 My name is Claire Sandberg. I work for Dream of Wild Health, close to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, just a little ways north. And our SAIR project from a few years back was creating a mobile farmers market. And we did this because our current model of showing up in an empty parking lot, setting up our veggie stand, was not working. So a little about our farm. We started in 1998 as primarily an educational farm. So we worked with the Native American community in the Twin Cities. It's the largest urban Indian population in the country. And there was a huge desire for a reconnection with the land and with traditional foods and traditional ways of growing food. And so originally we rented land, but in 2005 we bought 10 acres fairly close to the city. So it was a great location. We had access to markets. But we also had, we were able to bring kids to the farm to get the experience of seeing where food comes from and actually connecting with the earth in that way. So every day in the summer we probably have between 20 and 30 students on the farm. We have teachers on the farm. We have so many different projects going on. But we also are starting to develop the farm as a source of income and actually have it be a production farm. So why did we need a mobile market? In 2010 when I started we operated two market stands in parking lots. We averaged about five customers a day. And that was just not, we were trying to get people to eat healthier and make produce available in these areas that the nearest grocery store was miles away. If the corner stores did have produce it was wilted, going rotten. So we were trying to bring the fresh food to areas of the city that did not have it. But it was not working. Then the financial situation was also meaning that funding was less and less available to support our programs. So we knew that we had to make the farm a source of income. And then looking to join a bigger market in Minneapolis and St. Paul was really tough. We managed to get into a small one in Minneapolis. But the St. Paul farmers markets were very tightly controlled and there's a waiting list for years and years and years just to get into the main market. But we did have, one of our strengths was that we did have a network of organizations, social services, clinics that liked what we were talking about. And they were willing to work with us and let us set up in their area. So once we got the Sarah Grant we were thinking, okay, if we're going to make this market successful where do we need to start? And we started with asking the community what they would need in order to get to those markets to start buying produce and start participating in a market. And the top concerns or the top barriers to participating in the farmers markets were number one income. Familiarity with some of the vegetables that were being grown. If somebody has never used kale before they're not going to buy kale. So another one was knowledge. In the native community and in many urban communities today there's not a lot of knowledge about what to do with produce once you've got it. How to cook it, what the value is in even having a prepared meal every night. For most of the kids at the farm every meal is McDonald's or Pizza Hut. That's where they were at. And then the other barrier was transportation. Most of our families did not own cars. Getting to a supermarket was hard enough, much less getting to a farmer's market early in the morning. So to address these barriers just the first one was income more than 40% of the households were surviving on income of $25,000 or less. And that's not individual income, this is household income which often included multiple families. And then the state of Minnesota also found that more than any other factor the zip code where a child is residing determines their level of health and therefore their success in school. And the zip code where the largest concentration of native people in Minneapolis was that was the lowest for as far as income and health outcomes. So our solution to that was we needed to accept EBT so food stamps and WIC vouchers which is women, infants and children at all our markets so that if people were coming to, and everybody was even thinking about coming to our market we weren't going to let having no cash that day be a barrier. If you want to come to the market we will find a way for you to pay us. We started with our prices under supermarket levels. In the Twin Cities that's not too hard to do. Our major grocery stores usually have higher prices for produce and it's also very low quality produce. So that was a decision that we made to draw customers out of that model and start looking at farmers markets as a cheap and the cheapest and the freshest place to get food. And we also provided a lot of vouchers so initially that was selling out a loss but it got people to the markets. The familiarity with the foods we did surveys to see what people would actually be interested in buying and it's a pretty standard boring list of veggies. As a farmer I don't like to grow just 10 to 20 plants. I want to grow everything. So we always tried to have an abundance of these but we also wanted to bring in new plants, new veggies and educate people about how good they are. Knowledge was probably one of the biggest difficulties that we had in persuading people to buy our products but it was also one of the most fun to overcome. So we started doing cooking classes. We did food demos at events like powwows and community feasts. Any kind of meeting. We do a lot of farm tours in the summer and in the fall and then we also did features about some of the less widely known veggies. So then we took all that information and we started and we made a marketing plan of the who, what, why, when, where, how. In the end everybody's strategy might be different but for us doing quick stops around the city at those different partner organizations was what was going to be most practical. We decided on Tuesday and Thursdays because those were days that we had the youth at the farm so we wanted to incorporate the job training skills, get them out in the community so that they're not just seen as hoodlums and misfits and then also to see that you know you can earn a buck farming. This is wherever we're talking or wherever we're at a farming conference there's always a concern of getting young people involved because a lot of people just don't know that it's a viable career option and I'm still struggling with that myself. Yeah and you just have to make sure that it's actually workable with your field plans. We're struggling a lot with soil fertility still and just thinking about leaving a field fallow for a year or in cover crop for a season is really, really tough for us right now. So this is a picture of our first mobile market. We set up, we had the pickup truck, we set up outside the family center and we put all our produce out. We didn't even have a tent at that point but people were coming from inside the building and we had a few people stop by just feeling like what the heck are you doing? But the kids were really excited to show off what they had learned. And from the experience we learned that not only do we have to find a marketing model that works out for us but even within the entire Twin Cities food markets we have to stand out. So we decided because we only have ten acres we have to focus on quality over quantity. Getting the fresh greens to market was one thing that we really excelled at. Our heirloom tomatoes are amazing. I think I'm missing a slide here. And then we also focused on doing specialty and indigenous crops that our communities would really love to see. I don't know if anybody remembers using choked cherries or picking choked cherries but if we could grow nothing but choked cherries we would sell all of them. And then having the right equipment was really crucial for us. We started out with just using the pickup truck to get to market but that didn't work, it wasn't ideal. So this past year we got a new van, just a standard mini van that allows us to keep the greens air conditioned so we keep it as cold as possible for as long as possible. We're making two stops a day usually so if we've picked them the day before, cooled them and then they spend eight to ten hours out of the cooling system they're not going to look any good at all. The EBT credit card reader was also crucial in having our market succeed and then also developing the relationships. Once we get returning customers and they might have requests that mean that we have to go out of our way to pick extra or to pick fruit at a certain stage but it is definitely worth it. And the biggest lesson that we learned was to be flexible, listen to what the community needs, don't be afraid to change strategies but always it takes time to grow. So now we're in our fourth year of mobile markets and this year was finally actually seeing significant growth in income. And it was a year where our fields struggled a lot and we didn't always have enough produce to fill the two markets a day sometimes. And then diversify or specialize is also a really crucial thing. So looking forwards we are looking to do partnerships with early childhood family education groups so it's like after school programs for youth and adults. So we want to plug into those for our cooking classes so that we don't have to bring all the resources to it. That was a big drain on our resources. We're thinking about doing market memberships where families will get a punch card that they can use at the market for 15 or 20% off every week that they use it. So it gets them to keep coming to the markets and getting used to using those fruits and vegetables. We have seen just a few last year but hopefully more this year where other organizations will actually bring their clients to the market and do a brief tour and just get people used to the idea of going to a market. I know for myself I would be a little bit scared to go to a market for the first time and not know anybody there, not know what's going on. And then we also are still trying to balance our CSA and our mission. So our educational mission is very important. That's the primary reason that we do markets. But in order to grow our income we have started a small CSA and that's our major source of income and the markets are much more geared towards our mission. Yeah, that's all I've got. Does anybody have any questions? Yeah, the question was whether there are any growing power model urban farms going on in Minneapolis. And the answer is yes to a degree. There are lots of programs, there are lots of gardens that are doing it on a smaller scale. There's nothing as hugely successful as growing power was in Milwaukee. And feeding our soil and composting is one of our biggest challenges year to year. Because in an urban setting it... Well, I won't commit to saying that it might work better, but I think on the scale where we are doing it's a big challenge. We're bringing in compost every year. So our soil itself is not sustaining itself. You were just going to actually did a composting workshop out of the Hugo Dream of Wilder, maybe four or five years ago? Yeah, it was before I started, but Will Allen has been out to our farm. It's a continual, we're still trying to really integrate growing power ideas. And there's a lot of urban agriculture going on in Minneapolis. I think it's really cool and it's really inspiring. Me, I come from a rural background and I think in Minneapolis there's a lot of Native people that do come from a more rural background. And so it's a lot more comfortable to think about agriculture as happening in the country, which isn't necessarily always the truth.