GROUNDED Live - 2026: Clara Coleman & James McLennan - There's No Off-Season

Welcome to a new season of GROUNDED Live. This season features presentations recorded at GROUNDED Festival 2026, held over two memorable days on Yan Yan Gurt West Farm in Victoria, Australia. Each episode captures the ideas, stories and practical knowledge shared by the farmers, researchers, chefs, practitioners and thinkers who came together to explore healthier landscapes, healthier food systems and healthier communities.

In this conversation, American farmer Clara Coleman and Farm My School founder James McLennan reflect on the idea that growing food doesn't stop with the seasons. Whether farming through harsh winters or nurturing school farms year-round, they explore the rhythms, challenges and rewards of producing food while building stronger communities. 

GROUNDED Festival is a cross between a farming conference and a food festival, held on a different farm each year. Every festival is unique, celebrating the people, landscapes and food of its host region through an inspiring line-up of speakers, local producers and hands-on learning.

With multiple stages running concurrently, GROUNDED brings together science and technology, ancient wisdom and fresh thinking. It provides a respectful place for lively discussion, an audience as interesting as the speakers, and an excellent menu of local food, drinks and music, all on a beautiful, regeneratively managed farm.

Each year, we record many of the presentations and make them freely available as the GROUNDED Live podcast. We hope you enjoy the conversations.

Thanks for listening, and if you enjoy this episode, we'd love to welcome you to a future GROUNDED Festival.

Transcript

SPEAKER_11 0:05

G'day there. I'm Matthew Evans and I'm the founder and curator of the Grounded Festival. And what follows is the Grounded Podcast. Now, this is the audio that we capture from the speakers in the tents live on the day. It's unedited, and I hope you enjoy it. When I was chatting to Clara Coleman, who's uh one of our international speakers that we brought out for Grounded 26, she was saying that where she has farmed in Northeast uh the USA, it could be minus 20 and they're trying to grow crop. And I thought, wow, isn't that amazing? So I thought, well, you know, for a lot of growers, especially vegetables, there's no off-season. And I thought, well, I pair Clara with uh James McClellan, he's the founder of Farm My School. So they also have no off-season. Even when the kids aren't at school, they've still got to be growing stuff all year round. So I thought this would be a really good thing. There is no off season.

SPEAKER_08 1:01

Welcome to the Yarrow Gum Tent. My name is Danny Valant. I am here all day in this wonderful space hosting conversations. Uh, so wonderful to be with you. I am a food journalist and host of the Dirty Linen Food Podcast, which James has already been on, and I'm gonna rope Clara in as well. Uh we are here to talk about there's no off season with Clara Coleman and James McClennan. Um, perhaps some of you have already had the pleasure of listening to James or Clara speak. Has anyone already heard them at grounded? Yes, Meg? A few of you. Great. Well, uh I think I will ask them to introduce themselves. Um, we're gonna run this as a conversation, uh, and we'll have time for questions towards the end. And um, the word from on high, i.e., Matthew, is please make them questions, not comments. Um, there's lots of time for conversations, but just in the interest of getting through as many uh questions as we can, um let's keep them punchy and uh hear from James and Clara with their answers. Um but Clara, please, uh, do you not have microphones? All right, we've got enough for you all. Thanks, Meg. Um Clara, would you please uh kick us off with a bit of an introduction to yourself and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Thank you. Is this working? Can you hear me? Yeah. Um well, good morning, everybody. So I am Clara Coleman. I come from the States. I am based in Maine. And um I my background, I have a family farm called Four Season Farm. And it's like the name, we grow all four seasons, but you can probably imagine that Maine has a much harsher climate and winters. So um, so it's much more challenging to grow year-round in Maine. And uh from my family's work and my experiences growing year-round on a farm in Colorado that I had years ago, um I really recognized the lack of support that farmers receive. So I developed a nonprofit called Real Farmer Care to support farmer well-being and self-care. Um, so it's sort of interesting that like you know, this year-round no off season work is you unless you have something that's gonna support you through it, it's really hard to do this work year-round. Um, so that's kind of the lens that I'm coming from. So thank you. Thank you, James.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

That was a little short, brief one. Um so yeah, my name's James McClennan. Um, I'm one of the co-founders of Farm My School. Um, I currently live in a little town uh called Dean's Marsh, which it's lovely to be um having this in our hometown. Uh so a few years back, um, I guess I'll to start out with, I was from a regenerative beep and lamb farm growing up, um, which my parents took farm in the southwest of Victoria, just sort of near Mount Gambia, this side of the border from Mount Gambia. Um so had this really uh amazing childhood really connected to our food. Um we grew all of our own veg. We had a hundred and sort of 50-year-old uh old orchard, and um we ate our own meat as well. So um that moving to university, um, studying outdoor environmental education, and instantly saw this disconnect between people and um their food system. So that was sort of in the back of my mind. Um, you know, starting to work as a teacher and then as an outdoor ed sort of um specialist was also seeing this prevalent with not only the students but the teachers and the parents and um yeah, completely disconnected from where their food was coming from. Um so back about this is the very quick version too, um back in about 2018, um I left teaching, started my own business in food systems education, and was working with about 120 schools in the Barwon Southwest region and just saw how amazing school gardens are and the power of school gardens and um but how often they weren't funded. They were run by a passionate parent or a passionate teacher. Um, they were the place that the principal always took the prospective parent or the politician to to have that photo opportunity. Um come summer, they were forgotten about, they were dilapidated, they were dried out, they were um, you know, forgotten about over the longest break of the year. Uh yet there was so much potential. There was so much potential, not only for that one teacher who was using that class, but all teachers, all subject areas, all year levels could have been bringing their students out and actually learning from that space and using it within their curriculum for powerful, meaningful, tangible learning opportunities. Um that led me to actually being a pretty bitter, twisted teeth, not twisted, um, bitter teacher, disgruntled, got the shits, and left. I um had enough, so that's why I started my business. And then met a few other folk who were, you know, having the same, I guess, issues around school gardens or, you know, seeing the potential of school gardens and what if. Um so the three of us came together with this this idea of imagine if school gardens could actually feed their communities. Imagine if school gardens weren't actually school gardens. We amped them up to be farms that were producing food, an abundance of food, to actually engage and educate and inspire not only the students, but the broader community. Um, we could grow amazing produce, we could feed that out to the community basically. So they could be um, you know, buying veggie boxes, uh, that income's coming back into supporting Farm My School as an entity that employs our farmers. Um, but then having all these other opportunities using this space too. And I guess that's what we can talk about today is you know, in the off-season for us, um our climate's very different to Maine here, so we don't really have an off-season, but there's a lot of sort of off-seasons with schools. Um, and I guess our our production definitely drops through winter um and into spring, but we we can have other opportunities with that too. Um, so I guess farm my school, you know, we started at Bellerine three years ago. Um we now have two farms, we um both 1.5 acres. So one at Bellerine Secondary College, one at Colack Secondary College, which is open tomorrow for public viewing as a part of grounded. If you haven't got a ticket and want to check it out, um come along. So I think there's still a few tickets left. Um but yeah, 1.5 acres. In that 1.5 acres, um, there's basically 3.2 linear kilometres of garden beds um at Bellerine and will be 3.4 linear kilometres of garden beds at Bell um at Colack. Um to give you an idea of produce, we're producing at this time of year about 750 kilos of veg a week at um Bellerine. Averages about 250 kilos a week through the year. Um, and Kolak, even though we started it only three months ago, is already just producing an abundance of food and already doing. I think today, Katie, our farmer there is packing 20 veg boxes um to go into the broader community. Um, and literally that was only four months ago that we started that farm. So pretty exciting stuff. Um I'll leave it there because I think we've got lots of lots to talk about anyway, with absolutely we do.

SPEAKER_08 8:24

Thank you, James. That is extraordinary that it's um in such a short time, it's already producing food. Incredibly inspiring. Um, Clara, I'd love you to take us a little bit more into this world of um all season farming uh and just perhaps talk, just set the scene for us because it's um, you know, we don't know what it's like in Maine. We don't understand about, you know, digging carrots out of uh frost hard soil. Just take us a bit into that world. Like what is it actually like and why do you do it?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Um, let's see, I'll start with a why first because I think that's important. Um for food security, local food security, having food access, you know, in a local region is tremendous, both for uh economic viability for the farmers, but also for the um customers and consumers. Um it employs our employees year-round. So a lot of farms, if they have a serious off season, their farm workers will have to get work elsewhere. Um and it keeps, you know, it it keeps the farm in in sales and revenue throughout the year, which is important as well. Um so yeah, so plenty of good reasons to grow year-round for sure. Um, but let's see, I'll describe because I had a farm in Colorado, and then my family farm is in Maine. So two very cold winters. Um, interestingly, they're sort of the opposite extremes. Maine is got a lot more moisture, um, more humidity. Uh, and Colorado is much drier, arid, maybe a little more similar to Australia. Um, but we had a high elevation. So, because of the elevation, we had really harsh winters. Um, but the general concept with the four season growing, and this has been pioneered primarily by my dad, Elliot Coleman, um, is that it's not that you're actively growing the crops through the winter months, you're protecting them. So it's not the cold temperatures that affect the crop. Um, and again, we're talking about cold, hardy crops, spinach, kale, leeks, you know, some root vegetables. Um, it's it's the desiccating effects of the winter elements. So the wind and the exposure. That's usually what kills the crops in our harsh climates. Um, so if you can protect them, and namely with like a polytunnel, as I guess it's called here, we call them high tunnels, um, or some sort of you know, plastic or polypropylene fabric layer, you can actually keep them protected from the elements. Um so my dad actually developed this idea that for each layer of protection, you can move your, we have in the US USDA hardiness zones, um, one and one-half zones further south to basically a warmer um growing climate. So with two layers of protection, so we would have the polytunnel, and then inside you'd have the row cover protecting the crop. So that's two layers. So that would bring us three zones further south. So essentially we could go from a main winter outside the high tunnel to a Georgian, Georgia uh winter underneath. So pretty cool, because that's that's quite a few thousand miles that you've just traveled by protecting that crop with no supplemental heating. Um, so that's kind of the basic concept. And then a lot of it is is just sort of planning like when are you gonna harvest that crop? Um, like spinach, for instance, will freeze solid for a cold, cold night. So also let me give you some context. Trying to do the conversion of Celsius to Fahrenheit is still tricky for me, but um, we could get like a 20 negative 20 below Fahrenheit nights, for instance. And I think that's around um 28, negative 28 Celsius. I think that's true. Yes. Okay, so very cold. Um, and then if the daytime warms up to freezing, then we could harvest the crop. So then we would have to come in and harvest that spinach, you know, when it's not frozen solid. Um, and then like carrots, for instance, again, as long as the ground hasn't completely frozen solid, we can harvest the carrots. Um, so yeah, that's sort of an example of what we're dealing with.

SPEAKER_08 12:35

And just give us a sense of what it's like there in summer or other seasons. Um, are the polytunnels all gone? Is it baking hot?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Like what's it like then? No, I mean, we in Maine, we have pretty mild summers. Um, so help me with the conversion here, like 70s, upper 70s Fahrenheit, that's gotta be what, 25 Celsius? Anyone help me? Um so uh, and then because you know, like four season farm was on the coast, so we had sort of the maritime effect, um, it moderated the the temps. Um, so having a polytunnel was really essential for a lot of our hot crops, uh, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant. So we really needed that to grow them. Um, our last frost uh would typically be it could be like um end of April, you know, which is our spring, um, and then maybe by the end of September. So we have a relatively frost, short frost-free growing season in Maine. Um, so having those polytunnels is essential both for summer production as well as winter. And do you have a favorite time of year though? Um yeah, you know, actually I would say, so it's from like right after we got we get the majority of the spring plantings done, like in the field or in the high tunnels. Um, so leading up to like just before our summer solstice um in June. And everything's planted, everything's just starting to take off, and the weeds haven't totally taken over yet. And it's like you have that beautiful, like new growth green, and there's no crazy weed overgrowth. That's probably my favorite time. So yeah.

SPEAKER_08 14:12

James, I'd love you to talk more about this idea of the off season as it pertains to farm my school. As you've said, you know, you can grow all year, but there's not always the students around uh to um attend the plantings. Uh, yeah, what's the off-season like for farm my school?

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Yeah, so I think firstly, we we also um don't rely on polytunnels, um, but we polytunnels make a huge difference for us as well. So we currently have two polytunnels at Bellerine. We don't have funding for any at Kolac yet, but we'll be working on that. Ideally, we have three to four polytunnels per site. Um, would be would be great for us. And you know, it we've really struggled to grow cucumbers this year at Kolak because of the of the weather, of the climate. Simple as that. Um, with polytunnels, we we grew an abundance of of cucumbers at Bellerine. And climate's not too dissimilar um between the two sites, even though they're an hour and a half, there are um clear differences. Um the off season for us, I guess, yes. We, as I mentioned, we have um farm my school is integrated as much as possible into the curriculum. Um, whether it's you know, we have a year 10 elective called Farm My School, uh, and those students come out on a weekly basis, um, you know, a few times a week to actually work with our farm team. Um, and it could be, it's it, well, it is, it's based around sort of seasonality of the farm, could be composting, could be mulching, could be planting, could be um literally the one in Kolak a few weeks ago went fishing, um, caught carp from Lake Kolak. Uh, then they mulched up the carp uh and are now making liquid biofertilizers out of the carp. Um, so yeah, all these, like if we can actually add a science lens to it or um, you know, numeracy literacy or just simply well-being, um, then that's the sort of job done, I guess. A school is only in for 40 weeks of the year and they're in for nine um from nine till three each day. So I guess um there is a lot of time when there aren't students in the school. So the possibilities are huge in terms of that available land. But yeah, when we have students coming in regularly, and I think a few weeks ago, Katie, um, our farmer at Kolak literally had like about 20 classes coming out through the week and all helping in different ways. Some only came out for sort of 20 minutes, others were there for their whole period. Um, that's amazing. Then that's that's you know, free labor. That's brilliant. Um so, but I think it's also nice to have those times when the students aren't there. It sort of can you can focus on your work, you can um, you know, uh, but we do rely on our farm team more. So um, and I guess with that, um, we're also employing students with a farm-based um or a school-based traineeship. Um, so effectively, students who typically wouldn't be exposed to farming or wouldn't be necessarily even know that farming was a career path they could actually take. Um, because these are kids from town, or or maybe they they do live on a farm, but maybe they don't want to um farm on their parents' farm because it's a dairy farm and they did they want a you know a change. Um, but they don't like school. They don't like, you know, the sitting there with a textbook. Um so these students are actually employed by us two days a week. They study assert three in horticulture while they're completing their VCE. Um, and if they're interested, can continue to work with us. Um so we put five um trainees through this program. Um, three of them are still working with us, two of them are still completing it. Um so yeah, offering those opportunities. Those students uh in school holidays are actually still working for us. So it's not like they're going out and see you later. Um, they're still there, it's their job. Um they can take leave like any employee can, but typically it's not sort of um lined up with the summer holidays, especially. So we need them at that time of year.

SPEAKER_08 18:01

Well, on the cucumbers, um, Dan Hunter, the chef at Bray, was sitting in that chair yesterday morning, and his gardener, Joe Lawson, was sitting where you're sitting, Clara, and um they were both lamenting the bad cucumber season. Uh Clara lament uh Joe, sorry, lamented that she wasn't able to grow the cucumbers to her specs, and Dan described them as shit. So I think everyone was facing the same, the same struggles. And yeah, on the on the school garden in the off season, I've uh was often rostered on to water my inner city Melbourne um kids' uh primary school veggie boxes, you know, just wet watering them through the summer. But I think um so often without the the structure that you've developed with Farm High School, these veggie boxes, you know, you've got enthusiastic parents one year and not the next. And um they are so prone to yeah, becoming disused and overgrown and just this some sad legacy of um someone's enthusiasm. So yeah, I mean, it's really uh, I guess, you know, the flip side is something like what you're doing and some of the other fantastic kitchen garden programs, which persist because of embedded policies, um, which is, yeah, it's so yeah, has such wonderful outcomes. Um the fact of that, like this idea of there being no off-season is certainly something that a lot of farmers um and people that work in ag face, and it does definitely have a lot of flow-ons in terms of well-being. Um, Clara, I'd love you to talk about that work that you do, what drew you to it, and uh how it runs today.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah, so um, as I shared in my talk yesterday, the inspiration for real farmer care is both based on my family's farming story and my own personal story. Um, as I shared yesterday, I was born into a family farm tragedy when I was two months old. My uh three and a half-year-old sister drowned on the farm pond. Um, so really uh horrific event that happened right at the beginning of my parents' farming career when they were um subsistent farmers and creating this beautiful farm in the middle of the main woods um in the 1960s and 70s. Um so that sort of you know tore my my family apart and the farm sort of failed at that point uh and lay fallow for about 10 years. Um, and then when I started my own farm in Colorado, um, you know, really struggled with being a mom uh to two boys as I was doing this simultaneously. And uh and just no matter how hard I tried, I really couldn't seem to, you know, escape this constant weight of potential burnout. Um, and so I just, you know, thought to myself, um, you know, I can't be the only one experiencing this. Like this has got to be a common theme. Um, but no one seems to be talking about it. Um, and then it wasn't until I moved after my partner and I separated and I moved back to my family farm in Maine to help my dad run the farm. Because I thought at the time that, oh, I must be missing family support. Like that must be the missing ingredient. Um, and while that was great, uh, it didn't seem to address still this sort of pervasive lack of support and and you know, sort of what are the things that I can do to take care of myself. Um, so it was January 1st of 2020 when I started Real Farmer Care. And it started as a crowdfunded campaign on GoFundMe. Um, and I just reached out to a few farmer friends and I said, share a photo um of yourself and a few sentences about what farmer self-care and well-being means to you. Um, I will send you $100 and then we'll post it on social media and then recommend the next farmer recipient. So, you know, what started off is this tiny little kind of crazy idea has since uh ballooned into 639 farmers later um across 45 US states. Um, and they Have all shared with me photos and what farmer self-care means to them, um, and have applied this $100 self-care award to a self-care activity. Um, and from all their responses, I've sort of seen like there's four categories of farmer self-care. Um, it could be body repair care, is what I call it. So any of the things that you need to do to basically repair your body after all the hard farming work, um, you know, massages, uh physiotherapy, um, chiropractic, all that kind of work, and then body fitness care. So, what are the things you can do? A gym membership, yoga to take care of your body to keep it from breaking down. And then uh mental support care, all the mental health piece. And the last is community support care. So gathering with other farmers, connecting, um, you know, not feeling so isolated. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 22:51

So that's it it's interesting that you start with the question of, you know, what self-care will you do with this $100? Like what sort of resistance do you come up upon? You know, do you have people saying, well, that's that's not relevant to me, give it to someone else?

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah, I mean, it it right now I the demand for this has I I can't keep up with it. So the I fundraise try to fundraise to get enough funds to be able to support uh farmers with the these microgrants. Um, so I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that would be resistant to it, but you know, thankfully they're not trying to ask for it. So um, so again, I'm not trying to change anyone's, you know, individual mind. I'm trying to, for the farmers out there that know that they need this, I'm just trying to offer them the permission to say, yes, you can take care of yourself, and here's a little bit of financial support to do so. So yeah.

SPEAKER_08 23:46

I mean, permission is so powerful to making any change or even that validation that yes, you can have what you want in this space or you can reach for it anyway. Are there any stories of um transformation that you can share? Like how um this permission and taking that time, taking that action has made a difference?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah, I mean, I would say probably one of the primary activities that people do is get a like a therapeutic massage. And how many of the recipients have told me I have always wanted to get a massage? And I've never felt that I could afford it or that I could prioritize it. So, like, how amazing is that? I mean, you know, like to actually receive touch and care, you know, from your body that's been working so hard endless hours. And, you know, it's pretty amazing to hear that.

SPEAKER_08 24:34

Yeah. Um, James, I'd love you to share um just with this well-being thread, like, what are some of the issues in the communities uh that you've worked, you that you work in?

SPEAKER_03 24:44

It's it's funny you say that. And I'm I'm here sort of internally laughing, or not laughing, probably crying. But this morning uh Clara and I were talking about with with uh Sam, if he's in here or he's volunteering, but um he was apologizing for asking Clara a shit question yesterday in in her talk. And we sort of got talking and it's like, what do you do, Sam? He's a farmer from New Zealand, and um and then we'll talk about how undervalued farmers are in in society in general. Um so it's a it's an interesting concept to actually promote self-care um and self-worth when actually I don't feel like the broader community are actually valuing farmers as such. I think that's um it's definitely something that we try and do in farm my school. Um, I think we've probably done this better with our second school Kolak than we have at Bellerine, but making our farmers front and center, um, making Katie like she's the face of farm my school in Kolak. Um and that is a connection, that's a relationship that the the people who are buying the boxes have um with with Katie, with the farm, with who's growing their food. Um, there's other amazing growers right in this room, Tom and Brighty, who um founded Kinsfolk Farm um, you know, many years ago and and grew you know such beautiful produce. And even you know, the farmers market, which actually isn't really prolific in Australia, it needs to be, should be. I don't know why it's not, um, but I guess we don't have that cultural connection with food. Um, so the few people who do shop at farmers markets and go to Tom and Brighty's store to buy, you know, their amazing produce has that connection with their food and that relationship with the people who have grown it. Um, yet because we are reliant on that duopoly in Australia, um, we get everything from there because it's so convenient and it's so fantastic and it's so sterile and artificially lit, and it's just a shit experience. We haven't actually got other than you know, the big billboards up the top of the farmer who's proudly standing in his monoculture broccoli crop going support local or whatever it like that's our that's our connection. So I think society hasn't got a um yeah, relationship with farmers and don't value them because of that. Um so then for for us to go and value ourselves, I think it's a pretty you know I that another one I was I mentioned this one to Clara this morning too. I was in a um a conference in Melbourne a few months ago, and we were talking about um climate, farming and climate and you know things we have to consider to make Melbourne more resilient in in the future. And there was some discussions. I'd invited all these people from from across the sector, um, and there was very few farmers there or very few producers there, um, probably about 5% of the all of the population in this room. And we got broken up into groups and we started talking about, oh, you know, what happens on a hot day? It's a 33 degree d uh 30 to 33 degree day. Um what's you know, how how does the the harvest happen? And these people at the table were like, well, well, they they can't work. It's it's okay and safety. It's simple as that. It's like, okay, yeah, well, how how does like okay, this this farmer has to harvest this day, or they're they can't sell it, it's their you know, their produce spoils, or they need to actually make that that timeline to actually get it. But they can't work in those conditions. It's like so who's gonna harvest it? And it's like, well, that's that's not really, you know. I said, what if it's your son working in in this farm? My son wouldn't work in a farm. Who who's gonna work in the farm? And it's like, well, that that's the people, you know, the people that come in from overseas to do it. And I just said, Really? She's like, Yeah, well, we we import, like we Southeast Asian people come in and they they farm. And I said, You have to be kidding me. Looked at her dead in the eyes and she's like, Well, what do you mean? And I I started to sort of realize that these very well educated people in this room had absolutely no idea how farming actually is. So I think that whole well-being piece is it's it's one thing for us to really value our farmers and and care for them. And you know, it's something we take pride in at farm my school is is paying them above award rates, um, one thing, but also making sure they're working in a really cohesive and great culture to work in. Um, but also shifting the perception in the broader community to value farmers and to see, you know, what they're doing and put their work front and center is something we try to aspire to.

SPEAKER_08 29:37

I I really love the way that you um turn that into a turn your answer was about value. Um, and it's about, of course, you know, um farming is not presented as a viable option in the secondary school system. You rarely just uh heard you rarely hear about the incredible variety of work that is available in agriculture. And yeah, of course, when people don't know where their food is coming from, who grew it, um there's so it's so abstracted for them. Uh it just turns up as um a meal on a plate that perhaps they um eat, you know, perhaps not very mindfully while they're um, you know, scrolling through their phone or whatever it is. Um it is going to be, yeah, really hard to think about a farmer and their well-being. Um yeah, such an interesting way to answer because it wasn't really, I didn't think that's what I was asking you, but I love your you probably weren't, sorry. Um no, I think grounded is such a place of um tangents that I suppose that uh really tap into the multiplicity of ways of looking at something, but also the possibilities of um you know sitting beside one another and and looking at those issues together, um, rather than you know, um getting trapped in these binaries that we so often are uh locked into in our society.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

Um Danny, if I can the this Sam we'll speak into actually even said himself, brought up on a family farm, as a as a kid, he was like, Oh, I'm too academic to be a farmer, went and studied law, and then realized actually, fuck this. I I need to farm. So, you know, that that mindset shift of this and it is it's such like as a farmer, you you're so much, there's so many skill sets, there's so much knowledge required, there's the sciences, there's the maths, there's the it's it's all there if you're a good farmer. Um and I think that's a common like when we go into schools, we often hear that from teachers too. It's like, oh you know, our kids are pretty smart, so they won't become farmers, will they? It's like oh it's that you're that's the perception. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yeah, and I'd also add that I mean I've attended a lot of conferences, and if if it's outside of an agricultural conference, if it's a food-related conference, there are very few farmers that are actually invited to speak and be on panels, which is absolutely ridiculous. Like, why would you exclude the people growing the food when you're actually talking about food and food change? So it it, I mean, this is pervasive across the US, but it's changing slowly, but it needs to be much more.

SPEAKER_08 32:12

Yeah, you would think that when food is all about, I guess in the end, gathering around tables together, that it wouldn't be so disconnected. But I think the way that I first became interested in food systems was when I was asked to speak through my work as like a restaurant critic at a conference of food academics, so dietitians, um, policy advisors uh on nutrition. Um, and they were speaking of themselves as the food world. And I was like, oh, hang on. I thought I was in the food world, i.e., like the food media world or hospitality. And, you know, that's just two silos that didn't even include farmers or agriculture. Um, so you know, it's yeah, I suppose it's great to be at something like this where uh those connect everyone's looking for those connections. And the big question is, you know, it's particularly on this second day of grounded as we all head back out into our world is how do we spread the word? Like what's the the filtering out into the community? Um and I think James, that is something that you do very powerfully at Farm My School. Um, so to try to ask my question again in a way that'll give me the answer that I want, talk about the communities that you work in and some of the pressures that they're under some of the um, yeah, some of the the struggles that the kids have.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for rephrasing that question for me, Danny, because clearly I failed the first time to answer that.

SPEAKER_08 33:32

No, you succeeded in a surprising way.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

Um, so I guess criteria for us to choose, and we we we are planning not to stick with just two schools. We are scaling. Um, we'll be doing our third site next year, dependent on funding. Um, and then from there we aim to be doing a school a year. Um we have criteria for those schools, low socioeconomic community is number one. So we look at the um ICSIA rating of the school, which is a you know formula to basically show what sort of percentile of demographic the the school is. Um so typically we've looked at around you know 40 percentile and below um we would work at that school. Um obviously they need the land size. Um we've looked at you know, a minimum of an acre, ideally, 1.5 acres is the sweet spot for us to be growing in. Um and not every school has that. Um we get that, um, but we wouldn't be working with every school in Australia anyway. So um, and then I guess the receptivity of teachers um to be able to embed it into their curriculum or just a willingness, not even a knowledge. That's fine. If they're willing to, that's that's all we need. These communities, and this is this is becoming more and more prevalent to us, what they're facing. Um, you know, we look and look at the data, we can work with the the local health organizations, the community health organizations or councils to to hear about their communities and what some of the problems are. And I mean, if you look at the the data and the stats in Australia, it's it's alarming. Like it's I think Kolak um 65 over 65% of their diet is is now ultra-processed. Um they have like something absurd, over 50 fast food and pretty crappy restaurant sort of things in in Kolak of a town that's you know not even 25,000 people. Um so when when we delve deeper, we started a program recently at um Bellerine called Farm to Family. Um and this is like our version of food relief. Um, you know, food relief is obviously needed in Australia at the moment, um, but it's not the answer. It's very much a band-aid solution, and it's probably um it's it's providing print like typically ultra-processed foods um or food that's has been discarded from you know the duopoly um to go to these families. So there is a place for it, but it's not the answer for us. We we we're doing this sort of um as a way of trialing a new system where we can actually get funding to fully subsidize these boxes of our beautiful produce. It goes to these families for free who sign up for a 12-week program. And then we also offer these workshops where these families have to come and do at least two cooking workshops and one gardening workshop. So hopefully we're not just giving them fish, we're actually teaching them how to fish. Um, by the end of the 12 weeks, they have a suite of recipes that go with the boxes, meal plans to actually give them a bit of guidance around how they could be planning for their week and using the scraps to make stock and the um, you know, making some pesto from the leaves of some of this stuff that would be actually discarded usually or not even seen on the supermarket shelves. Um and in we we thought to find 25 families at this school, you know, we should be able to do that. We worked with the well-being team, they gave us a list of about 50 families, and we're like, great, like surely, you know, we need to do this with dignity. That was the sort of hard part was actually going, hey, you've been selected to get free, free food and and this program. Um, so we've been really cautious around how we've done it. But then very quickly we had to start crossing the names off the list. One of them um was that the family had recently been kicked out of their house and they were living out of their car. So how how are they going to use this box of veg? This you know, raw, unprocessed food, they'd know where to cook it. Um, so those those sort of stories of these families who um just yeah, you hear about it in the media, but I guess when you're actually face to face with a student who is living that right now, it's it's pretty, it's it's shocking what's happening. So um, yeah, the well-being, like, and we have a number of stories of these impact stories of students engaging with our farms, um, taking knowledge home with them, sharing that with the parents, and actually having, you know, these little tiny gems that are transformative in their homes and everyday lives. Um, you know, I guess the food for us is almost a byproduct. What we're creating, hopefully, is actually far more profound than a you know a delicious carrot.

SPEAKER_08 38:06

Well, tell us one of the good stories.

SPEAKER_03 38:10

Um so I I told this one yesterday, and this was with a study we've been doing with Felice Jacker, who's speaking later with um Dr. Stephen Chen. Um we we've been doing some studies around. So, Felice Jacka, for those of you don't know, she's a leading professor globally on um how your gut health relates to mental health. Um, she heard about us earlier on. She came to one of our events and she said, Hey, I want to study how your soil health is changing, how the soil health is impacting the nutrient density of the food, how the nutrient density of the food is basically feeding and transforming the gut microbiome, and then how that is um you know affecting students' um well-being, mental health, uh, and their engagement into education. And we thought, great, well, we weaves always thought eating eating you know, veg was good, but let's let's go that step. So we had um 15 students from Bellerine Secondary College, um, a part of this study. We had 15 students from Geelong High School as a similar low socioeconomic school. Um, so very similar demographic and cohorts of students. Um the students from Geelong High weren't eating the produce from the farm and they weren't engaging with our farm. Our students were engaging at least an hour a week with the farm and our farm team and taking home veggie boxes weekly and eating it with their family. They were also cooking, like doing cooking workshops at lunchtime with our team. So we noticed very quickly a change in these students. Um we were doing hair follicle testings, skin swabs, and um fecal tests of these students um over the sort of 12 weeks. Um their gut microbiome changed within two weeks. Um, their mental health or their physical appearance in terms of connection to teachers and engagement and um well-being shifted within about three to four weeks, so much so that teachers were coming up to us saying, What the fuck have you done with these kids? Um we yeah, I think for us seeing like after lunch their engagement levels, like where they usually have that slump um from the shitty food sold at canteens, um, was was a really obvious thing. But obviously, then that you know feeds into how they're going with school and their concentration levels and their um their obtainment with all the content. Um, but yeah, some of the stories coming out of that one student who I didn't realise at the time, but she was a year eight student who came out on the engagement day to the farm, and she was like, I'm not touching the dirt, I'm allergic to dirt. And it's like, okay, well, luckily we've got soil here, not dirt. She didn't think that was funny. Um she actually elected to do the farm my school elective in year 10. Um, don't know what changed in that time, but she was a student who had um diagnosed depression, anxiety, eating disorders. Um, she was uh Terence. She had thank you. Thank you, Kate. Um, you heard this story yesterday. Um she was a classic case of that um eco anxious, like had just so much, just was holding a heap. Um so she she enrolled not only in the Farm My School elective, but then she enrolled to do this study as well. And she was from her uh single mum cleaner who just worked like she was a really hard worker and a beautiful soul. Um she came up to me at this event. I didn't know who it was. She came up and said, What have you done with my daughter? And I was like, sorry, I she's like, She's she's a part of this study. That's you know, pointed her out. And I was like, Oh, how's she going? She's like, I don't, I don't recognize her. We're we're we have got a relationship like we've never had before. We're cooking together, you know, we're cooking those recipes you've been giving her at school, where like we're getting along, we're not arguing. And her Tourette's like she's she's not having ticks. Like she she has ticks like regularly. Now she's not. She's she's had like yesterday she had like two or three ticks in the whole day. So we're we've gone from just being a farm in a school and employing a farm team and you know, whatever else, helping the teachers to engage into their curriculum. But we're doing far more than just growing food in a school. Like this is transforming families and and kids and relationships.

SPEAKER_09 42:37

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 42:41

Incredible impact. We will come to questions shortly, but Clara, I wanted to come back to you and just you know Can I add a quick little story?

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Please. Um, so I it's funny you should say that. Or I mean it's a beautiful story, but I I grew up with my dad saying, I don't need drugs, I'm high on life, which as you can imagine is quite an you know, if you're a teenager and you hear your dad say that, you're like, okay, what are you on? Because who says that? Um, but what's interesting about him saying that, and then I've learned since, is that there are many studies that show that the soil microbes, if you inhale them, they actually elevate your mood. Um, so I just think about all the years that he's been having his hands in the soil and compost and you know, inhaling all of essentially this mood-elevating microbes, um, not to mention all the amazing food, you know, that he's been eating too. So so it just shows like being surrounded in this natural world, you know, yes, of course it's going to help your mental health and well being. So yeah.

SPEAKER_08 43:46

Well, I was gonna ask you if you had any reflections on that, that side of um growing food and the impacts that it can have. But I, you know, I'd love to know if you've got any reflections on whether it's generational farms you're working with, your father, or this idea, you know, people who have Are under socioeconomic pressures, how food or farming can um come into their life and and have an impact. Uh is there anything you can reflect on from your experiences?

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Um yeah, I mean, you know, I I usually like to come back to also flavor because I think that's one of the fastest ways to help a person understand the difference, um, especially kids. Um, so we, you know, grow these winter carrots that have been named candy carrots because when you grow them and store them through the winter months in the ground, the starches convert to sugar. So they get exceptionally sweet and they're so good that you know any kid that tries them, they're just like more, more, you know, and so we're always having kids coming to the winter farmer's market clamoring for these carrots, um, which is an amazing thing, right? I mean, we want our kids to eat eat vegetables and eat good food. And if the flavor is encouraging that and flavor is coming from the health of the soil, then yes, of course, you know, that is a beautiful thing.

unknown 45:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

Can I can I jump in with another story? Another student story. Um, the first year we just built the farm at Bellerine and we did this over a 24-hour period, um, which I can go into and if anyone's coming on the tour tomorrow, I'll tell you the whole story. Um, but the the principal's like, oh, we want to get the year seven and eights. They're there from a different campus, um, just up the road, 10 minutes away. We want to get them engaged with the farm. What can you do? I was like, oh, great. How many students? He's like, 170. I was like, right, over a day. Okay. So I said, no, fine, leave it with me. We'll make it happen. So I set up this rotation of um five different activities through the day. Um, I think those only ended up being 120 students, so it sort of worked out nicely. And um I said, right, first ones that they're they're going to be cardboarding and mulching pathways, which, you know, that that's a bit of a bit of hard work, good. Next ones, we'll get them propagating seeds, so they'll be in the nursery doing some propagation. And I wanted to have this whole sort of five activities as like the whole food system. And so the last activity was cooking. Um, and we didn't obviously have any produce then because it was literally only a month from our event. Um, so I got produce from all other local growers. It was like all local produce. We had beautiful spuds from a biodynamic farm up the road, Kajarina farm. Um, and then we had like all the trimmings, like all the, we made like a raw beetroot pickle and we made um some other beetroot leaves with the carrot tops and um like this uh Warrigal greens as well, bit of garlic, bit of olive oil, local olive oil. Um so we had this this whole lunch, five different elements to this lunch, um, with each group making an element. And the end of the day was a big room of you know, year sevens and eights sitting together uh enjoying the lunch. That was the plan. And I was like, so I need at least two teachers on each rotation, plus I'll have a staff member on each one so they can be facilitating the teachers of there purely for you know just the crowd control. Um, but for the cooking, I want food tech teachers to help. That was fine. Got my got to meet the food tech teachers the day before, and they're like, so these recipes not gonna work. I was like, oh, how come? Like, it's all veg. I'm like, yeah, there's there's cheese, there's local cheese. They're like, no, no, no, you need protein, you need meat. This that the kids will not eat this. I was like, oh, okay, it's yeah, let's I reckon we just give it a go, hey. And they're like, no, we're not doing it. We're we're this is this is gonna be shit. We're we're gonna be in the classroom for the whole day doing this.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

And I just looked at the principal and said, Wayne, and he's like, James, he's done this before, trust him. And the teachers are like, huh?

SPEAKER_03 47:45

So sure enough, the teachers had to do it. We had I I got the produce in there this morning, uh, that morning, and I was like, really, sort of just like, yeah, so check out these potatoes, and went through it all with them, and they're so just pissed. They were just had the shits. One of the teachers came up to me at lunchtime, and literally I walked into the room, and there's kids sort of lining up, and it's a spread of these perfectly baked potatoes with like you could see the salt on top, the the local salt which was pumped out of Angle C um and made in in North Geelong, and the rosemary picks from the the school garden, and it just looked a treat. Like we're talking, you know, Dan and Joe were here from Bray yesterday. This could have been from Bray. Um, and next to it, like it was the rainbow, the bowl of the beetroot pickle, and then like the rainbow chard, sort of like just um what else there was that's the flaw, there was it just looked amazing. And the kids were lining up, and literally it got to the end, and there was only the only thing that was left was a bowl of potatoes that we'd we'd done like double potatoes, everything else was gone. And the teacher came up to me and said, Um, firstly, that was the most amazing produce that I've ever seen. Where did you get it from? I was like, all locals. Um, and then she said, I'm I'm really sorry. Um, I didn't think that was gonna work. And I said, I'm glad it did. But it was, I mean, giving these students the opportunity to actually cook with this food and then seeing their response of, oh my god, it's so flavors. My kids coming up for more of this, you know, green stuff, which kids don't eat green stuff, um, but they were lapping it up, and the teachers just standing there serving it, going, Oh my god, it's yeah, it's flavor speaks for itself.

SPEAKER_08 49:34

Well, yeah, definitely the the doing, not the telling is where the transformation happens. We've got about 10 minutes for questions. Meg's got a microphone or come around to you. We'll start at the back, Meg. We'll try to keep the questions short because we've got a lot. So let's keep the answers punchy as well.

SPEAKER_04 50:00

Um, thanks, guys. Uh, Georgia from Northwest New South Wales. Um, I think it was your second criteria, James, on when you identify a school to work with was land size. Do you guys have a plan to work in urban spaces where that land size might be even more restricted, or is that sort of down the track?

SPEAKER_03 50:18

Yep. So school number three is going to be in a Geelong. Um, so we're working with um metros. We want to show that we can do it with metro schools. I think we've got to sort of change our perception of a school ground and actually, oh, there's a footy oval on a soccer pitch and whatever else, because a lot of schools aren't actually using their soccer pitches or ovals anymore because council over the road have these amazing sporting facilities. The school doesn't have to maintain their ovals, um, and you know, that's that's sort of their saving money. Um, so they're using these grounds. Um, so if we can actually shift our perception of, oh, we need the footy oval, um, do we? Could we could I'd like I don't want to discourage sport, but we could actually be using you know alternative bits of land. And the good thing is about school land too is we don't need to go to council for approval to actually change the zoning to agricultural to blah blah blah, because we'll be 10 years away from even thinking about starting, let alone you know, so it's yeah, absolutely urban tick.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Um from Palmet Forward. Um yeah, just uh to yeah, to to back onto that. Um in the Blue Mountains, we we do grow in a peri-urban environment within a high school public high school. So yes, it can be done. And also by mobilizing unused private land around the school. So um engaging the community uh around the school. So a lot of a lot of families have um, I mean, peri-urban rather than suburban environments, but maybe also applicable to suburban environments. Um sometimes there's a big, yeah, exactly, a big um oval that doesn't get used because the aquatic center is just down the road. And um yeah, so yes, our grow tunnel is actually on top of one of those. It's um an oval that wasn't being used um next to the tenants' courts at at the public high school. But it there's also a potential there's usually private landowners around that are engaged somehow in the public school, maybe, and just mobilizing that unused land around the school down the front here and there, right?

SPEAKER_06 52:38

Um big fan, Clara, yeah, big fans. Um but I have a hard question. Is farming viable? Um I know that four season farm definitely is viable, it's been there for so long. Um, but yeah, is it viable? And it seems to be more viable in North America and Canada than in Australia. So context is everything. Um, so if you could reflect on how you make it viable, you and your family, um, and a very specific question: what is your beauty your largest expense on the farm?

SPEAKER_00 53:19

Um, great question. Uh so I would start by answering, I think it depends on how you define viable. Because uh while Four Season Farm is viable, um the the viability is not necessarily based on just selling vegetables. Like the the product and what we can sell as vegetables is keeping things running, but not necessarily creating savings or extra capital to to build out things. So, you know, the way my dad has approached that is he's written books, he's consulted, um, he's done public speaking. So there, these are sort of all additional revenue streams that have allowed, you know, the farm to grow in the ways it has. Um and and the biggest expense has always been labor. Um, you know, when I was running the whole farm operation, I wasn't actually taking a salary. Um, I, you know, was doing some consulting. And so essentially, like my the work I had outside of the farm was subsidizing the farm. Um, we don't often talk about this, but I think it's so prevalent. And and it's interesting that we want to hide that because any entrepreneur entrepreneur knows that you have to be scrappy and do all these different things to make a business work. So it is really interesting that we're like hyper focused on like if you're not making the money specifically from the veggies or the the meat or whatever, you're not successful or you're not viable. Um and yeah, so I I would say that you know, you have to be creative. And you know, whether it's it's right or not is sort of the big question. Um, but it seems to be how we're making it work. Um, people don't, you know, we're not, we don't charge enough for food, right? But we don't want to charge so much that then it's not accessible. So we're really caught in a bind. Yeah. Good question.

SPEAKER_08 55:24

Well, I was just gonna say it really circles back to the start of the conversation where if someone's doing if someone's hustling off farm and um then they're wondering about when they've got time to get a massage. I mean, the all these issues just cycle back on one another, don't they? Over to you, James.

SPEAKER_03 55:39

Yeah, I was just gonna say also further to that, I think the current situation that we're in, people are going to start looking to alternatives. I think all of a sudden, when our you know artificial and big ag and supermarket sort of prices are inflated dramatically, um, and probably not immediately, but in the next sort of three to four or five months, um, due to fuel cost, due to artificial fertilizers, uh yet Clara's prices probably won't increase and other local prices won't increase, and and all of a sudden that little local food system of a few growers here and there. And if we're supporting each other, and as as Manu pointed out as well, this isn't just about one organization, one farmer changing the world. It's working together. Um, you know, when we can't grow in in winter, we're buying in from other producers to put in our box to promote them to say, hey, you know, get your potatoes from from Kajarina Farm, or you know, it might be get your greens from wild greens um or um sorry, wildfields. Um it's like there's there's so many growers doing amazing things, but struggling because people haven't valued it. So when we start to shift that perspective and go, well, what's the alternative to these supermarkets? That's when I think it will be valuable and viable as well. So yeah, I think it's a very interesting time um and exciting time as well.

SPEAKER_08 57:03

I feel like we've got time for one more question.

SPEAKER_07 57:05

Oh, okay, Timo. Yes. Oh, lucky me. Thank you very much for your presentation. I want to go back to James when you were saying about being in the room with um a lot of city-centric people who do a lot of the planning on behalf of agriculture, making a lot of the decisions. Um, just an additional challenge to me is they're all on their good salaries and they're asking farmers to come in and volunteer their expertise and volunteer their time.

SPEAKER_02 57:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 57:32

And um, I really I think two things. We need far more farmers in those rooms, but we also need them acknowledged for that. How's that gonna unroll?

SPEAKER_03 57:42

Yeah, so whenever we we've recently got a decent grant through VicHelp, um it where it's to create a sustainable food network uh on the Bellarine Peninsula, um, bringing in local growers to almost create a peak body of producers so we can actually keep local produce on the Bellarine and feed Bellarine people. Um in that grant, we specifically wrote, well, we want to subsidize these people. We want to invite them in, but we want to actually pay for their time to be there. Um, not just to in kind give us all your knowledge and then you know, see you later. Um with this this template from all your knowledge. Um, we want them to be part of that journey and actually, yeah, be rewarded for it. And um their time is valuable. It's um as Clara said, it's the most um it's the biggest expense when you're when you're farming is is labor. And if they're taking a day out of their time to to be there or you know, 10 days, whatever it is, that's a big sort of you know, piece out of their pie.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

So um it has to be um yeah pay for.

SPEAKER_05 58:47

Hi James, um Nat's from um Blampede. Um we're from we've got a regenerative farm, beef and pork, and we've been running it for like 12 years. We've got a commercial kitchen, class two. We work a bit with Wesley College, uh Cloons, year nine. We're set up so that schools can come to us, but we struggle to find a pathway to find those schools to come to us. Um, do you know of any avenue that we could tap into to get more schools involved? Because it's, you know, with the beef and the pork, it's a bit hard to, I guess, have that set up on a school ground.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, maybe we chat after. I've got a few ideas around that. Um definitely a few networks who can who can promote what you're doing. Yep.

SPEAKER_08 59:37

Thank you. Wow, what a good short question and a great short answer to wrap it up. Will you join me in thanking Clara and James?