- Author: Deborah Schnur
For the first time in three years, the California Agriculture in the Classroom Conference was held in-person this past September. Ventura County, with its rich agricultural heritage, was the perfect location for the conference to make its comeback. Growing up on the beaches of Long Island, New York, I was excited to attend the conference and spend some time by the shore. The conference agenda was filled with opportunities to learn and network through tours, presentations, exhibits, workshops, and discussions. Best of all, I returned home with three full bags of materials to use for school and environmental education.
Pre-Conference Tour and Reception
My second favorite part of the tour was walking through Air Force One and seeing how it was used during Reagan's time. The plane was retired after Reagan left office and moved to the site of the Library, where the building was constructed around it. The Air Force One Pavilion also houses vehicles from the presidential motorcade.
After the tour, I returned to the hotel for conference registration and a reception with Maureen McGuire,CEO of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County. I also took some time to network with exhibitors including the California Farm Bureau, California Women for Agriculture,Ventura County Farm to School, Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture (SEEAG), and the Ventura County Agricultural Museum.
Opening Session
The last speaker was Christine Birdsong, the Undersecretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, who emphasized the importance of agricultural literacy for students and teachers. Because California has about 24 million acres of agricultural land and $20 billion in agricultural exports, the state's economic health is closely tied to agriculture. Agriculture is a growing career field that increasingly relies on technology, and a diverse group of young farmers is needed to replace those who are retiring.
Workshops
The opening session was followed by two workshop sessions. The first workshop I attended was “Youth Can Run a School Garden Program”, presented by Abbi Mars of UC CalFresh Healthy Living and students from Arthur Hapgood Elementary in Lompoc. I was inspired to hear how fifth and sixth grade students run all aspects of the school garden and teach younger students about gardening and nutrition. The student leaders rotate through different teams to learn about composting, fruit tree care, hydroponics, harvesting, and teaching. At the end of the workshop, the students gave a demonstration of the “Pest or Pal?” lesson from the CalFresh TWIGS (Teams with Intergenerational Support) curriculum.
My second workshop was “Bringing Gardening into the Classroom”, led by Veronica VanCleave-Hunt of CalFresh Healthy Living. She and her colleague presented three TWIGS garden lessons that can be taught in the classroom without a garden. The first lesson was “Seed Magic” where students dissect a seed and identify the parts. The workshop attendees received lima bean seeds that had been soaked in water and were instructed to remove the seed coat and identify the leaves, root, and cotyledon (food source). Who knew a simple seed could be so interesting?
The second lesson was “Soil” where we used our senses to observe the soil components of sand, silt, and clay. Then we learned how to conduct a soil test by mixing a soil sample with water in a jar and watching the layers separate. The final lesson was “Eat Your Plants” about how food can come from all plant parts: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. The workshop instructors passed around bags, and the attendees tried to identify the fruit or vegetable inside and the plant part.
After the workshops, we were treated to a hearty lunch and an engaging talk from Coach Kiah Twisselman Burchett, “Grow Through It: Blooming Through Hardship”. Coach Kiah is a cattle rancher turned motivational speaker who shares her triumphs and struggles with body image and weight loss to empower others to find joy in life.
Field Trips and Taste of California Dinner
The day ended with the Taste of California at the Ventura County Agriculture Museum in Santa Paula. Each of the 13 tables was decorated according to a theme by a host organization. Hosts ranged from the Santa Paula High School Ag Department to the California Farmland Trust. I opted for the “CA Central Coast Cornucopia of Freshness” table hosted by the California Women for Agriculture, Ventura County. After a welcome from Shannon Douglass of the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, Coach Kiah took the reins as the emcee for some table games. At the end of the night, I filled a bag with take-home gifts of seeds, citrus, trail mix, and local Blue Ridge honey from my table host.
Closing Sessions
After the panel were the Make ‘n Takes, 20-minute activities to share with students. During the Beads and Books session, I made a daisy beaded bookmark from natural materials. From the Orange You Glad We Have Farmland? session, I learned the percentage of land available to grow food for the world–only 3 percent! The MyPlate Nutrition activity demonstrated ways to introduce the five food groups to students and help them list foods in each group.
I was sad to see the California Ag in the Classroom Conference come to an end but happy to spend a few hours on the beach before heading home. Next year, I look forward to attending the state conference again and maybe even the national conference in Orlando! If you're involved in agriculture education, I highly recommend checking out the resources that Ag in the Clasroom offers at https://learnaboutag.org and https://agclassroom.org.
Have you enjoyed reading this blog? Do you have questions? Need help with school gardens or environmental education? If so, send an email to dschnur@ucanr.edu. I look forward to hearing from you.
- Author: Margaret J O'Neill
School and Community Garden Collaborative Quarterly Workshop was on the 17th and it was great! Did you miss it? Check out the recordings here:
Full workshop link: https://youtu.be/lhAb1Q5LF40
Building your Soil presentation: https://youtu.be/YKq-pV_ppY8
FIG (Friendly Inclusive Gardening) presentation with Stephen Cantu: https://youtu.be/3NjLW07X_qs
Seed Library in Every Community Short Introduction (Check this one out if you want to see a new program we are offering to the public, and email me if you want to be involved!): https://youtu.be/8drCIzytibM
Join us for this quarters School and Community Garden Collaborative Workshop! We are getting into our second year hosting this collaborative here in San Bernardino County and it's been great to watch it grow! There are many people throughout our large county working on school and community gardens and we wanted a way to bring them together to discuss ideas, brainstorm challenges and share success. Over the last year we have featured some amazing school garden projects and highlighted some really innovative community gardens.
This quarters workshop will feature a UCCE Master Gardener from San Diego, Stephen Cantu, who has done some amazing work in the area of accessible gardening for all. After living for many years with a mobility limiting injury, he developed what he calls the FIG program, or Friendly, Inclusive Gardening Program. Research has shown that access to gardening is so important for physical, emotional, and mental health. We want everyone to have access to gardening and Stephen Cantu will join us to talk about how to make that happen!
Our Master Gardeners will be rolling out our “Seed Library in Every Community” project to support schools and community gardens who want to start a seed library for their students and community members. In addition to just having a supply of seeds at your site we will also teach the community all about seed harvesting, cleaning, storing, and seed starting.
We will also be hearing from one of our partners and supporters, including IERCD (Inland Empire Resource Conservation District) about all the great things they are doing in the community. Save the date for our next workshop on Jan 21st! Register below! It is open to all whether currently involved in a school or community garden or just interested in perhaps doing so! Also feel free to join and share upcoming events and activities at your community or school garden!
https://vms-mg.ucanr.edu/calendar/cal_view_event.cfm?caleventnum=538976&mgcat=
- Author: Margaret J O'Neill
This month's UCCE San Bernardino County Master Gardener Spotlight is on volunteer Carolyn Paul. Since I first met Carolyn, when she went through the program in 2019, it was clear that she looked at gardening and all its benefits with a holistic view. She sees the beauty in the flowers and trees, but doesn't forget that actually interacting with the garden is half the fun and benefit of gardening! When Master Gardeners were starting the compost project at the Root 66 Garden in Rancho Cucamonga (read here to learn more about that great project https://ucanr.edu/b/~B3D) Carolyn jumped right in to help get that project started by helping to build the boxes, turning the compost and more! She has also worked extensively with both our School and Community Garden committees, helping to organize the outreach and support that the Master Gardeners provide to the public so that youth, adults, and families can all maximize the benefits of gardening. Carolyn's insight on how to connect the Master Gardeners to the community has been an invaluable contribution to our program and San Bernardino County as a whole. She gardens with heart, and takes the time to share that enthusiasm, imparting her wisdom on the benefits of gardening with the community every chance she gets. To hear more about her love of gardening and her thoughts on the benefits of gardening, read more from Carolyn in her own words below.
-Maggie O'Neill, UCCE San Bernardino County Master Gardener Coordinator
Why did you decide to be a MG? I grew up gardening with my parents and grandparents. And when I started my own family, we all have gardened together. So, gardening for me has been a social experience, one filled with fond memories. So in wanting to volunteer, I thought that Master Gardeners would provide a similar social environment where we could all enjoy one another's company and learn from it!
What are your gardening passions? For many years I've grown flowers of all colors and fragrances. Thanks to Master Gardeners, however, I've expanded my love of colors and fragrances in my yards to drought tolerant plants. So now both of our yards have Grevilleas, Lions' Tails, white Lantana, Fairy Dusters, and Hot Lip Sage. They need much less water to stay green and bloom than my flowers.
What do you think gardening gives back to our community and why do you think it's important for overall community health? I think that gardening has the potential to benefit everyone! As individuals we can gain a sense of well-being and accomplishment from it, as well as take advantage of the exercise that it offers. Since we heavily rely upon many technologies in our daily lives, it can be helpful to get outdoors and see how good that connecting with nature can make us feel, physically and psychologically. And gardening can bring people together in a number of positive ways. It can lead to neighbors sharing cuttings and other items from their yards. Most importantly our Master Gardener classes and events
not only provide information to the communities that we serve, but they can also facilitate new friendships and partnerships along the way.
Do you have any tips for the community about conserving water in the drought? Since being a Master Garderner, I've come to better understand the need for water conversation and how my family and I can contribute to it in caring for our yards. We have replaced some of our older, water-thirsty plants with drought tolerant ones. We've mulched wherever we could. And we now have the front and back yards on a watering schedule. On June 1st our local water district required that our city start mandated water rationing. Watering outside is now confined to one day a week for sprinkler watering above ground. Underground watering systems and hand watering are not confined to a specific number of days, but each residence and business has been given a monthly table to follow based upon our previous 2020 total water usage. For each month, we are allotted a portion of this past usage for both indoor and outdoor watering. This has not been easy, since we had to make changes in our use of water inside the house to make certain that we have sufficient water for all our trees and plants. We also removed our pool in order to balance our indoor and outdoor water needs, and to manage the increasing cost of our water.
What is a tidbit or two you've learned as a MG that the public reading our newsletter could gain from? I've learned many, many things from the Master Gardener program. But what stands out the most for me is becoming serious about the close connection our gardening habits have with the climate changes that we are now living with, coupled with the need to be flexible and creative in how we care and nurture our landscape that is threatened by these serious changes. Master Gardeners are important in educating our local communities on how to adapt to climate changes in positive, optimistic ways.
What advice would you give someone considering becoming a UCCE MG? During one of my MG training meetings, I won a copy of the book Biophilia written by Edward O. Wilson! It was enriching to read and confirmed my decision to join Master Gardeners, so I would briefly talk about its message with anyone thinking about being a Master Gardener, since it describes our human bond with other living things, which can easily be ignored: “………to the degree that we come to understand other organisms, we will place a greater value on them, and on ourselves.” (Prologue, Biophilia (1984).
- Author: Deborah Schnur
FoodCorps has held a special place in my heart ever since I served as a FoodCorps service member at Phelan Elementary during the 2019-2020 school year. It was hard work and also immensely rewarding to connect kids with healthy food and share the joy of gardening. I loved seeing the smiles on students' faces when they harvested their first tomato from the school garden and tasted their first “rainbow” smoothie.
FoodCorps' Work
FoodCorps' mission is to “partner with schools and communities to nourish kids' health, education, and sense of belonging.” Their vision is that “every child, in every school, experiences the joy and power of food”. As a member of the AmeriCorps network, FordCorps provides leadership and educational opportunities for service members in limited-resource communities. In addition, FoodCorps advocates for policy change to promote equity and sustainability in the school food environment.
The Service Member's Role
Service members must complete at least 1700 service hours during an 11-month term. They are paid a living stipend and receive a Segal Education Award after successfully completing their term. Those who serve in California also receive a California for All Education Award.
FoodCorps service members focus on three main areas of impact: leading hands-on lessons, influencing nourishing school meals, and building a schoolwide culture of health. In the first area, they teach students to grow, prepare, and taste new foods with interactive lessons linked to academic standards. To influence school meals, service members conduct taste tests, promote healthy food choices in the cafeteria, and work with school district administrators and staff to add local foods to school meals. To build a culture of health, service members collaborate with the entire school community–including teachers, administrators, and families–to plan activities such as family cooking nights and garden work days.
Master Gardeners Help with Garden Training
FoodCorps service members start the school year with a wide range of gardening and farming experience. Some have majored in agriculture, and others have grown only houseplants. Most are expected to start or maintain gardens at the schools where they serve.
To provide their service members with a basic level of gardening know-how, FoodCorps site supervisors in Los Angeles (Rachel Black), Upland (Cassidy Furnari), and San Diego (Janelle Manzano) planned a joint garden training class. Cassidy, the Upland Unified School District (UUSD) Farm to School Manager, asked the San Bernardino County Master Gardeners to help deliver the training at Baldy View Elementary, which has an extensive vegetable garden, native plant garden, and orchard. Maggie O'Neill, the Master Gardener Coordinator, and I were excited to accept the challenge and prepare for the class.
For the next half-hour, I led a hands-on demonstration of how to teach composting to students. I asked the service members to line up and add greens (food waste) to the compost bins followed by browns (mulch). Then everyone took turns watering the compost piles and turning them with shovels. That's all there was to it! To continue the decomposition process, compost needs to be watered and turned on a regular basis. For reference, I gave the service members copies of a composting resource sheet and my favorite compost guide from LA Compost.
After the training, the FoodCorps service members, site supervisors, and Master Gardeners gathered for a healthy lunch including figs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash harvested from the Upland school gardens. A fitting end to a productive day! I hope this experience inspires some of the service members to become Master Gardeners in the future.
Meet the Upland USD FoodCorps Service Members
Valerie Tu has returned for a second year with FoodCorps after spending a year as a Fullbright Scholar and English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan. She is teaching at Baldy View Elementary and Citrus Elementary. During her first year at UUSD in 2020-2021, Valerie's interaction with the students was entirely virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Valerie graduated from the New York University Gallitin School of Individualized Study with a Bachelor of Arts, concentrating on the politics of food. While studying at NYU, she also worked as a farm operations intern, a resident assistant, and a culinary intern at the Museum of Food and Drink among other activities.
FoodCorps' Impact
I am so grateful to Valerie, Meagan, and all the FoodCorps service members who devote a year or more to promoting food justice in schools and communities across the county. Last school year, FoodCorps service members taught 15,000 lessons, led 6,000 food tastings, and supported over 350 gardens nationwide. In four Upland schools, approximately 1,400 students received biweekly FoodCorps programming, and nearly 2,000 students participated in lunchtime activities and engagement during the school year. Through these types of hands-on learning activities, service members will help FoodCorps reach its goal for every child to have access to food education and nourishing food in school by 2030.
Have you enjoyed reading this blog? Do you have questions? Need help with school gardens or environmental education? If so, send an email to dschnur@ucanr.edu. I look forward to hearing from you.
- Author: Margaret J O'Neill
Emy joined our UCCE San Bernardino County Master Gardener team during our first online training ever in 2020. She jumped right in and was excited to learn all about gardening and to share her passion for gardening with her peers. As we got to know each other online during class it was clear that she had a connection to gardening that went beyond just the horticultural aspects to include how gardening can change our lives and the connections we can have with our family and loved ones through the plants they grew. When pandemic restrictions began to lift, and we were able to work more directly with the community, Emy was able to get out to the community as a newly certified Master Gardener and stated seeing what the possibilities were in her new role. We always hope, as community members join our Master Gardener team and become volunteers, that they connect us to needs and opportunities that they are aware of in their community and Emy did just that. Right away she saw how the program could support some organizations she has worked with in the past and brought in fellow volunteers to get some gardening going. Our volunteers are an invaluable resource for knowing the needs of their own communities so that we can go where we are needed. Many of our outreach activities also include our Master Food Preservers and Emy was excited to learn more about that program too. She loved how Master Gardeners helped people grow their own food, and Master Food Preservers helped them to preserve it safely. Her and her husband are now enrolled in the Master Food Preserver program so that they can have an even greater impact on their community through education and sharing of resources on gardening and safe food preservation. Emy's soft spoken determination to improve the lives of her community members, both physically and emotionally, makes her a wonderful Master Gardener (and human!). She gardens with a heart and shares that heart with all she comes in contact with. Encouraging people to try it themselves and providing them with the information they need to be successful. All those who come in contact with Emy know that if they have any questions or need any support that Emy and her fellow Mater Gardeners are here to help!
Why did you decide to be a MG?
When I was working at the AAA Speedway in Fontana, every time we had an event, I'd always tell the caterers to give me the produce that they were about to throw away. One day, they finally asked me why and I told them, "It's because I have worms!" After seeing the shocked look on their faces, my boss and I laughed, and she told them that I have composting worms. Then one of them said that she was a Master Gardener, told me about the program as I had never heard about it before. We exchanged numbers and emails, but it wasn't until I was taking an EFNEP Class through our granddaughter's school and the teacher mentioned the Master Gardener Program that I really thought about it again. Excited to find out that was available in our area, I signed up!
What are your gardening passions?
We'll, as I previously mentioned, I'm NUTS about our worms! I treat them as our babies! We've given them out to many friends and relatives as birthday and Christmas gifts! My first workday as a Master Gardener was at Kimbark Elementary School in Devore. Cass Henderson and I were digging out the old soil from one of the raised beds. I told her not to think I'm crazy if I stop to save a worm! We came across a few…all digging had to stop so I could pick the worm up to place it safely away from our shovels! I also LOVE fruit trees, any edible plants and anything related to gardening! I'm not allowed to
go to Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco or Sam's Club by myself, just in case I go crazy buying everything. I justify it by saying that it was on sale!
What do you think gardening gives back to our community and why do you think it's important for overall community health?
Interning a few months at Sarvodaya Farms, an organic teaching farm in Pomona changed my life! It helped me to see that gardening is healing, not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually! Not to mention the joy it brings to be able to share your bounty with family, friends, and others. The food that comes from the garden tastes SO MUCH BETTER than store bought! I feel it's important to teach everyone, both young and old alike, the importance of growing your own food, especially through a time such as what's happening now.
Do you have any tips for the community about conserving water in the drought?
Mulch, mulch, mulch. And did I mention mulch? We actually use hay from our friends' goat ranch, so it also contains goat poo here and there. It doesn't smell and our plants and trees love it. And best of all, it's free!
What is a tidbit or two you've learned as a MG that the public reading our newsletter could gain from?
I love how it has upcoming events and Zoom Classes. The newsletter's free! It's great that it has tips that are pertinent for issues happening right now, being more mindful about your plants and trees during this drought, how deal with pests and what might one do to have a more successful garden.There's SO MUCH VALUABLE information that one can learn, but unfortunately, many people nowadays just want to get their information from social media or other platforms that they could just watch online through their TVs, pads, computers or phones, not knowing about our the great resources Master Gardeners provide.
What advice would you give someone considering becoming a UCCE MG?
Do it! Not only for yourself, but how you can help teach your family, friends, neighbors, and others! When we help each other, we too also get blessed!