 part two of hashtag for me to share this information with you, and I'm so excited about it. So today, we're going to have discussions around growing vertically and for pennies, and also for being self sustainable by doing so. So I want to encourage all of you out there to live in preparedness. What does that mean? Make sure that you have enough of your supplies. If you watch the news, always you're teaching us how to live in preparedness by stocking up on certain foods. Personally, I will continue to eat healthy, even in times of disaster. So I already have a lot of food in my preparedness kits. So I try to do dairy free, wheat free. So I have a lot of rice noodles in storage. I have a lot of rice wrappers in storage. I have beans galore rice, white and brown. I grow my own vegetables on my balcony, as you'll see so I can easily wrap lettuce with the rice paper and pickles and things in the wrapper. And I make my own dressings here. So I have a bunch of that. I mean, quite a bit. And then of course, you know, I have my protein drinks that I drink in which can sustain me along with my kale and water. I have lots of water containers which are food grade food safe, as well as the bathtub liners and many things. So if you need to learn more about being prepared, just go to your city mill or go on to, I think Hawaiian Electric, they put out that pamphlet and they tell you what you need to live in preparedness, or ask one of your Mormon friends. I ask my Mormon friends all the time and they live in preparedness. So they have a lot of great tips, hints, and contraptions that they would love to share with you. So before we get started, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a West Side chick. I was born and raised in Miley on the West Side of Oahu. I graduated from high school. And after getting married, I lived in Hong Kong for five years. I have two beautiful daughters. And we also operated an old chocolate that she for about 20 years. Now mind you, I didn't graduate with a business degree. No chocolate degree. But I was able to start a factory and lasted 20 years with God's grace in the business world, helping as many people as we could along the way. I think a lot had to do because I sat on 12 boards, and I helped raise millions of dollars for the people in need that lived in Hawaii and abroad. So God has some amazing plans for me. And now all things from a chocolate maker, I am now considered an urban farmer. So this is really exciting for me because I don't like dirt in my nails. And even though I've been planting and growing my own food for the last 10 plus years, I still don't have dirt in my nails. And did I tell you that I live in a condo? So I live in the sky in the heart of Oahu, and I grow my food. So I'm so excited to share some pictures with you and some experiences. And my goal today is to encourage you to get excited about grown, not flown. And if you can, if you have a yard and you can go out into the Aina and dig hose and plant your food, do it. If you have raised pots that you can put seeds in and grow it and then consume it, do it. Just do one little thing. Everybody do raise one more head of lettuce, raise one more batch of kale or tomatoes or cucumbers. And that's how it all starts. And you get really, really excited once you see things start growing. So I want you all to just get a little bit as excited as I am, because it grows on you, get it. But anyway, so let's get started. Hashtag grown, not flown is so dear to my heart. Growing food locally is so critical. That's the hashtag grown, not flowed venture. You know, I just want everyone to think that it sounds cool. It's grown. It's not thrown, right? So it makes sense. So what we want to do is we need to grow local, and we need to buy local, we need to eat local. And so that's how we can continue the economy of Hawaii. So this year, more than ever, when I was listening to all the campaign speeches, all the speeches, every one of those candidates, especially the gubernatorial candidates, all talk about Hawaii needs to diversify Hawaii needs to grow other things and do other things besides tourism. So what were we before we had tourism, we were an egg state. Now we don't do a lot of egg, everything pretty much is shipped or flown in. So what does that mean? That means that it was grown on the mainland, or some other country, it was grown, it was picked green, not added to the ripas. And then it was flown or shipped here. So you're talking, it must be at least a week old. And then we buy it. And we hope that it can give us enough nutrients, vitamins, calcium, and all the good things that are in plant based. And we're hoping that it is still in there that it can sustain our bodies. So we too can get healthier by eating that food. So let me tell you, the food that I grow on my balcony, every morning for the last 10 years, I go out there with my little peppers, I clip my kale, and then I blend it and I drink it. So that bugger is five minutes old at its best. And so I'm eating food that is five minutes old, full of nutrients, full of all the things that I need for my body. So that's why I'm encouraging all of you if you do raise beds or anything that you can produce something. So you can get a little bit of a edge over just buying food from the mainland, especially what we experienced in the last two years. We need more than ever to step it up as far as building up our health and making our bodies healthier and stronger. And so that's why this is now the urgency is now we need to grow, grow our food locally. So I will hold the, whoever's our next governor and lieutenant governor, I'm holding you responsible for making sure that we become more plant strong here in Hawaii and continue to love the people of Hawaii by getting them healthier. So I'm here just to encourage all of that. And I'm going to continue saying that because that's a simple message about eating more sustainably by growing it here in Hawaii. So let me tell you a little bit about the tower gardens. The tower gardens are made of food grade plastic. It's UV protected twice. So it won't crack or chip in the dead of the heat of Makaha Valley or in Mesa, Arizona, where it's 120 degrees. The tower garden, we boast that they use 90% less water, which is also some issues in mainland states or some parts of the island water. As we are experiencing some areas of drought, we use 90% less water, 90% less land, and we are 100% cheaper because you're growing your food. So of course, it's got to be cheaper than what we buy in the market. So those are just some simple facts about the tower garden and why I just continue to promote it. So for me, I want to share with you how simple growing, whether it's a flatbed, as I said, a grow bed or the tower, what we do is we first start with seeds. Okay, and this is what excited me the most about the tower gardens is the seeds. When you put the seeds into the growing medium which we use, we use a growing medium called the rock wall, which is that off colored green square around the little seedling. So it's a volcanic material. We are also transitioning into using cocoa core, which is a more organic material. So once we develop using all growth with cocoa core, we can then say the vegetables and produce coming off of the towers are organic. Right now, because it's in the volcanic material called rock wall, we can't really call it organic. But what I like to boast is that we are chemical free, non GMO five minutes old into my body for consumption. So that is as important to me as the label of organic. So all these little terms, we really need to study and understand and get ourselves familiar. Well, what are they marketing to us in the stores? So if you do it, you know what you've done to it or what you haven't done to it. So it makes a lot of sense. So trust in yourself. And that's why it's so important by using and growing your own food. You get peace of mind that you know what you're putting into your body. If you didn't spray any ground up or chemicals on your produce, you're not getting it in your body. Does that make sense? Right? Okay, so the next slide I want to share with you, this slide shows two weeks of growth. So once you put the seed into the rock wall, in two days later, it starts sprouting. And when I first had my seed sprout, I got to tell you, I felt like I was a grandma having babies, even though they were the seeds. So after two weeks in the tower garden, they should look like about this size. And they're ready to go into your tower garden or ready to go into the ground if you want to do it that way. So these two weeks of seeding, all you got to do is take each one individually and stick it into the tower. Once you put it into the tower, you're going to let it sit in the tower. The tower is on a timer. So it waters my plants 24 times per day. 15 minutes it waters my plants 45 minutes per hour, your plant roots sit in oxygen. So every hour, 15 minutes of water, 45 minutes of oxygen. And so this is vertical gardening. And that's this system is called aeroponics. So it's an aeroponic vertical growing system that we like to promote because it mimics mother nature very closely because plants and roots should not be sitting in water. It should be in the dirt, which is the dirt is the source to hold it up. But it's grabbing oxygen well, within the dirt, and all the other nutrients within the dirt. So I like the system that we have. Because remember, I told you, I don't like dirt in my nails. But anyway, so the next slide that I want to share with you is this is after two and a half to three weeks of growth. This is my Manoa lettuce. So doing the last two years when everyone was in lockdown, and we weren't able to go to the market as much. I was growing my all my food, but I focused a lot on Manoa lettuce. And then I would put it on Facebook, and everyone would say, Hey, you got any more lettuce? And so they would come upstairs or come by, and we just give them the Manoa lettuce. And the Manoa lettuce, of course, being the freshest that it could be. The tastiest that it could be. And I just grew it to share with everyone. And at that time, when they would come to my home, I would make them a fresh kale smoothie. So they too would not forget the taste of fresh goodness that they should be enjoying daily. So now the next slide I would like to share with you, that is Mizuna. And so about this time of the year, I will start plant planting my Mizuna seeds, because I need to make sure I need to make sure that I have the Mizuna at that point. So by November or sorry, December 31, my Japanese friends who already are ordering the Mizuna from my tower, they're going to want to come up. And they're going to want to come up to my home and buy or pick up a Mizuna for their year end soup. And their year end soup is called Ozoni. And every year, the Japanese people need to be making this Ozoni. And the main ingredient is the Mizuna. And what happens is, in the past few years, the Mizuna locally has not been the best quality. So they can't get it. And so that's why they depend on me now to grow the Mizuna. And so right now, I'm coming to you live from my tower garden on my balcony. Thank you to our tech person who allowed me to go live and show you all this fresh goodness that we have growing here on my balcony for the last 10 plus years. So can you imagine how much money I save? Can you imagine how much calcium and protein I get directly into my body? It's only 10 five minutes old. And it's in my body, it doesn't even know that I've cut it and it's dying. And it's already in my system. So I'm so ever ever grateful to this tower garden and the convenience of it growing on my balcony. So right now, I want I want to share with you a little video to show you how the tower garden works. So we're going to be watching that in a few seconds. Tower Gardens State of the Yard Aeroponic Vertical Garden System uses both water and air to produce more colorful, better tasting and incredibly nutritious fruits, vegetables and herbs. Tower Garden has a 20 gallon reservoir at its base that stores the tower tonic nutrient solution developed by experts in plant and human nutrition. Tower tonic mineral blend enables superior plant growth and better nutrition from your tower garden produce. The process begins once the seedlings have been placed in your tower garden. Here they will be nourished with tower tonic nutrient solution. Inside the reservoir is a small low wattage submersible pump. The pump pushes the nutrient solution up through the tower to the top. From there, the nutrient solution drips through the central tower using a special device that evenly cascades the solution over the exposed plant roots. On the journey down the tower, the nutrient solution feeds the roots and becomes highly oxygenated as it cascades gently down the reservoir. This process is continuous, providing fresh oxygen, water and nutrients to the roots of the plants. This patented aeroponic process enables food crops to grow faster than they would in soil so they can be harvested more often. And it makes tower garden the healthier, easier, smarter way to grow your produce. Well, you got a live shot of the tower garden at its best. And you if I stood there for a few more seconds or minutes, you can actually see the greens, the kale and everything grow. When I do my like trade shows and things I'm stuck with the tower for like eight hours sitting with it. I actually should mark where it starts when I get to the location. And after eight hours of sitting with it, I actually, I swear, I see it grow, because it does grow within the first time within eight hours. And so I'm so excited because I get to witness all of that and learn more science than than I thought I ever would, even at my age. But what's really, really neat is that we we also get to take these gardens of around and many schools have invested into the tower garden systems. And I'm very proud to say like me, I may have schools, they've even invested to bring in Stephen Ritz to talk about the tower gardens and share the excitement that he has as he travels all over the world to share the what the tower garden has to offer. So we teach the students the STEM curriculum with the tower garden. And the students are so excited, they get to plant seeds, they get to watch it grow. And the best part is they get to eat it. And when a lot of these kids didn't like the green stuff in salad bowls, because they ate it, they're going to I mean, because they grew it, they're going to eat it. And so that's so exciting, when we can stimulate and educate the young ones to appreciate the food of the earth. And when I used to work with the Easter Seals and volunteer there, my my greatest reward, I should say, is when I was working with forces, the the cakey on the wheelchair, they were able to farm and grow things alongside with me, as well as the autistic kids. And autistic kids sometimes won't eat the greens, which they desperately need into their bodies. But when they grow it, and they watch it and they experience it, they are tempted to try it. And then they love it. And so that to me was an experience I'll never forget. And from that point, which was very early in my urban gardening career, that's what I experienced. And from that point on, I'll never stop, because I thought that was such a rewarding feeling that I got. And I know now why this is part of my journey. So I can continue to grow Hawaii healthier. So I want to also mention that there are, we have existing curriculum around the Tower Garden. We have a curriculum that was developed so so teachers don't have to develop a program in their school. It's already developed that they can pick it up and utilize it in their daily curriculum. Or if they want to do an extreme or advanced program, we also have a curriculum for purchase, which goes online and it's interactive. So that's exciting as well. We also, for the continuing education program, culinary program at Kapiolani Community College, they also have Tar Gardens in their kitchen. So when you sign up for that program, what they're doing is they're growing vegetables in the kitchen. And so when you sign up for a class, the recipes that they provide for you are going to be things that they have grown on the Tower. So they're going to give you a basket and a little clipper. And just like the chefs at the French Laundry in Napa Valley, the chefs daily go into their one acre property across the street and they're going to pick the best finest herbs, tomatoes and things that they want to present to their clientele. And so the students that attend this program also have that experience to go into a garden, which is right in the kitchen and clip the vegetables and lettuces that they need to utilize in the dishes that they're going to create. So I'm excited about that. And as their Cannon Club restaurant is completed, the kitchen shall grow and the Tower Garden shall grow, the farm shall grow so that they can produce more so that they can start producing food for their kitchens, for their clients, enjoying the best view in Waikiki from the Cannon Club. So a lot of things are happening. I'm so excited. I also want to give a shout out to Yolani High School. Yolani High School also the great school. Yolani has a sustainability director, Debbie, and she's amazing. She just loves to psych the kids about sustainability. So they have all forms of farming right there on the fourth level of the Sullivan Center. This is one of their towers. And this tower, what they do is the students will plant seeds, drop the seedlings in, grow the lettuce. And what they do is every other cycle. So if this is the cycle, they're going to pick it and they're going to donate it to a shelter or a senior center so that these people can enjoy that quality of food that the students grew. So they're also cultivating the servants' hearts in these students by helping them, teaching them to grow and to give. So I thought that's exceptional. And then the other crop of the month, because it can produce two crops per month, the second crop of the month, they bag it up and they have the opportunity where the administration can come down stairs and grab a bag or two and take it home. And then if they want to drop a donation into the basket, they can. And what that does is it provides more of funding for this program to continue on. And so how amazing is that they don't it's again financially self-sufficient as well as support sustaining the best quality of food for all of us. So I want now to pay attention to this young man. I've become very dear friends with him. His name is Jack. And I'm always going to talk about Jack because not only he's the cutest, but he's the funniest, the friendliest young. I think he's just turning 20 now. But Jack's very special because he at 19 years old, we were in the middle of a pandemic and stuck at home and on his wheelchair. And he says to his mom, mom, I can't find a job. What am I going to do? And so I heard that complaint or that statement. So I said, Jack, we're in the middle of pandemic. You are a B average student. You just graduated. You have no experience. And there's some other things about you. You have special needs. How do you think? I mean, why do you think you're going to get a job over someone else? I was very straightforward with it. But I tell you what, you've got eight tar gardens in the front yard. His mom loves the tar garden so that she bought about eight of them in her front yard. I said, why don't you make a pow wow with your family tonight and talk to them. And Jacks, if you're in on this, we will support you all away. But you've got to say, yes, I want this, talk to your family and ask them for their support. And if you commit to doing this along with your family, I know that they're going to support you. So the next day, the decision was made. Jack said, we're all in. So what does that mean? At that point, they received two checks. So they all decided that those two checks, they would put it together so that they can throw down 300 square foot cement slab. They put that down and then they acquired 12 more towers. So they have 20 tower gardens on the cement slab. And this is now Jacks's and the family's tower garden farm. So now I did I did I also mention that Jack doesn't have use of his legs. So he was born. He never walked. He will be on the wheelchair or we put that beautiful slab down because at times he may have to drag his legs and his body across the slab so that he can work the lower parts of the tower, but he doesn't have to go on dirt and he doesn't have to go on gravel and he can sit on his wheelchair and he can test the water, fill the water. He can grow the first like four layers of plants and some of the commercial towers go up seven layers. So the upper layers, his family, his Ohana had to agree that they were all in with him and they have. And so that's why they have to do the family powwow. So now Jacks, I believe he's 20 years old now on his wheelchair in his tower garden farm has a future. So he's growing food for the neighbors and for the restaurants around him that want to support what Jacks is doing. So how amazing is that that these little stories just inspire me to continue to do more and more because there are 24 hours in the day. We need to utilize every minute of it so that we can make a change in many people's lives. On the next slide, I want to share with you. This is in East Hollywood. The Kobe Bryant Foundation, they developed this abandoned hotel and they turned it into I want to say they call it a soup kitchen. So on the ground floor, they feed the house. This community on the second floor, they have activities on the third floor more, but on the rooftop, that shot of that wall, that mustard colored wall is lined with 30 tower gardens. Now, can you imagine the abundance of food that they are creating? I sat on the border directors for the River of Life Mission and we get all the donations and we're very grateful for all the donations for the people of the street. But rarely do we get a good or great quality of vegetables. So now at this shelter, the volunteers from below and they want to do more than just receive, they can volunteer to go up onto the third level and take care, harvest and bring down to the kitchen, the vegetables and feed the fellow houseless community the best quality that even the richest can enjoy. Because you remember, five minutes from harvest to body, that's crazy amazing. And that's how we should be living and eating. So I just tell you, everybody can do this. You got a little box, you got a little wooden box, go and create some food, go and create drop some seed. The seeds become plants. After they become plants, it's protein, it's calcium that you can consume, put into your body and enjoy and reap the benefits of good health, especially we have no idea what's coming down the pipelines in the next few years. But you know what, I'm ready. So are you ready? That's my question to you. So every morning for the last 10 plus years, I take my clippers, I walk to the my tower, I take 10 leaves. And those 10 leaves of kale when I calculated when I go to the market, those 10 leaves of kale average about $4 for that bunch. Now, if I eaten that for the every month for the last 10 plus years, every month there are 30 days in a month times $4 a bunch. So I average about $120 of consumption of kale into my body for the last 10 years. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Since growing my kale, I have never bought kale. Since starting growing my kale on the tower garden. Before that, I never ate kale. Kale was made, I thought, for the salad bars to line the salad bars. But now I eat it every day. And for pennies, I want that for you as well. So I know that we had so much to talk about, but especially because I'm doing all the talking, but we've run out of time for today. So I hope that I've encouraged or motivated you to go out and start growing. Don't wait Hawaii. Kale Kula has blessed us many times in his spirit, many storms and fizzled it out so it wouldn't damage our beautiful islands. Please don't wait, Hawaii. Wake up. We'll be back in two weeks with more of taking your health back with Wendy Lowe, Mahalo and Loha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com Mahalo.