00:19:32 Michelle

What? Tell us about the bus.

00:19:34 Beth Brewster

There's a bus. We could be here forever. One of those aha moments, we talk about food deserts and people not having access to fresh produce. So I was at a conference and this woman gets up from California. She's like, yeah, people aren't coming to us. So we got a bus and went to them. And I was like, oh, that's brilliant. So we actually repurposed A Maryland Department of Transportation bus that they donated into a farmer's market on wheels.  So we go into subsidized housing for seniors andfood desert areas to families with fresh produce, milk, eggs, and those type of really cool things.

00:20:16 Michelle

Okay, wait, So, nutrition services, and then how do you go in and you... bring food, sell food.Is it part of one of the national school lunch or breakfast programs?

00:20:28 Beth Brewster

So we do summer meals off of it.

00:20:29 Michelle

This is how you do summer meals. Oh my gosh.

00:20:32 Beth Brewster

Because rural America has non-congregate meals now. So we do summer meals off of it. But it does run all year. It's on a different program so that we can provide fresh produce all year long.

00:20:44 Michelle

Is it DOD fresh? I'm just wondering what the program is. How can people replicate this? It’s phenomenal.

00:20:53 Beth Brewster

Yeah, so we actually purchase the food and then we just sell it 5% over cost. Like we work with our local farmers. And then Walmart during this winter is great too. You know you can get kale all year. Yes, That's about it. I love kale.

00:21:13 Michelle

Is Radicchio having its moment in Maryland too? It's like where you go everything.. we're northern. We're a little more northern. Okay, Detroit, Oregon.

00:21:25 Christy Sherding

How long have you been doing the bus?

00:21:28 Beth Brewster

We're going on year five. Yeah, we started during the pandemic.

00:21:37 Christy Sherding

You know what? We've heard a lot of stories of resilience and silver linings and just, and again, Michelle, another powerful woman. We have been talking to so many women doing amazing things.

00:21:47 Beth Brewster

It's funny you talk about silver lining and COVID was, it was hard because, but we had always planned to do meals, frozen meals for kids, our highest need kids. we have a central backpack program and we send out 1,100 backpacks a week on that program.

00:22:04 Michelle

Wow.

00:22:05 Beth Brewster

So, but we always, during the summer, we just didn't want to get them individually wrapped items. So we actually did frozen meals that we learned to do during the pandemic so they could put them in the microwave or the oven. So they had a wholesome meal that they could, a hot meal instead of just like, you know, something out of a bag. So that made us know that we could do it. So now we do it all the time. So summer, our summer meals, there's at least two of those meals, prepared meals into the bags. So I have this incredible team of people. And if they're listening, like they are, they're, they believe, you know what I mean? They just believe in what we do, feeding our kids, working with our community to make sure people have access to food. So Dream team. Can I go eat now? Thank you so much. Oh, it's a pleasure, ladies. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

00:23:06 Rick

Wow, Beth and Holly, what an awesome, interesting...

00:23:11 Michelle

Extraordinary, innovative.

00:23:13 Rick

All those terms, all the terms. I want to thank everybody so much for listening today and thank Christy Sherding from the Henry Ford for being our very special guest co-host.

00:23:21 Michelle

Our amazing guest host. Which Farm to School podcast was written, directed, and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markeston with production support from Lee Ann Locker and the amazing Lauren Tobey of Oregon State University. This podcast was made possible in part from a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:23:38 Rick

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

00:23:53 Michelle

Do you want to learn more about Farm to School?

00:23:54 Rick

Can we?

00:23:55 Michelle

Can we please? We'd love to hear from you. So stop by. We actually… Maybe we should have like a Spotify list. We were starting on karaoke songs like Choose Your Karaoke.

00:24:06 Rick

A Farm to Schools, a Farm to School playlist.

00:24:09 Michelle

I'm really good at that. This is an Easter egg in the Farm to School podcast. If you listened all the way here, you too can join our Spotify jam list.

00:24:17 Rick

Okay, and soon to be coming in the show notes. Okay, I have production work to do. Well, thanks everybody. We'll see you next time.

00:24:25 Michelle

Thanks, Beth. Thanks, Holly, for the incredible inspiration. Thanks, everybody.