Growing Food for the Hungry: Farm to Food Bank Cover Crops

0:07 It's a project that Trey and I came up with I don't know several months ago. We were talking about cover crops and how important they were and what the goals were. Trey said I wonder if we could put some vegetables in there and do some things, and that kind of got the wheels going. We and Keith had sent me some squash earlier the year before that we put in some cover crops, and that developed into a thought process of what we might could do that would be important other than just us.

0:48 I'm all that trait off a little bit about the progress. So I'm with the conservation districts. I'm state president Oklahoma this year, and we think this is one of the best partnership programs that we've ever been involved with.

1:07 So true, thanks Jimmy. I'm executive director of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission, which is the state agency, also farm and ranch, and have been a Conservation District director. But basically in Oklahoma we have one saying, and that is that Jimmy said it'll work, so anything to his soil health or cover.

1:24 Crops Jimmy said it'll work so we do it. And Jimmy had been doing a lot of things before anyone else. He was an early adapter and he brought the idea of the chaos garden and the idea of putting vegetables in it to Oklahoma. So we thought well, is it possible to feed the hungry out of that same program we're already going to plant the cover crop? It's going to be out there. Well, there are vegetables that can be substituted for other species in your cover crop. Okra will have the same function as say a sunflower in breaking down into the soil. You know, you're already planting radishes, you can throw some turnips in there. We can throw some melons. Those vining plants have the ability to really put a lot of cover on the ground. You know, we know the old Three Sisters of corn and beans and squash that our Native Americans used. You know, now we know the biology. Now we know the ability to deliver nutrients to those other plants. So we got together a group of folks to be partners in this. The Food Bank of Oklahoma both the.

2:33 Western and eastern part of the state. NRCS, our conservation districts, their association, the Commission, and green cover seed—and we sat down and we brought in some other agencies because we asked the question of FSA and RMA: well, what happens if we plant vegetables on our cover crops? And they're like, well, you can't do that. Well, you can do it if you're going to give it away, and that's what our thought was—we're going to give this produce to the food bank.

3:06 So we work through logistics of that, talked about base acres, talked about insurance, and a lot of other things. And that's key if you're going to do this program—make sure everybody's on the same page because we certainly don't want to get anybody in trouble at their local FSA office from a misunderstanding or on their crop insurance. Right, so if you've got a full base acres on your farm—80 acres of base on an 80-acre farm—you can't do it. But everybody has, well, at least most people aren't fully covered on their base. But check into that before you try it.

3:44 So we, Jimmy started out, we set up a

3:47 Pilot program green cover donated the seed and we planted four pilot farms in Oklahoma from an acre to up to four. And Jimmy might, I don't know what the Jimmy or Sarah wants to talk about the produce that we got this summer and how it went, so we're gonna look at some slides here. So I'm Sarah Blaney, I'm the executive director of the Oklahoma Association of conservation districts. How many district directors are there or district supervisors in here? How many co-operators? District conservationist co-operators? A lot. You guys need to be local co-operators with your conservation districts, okay, anyway.

4:31 So we know there's a lot of hungry kids in Oklahoma. There's probably a lot of hungry kids here in Texas as well. And so this was a problem that we thought we had a pretty innovative solution for. And so it really grew out of the soil health movement, and it was just really as basic as Jimmy said—him and Tre sitting down and talking to each other about how can we address this problem of hunger in our local community. And so what we did

5:04 They're using both edible and non-edible cover crops in the mix, so you're still getting all of the soil health benefits that you would like to have for your operation. Some of them are edible and some are not, but the mix is always based on what your operation's needs are and how you're wanting to build your soil profile.

5:29 We signed a Memorandum of Understanding basically with the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma and the Community Food Bank of eastern Oklahoma. Basically what we said is that we would raise the produce, they would organize the volunteers and come in, clean the produce, and get it to those in need.

5:49 It has been a learning curve for, I think, on both sides. My favorite story is when Jimmy texted me and said, 'Sara, they're out here picking watermelons.' And I said that's great, I'm really glad that they're picking watermelons. And he said, 'No, they're green pumpkins.' So I was like, okay, we got to back up a little bit. We need to do some plant identification. So if you're interested in starting a similar program in your...

6:19 Community, there might be learning curves, but if you're in Oklahoma where we're happy to help and happy to talk to our Texas counterparts as well to get you guys started. Here is our partnership. One morning we gleaned just from like 8:00 to noon, it was very hot. We gleaned a little over 2,500 pounds of produce, and that night it was actually in the senior citizens community center feeding folks. It's a wonderful turnaround in time, and it's great that this local produce is going to folks really close to where it's raised that are hungry. Even got some phone calls from some local people that hadn't had fresh produce in a long time—specifically squash. They were very excited to get it. So it's a really nice community thing to be able to offer.

7:12 These are just some pictures of different produce that we gleaned. We've incorporated the local FFA chapters at the high schools and also 4-H to help with the volunteer process. We always try to include public officials when we do these kinds of projects. Specifically, we wanted to—

7:36 Include congressman Lucas because we're looking to that base acre issue and we really think that that's something that can be addressed so we're working with him on a solution to do that.

7:48 This has been great for us as conservation districts and that's why I asked you as a cooperator and who's the director and if you're for your conservation district or your community organization it's a great way to tie what we're doing in the rural areas with a kind of an identifiable need in suburban and urban areas so it's been a wonderful kind of connection for us and we've been able to reach all kinds of new audiences and so we're excited about that.

8:18 We've raised a little over six thousand pounds of vegetables and Trey had another planting the other day down at his place so we're raising more greens now so that number's higher. The three farms that are currently right now are in Dewey, Custer, and Garvin counties and then of course we have lots of volunteer opportunities if you're in Oklahoma and you're interested in.

9:51 Know this because I think we need to fix this. And the national director said of RMA said, 'Well, the only two purposes for cover crops is grazing and hay.' And I said, 'Okay, I can play by their rules. We're good.' And it got real quiet on the other end of the phone. I said, 'What do you mean by that, Mr. Hammonds?' And I said, 'I can bale it in a brown box and we're gonna graze on it. I can play by the rules.' It wasn't that quiet on the phone, but we figured out that several of our farms don't have full base and we can do that.

10:30 We're currently working with congressman Lucas in the AG committee to try to get that exemption. And the reason it was put in there, quite frankly, was we don't want to compete against vegetable growers and we understand that. But we're giving it away to the hungry and the needy people, and there's bound to be a way that we can get an exception to the rules or change the rules. And he's very committed to that, so we're gonna ask Keith to come up now and tell a little bit more about green covers' role. Now we can't say enough about what green covers done for this project. And like...

11:08 Sarah said I've got a call from an elderly lady that was 25 miles from me and she said 'Mr Evans, yeah Jimmy, you know I remember you when you were little.' That started a good conversation and she said 'I just wanted to call and thank you. I understand that we got squash and okra from your farm today that you donated to the food bank and it came through the meals on wheels.' She said 'I haven't had a fresh mess of squash and okra in over 20 years. I'm homebound.' She was in her 90s. She got real teary, and I kind of got choked up too. That's how important this is. We thank you, great program.

11:55 We're going to do a couple of different things for next year. Number one, we're going to change the name from Chaos Garden to a different term called Milpa Garden, M-I-L-P-A. I was listening to the book '1491' that talked a lot about Mesoamerican cultures and he talked about this term that the Native Americans would plant these milpa gardens and it went beyond the three sisters of having corn, beans, and squash because these would typically have eight to ten to twelve different plants all.

12:30 Growing together in the same field to be harvested for food. I heard that, I thought that's exactly what we want to do. So we're going to be calling these milpa gardens and educating people more about it. And Green Cover Seed will donate up to two acres worth of the seed to anybody that wants to establish a partnership with a food bank in their community and will help support getting through some of the hoops and some of these things.

13:00 The other thing that we're going to do is we're going to start adding more variety of different vegetables and also look at timing something so that if you're really committed to this and you want to have some early stuff, some summer stuff, and some late stuff, we'll be coming out with different mixes for different times of the year, even to the point where we've got more winter hardy stuff so that you could be harvesting winter squash type stuff. Now, we kind of jumped into this midstream and we hadn't really thought through it. Now we're taking the time to think through it.

13:34 Little bit and I think we can make some really good improvements so if you're committed to doing it we're committed to supporting you. So we'll be sending out more information about some programs on that and kind of educating a little bit more about what these milpa gardens, you know, not only can do for people but you know one of the reasons that they did it is because it was so good for the soil to have all those things growing together, kind of that three sisters concept but three sisters on steroids I guess you could say. And in the wild life like it is, so you know, great program. I would encourage you to visit with these folks later on if you have an interest in starting that. There are a few hurdles to cross but you know the main thing is if you have a commitment and you've got, you know, there's hungry people everywhere. It's just finding the right food bank that will work with you. And my guess is is they would be more than happy, you know, if you're willing to put the effort into it. And yeah, FFA kids, 4-H kids, you church youth group kids, what a great project to come and do that. So we're willing to support you any way that we can do that.