Progress 09/01/11 to 08/31/14
Outputs
Target Audience: The ANC Extension Program's target audiences are the children of the Head Start Program here on the Fort Belknap Reservation, the White Clay Immersion School kids, the grade school from Hays/Lodge Pole, the children at the Mission School, the grade school from Harlem, residents of Fort Belknap Reservation, the surrounding communities and local producers. Summer Interns along with students enrolled in either the Native Plants or Botany classes here at ANC are also part of our target audience as they grow and nourish these plants which will be transplanted later into our garden plots and box raised beds. The people of the Fort Belknap Reservation are members of the Aaniiih (White Clay People) and the Nakoda tribes. Both of these tribes have an alarming haigh rate of unemployment. We continue to address this poverty issue by providing education and outreach programs that promote individual and community self-sufficiency and sustanability. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Summer Interns working down at the garden and college students working in the greenhouse are able to get training on traditional and common vegetable plants. These students are learning water management, plant growth, weed control, irrigation techniques, insect control, and various other skills that are essential for them in the field of science. Local producers are attending workshops here at ANC enabling them to financially manage their agri-business enterprises better. In 2012 we offered workshops to our local producer under the title of “Beginning Farmer and Ranchers” which were conducted by local experts in the field of Agriculture. The local residents of Fort Belknap Reservation are receiving technical information on growing and maintaining vegetable gardens, growing trees and medicinal plants benefits and usage. Food preservation and canning workshops are provided in order to extend the shelf life of food items and enable people to eat healthier and at a low budget. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We disseminate information by using our local newspapers, the college's radio station "88.1", calling people and visiting the outlying areas of the reservation. We also use flyers and the college’s electronic billboard to disseminate program information and future events. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The Aaniiih Nakoda College Extension Program has been working diligently to accomplish the objectives set forth in the grant. We are averaging around 150-200 adult participants during our Garden Tours which are conducted during the first week of September. We also averaged around 150 students from the local grade schools and around eighty children from the Head Start Program who enjoyed taking home fresh vegetables. Our next event is the annual We Dig You Pick which allows participants to take home fifty pound sacks of Red Norland potatoes to help with their personal food budget. Our numbers for this event is usually around fifty because of the amount of potatoes that we grow usually averages around 2 ton of spuds. We also donate farm produce to the local Senior Citizen Centers, the local schools and participants in our annual garden tours who pick and take home fresh vegetables. Food produce is also donated to the local Expanded Foods and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) to be used in future food preparation and preservation workshops and to local Farmers Markets. We have a designated area where community members can come and grow their own vegetables. Participants who come to our tours receive plenty of information from all local programs to include the Indian Health Service Nutritionist Val Pratt, the folks at Tribal and ANC Extension, and programs associated with health. We prepare a Healthy Taste Meal with all of the main ingredients coming from the vegetables grown at the garden site for the people to taste. Packets are prepared for the participants to take home with program brochures, nutritional and gardening information and flyers with upcoming events. Health Screening is provided by PHN, Diabetes Prevention Program and folks from the Healthy Heart Program who come together and collaborate to help make this event a success. We go from plot to plot and disseminate information on nutritional values, gardening techniques and origin of the plants. We use as many heirloom seeds as possible in our garden and everything is grown organically. Gardening classes are put in place early in the beginning of the growing season with participants receiving a few plants to take home in order to get their gardens started. We put on an Open Greenhouse for the public where local gardeners can come and receive plants to use in their own gardens. We promote eating healthy, exercising and self-sustainability with every event that is carried out. We coordinate Stew Cook Offs to encourage participants to use healthy ingredients to make their dishes and we are able to gather recipes to use in our handouts during our annual Garden Demonstration Tours. Incorporating our cultural component into the garden we have implemented the Three Sisters gardening technique, and planted tobacco and Sweetgrass. These last two plants are harvested by the children of the White Clay Immersion School who give to the Elders in the community. The tobacco and Sweet Grass are used by our community members that practice cultural events like Sun Dances, pipe ceremonies and sweats. We established a medicinal herb garden that covers most of the native medicinal plants grown naturally in the area and some of the plants are from other parts of the country to be used for the prevention of illnesses and healing which was cultural knowledge. This knowledge was becoming a lost culture but is slowly being retained and dissimilated back into the homes and lives of community members. ANC offers a Traditional Native Plants class/Intro to EthnoBotany class which allows students to propagate plants inside of the greenhouse to be later transplanted into the raised box beds in the medicinal garden or for local community members to grow and harvest as their own medicinal herbs. In collaboration with the folks at the Farm Service Agency we offered loan certification classes that assisted local producers/farmers to become eligible for loans through their program. This workshop also enabled them to gain crucial knowledge about the business aspect of running an Ag-business enterprise. ANC hosted Co-op meetings for our local producers and we gathered information for future workshops to help them in their Ag-business enterprise.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/12 to 08/31/13
Outputs
Target Audience: The ANC Extension Program’s target audiences are the children of the Head Start Program here on the Fort Belknap Reservation, the White Clay Immersion School kids, the grade school kids from Hays/Lodge Pole, the grade school from the town of Harlem, residents of the Fort Belknap Reservations and the communities of Harlem and Dotson and local agricultural producers. We had three Summer Interns and numerous college students that grew plants in the greenhouse which were enrolled in the Native Plants class and the Botany class here at ANC. The people of the Fort Belknap Reservation are members of the Aaniiih (White Clay People) and the Nakoda tribes both of these tribes have an alarming high rate of unemployment. We continue to address this poverty issue by providing education and outreach programs that promote individual and community self-sufficiency and sustainability. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? The Summer Interns, college students using the greenhouse for propagating plants are receiving hands on knowledge on the world of plants. These students are learning water management, plant growth, weed control, irrigation techniques, insect control, and varies other skills that are essential for them in the field of science. The local producers are attending workshops here at ANC that have taught them how to financially manage their agri-business enterprises. Last summer we had a “Beginning Farm and Rancher” workshop in Great Falls which we put together with the help of Blackfeet Community College. The local residents of Fort Belknap Reservation are receiving technical information on growing vegetable gardens, trees and medicinal plants. They are also receiving training on preserving these and other food items to use during the long winter months of Montana. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We use our local newspapers, the college’s radio station “88.1”, calling people from a list of producers that the folks at INCA have established and putting information on a newsletter that they generate around and off the reservation. We use flyers and an electronic billboard that the college has on campus. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We are currently preparing our garden site for this growing season and planting all of the vegetables and medicinal plants that will be part of the annual tours. The Demonstration Garden will take up most of our time and efforts to keep the garden looking like it should during the summer months. We will have another Stake Holders meeting during the end of the summer to get everything lined up for the next tours and to see what we can improve on. We will continue to look for workshops for our local producers and continue to assist those who need some kind of help in their agri-business.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Our Demonstration Garden tours ran last year from Sept. 4th thru Sept 6h and during these four days we were able to have one hundred and twenty-five children and about one-hundred and five adults participate in this event. We were able to have raised box beds full of medicinal plants that were found locally and were used by these tribes along time ago when they were used to heal and for their nutritional values. The community members have shown much interest in this area and many remember hearing their grandparents telling them what they were used for and why. Sometimes we are learning from them as well as they are learning from us when it comes to this topic. This part of our garden tours has begun to take up much of the time that we have for the whole event because of how much information is being presented and how much questions are being asked. This was a piece of the culture knowledge that was dying out and we are trying to preserve it. We also grew tobacco and sweet grass which was processed by the Immersion School students with the help of their teachers. Together these two products are handed over to the community members for cultural events. We gave nutritional and gardening technical information out to the participants of the tours as they enjoyed a meal prepared from vegetables obtain straight from the garden site. The folks form Healthy Heart prepared these meals and the Indian Health Services nutritionist Val Pratt gave out the information on the nutritional value of each plant as we went around the garden site. The participants left with bags full of vegetables and healthy recipes which they can try out at home. Our garden operation is all organic and we do not believe in using any herbicides or pesticides. Questionnaires and program evaluation sheets given out during the tours have indicated that more and more families are starting to garden and that the children are learning about gardening. Eating homegrown food, using homegrown goods, and caring for nature, and the people's long term health and sustainablility, from generation to generation is a goal that we are trying to accomplish here at the Fort Belknap College Extension Program. We collaborate with many local health programs like Tribal Health, Healthy Hearts, Diabetes Prevention, Indian Health Services, and the FERTEP agent in order to accomplish our goals. Many were screen for any health problems by the Diabetes Prevention staff that continue to participate in our tours. We donated vegetables to the Fort Belknap Senior Center which were distributed among the three different sites on the reservation. In October we had our annual "We Dig You Pick" event which produced around 2 ton of spuds which community members came and picked. This food supplement helps stretch the food budget during the long winter months. Sacks of potatoes were also donated to the Seniors and the Immersion school in order to help with their food budget We also held a separate tour for our Head Starters and they were allow to take home some of the cold weather crops that were stilling growing, spuds and a pumpkins for Halloween. These little guys are very happy to come out and run around in the garden and are proud to carry their bags full of veggies. Parents always tell me how their little ones are so proud of their veggies and their little pumpkin. We try to service all of the age groups from Head Start till our elders. We were able to give some pumpkins to the Boys and Girl club in Hays which is one of our local communities on the Fort Belknap Reservation. We also took pumpkins to the local grade school which puts on a competition between the different classes to see which one could have the prettiest pumpkin. We hosted a ten week long workshop here at ANC, that was being put on by the Farm Services of America and presented by the Agriculture Department at MSU Bozeman. This workshop began on Nov. 5th 2012 and continued every Monday for the ten weeks and the participants had to attend all of the sessions in order to receive a certificate that they could use when making loans through the Farm Services of America Agency. The material covered during this workshop would allow our local producers to be able to keep financial records, manage livestock, Risk Management, and varies other topics which would help them in their agriculture enterprise. We had a total of four local producers attend this workshop and we hope to see more next year. The Stake Holders are a crucial component of this program and we are in constant bases with the individuals that compose this group. We had a stake holder meeting on the 15th of Nov. 2012 to go over the progress that we had at the ANC Extension Program. Present at this meeting was myself the ANC Extension Program Director, Diabetes Prevention staff Mercy Snell, Tribal Health staff Katrese Hammond, Indian Health Nutritionist Val Pratt and NSF-TCUP project coordinator Cheryl Morales. The meeting was held to go over the progress that has been ongoing in the program. Presented to all present was the questionnaires that were collected during the garden tours and the sign-up list of those that participated along with a summary of what we have been doing here at Extension Program. We continue to add new components to the tours as a result of inputs from these stakeholders. The tobacco for cultural reasons came from such a stakeholders meeting and so did the idea of implanting a medicinal plants garden. The tree nursery also came from a stakeholder meeting and the grant came from the "Sisters of Province" which allowed us to add a new component to our tours and hand out trees for beautification and sustainability. We use these questionnaires as an evaluating tool to see what the public is learning and what they like to see improve. We are seeing that more and more community members are gardening and we also know this because we provide starter plants from our greenhouse to these local gardeners. The turnout for the demonstration tours and the "We Dig You Pick" were strong indicators on how important organic foods are to the residents of the Fort Belknap Reservation and surrounding communities. The participation of the local schools in giving the children an opportunity to come to the garden and learn about how vegetables and fruits are grown as well as their nutritional value shows how important the message is to them. Food Sovereignty is a movement that is slowly gaining momentum throughout Indian Country. Many of the reasons are due to the high rate of Diabetes and other health issues related to obesity Traditional foods, nutritional diets, medicinal plants, and exercising are some of the ways to fight these health issues. We began all of our starters plants in our greenhouse from mid-February till present in order to have the plants that we need for both our vegetable garden and our medicinal gardens. With the aid of both the students from the Native Plants class and the Botany class we were able to produce more than one thousand vegetable plants and four hundred native plants. These plants will all be used for the demonstration garden, raised box beds and to for the many local gardeners who come to the green house during our “Open Greenhouse’ event. We had our annual “Open Greenhouse” event on May 22nd and we had about 150 plants that went to our local gardeners. These plants are a strong sign that community members are planning to garden this year and a good feeling for us here at Extension. The gardening workshops are going on around the reservation with an average of twenty participants at every locations and these participants are going to take home some good technical gardening skills aloing with some trees to use for landscaping and fruit production.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/11 to 08/31/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The Aaniiih Nakoda College Extension Program has been working very hard to accomplish the programs objectives set forth in the grant. Last year was a terrible year for farmers, ranchers and gardeners with the record amount of snow and rainfall that haven't been seen here in over 50 years. The local river flooded our garden site, causing the ground to be saturated and having over three feet of standing water which kept us out of the garden for over three weeks. Unfortunately, the saturated ground and the river silt that came with the flood caused our plants to die or, in some cases, never mature. This left us without a demonstration garden for our annual tours and Farmer's Market. We were able to have a children's scavenger hunt at the garden site, and we were able to teach them the Three Sisters technique of gardening. The vegetables came from our local grocery store, and they represented the three vegetables used, which are beans, corn and squash. They learned about the insects that live in the garden and which ones are beneficial and which ones are harmful. We coordinated the scavenger hunt with Native American Week, which was one of the suggestions from our Stakeholder Meeting. We had 38 grade school kids that attended the event, which also included a potato sack race at the end of the scavenger hunt. The kids enjoyed themselves and we had a few questions for them to answer to see how much they learned, and we were very pleased with the results. We also had an adult stew cook off at the different communities here at the reservation on different days. We had seven participants and we now have seven new recipes that can be shared at the garden tours next year. We were able to give out beneficial information on raised beds, composting and nutritional factors on eating healthy to the members of those communities who came to these different Senior Citizen Centers for a lunch meal. I was invited by Mary Musil, Director of Child and Adult Care Food Program in Helena, Montana, to come and talk about our demonstration garden and how we provide vegetables to the Head Start children and the community. I did a power point presentation for the audience that was gathered at the City Hall in Harlem, Montana, and gave them an overview of what we did here at Extension and the services that we provide. This took place on September 7, 2011, from 11:00 am-11:40 am, and it was during their CACFP directors' training. Thirty directors from various Head Start schools attend the presentation. We also participated in our annual "Mid-Winter Fair" where we also handed out information on raised beds, composting and nutritional factors on eating healthy to those that attended this event. We were able to have another Adult Stew Cook off and it went really well with ten participants. On April 19th we were part of an Earth Day event attended by all local students. We had over two hundred students participate during the daylong event and we were one of ten stations set up. Our station had the Three Sisters technique of gardening and different soil type samples. I was impressed by the amount of information that the students knew concerning gardening and eating healthy. PARTICIPANTS: I, Manuel Morales, am the principal investigator and director of the program working diligently to meet the programs goals. I run the greenhouse which is used as a production site for all of the vegetables and medicinal plants grown for both the demonstration sites and community members. College students in the biology and native plants classes utilize this facility to grow plants while learning the different stages of the growth of a plant from seed to starter plant. They also learn how the humidity, growing medium and other factors affect the life of a plant. Our community members get to tour the facility and see how it operates along with the kids who participate in our tours. I run a small tree nursery where we bring in small trees, harden them for a year, and give them out to the participants of the garden workshops which are conducted by our FRTEP agent. Our FRTEP agent was Samantha Graff, who has since moved on and we are now waiting to see who will take her place. I hire a seasonal worker by the name of Mr. Ennis Russell who has been working alongside me for about five years. He helps me out during the growing season which is very labor intensive due to the fact that our garden is organic and we have about 2 1/2 acres of growing space. We also rely on the help of student summer interns; we usually get two to three students during the summer months when the college is done for the normal school year. These students are normally from the Native American Vocational and Technical Educational Program and the TCUP ( Tribal Colleges and University Program ). Our program will pick them up after these programs have exhausted their funds, allowing us to keep them for the duration of the summer. These students are usually in the Natural Resource Department and like to work outside. They obtain valuable information on water management, pest management, pest control, weed management and soil management. We also collaborate with Mrs. Mercy Shields and her staff who work at the Diabetes Prevention Center. They are responsible for some of the "Taste Test Meals" that are prepared and fed to the participants at the tours. They give out healthy recipes and also provide health screening. We also work with Mrs. Val Pratt who is the Nutritionist at the Indian Health Services, and she talks about the different nutritional values of the vegetables and how to cook them. We also work with Mrs. Katrese Hammond who helps fill in for Val when she is unable to attend the tours; Mrs. Doney works for Tribal Health. Mrs. Cheryl Morales, who is the TCUP director and also teaches the Native Plant class, also is instrumental during our tours with her expertise on our native plants, which we have been able to grow with the aid of the students who participate in that class. Native plants were used by the indigenous people of the Americas and this information is being reintroduced to our community members in the hopes that they will be used instead of pharmaceuticals which have ingredients that cause side effects and are manmade. These people also make up our stakeholder committee. TARGET AUDIENCES: Our target audience is every member of the Fort Belknap community. We provide outreach to all ages from Head Start to the elders of these areas. The program's demonstration farm and greenhouse grow a variety of vegetables, herbs, trees, and shrubs to demonstrate food production, preparation, and preservation methods for all community members. Native plants with traditional cultural value are cultivated so that community members can identify these plants and learn about their nutritional, medicinal, ceremonial and/or historical importance for the A'ani (White Clay, also known as Gros Ventre) and Nakoda (Assiniboine) people. ANC students work as interns at the farm and greenhouse, and classes in biology and natural resources make use of these facilities as a "living laboratory." Extension personnel also work with students at the local public schools, White Clay Language Immersion School and Head Start. Farmers and ranchers tour forage crop demonstration sites and attend workshops on a variety of agri-business topics. In this way, community members of all ages and walks of life benefit from the extension program, and program-sponsored tours, workshops and individual consultations provide opportunities for all community members to gain the knowledge and skills needed to create positive changes in their lives. ANC's Extension Program addresses several of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture's (NIFA) extension program areas, including agriculture, natural resources, family and consumer sciences, and community and economic development. ANC's extension program also addresses NIFA's national critical needs areas of sustainability, food security, childhood obesity and food safety. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
When we had our Vegetable Scavenger Hunt the participants were 5th and 6th graders from our local schools and we had around seventy participants. We gave them a small quiz at the end of the event and they seemed to be understanding what was being presented to them. Many seem to have put in a garden with their parents. We find that as the kids are getting older they seem to remember coming to the garden as young as Head Starters. They also learn in school how plants grow and what is in the soils. We allow those that have never been in a garden to see how beautiful it really is, taste the vegetables grown, and see how different the taste is from those vegetables bought at the local grocery store. Together, the hands-on knowledge and the information presented to them allow them to understand why plants are so important for our existence. Many of them raised their hands when asked if they like veggies and if they eat them. We were able to do some Adult Stew Cook offs, where we had a total of seventeen participants and we covered the reservation from one end to the other giving out information on different topics which were related to gardening and eating healthy. We also handed out some of the program's brochures that gave a layout of what we did at Extension and the history of the program. We are noticing that more people and children are putting in gardens and that many of the ones that have been doing this all of their lives are willing to share their expertise. Our Summer Interns are learning how to maintain a healthy garden free of chemicals. They learn irrigation techniques, weed management, pest control and various other practices needed to maintain an organic garden. Our Immersion School kids are learning their cultural ways by harvesting, braiding and handling the sweet grass that we grow along with the tobacco that is used by the community members for cultural reasons. All of the harvesting and preparation of the tobacco is done by the kids with the supervision of their teachers. More people are putting in raised beds and this was an outcome of the flooding that caused a change in their soils which were now full of silt. Many have been making them with legs so that they would be able to work on the soil without bending over. We have many community members that come to our greenhouse looking for plants to put in their gardens and many are new faces. Many people are getting tired of the high prices of veggies and the possibility of pesticides and herbicides being used to grow these good looking veggies. This is attracting more people into organic gardening and taking control of what they eat. By networking with the other agencies involved in the health field we are getting our message out there. We use our local radio, digital billboard and flyers to let our community members know what is going on in our program and when the events are going to occur.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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