 Hi, welcome everyone. I'm Erin Schneider. I work at the North Central Fair program and I also farm and I am really excited to be here with Marie Flanagan. Hello. You're in for a treat. We are here with John Jamerson from Legacy Taste of the Garden and that is right outside of, or in Lyle Station, Indiana. And as with all of our Farming Matters episodes, we're really here to help celebrate your completion of your grant. You can tell us a little about your stair project and then also just like, you know, you were mentioning like really interesting directions that your farm has been taking. And you all have staying power. It's what, fifth generation, sixth generation farm, and I will just toss it over to you, John, and you can share what you're all about and where you're growing from here. Thank you so much. Well, thank you guys for having me. I definitely appreciated the opportunity to be a part of this grant. In fact, it was the first grant that I have wrote and the first one that I was granted. So it was a very steep learning curve for me. And it's something that I would suggest that everybody take a part of. It's a very great opportunity with it. So, want to thank you guys for having me here. The name of our grant was the Legacy United Farmers and Community and Urban Food Desert project. It was part of the SAR grant in 2019. The name of our business is Legacy Taste of the Garden. We're located in Lyle Station, but the address is in Princeton, Indiana. We are fifth and sixth generation farming. Our motto is to create, maintain, pass down and continue. This is my father-in-law, Norman Greer, who is featured in the Smithsonian African American Museum of History and Culture. He's in there as one of the last remaining African American farmers who still farm and family on land that they own pre-several war. At Legacy Taste of the Garden, like I said, we are a family farm that has started back in 1855. Since we've started this grant, we obtained a couple more grants. One is the 2501 grant, which is part of the live project. And we re-upped that one again this past year in 2022 to get that a second time. As a Legacy Taste of the Garden, our project, some of our objectives were to utilize the website and social media to connect farmers and communities and share information products and locations to provide locally fresh produce and increase consumption in the communities designated as food deserts to educate the communities and youth in different farming techniques that can be utilized in urban farms and garden and to educate communities and youth in nutritional values of eating whole foods and the health benefits and to encourage the community and the youth to participate in CSA diet and health challenges. So part of our objective was to begin to educate the communities and the youth in different farming techniques. We took them from seed to market. We talked to different styles of how they could farm and grow from raised beds to hoop house to aquaponics. We introduced them to a wide world of agriculture, everything from rodeos to markets. In the right corner there is a group of bus that we took from Evansville to Atlanta so that they could see urban farming in other areas so that they could understand that this wasn't just something that we were just making up, but this was something that was becoming a trend across the nation. We taught them different types of garden styles. We had different festivals and stuff that we were a part of. On the right is a bucket style of drip irrigation that we talked that they could grow and that was in Indianapolis. The importance of teaching the different styles and techniques were to teach them that there were more than one way to grow. Not to get stuck on traditional farming, not to get stuck on raised beds, but to let them know that challenges were going to come as far as growing food and to use their mind and imagination on creating different ways to do such. And so these are some of the different growing techniques that we have here. Part of our objective was to educate the community and the youth in eating nutritional foods and whole foods as the health benefits. Here we are at several different markets in Evansville and Indianapolis. And so the communities that we serve was Princeton, Evansville and Indianapolis. And so we would bring the fresh produce to these communities and make sure that we had to educate the people on that. On the right, we have a bunch of youth that were a part of our garden program. We try to make sure that they understood what they were growing, the difference between the different types of tomatoes and cucumbers and things of that nature so that they could educate the community when they went to sell it. So in our youth groups, we had a 4-H participation. One of our individuals down below in the lower right corner had won a grand champion for the county for her cucumber. And we taught them and we make sure that they, as I said before, were very well educated and took pride in what they were doing. We had the program to do different types of participation and presentations to teach them how to can teach them how to the importance of value added. We also did what was called a book and cook program where we partnered with other organizations in the community. And our book and cook project with the African American Museum in Evansville was granted an award as the regional collaboration project award in 2021. We also did CSA bags and taught people how to grow. We promoted local products and stuff in our CSA bags. We brought the local produce that we had as well as other things. And this mostly came really grew through COVID when people weren't able to go to stores when produce and things were becoming scarce. And there was a major shortage in the food. Our CSA bags really picked up at that time and participation and really picked up prior to that. People were not that interested. They were interested, but they didn't participate that much. But as COVID hit and they began to understand that the importance of nutritional food, helping them to be able to overcome those symptoms and the issues of that virus. It really promoted our program. As we say, we utilized our web and social media website is legacy tasted garden.com. We have social media, Facebook and Instagram. Just used to have track legacy taste of the garden and our email is legacy taste of the garden at gmail.com. We had had some serious issues that we ran into and that was basically due to COVID. And so part of our thing was to work with the people in the community to help to solve the issues of food deserts and to connect the farmers, local growing with those communities. Part of the key points that we did was to identify what the community needs were and what the issues and the effects of it was and to identify community leaders who are already involved in those communities. We have people here in Bloomington and up in Gary, Indiana, because as our stuff began to grow so did our expansion. We we empowered these leaders to be able to tell us what they needed in their community and opposed to us coming in telling them what they need. And so in the upper left, I think we did over 400 CSA bags. Those are all the yellow bags that you see on the floor. And that was in Evansville in the middle. There's Chicago where we went up there and helped them to do a community garden and to the far right. That's another picture of the Indianapolis group that we dealt with there where we had the bucket irrigation growing out of this. Like I said, when COVID hit, people really started to demand fresh produce and out of that we provided in over eight cities, truckloads and my truckloads of fresh produce into those communities and really got the communities involved with that. So we, as we said, we're trying to connect to meet the needs of the community and not just our ideals and thoughts. Also out of that, we began to partner with these different communities and we created what we call Indiana Black Loam. Loam is the best type of soil that you can get. There's three types of soil, clay, sand and loam. Loam is your top soil, your most fertile soil. The darker it is, the better it is. And so our thing was cultivating a sustainable farm legacy and creating an opportunity that promotes the best growth for our farmers and communities. And so we ended up having out of this through the connections that we made through this project, connecting with growers in Indianapolis, Bloomington, Gary, Fort Wayne and Evansville, Indiana to promote these programs. We have grown even more in partnerships where we connect with the National Black Farmers Association. We partnered with the NRCS, the USDA, and by her school in Indianapolis, as well as local organizations, churches, hospitals, Mt. Carmel, New Destiny Church, Flannery House, and Cleo's Bodega in Indianapolis, and Cobra, I-Y-N-E, Youth and Establishment in Evansville are some of the ones that we've partnered with. Out of that, we just kind of grew and grew into different projects. As I said, the grant that we had was the 2019 Sarah Grant. My son also got a grant from the 2020 Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition. We were also awarded two 2501 grants for the legacy farming and health, which we call the LIFE Project, and that's with Purdue Extension with the Agribility Project there and with farmers across the nation. And LIFE Step were legacy innovation, farming, and economics. And so those were the things that we did that stemmed out of this grant. This wasn't where we had planned to go to begin with. Our main concepts was to just collaborate with farmers and to use unique practices to educate, produce, and provide a system that would increase the availability of whole food and to get it to be used more in food deserts. And out of all that, this is where we're at today. And so it was due to the Sarah Grant that we have gotten to the point to where we are today. And I don't think we would have been able to do it without it. I'm struck by like a lot of things in your, just how, you know, how you kind of streamlined and really connected agriculture and education across generations. I'm from Indianapolis, so I wasn't born down here. This is where my wife and her family are from. But it shocked me how most of the communities that were considered food deserts were in the black and brown communities. And that the farmers who had the least amount of income revenue. Productivities were black and brown farmers and I'm like, where is the disconnect with that. And so we were and we and the fact that we were losing a lot of our farms from African American farmers. Because it became a great concern of mine. And so in trying to connect it to I always ask questions. You know, and and the more questions I asked the more questions I figured I need to ask. And so part of the, the issues that I was finding when we first started this progressive process and as I said, at first people didn't want to be a part of the USA program they didn't understand why they needed to buy fresh produce and stuff. And I was trying to, to share with them the importance of having nutrition in their body and that fresh produce brings that type of nutrition. In our community we have what is called soul food. And as I broke it down to him I said everybody loves soul food. And so but we have to understand what is soul food. And soul food was the fact that they would cook things that were fresh out of the garden, fresh eggs fresh fruits and vegetables and stuff. And you had all the fresh herbs and spices and that's what gave it all that love and flavor that we enjoy. Now we have chemical substitutes. And so, but the problem with the chemical substitutes is that they don't provide the nutrition. And so when you when I began to do the research and I noticed that 90 over 95% of all the diseases that we have heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity. What we call in our community sugar diabetes things of that nature would all stem from food that we you could you could cure all of that just by eating the correct food. And so that's when I began to try to connect that back to the community and say hey, these are the issues that we have in our community. It still kind of fell on deaf ears. But when COVID hit, and I started to help to connect that what is the reason why COVID was so devastating in our communities was due to the fact that we had these preexisting issues. Where did these preexisting come from due to not getting the proper foods that were needed. And so, with that being said, they began to make that connection. And so, since COVID in the African American community, not sure if it still is but I heard about a year ago that they were becoming the fastest growing plant based group in America, as far as converting over to plant based food. And so I think that the word is has gotten out a little bit and people are beginning to understand the difference in that and so it's just in finding out what the disconnect is from trying to educate people so that they can make that connection with it. I wanted to ask you what questions are at the front of your mind, like having in the 2023, you know, I'm really asking the community to really come together. You know, this is something I believe that not just in our community, but in our nation that we need to do. We need to come to the mindset of the United States of America, opposed to the divided states of America. Not trying to get on any political thing, but if COVID showed us anything, it should have showed us how vulnerable we are in our dependence on other countries to feed us. And we should have enough food here to grow. That's grown that to feed our communities and so we need to get back into the concept of making sure that we support our local growers or local farmers that we, you know, this is opportunities for individuals to be able to make their own local sources or value added products and stuff and support one another. And so if we could do anything, if I could ask the community to do anything that will be the thing that I would ask support. John, thank you for being so generous with your time and your willingness to share and what kind of grown out of that sharing for many generations and wishing me well and hopefully for the next 1000 generations to come, you know. John, thank you guys. I don't know how successful it is to anybody else, but it was more than successful for me.