 Hi, I'm Tane Danger. This is Give to Gustavus Day and I'm standing here with Lily Kingsley, Audrey Octrip DeCarol, and Andrea James. Andrea James. Obviously. So we're here at Big Hill Farm and this, I understand, is where all of the food for Gustavus has grown. Not exactly. We do grow lots of produce over the summer and into the fall and we sell it to the cafeteria. So a little bit of the food in the cafeteria is from here. That is good. So like most of what we will be eating for the rest of the day is pumpkin and owl meat. Correct, right. Yeah. That's good. Now tell me more because it's like beautiful out here. I mean we're at the end of the season it seems like we're mostly eating pumpkins and and zinnias, right? That would be correct. So yeah. So I don't tell like who all is out here working and doing stuff? Well the farm is entirely student run. Previously it was just a farm. Now it's expanded to a student org that's active during the school year rather than just the summer. So this summer, for example, myself and two other interns, Emily Gurrenser and Josie Kleckner. Good name. We're putting around. We worked from June to still working currently. As you can see, there are still things to be picked and all of that food we produce, like Lily said, goes straight to the calf and then during the school year our org plans fun events, plans what will be growing the next year and hires new interns for the next summer. A squash. Actually that is a dead cucumber. It's rotted. We're at the end of the season. We are at the end of the season. See, you can tell this is totally unscripted. This is real. Like I just picked up a, that's fine. Anyway, so I don't know what do you all learn like by doing this? I mean obviously you learn which pumpkins are the cutest. Yeah, lots of hands-on skills. So obviously skills that include planning out a farm, planning what to grow where and when to grow it to make the soil be the best quality for where we're at. And then lots of other skills like appreciating nature, getting out here. We also focus on food justice and sustainable agriculture practices to get to know that a little bit more. So can you just tell me quickly about like sustainable agriculture practices like out here? Like what some of those are that you all are practicing? Yeah, so we are not certified organic but we don't use any pesticides or herbicides on our vegetables. So by definition they are organic. Besides that we do crop rotation. So these plants won't stay in this spot next year. We'll rotate them to another plot and that ensures that the nutrients that these plants took out from the soil this year won't continue to be drawn out and the soil has the opportunity to regenerate and stay as healthy as possible. Additionally we do low to no tilling which involves softening up the earth and drying it out and that can cause soil erosion. And beyond that we just try and plant pollinator friendly plants. That's why we have a prairie. Yeah and there's a myriad of different practices that you can employ but we don't have to get into all of those right now. No that's very cool and just I'm going to walk into the brush here in a second. But while I'm doing that can you just say a little bit about some of the I don't know experiences you've had because you've both been working here for like a while now. So like I don't know do you have any favorite memories of working on the farm? Yeah so my first year at Gustavus there you go. And on in. Oh good. So my first year at Gustavus the first club meeting I ever went to was a big hill farm meeting and my mom always likes to remind me of this story of I called her walking to the meeting. I'm so scared to go like I don't know if people are going to like me like I don't know if I should even be in this club. And so I was really anxious and then I went there and James and Andrea who our owl is named after just made me feel really welcome and eventually this kind of became my favorite club favorite place to be on campus. And so it was really cool like feeling like I had a place at Gustavus surrounded by people who were like me and who were just generally awesome like Audrey. Thank you. Well that is very cool. Should we do you want a habanero? No that's an extremely spicy pepper and I don't want that right now. I'll hold it for you. Well thank you both very much for talking to us. Thank you for showing us around end of the season big hill farm. I am going to steal this pumpkin. Go right ahead. But I hope that you all are watching and your support today is supporting really cool amazing things like this. So help us make Gustavus grow. Oh wow. Are you okay? I'm going to die. Oh I can smell that. Oh my mouth. Goodbye. It's over. The shot is over.