 Welcome to InSight, produced in partnership with Lakeland Public Television serving North Central Minnesota. Today we are chatting with Lynn and Paul Hunt of Happy Dancing Turtle. Lynn and Paul had generously agreed to share some of their experience with us. I'd like to thank you both for joining us today. Thank you. Our pleasure. So talk about the programs and talk about your approach that you developed through Happy Dancing Turtle. With Happy Dancing Turtle then as an operating we did research. So what we did is we did a lot of research on permaculture, how to sustainably grow food. Then we take that within our own campus area. We actually are doing research all the time on how to grow food. What's the best way? What's the best paths? And then how can we share that knowledge? And how to make the food healthier? Yes. It has to be nutritional. It has to be more local. And not only that, you can get lots of different foods. But how many people know and understand what these different foods are? It's first the growing of the food. Right. And then that extends into the conditions of the soils. Right. And sustainably cultivating the soil in a way that keeps it very healthy and able to... We also have created a CSA, Community Sponsored Agriculture Shares. So we can't eat all the food we grow by ourselves. And if we wanted to keep it our small individual gardens, then we're not going to learn how to help other people grow more. So very often when people think about soils, they think about soil as if it's dirt. Soil is not dirt. Oh. So many microorganisms. Soil is minerals. It's organic materials. Microorganisms. It's microorganisms. It's animals that live in the soil. It's trace substances. A teaspoon of healthy, organic soil has over 10,000 species in it and over a billion individuals. Right. And then there are all the technologies required to make use of that soil in a productive way. It could be manual technologies. It could be the old mattock and shovel, which has been around for as long as humans have been working with tools. But it could also be other things, everything from horsepower to tractors that consume fuels and oils and so on and so forth. And of course, being able to cultivate crops that are not eaten while they are still ripening, there's a question of how do you balance that? How do you make those crops unattractive to the animals that feast on the crops so that they're available to us? Yes. And how do you do that in a sustainable manner? And so that's the research that's kind of going on. It's a continual process. We learn a little bit more. We try different things. There's a lot of practice out there. We learn about lots of other experts. Yeah. And then we try it to see how it works in our environment. You also talk about making this information available to others. So in your practice, you also have to be documenting what works and what doesn't work and why, and through a process of elimination, focusing more and more on either proven approaches or suspected approaches that you will test and then decide whether they are proven out. How do you actually go about that part of recording the information that you have? Some of the recording is videoed. Some of the recording is just documented, but you can have all of this information, but how are you sharing it? That's right. That's the important part. That was my next question. So if you have it documented, how do you make it accessible to others? And it's taking time. We've moved into videoing, so we have videos. We've actually did a large amount of videos in a year or two, taking not just our stuff that we're doing, but we went around the region and we picked up these different farmers or different other things that were going on and we documented them as well. And then we actually used Lakeland Public Television, and they took a lot of those videos and put them on. So again, Lakeland Public Television is not only partnering with people like us, but also people like yourselves, your developing knowledge and Lakeland Public Television, public media in action, serving rural communities, is helping you get the message out as well. There's Lakeland Public Television, just to give a plug, has over 350,000 viewers. We know that our stuff is not only on there, but it's also on YouTube. And we know we have a number of quantity of views on YouTube. We don't have... You can't track how many people you're really... We don't have large numbers. Yeah, we're still small, but we're reaching. We do such a ripple effect of what we're doing, because it's not only what we're doing, but we try to look at what everybody else is doing and try to bring in the sustainable, resilient practices that are the best practices. And then we talk about our seminars and our day camps and things like that. Yeah, we have... yearly we're putting on our back-to-basics over here. We started in 07, so we had our 11th one just happen this year. And we just go to the local school either in January or February. And what we're doing is it started out that they already had an organization going on called Cabin Fever Days. And they didn't have what it took to continue that program. And so we took it and called it Back to Basics, because that's really what we're doing. We're trying to go back to basics, because our grandfathers and great-grandfathers always were doing all of this stuff that was sustainable and resilient. They didn't have the same resources, so they had to do it themselves. So that's where the name Back to Basics comes from. And then we take a theme every year, and we have a keynote speaker come in, and we have lots of vendors come in from the region. We have, you know, on sustainability products and stuff like that, so people can find resources. Then we also have lots of classes on all these different topics. And so they go from all these different topics and go from this one to that one to this one to that one. And some of them are just the simple ones like yoga, which is not simple in itself, but it's fun, you know, to a more intense one on what's solar panels and how do you do solar, or how do you do gardening, or how do you do hydroponics or aquaponics. There's just so many different things that this program's continued to grow every year in the number of attendees. And it almost worries us, because now what do we do if we outgrow our space that we're doing it in? And then we have the smaller little programs that we're putting on, classes that our knowledgeable people go out. They're also catalysts and conveners and within their own organizations that they're connected with. So you're partnering with other organizations very actively? Very actively. You're leveraging their expertise and their connections? Yes. We're the small little catalyst in that we see things and we say, you know, you've already got this skill and you've got that ability. And if you guys connect or we say, okay, you need to help develop this next thing that you're doing. And what can we do to assist or we give them ideas? We once had a really fun one with energy because we were looking at energy too through other things. And we were looking at how does people understand, how do you make something simple enough for people to begin to understand power or renewable energy? Because that's really the way we see that we need to go. And we said, well, you know the food pyramid? Right. You know, you have your basics here and then you go to this and then maybe you can get some sweets up at the top. Well, in reality, those sweets are your renewable energies. What things can you do down here, right? And so we did that. We kind of outlined it and we had at the meeting actually Minnesota Power. And we were working with the different people at that one meeting about different things and he liked that concept so much. He says, can I take it and run one? And I says, go for it. You know, because we don't have anything that we need that for but we just kind of how do we brainstorm? How do we help people? How do we bring, not just catalyze, but actual, we don't want to be just a name partner. We want to work with these organizations to help them better do what they're doing already. And they love that product. They ended up, what's the right word? Not patent. Trademark. Trademarking. Yeah. Trademarking. That one and developed it on their website. And they use that a lot now. Yeah. It's really interesting how you defined your role and then defined a Minnesota specific approach, this area of the country specific approach to sustainability and exploring this topic. Now, one of the things is the ripple effect because what we do, like one of the areas would be the resilient region project. Have you heard about the resilient region project? I've heard about it but why don't you describe the... Okay. Region five is the organization that initiated it. And they created, the woman there is just fantastic, Cheryl Hills. Cheryl Hills. And she pulled together the funding from national level funding and pulled the funding together. And then she created a, not a round table, great big meeting, trying to get everybody from the region. And they had like over 400 or 500 people. When you looked at a resilient region, which is what the plan was, is how do we, where do we see ourselves being in 2035 or something of that nature? And we wanted to create the plan. Now, most of these people that were getting funding for trying to do this level, we're only looking at one or two focuses, maybe transportation, maybe food, maybe something else. And with Cheryl, it was the whole region, the whole resilient scheme of things. How does it all combine? Yeah. How does it all combine? From funding to transportation, to food, to economics, to health and education. So you have this whole product of areas. So we brought everybody together. We looked at all of these and we said, who do we want to be in 2035? How do we want to become more resilient and sustainable? And of course, we were there kind of catalyzing some of that. With wonderful people that were helping her. And they came together, they created a plan. Now you've got a plan on the, you know, it's like a strategic plan. So the strategic plan is ready. It's on there. It's all these different goals that you have to try to make the whole region more resilient. Now the next step then is they decided how do we move that forward? We need champions. So we need champions for each of these focus areas. And then within our own employees and teams and me, we actually stepped in. And so some of us were champions for these different topics. And some still are. And so within that, then we're helping, okay, how do we drive and help build the leadership and how do we move this forward so that these goals can be met? Does this goal still work or not? Or is it still needed or not? Is it done? And so with that, because we've done the plan, the whole region, if you go for a national level grant or funding right now, it gives you a couple, a point or point and a half difference just because you're part of the plan. And so we've done that and they've been able to get extra funding in for that regional effect. So we're actually kind of contemplating now going back and we're looking at it and we're setting that strategic plan again. Well, again, this is a great example of how the sensibility of coming together to look at a problem, collaborating on defining the problem, putting together a plan and then having individuals or individual organizations select their role. And then dispersing and just doing it, right, delivering it. Not talking about it, no more meetings. Just get something done, right? And then come back when the time is right to report back and then adjust and then move out again. One of the good examples here is the school districts that are working together or the communities that are working together now. They're bringing those together. But here you have your health industries, right? So we have this hospital organization and this one and this one. And they are talking just because we were able to convene and create this. So focusing on health for the whole region and how they communicate together where before they weren't communicating. It's just a wonderful, wonderful initiative that you've put together. Well, I can't take credit for starting that. Like I said, we have fantastic people. So if we just try to support a little bit, then do what we can. Thank you so much for sharing your work at Happy Dancing Turtle, Lynn and Paul Hunt. Thank you so much for your work on sustainability here in the region, in Minnesota, in northern Minnesota. And thank you so much for your insights.