 All right, welcome back everybody to our next session and big talk from small libraries 2022. I am your host Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. This reminder big talk from small libraries is our online conference for a lot and all of our presenters are from libraries with a population serve or FTE of 10,000 or less. And next up is another food related session. We seem to have a lot of things going along with this was not on purpose. But our previous session was about insert searching for the perfect potato chip. Go ahead and watch that one to see what I mean by that. But now we're going to thematically go right into having food in the library. Reading and feeding your community. And with this is Julie Elmore. She is a returning presenter from she's been on and big talk before. For us. And she is from the Oakland city Columbia township public library in Indiana. There we go. So I'm just going to hand it over to you, Julia. Tell us all about how we can read and feed our community. Well, perfect. Well, thank you for allowing me to present again. And thank everybody that showed up to listen to me. So get that out of the way first. Again, I am Julie. I'm a library director here in Oakland city Indiana. It's kind of in the Southwestern portion of the state kind of where Illinois Indiana and Kentucky all kind of meet up. In town, there's about 2,500 people, but the entire service population is about 3,900 people. And, you know, I mean, if you feed them, they will come has been a long standing staple in in library land. And then, you know, COVID kind of came along and then we started looking at food a little differently. And we found some ways that maybe we could assist people without being completely like in their face about here's a handout. And along the way, we, you know, we just kind of found out we could give food to people, but we could also use it as a way to promote literacy and education and, you know, depending upon, you know, what COVID is on any given day of the week, you know, maybe rebuild some social connections as well. So we're always looking for ways to incorporate food here. So I thought that I would show a few of them and then talk about how we paid for them, most importantly, and what we've done with them. So some of this is a little bit prior to COVID. We used to have a very active cookbook club. And as you can see in the upper right hand corner picture, those ladies and gentlemen did not disappoint at all. I always kind of said it was kind of like church ladies gone mad. So we hope to be able to bring that one back. That cost the library nothing every month we had a cookbook out and everybody could pick a recipe out of the cookbook. We originally did themes were like one month in February, everybody had to cook a red food. And then we kind of ran out of themes after a couple of years. So we just switched over to the one cookbook model. Our books and bites is our book club we meet where there's food so we go to a restaurant to meet or at least we did prior to COVID. When community spread is is high, which it currently is right now, we meet in the library and people just kind of brown bag it so they'll stop at the restaurant and pick up their dinner and then we will come and discuss our food over dinner. So that way everybody is pretty much in a good mood because you know they're eating. We also did a lot of one off programming when the instant pot was big. You know we did we had then that cost us nothing we had I had a friend of mine who every other day seemed to be posting something she made on her instant pot. Well I take that back it didn't cost us anything didn't cost us for a presenter. We just bought her some supplies and she came in and cooked like four different things for everybody to sample. I forget what day of the year it is but there's an actual pumpkin spice latte day. So I brought my blender in from home and we moved microwave around and we taught everybody how to make their own pumpkin spice lattes in the library. We also did the health benefits of chocolate which I highly recommend if you can talk your extension agency into doing that. We bought it's healthy. Yes, it's healthy. So we did we did a variety of different percentage of dark chocolate and you know a lot of people would not buy a $4 bar of chocolate dark chocolate just to see if they liked 82% versus 76% But by purchasing you know one bar and then dividing it up for the 20 people that were in the room. You know it was you know we were able to buy four or five different bars and let people kind of learn about dark chocolate and see what they liked. We did a slightly less educational program with the kids, but we made chocolate bowls where we blew the balloons up and dipped them into chocolate and then we popped the balloons. We did dipped when we we did like a variety of tastings of things that they could dip and we did expose them to milk chocolate white chocolate and dark chocolate as well. And you know for a lot of kids that was their first time they'd ever had dark chocolate but we were dipping to link it back to your earlier presenter. We were dipping potato chips and into chocolate. So they were able to see lots of different ways to utilize that the farmers to family program. That has wrapped up it was a coven experience experience where they were giving away the boxes of produce and dairy products. We partnered with a group that was that had the regional contract they were about 30 minutes away and I said hey what's the likelihood of getting a delivery setup up here. And they were like pretty darn good because we don't have anybody up there doing it yet so they came out three or four times and we were able to just be a drive through food distribution site. Now there is a reason why I did include it in this presentation I don't want you to think oh great well there's something I can never use. But a lot of times your food banks will get extra things and they will we've done it with the food bank before where they've just once they knew that we were willing to be a distribution site. When they had excess you know we're on their radar they'll call us and say hey or we'll call them and say do you got any excess coming up this month of something and we were able to give out additional food boxes that were through the food bank rather than the farmers to family. So I always like to make sure that people are aware of that just really build those connections with your local food bank because every now and again they get a massive influx of something and they need to distribute it. So also we had to do a strategic plan and without going into way too much detail about strategic planning. We decided that if we did a lunch for our seniors that that was a great way of capturing them in. So we, we were part of the libraries transform communities grant, and we actually budgeted in that grant to serve our senior citizens lunch in exchange for all of their opinions. You don't necessarily have to have a huge grant you could do something smaller and just offer them maybe appetizers or something rather than a full lunch. But if you do, if you can get any help with your strategic plan. I found I had 31 people come to a strategic plan community meeting and I thought that that was a huge number in a small town that and I and I got great stuff out of those folks about what type of programming they wanted coming up. So if you can feed them you will you can probably get quite a few more people to your strategic planning events. Some other things that we do is thinking about food at summer reading. So when you think about your themes we think about ways that we could always incorporate, you know, food to in some way and sometimes you know we focus on bigger healthier options for people and sometimes we focus on. What's an extra treat because if the money is tight at home a lot of times those extra treats that they get here might very well be the only place that they actually get an extra special treat like that. So the year that we did pop open a good book which was a books to movies theme. We built into our grant requests that we and or I can't remember if it was grant funded or if we use furniture and equipment money but regardless we built into our budget. A popcorn machine. That was like an investment piece right because we not only used it and gave away popcorn all summer long, but we now also have the ability to make popcorn for darn near any event that we want to host. So, you know that we we tried to look at ways that we can incorporate additional things into our summer reading. We also did reading a suite one year so we incorporated in a cotton candy machine and gave out cotton candy one year. Every week again you walked in on a Monday there I was spinning cotton candy for Tuesday's program. We also did. I want to say I was a Dr Seuss maybe themed week that we did there on the left for think it was one fish to fish red fish blue fish. So we decided to let the kids make fish out of cupcakes so we gave them undecorated cupcakes they got to decorate their own cupcake. We used M&Ms to decorate them and then them little orange slices for a tail. And the kids were super excited because they were able to do their craft for their program and then they were even happier to be able to eat their craft. So sometimes it's you know it's as simple as bringing that type of project in rather than just a typical Oriental Trading Company type process or product craft that we might want to make. Some are feeding at the library I know that y'all have been to tons of webinars on that so I don't want to give you a whole lot on that. There's tons of training on that out and about but one thing that I did want to focus on because it doesn't get talked about a whole lot is. And especially we learned this because our schools also do the summer feeding programs. So we opted instead of doing the breakfast or the lunch. There's a there's a snack option. And so we decided that we were going to do the snack option and it was a whole lot easier because there was less stuff to store. There was less stuff to deal with and the snacks were good. I mean it was like bagels and cream cheese and a juice box or string cheese and a juice box or crackers and cheese or something along those lines. So it was enough to kind of help the kids who were just kind of out and about all day long and maybe didn't necessarily have lunch at home or couldn't get to the schools for the full program. It is designed for low income areas. However, our school district is made up of multiple townships and some of them in the outlying townships are a little bit more of. We have necessarily quite as many free and reduced lunches, shall we say but we were able to and you'd have to go with go with your whenever you get signed up with the summer feeding program. We asked them to do we were we were told that we could use our six blocks, six block census around the area and I knew for sure that in town our numbers were fine because our in town school has a high rate of free and reduced lunch. Because our six block radius around the library qualified, then that opened up our community to the entire program for free. So I would definitely recommend that if you are interested and you attend some webinars on the summer food service programs that you take a look at your census area for where you're at in order to maybe see if you can't qualify on that way if you can't get in on the first way. Another thing that we do here that I want to go into maybe a little bit more detail on is we do a summer food box. I'm sorry senior food boxes. So the senior food boxes again costs us nothing. It's a partnership with our regional food bank. They actually deliver boxes to the library once a month and then we distribute them to the seniors that have qualified for the program. Our involvement is assisting them with filling out the application for the program and contacting them to let them know when their boxes are ready to pick be picked up and because we're dealing with a lot of elders. The boxes are like 25 pounds oftentimes we haul them out to the cars for them. We give them two days to pick up but honestly you know you can limit it originally they said that we were supposed to limit it to like a two hour window but you know you do you and we found that in our community. Sometimes people are not able to pick up on the first day so we just hold the box and let them pick it up. But usually we have the boxes stacked up in our meeting room for maybe you know maybe a day maybe two kinds depends on what type of room you have. So and we also have to fill out a monthly report that says we received this many boxes and then this many boxes went out and we have this many leftover. But in the boxes there is they get a brick of cheese of the processed cheese they get some pasta there's always a big thing of juice in there. There's usually some sort of a canned protein be it canned chicken tuna. Sometimes they send beef stew some shelf stable milk usually some sort of a grain like a cereal or oatmeal. So that's like I said it's about a 25 pound box of food that they get 2025 pound box of food that they get every month and again it costs us nothing but it's a great opportunity to interact with some seniors. Our biggest problems and our biggest challenges that we faced with this were one breaking through to seniors that they could and should take care of this opportunity because sometimes you know there's there's a lot of pride there. But you know we just we just sell it to them as part of the library service and you know they don't necessarily we don't we don't harp on too much the fact that it's coming from you know a different agency or from the food bank. The other thing is that there is a lot of food in there sometimes the seniors. You know after we had one lady and she was 90 and she took the boxes for like six months and after that she was like. I don't think I need this anymore because it was too much food. So you know you may have some people that come on and go off but a couple if you have like two seniors living in the household. They can make up to $1900 so if they're just pulling in Social Security money they'll qualify for that. You may check on your state's Department of Health and Human Services website and then you can find out from them from there who runs the commodity supplemental food program in your area. And even if there's already a program running. I would recommend that you reach out to whoever has their program and see if you can advertise as a real quick program in your library. An opportunity to just host a sign up day so that you can promote getting that information out to everybody. My next program and fair warning I could talk about this program all day long so I will go quickly just so that I don't get sidetracked and wind up going all day. This program actually came out of last year's big talk for small libraries presentation. I believe her name was Kate Kosiar from Cranberry Lake New York. She did a lightning round and she was talking about this program where they sent take home kits and address different needs. One of them was food related. One of them was I think they did a hygiene one and I really kind of was like ooh I like the idea of that food based one. So we came up with read and feed and read and feed was you come in for a story time you have a traditional story time. We kind of designed it for kids four to eight but honestly we kind of had older siblings we just let them come in anyway. But it was a traditional story time we did a craft focused around a theme we read books and songs around the themes. We held it after school and then when they went home with it they went home with the ingredients to make a very simple supper that matched the theme. So we did themes around pasta and tacos and a whole bunch of stuff. But the best part was that it expanded their literacy because not only did they get the literacy development through story time but we sent them home with the recipes and the instructions for cooking their food. And it also was a family project because nobody was letting the five year old completely cooked dinner alone. We had to have the adults help so that there was a lot of interaction that went farther beyond just a simple handout box of food that they may get at a community food bank or something along those lines. So here's a picture or some several several pictures I guess of a typical day in our read and feed program. So again we you know we kicked off with our story time and our crafts I don't think we spent a dollar on crafts we kind of cleaned out all the cabinets. So in the upper right picture that was the week of we did soup as a theme. So we did we had leftover construction paper and they just tore it into different vegetable shapes and we did torn paper art for that. We cut out a big soup pot and the kids made whatever they wanted into their soup in the lower left picture we had our tacos theme and we just ran. We had some leftover colored paper so we ran it through our shredder and we made taco ingredients and we had beige paper so that was their tortillas and then the picture down in the bottom right was somebody actually going home with all of their ingredients and their recipe. We had at any given point in time we had around 11 kids usually there it was six different families. For our six week dinner program, it cost us under $300. Now I will say that that was prior to 78% inflation where you go to grocery store every day and it's you know another 5% more. So the cost probably would be a little bit more, but we kind of saved a little bit of money because we limited it to one meal kit per family. So the lady who had two kids only got one you know only got took home one kit. And then we kind of had you know if we had a family that had more than you know, we tried to base all the kids around like four servings. So if somebody had more than that then we would just send them an extra kit home. So, but you know if money is a huge barrier to you you could still simply do a food themed story time where instead maybe use a hot plate or an air fryer, and you cook as an example with the kids in the room, and then everybody just gets a sample of the meal. And that will cut your costs a lot, but again we wound up this was grant funded from our community foundation. We'd actually asked for $550 and that's what we receive. We found out that our total costs for the first round we only spent 300 bucks. Some of that was because we had a few less kids than what we had anticipated. Thank you. But we did wind up having a little bit of money. So leftover so with that last $200 we said well let's do it was November we said let's do a four week baking program as well. So we did a baking program. And again not expensive recipes we did the you know the can of biscuits where you fry them in the oil and then you toss them with cinnamon sugar. So you know it was one bag of sugar divided out between six kits and a little 50 cent bottle of cinnamon divided out. So there wasn't necessarily a huge cost to the to the ingredients. When we originally planned it we were doing tacos week and then we saw what the price of ground beef was looking at. We flipped it so that we could do breakfast tacos instead and it may have brought our costs down a little bit on the tacos, but this is a sample of what the recipes looked like when, when we went home, or when they went home with them. So, you know, for example, also during taco week we read you know dragons love tacos this is this is not a taco. So we sent them home with all the ingredients and the kids absolutely loved it and this is my biggest tip for you all if you do this take pictures beg your families to take pictures, because I mean really these pictures. If that doesn't scream successful proud kids I don't know what does we had great and amazing social media interactions on a lot of these pictures. We still have a little tiny bit of money left over from that from this project and another project. So as soon as I can wrap up a couple other things I've got a couple other plates that are currently spinning. We're going to do a four week mic mini session. Again, I've read and feed but we're going to be reading feed around the world. So, for France we're going to do before, before it happens I can't believe I'm going to say this while you're recording it. We think we're making croak once more, but before the before the session I'll learn how to say it properly, but it's basically a fancy grilled ham and cheese sandwich. So we'll be able to send that home with the kids and, you know, continue this fun. These kids loved this program the parents loved this program. And the best part aside from the fact that these kids were like super super proud of themselves to be able to provide I mean they were providers of dinner that night so they felt, you know, it was just a good feels all the way around. And it also addressed food insecurity in a real covert kind of a way, you know, because it was part of a program it was there that work for that kind of make their meals themselves it wasn't just a simple case of, you know, here's some food, you know, and move on. So it was it was part of something else that they were a part of already. So, and we know that it addressed food insecurity because like all grants we had to do a survey, and we asked the question did this address food insecurity in your household, and out of the six or seven families, two of them said absolutely. And it was nice to know that we were able to help these kids have something and, and we exposed them to a lot of new flavors the bottom center picture there. We did a vegetable ragu in the oven that they made with our, I think I can remember it was a vegetable ragu or something that they made where they roasted a bunch of vegetables. They had zucchini and they got to roast in the oven cherry tomatoes which you know, they didn't know was anything other than something that they topped on top of their bagged lettuce you know, we gave them different ways of of experiencing the food through this project. And the best part to with this was that the funders loved these pictures, and we tagged the funders all the time with this pictures actually wound up leading to me requesting a different grant from the funder, and they actually overfunded my next request because they loved this project so much. So that doesn't happen too often so I would say that it was a total win. It's awesome, Julie I just looking at these pictures you're right I was just saying it just makes my heart so happy seeing these kids doing this. Yeah, the little boy with the pancakes. Oh my gosh I got so much traction out of that picture of him holding that plate. And so, and you mentioned and I'm also thrilled that this is a, you know, someone actually attend, you know, seeing a session on big talk from small libraries and then actually using using it at their library. And that's great and this. So just, this is a session last year our first lightning round. So if you can see the recording, like Kate Cozier did called poverty relief through story time. That was the topic of hers and we have her presence later recording of her presentation and her presentation slides up there on our big talk website. Yeah, it's like the best part of libraries right like, we're not, you know, as one time my husband was like I can't believe how much stuff you share. And he's like, you know, because he works in private business they're not calling their competitors going, hey I figured out this great way to save cost. You know, but but in our world that's what we do. And so hopefully you know maybe somebody sees this and they just plants a little seed right like if they take one thing away from this right. So if you have a question that I want to ask while you're on here still sort of watch you're at this that's no problem we can ask these questions now. I want to know how did you determine how much of each, how did you determine how much of each ingredient to get for this read and feed story times I would think you might have higher attendance at these. Now, did you registration required. Yes, you know how many people would be attending and how many families and. You know that people register, you know, on week two if they decided that they wanted to join in. But yeah we it was it was a registration required. And I think the first week because we weren't really sure if people were going if we were going to have gatecrashers. We did by two or three I think the first the first week was super simple because we didn't know what we were going to get. And if we had you know, I don't want to say bugs in the system. But if there were any sort of kinks, kinks in the hose will go with kinks in the hose I like that one better. But if we had any sort of issues we wanted it to be on an easy one. So we did pancakes the first week and all. So we bought the just add water pancake mix and bottles of syrup, and we bought I think two extras. So that just in case that we had that. We just left over we just donated to the food bank. So that was kind of the kind of an easy way to build in an extra. Oh my gosh. So did you limit registration to start or just say we'll see. Yeah, it was just like how many we got. I think eventually I mean I would have had I think cap it at 20 just so I didn't run out of money, but for the most part, it was. We did have that original grant to start with that, at least. And once we once we got going, we kind of knew okay, where this is kind of where we're going to land is it's going to be this. And we had them register for the session for the for the series, which I'm finding post COVID is is almost we're doing better if we do a four week session or a six week session. Rather than people signing up for something that is weak or not necessarily signing up, but even hosting something that is weekly or monthly. It seems like at least especially for me. I'm like, okay, I can commit to doing four weeks of this. If I look at my schedule and life in in these days and I go, can I can I sign myself up for something that's going to go in perpetuity. No way. The way things are now things could change so drastically in months from now that you would not want people coming into the library for an in person food. Absolutely. And the nice thing to we did have a kiddo or two along the way somebody would get quarantined somebody to be out. So we had per my previous session that I did on the after hours lockers. We had a couple kiddos got quarantined. So what we did was when storytime was over we checked out the books that we read. I printed off the songs that we sang, and I bagged up their groceries checked it all out, put it all out to the locker. And then their family was able to swing by later that they pick it up and then they just did storytime at home that week. Well, that's awesome. Yeah, we tried, we tried. So but again, I'm going to, I'm going to move on because this one will, I could talk this all day long. I would request that if you would be able to be able to share a sample of the cook and feed program. Actually, I'll do you one better later in my presentation is the link to our entire all of our lesson plans for it. There you go. Awesome. Perfect. You can have everything that we remembered that we could rebuild for this library share just like library share. So, are you okay for me to go forward? Yes, go ahead. Okay, perfect. Next up is our super cool tower garden, which I'm also equally stoked about. It was an investment piece, not going to lie, it was $1,500. We actually got it as an LSTA grant from our state library because and also I think one of the things that the state liked about it was every time people think LSTA and technology they straight go or they go straight to computers. And we've kind of flipped it upside down that we're like this is an entire different way of using technology to garden and to garden indoors. So they bought it and they approved our grants. I will tell you that my biggest downfall to this grant and it was stupid because I heard it later. Matter of fact, it was a webinar I was in just earlier this week, somebody said, you're going after a grant go all the way. I should have done this as a $3,000 grant and bought two because it's fabulous. The $1 included a year of supplies I bought, you know, like pretty much every accessory that I could get. I bought the dolly which you want because you don't want to have to move this thing without wheels. I bought cages because eventually we're hoping maybe fingers crossed in the spring we have kind of a more secured area. We're looking at maybe moving it outside and doing tomatoes or other vegetables that require some pollination. But what our tower garden is for those of you who've never seen one or don't know what they are, it is an indoor soilless aeroponic vertical garden. The cool factor totally off the charts because people walk in and all of a sudden they see lettuce growing outside of this tower where they walk in and they see these super bright LED lights that are going. Basically it has a 20 gallon tank underneath on the bottom or the base I guess I should say has a pump and then that pump is hooked up to a timer for indoor gardening it turns on for five minutes and then it shuts off for 45 minutes I believe is the cycle that it's on. It's kind of nice sometimes you walk into the library and you'll hear water draining because it's it's running kind of sounds like we have a nice fancy fountain. What's also super cool was we were able to do we've done garden story times with the kids and then we let matter of fact I did a outreach story time to the kindergarten class, where we I told them all about this garden and they they knew all about gardens that grew in the dirt and then I showed them pictures of our tower garden, and they were like way cool and then I gave them all little coupons that we made that were called tasting coupons, and they could come to the library and present that at the desk and we would go cut off what they wanted to try off of the garden. So we have lettuces we had a ruga look growing. I just got kale going, which, if you even while it's real tiny is really quite nice we have shard growing. We have dill I can't keep dill in stock, oregano basil you name I mean we've got all sorts of stuff, except spinach my speeds my seeds will not sprout but they're coming I'm not giving up hope. So what's been really cool with this was we also linked it right back to our reading feed, we had pizza week right. So we brought the kids into the garden and we clipped them oregano and sent them home with fresh oregano and basil for their pizza. And you know when you buy the $2 jacks pizza at Walmart, those don't have fresh basil on them so the kids were able to experience something completely new and different. We also learned really quick that, you know, a lot of them led us to them comes in a bag, they don't know where it's grown at they've never seen it grown. They've never even seen it shaped like that because when they buy it in the bag it's already cut up for them. So there was a lot that the kids were able to experience and see. And then even when we did soup week, we also sent all the kids home with arugula. Because when they tried arugula, it's peppery that wasn't necessarily their favorite thing. But then I told them I said, but when you're cooking at home how many times do you put salt and pepper on your food. So we gave them arugula to toss into their soup to kind of let them have that flavor of the pepper permeate through their soup. And they found it completely. They were like, Oh, that's not bad in the soup. So that was that was fun. And we have adults that just come in and she comes in every other week to swap her books out and she asks for a bag of lettuce every time she's in. And we go over and we cut it and they're amazed at how long it lasts in the refrigerator, because it's basically straight from the farm rather than sitting in a warehouse somewhere. So as far as any work required on it. It's about a 30 to 40 minute time investment every week. So right now with because we're running the heat in the building the water dissipates a little quicker so we go through about four gallons of water we have to refresh put in about four gallons of water every week. We check the pH levels once a week. And if we need to hear it seems like I always need to lower the pH. And we've learned along the ways that it grows better when you trim the roots as well. Because it's aeroponics, the roots are fully exposed. They're not buried in dirt. So, if we trim the roots and keep the roots out of the base of the water it keeps the pH a little lower. So and then we pour in some minerals once a week as well to keep it growing and keep it growing healthy. Another issue that we've had is I am not a gardener I am the daughter of somebody who proudly killed a cactus by over watering it. So, you know, green thumb not necessarily but you can see by proof in the picture I actually can use this and grow this because I don't have to touch it a lot. So, it we have discovered the only other issue that we've had is that when the we weren't really sure when the produce would start hitting the bolting season where the when it bolts and then it's no longer good. Well I shouldn't say it's no longer good it just becomes bitter and not necessarily lettuce that you want to eat your salad on. But we haven't quite nailed down the wind to plant the seeds to get them ready to replace what's bolting. Because that's a timing issue and it's coming and we're getting better, but it's not perfect yet. But we do have I guess let me flip back if I don't give everybody too much in the far back of that picture you see a great big board. This is what's on that board. We showed how quickly things were growing and the. You can see the bib lettuce the difference in from from September 7 where we had our seeds planted in the little cubes that go in there they're made out of rock wall to the time when we put them in the tower a week later to two weeks later how fast they grow. So this part also was very interesting and I think that people should definitely do because. People were really just stunned at how fast it was growing because of the open air access to the roots. And then we also have them you can't really see it too well on your screen but the root system we like to take pictures of the roots and sometimes when the kids are in we'll just pull one out of the pod. And you'll have you know a foot and a half long root that just pulls right out and the kids are like whoa what is that so you know it's opportunity to to educate and again pictures pictures pictures. This was a read and feed a day at read and feed. And the kids were coming in and we were doing tastings and letting the kids try out what they had and they were enamored with it. So I definitely. You know I just I love this picture it just says it all. But you know of course the state wants their data so we're about six months into this project well September. Okay so we're about five months into this project. We have done over 150 reference questions about everything from what is that to how does it work to okay I'm thinking about buying one of these because I saw a commercial on Facebook. And I'm sorry if you have your phone around now everybody's going to get an ad later tonight for these because I'm sure Facebook will hear it. But you know people were seeing them online they're like oh that's really cool I want one. And so they would come in and get some some detailed information on it. We also keep track of how many times we've given away different tastings and we've given away over 100 samples and that could be anything from a kid. My favorite was the kid that walked in and said can I try some of the grass. And after we educated them on what it was. We found out that we let them try us a little sample right. We count that as a tasting we count a whole bag that we give away as a tasting. We've given away over 100 different times. And again I think my biggest regret is not getting two of them if we would have had to I think we could have grown enough lettuce that we really could have made more of an impact with the food bank. Right now we kind of grow enough to keep our patrons taking stuff home. If we had to I feel like we could do more harvesting and help to supply the food bank so. There's probably going to be another grant or maybe if I get to the end of the year and there's enough money left over and all the pots and I can combine it. There'll probably be a second one coming to my library pretty soon. But we've talked about fun things we've talked about the other things now we got to talk about how we pay for them and of course I did share that some of it was grant funded. But you may not have access to the Gibson County Community Foundation like I did or you may not have a particular your state may not go for that particular type of a definition of technology. So our food bank our food bank helps supply our summer snacks our summer snacks they supply our senior food boxes. So reaching out to them is a big key connection just to see what you can do ask them how can we partner with you to help get food in our area. And I don't know about where you're at but where I'm at the food bank itself is in the larger city that's 45 miles away. Now we do have some local small church food pantries, but to do the big box giveaways a lot of times my people can't get the 30 minute drive to the regional food bank. And they're hungry at the food bank to find partners who are in the rural areas who will help do the commitments to these things. I am the only site in my entire county that does senior food boxes. So we had people coming, you know, 15 minutes, 20 minutes away from the other from other parts of the county sometimes 30 minutes away, because they were able to come here but we were the only place in the county that did it. So, you know, if there was another site on the other side of the county, I am quite certain that our food bank would be thrilled that we would be able to serve this county a little bit more between two of us. LSTA grants like I said get creative with what counts as technology that that tower garden has all sorts of technology it has aeroponics it has, you know, timers and it has automated feeding. There are a lot of ways of getting creative there. Look around for any sort of a gardening grant right my tower garden would qualify also as a gardening grant. If you don't want to go that way if you have a lot of land you might want to look at a community garden if you have access to a lot of land and extra volunteers who might be interested. A friend of mine. The state has a much larger yard I'm very landlocked in my lot of land, but she has a big side yard, and she now has a whole community garden growing there. Walmart is Walmart does their community goods grants they're small they're local, and even if your town is too small to have a Walmart, your area is probably served by a Walmart or the next Walmart closest to you. When you go on your website you can find out which store to apply for just because the store is in Evansville does not necessarily mean that I in Oakland City can't apply for funds from that store. They kind of have more of like a region that they cover. If you have an Aldi's near you I have not applied for this but it is it is on my list I will be applying for it later this year. I want to do a no cook cooking club for after school kids. They have an entire grant that is geared towards food and getting food to kids. So if you have an Aldi's near you. Matter of fact their website I'm just going to read it because I will get it wrong. They are looking to partner with groups that make a positive impact on our kids health and well being food insecurity diversity equity and inclusion programs. So getting food into kids hands is right there in their purpose. So I think read and feed would be an excellent proposal to put in through a local Aldi's or regional grocery depending upon where you're at. Check with your grocery stores, especially the ones that might be a little bit larger than just maybe like an independent grocer but if you have somebody who maybe serves the region. See if they have something that specifically addresses food insecurity because it might not be a place that you think to look, but they may have money sitting on the table. Utility companies, we pay them enough money every year just opening our buildings up don't be afraid to ask them for money. I was also once upon a time told by somebody who worked for a utility company in their foundation area. He said the more that you can say education to them, the more they love to fund it because the higher the education is in the person, the higher their utility bills will become. So now whether or not he would admit to saying that publicly I don't know but he did tell me that and it makes sense right. The higher the educated person is maybe the higher disposable income they have the more electronics that they're buying the more energies are using. So it's a self fulfilling thing that they're doing. Don't be afraid to go get some money from them. Also, we ask for them for summer reading funds every year. They are the ones who bought my cotton candy machine because I budgeted it in as a piece of equipment that matched our theme. So don't be afraid to build those pieces into your budget, especially when you're going after cash. And of course Dollar General right you know Dollar General has their summer reading grant as well. One of the things that we've used with some Dollar General money. I'm so proud of myself for not just shortening that to Dollar G it want to say it every time. But anyways one of the things that we've done is we do candy bouquets as prices where we. They're super popular here you put them on a soda bottle and decorate around them with a bunch of candy. And we've didn't really think that people would be that excited about them but I could make six of them for like 30 bucks last year. Maybe 40 bucks this year but we could do them. And I didn't think that the kids would be super excited for them. But they truly were because when they go to Dollar G they might get a candy bar right. There's not enough disposable income for them to get this whole assortment of tasty treats given you know that they can get. So a matter of fact I'm kind of thinking that I might even turn this into a craft night program for our adults this year as well for how to make them because again they're super simple. And when I do things that involve programs like that for our adults. I'm not afraid to say you know donations of candy gratefully appreciated. And we did that in our Valentine's Day craft. We made little cute little treat boxes. And I saw I asked everybody because now we kind of like a monthly group that meets. So when they were there in January said hey I said would you guys mind to bring a bag of chocolate so this way when we make our treat boxes it's not all the same candy you guys can interspersed with each other. And we had four or five bags of candy that was donated so you know it's a cost of admission without actually being a cost of admission. And we never say that it's required but we are we have learned real quickly that if we put on the flyer. Donate you know donations not donation not required but gratefully appreciated or some wording to that effect. So as as the grant LST a granting going back to your previous slide LST a granting institution here in agency here in Nebraska, the library commission where the ones that do that. I think you're right people do get hung up on that technology part, but remember LST stands for library services and technology. So, exactly. What the difference was is that what did happen it used to be LST a if anyone remembers like 25 years ago used to be library services and construction act. And I am less real this guy decided we need to help people with technology that's a new big thing so no reconstruction, but technology and everyone grasped onto that but there's that whole services part that doesn't have to be a lot of technology and we would have we would have we would have we would I would totally approve that. There you have it there you have it you heard it here first. So some things that are coming down down our, our way. And I'm going to look through this fast because I know that our time will be coming up soon. But there's so much man once we decided to kind of focus as food is our theme next thing I know it just became everywhere. So, matter of matter of fact Monday we have 20 people coming to a lunch and learn. This is funded by our community foundation that funded our read and feed program. They actually overfunded this program based purely on the success of our read and feed program. So we are doing a series of, I can't believe I committed to 10 different programs but that we are going to have lunch and you know some of the lunch is going to be. I'm going to buy it from some places in town. Some of the lunch is to stretch the money a little further Monday I'm coming in and I'm making an 18 quart pot of potato soup and ham and cheese sandwiches. So you were kind of kind of all over the map to depend upon how much we're going to spend on this. And again, it doesn't have to be a 10 week program for you but if you're going after grant money go all the way right. So we do have this where they're going to come in where they're going to have a free lunch and then we have some sort of a program for them. We have this program. I just booked a program for with the National World War two museum out of New Orleans where they're going to do a program in March on women, women's roles in World War two. We kind of are going all over the map with one matter of fact one week we're going to do and why not we're focused on food this year or lunch and learn is going to be learning how to make homemade dog biscuits. And it's going to be a craft for a cause type of event where we're going to turn around and donate all the dog biscuits that they make. And we're doing them in an air fryer because we don't have an oven because why not we so we do we improvise adapt and overcome work with what we got. So we're going to an air fire dog biscuit program and at the end of that we're going to take all the dog biscuits and we're going to donate them to the animal shelter in the county. So even the dogs will get food around or treats around here because that's how we roll. So that's coming that's our big that's our big one that's coming. We almost have our flavor club ready to launch. This was based off of New York has more sauce public library. They had a super successful program. So what did I do I saw it on Facebook. I called them up and said can I talk to your person that does that and learn from them what they do and what we're going to do with this we're going to feature a particular herb or spice. Some of them will be straight off of our tower garden. Some of them will be things that we buy. We're going to send them home with a sample. We are also going to use I want to say it's the database is called a to Z food. I think that's the name of it. But we're going to print off the information for them about a particular spice or her. Send them home with that and send them home with a couple recipes that are easy recipes where you know we're not we're not going with whole fancy fruit fruit stuff. But we want to open the doors to let people try something. They may not want to buy a $6 bottle of curry to see if they like curry. But we can buy a $6 bottle of curry and divide that out a bunch 2530 people as a take and make kit. And then our program became very affordable at six bucks for 30 people. And it lets people go. Nope, I don't need to waste my $6 on curry, but then another family may go. This is fabulous and they would have never known about it had they not gotten it from us. Our reading feed or I already talked about that we're doing around the world. We are also dedicated a lot of our year this year to programming for seniors to kind of help post COVID with some socialization opportunities. So the new census data came out and my town is 28% over the age of 65 and also ironically enough 25% of my town lives alone. So we are taking that to show that we have a large single senior population. So we're focusing on cooking for one air frying. I just booked a program with our county extension agency because they're fabulous resources. They're going to do a program on preserving that's going to be for anybody that wants to attend. And I asked them because I really feel the way grocery prices are rising. People are going to be doing a little bit more home gardening, but money is tight. So they may not, I told Daya or I asked them to not focus on canning quite as much because people may not be able to afford the product of canning, you know, the jars and the this is in the that's to go with it. They're going to focus a lot on freezing because I don't think a lot of people have seen the proper ways to freeze things. And they can freeze quite a bit of food that they maybe don't necessarily know that they can, trying to get budget saving tips built into that program a little bit so that those dollars for their food can go a little further. Holiday candy making a neighbor library in the county last year was posting all this fabulous candy that they put made in their library. So I'm hoping to steal quite honestly not only her program, but if she's listening her presenter too. So I kind of want to kind of want to work with them are no cook cooking club which is kind of I talked a little bit about that that's our after school kids where we're going to focus on ways that they can create simple and healthy snacks that they can eat after school without actually running the risk of burning down their house if they are home alone. Our summer reading this year we are doing the camping theme the read beyond the read beyond the beaten path or camp I read. So totally we're doing s'mores up in this library at least once. And, you know the other thing that also as I wrap up I want to make sure don't get discouraged if you don't have necessarily the grant or the funds are not super flush. You know, we may be doing a series on something that you can easily dial back to doing one program. So if you don't have air friars at your library you can't afford to buy the air friars. Borrow a couple that's how we did our instant pot series I had one, my friend who did the program had one. And we had two other patrons that were coming to the program anyways and wanted to learn how to use their so we used theirs, just so that they knew exactly how to use theirs in the future. Again, your extension agencies a lot of times they have programming money at least to help cover some samples so don't necessarily think that it has to be your money it can be another group's money too. They came in they did a low sugar program for us once they made a cake right one cake and then everybody shared the one cake. So it didn't cost us anything they paid for it out of their supply money. And it again adjust adjust as you have to adjust as you need it right. It doesn't necessarily have to be your main focus like food is our focus for the whole year, but you know a couple of these programs and you can go a long way. There is my promised link to it's obviously not a link because you're looking on the screen, but you can write that down I made it as small as possible. If there's another way to get it shared with y'all. Or if you could send it into the chat or something I don't know but that will take you straight to our lesson plans you are welcome to use anything in there that works for you or hopefully at least let it inspire you. Some other pictures those are our candy bouquets that we did as prizes. Obviously when my kiddo, you know, if I don't have a bunch of extra money, I'm not going to go in and buy all of that. If you go to a flower shop even if your flower shop sells those. They can be a lot of money that they're really not. There's not really a whole lot on it. The biggest thing is is remembering that when you're, you know, we go we hot glued candy to bamboo sticks and stuck them into a pool noodle that goes around the neck of a soda bottle or in this case the lemonade bottle. Those kids were coming in every week going who won last week's candy and then I have one kid that came in every week and he was like, you didn't call me for my candy bouquet. And I mean every single week, he thought for sure that he was going to get it. I were small library I'm not going to lie he may have got the last one. You know, because here he was every single week dedicated every time. You didn't call me. You didn't call me so finally the last week I called him and the picture of cilantro was right before Super Bowl, and we timed that right because everybody was making salsa. So we had cilantro to provide to people and we you know of course obviously got to post with the whole timeliness about Super Bowl. The last photo was when we did a food giveaway here at the library. When you're when you're married to the safety professional everybody gets a bright green reflective vest. But, you know, it was a great program we did it as a drive through we gave away almost I think there's there's 380 boxes of food. Everybody got two boxes on that particular program. And we did that in 45 minutes. We gave away that much food. So, you know, it doesn't have to be lifelong commitments that that was an hour of everybody's time, and they were in and they were out. A couple other things that I always like to remind folks and I'm going to wrap up. Just remember food is not a craft supply. If you don't take anything away from me take that away because if you don't have enough food. It's not a craft supply unless that craft remains edible. So while we may do a how to make a candy bouquet that food is not ruined they can then take that food home. They can gift it to somebody or they can then eat it themselves by disassembling it, but I'm talking about where people would carve into potatoes and make stamps and things like that. If you don't have food, it becomes very insensitive. It's quite insensitive to use what somebody doesn't have as something that you're just going to use cover and paint and then throw it away. So I do ask that you keep that in mind. And by incorporating food into your program. You allow for people to have that do have that food insecurity, you give them a chance to receive that food with some dignity it's not just a handout it's a part of something bigger. So that's a lot. Hopefully you were able to at least capture something out of there that maybe has inspired you. If you have any questions you are always welcome to reach out to me. And of course you can always follow us on Facebook and see what we're what we're doing next, or give me a call it doesn't matter I'm always happy to talk food. Okay I went one minute over I'm sorry. No you're fine. No you're fine you're fine. No by my clock it's still 359pm in my office so it's all sweet. This is what happens when you have a cell phone and your satellite sits on the line, or when your county sits on the line of eastern and central time so you're never really sure what time it is. Great awesome so thank you so much Julie there's your contact information if anyone does want to ask questions. We can put through in a couple of questions here if anyone does want to ask anything desperately of Julie right now typing the question section. We do. I did share that tiny URL link out I typed it wrong the first time but I redid it into the questions in the chat. We will also have Julie slides available after, along with the recordings like I always do. So, you will be able to get it from there as well. And we do have some things thank you I love this Julie sponsor always full of amazing ideas. We do have a question way back the beginning you talked about the CSFP program. And the question is how'd you go about starting a CSFP program if it's offered in your state but not in your county. And this person state they say they actually actually 58% of our counties do not have the service in their state. Wow, our regional food bank actually is the one that handles it for our particular corner of our state. So that was my main contact. But if you don't have one I would seriously reach out to either somebody at your State Department of Health and Human Services, probably a little easier to reach out to whoever is your regional food bank. And by the by the food bank I mean, not necessarily the local church food pantry, but the places that are where they can buy their food at the reduced costs if you have one of those in your area. Like our regional food bank supplies the food to, I think 12 different counties for their food pantries. So kind of maybe work it up the up the level. But if you have a regional food bank, I would probably start there and say who handles it for our area. And if they don't handle it for your area, reach out to Health and Human Services and if you really want to do it. Everybody I firmly believe every librarian should be involved somewhat in their advocacy and know who their state representatives are. Shoot them an email, because if they you know maybe not during the middle of legislative session, but during the rest of the year when they don't have a whole lot of emails flying their way. Shoot it to them, get them involved, ask them say hey, who handles this for us because if not, you're quite likely going to wind up getting somebody getting somebody who knows how to get that ball roll. It's someone who is concerned as you are once they find out that it's not available. Yeah, when you say hey 58% of our state doesn't have that. Trust me that politicians gonna be like well I can be the savior. Absolutely. All right, great. Thank you so much Julie reach out to her. Like I said we'll have her resources available to you.