 Well thank you everyone for coming to our presentation. I see some friends out there I haven't seen for quite a while. My name is Sue Isbell. I'm the county extension agent in Sue County in Fort Yates, North Dakota and our program was a partnership between the Sue County extension and also the United Tribes. And with the United Tribes we had Robert Fox and of course we had Frank who's our support system behind us all the way. We chose a project with our youth educator grant. We wanted to work with our youth on, we called it Scorch Breeding Project is what we did. We have found with our youth particularly in the reservation communities the art of gardening has been lost and it's been lost for several different reasons the largest of which is the loss of the good soil. When they dammed the rivers they destroyed our soil and they destroyed the areas where the gardening was done. When the river bottoms were flooded the communities were moved up on top on the bench area and I'm not kidding your soil depth is about like this and it's not top quality soil. So our kids have not grown up with the opportunity to learn about gardening. It was funded like I said with the youth educator grant through SARE. The partners were Sue County extension, United Tribes and Frank Kutka with Northern Plains. It was a two year demonstration, research and outreach to breed the squash and learn about food with our indigenous youth. The goals of our project were to empower the youth to have the skills and knowledge about food, gardening, marketing and plant breeding. We need healthier communities with more options for high quality. Our people and our youth on the reservations were an extreme food desert. We do not have the availability for fresh fruits and vegetables. Most of our families receive their food from the commodity system which is not the best option. It's the only option a lot of them have and like I said the gardening had been lost. So this was a huge step for us to bring our youth in to do this. When we talked about squash with the youth or we discussed what do we want to breed? What do we want to learn about? Squash are traditional in the native culture. A Hubbard squash is the squash to have. Well we've had a few issues with that. The first year we got our high tunnels the youth planted the squash in the high tunnels. I told anybody if I ended up missing go out there because I was in the jungle somewhere. And we had a lot of issues with our, the Hubbard squash is huge which I'm sure most of you know. So it takes a large area to produce it. So they wanted to come up with a squash that was smaller that would be more conducive to the family gardens. The model of the youth plant breeding project was to work with other groups from within the indigenous communities. And that's why we partnered the Standing Rock Group and the United Tribes in our program. How did we get started? Squash, gardening, seed saving, a marketing, they're traditions of the native people. They've been there for generations. But like I said, the art of it has been lost, particularly in the two sites that we looked at. You see very few gardens you have in the past on Standing Rock. And of course United Tribes is located in Bismarck. So it's an off-reservation community within the urban area. With education, once it included the basics, our kids needed to know everything. They don't understand soil health. They had never heard of plant breeding. They needed to understand the nutrition, the nutritional value that the fresh fruits and vegetables would offer. And they need to know how to market. The Native American people are humble. They don't want, it's difficult, I won't say they don't want to, but it's very difficult for the Native American youth and families to do a farmer's market because it's their culture to give and share. It's not their culture to market. So we have worked with the marketing ideas. And this is a picture Frank found this for us of the original 4-H corn club manual. It's amazing. It's very, very interesting. Our goal is to come up with a 4-H manual and we are working on it. We are in the process. Our dreams were way beyond what was attainable in a two-year time period. But if you can't dream, you know, where can you go? We had some really good, good experiences with our kids. This is our beloved Hubbard Squash and I would say this is probably one of the small boys because they are monsters when they grow. They use them for soups and they also dry them. I will tell you if you want to cut one of these, find a hard piece of concrete and drop it on there because they are tough. They're incredibly difficult to cut. We've had people work with our youth to prepare them for our elders. Our elders do not have the physical strength to actually cut them. Some of them that I've opened up, I've used a saw. So we've had youth do that and package them and gift them, take them to the elders. They have marketed them. Traditionally, a lot of them were cut in a spiral and then they would hang them and dry them. The kids loved it. They loved getting their hands in the project. One of the things that was the most amazing with it is we did a lot of multi-generational, cross-generational training and sessions. This is at the site at United Tribes with some of the squash that are planted and they're just learning about it. When you have kids as adults, we assume they know a lot of things that we were probably brought up with because of the difference in generations. Kids now think food just grows in the grocery store. They don't realize what it takes to produce it and how much fun it is to do it and watch it grow and take care of it. They have a big flower, so they're easy for our youth to work with. Frank came and helped us with the process to begin with. I'll be very honest, I knew this much about plant breeding when we started the project. I had the interest and the desire, but I did not have the knowledge. That's this man sitting here. He gave us endless hours of his time to work with our youth, to teach us a process, to re-teach us the process, so it was a real unique experience. Frank made the crosses the year before, so we had a quicker start. Our goal was to cross the buttercup and the gold nugget. We did cross buttercups, too. I'm quite sure we had some unique crosses. The gold nugget and the hubbert, the youth wanted to create a bush variety with a smaller fruit on it. That was the goal. That was easy to come up with that. It was the rest of it that gave us some issues. This again is some of our elders from Fort Berthold and Standing Rock on the first day at United Tribes. We had, as traditional in the culture, we had the ceremonies and the blessings before we started in the prayers, before we started the project. We had stories that were amazing from elders that told their story and how important it was to them and how they did it and how valued it was. The first seeds were planted at United Tribes on this day. This is the hubbert gold nugget cross plants the first year. We got vines. This plant is possessed. It just goes crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's very vigorous. Thus, it doesn't work real well in a small family garden. That's where our issues work. This is at one of the high tunnels we have in Fort Yates and elders from White Shield came down there and visited. We had a large gathering, probably 60, 70 people between elders used and just outside community members that came. You can see we had gone to the box gardens. The box gardens, because of the poor soil, we have to use box gardens. This is some of our jungle before it really became a jungle. I said if I find a snake in that jungle, I'm going to re-vent, delay any high tunnel I'm in. Obviously we didn't have this one covered at that time. In the background, you can see we have three high tunnels. They're 16 by 24 side by side. This one is 30 by 40. The kids are on the hunt. The kids love this part. It worked very, very well at United Tribes because the kids are on site. They're on campus. It worked well to do the early morning, the evening part of the plant breeding. However, for me and Fort Yates, it was quite difficult because the youth that were taking part lived in Kennel, which is 50 miles from the site we were doing it. Number one lesson, be sure your kids live really close to where you're doing the project. That was difficult for us. The kids, they take to those kind of things. They love the science. This is one of our fruits from the crossed. I have some others I'll show you here. We had varieties, can you hold one, Steve? We had this, Frank, Judy, can you step up here and help me? Yes. There you go. These are small. Judy, do you want to hold another one up? These are just a few of the varieties we got. I didn't bring all of them because, wow, what a circus we had. Frank told me, he said, you wait till this takes off, you're going to see everything. We did. We had big ones, small ones, green ones, orange ones, striped ones. We didn't get any polka dots. That's the only thing we didn't get. What I did is the kids went in and they evaluated for their desire what they wanted. Number one, it had to be a bush variety. So we ruled out anything that vined. So these came from their bush varieties and I said, pick your favorites. And why? Oh, my gosh, the why was amazing, why they thought we should have it, very. The girls didn't like this because it's too big and too heavy and whatever. The boys liked this because it looked like, I don't know what they told me, I can't remember. The girls didn't like it because it was an ugly color. Frank's was, it looked like a pear. This one was too rough. From our varieties, this is honestly what the kids selected. It stores well. It has the thicker skin, so it stores well. These do not store as well. Thinner skin, they're easier to prepare, whatever, but this is what the youth picked. This is their project. It's not Frank's or mine or Robert's. This is now the King Cody. The elders love it because it's small. It's the right size. You can sit down if you want now, thank you. This is my neighbor, Judy, that rode with me, so thank you. Thank you, Steve. It makes a nice pot of soup. We make squash soup all the time, it's traditional. This is nice because it's a small enough squash that it's usable. It stores well and the girls thought it was cute. If a squash is cute, this is it. This is the cute one. But hey, that's what it's about. It was for the kids to breed it, the kids to choose it. So we'll have plenty of seeds. If anybody's interested in King Cody, we can give it to you. We've got it. This was one that didn't make it. I don't know why it wasn't a desirable choice for the kids. Like I said with Frank, he provided a lot of our education. I like to get in the ground the dirty, messy, muddy, buggy. That's my thing. And I can understand the genetics, but I want someone that can come in and can educate the youth at a high level because my expectations for our indigenous youth is up here. I'm not satisfied going with something that's just cute and occupies their time. There needs to be an educational component to it. And our youth will achieve to the point you set your expectations. So that's why we called in the master to do that. And we always eat. Come to our country to anything we always eat. We'll feed you well. We save the seeds. This was fun for the kids because too often we don't let kids just get in there and feel it and understand it. That's what it's all about. If we just give them the seed package and they plant it, they've missed all of this. This is what it's about. It's slippery. We have a few boys that like to do this. We, with some of them that they didn't choose, we roasted them. Let the kids eat it that way. It's another option. Why throw that out even if it is not the choice that you want to keep the seeds for? There's a use for it. Cleaning the seeds, I will say was not the funnest part. It gets a little time consuming and they are not real crazy about it, but that's not an option because it's a necessary part of the process. They tested various, well, not various. I think they tried them all. And honestly, the small one that they chose, you can definitely taste both of the varieties in that. But it was really interesting for the kids to understand one tasted just like the Hubbard. Some could taste just like the gold nugget, and yet this one had a combination. They were interested when you cut them open the color variants that was in there and the density of the meat that's in it. So it was more than just doing the plant breeding. We got to educate them in all kinds of aspects of sustainability. And Colette, who is also part of it with Robert up at UTTC, she baked them. They made the squash cookies when I wasn't there, but we now have an elder in our community that's doing squash bread with the kids. So that's just another use of it. A lot of the kids said, I'm not eating that. It's gross. So we have to work with ways we can get them to incorporate it into their diets and make their health improve. We planted seeds that were saved. And this is, again, at the UTT site. So that's some of their kids. These are probably Robert's kids, in fact. And we only pollinated the bushes this year that with the types of plants we wanted, hopefully. I'm not going to stand up here and say, that's the only thing we did. Because kids can be really creative. So have we got a pure plant yet? No. Are we probably going to from this project? Probably not. But we've got the process started. I mean, now they're talking, well, can we breed cucumbers? Can we do strawberries? Can we? Yeah, we'll just call on him. So I'll reach to others. Obviously, squash is prolific, like we said. It produces a lot. We were able to get squash to our elders, to the nutrition sites. We provided it for families that needed the food. And they also did market it. And it was interesting with the people that would come to the market, they'd want to know which ones did you like, which one did you breed, whatever. So the kids did get to share their knowledge and their experience with the elders. So that, I think, is a very, very strong point of this. Conference presentations and the new squash varieties. And like I said, the youth, it's going to be an ongoing project. Just because the grant has concluded, that's not where we're going to stop. Stop. It's going to go on. I have on board a Vista AmeriCorps young woman that is developing a curriculum for our K through grade 6. And she is intentionally putting the plant breeding aspect into every grade level at an age-appropriate skills. So it's going to go on. And I'd be more than happy to share that to you when we completely get it pulled together. It's about 95% ready right now. Five minutes? Seven, OK. YouTube videos, we're working on it. Like I said, we're just going to keep at the same thing. Just keep it going. It's not going to end. It's not going to end when I'm gone, when Frank's gone. That's our intention is to bring it to the kids so that they take ownership of the program. I have sixth graders now that are talking to kindergartners about it. That's where we learn from is our peer mentors. That's the key. We really, really wanted to get the plant breeding 4-H curriculum together. It will be done at some point. It just was a much bigger project than we anticipated. But it will be done at some point. Here's our kids celebrating. That's the beast. That's what it is. So I thank you guys for listening to us. Is there any questions? OK, Steve asked if we have thought about going several steps further and actually looking. When we get a uniform squash that we want to breed, we can get our consistency if we would look forward or into marketing this through seed catalogs. I think that would be wonderful. We're not ready yet. But heck, I'll try anything. I don't care. We were going to start with fifth and sixth graders kind of was where we thought it would be the best project. What I have found with any of the programs I do, and I also know with Robert at UTTC, you guys, everybody on the res is a tribe. And when we do things, we do it together. So we had preschool kids coming in, being part of it, learning, did they understand the concept maybe of the plant breeding? Probably not. But it's a starting point. And that's what we're about. We've got to start somewhere and not give up. And Cody that was the most active in four Yates is, I think he's 11 now. So that's the age where I think you're getting the actual educational component in. But we've got these younger kids are hooked now. They got to get their hands dirty and dig in the dirt and dig in the squash. So they're hooked. They'll be back.