 Welcome, everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host for today's Field to Fork webinar. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. This is the seventh year we've done the series and we're so glad you joined us today. The next slide shows our upcoming webinars. Next week, Byron, an assistant professor and extension food safety specialist from the University of Nebraska will be joining us and telling us about developing safe food products. So if you've ever thought of coming up with your own food product, I think you'll learn a lot from him. Following that, we'll have Jan, who's a professor and extension entomologist from NDSU, talking with us about attracting pollinators to your garden. The next slide shows our webinar controls. Because of our large number of participants, we've had over 750 join us for the entire series. We invite you to post your comments in the chat box. So let's practice finding and using the chat box. So click to open the chat and then type your city and state in the chat. And while you're doing that, our next slide provides an acknowledgement. I have a special request. I asked that you do our survey at the end of this program. We ask that every week that you participate. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's agricultural marketing service. So again, right after our, our webinar, there will be an online survey that will be emailed to you directly. And I will be providing prizes to the lucky winners and I have lots of prizes so you can even win more than one prize. So be sure to include your complete address on the follow up form and be sure to include your city, state and zip code. Again, I welcome you to today's webinar and I'm very pleased to introduce our speaker. Esther McGinnis is an associate professor in the North Dakota State University Department of Plant Sciences. I'm also an extension horticulturalist and the director of the extension master gardener program, and I'm sure there are several of you master gardeners on the call. For graduate students conduct research in the areas of native plant evaluation, pollinator conservation and plants for rain garden environments. The administrator of the extension master gardener program, impactful initiatives include planting pollinator habitat fighting food insecurity community beautification and basic plant diagnoses. So thank you so much Esther for your talk and it's all yours. Julie, and thank you for inviting me I always enjoy interacting with your field to fork audience. They're always a very gracious and receptive audience. Well today, I'm going to be talking to you about fighting food insecurity in our communities. So that's kind of a deep topic for us today. Now my talk is going to be a little on in on the unorthodox side so I'm going to tell you instead of, I'm not going to give you an outline what I'm going to talk about instead I'm going to give you an outline about what this talk isn't about. So this is not going to be your typical gardening talk I'm not going to give you recommendations for the best cultivars of beans I'm not going to tell you how to prevent powdery mildew on cucumbers. This talk is not going to be about problems in some distant community or some distant country instead we're going to be focusing on problems that are in our region and may even be in our neighborhoods. This isn't to talk about just an urban problem. We're going to talk about rural problems to. First of all, this is not about situations that are beyond your control. So we've got a lot of situations out there that we have no control over we have no control over what's going on in the Ukraine. We really haven't had control over COVID and such. So instead, I prefer to focus on programming where we can make a difference where we can have an impact, because then we're motivated to go out and do something that we can really change our communities. And I have, you know, I've built my career on making a difference. So I started off in law, and I have to admit at a certain point I left that profession to study horticulture and to eventually work for extension, because I wanted to have an impact on our communities for the better. And that's what this whole program is about. Now, there may be some of you saying how can I have an impact. Well, I love this African proverb. If you think you're too small to make a difference, you haven't spent a night with a mosquito. So I want all of us to be mosquitoes by the end of this presentation. The first thing we need to do before we can understand how we can make a difference is we need to understand the problem and understand the scope and realize that it's an immediate problem in our communities. When I think of North Dakota, I feel a lot of pride. This is my home state. I'm really proud of our agriculture industry, because we're number one in the production of so many things. We're number one in the production of dry edible beans, navy beans, pinto beans, number one in the production of canola that goes into canola oil, flaxseed, honey, and dry edible peas. But when I think of my great home state of North Dakota, I think of us as being the bread basket of the United States. So we're number one in the production of Durham wheat, we produce spring wheat. So really a land of plenty. But at the same time, there are disparities. Now I found this data on a feeding America website, and this is a snapshot in time showing that approximately one out of every 15 North Dakotans experiences food insecurity. So roughly about 50,000 people. Now keep in mind this really is a snapshot this does fluctuate with the economy this fluctuates with all the shocks that we've had. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that, but just know that a significant number of people and this is data coming to us from feeding America. We know that more children than adults are food insecure so one out of 11 children are food insecure. So what is food insecurity seems like everybody uses it in a little different manner. So I turned to the USDA for the definition and the USDA definition is lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. So think about that a little bit more. It's quite a simple definition when you think about it. It doesn't seem to tell a whole lot. At the same time, it's broad enough to encompass a couple of different things. When you think of food insecurity, there's a lot of people that think about quantity. So people not having enough food, you know, which would be synonymous with, with hunger, you know, whether that's on a day to day basis or whether that's infrequently. That's one end of the spectrum. But this food security definition is broad enough to encompass quality also, which implies nutrition. And, you know, that brings me to this my plate figure from the USDA, you know, we can think of individuals that are food insecure, but have enough calories, you know, so think about individuals that are purchasing, you know, lots of mac and cheese, purchasing lots of ramen noodles. You know, they may not be hungry, but at the same time they may not have access to food that helps them live an active, healthy life because they're not eating the fruits and vegetables are not getting the antioxidants and vitamins. So food insecurity encompasses both hunger but also the lack of nutritious food. That ends of the spectrum. And to make that just a little bit clearer. We've got the survey from the USDA, and you know it's showing different characteristics of individuals that are food insecure. So we've got some individuals that are experiencing anxiety that their food would run out. For some individuals, the food that they purchased did not last until their next paycheck. So individuals that could not afford a balanced meal. So this is where nutrition comes in. And then we get to more of the, what we think of as hunger. People are eating smaller meals or they skipped a meal. They ate less than they wanted to. People are very hungry and started, you know, skipping meals and actually lost weight, or did not eat entire days. So you see the full gamut of what food insecurity encompasses. Food insecurity is not just an urban phenomenon. We've got food insecurity in every county in North Dakota. But there are five counties that have food insecurity rates that are greater than 10%, two of them are urban and three or not. So Cass County, which includes Fargo and then Grand Forks County are of course urban. But we have three other counties, Benson, Roulette and Sioux County that have greater than 10% food insecurity rates. But we have, we have food insecurity in every county regardless of whether it's rural or if it's urban. We have data showing that food insecurity has fluctuated and worsened during the beginning of our COVID-19 pandemic. So when, when the pandemic struck, it certainly had a great effect. And the Great Plains Food Day Food Bank data shows this. In 2019, the year before the pandemic started, Great Plains Food Bank, which, which occupies, you know, most of North Dakota and goes a little bit into Minnesota. They provided the equivalent of 12 and a half million meals to over 100,000 individuals. So with the pandemic, the demand for food greatly increased and we saw that close to 18 million meals were provided by Great Plains Food Bank to, you know, close to 146,000 individuals. So you see how this fluctuated, and it increased by 42%. Unfortunately, we're over the worst of the pandemic and the economy seemed to be on the up and up during 2021, but then we, we have new challenges that are happening we have inflation. I went to the grocery store yesterday and I was just shocked at what hamburger costs. And we know that our, our supply chain issues are having a major effect on inflation so food prices are going up the price of gasoline. So for individuals that cost more for them to get to work so maybe they have to then, you know, purchase less as far as food. So inflation is having an impact and we saw that coming into play in 2021. So we have the Ukraine and Ukraine is also the war and the Ukraine is having a major impact in that the Ukraine is a big producer of wheat and barley. So we know that they're not able to plant their crops at this point in time and that may have an impact on our food prices because, you know, we're a global economy. And so this is coming into play and will will make matters worse for those individuals that are food insecure in 2022. Now, fortunately, we have fantastic food pantries. So think of the food bank as being kind of the overarching structure like the wholesaler that that sends supplies to food pantries and the food pantries are what we deal with at the local level. So food pantries provide, you know, lots of wonderful meals to our individuals in the communities. And you'll notice that they're of a certain type. You'll see a lot of canned goods and also box goods at food pantries and this is because they're shelf stable. So it makes sense that food pantries don't have enough room to refrigerate everything so they want a lot of canned goods and a lot of box goods. But at the same time, they recognize that fresh fruits and vegetables are very rare, but very valuable for individuals. So we do have food pantries that have refrigerators that can accommodate fresh fruits and vegetables, but there's fewer of them that are donated. And the types of fruits and vegetables that are donated tend to be past their prime. So think Hornbockers or cash wise that are donating strawberries that are close to spoiling or maybe there may be even some that have some mold on them. So what's being donated isn't necessarily of the best quality. So there's just fewer fresh fruits and vegetables that are available to those that are food insecure and that drastically affects their nutrition. So this was a point of inspiration for the master gardener program. So the master gardener program has been working in this area since 2014 so we've been donating fresh fruits and vegetables and having master gardeners earn volunteer credit since 2014 and they've had a major impact. Now, I could spend an hour talking about the impact that master gardeners have had in respect to food security but I limited myself to one slide here, because I want to make sure I've got time to inspire you to go and do good in your communities. So the end you see extension master gardeners impact with respect to food security is we have lots of groups that have tended large community gardens, you know, such as our might not master gardeners tended a fantastic community garden and they send hundreds and hundreds of pounds of produce to their local food pantry. We have Cass County master gardeners that work with Jack Wood and growing together where they work with new Americans, and teach them how to grow fruits and vegetables and share the bounty of their gardens with them therefore fighting food insecurity. We've got master gardeners that have started seed library so I'm thinking James Town and Fargo in particular, and what they have done is they have solicited seed donations for major companies package them into smaller seed packets, and then provided them to library patrons that would otherwise not have been able to afford seeds to grow their own food. We have master gardeners that have gleaned crops that were still in the field. And then our veggies for the pantry works in Cass in Clay counties. They have a little unique take on it. Their approach is to ask home gardeners to bring their surplus to collection points throughout the metro area on Monday nights. After work, you know we've got these fantastic collection points people take their produce to them, and the produce is then delivered in the morning to the food pantries. So since 2014, this collection of individuals has grown collected gleaned and donated on close to 111,000 pounds of produce, which is the equivalent of 444,000 servings. This is all the work of individuals, but I, and collectively it has this massive impact. So, decided to use this quote here I don't know this particular individual but I love the quote individually, we are one drop, and together we are an ocean. So this is at the point where I want to plead with you to help make a difference for North Dakota food pantries. So if you are a producer for farmers markets, you know, maybe consider setting aside an acre and donating donating the yield from that acre to the food bank, you know, maybe grow another acre of potatoes or sweet corn. So I'm starting big we'll get to the home gardeners here. If you're a home gardener, think about planting an extra row of vegetables specifically for the food pantry. I love this picture here I wish this were my garden this isn't but but you can you get the picture you know plant an extra row, and then take care of it and donate that to the food pantry. If you're lucky enough, maybe you have a number of raised garden beds. I consider dedicating one raised garden bed as a giving garden for the pantry and then, you know, get your kids involved get your whole family involved in growing that one plot, and you can teach them not just horticulture and gardening, but teach them the joys of sharing the bounty of your garden with those that are in need. So there are a lot of life lessons that we could be that we could be teaching in a giving garden, or if you consider if you're like running a daycare. There are lots of opportunities where you can get others involved in being generous. I'm going to leave out the apartment dwellers. The apartment dwellers may not have room for may not have an in ground garden, but consider planting an extra container, you know on your balcony or, or on your patio. So there are ways that all of us can become involved all of us can have a deeper stake in our community and be able to share with those that are food insecure. So the form that you decide to take here whether it's doing an extra row I mean just donate your surplus it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be that row if you'd rather just, you know, take bits and pieces from all parts of your garden, it will be greatly appreciated by your food pantry, but it's a family effort because a lot of lessons can be learned here. I have an incentive for you. Now I don't want to sound like a TV salesman here but I really, really want to motivate you to help your local food pantries. The Extension Master Gardener program has done is we, we just purchased a bunch of seed packets so they're coming in the mail just ordered them yesterday. And this is specifically for our field to fork audience here, but we have ordered five different types of vegetable seed packets like carrot, carrot, Lincoln P, Blue Lake Beans, Space Master Cucumber and Detroit Red Beets. So these are crops that would be greatly appreciated by food pantries. Now we'll send you a free packet of seeds. If you agree to donate some amount to the local food pantry from your garden, and then report the totals to us at the NDSU Extension Master Gardener program at the end of the season. So I'm willing to send you free seeds, but we would love to see you donate some of your produce to the food pantry in return. So as a further incentive, we want to help you be successful in the garden. We would send you an email once or twice a month that will give you some gardening tips because we want to help you grow the most that you can so you will have access to share with food pantries. And you know, we'll talk to you about some common diseases, you know, such as some of the tomato blights that we have, you know, sceptorial leaf spot on the left. So how do you prevent that, or how do you deal with blossom and rotten peppers and tomatoes. How do you grow in your giving garden? What would be the most useful for food pantries? Well, fortunately, that question has been answered for us. The North Dakota Department of Egg has put together a list of the most valuable produce for food pantries, and this includes apples, beans, beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, melons, onions, peas, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, winter squash, and zucchini. So you'll notice that the list here includes the most durable of the vegetables that you would find those that have a little bit longer period of time before they go bad. So you'll notice that lettuce and some of our leafy greens aren't on here. So we want more durable vegetables going to the food pantry and some of these can stay out overnight, if necessary, if in fact refrigerator space is running a little bit low. Well, I should go back. One thing you'll notice here is that you won't see sweet corn on this list. We do have a number of sweet corn producers that donate a large amount to the food pantries. So I wanted to point that out. But other things to think about is, you know, it's better to be donating a commonly known vegetable, one that is a little easier prepared than maybe some of our more exotic vegetables. I think of Swiss chard is being just a, just a hair more exotic than the others and maybe less appreciated at the food pantry. You know, the same with Brussels sprouts, although I have to admit in my household Brussels sprouts are our favorite vegetables, loved put a little olive oil and garlic salt on them just fantastic. But, you know, keeping in mind our audience we want to grow something that they would use. Now the stakeholders at food pantries do vary quite greatly. So while at the same time I'm telling you to grow common stuff, you may want to check with your food pantry, particularly if you have new Americans in your group. So I asked this from Barbara keys one of our master gardener she sent me a list of what new Americans and West Fargo would like to see at the food pantry. So they have a little bit different lists they'd like to see some of the herbs cilantro and parsley they'd love to see Chinese vegetables. So I'm assuming that would be bok choy. They'd love to see some kale pumpkins. So you have to, you have to know who the stakeholders are for the food pantry. And if you do have new Americans in your area they may want some of the more exotic things. If you grow for them maybe consider giving a call to the food pantry and seeing what they would need and what would be really appreciated for their audience. So when in doubt, you know, ask. So where do you donate. The North Dakota Department of egg has a fabulous website is called their hunger free garden project. And it's wonderful we didn't have to compile a list of produce donation sites instead it's already done for us by the Department of egg. So this is last year's map it could change but these are the food pantries that will accept fresh produce donation. And you'll notice that they're scattered across the state in the urban areas there are definitely more than one site. You may notice that in fact your food pantry the closest one to you is not listed on here, but that doesn't mean that they might not necessarily take fresh produce, but in that situation, you may want to call them in advance to make sure. But the food pantries on this particular map are those that have the capacity to refrigerate fresh produce and they tend to have a little bit greater capacity to distribute fresh produce. So here's a little close up of it I just chose my not and I just happened to click on one of the sites. So if you click on the map. You will get this little box on the right. So I'll give you the name of the food pantry, he'll give you the name of the contact, the address, potentially an email, and I'll tell you when that pantry is open. And when are good times to drop off the bounty from your garden. I like that this particular site tells you where to leave it go in door number one and put it on the white shelves. So this is all information that will be at your fingertips thanks to the North Dakota Department of Ag. I'd be remiss in a field to fork seminar if I didn't say something about food safety I've learned a lot about food safety from Julie garden Robinson she has done some some great seminars for you know professional producers and I've learned a thing or two about her so thank you to Julie for that. But I just wanted to mention the food safety tips that apply to growing produce for donation to the food pantry. So with food safety. The first thing is don't use uncomposted manure in your garden. I'd say that uncomposted or aged manure is one of the more dangerous things you can add to your garden because of the risk of salmonella, you know Listeria, Campylobacter E. Coli. So these are all bacteria that cause foodborne diseases, and we want to make sure that we're not getting people sick so we need to be very careful when we grow food for other individuals. If you think of patrons that go to a food pantry, I wouldn't be surprised if a relatively large percentage of them have health difficulties. Maybe they have diabetes or heart disease, or any number of illnesses we certainly don't want to get these individuals sick so food safety has to be paramount in our mind when we're donating to a food pantry. We want to keep animals out of the garden so don't allow your pets in the garden. And if you can, you know figure out a way to fence off your garden that's really helpful and prevents animals from introducing disease born pathogens. Think about how you're applying pesticides and read that label really closely. We really don't want an excess of pesticide residue on the fruits and vegetables that go to food pantries. So read that label really carefully. If there is a pre-harvest interval on there, obey that. So the pre-harvest interval would tell you, okay, you're putting this insecticide on, you need to wait X number of days before you harvest it. So that gives time for some of that residue to go away. When you donate, be picky about what goes to the food pantry. We want quality produce to go. We don't want to donate something that's going to rot or spoil right away, so we wouldn't want to be donating cracked tomatoes. We want to give produce that you would feel comfortable consuming. If you don't feel comfortable consuming it, then it's not a good object to be sent to the food pantry. And in fact, we don't want to add to the burdens on the food pantry of having to sort through everything and throw out what's on the point of spoiling. So we want to take produce to the food pantry that still has some time before it goes bad. And just common sense, wash your hands before harvesting. I've talked with a fair number of producers that have produced for farmers markets and I'm surprised how few people wash their hands. But this is this is really important. I know people think of gardens as being dirty. But that's not what we're necessarily worried about. We're worried about the germs that we could be bringing to the garden on our hands. If you harvest for the food pantry, wash your hands, get rid of those germs, then go and harvest and make sure that you're using clean bags to take them to the food pantry, you know, you know, Ziploc baggies. If you're reusing a grocery bag, make sure that it's clean. You know, if you happen to have some hamburger juice or something that's leaked, that's not good. That's not good at all. So if you use common sense, you know, one last food safety tip here is to harvest before I mean right before you take it to the food pantry, then you don't have to worry about it so you know, harvest in the morning take it over to the food pantry. If you're going to harvest and it's going to be a couple of days before you get to the food pantry with your delivery then make sure that you refrigerate it. If that particular vegetable requires refrigeration. Now think about as you transport your vegetables to the food pantry, don't put it on the floor of your car, you know, put it in a crate or put a sheet down in your trunk. So we want to make sure that the items are clean. All right, I'm going to put in a plug for the great work that Julie does. So we have lots of food pantries they're like okay so Esther we've got these clients that want to do something with their squash but they don't quite know how to prepare their squash. Now fortunately Julie has a lot of good resources on there. Pinching pennies in the kitchen is quite relevant because you know she talks about using modestly priced ingredients and there are recipes out there for that. And then of course Julie has a lot of great resources on field to fork on how to prepare specific items you know, for example okay you've got these carrots what can you do you know make carrot fries or something along those lines I have to admit I've got one of Julie's recipes and I I'm making carrot fries that were that was on your calendar absolutely just it's one of our favorite recipes. So, and you see extension has the resources to help food pantries you know go from, you know, field to fork. Now to receive seeds from the extension master gardener program we have just a small number of stipulations here. I ask you to agree to donate your produce to a North Dakota food pantry, or you know if it's like a border county or border city like more had or East Grand Forks, you know that we consider that to be close enough. And in fact we do support a lot of our food pantries and more had an East Grand Fork so our master gardeners do contribute to those. We're asking that you report to us at the end of the season, the total amount that you donated to your food pantry and the name of your food pantry. So for me this is a pilot project. We're putting, we're spending money on seed packets from pine tree seeds, we want to see if in fact we are increasing what's being donated to the food pantries. We want to see what sort of impact we're having and you know do we go bigger and better next year so this is all great feed feedback for us. So that's some of the stipulations. We do have a form to use here this is a Google form. So I'm going to ask Scott or Julie to copy and paste that particular form into the chat box. And one of the things that I want to show you out there that's all you need to do is click on the link, and then you can fill in your name and your address and we'll send you a packet of seeds will also ask for your email address. Now here are the seeds that are going to go out again. We're not going to allow you to choose the seeds, you're just going to it's going to be luck of the draw, because otherwise it's going to be too hard for us, you know to keep track of that, etc. So these are the seeds these are some common cultivars that are out there. Please know that our seeds supplies are not unlimited so we're going to limit the number that's going out there. But we just want to provide you with the seeds. Now, can you keep some of this for yourself sure. Can you grow other crops and donate to the food pantry sure but we just want to give you some incentive to do this to think about the food pantry to think about what you're eating. So that that's our attempt here is we'll send you the free seed packet, and ask that you donate something to your local food pantry. I mentioned that we would email you once or twice a month with vegetable gardening tips, some of those will come from you know our master gardener newsletter and such. I'm not going to spam you I don't have time to spam people believe me, all of us in NDSU extension are working very hard. We'll send you an email once or twice a month because we want you to be successful, so that you'll have, you know, wonderful yields and we'll be able to donate your surplus to food pantries. We'll also email you the link to the North Dakota Department of egg, so you can look up where your closest food pantry location is. If you happen to be cast or Clay County, we will email you when veggies for the pantry starts accepting donations. So remember veggies for the pantry collects produce on Monday evenings. So for those of you that work it's a lot more convenient so instead of trying to go to the food pantry during the middle of the day veggies for the pantry is meant to be a little bit more convenient and will be might be closer to your home in and then at the end of the season will email you asking for the total that you've donated and will also aggregate that and send you the statewide total at the end of the season so you can see, you know what has been done. So this is a fairly short talk but I felt like I said everything I needed to say in in 30 minutes so I just want to thank you for listening to me and I hope I just hope that I've inspired you to do something because you can make a difference. So think about if you donate vegetables to the food pantry you could be helping one family or more in your community so you can make a difference. So thank you very much. Thank you very much Esther that was really interesting and I hope you've inspired our guests we had over 100 people today. So I, I have some questions in the chat box. Let me see here. Let me go back. We have some links that we've placed in the chat. So you can check those out and thanks for the plug for the pinch and pennies in the kitchen I appreciate that. I'll also add that a lot of our extension agents have printed copies of a lot of materials available to. So I do a question from Amanda, are there restrictions on what can be donated, or do you need to register somewhere prior to a food pantry accepting homegrown produce. I'm not aware of there being any major restrictions. You don't need to register. You can just walk in with your produce. Now I think any of the restrictions are more of the common sense you'll making sure that the food is not spoiled but as far as I know there is no restriction. And we've never had a problem when we've had master gardeners take items to the food pantry. I have a question for me, how did you make the decision on those particular seats, how did you decide which ones to offer. Well, I went with some of the tried and true cultivars, but it also had to be something available through pine tree seeds I'll explain that part of this is economics, because we wanted to be able to afford these seed packets. So I didn't solicit free seeds from companies instead I went to pine tree seeds because they're known for having a little bit cheaper seed packets so they're they're like $2 a piece and such. So I needed to have something that was available there but I wanted a more try and tried and true cultivars, you know, some of them have been recommended by my colleague Tom Kalb. He's a big fan of those Lincoln P's let me tell you so we're trying to get you know quality cultivars into your hands but at a reasonable price. Jennifer makes a comment about the North Dakota Ag Department and the hunger free garden project, and I believe that's still in effect. That is and that's what I was referring to with some of the resources so that's where we have our, our list and maps of food pantries throughout North Dakota and particularly the ones that accept produce donations. So we're very thankful to have this relationship with the Department of Ag, and to be able to use these resources because otherwise we'd have to put this together from scratch. And Anita made a comment she's from the local growing together community gardens and Fargo area. She said they track their donations then asked if you would like a record of that. That would be awesome Anita. So Anita is one of one of our fantastic master gardener so yes, yes we would love to do that and growing together does tremendous tremendous work in the Fargo moorhead area. And I think I think you have six somewhere between six and eight gardens in the metro area and it's it's truly truly you know, a treasure that that we have here in the community and just the selflessness of the individuals. And Anita said eight. So there are eight community gardens. And one of them is in the, in my church backyard. So it's kind of fun to watch it grow. Any other questions or comments for Esther. You can post those in the chat. Scott has placed a couple links that will get you to register for the program that she talked about. And I also encourage any of you who are not master gardeners and maybe from other states to consider becoming one. I've been a master gardener now for several years I think 10, and it's it's really very fulfilling it's a great thing to do. You're a modest Julie your whole family, not your whole family but you've got three master gardeners in your family you take this very seriously, and, and you do donate quite a bit to your food pantries to so. Thank you for all that you do Julie. Oh yes. Deb asked how do you become a master gardener. Great question. Every year, we have a master gardener core course, which is a 40 hour course that master gardener trainees take. So, you have to be accepted into the program because we have certain communities where we have more master gardeners and we can accept in a given year. So there's an application if you're accepted you go through a background check because we do work with children, and then you take a 40 hour course that covers a lot of different, you know topics everything from ornamentals to edibles. How to take care of diseases and insects and such. And then there is an internship period in which you do volunteer service to become a certified master gardener we require 48 hours of volunteer service over two years. And we certainly help make that volunteer service fund so we've got all kinds of volunteer service possibilities. You know so we've talked about some of the food insecurity measures that we have taken that are part of that. And Laurie, thanks you for the shout out for the Jamestown seed library it's open and busy, and it's in the Stutzman County library so if you're in that Jamestown area. Check it out. So Laurie's done great work with that seed library and so we've our master gardeners are fantastic and so very innovative. Deb asked about the junior master gardener program. Yes, there is a junior master gardener program, and I'm not affiliated with that that has been split out so that Tom called is in charge of that. And the junior master gardener program as it's run in North Dakota is a grant program where Tom and a committee gives out grants to various county entities and you know they work with they work with children to teach them how to garden. And we all know that these children that eat fresh vegetables are more likely to consume fresh vegetables as they grow older. So, yes, there's that but that's run by Tom called. I'm looking up right now the link for the NDSU master gardener program and I think I found it here so. Scott, Scott's ahead of me. Thank you, Scott. So look in the chat box and he has posted the, the link to that and again, it's very rewarding and I would encourage any of you to consider doing that. Or if you don't want to, you know, go through the the time involved. Certainly, there are a lot of places all across the United States we're looking for help in community gardening programs. So check that out. Absolutely. Any last comments. Well this was a great program Esther I thank you for it and I hope everybody is inspired and I am inspired as I look out my window and it's finally the snow is almost all gone. So I hope we all get our green thumbs out. Yes, yes, bring is coming yay. In the chat, I'm now posting the link to our survey so let us know what you learned today. And keep going to the end of the survey it'll only take you a couple minutes but when you click submit, you'll be taken to a link where you can sign up for a very cool set of prizes so, and there's more than one prize I have lots of prizes. So check that out. Well, thank you to everybody who participated and especially our presenter Esther. This was great. Thanks. Alright, thank you very much Julie.