 My name is Lindy Berg and I'm the Towner County NDSU Extension Agents and I'm just going to do some housekeeping items and so I do want to welcome you on behalf of the NDSU Extension Small Farms Team. Today is our second webinar of the five that we have in our series. So you can see what some of the ones that we have coming up but today is our meet and poultry and farmers markets and farm to fill session and I just want to talk about a couple of things. One, I just want to mention again the pre-survey, feel free to go to the chat, there's a link in there and fill out our pre-survey for us. I also wanted to mention that we have a new publication that came out not long ago and it's called Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens and so if you want to look that up under NDSU Extension that is a new publication that's out. It's called Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens. We also have, yes thank you, there is a poll there and you should see that, please fill that out as well. We have a grant workshop in the works coming out and so if you write grants, if you're interested in writing grants, the dates and everything, we have a Save the Date press release that will be coming out next month but it'll be this fall, one day in September and one day in October and basically what it is is on the first day you are going to create your proposal outline. It's where you take all of your resources and improve that outline to make a full proposal and then on the second day you come back with your proposal and you kind of look at that from the role of the reviewer and you kind of work on your strategies and find out different ways to find that funding and then you have that opportunity to really polish your proposal for, so it's ready to submit. So that'll be this fall, so just keep an eye out for that. Like I said, there will be a press release coming out with the Save the Date next month. The recording link, so when we're done with today, I will hopefully, I've been getting them done on Friday. So Friday you should be getting the recording link for today's session if you want to listen to it again. Let's see if there's anything else. If you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat and we can relay those messages. Feel free, Jan. She's going to introduce everybody and she's our moderator for today. If you want them to go ahead and unmute depending on how many people we have fit the smaller group, just unmute and ask those questions. That's probably fine too, but I'll let Jan kind of discuss that as well. With that also, Travis is on here too and I'll let Travis introduce himself too because he might pop himself in and out a little bit too and he's the one that kind of helped put this whole thing together. So with that, I will let you guys take over. Thanks, Lindy. My name is Dr. Travis Hoffman. I serve as the extension sheep specialist for North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota. And so I'm just going to leave this up for one second. We're at half of the participants that filled out the initial participant poll. So if you'll just fill that out here in the first quick minute and then I will close it and Jan can lead our discussion and introduce our panelists. So thanks so much for everyone for joining us. Great. Thanks, Lindy. Thanks, Travis. Hi, everybody. I'm Jan Stankiewicz. I'm also with NDSU Extension. I'm a community health and nutrition specialist as well as a tribal liaison for extension and NDSU. So while everybody is finishing up filling out that poll, I'm going to pull up my screen and you should all be seeing a non-discrimination statement just letting you know that extension programming is open and available and all are welcome at all of our programming and we do what we can to accommodate. I would also like to out of respect and responsibility just share with you the NDSU land acknowledgement and while this might pertain to specific land that you are not located on, but it might be a good opportunity to learn more about the land that you are on today. So we collectively acknowledge that we gathered at NDSU, a land-grant institution, on the traditional lands of the Osheti-Shakowin, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Anishinaabe peoples. In addition to many diverse indigenous people still connected to these lands. We honor with gratitude Mother Earth and the indigenous peoples who have walked with Earth throughout generations. We will continue to learn how to live in unity with Mother Earth and build strong mutually beneficial trusting relationships with indigenous peoples of our region. And with that, this is just another reiteration of what's to come, but I am here today with my friends Deb Egland and Christine Kostak. So Deb Egland is the assistant director to child nutrition programs for the North Dakota Department of Ag. And I'm going to just spotlight them. And Christine Kostak is the local foods marketing specialist for North Dakota Department of Agriculture. And we're just going to kind of have an informal conversation and sharing some information about local meat and what it looks like and can look like in farmers markets as well as farm to school. So I will just turn over, we'll start with you Deb, if you want to just take a few minutes to introduce what your role is within DPI, what that looks like. And then I'll hand it over to Christine to do the same with maybe more some of the farm to school efforts but then also the farmers market world and then we'll kind of get into some of those questions. Okay, that sounds good. I'm Deb Egland and I work in Department of Public Instruction. I take care of school lunch programs. There's many, many, many regulations, but we're so excited when we can make things a little bit easier and serve really good local food. First of all, I'd like to say this logo, Christine made this logo and put the little cow calf in there. We work really good with the egg department. That's why, and we also work good with extension. So I think our state really collaborates well. And I like to work with these people. It's kind of interesting because everybody brings something different to the table and has a different group of contacts. So we can make sure that we get our message out farther. Great, thanks Deb. Christine. Hi everybody. My name is Christine Kastik. And as Jan said, I'm a local foods marketing specialist for the North Dakota Department of Agriculture. Basically my position oversees all the marketing associated with local foods, PR work, any type of communication stuff with that being said, anything the department has to do with farmers markets and grant funding associated with that, the Farm to School program and other various events, things like that. This past year, I would say that North Dakota Department of Agriculture has taken a particular interest, especially in like Farm to School and expanding like its efforts in developing just a program for it because we were kind of at a blank space when I came on board and we've worked really closely with DPI as Deb has said to kind of get the ball rolling. And yeah, just kind of excited to see where it goes and doing more events kind of like this to educate producers on how to get involved in Farm to School. Yeah, excellent. Thanks for that. Just kind of setting the stage for our conversation tonight. So if we just start with like one of the basic questions and knowing that these past couple of years, as you mentioned Christine, there's been an elevated spotlight on local foods and particularly local meat in Farm to School programs and accessing local meat. But Deb, maybe you can speak to local meat and local products in Farm to School efforts isn't necessarily a brand new thing, right? What's the history been with local meat in Farm to School programs in North Dakota? It's always been allowed as long as the meat was processed at an inspected plant. It's just that we haven't had many people do it. I know there's a huge misconception out there with our school cooks who have flat out told producers, we can't use it unless it came from one of the big trucks. And that's not true. I mean, we say all the time you can take donated fresh or you can take donated or purchase fresh produce, honey and then meat and eggs have to be inspected before you could take those. But they seem to have a real roadblock with it. Every time we talk about it at any kind of a farmers conference, something like that, we always make sure a health inspector is there to reinforce the exact same thing. But I guess it just really took off a lot more this year because our person who orders the commodities in our office orders a lot of ground beef. And she canceled three of the trucks. Well, then our schools were looking for ground beef. So they had to start purchasing it from big trucks. It was just a perfect storm at exactly the same time that we had this one distributor who dropped a hundred of our 200 districts. And then Jeremy Maher of a rancher just left a message with a guy at DPI who just happened to forward it on to me. And so I called him back and he said he wanted to get a beef to school program going in North Dakota. How could he do it? And I told him it was certainly allowed. It's just that a lot of people hadn't taken advantage of it. But we just really got the message out there. And we were, it was just perfect storm. All I can say is because we knew all of our schools weren't going to go to serving just chicken. They wanted beef and they wanted a way to get it. So the ranchers would wanted to donate some. And then when that got going and people heard about it, then they said, I want to buy some too. How can I do it? Then we got together with Christina Cara from the egg department and had our list of inspected processors. So they knew where they could go to another thing. I guess that was kind of an impediment was all of those meat processors were swamped. They had ranchers would call us and say, I can't get in for a year, but we had South 40 in Mott that had just opened recently. So he, he wasn't such a, I guess, booked like no one guy. He was more of a new person. And he told the ranchers that he would process that beef for the donated samples in the beginning for free just to get it going. So that worked out really well for us that he was not as busy as some of the other processors. And these ranchers were just, they were willing to just personally drive it themselves out to the schools and the schools really needed it and wanted it. So it worked out really, really good. I guess one of the things that we love is that they could ask for it in any kind of packaging they wanted because we do have some real small schools. And when they buy it institutional, it's 40 pounds. It's for 10 pound tubes. They like the smaller amounts if they can get them from the local guys. That's a really nice benefit to it. Yeah. That's a good point. Thinking about, and that's, you know, something for farmers and ranchers to think about is, you know, when you're dealing with a larger school district like Bismarck or Fargo or West Fargo or something that you might have the perception that you have to supply all their needs. And is that the case, Deb? No, there's just no way. We don't want that to scare people off. That's been a huge problem, even with produce and things. People say, well, there's no way that I could supply the whole Bismarck or Mandan or Fargo district. But even just a little, if you just want to get it started, because most of them, even if they have 22 schools, if they could have a local product in one school, they'd be fine with it. And maybe they would rotate because USDA, that's where we get all of our money that we give to the schools and the commodities that we give to them. USDA in the last few years has had this farm to school as a corporate priority. It's not just about getting local foods in the schools. One of the bigger, I guess, goals of the whole thing is to get kids interested in agriculture and agriculture careers. I mean, it's just not common anymore that everybody has a farm with a farm. People don't see that anymore. And they really want to bring that back. And it's worked out pretty good because I've even checked out the Career and Tech Ed website. And they've had a huge increase in kids signing up for egg classes. So I do think that's good. It's not just getting the food in there, but getting the kids interested in where does this food come from? How does it all work out? Hey, maybe that might be a good life career for me. Yeah. Those are really good points, Deb. The education piece, the agriculture career mindset for any kid, rural, urban, yeah, any side school, those sorts of things. Christine, how about like does, so the Department of Agriculture, do they deal with those state inspected processing plants? So can you talk just a little bit about how would a farmer or rancher know what processor they can use or not use? So we do have a list on our website and I can definitely share it in the chat of all of our inspected facilities across the state. But pretty much every single one through the state kind of has that, if they're legitimately selling at a storefront or anything like that, it's pretty much a safe bet that you can go to it and use it for farm to school purposes. Like I said, we do have our lists of all of our state and federally inspected facilities on our website. We also have an entire department, not just inspectors, but people that like specialize in meat inspection. We have a specialist that just works on almost communication type materials and things like that to kind of spread the word. And like I said, I'll share it in the chat so you guys can kind of explore what we have out there because it's a lot. We do like a monthly newsletter, all sorts of or a yearly, I should say not monthly newsletter, just about meat production and inspections. That's great. One other question I have, and if anybody in the room has questions throughout, yeah, certainly use the chat, but yes, feel free to unmute yourself if you're comfortable and have the means, we'd be happy to take questions throughout the evening. So Christine, aside from having a farmer or rancher utilize a state inspected facility, what are some other regulations that a producer would need to know if they're looking at getting into farm to school? Well, that big key component of it is finding the right facility to work with. There's a couple of different ways that ranchers can get involved in farm to school. They can kind of approach the school themselves and basically take their product there. Once it's like processed in that state or federally inspected facility and kind of work one-on-one with the school to kind of get a contract developed, things like that, or they can just go straight through the processor. As Deb said, South 40 has kind of made it their quest to like get the farm to school program up and going. Boat and meat processing is another huge one. I know they have actually directly reached out to schools themselves just so they could kind of develop a list because they have ranchers that come in and say, hey, I'd like to see this meat go to a school. Can you make sure it gets to a school? So when they hear that, they have that list that they can make sure it gets to that school. So really we've kind of been working a lot with the processing plants in the state to kind of get them on board and kind of make it an independent action. So the producer doesn't have to do so much legwork to track down the right school to sell their product to. Yeah, that's a good point, Christine. Like those personal relationships are really helpful, but oftentimes, and that can like open doors and lead to new things, but it can be time intensive and, you know, it takes a while to build relationships with folks. So those processors can help alleviate some of that workload that's helpful, too. Absolutely. And it's, I think it's kind of intimidating. I've worked with other producers, even that have done, been selling produce or any other product, and they'd like to see it get into a school, but it is intimidating to approach somebody and kind of almost solicit them with their product. That's a great product, but it's hard to know where to start. And a lot of schools, and we recommend, I would definitely stand by always having a contract with your school that you're working with, and that's kind of a big animal to take on, too. So when you work with a processing facility, there is none of that. It's just straight up. You have the option to just go right through them. Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of leads into another question I have, if we'll bounce back to Deb. What sort of process do schools and districts have to go through if they are soliciting for local meet in their schools? Is there, like, do they have to have a request for bids? Like is there a bidding process? Any of those sorts of like contractual things that farmers and ranchers should know about? Well, in the toolkit that Christine has on the egg department website for farm school, we made a little template asking for pricing on beef. And if you had any specifics about when you wanted it delivered, what amounts, if you wanted cafeteria visits, different things like that, that they could use. I guess another thing that we have is a thing called the micro purchase where schools are allowed to spend up to $10,000 on like special events or also it's called spreading the wealth. If they wanted to purchase up to $10,000 of any type of food from a whole bunch of different places, that's another thing they get confused about. They say, oh, does that mean we have to go to every convenience store and gas station in our town? No. It just means spread the wealth that you don't artificially make your purchases, let's say from U.S. Foods or Cisco, you say, well, we never buy more than $10,000 a month, so that's okay. We can just be with Cisco without getting a bid. No, that's not spreading the wealth. That would be more going to a bunch of different ranchers, maybe up to $10,000 each if you wanted to or if you wanted a good permanent deal that you could line something up for a year that they would deliver weekly and what package sizes, then you could use this request for price quotes that we have. I guess one of the things that really causes, I don't know, maybe more of a less market for some of the people is how far they'll go. That's the thing about John in South 40, he's delivering all over the state, whereas we have other local people who they don't want to be delivering 400 miles away. So that's something to think about too, and that's where it gets really local. If a rancher wants to go to a processor that's in his close area and then maybe sell to just a few schools there, they don't necessarily want to be going up to Cavalier or anything like that. So that kind of limits some of them of where they can go, which is nice because then it just keeps it local. If that's what they want to do, you don't have a big guy coming and trying to put the smaller people, I guess, out of business. Everybody gets a chance then. Beef isn't so bad because it's frozen. You can go farther, but like with lettuce, we have some lettuce growers, they just can't go very far. Just our weather and distance really limits that. So it works best if you start in your local area. And if you have capacity to go farther out, that's great. But I guess starting out, I would stick to not having to deliver very far away. Yeah, that's something to think about in planning and sustainability options for sure. One other question that I had, and this is probably for both of you. So you can just feel free to chime in with whoever wants to go first. But when we're talking about local meat in farm to school, specifically, I guess we haven't really broached the subject of farmer's market yet, but talking about farm to school, why would people be interested in farm to school? So from the public instruction standpoint, why do we want local meat in schools? Why would farmers and ranchers want to be concerned about wanting local meat in schools and then Christine your take on it too. So I'd be happy to hear what you guys have to say about that. Well, one thing that we say about local foods is that the students win, the farmers win, the community wins. It's kind of a circle because we have some very, very small schools that it's just a miracle they're still open. But if they can support some of their local people in the community and potentially have students who want to become ranchers or farmers and stay in the area, once they kind of get the bug that they think this is good, that really helps them. So that's one of our biggest things that it just, it is a circle that helps the students, the farmers and the community and community pride. Just this was growing here. They people really like that. It just kind of pulls the community together. And if there's a way that they possibly could buy it at, not a huge price increase, it's worth it to them to support their local community. Yeah. I've heard a couple of recent stories about the ranchers connecting with the, with individuals in the schools, whether they're school cooks or teachers or students. And when this gentleman spoke his face just lit up as he was talking about walking into the school with his product. And so it really is, you know, it's a feel good thing, but it's not altruistic. It's there's economic and significant economic impacts of local meat into schools. Okay. Christine, I'll hand it over to you. I was actually going to just start on that. Jan, it keeps the money in your area. So I mean, when you, when you think about that kind of impact, what that can do and circle back to the community in ways that you don't even think about, it's pretty important. I guess the other side of it. So when Deb was talking about ranchers and like their children, it kind of encourages them to be open about staying in the community and continuing on their parents's legacy almost. I think that's awesome and extremely important. I, of course, I grew up in Bismarck here. So my, my take on it is the, the biggest importance is like that education component of understand where your food comes from. Just because I, when you, when you grow up on like a ranch or something like that, you kind of understand the circle of where your food comes from. And I think it's important to understand that you don't get that same thing when you grow up in a larger city like I did and Bismarck by no means is necessarily like a huge city like a Minneapolis or Chicago, but I can definitely say from experience, like attending public school here, there was definitely a big detachment from produce, what grows in what we can grow in our gardens, raised on a farm, everything like that. So it's, we live kind of in a culture where everything is so packaged and shipped in from elsewhere. And I think a lot of people in these larger communities like Bismarck, Fargo, even my not, don't have that same attachment and understanding of their food. So farming school definitely helps bridge that gap. Right. And when you mentioned that Christine, what comes to mind too, is to when local products are used in school programs or even farmers markets, there is that like that consumer based education piece. So not only just knowing where food comes from, but knowing what's involved in raising and growing and producing that food. And then not only does that give, you know, it can give you the sense of appreciation for where their food comes from, but also it can help build positive and healthy food habits. So, you know, having a positive relationship with food is important in long-term lifestyle and chronic disease prevention and those sorts of things. So, and that's more of my world and not so much of agriculture world, but yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of amazing when you start thinking about it, how everything is kind of tied together and we're all kind of on the same team when it comes to farm to school. When you were talking about that, I started thinking back to how we went out to Willmore when we were doing some work for farm to school and they were featuring some type of local produce on their menu and they had their salad bar set up and the cooks there had basically decorated the kitchen space all about how they had these local items on the menu. So the kids definitely knew that this was something that came from North Dakota. This is something that is healthy for me and this is something that I should kind of be excited about and recognize as something special. So we're kind of all on the same team and that goes back to like that community pride thing that Deb was talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Christine. Thanks for all the questions in the chat, Lisa. She's asking about what percentages should the meat be when looking to produce for schools. And Deb is saying about 85, 15, 90, 10 is fine. And then she had a follow-up question, Deb, about what kind? Double ground, single ground, what size? Should they come in patties, et cetera? So if you want to address some of that. Thanks, Lisa, for the question. Well, Lisa, I feel really dumb now because I don't know the difference between double ground and single ground. I guess just ground beef. They use a lot of ground beef. Some of them will take patties if they have a flat top brittle to make them on, which is really interesting. Just last week, we had a little talk about this, me and Christine and Nicole from beef commission and some of our ranchers about how could they actually cook raw beef patties because we one time got some in for commodities and they sent us all these pictures of how gray they looked and awful and they were all mad as could be about it because they'd never gotten great or raw patties before. Had pre-cooked, just heat up patties. And so we're thinking about ways that we can teach them to cook the patties because they actually do taste a lot better if you get raw patties instead of the pre-cooked ones. I saw a presentation of a guy from Colorado where they had put patties on pan liners on tray season them and then baked them in the oven and they looked great. I'm not sure why our people when they came as commodity item for whatever reason, they turned into ugly gray pucks. So we're working on that to try to figure out how they can actually make a raw patty and that it would still taste good and look good and I almost think they need to have their oven a lot hotter. That's what I think but I had a plan when we had a meeting last Thursday that I would contact this guy in Colorado and ask him how they did it because his looked fantastic. It's just something to do with the way they cook them because the way our cook sent pictures to us was not good, not at all. Yeah, that's a good point though, Deb. And Lisa, to your question, lots of times those answers, those questions can be answered in conversations with the schools, the person who's kind of in charge of the kitchens in those schools. So they will, and if they're asking for local meat in their schools, it might even be like in that contract or in that RFA or something. They might describe exactly what they're looking for. And then Deb, I guess that's just maybe one last question specifically targeted and then we might transition, give you a little bit of a break and transition to farmers markets. But if you could talk a little bit about maybe some of the transitions that would be required if schools are getting raw product. So changing, you know, their food prep and their time management and stuff to get that raw product onto the school lunch line. Well, they do receive raw frozen ground beef now. They can either get it from us from commodities or that's what they buy from big trucks. We only have two schools who said they will not accept raw ground beef. They buy pre-cooked crumbles just because they feel like for food safety, they don't want to deal with any kind of raw meat in their kitchens. So it's not that it's raw. That's a problem. They're used to raw beef because they all make tacos, spaghetti, sloppy joes, Tater tot hot dish that all the superintendents call that scratch cooking. Funny I call that a bunch of processed stuff you threw in a pan. But anyway, they're used to cooking up raw beef. It's just the patties to make really good hamburgers that are patties. They're used to cooking up raw beef. They're used to cooking up raw beef. They're used to cooking on a little bit more. If they have flat top grills, that's a thing. If you're a very big school, how many flat top grills are you going to have going? I think in the oven would be way better. And with some people who have rational combi ovens that are fantastic, they'll cook meat that looks like it was cooked. And it highlights all of the layers and complexities involved with cooking large amounts of food on a daily basis. It requires proper equipment. It requires a certain amount of person power to get the cooking done in a short amount of time. And then on the production side, getting the food and the product into the kitchen. So that's what it is that the schools will need. So again, it's lots of layers and it can be a little bit clunky at first. But again, it is doable in lots of these schools. And Deb, what was the number of schools that we've got local meat into now? 71. Before we started this, maybe there might have been two or three. If I even heard about it at all. I think that's the number of schools that we've got local meat into now. I think that's the number of schools that we've got. We have 71 of our 200 districts are using local beef now. So I think that's quite a success story. And I was just thinking about something when you said that about equipment. When Fargo built a new central warehouse kitchen, they were thinking about putting in one of those chicken rotisserie cookers. They would have a conveyor belt type. The way they do those rotisserie chickens, they do beef patties. I have a feeling there is something like that, but it would pretty much take a new kit, new construction kitchen probably to put one in, but it would be a good idea because I know our North Dakota people really do prefer beef to chicken. Yeah. Yeah. All those equipment pieces are really something when you see them in action, that's for sure. Awesome. Well, again, just a reminder, keep those questions coming in the chat. Feel free to unmute, but we will take a little bit of a turn and maybe talk about specifically farmers markets now. So local meat farmers markets. And we're just gearing up for farmers market season soon. It's almost June, which some kind of kickoff in getting into July where it really warms up and gets, gets cooking. So lots of times when people think about farmers markets, and baked goods and pies and jams and jellies. But if we can talk a little bit about the importance of having local meat in farmers markets. So maybe what a meat producer can bring to a farmers market and why they could consider that as another business venture. Sure. So there is a ton of benefits for meat producers to participate in farmers markets. It's a great place to kind of start out. So if you are a business that is just kind of getting your feet wet in this, it's a great starting point. It's a good place to expand your customer reach, get your name out there. And of course network for other opportunities. Most markets are extremely reasonable to participate in. And they provide kind of an extra layer of. Insurance for producers and just kind of allow them to sell flexibly too. That's another thing. If you are an interested in, you know, going as big as having like a 3B, but you do have a small ranch someplace in North Dakota and you, you'd like to just get it processed and sell it somewhere. It's just an excellent opportunity for that. Cause like I said, they're pretty flexible with the scheduling. Usually once you pay that fee, it's like, you can come once a summer, you can come a hundred times. It kind of just depends on the market and the amount of product that you're presenting and just how much, how much you want to put into it. So it's a good opportunity for all that. And we do have over 50 farmers markets in the state. I would not be surprised if that number that I just spouted off is actually a little bit off because every single year the department kind of learns about more and more and more that are popping up, especially in small counties and rural communities. So it's just an excellent opportunity to highlight your local product without maybe having to do, have such a large business. Yeah. Good point. And then thinking about some of the regulations. So we talked about when distributing to schools, you need to be through a state, state inspected facility. What are the regulations for a local farmer and rancher to sell at a farmer's market? Sure. So I actually kind of love meat questions because a lot of the other items that can be sold at farmer's markets like canned goods or baked goods or just produce even in general, they have kind of different regulations depending on what avenue you're selling to. Whereas meat, it's kind of across the board that same regulation where it has to be processed in a federal or state inspected facility unless otherwise it is retail exempt, which what retail exempt means is basically it has to be state or federally slaughtered, but the result, but the result is then further processed by a licensed butcher shop. And then all sales from that point on are conducted by the person that processed it. So if you can imagine like a 3D meats or a John's meat market having a farmer's market stand, it's kind of where that retail exempt piece comes in. Let's see here. I think that's pretty much about it. It's just an easy thing to kind of do the right thing at just because you can't sell in a store or at a farmer's market or to a school unless it meets those requirements. Okay. So lots of the same requirements. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good facility is way to go. Once if somebody is just looking to get into a farmer's market, sell some meat, what is something they can expect at the market? Like will their booth be inspected? Will they have to abide by certain rules of the farmer's market in order to sell meat? Sure. So their booth at the farmer's market could possibly be inspected. We do not oversee inspections for farmers markets or other events like that. It is kind of up to the local health district to handle that. So public health, for example, handles biz market, capital, farmers market, and Bismarck farmers markets inspections. Let's see here. And unfortunately, every public health district is a little bit different. I know my knot is kind of notorious for having a little bit stricter policies than maybe a Bismarck or a Fargo. But most often, whether no matter what kind of booth you have at the farmer's market, whether that be meat or produce or canned goods, most of them are very, very happy for you to make that call before you set up your booth and just say, hey, I'm new to this. I have some questions or I would like to handle my business like this when I'm at a farmer's market. Is this okay? They're all very open and I guarantee would rather have some phone calls and questions answered before, you know, it gets to that point. So that's a really good tip, Christine, yeah, to reach out to those local public health units and ask the questions ahead of time can alleviate a lot of things. So I've been around some farmer's markets in the Bismarck area that have been inspected and lots of things they do is like check for like freezer temps and storage, you know, those sorts of things, checking temperatures, making sure that things are at the time they need that they're frozen solid, that the freezers are still plugged in and that sort of thing. So pretty simple in regards to inspections, but just again with food safety in mind, all important things. So Travis has a question. If a producer wishes to get a retail license for the farmer's market, who should we contact first? So I guess I would advise you to maybe, well, two ways you could go about it. Like I said, you could contact somebody in our office and I will put our meat specialist, Nathan Crowe's information in there. He is excellent to like get any businesses ball rolling kind of because he's the expert at this and he's very, very, very just good to work with. So I will put his contact information in the chat here. The other thing is most processors. I have come to learn through this job just in the last year are pretty knowledgeable about the different avenues that you can sell meat on. So I wouldn't even be shy to maybe even ask your processor about it. But like I said, if you are going through a processor and you are following all the other regulations that the farmer's market has, you should pretty much be okay. So, but don't hesitate to reach out to either me or Nathan. Great. And thanks to Travis for putting that contact info in the chat. We've got a question. We've got a question from Joanna. Are the rules different if you're selling frozen packages of meat? I expect to bring freezer for booths to keep it frozen before sale. Are there transportation rules even if processed by USDA? Not that I am aware of. Obviously it needs to stay frozen. That's a really good question to maybe just run by Nathan again. Like I said, I'm not quite the expert in the area of meat. I kind of just send them all that way. So I will probably recommend that you just reach out to him with that one. Yeah. And I think I may be off on this, but I think that if selling meat at a farmer's market, I think it must be frozen. I don't think we can sell fresh meat at a farmer's market. But again, Department of Ag folks would have very likely more solid grounds for that answer. I believe that to be true. Thanks, Jan, on the frozen and in fact, you know, to lead into next week's retail and inventory management. When we think about it from a small producer standpoint, it's certainly a better option of providing that from a frozen approach than fresh. Awesome. Thanks for that, Travis. That's helpful too. Lisa's got a question. Are there opportunities to sell ground pork, for example, in the spring, when you would have to go to school to get a little bit of ground pork, would you like to get a breakfast sausage or Italian sausage crumble to schools? Oh yep. And Deb's got a yes on the pork. Oh, and this is, I actually did this back in the day when I was a school food service director. The commodity person could not get rid of ground pork. So I would take all she had. We would throw it in our mixer with some sausage seasoning and then scoop it out with. And then we'd take another tray, smash them down into patties. And we actually baked them off in our oven and they were great. And I think it might have been the higher fat content, but yes, they love to have sausage at breakfast. So if you had pork, that would be great. Italian sausage, they could always use that in spaghetti or even if they made a different kind of sandwiches. I mean, they love like bratwurst, things like that. But if they had an Italian sausage in there and they put a little bit of mozzarella and a little bit of spaghetti sauce on it, that'd be really great. Nice. I know. I love to hear all the tricks of the trade in school lunchrooms. I always get a kick out of those. Coulter's got a question. When is a retail meat license required to sell frozen meat? I guess maybe I would ask a clarifying question. Coulter, are you thinking in a farmer's market or to schools or in more of a retail setting? Because from my understanding, farmers are privately to individuals. Yeah. So at market, Christine, they don't need any specific licensure, right? They just need to go through an inspected facility. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's the worst thing. Yep, yep. And then selling to individuals, I am not sure about that. Christine, do you know the answer to that? Like if somebody, if a farmer rancher, we're looking to sell to individuals. So I am always going to recommend that you make a retail ready when it comes to meat. I think it's just easier and safer just to go that route. Yeah, I guess my recommendation to you is to always have it at that level where you can sell it at any avenue. And that'd be just in general. OK, thanks, Christine. Jean's got a question asking about county requirements to sell at a farmer's market. And I think that kind of relates back to the local public health unit would be doing and managing any guidance on what can be required of meat producers at farmer's markets, right? Yep, absolutely. Yeah, so it wouldn't necessarily be county specific, but it would be local public health units to contact. And I think lots of times the farmer's market might have information on that too. They could direct you, you know, if you're looking to get into a specific market, they could maybe point you in the right direction on who to contact about that. Anything else, Christine, that you could think of that we didn't cover for farmer's markets for meat producers? No, I don't think so. Thanks. Yeah. All right. And Deb, anything that we missed with the farm to school conversation, anything else that you're dying to tell these folks? I can't think of anything right now. I would just say maybe approach your school and see if they're interested. Because some of most of the people who've been approached were like immediately they call me and say, can we do that? And I have told these ranchers over and over. It won't matter what you say. It won't matter how many pieces of paper I give you. They're going to call me and ask me if it's OK. And I'll just say, yes, it's OK. You can do that if you want to do that. There have been a few where they're like, no way. We can't unless it's off the big truck. And I don't know if they actually think that or if they just don't want to mess with it. Some of them, they just prefer to order off the big trucks. Maybe they think it's easier. I'm not sure. But you can try and please don't feel like you have to donate. Maybe you want to donate a little sample. But I guess you should get paid for your product. You can expect that. And you could definitely say that it's got value. Of course, it has good value and you should get paid for it. So don't get hoodwinked into thinking you always have to donate. I know that some people won't come to farm school conferences because they think someone's going to come up to them and say, hey, could you donate to my school? And I told people, then knock it off. I mean, you pay the food guys for their food. You can pay your local people too. Yeah, good point, Deb. Thanks. There's another question. May is beef month. Beef month. And North Dakota Department of Public Instruction had a social post on it mentioning nutritional value. So Deb, if you just want to share a little bit about that tidbit of information from one of the local ranchers and how the yield maybe was more because of the fat content was lower, I think maybe that's what it had to do with the nutritional value of that local beef. That's what I'm thinking that was about too. Because I'm sitting there thinking, what was that, the sloppy joe posture? And I'm trying to remember what said on it. Yes, we have noticed that there is less fat. That comes off. And I think one of the things is we were discussing this also at our meeting when we talked about cooking beef. We think that these ranchers are possibly making theirs even more lean because they want to make absolutely certain. They eat the 85-15. So it might be higher, but they're not saying it's higher just because they just want it. It's funny, it's just like our cooks. If they cook for 200, they actually cook for 250 just in case. Whereas I think on the commercial, it probably is exactly the 85-15. So then when you get more of the fat off, then you have more protein left. There is also science now that tells you the important of fat in children's diet. So when you say it has to be so super lean, you're kind of missing a nutritional piece. Well, it doesn't really have to be that lean. I mean, some of the stuff they get is not lean. It's just that they lose so much. When they cook it, they really like the extra yield. So yes, I agree because my thing is we have this requirement. You have to take a fruit or vegetable and then we're supposedly have to have low fat, low sodium ranch nobody wants. That's my thing. You need some fat and some sodium to get the food to go down. So yeah, I totally agree with that. And Travis has a question for you, Deb. What is your best success story of producers talking at a school and making the connection with agriculture in the schools? Let's see, I'm trying to think. Well, I kind of wonder about Elgin's school because when John made his meat processing plant down there, then the school was all excited. Maybe if they would revive their egg program, they could do a butchering class and teach the kids how to do butchering and then they could potentially get jobs there. And then they also started purchasing that same local beef. So it was kind of a cycle that it could create some jobs. And kind of like Henry Ford, he made his cars just cheap enough that his own employees could afford to buy them. And that's how he took off 100 years ago or whatever. So I think that the Elgin Mott area is a really, really good success story that I guess I can think of right now. Great, thanks, Deb. And Lisa found the post that she was referring to there. Okay, well, we took that straight from the ranchers and stuck it out there. I guess we'll, I would just say that more of the fat comes off of it. And so you get a good high protein. And also I know it has more protein than chicken. I mean, I hate to be an anti-chicken here, but I was worried to death when our commodity person counseled three trucks of ground beef but our schools would go to more chicken and I'm the chief complaint officer in our office. And that's what I hear all the time. Moms call and say, is that all they ever serve is chicken, chicken, chicken? Oh, like the counselor of the same meat more than three times a week. I'll check their menu. These are great questions and good insight from Christine and Deb. So if you have more questions, feel free to unmute, pop it in the chat. Christine, this is an overarching question. Thanks to both you, Deb and Christine and I really appreciate your hard work on this. And this is a generalized question, Christine. And maybe I shouldn't ask this because this throws it out there. But what, I mean, I pointed on there, the North Dakota Department of Agriculture, the local foods map. And so people can go to farmers market, but is there one that, see, I already asked Deb, you know, what was her best connection, but is there one that, again, maybe you're picking your favorite child, but is there one that's just like boomed? That like, whoa, that went from zero to 60 in 5.2 or is it all of them? For like producers selling to the school, you mean? Is there a farmer's market, on the farmer's market when you describe that, is there something where like, wow, that one's really been a staple to the community and maybe that's too big of a generalization, but we've seen it in lots of different communities. Like, whoa, that one really took off. Yeah, that is such a hard question to answer. Not because it's not a good question because it's a really, really good question. Man, so I, for several years, was a farmer's market vendor myself, and I can say I participated in several in the state, and I worked with Jan through the biz market and stuff like that, and to watch that one grow and develop over the years has been really fun and exciting, and to just see the different vendors that come through from everything, from meat producers to ice cream, to just odd produce and odd items that you would not expect would be sold in North Dakota, or at a North Dakota's farmer's market. The Red River Market, that's another one that I kind of, I remember when that started in Fargo because I think I was living down there at the time, and to see that one develop has been really fun, but I would say, especially working this job, the excitement of going to a small town or doing an egg in the classroom presentation about farmer's markets, and hearing kids from these rural communities talk about the farmer's market and what a big impact it's made, there's some that they make such strong connections with these vendors and their local community, and then that turns out to be between their garden going full blast and the work that they do, and then buying from other people in their community. It's almost being like the sustainable thing in some of these rural cities. So I don't know, I was thrilled to death when I was in Lisbon a few weeks ago and saw they have a farmer's market that is gonna start up here in like end of June, and that was exciting, because who would have thought that Lisbon, North Dakota would have like a farmer's market that is fairly decent in size. So really, that's not really answering your question, but... That's okay, I told you to like pick your favorite kid, it's okay, it's a question that I shouldn't ask, I should preface that, just in terms of the thought process, but even as we built this as our small farms team and kind of pulling a lot of this together, and in fact, some of the previous research that I've been a part of, even whether it was a natural, I'm just gonna name from a labeling standpoint of natural and organics and grass fed or grass finished or grain fed or grain finished or whatever that may be. And so some of the like, and we'll talk about this later, and hopefully this is a transition to future webinars that we have, but that relationship is so important. And both of you guys touched on that extremely well of whether it's at the school or at the farmer's market. And I always liked that, even when I was digging on kind of some of the retail and food service connections that I got to do in some of my research and projects is that local Trump's all of that. And in fact, because and the reason that that is even from a research standpoint is that that connection with the producer provides trust. And when we think about it from a food system standpoint or the food supply chain, trust is absolutely imperative. And I think maybe you guys will agree. And so that's why it's important that we have, even our farm to school program to continue to build that. And also what we do at the North Dakota Department of Agriculture and hopefully what we do at NDSU Extension as well is building trust along our supply chain. And that's why I'm excited to be part of our small farms group and kind of build that trust of our food industry. And as Deb kind of led off and kind of her topic statement there is that more students are understanding potential careers, potential interest in agriculture, but also in their food system, which is Jan. And that's why we have a diverse group even within with our team. And so the quick question there from one of our colleagues and I'm transitioning sorry, Jan is moderator but of the schools taking or any schools taking lamb and goat meat products. And so that comes from our outside. And in fact, truthfully our lamb and goat producers are probably pricing themselves out of the market. And it's maybe not quite as highly acceptable Deb, but that was a negative head shake. It's your turn. They're not now, but I guess I know a lot of people who really, really like goat cheese and there are like 27% of people are lactose intolerant and for whatever reason, they find goat milk easier to digest. I almost think there might be a better market for that in childcare centers than in schools, but it's not like it's unheard of. I mean, I actually know a lot of people myself who raise their own goats just because they think it's really good on the lamb. I don't know, I just don't see that going in the schools but there might be a place where people know lamb producers, it might go better. It's kind of like if you talked about Rocky Mountain oysters, most people would be creeped out, but then other people are like, yay, sign me up. It just depends on what is, I guess, valued locally. That's kind of why it's local because we wouldn't eat what some people in Hawaii think is fantastic. And they would probably think some of our stuff is the weirdest stuff ever. So it could go. I mean, I see more potential with goats than lamb, but that could be wrong. Well, Deb, you brought up Hawaii and I've been there once and one of the proteins of preference is spam. And so we don't have to go there yet, all right? So that's the opposite of a local foods is a highly processed meat, but at least that's an option. So I'll leave you guys, because I think we got a lot of the questions answered and appreciate your information. Thanks so much for being a part of our discussion. Yes, I second that. Yeah, go ahead, Christine. Oh, I was just gonna say thank you so much for having us and please, anybody listening, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Deb or our meat inspection specialist either with the stay in. Yeah, and I think that as a part of this conversation, local foods like Travis was alluding to is a really integral piece to the food system in North Dakota. And so looking at ways, not that one thing is ever going to be the end all be all answer. So it really does take each piece in each part. And so we do appreciate your comments in the chat about conventional compared to local and relying on science and yes, so as a North Dakota Department of Public Instruction is a USDA funded program. And so they do rely on federal guidelines and regulations and extension is rooted in science and evidence-based information and much like Department of Agriculture. So we do appreciate those comments and those conversations and we look forward to continuing the conversations. And again, contact information has been shared. So feel free to put that out there and we appreciate your time and energy today. So Lindy has or maybe Travis launched poll. So please feel free to complete those. We'll leave it open for a few more minutes if anybody has some final questions that are needing to be addressed. But again, we appreciate your time and attention and take good care. Thank you. Thank you.