Hit “Record” and See What Grows.. an Unplanned School Garden Conversation

Hit “Record” and See What Grows.. an Unplanned School Garden Conversation 

This episode proves that sometimes the best conversations happen that are unplanned. Recorded “on the fly” at the Oregon Farm to School Conference, Rick pulls up a chair with Corrina Hargett—teacher, school garden champion, coastal wonder‑cultivator.. and avid surfer—to talk about dirt, curiosity, broccoli that actually tastes good, and why gardens belong to everyone. From surfing the Oregon coast to growing pumpkins where people said they wouldn’t grow, this joyful conversation reminds us that when kids (and adults) get their hands in the soil, they calm down, light up, and rediscover the best parts of themselves. No script, no grades—just wonder, laughter, and a whole lot of heart.

Transcript

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 and the world.

00:00:17 Michelle

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

00:00:19 Rick

And I'm Rick Sherman, still Rick Sherman. Today we're going to talk about something completely different. And now for something completely different for our Monty Python fans out there. So we, this last winter, were at Oregon Farm to School Conference, where a few 100 Oregonians got together in the Farm to School world.

00:00:44 Michelle

But you met up with someone spontaneously that actually is connected to all our food education for all work.

00:00:52 Rick

Actually, it was pretty funny how it happened because there was a photographer there. I wasn't planning on doing any recording without my podcast host, Michelle There's... Oh, that's hard because I've been doing it. Well, that's okay. So somebody wanted a picture of us in action. So I, and I just, I hit record and I just said, hey, Corrina, come here, sit down. And she's a dear friend. I've known her for a long time She's out at the coast, right? She is, but we have a school garden coordinator training that takes place. You can take it online through Oregon State University. Anyone in the country can do it.

00:01:27 Michelle

He's going to link to it.

00:01:28 Rick

I will link to it. And it's been a really good thing. It's A week-long immersive course that used to be in person, in Portland. And this was back in those days. Kelly Douglas was part of that, which we recorded. I did over 10 years. Very first, yeah, first episodes. I always do the food safety thing. Well, it became online now. But anyway, Corrina was part of this, one of the early ones when we were in person. She was in Lincoln County School District at Newport High School. She's a teacher there. And I knew her and I knew she wouldn't be too nervous.. she was. I don't think it shows much on this, but this was totally unplanned, unscripted. And I just said, hey, Corrina, tell me your goals, life ambitions, and tell me what you do. And sometimes those are the best episodes. But it's funny that we mentioned this. We talked about Pilot Light and Alex DeSorbo Quinn in a previous episode. Come to find out, I didn't even know this at the time, but she was a recipient of fellowships, fellowship of this at her high school with pilot light. Yeah, so it's kind of neat what she does in the CTE world, the career technical education. But yeah, listen to this episode.

00:02:51 Michelle

I can't wait to learn about it.

00:02:53 Rick

So here we go. What's your name?

00:02:57 Corrina Hargett

Corrina.

00:02:57 Rick

Carina what?

00:02:58 Corrina Hargett

Corrina Hargett.

00:02:59 Rick

Where are you at?

00:03:00 Corrina Hargett

I live in Newport, Oregon.

00:03:02 Rick

What do you do there? In Newport, Oregon.

00:03:04 Corrina Hargett

I surf.

00:03:05 Rick

In Newport, Oregon, for those of you who don't know, it's on the Oregon coast. So it's like the most beautiful place in the world if you're a beachgoer. People think our beaches, if you come here for a nice warm water, don't come to Oregon because it's freezing cold. But it's sandy beaches. Beautiful, touristy place, a lot of traffic in the summer. But so it's one of our, it's like we say, like if you're in Portland, you're an hour from anywhere, hour from the beach, hour from the mountains, so the beach. It's one of our playgrounds. But so you're at a school in Newport. What do you do there?

00:03:44 Corrina Hargett

I teach at Newport High School.

00:03:46 Rick

And what do you, how, what do you teach there? Well, my background is early childhood education, but I always say I teach students because I teach the high school kids. I teach the little kids. Yeah. And they teach me.

00:04:02 Rick

What's, so your school, it's a high school, you said.

00:04:04 Corrina Hargett

It's a high school.

00:04:05 Rick

But you said little kids too.

00:04:06 Corrina Hargett

And we had a preschool for about 20 years.

00:04:10 Rick

Okay.

00:04:10 Corrina Hargett

Yeah, we had a high school and preschool and the garden together and we're coming up on our 20th.

00:04:18 Rick

I know. I've been around for a while and I've seen you since the start of my job. And so you've been there the whole time. Were you in Toledo once too?

00:04:30 Corrina Hargett

I did some work at a Lala Center and last summer we built a hoop house in Toledo.

00:04:36 Rick

Okay, I thought I remembered something about that. But so what's your favorite thing about your job then?

00:04:42 Corrina Hargett

I actually surfed without my wetsuit in October. We had like a 70 degree day. And it was so nice.  And I was out there like an hour and a half. And I came in, I told my friend, I go, what's up with this?

00:04:57 Rick

Do you do a wetsuit in your school?

00:05:01 Corrina Hargett

No, but I didn't have a wetsuit on when we went surfing that day. 

Later on, I got cold. And I was like, that was an unusual day. You can't normally go in the ocean that long without having.

00:05:14 Rick

Back to your school garden thing.

00:05:16 Corrina Hargett

Okay.

00:05:17 Rick

So, and just so everybody, I knew Corrina, so, and there's a photographer here. We're at the Oregon Farm to School Conference, and she wanted to take a picture of the podcast live, Corrina, and she had no idea that she's even being recorded. She's like, you're recording me. Yeah, so yeah, we're recording. So, but I've always wanted to get out to see your school. Like you say, come to the coast anyway. So I'm going to do that one day, come over. But what's your favorite thing to do there? You were saying teaching the kids and just any specific thing that makes you just light up or what?

00:05:57 Corrina Hargett

Well, I grew up out in the garden with my grandma, my great grandma. And I just, there's so many instinctual things that happen in the garden. And I see that with my students. There's wonder, there's curiosity when they're really little, but as they get older, they don't lose that. They just have to re-find it. So really seeing them inspect a little caterpillar riming up the tree, or I see high school kids get to revisit the best part of themselves, which is that really young, curious, no grade attached. to the learning. And I think that's something we need more of.

00:06:37 Rick

Yeah, I think it's life-changing sometimes. I've seen it in kids' eyes where they just, like their behavior changes. It's been well documented in our world. Like behavior problems go down, they get their hands in the dirt, and they're just like “zen” out.

00:06:51 Corrina Hargett

And we can, I mean, we can take it to the highest level. They can look at the microbiome, they can look at how to prune trees properly. Like they can look at the disease of the trees. We can stretch it to an advanced high school and beyond learning environment. But I think for me, the most pure part is when they realize I can get in the dirt, feel better after I've been in the garden. One student, I said, try this, taste it. What is that? I go, it's broccoli. I don't like broccoli. And then, but the garden broccoli is different. So they literally taste. This doesn't taste like I've had it before. And I think it just, it stretches all of us. There's no one place in the garden where no one doesn't belong. It's for everyone. 

00:07:43 Rick

And you can do anything in the garden. You could have a reading program, you can have art, you can have physical education, you know, shoveling and stuff. Yeah. I know, like, there's a part of the coast that's called the Mediterranean climate. Have you heard that before, too?

00:08:00 Corrina Hargett

A little bit.

And we have some olive trees that we're dabbling with. I know Blake's Coastal Nursery in Glen Eden Beach, which is right outside of Lincoln City, has some olive trees that have acclimated and they actually have produced olives right there. what is it, less than 5 miles from the beach?

00:08:19 Rick

And that's what they say about where we live, our state. There's every climate in the world. There's desert, there's mountains, there's our Willamette Valley, which is our breadbasket. But then, yeah, I heard that there's this Mediterranean type climate that's on the coast range and over towards the coast. So who knew? So yeah.

00:08:38 Corrina Hargett

I've heard that there's a lemon tree up in in the city somewhere. I haven't found it.

00:08:42 Rick

Well, we have palm trees here in Salem. They're kind of stunted, but you can see them everywhere. There's even a nursery around that sells palm trees, and who knew that? So, I mean, we have super nice summers. Don't let it get out. Don't come up here, everybody.But yeah, our summers are beautiful, but now it's like 10 months of rain. So what are you guys doing now when it's not really conducive for getting outside?

00:09:06 Corrina Hargett

We actually have the lettuce grow towers inside of our kitchen. So we've been working with getting food into cafeterias, letting the kids, learn about healthy nutrition, making healthy smoothies they love. We've got kale growing out in the garden outside and we bring it in and make kale chips. And so we just try and, you know, it's year round.

00:09:31 Rick

Good on you. And that's such a… I know some people over in Central Oregon where it's, I mean, spring doesn't happen there until late May or June. it's just, it's frozen ground. And they do that. They do aquaponics and aeroponics and all that stuff too, like over in Sisters. And that's the way you have fresh herbs or fresh lettuce in your cafeteria. Good.

00:09:56 Corrina Hargett

And I think giving the kids some choice. What do you guys want to do? Well, right now they love the strawberries. So we're all about trying to get as many strawberries as we can. going for the, we get a spring harvest and a fall harvest.

00:10:12 Rick

I used to pick strawberries for a living as a little kid. If you had all the money in the world, what would you do? Would that change your life at your school at all for your programming or anything?

00:10:26 Corrina Hargett

Well, I know money's how we get more things. But I think for us, There's a lot we can do with what we have. And we have school gardens in all four of our schools in Newport. And so we can share resources, we can share, we propagated things and kind of, they multiply and grow. We also get a lot of donations. Our blueberry bushes came fromdown on the McKenzie organic blueberry bushes.

00:10:57 Rick

You just got to ask sometime, right? Yeah. And your food service has been very supportive with getting like school garden produce into the cafeteria or whatever. They're working so hard.  know they're here at the conference right now.

00:11:09 Corrina Hargett

I think their big claim to fame is going to be getting the seafood. We've had some really neat connections with our fishing community and even the fertilizer, like being able to take the, I think it's shrimp waste and using that as fertilizer.

00:11:27 Rick

Oh, you're going to have to let me know how that's going when I come over and stuff. But that's so important. Like you talk about your community and like teaching the kids where their food comes from. That's a way of life over there. So that's a really neat connection. But we've even found like, I know Ben LaPine schools in Central Oregon, they did a boat to school thing. And you would think their kids would not like seafood because they're in Central Oregon in the desert, but they loved it too. So it's, but it's a neat teaching opportunity.

00:12:00 Corrina Hargett

For sure. I think our tribe, Siletz tribe also has been amazing.

00:12:05 Rick

I need to get there.

00:12:06 Corrina Hargett

They are wonderful, sharing seeds, sharing produce from their garden. I went out to do a sweet braiding. in the spring and they hand you a box of food and they're doing a lot with community building. So I think there's a lot of great things in our coastal region.

00:12:28 Rick

Yeah, it's making me want to get out there again when the weather turns a little nice. Although it's so fun to go there during a storm and just see those waves crashing into when it's, just bundle up.

00:12:40 Corrina Hargett

Don't turn your back on the ocean. Keep your eye on the ocean.

00:12:44 Rick

No, we have a thing called tsunamis here. Yeah, that and rogue waves and all that stuff.

00:12:49 Corrina Hargett

Yeah, they're for real. I will say 20, almost 20 years ago when they said we couldn't grow pumpkins on the coast. kids wanted to, and it was magical.

00:12:59 Rick

Yeah.

00:12:59 Corrina Hargett

And I think, try it.

00:13:01 Rick

Yeah. Where there's a will...

00:13:03 Rick

Yeah.

00:13:04 Rick

so fun.

00:13:05 Corrina Hargett

Don't limit yourself ever in the garden, in the school garden. And I want to thank you because one of my favorite memories was up in Portland at the Farm to School Garden conference or the training. And we met the folks from Hawaii.

00:13:19 Rick

School garden coordinator training, right?

00:13:21 Corrina Hargett

Yes. That was so, that was life-changing to learning in the gardens and let the folks from the Kukua farms in Hawaii. And that's what I want to go to some days to see that.

00:13:33 Rick

I remember that because like here in the Northwest, we're very high up in the latitudes. And so you point your garden, you always look, well, where's your sun going to be? Because you have to kind of, you have this arc on the, you know, on the horizon where you got to get every bit of sunlight you can, especially in the fall and the spring.  in summer, not so much. But the people from Hawaii said, why do you keep talking about sunlight? What is that? I'm like, yeah, you don't have that problem. There's always sun. And Alaska, they grow so much because they have full daylight, all the time in the summer. so it's actually a really good growing season. Who knew that?

00:14:14 Corrina Hargett

That's amazing.

00:14:16 Rick

Well, Corrina, thank you so much for being our guest so far. Our first guest at the Oregon Farm to School and School Garden Conference here in lovely Corvallis, Oregon. Go Beavs!

00:14:27 Corrina Harget

Yes.

00:14:28 Rick

Thanks very much.

00:14:29 Corrina Hargett

Thank you, Rick.

00:14:30 Rick

All right.

00:14:30 Corrina Hargett

Have a great day.

00:14:31 Rick

We'd like to thank you so much for listening today, and thank you, Corrina, for being a very awesome, impromptu guest.

00:14:41 Michelle

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

00:14:55 Rick

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

00:15:09 Michelle

Oregon.

00:15:11 Rick

I was going to say OSU and I said I went…

00:15:14 Michelle

It's like best practice not to do acronyms.

00:15:17 Michelle

Did you know that?

00:15:17 Rick

But we say USDA all the time.

00:15:19 Michelle

Gosh, but that's kind of like FFA.

00:15:21 Rick

Yeah.

00:15:22 Michelle

But they're, that's actually their name.

00:15:24 Rick

USDA.

00:15:25 Michelle

FFA.

00:15:26 Rick

FFA.

00:15:27 Rick

Future Farmers of America.

00:15:28 Michelle

You could learn more about acronyms and Farm to School and check out our other episode show notes and contact information by going to Farm to School Podcast.

00:15:38 Rick

OSU.

00:15:39 Michelle

You did say OSU.

00:15:42 Rick

I know.

00:15:42 Rick

That's what it says in the notes.

00:15:43 Rick

Okay, everybody.

00:15:44 Michelle

We would be glad to hear from you. Bye.

00:15:45 Rick

Bye.