 Welcome everyone, glad to see you this afternoon and I am Joan Benjamin, I'm with the North Central Region SAIR program and you're listening this afternoon to speakers who have had grants through our grant program. We're going to have Laura Worstel speak this afternoon on wild eating at Scattering Fork Outdoor Center. We have a microphone here for when you have questions. We ask you to use the microphone because we are videotaping this session. Thank you Laura. Thank you, I'm glad to meet you. Good afternoon, I am Laura Worstel and I'm from Scattering Fork Outdoor Center and we're located just southeast of Mexico, Missouri on about 47 acres of woods and creek and trail and in fact we're along the side of Scattering Fork Creek and that's where it got its name. Since 1992 Scattering Fork Outdoor Center has been working with kids from preschool through kindergarten to help them learn about working together where lots of teamwork and enjoying the outdoors in nature. We are a 501c3 educational facility and we're dedicated to providing personal growth through outdoor education. Every year in April we open the center for what we call one of our public days and that's wild edibles and we have the public is invited to come out and taste to identify or find out which ones they are. All of our roots and shoots and leaves and nuts that grow out there and because most people really don't know that there are a lot of things out there that are edible and because they're in the wild they don't really trust them and they think okay I'm not sure I want those and that's why we do it. This project and this grant came up because we realized that we saw a need in these young children to learn that the outdoors has many many healthy foods good tasting fruits and nuts and flowers and leaves and seeds that they can learn to plant care for and harvest for themselves and their families they don't know that. We believe that young people can become lifelong advocates of healthy eating when they learn how tasty and healthy while the natural foods really are and how they can produce and harvest them themselves. You've become intensely interested in food production when they have the chance the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge in planting and harvesting these wild foods. This project we picked a group from the city of Mexico it's a it's a four-each club and it's called a rug let me see what happens when I do this. This is this is the grant this is a group of young seven eight nine year olds and who had no experience at all being outside even in the woods and so when we they have a tremendous leader and when we brought them out we did the preliminary work on this area because we'd set it aside for this and we had to pick up the big logs and the and the sticks and things that they couldn't move but they had to come out and learn how to use we they didn't even know how to use a rake or a hoe or a spade and so we brought them out and we had two great groups that help us with everything we do like this and that's the area master gardeners which I'm sure lots of you know about master gardeners and a garden club in the in the city of Mexico that these women came out and helped us with these boys and girls you see that they don't know much about the shovels and anyway they learned in a big and a big hurry but they had to be shown how to do it. The staff partnered with these master gardeners and the garden club people and we had three sessions three after school sessions they meet every Wednesday all year all summer all winter long through the school system school time and so it was easy for them to come out after school and you can see from the bottom picture that the clearing goes back a certain area and then from there on it's woods so and this section here is on the south side of the trail and the top picture is on the north side the trail the trail goes right down through the middle of this section now this is a permanent site it's not going to be used for anything else the people who use our low ropes course will go right through there on that trail and they'll be able to see what what's happening and the first session as I said on March the 21st was devoted to showing them learning how to use the spades and and it rakes the spatially and picking up all the trash and and moving it out of the way and they also learned about the that the needs for minimal shade for this kind of plants and for the depth of soil and the nutrients that would be in the soil and it had to be well drained soil then on April 11th the next time they came out they had to learn it to use those spades and shovels to plant the trees and the shrubs and the native trees and shrubs these were from a new kind of packet that the department of Missouri department of conservation puts out they put the packets out for years this year they had one new it's called wild edibles and in it there were 10 varieties of trees and shrubs all of them nut bearing or fruit bearing and there were 10 and each five of each one of them so we planted 50 trees and here's some of them now there's a couple on here that we did not have in our woods almost everything under the sun is in our woods because it is on a creek and it's a it's a it's ancient it hasn't been used for anything for years and years and years so that it has a deep soil and it has lots of water the black choked cherry and the elderberry and blackberry and now we did not have golden currant we're going to have them and they have a blueberry and they they look good and the red red mulberry papa that wasn't it that one wasn't there when i thought it would be the master gardeners and the garden club women said now really they need to know how to plant flowers so a little section of the north side we let them plant flowers we already had in that area lots of violets and spring beauty and even dandelions and so but they put a few annual flowers in there and the nasturtiums really did well even with with the drought so these are the trees we planted the third station on april of 25th was when they had to come back and take care of this area and here they are just pouring water out of cans but there's another show slide that shows you where they're mulching them i think in this bottom slide you can see that we didn't let them just go in nearly nearly planting plants you can almost see the the the swing of the rose now this if i turn around then you can't hear me can you the swing of the rose was in a curve and so that the trees were planted in the area on a curve and in between you can see where where the grass was still there they didn't try to rake up all the grass they just raked it so that we could plant them and that's where that is okay and then this time they got to pick up pick the leaves off of the spring beauty and the dandelines and the violets and make a salad they weren't really great for salads but they learn and then i also have a violet jelly made out of violet blossoms and anybody that's tasted violet jelly on a cracker i know some people think elderberry is better but violet's pretty good too so now it's an outcome from this project that the students learned to grow these 15 species of plants and how to keep them healthy and then how to improve their own health by learning how to eat them enjoying them these natural foods they learn how the soil and the plants and the people are all parts of a natural system and they're then they're a part of it also and they learn how one plot of land not really big can produce can be used to plant native plants and multiple crops to benefit them and mutually they also learned that as a team of co-learners they learned how to work together if one person could hold the plant the other person could dig the the hole and then they learned how to tamp it in and and this was will show them much about working together many of the skills they required to produce those foods produce knowledge that can't be obtained from books you can't just go read a book and say it tells you how to stick a shovel in the ground and how deep just put it in and what kind of a plant to put in and how much you can cover them up and how much you can't these young participants also learned that now they can take those and produce their own plants after the second time when they were out there and planted the plants one of these little boys came up to me and that afternoon he said you know what and I said no you never know what when it's one of those and he said I can now this was on the the first part of April 11th and on the 22nd of April the Mexico Department of Parks and Recreation always give to give out free trees and he said now I can go and get a free tree and take it and plant it in my garden and I know my grandma will let me use her shovel so I thought gee he's he's gotten something out of it just like that and I said sure why don't you tell one of your friends to do the same thing because the trees are free all you have to do is go pick them up so I think you it's hard to realize what the impact is when you get children out in the wild out in the woods and let them learn how to do something in addition just to go by and pick up something to take home every about two weeks ago we had 80 preschool kindergarten kids not preschools kindergarten kids out where for well they come in stations and they come in the morning because that's when kindergarten kids are their best and it's it's almost unbelievable what they can put in a gallon ziplock bag to take home from walnuts to hickory nuts to acorns to all kinds of leaves just about anything on earth and they and they just get so much out of being out in the wild that's one of the reasons it's gathering forked outdoors center is so much fun anyway we know absolutely that most of these as scaring forked students will never they won't become farmers but they can all grow and use their own natural foods so here's at scaring forked they learn how their health and happiness can improve by getting outdoors working in the soil planting something collecting it and then eating it eating it's whether it's a berry or a nut or fruit or seeds we teach them the agricultural skills and knowledge they need and they all we also you teach team building to build a community of natural food enthusiasts and consumers we've used the advice from the conservation department and the adrine county extension service of course our our favorite helpers and favorite people who come out and say yes we'll help you do this we'll help you any way you want or the s of the master gardeners in the garden club they were helping they were invaluable in instructing some of our staff on how to do this our main source of course is our 40 plus acres of woods and small clearing of all of these young and mature species of native spirit species and that in this area that we've set aside so let me see if I didn't put this together but I would have done a worse job than this so I I had a picture of the the place the areas it looks now we have a really nice sign that came from some extra wood do we have around and someone who has a rotor at a they can route out the the words and it showed them the plants all being after they were mulched they looked great they don't look so great now the kids are going to be back in the spring we'll order another bundle because we do have to do some replacing the drought wasn't any better to us than it was to anybody else in the whole country and so but they won't mind they love to be out there and now they know how to dig in themselves are there any questions yes yeah they walk on the trails and oh sorry she said when we when we have them out for the public days like grandparents day and we do a wild edibles we do a wildflower walk in the spring and if you want to see something gorgeous you ought to see the woods with just masses of flowers on both sides of the trails yes we do we take them out we and we let them um sample anything that now we're really careful to make sure that they never sample anything that they haven't that they don't know for sure is edible because there are things out there that aren't edible and probably are not good for you and there's some that are just staying sticky and nasty but yes we do because they lots of them that's what these are all ages we have sure sure we have a lot of uh of older adults middle-aged people and younger yeah we do we have that's what our public days are for and uh and so that people can come out and it's not a park it's not used as a park so you can't just go out there and and wander around because it is a low ropes course and uh the part that uh is a low ropes course isn't we don't allow anyone on unless they have a certified staff with them so it's not it's it's just that you can come or you can come as a group the uh uh master gardeners have come out just as a group just to tour it and see you and sometimes they'll say do you mind if i have a spring beauty to take back with me no hope we've got gobs i'll give you a plastic bag to get up and take it with you yeah yeah yes that's what our public days are for yeah any other question