Healthy Harvest #57

Lisa Silverman:

Michio Cucci says you don't have to meditate eating this way you become meditation because your body isn't fighting anymore. It's just hooked up with heaven and earth and all the things move through you in a free way as opposed to having to fight all the time to find balance.

Christine Slader:

For me, it's very therapeutic and I find that children or people of all ages and abilities can find some sense of peace and satisfaction when they're in the garden, when they're allowed to get dirty and dig around and and see something grow from a tiny little seed to a plant that can actually be given away and help others.

Craig Haims:

So then our task is, okay, we have a student that has not resonated with a traditional school. How are we going to integrate this student into our program and find whatever gift they may bring and amplify that gift?

Ken Morse:

One way we look at Farm to School is breeding a whole new generation of folks that really are into growing food and cooking food and eating food.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 57, Healthy Harvest, airing for the first time on October 14, 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio, Portland, Maine. As those of you who listen regularly may realize, we've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks talking about students and schools and education, and this is an appropriate time of year to be doing that because September is our Back to School months or was our Back to School Month, and now we're into October, which happens to be Farm to School Month As a younger physician in primary care practice, I quickly realized that food and nutrition was pretty much key to many of the problems that I was dealing with with my patients. I also quickly realized that it was something I needed to learn more about in medical school. We did get a basic education in biochemistry and nutrition, but we didn't really learn about hands on things, cooking, for example. So when I was reconfiguring my practice and trying to figure out how I could best help my patients, I went back and I taught myself how to cook. And in fact I went into the Macrobiotics school of cooking, which is a healing tradition. Macrobiotics is a healing tradition. This is one of the reasons that we have Lisa Silverman coming in to talk to us today. For more than a decade, I wrote for the Parent and Family newspaper and spent many columns advocating about getting children into the gardens, getting adults into the gardens, getting adults out to the farmers markets, and really reconnecting people with their food. Now that was more than a decade ago, now maybe 15 years, and I'm happy to say that it's come to fruition. There are many people who firmly believe in the importance of community gardens, school gardens, and getting children and adults back out where the food is being grown. I think this is something that we're all coming to understand is important from a multi sensory perspective. The fact that you get your hands on your food, you learn how to grow your food, or at least you appreciate how it is grown, you learn how to cook your food, you know what's nutritious for yourself and for your family, and you know how you can choose for sustainable products that are going to better impact the local economy and the environment. This is the reason that we have Lisa, Christine, Craig and Ken on today's show talking with us about Healthy Harvest. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoy this. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hourum Podcast is pleased to be sponsored by the University of New England. As part of our collaboration with the University of New England, we offer a segment we call Wellness Innovations. This week's Wellness Innovation is National Farm to School Month. October is National Farm to School Month, a time to celebrate the connections that are happening all over the country between schools and local food. Farm to School is broadly defined as any program that connects schools, K12 and local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving school nutrition, providing agricultural, agriculture, health and nutrition education opportunities, and supporting local and regional farmers. Farm to School programs exist in all 50 states, but since Farm to School is a grassroots movement, programs are as diverse as the communities that build them. To find out more information about Farm to School, please visit their website@farmtoschool.org for more information on National Farm to school month, visit farmtoschoolmonth.org and for more information on the University of New England, visit une.edu.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

from the beginning of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour, we have focused on the importance of healthy foods and bringing healthy foods into our lives, into our children's lives. And we consider healthy foods to be really whole foods, foods that are not processed foods that don't have a lot of additives. And Lisa Silverman is right in our camp, so we thought we would bring her in today. She is a Whole Foods chef, not the chef from Whole Foods, but she actually works with Whole Foods. She's also a breath worker and a shiatsu practitioner and is the owner of the Five Seasons Cooking School. So lots of different things. Plus, I know she has a few other jobs, but she's all about the whole life and the whole living. Thank you for coming in, Lisa Silverman.

Lisa Silverman:

It's my pleasure to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, I've known about you, Lisa, for while your reputation precedes you. You've been in the community a long

Lisa Silverman:

time teaching over 20 years, and you've

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

been doing this since before. Well, I want to say since before Whole foods were popular. But obviously we've been eating whole foods for a long time in our culture. It's just that 20 years ago we really had gotten into more of a processed sort of food.

Lisa Silverman:

Well, it's too bad 20 years ago we had the good Day market and the whole grocer. You know, I grew up with more of those sort of smaller health food stores, but. And they were great because they made all their own food right there, and it was just amazing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this was a movement before Whole Foods became the big whole. And we have nothing against Whole Foods. Let me just say that we like the fact that they're out there in the community and we're happy to have them. But before the big Whole Foods came into being, you were all about food, vegetables, things from the earth. And I think that your background is in macrobiotics.

Lisa Silverman:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me about that.

Lisa Silverman:

Yes. Well, I went through a change in my Life at like 23, just looking at a healthier lifestyle from the kind of crazy lifestyle it had before then. And I was looking at how food can help balance out addiction. And I was going to school in Orno at the time and I met a woman and she said, you need to go to the Cushi Institute to study. And I never made miso soup or anything before I went to a five week course there. I bought the little book and tried to make miso soup before I went, but so I wasn't practicing macrobotics before I went there for five weeks and it was an amazing experience.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And who are the Cushis? Tell me who they are.

Lisa Silverman:

The Cushy Institute was founded by Michio and Aveline Kushi and they're from Japan and they studied with somebody named George Osawa. And he discovered that Hippocrates said, let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. And that you could discover how somebody illness came about by just looking at what they eat, pretty much patterns of eating. And that if you ate more foods that were centered, like simple brown rice, vegetables, beans, some transformational. What do you want to call them? Transformational processed foods. Not processed foods like we call it today, but things like miso and tamari, soy sauce that's been brewed for a long time. If you use some of these traditional healing foods along with simple whole foods, you could heal anything. And so they found, they came over here to the United States and started the Cushy Institute, which is training on, you know, visual diagnosis, cooking, shiatsu massage and lifestyle. So for five weeks, I not only learned about cooking, but I learned about macrobotic philosophy. It's really based on Taoism and also shiatsu massage. But sometimes I would get three to five a day, which is good for anybody.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You mean in your training you actually got massaged yourself?

Lisa Silverman:

Because we were, you know, practicing on each other and, and then the cooking itself and then diagnosis, like looking at somebody and seeing, you know, how to balance their diet based on what you see in their face or hands or way they walk.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now it seems like there may be a crossover. Well, actually, I'll say I know there's a crossover because I practice this type of medicine. But there is a crossover between five elements and traditional Chinese medicine and what you're describing.

Lisa Silverman:

Yeah, and we call it five transformations and the five elements. And so the way of eating is based on seasonal. I call it five seasons. Cooking school based on the five elements of wood. We call it wood. I don't know, you call it tree. We know we Call it tree, you call it wood, and then fire, and then late summer is that fifth weird we're in right now, kind of, which is stomach, spleen, pancreas, which is more that energy, and then fall, which is metal, and then water, which is the wintertime. And so basing your diet on the seasons and basing it on the organ systems that are more prominent in that season to heal is all what macrobotics is about. So it's totally tandem.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. There's a lot of crossover between the five elements and the five transitions you're describing. And of course, this whole five seasons idea. Yes. So what was it like when you started doing this 20 years ago before there were so many acupuncturists, There were so many five element practitioners. There were so many people that were doing this type of work here in the Portland area.

Lisa Silverman:

Yeah, well, I, you know, at first I felt alone in Orno because there wasn't much out there for support. And I think my first winter by myself eating this way, I went a little bit nuts because I had a very narrow view. And I thought I got scared of food for a little while. It wasn't brown rice and tofu and vegetables. I thought I was gonna go crazy. But I was just getting a little bit too narrow in my thinking and in my diet. That's what happens sometimes in the beginning. You get too fanatic about it. But I did reach out to some other people that I met in the macrobiotic community who had more of a whole person approach, and they were able to sort of guide me back. But I did end up seeing Tom Bowman, which was a five element acupuncturist. And he was really helpful with the aspects of my own energy, getting it unstuck along with the food. But with the meridians and the needles, he goes, this is the only side effect right now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Ow.

Lisa Silverman:

But he was great. You could just talk to him and heal. I mean, it really was about his whole person. Not only the needles, but the philosophy and the five elements. Because I was attracted to five element because of the five transformations of what I was learning.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's interesting to me that you first got into this because of this idea of addictions. Why was that the case?

Lisa Silverman:

I had this idea that, you know, healing from. For me, it was alcohol and drug addiction, that there must be a way of eating that would support that and help limit cravings. And when I went to the Cushi Institute, studying yin and yang, studying contraction and expansion, at first it was a little tricky. I thought, oh, well, if I eliminate meat, and if I eliminate a lot of salt, maybe I could drink again. So it kind of messed with my mind a little bit. But then after a while I was like, well, there really isn't any place for that in my life anymore. But by eliminating some of the really contracting foods, you're not driven necessarily towards the more expansive things like alcohol and drugs and sugar. And so it wasn't necessarily about just eliminating those things. It was eliminating the stressors, which is a contraction, is eliminating the meats which are really contracting to the body. Really salty foods, you know, baked dry flour product type things. And almost like by eliminating that, it sort of opens up your whole body so that you're not. You can relax more in yourself and not feel like you need a fix or you need something at the end of the day to go. I, you know, you become. Michel Kuchi says you don't have to meditate. Eating this way, you become meditation because your body isn't fighting anymore. It's just hooked up with heaven and earth and all the things move through you in a free way as opposed to having to fight all the time to find balance.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And macrobiotic itself, the definition has something

Lisa Silverman:

to do with large living, living eating for longevity. So living a large life, but also living a long time. If you've read the book the Blue Zones, it talks about what are the elements of longevity in different cultures. And Okinawa Japan is one of them. And that's very in line with macrobotic sort of thinking and philosophy is eating whole natural foods. They're not necessarily vegan. They eat some fish. And it's really about making balance with your constitution at this moment and your condition growing up. So there's not one meal plan that's for everybody. It's really looking at the individual and seeing what would make balance in their life right now, what would make balance in what they've been doing up to this point. And how do we restore homeostasis so that the body can heal itself?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And some people take advantage of macrobiotic eating for true healing. Some people who have cancer, I know Meg Wolf is a mutual friend of ours, and she had breast and bone cancer, and she's written a few books about that. Initially, this was a healing diet.

Lisa Silverman:

Yes, yes. Well, initially it was a traditional diet before people got sick. And then when people started getting sick by getting away from it, it became a healing diet. And, you know, Meg was one of my students, and she never thought she could teach a cooking class. And one time I couldn't go to the cancer community center. And she goes, well, they asked me to go, but I've never taught a cooking class. I said, meg, you, you live it. You know, you live it so you can do this. And it's just amazing. Every person that I've helped to work with and see their transformation, it just reminds me that I have a tool that can help save lives, too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As you know, the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast is focused on the mind, body and soul. Sometimes our bodies are giving us a little indication that maybe things aren't quite right. Here to talk to us about some particular things that we can listen to when our bodies are acting up is Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth. Main today's diagnosis is lateral epicondylitis.

Ken Morse:

Dr. John Lateral epicondylitis is extremely common. It's that kind of pain you get in your elbow when you pick up a cup of coffee, try to open a jar, and it's frequently called tennis elbow. In our office, we can see it very explicitly with an ultrasound and direct treatment right toward the area by utilizing cortisone or PRP or even stem cells in the future to heal it. For more information on that, give us a call at 781-9077 or online@orthocareme.com

Christine Slader:

for

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

people who are listening who aren't quite ready to sort of go the whole way with this, what are a few simple things that they can do to get started with macrobiotics and whole food eating?

Lisa Silverman:

There's a couple great books out there. My friend Jessica Porter wrote the book Hipchick's Guide to Macrobiotics. A lot of my recipes are in that and I've done the Test kitchen. But she really has a fun way of explaining macrobiotics that's light hearted. And she also wrote the Kind Diet with Alicia Silverstone, which is more of a vegan book, but has some of those same principles finding a book. Or Christina Perello has a great website called Christina Cooks christinacooks.com and there's great recipes on there. Trying one new recipe a week or, you know, I do these crazy things like go on a brown rice fast for seven days. We did a winter rice reset, although arsenic and rice, you might want to do barley or millet or quinoa. Now I want them to fix the whole rice thing. But chewing whole grains and having maybe a little bit of vegetables for seven days can kind of bring you to a place of center to see how food really affects you. Because sometimes we're just eating stuff every day kind of unconsciously and don't really know how it affects us. And so by having a period of time off of processed foods, sugars, coffees, and then reintroducing them maybe or maybe not, and see how they really affect you can be an awakening. But you know, anybody can eliminate sugar, coffee, a lot of meats. I mean, reading, you know, looking at the movie Forks over knives can be, you know, an experience or fat, sick and nearly dead. I mean, some of these movies are crazy, but they just give you an idea of wow, a period away from the way that you eat every day. Like a break from that giving your body high nutrient dense food. I mean, I have a bumper sticker, eat more kale. Just go to the farmer's market and eat stuff that's in season, that's organic, that's locally grown, that has this vital energy in it. You know, choosing high quality foods is really important. So if you ate more kale, if you ate high nutrient dense food, it's almost like the suboxone of food people, you know, I mean, sort of sinks into the receptors of your hungry crazy ghost that feels like it needs to eat all the time and it satisfies them on a level where then you don't need such processed foods. So eating more vegetables, eat plants. That's a message. Just eat plants.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I like it. How can people find out more about you, Lisa, and what you do?

Lisa Silverman:

I have a website, fiveseasonscookingschool.net and I'm kind of lazy at keeping it up to date, but it has ways of getting in touch with me. And we also have a macrobotic potluck usually every month, but if you want to be on the mailing list for the things that are going on in Portland, it's Maine, like the state of Maine. Macromail.com if you email me, I'll put you on the list. And if we have things like Warren Kramer comes every four months to teach dinner and a lecture and a cooking class. And he does consultations. He gave Meg her first consultation in Macrobotics. He comes every four months and we have teachers come from around.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I'm so glad that I was finally able to meet face to face with you. I'm really happy that you've brought macrobiotics into the Portland community and I guess the Orono community before that, because I think it's an important thing for people to explore if they need healing or even if they just want to live fuller lives. It's something that I practice myself or I attempt to so people who are interested go see Lisa Silverman's website. We've been talking with Lisa Silverman, Whole Foods chef, breath worker, Shiatsu practitioner, and founder of the Five Seasons Cooking School here in the Portland area. Thanks for coming in.

Lisa Silverman:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. We've long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Sheppard of Shepherd Financial.

Ken Morse:

How does a saver trying to protect his money talk to a long term investor trying to grow hers? The answer? Speak louder. That's the state of our culture, and it's increasingly insufficient. One of the reasons we can't agree on so much is that we are using different value systems to filter all of our knowledge. Today's Tower of Babel has been built on the structure of an increasingly complex financial system. At Shepherd Financial, we've identified seven relationships you can have with money and even in the same level. Our motivation is to protect, manage or grow. That's 21 different languages. Visit Shepherd Financial Maine to learn more about how to get along with money in this complex world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I first learned about the Yarmouth Community Garden about the time it was founded, I think, and my friend Marjorie introduced me to the concept. I actually had a plot there for a few years and it's my great pleasure to have with me today a representative from the Yarmouth Community Garden. This is Christine Slater, whom I've also known for quite a while. She's a fellow Yarmouth person, also helped me with the book Our Daily Tread that we put together for Safe Passage. And Christine, like myself, has a son that went down as a long term volunteer for Safe Passage. So we're talking about the Yarmouth Community Garden, but we're starting with the idea of community and how that's important on our Healthy Harvest show. So thanks for coming in Christine.

Christine Slader:

Thank you. It's very nice to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why are you involved with the community garden and what is a community garden?

Christine Slader:

A community garden is a wonderful opportunity to bring many different ages and abilities and types of people together to form community. I'm involved because I have grown up in Yarmouth and love my town and I love to garden and I love children. So the Yarmouth Community Garden is a wonderful place and opportunity for me to bring all my passions together and help my town give back to my town.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So describe what the community garden layout is.

Christine Slader:

It's about a two and a half acre plot on town owned property right near the Frank Knight Forest which is on East Main Street. It's between Esterbrook Greenhouse and the town transfer station which I as a local like to call the dump. It's a beautiful piece of property. It's got sunshine, great fertile soil and it encompasses three different sections. One is the rental plot, one is the community garden and one section is the children's garden. And that's the part I'm most actively involved in. The rental plot consists of about 14010 by 10 plots where people, anyone from our town or non residents, can come and grow a garden. And the community garden is set up to grow vegetables and flowers for people in need. And then the children's garden, we also do that, but it's also considered a learning garden where we offer classes for children to come in and learn about gardening, become future gardeners and also get started becoming community members.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why do you think that gardening is important for children and adults?

Christine Slader:

It gets you back to your roots. I mean literally and figuratively. It's a very for me, it's very therapeutic. And I find that children or people of all ages and abilities can find some sense of peace and satisfaction when they're in the garden, when they're allowed to get dirty and dig around and see something grow from a tiny little seed to a plant that can actually be given away and help others. It's also really fun to garden. You know, it's a chance where your parents don't mind if you get dirty and you get to eat what you grow. I've seen children who come into the garden and don't like vegetables before our classes start. And by the end of the season, they're asking for more. I had a little girl this year who asked her mom if she could have more salad because she grew the vegetables. And her mom was thrilled, of course. So it's just a great place to hang out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you notice there's a difference between boys and girls? I mean, you're involved with the children's garden. Is there a difference between boys and girls in the way that they approach gardening?

Christine Slader:

I'm so glad you asked that question because we offer two classes and over the years we've had a younger class and we've had an older class. So we started the younger classes with 4, 5 and 6 year olds. And the older class was for 7, 8, 9, 10 year olds. And then we ended up combining the two age groups because it was more convenient for parents. And we were a little worried about the boys, especially in the older class. But the boys love to garden just as much as the girls. And the older boys especially love to be in the community garden. I have returning campers who come back every year, and I actually have one boy who, if I have time for a story, he was very reluctant. The first year his mother signed him up. His name is Ben. And he didn't. He was mad that his mother signed him up for the class. And I had a meeting out of my hand at the end of the class because he loves art. And I was doing my first class with was on Vincent van Gogh and how you can intertwine art into the garden with sunflowers. And his mother just so happened to be an art major, art history major. So he knew about Van Gogh and he like, oh, maybe this class isn't so bad. And he has returned every year to the garden class. And this year he was one of my counselor helpers, so it was very cool. And he actually, I paid him a little money and gave him a gift certificate. And he came in and the kids loved Him. He loves teaching them what he knows and has learned. He shows the boys especially that boys can hang out in a garden and enjoy themselves.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How many years has the community garden been going on in Yarmouth?

Christine Slader:

Almost 10 years. We were established in 2003, so we're celebrating an anniversary coming up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Christine, you and I both have older boys or out of the house now. What kind of an impact has this garden and the work that you've been doing with the Yarmouth Community Garden had on your boys as they've grown up?

Christine Slader:

Well, my boys have always been part of my gardening experience. From the time they were born and could walk, they've been helping me in the garden. When they were little, they used to give me a gift at Mother's Day, and they would go to the transfer station and get the free mulch there and they would sift it out and bring it home. And that was called Mother's Day mulch. So they would help me spread that on the garden. They have learned to like their vegetables a little better knowing that their mom helped grow them and they helped grow them. And I think throughout their young adulthood, they have seen me work very hard and have learned to. It's probably influenced their work ethic. Both of them are very hard workers. Wilson, my son, who's in college right now, is working in a restaurant and likes to be around food and vegetables. He loves to cook and eat vegetables, and he works through his school career, so he is very busy and has a good work ethic. And Alex, who doesn't like vegetables quite as much, still appreciates them. And he is also involved in restaurant work and has enjoyed the cucumbers from the Yarmouth Community Garden. This summer, he has been mending from a snowboarding accident and would go up to the garden with me a couple of times and just hang out with me when it's peaceful in the evening and there aren't so many people around and just kind of have a chance to rest and restore. Being around the garden, he likes the birds up there and the view, the sounds of nature.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It sounds like a very healing place.

Christine Slader:

It is. It is. For me especially. I mean, we all have our stress. This has been a very busy summer for me. I'm restoring a house and I work at four different jobs. And when I go to the community garden, whether it's with people around or by myself, I just feel rejuvenated and take time to pause and watch the birds, listen to the sounds. There are beautiful sunsets at the Yarmouth Community Garden. And if the mosquitoes don't drive me out, I'll stay there and just be by myself. And then again if people show up, that's also very restorative for me because the people there are amazing. I have made some of the most wonderful friends and they are from all walks of life. We have older volunteers there. We have children of course, who I've got to know very well and their families. We have people who are first time gardeners. We have people like Norm who is, we call him the Onion Man. He's one of our older gardeners and he has so much knowledge of the garden that I just love just gardening alongside him and hearing what he has to teach and spending time with him. And you know, he has taught us everything from how to grow things to make sure you put the tools away clean and don't leave them upside down in the path where somebody might step on them. And there's just a wealth of amazing people that get involved in the community garden and I love being around them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I understand that you have this upcoming event where people can maybe meet some of these amazing people. Yes, and you've already alluded to a little bit, but tell us about this.

Christine Slader:

Well, it does take place on Wednesday, October 17th from 5 to 7:30. It's at the Yarmouth High School cafeteria and the menu is of garden produce. We have pasta with marinara sauce made with our own tomatoes. We have Chef Stephanie from the Seagrass Bistro and she takes all our tomatoes and volunteers her time to make the sauce. So it's amazing. We have pesto that all the volunteers help make. We gather up the basil throughout the season and make our own pesto. And we have fresh salad, unfortunately, that isn't from the garden because it's gone by by then. But we get that from local sources. We have local artisan bread, and we have an army of helpers who peel and make apple crisp. Peel the apples from my local. I think sweetser oftentimes gives us some apples. And they all work together. We set up the cafeteria in a beautiful harvest style. This year we have a really nice, wonderful new volunteer. Her name is Mary Weber, and she lives in Yarmouth and has been growing flowers in her garden her whole life and giving them away, which is another example of the amazing kindness and generosity of our community. And this year, she's been giving flowers to the Meals on Wheels program, which is one of the recipients of our garden produce. And so each time people get a meal from Meals on Wheels, they also get a little posy made from her flowers by some of the volunteers like Ted and Jane. And she will be making the centerpieces for the dinner. And they're going to be sold or given away. I think we have an amazing raffle. All local goodies, like gift certificates. We have beautiful original artwork, jewelry, garden people, little wooden garden people. I make a garden lady who sits, sits in a chair and we give that, we sell that, or auction that off. It's just a really fun night. And I always have a table set up for the kids. So we have coloring and crafts and they get to take home a pumpkin as long as the supply lasts. So it's a great night and it is our major fundraiser. It's how we support the community garden.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I encourage all of our listeners to take advantage of your harvest dinner and they can find out more about your community garden garden and the harvest dinner on the website.

Christine Slader:

Yes, it's www.YarmouthCommunityGarden.org.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and do you have a Facebook page as well?

Christine Slader:

We do like us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very good. Well, thank you so much for coming in and talking to us today. We've been talking with Christine Slater, who is the children's garden coordinator at the Yarmouth Community Gardens and also a personal friend of mine. So. So it's been a privilege to have you in the studio with us.

Christine Slader:

Thank you. It's been a privilege to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

For those of you who are listening, you know that we spent a lot of September talking about education and the relationship between education and health. And what I've loved to see over the last past, oh, I don't know, 10 years or so is an increased emphasis on nutrition in Schools. I think we've seen this from a larger standpoint with the usda, with the Department of Agriculture, but we've also seen farm to school movement. And of course, Ken Morse is going to talk more about the farm to school movement. But with us, we also have Craig Hames, who is a longtime alternative educator who works at the Real school and is a co founder of the Real School Lunch program, which is an ongoing service learning project. Craig, you have a very varied background and you're doing a lot of different things. But first I want to talk about what is this real school? It's R, E, A L, big all caps.

Craig Haims:

That's right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What's the real school? Where is it?

Craig Haims:

The Real school is a school on Mackworth island in Falmouth. We're a program of the Wyndham Public Schools, however, saying that we also accept students from all over southern Maine. We're the only special purpose, dual purpose, alternative ed, special ed school in the state. We're certified as both, which makes us somewhat unusual. And we draw students from all over southern Maine. We work with students who have struggled in mainstream placements, so they're largely at risk kids that have struggled in mainstream placements. And basically we work with them at the Real school and engage them this year, particularly in service learning projects.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is a service learning project?

Craig Haims:

Service learning is multifaceted. Typically it's a long term project that integrates the various different subject areas through real, meaningful and purposeful work. One of the projects that we're most excited about this year is called the Real Lunch program. And it's a program whereby we're trying to integrate as much local food into our school lunch program as we can. So we've involved students in basically growing food right on the island. We've established two gardens on the island. One is a winter garden where we can grow greens throughout the winter and fall season. The other one is a summer and fall garden. And we've broken the program into two components. One component is the agriculture component and the other program is the culinary arts component. So the students are very involved on many different levels, engaging them on many different levels with local food, from planting the gardens to ordering seeds, to sowing the seeds, to everything it takes to prepare the garden beds all the way through the harvesting process, the preparing and then the cooking process, which is a whole other big event in itself. Students do this Wednesday through Friday throughout the school year.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So if you have a summer garden and a winter garden, who's taking care of the garden when nobody's in school?

Craig Haims:

Good question. This is why it's helpful to have teachers that live close by the island, myself included. So Christine Caputo was one of the co founders, founders of this program, along with myself, and she and I took turns throughout the summer coming and checking on the gardens, bringing students with us. We try and involve our students throughout the school year, so we'd bring students with us to help harvest, to help weed, and do whatever needed to be done in the gardens throughout the summer. So it's a little bit more labor intensive having to drive out to Wyndham and pick up students and bring them back to Falmouth. But they need to be involved in the summer, so it's a great way to involve them. Continue your relationship with the student over the summer. Make sure that there isn't any kind of regression that might happen in the summer, and just keep them involved.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me about what types of students actually end up at the real school. How old are they, and, you know, why do they end up there?

Craig Haims:

Well, it's a 7th through 12th school, and we work with students who have struggled in mainstream placements. Now, they may have struggled because of academic difficulty, social, emotional difficulty, learning disabilities. There's a whole variety of reasons why students may come to us. The common denominator is they have not found success in the traditional channels. They've struggled, often mightily, before coming to us. So then our task is, okay, we have a student that has not resonated with a traditional school. How are we going to integrate this student into our program and find whatever gift they may bring and amplify that gift and find, figure out a way to be super creative and get them recharged up about school and about their own lives and becoming contributors. And I think the Real Lunch program is a good way to take somebody who may be more accustomed to being a consumer to a producer, teaching them how to produce, make something. Make something real, and eventually develop some pride in that, eventually develop some ownership in that. And that's what we do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What would you say to those who might be a little bit cynical about the high cost of educating students in an alternative way?

Craig Haims:

I mean, I guess I'd say to those. Those folks, we all live in our community together, and everybody is a valuable member of our shared community. And the alternatives of not educating our kids in whatever means it takes to educate them can be severe, and it can lead to all kinds of social problems that none of us would care to carry the cost of. So it's critical, and it's critical that we step outside the bounds of traditional education to engage the kids who have just not thrived in that system. And there is, you know, a handful of kids that have not thrived in traditional settings. Despite the excellent, amazing, dedicated efforts of their teachers and their administrators, they still have not responded to the traditional approach. And so at the real school, we see it as our responsibility to be completely different because anything that's been tried before hasn't worked with our population of kids. So we see it as our responsibility to be different. And we do that in many ways. One of the foremost ways is relational education and doing whatever it takes to find the good in whatever kid steps through our door and amplify it and make it shine a light on it and amplify it. So that's what we do. And using service learning and relational ed, we have great results.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How can people who are listening find out more about the real school and the real lunch program that you're doing?

Craig Haims:

Okay, well, we have a website, www.realschool.org. that's one way. Another way is to visit our school. We're on Mackworth Island. We have an open door policy. We love to have visitors come to our school and see what we do. It's very unique. It doesn't look like a traditional school as you would imagine. It's very dynamic. This year, the Wyndham RSU 14 district has hired a videographer who will be doing videos all throughout the district, including videos of the real school. And there are links to videos on our website as well. So if you can't get to the school, certainly check out our website.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And for those people that I go out to Mackworth Island, I walk around there and I think there are lots of people who walk around. Those people who are listening, you know, kind of peek over and see if you can see the garden out there.

Craig Haims:

That's right. That's right. As you walk around that lovely nature trail, which I think is about a mile and a half loop, when you hit your second field, not your first field, but your second field, I guess this is if you're walking kind of counterclockwise around the island from the parking lot, then you can see our low lying brick building and one of our gardens off in front of the school. And then the other garden is if you were to drive to the interior of the island, past the gatehouse on the left, there's a hoop house there. And that's where we have our fall and winter garden.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you also have a Facebook page.

Craig Haims:

We do have a Facebook page. That's our service Learning page. It's called the Real School AmeriCorps Service Learning Program on Facebook. And we've recently returned a contingent of students and our director, pender Makin, and AmeriCorps members went down to Florida to do a sea turtle rehabilitation project. And just yesterday we loaded photographs from that experience in Florida. So pretty exciting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thank you so much. We've been talking with Craig here of the Real School and the Real Lunch program. I encourage all of our listeners to go check out the website, the Facebook page, watch some of the videos, walk around Mackworth island and get a sense of what's going on over at the Real School.

Craig Haims:

Thank you so much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today on our Healthy Harvest show, we are speaking with Ken Morse of the Maine Farm to School Network. Ken has a wealth of experience in other areas as well, which we'll talk more about. But we're very pleased to have you coming in to talk about Farm to School. And why is this so important to you, Ken?

Ken Morse:

Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons and it's a real cultural shift thing. So it's not a simple one kind of thing. It's more cultural. We were talking about it this morning at our staff meeting that partly with we were talking about walking school buses and why kids don't walk to school more. And there are some safety issues. So I think part of the childhood obesity epidemic, which most everybody knows how serious it's become, is that kids are not as free to play outside as kids used to be. You know, when some of us were younger, we were outside all the time. And not only that, but then they fill their time playing with digital toys. And so kids really take to farm to school to get out and get dirty on school time. And it's really especially helpful for kids that may not thrive in the classroom. And more and more learning is being integrated for every subject through the gardens, through working in gardens and learning about food and agriculture. And so it's multiple things, but just getting kids out active at the school project in Norway, they put heart monitors on the kids when they're building raised beds and they track how much physical activity they're getting and stuff. And the kids love it. You know, they just really enjoy getting out, working in the garden. And then of course, it begins to really impact the school meals too, which have been a problem for quite some time. They're very important. Some kids don't get great meals outside of school, but some of the food in the school meals is. Has probably been more important to support commodity growers who grow surplus than necessarily for feeding kids well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And part of your interest, I think, in the health and your knowledge of the obesity rates in children comes from the work that you've done with Healthy Maine Partnerships.

Ken Morse:

Yeah, I'm the director of a local Healthy Main partnership in the Oxford Hills area, Healthy Oxford Hills, and have found that the Healthy Main Partnerships have gotten more and more aware of food system work as part of the solution to the nutrition issues. And one of the keys there is that up until very recently, when there were changes made by the governor and the legislature, the Coordinated School Health Program was part of the. The Healthy Maine Partnership system. So all the Healthy Maine partnerships, or HMPs, as we call them, do their work through community partnerships. And the one that's the most important, the most required and funded through the program are the schools. So that's partly why the Healthy Main Partnerships have tended to be some of the most active community groups with the farm to School movement.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Given that Maine has traditionally been an agricultural state, why do you think it took so long for us to get back to the idea that there should be a link between farms and schools?

Ken Morse:

Maine, you're right. Maine was a huge agricultural state. But starting when agriculture became more industrialized around the time of World War II, that began to shift, actually shifted somewhat before that with as they built canals and railroads that opened up the Midwest, because there was at one point when Maine was considered the breadbasket of the East. And so that whole industrial agriculture transformation, which now to some degree farm to school as part of a larger movement to reverse that and bring our food supplies back closer to home, that was a pretty radical shift in terms of the way America fed itself. And now, as more and more people understand, there's some real problems with that model. It creates cheap food, although the price of the industrial ag products don't really reflect all the costs, the health costs, the environmental costs, some of the social justice costs in terms of way people are paid. The climate change implications with food being transported so far, in one way we look at Farm to School is breeding a whole new generation of folks that really are into growing food and cooking food and eating food that's fresh and local. And so that's, you know, there's kind of a lost generation or two between like our grandparents or even some of us when everybody cooked and canned and, you know, bought a lot of their food locally in the last 50, 60 years or so, that got reversed and all the fast food places and everything. So this is partly part of a movement of reversing that cultural trend.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Ken, how can people find out about the main Farm to School Network?

Ken Morse:

There is a growing website you can find needs a number of work. There is a national website that's pretty robust. There is right now. There's a national Farm to School Month website which has lots and lots of good stuff on it. And there's the main School Garden Network website. So those are all ways. And then getting in touch with their local Healthy Maine partnership or other sort of natural partners like the Cooperative Extension, which are the co op Extension is very involved with school gardens and Farm to School pretty much all over the state.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this is a University of Maine program. Cooperative Extension.

Ken Morse:

Cooperative Extension, yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Great. Well, thank you for coming in. We've been talking with Ken Morris of the main Farm to School Network and we really appreciate all of the work that you're doing to get kids into gardens and gardens into kids and good food into kids and adults and helping our state be healthier.

Ken Morse:

Well, thank you and thanks for helping us spread the word.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 57, Healthy Harvest. Today's show has featured Lisa Silverman, macrobiotic instructor from Five Seasons Cooking School, Christine Slater from the Yarmouth Community Garden, Craig Hames from the real School, and Ken Morse from the main Farm to School Network. We hope that you've enjoyed our conversation with these individuals and thought a little bit about how you might spend some time bringing more real food into your real life. Whether it's thinking about a garden for next summer or going to your local farmers market or maybe encouraging your children to get a little bit more in involved in the cooking, we know that there are many different ways for us to reconnect with our food and we know that you'll find just the right one for yourself and your family. We encourage you to go back and listen to our past podcasts through itunes. All of these may be downloaded free. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Also sign up for our newsletter through our website, Dr. Lisa.org where you can find more information about our guests like us on Facebook, the Dr. Lisa page, or get in touch with us when you see us on the street and let us know how you think we're doing. We really appreciate your feedback. We also truly appreciate your letting our sponsors know that you're happy that they're helping us build a better world. This is Dr. Lisa. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.