Progress 09/01/07 to 08/31/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The Aaniiih Nakoda College Extension Program has been working diligently to achieve the programs goals which are directly linked with the needs of the Fort Belknap Reservation and its surrounding communities. The objectives are to promote a healthier life style among the residents on and around Fort Belknap, to assist local producers in developing alternative crops and increase forage production and to establish a horticulture /agriculture training center at the Aaniiih Nakoda College. During these four years the program has extended its capacity to better achieve these goals. Our Demonstration Farm was moved to a closer site that is more visible from the highway and more accessible and practical. We were able to build a tree nursery that gave us the capability to bring in young trees, let them get hardy over the winter and give them out to the community members that attended a one day gardening class offered in the spring. We were also able to put in a community garden adjacent to our Demonstration Garden, allowing participants in certain tribal health programs to learn how to plant and maintain their individual plots and benefit from eating organic vegetables. We added sweet grass, tobacco and the Three Sisters method of gardening to enhance the Native American cultural knowledge. The concepts of self-sufficiency and eating healthier are promoted with the use of our Demonstration Garden. Our 2 1/2 acre Demonstration Garden grows all of the major vegetables found in the local grocery stores, and all vegetables are grown organically. At the end of the growing season we have our annual demonstration tours where participants come and walk from plot to plot while they receive instructions on how to grow the plant, the history and the nutritional information associated with the individual plant. They also get to take home vegetable samples from the garden to cook. Participants are encouraged to participate in a health screening provided by the tribal health program. The participants are also fed a "Taste Test" meal which was prepared from vegetables grown in the garden and prepared in a healthy manner by members of several health programs. They receive packets filled with nutritional information and recipes. We believe that we should reach as many age groups as possible so we have Head Start, Grade School and adult tours. This enables us to reach a wider audience and to promote healthier lifestyles. We have a We Dig You Pick, where community members get to pick a 60 lb. sack of potatoes which helps them with their food budget. We put on a Farmer's Market where community members can sell their garden produce. We use the TEAM (Together We Achieve More) concept to achieve these goals. We know that by staying with the Fort Belknap Indian Community Council's Strategic Management health segment that we can network and collaborate with other tribal health programs in order to achieve more than we would by ourselves. We were also instrumental in working with the Science Department in growing some bio-fuel crops which would benefit the local farmers and ranchers in producing alternative crops for animal consumption and for sale. PARTICIPANTS: I Manuel Morales the program's director am responsible for achieving the program's goals by coordinating and supervising and executing the program activities. During the months of April thru Oct. I have a summer laborer by the name of Ennis Russell who helps me tremendously during these months. I also have the help of Student Interns that are provided by two different college programs which are TCUP (Tribal Colleges and Universities Program) and NAFTAP (Native American Technical Educational Program). These program depending on their annual program contribute one or two Summer Student interns which gives us the manpower to operate and maintain the Demonstration Garden and Tree Nursery. In order to achieve our goals better we have teamed up with other tribal programs here at the Fort Belknap Reservation. We collaborate with Tribal Health, Tribal Extension Agent, Healthy Hearts and Diabetes Prevention Program in order to achieve more. These programs contribute greatly to the success of our mission and goals. We work together with the Tribal Extension Agent to put on workshops on gardening and food preservation which help community members gain the knowledge needed to be able to can their goods and to put in a garden that will flourish during the summer months. These programs help put together the information that is given out during the annual tours. The tours beginning at the greenhouse and from there they go to the tree nursery and finally to the Demonstration Garden meanwhile receiving information from medicinal plants, greenhouse operation, raised box beds, different types of trees and how to plant them, information on gardening and the nutritional value of eating organic vegetables. We have an annual Stake Holder's meeting which helps us analyzed our program's performance, discuss any issues, address any concerns and to see what can we do better. The programs that were mention before a the same ones that are in the Stake Holder's meeting and we have a community member which will also attend the meeting. TARGET AUDIENCES: The program was designed to target the residents of The Fort Belknap Reservation and all of the surrounding communities. Because of the health problems associated with bad eating habits our goal is to educate the community in eating organic vegetables that are grown in their own vegetable gardens which are free of chemicals. We are seeing younger people interested in gardening and preserving techniques. Participants in our tours have a wide range of ages, which has helped us reach a wider audience. Hopefully, by reaching them at a younger age we can get good eating habits established. Local farmers and ranchers are also part of our target audience, and with the help of the Science Department at the college we were able to grow alternative crops. These crops would be use for animal production and can also be sold for bio-fuel. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
During the four years we have averaged about 150-200 participants during our annual garden tours, and the ages range from young adults to elderly. We also have about 150 children that attend the garden tours, and their age groups range from pre-school to grade school. We have about 50 participants in our annual We Dig You Pick event and about the same number in our Farmer's Market. We have student interns that work in the summer and they average about one to two every summer. We donate a lot of our produce to the senior citizens and the local schools. We grow a big pumpkin patch and we donate the pumpkins to the local schools. We grow around 300 pumpkins. We do questionnaires after each tour and we noticed that more people are gardening. We are also happy to know that the children are learning from the tours. We now see grade school students that remember coming to the tours as Head Starters and know a lot about gardening and have put in gardens themselves. We see more community gardens being planted every year and the interest of food sovereignty taking shape as more people are aware of eating organic vegetables. We have 13 White Clay Immersion School students come and harvest the sweet grass and tobacco. They are helped by their teachers and receive the cultural knowledge on how to harvest the crop and how to prepare it to be given out to the local community members that will use it in their ceremonies. The students take pride and ownership in these products and they also use the greenhouse to grow their own plants that they get to see develop from a seed until they mature into a plant. They get to take home these plants and present them to their mothers for Mothers Day. Our greenhouse continues to be a learning resource for our students as they are able to do research in a living bio-dome, which enabled some students to do a presentation during the 2009 FALCON conference in Washington DC while others get hands on knowledge in botany. We grow all of our starter plants there, and we supply the local gardeners with starter plants for their personal gardens. We give out program brochures at local events, and we use the college radio and local news media to let the public know of the upcoming events. Our student interns receive a lot of Ag. related knowledge while working at the Demonstration Garden. Hands-on knowledge on irrigation, plant life, soil nutrition, pest and insect control and weed control which is all done without the use of chemicals. They get to see the fruit of their labor when the community members participate at the annual demonstration tours and when we deliver the pumpkins to the local schools. We are also now starting a medicinal plant area where we have five big raised beds dedicated to this. People are receiving information on how these plants were used by Native Americans to cure some of their illnesses. We have given out over three hundred trees to those who participate in the garden workshops and many of the trees have survived the transplants.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 09/01/09 to 08/31/10
Outputs
Annual Accomplishment Report 06/01/2009 to 05/31/2010 During this time the Fort Belknap College program has been working very hard to accomplish the objectives set forth in the grant. The planting season is now opened so that we can get our 2 acres of gardening in. This year we are excited because we have two new crops which are going to be use for Native American cultural reasons. These new crops are tobacco and sweetgrass. Our annul garden tours went great and ran for about a week. During this time we had adult tours and children tours. Our tours are developed for all ages so that we can reach both present and future generations of gardeners. We grow everything organic so that the vegetables are one hundred percent chemical free. We control our weeds with the use of tillers and the old fashion way of pulling weeds by hand. The participants learn about the nutritional value and method of growing the different vegetables as we walk from plot to plot. They are given a Taste Test Meal at the end of the tours, and the meals are made using vegetables straight from the garden. The participants will get recipes of these meals in their folders which consist of healthy dishes that taste good. Participants are encouraged to be screened by some of the health specialists who are there as part of the tour. We are networking together with other tribal and local agencies so that we can promote healthier lifestyles in order to fight the health issues that we see across our communities. We had a good turn out and we hope to continue to reach a bigger audience this year. The tobacco turned out wonderfully, and the community members took samples of the tobacco home to dry and use in their ceremonies. We had a three sisters garden set aside in our community garden and it was next to the tobacco. Our greenhouse continues to be a great learning tool in which our botany classes and summer interns get to do research in the fields of plant science and alternative crops. Our summer interns attended the annual 2009 FALCON conference in Washington DC and did their poster presentations on their experiments with alternative crops which were done at the greenhouse. The alternative crops that we grew were Willow Creek grain, winter peas, lentils, barley, camellia, and canola. The General Biology class did an experiment with different soils in order to find out which was best for propagation, and the students made a poster with all of the information that they had gathered. We also held our annual farmers market and we were delighted to see the turnout from the community. Local community members are happy to be able to get fresh vegetables straight from the garden which is produced locally and organic. We also had a great turn out for our We Dig, You Pick, where we grew over two tons of spuds. With the alarming high rate of unemployment and the rise of grocery prices, these spuds help the community members stretch their food dollars. PRODUCTS: Our annual garden tours are considered to be a mobile classroom as we go from the greenhouse to the raised beds, to the tree nursery and then travel down to the demonstration garden where we go from plot to plot. During this time the participants are receiving information on the different plants and techniques used in growing the plants and trees. They receive a folder full of instructional materials for gardening, healthy recipes and nutritional information. We were able to purchase a new digital camera which allowed us to capture the different program activities. We repaired some of the farm equipment that is used in our normal every day farm operation. We were able to obtain one summer intern from the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP) who is majoring in the field of Natural Resources. We gave out brochures during the AIHEC conference in Arizona. OUTCOMES: Our garden and greenhouse tours, farmer's market and We Dig, You Pick went well. We had 118 adults, 76 grade school children and 30 Head Start students participate in the tours. We had about 50 adults participate in our farmers market, and we went from one end of the reservation to the other end trying to reach everyone. We donated a lot of our produce to the senior citizens centers and to the schools. We had a great pumpkin patch and we donated the pumpkins to all of the local schools. Our We Dig, You Pick went really well with about 50 participants, and we sold out in two hours. All proceeds are used to purchase more potato seeds and sacks. The White Clay Immersion School students and teachers came down to the raised beds after the tours were all done. Mrs. Lori Archambault, one of the teachers, taught students the cultural way of harvesting the sweetgrass and how to braid it. The students gave these braids of sweetgrass along with the tobacco that they helped harvest down at the farm to local community members who would be using them in their ceremonies. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: Activities designed to the function of distributing information to the public, whether through printed documents or electronic or other media. It is a proactive role in announcing, circulating, communicating, diffusing, publicizing, publishing achievements, products, outcomes and impacts. We continue to use the college's radio station and computerized bill board in order to put out any information pertaining to the ongoing program events. We have the local newspaper come to the farm, and they take pictures and get information on what's going on now and we keep them informed on upcoming events. We give out packets full of nutritional information and recipes during our greenhouse and garden tours. We hand out brochures when we travel to different meetings or workshops. FUTURE INITIATIVES: We are planning to put in Native herbal plant plots and a small tree orchid to use for demonstrations. We are planning to give away another 500 trees to the community members for landscaping. These trees include evergreens, green ash, cottonwoods, apple trees, grape vine, etc. We have an upcoming gardening workshop. Our gardening season is on its way as of the 1st of June.
Impacts
When we do our tours we hand out questionnaires, and we are finding out that there are more and more community member putting in gardens. We are receiving phone calls from people who want to know how to start a garden. We are seeing new faces at our tours, and a lot of younger people are interested in starting a garden. By networking with the other agencies involved in the health field we are getting our message out there. We see more people participating in walking groups, eating vegetables, coming to the greenhouse and buying plants for their gardens. We get a lot of positive comments on our program and how pretty our garden looks. By being close to the highway we are in the spotlight and passing traffic beeps us and lets us know that they see us. The community garden was used by the Vocational Rehabilitation Program so their clients could grow vegetables and sell them. They enjoyed the experience and many are going to plant a garden this year. Tammy Rider, the Community Organizer for the Center for Native Health Partnerships Division of Health Sciences, put in the tobacco and the three sisters gardening technique to show how the Native Americans grew their gardens.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 09/01/08 to 08/31/09
Outputs
Annual Accomplishment Report 09-1-2008 to 05-31-2009 During this time the Fort Belknap College Extension program has been very busy trying to accomplish the objectives set forth in the Grant. Ed Doney the director has left the program, and Manny Morales is currently the acting director. Our annual Garden Tours ran for a week with community members participating in greater numbers than in previous years. We are starting to see younger people putting in gardens and who remember coming down to the Demonstration Farm tours when they were in Head Start and grade school. Our tours are developed for all ages so that we can reach present and future generations of gardeners. The participants are given the nutritional value and method of growing the different vegetables as we walk from plot to plot. They are given a Taste Test Meal at the end of each tour which have vegetables straight from the garden and are healthy dishes which taste good. They are encouraged to be screened by some of the health specialist who are there as part of the tour. We are networking together with other tribal and local agencies so that we can together promote Healthier Lifestyles in order to fight the health issues that we see across our communities. Our Greenhouse continues to be a great learning tool in which our botany classes and summer interns get to do research in the field of Plant Science and alternative crops. Our summer interns attended the annual FALCON conference and did poster presentations on their experiments with alternative crops which were done at the Greenhouse. All of the Senior Centers now have their own small cold frame Greenhouses; we are in the process of training them in order to get them familiarized with the process of starting long season plants in their Greenhouses. We also built them a couple of box raised beds that are sitting on legs making them easier to work with rather than bending over while kneeing on the ground. We held our annual alternative crops field tours for local farmers to attend. We grew Willow Creek grain, Winter Peas, Lentils, Barley, Camellia, and Canola. We had a good turn out and we hope to continue to reach a bigger audience this year. We also held our annual Farmers Market and were delighted to see the turnout from the community. We could not keep the vegetables on the trailer long enough to restock them. From the Immersion School kids to our senior citizens, they were all buying vegetables. We also had a great turn out for our We Dig You Pick, where we grew over two ton of spuds. PRODUCTS: I have currently developed a new program brochure with updated information, new pictures and a new faceplate. We were given two summer interns out of the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP) these students are in the field of Natural Resources. We have a new crop this year, tobacco, and we are really excited about it. Tammy Rider, the Organizer for the Center of Native Health Partnership working out of MSU Bozeman, is growing tobacco to be used in the community for cultural reasons. The plants were started in the Greenhouse from seeds and will be transplanted some time soon. Along with this new crop we will have a Three Sisters garden which will resemble the ways Native Americans grew their gardens. We are in the process of giving away five hundred trees to the community members which were provided to us through a grant from the Sisters of Providence. These trees will make our community look prettier, and we will be teaching the participants how to plant them and to take care of them. OUTCOMES: Our Garden and Greenhouse Tours, Farmer's and We Dig You Pick. Audience type and numbers reached. Adults: approximately 200 participants, ages ranging from young adults to the elderly. We also had about 150 pre-school and school age children. We had about 50 adults and 12 children participate in our Farmer's Market, and we went from one end of the reservation to the other end trying to reach everyone. We donated a lot of our produce to the Senior Citizens and to the schools. We had a great pumpkin patch and we donated the pumpkins to all of the local schools. Our We Dig You Pick went really well with about 50 participants and we sold out in two hours. All proceeds are used in purchasing more potato seeds and sacks in the future. We grow nice size potatoes and people are always happy to come down with their loved ones and have fun filling up their sacks. We continue to promote healthier lifestyles in all of our events and the community is embracing it. Our summer interns are gaining valuable knowledge on agriculture practices. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: We continue to use the college's radio station and computerized bill board in order to put out any information pertaining to the ongoing program events. We have the local newspaper come to the farm, and they take pictures and get information on whatis going on now and we keep them informed on upcoming events. We give out packets full of nutritional information and recipes during our Greenhouse and Garden tours. We hand out brochures when we travel to different meetings or workshops. We were invited to be a presenter during the Annual FALCON conference on Dec. 07, 2008 and I took a power point, which I presented. FUTURE INITIATIVES: We are exploring new ways of maximizing the Greenhouse, so we will be trying out some new ornamental flowers. We hope to have student interns grow and market seasonal flowers. We will be giving out 500 trees to the community members to use in landscaping. These trees include evergreens, green ash, cottonwoods, apple trees, grape vine, etc.. We hope to be using the root cellar to store some of the extra vegetables and potatoes in order to sell during the winter months.
Impacts
When we do our tours we hand out questionnaires, and we are finding out that there are more and more community member putting in gardens. We are receiving phone calls from people who want to know how to start a garden. We are seeing new faces at our tours and a lot of younger people are interested in starting a garden. By networking with the other agencies involved in the health field we are getting our message out there. We see more people participating in walking groups, eating vegetables, coming to the greenhouse and buying plants for their garden. We get a lot of positive comments on our program and how pretty our garden looks. By being close to the highway we are in the spotlight and passing traffic beeps us and lets us know that they see us.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 09/01/07 to 08/31/08
Outputs
Annual Accomplishment Report 09-01-2007 to 08-31-2008 Program Keyword: Plant Science Grant Title: Fort Belknap Extension Program Award # 2007-47002-03841 Reporting Period: From 09-01-2007 through 08-31-2008 What's the problem Unhealthy Lifestyles and the greater need for Self-Sufficiency. (1) There is a noticeable percentage of residents from the Fort Belknap Reservation and surrounding communities who are considerably overweight, and many are becoming diabetics from their unhealthy lifestyles. Through collaborative efforts of our program and other tribal programs many participants have increased their vegetable intake because of our garden project, but still do not entered into a consistent exercise program. We have reached many candidates but many more candidates need to be reached in the area of physical fitness. We encourage people to walk before they eat to get their metabolism going to burn calories while they walk and even after they eat their smaller portioned meals. (2) Because of the lack of resources on or near the Fort Belknap Reservation there is a need for greater self-sufficiency. This is also due to high unemployment (seventy four percent) and chronic poverty (over forty five percent of families live below the federal poverty level). What you planned OBJECTIVE: USDA Extension has offered Educational opportunities for every segment of the Fort Belknap Community and will continue to offer these as long as there is an Extension Program. (1) As part of the Community Council's Strategic Management health segment, we continue to promote healthier lifestyles in hopes of helping our people to maintain a healthy lifestyle by more vegetable intake and physical fitness through our Greenhouse and Demonstration Farm Garden, and to join walking clubs and other exercise programs. (2) We promote healthy diets and healthy food intake by providing annual garden tours and taste test meals to participants as they attend these activities that we provide for them. Participants are encouraged to walk from plot to plot and sample vegetables as well as participate in the taste test meals provided in our collaborative team efforts. (3) We continue to promote self-sufficiency among the Fort Belknap residents through our Farmer's Markets by encouraging selling of their excess vegetable crops and for our Livestock Operators by showing them that they can producing alternative crops fore their livestock and to sell excess hay for profit. Mr. Ed Doney has been the Extension Program Director from 06-01-2001 to the present time and Mr. Manuel Morales was hired in 06-01-2003 as the Greenhouse Technician. Together these two individuals make up the Fort Belknap College Extension Program team. We believe in the T E A M concept of program management. We collaborate and network with other programs who also promote healthier lifestyles among our resident. Together Everyone Achieves More. PRODUCTS: We have developed our own program brochures that we have given out to help explain our mission and goals. We have four boxed raised beds near the existing Greenhouse that we demonstrate to participants during the garden tours. We built a 100 foot x 150 foot Tree Nursery from a grant that we received from the Sisters of Providence who are located in Washinton State. With the help of the Late Mr Don Addy who passed away in May 2008, and the Late Sister Nancy who also passed away in November 2008, we put together the grant application and it was funded to build the nursery and fill it with 1000 potted trees. These trees are to be given away during the Landscape and Garden sessions in the spring of 2009 with the new Tribal Extension Agent. We are very excited about the nursery. We are nearing the completion of a new root cellar that was funded by a "Back to Basics" grant. The cellar will be 30 feet x 40 feet by 9 feet high. We will be able to use it to store produce after the 2009 season harvest.We are really excited about this project and are anxious to put the cellar to good use. We planted and grew 700 pounds of potatoes in the garden and during our annual We Dig, You Pick potato harvest, we harvested 5 ton of potatoes. The soil is sandy and grows real nice potatoes. We received several comments that those were the best potatoes that we ever grew. With positive comments like that it makes all of our efforts worth it. OUTCOMES: OUTPUTS: Garden and Greenhouse Tours, Farmer's Market, Audience type and number reached: Adults: approximately 200 ages ranging from Young adult to the Elderly Children: approximately 150 pre-school and school age Children Besides our annual tours we held a two day Farmers Market in the fall and 50 adults attended. This was at the southern and northern end of Reservation. We sold a lot of vegetables and still had a lot left so we donated them to the Senior Citizens Centers and to the schools. We continue to conduct educational tours, promote healthier lifestyles for adults and children of all ages. We held a one day We Dig, You Pick potato harvest sale. Approximately 50 people came and sacked up their potatoes. At least 25 more people have asked when we are going to dig our potatoes and they find it hard to believe when we tell them that we already did. It makes quite an impact when you downsize from 2 acres to approximately one eight of an acre. We hope to grow more again next year. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: We always us the college's KGVA radio station and their computerized bill board to announce all of our program activities such as garden tours, corn maze, farmers market, potato harvest, etc... On the radio we do a live interview and the dj asks us questions that relate to our activities. We do news releases to the local news papers and they come and take pictures and do a story on our activities. We do our own posters and flyers of each upcoming event such as the garden tours, corn maze, farmers market, potato harvets, etc... This year we were contacted by Falcon and asked to do a presentation during their meetings in Las Vegas. We put together a powerpoint presentation and Manny Morales will be speaking. Last fall while Mr. Don Addy was still with us, he and Ed Doney traveled to the state of Montana Governer's conference and did a powerpoing presentation on the USDA Extension Program. Don ran the powerpoint and Ed spoke. We also had a display table with lots of pictures that we took during our program activities. FUTURE INITIATIVES: We will be utilizing the new Tree Nursery and giving away and selling potted trees. These will include several types of evergreens, green ash, cottonwoods, apple trees, grape vines, etc... We will be utilizing the new Root Cellar and storing and selling produce out of the cellar during the winter months. We hope to have the student interns grow and market season flowers such as pointsettia's for Christmas, lilies for Easter, Roses for Mothers Day, etc...
Impacts
-IMPACTS: We believe that our moving closer to campus had a real big impact on our residents and it is much easier for people to come to the new Demonstration Farm. We believe that our objective of offering educational opportunities for every segment of the Fort Belknap Community is met because we get a larger audience every growing season, we are seeing new faces and we are getting our message of healthier lifestyles and greater-self sufficiency to different groups of our people. (1)Our networking with the Tribal Extension Agent, Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, the Indian Health Service Nutrition Program, the Tribal Health Educator, the Tribal Diabetes Staff,the local schools, community members, and agricultural producers is a success story. (2)As a TEAM, Together Everyone Achieves More. (3)More and more people are eating vegetables as a result of our garden tours. More people are walking and using exercise equipment in the campus weight room and the Diabetes Trailer. Name of persons who could be interviewed: Benita Plain Feather-Tribal Diabetes Director (406) 353-8537 Katrese Hammond-Tribal Health Educator (406) 353-3156, Julia doney-President of the Fort Belknap Community Council (406) 945-5574. Mr. Tim Guardipee-Tribal Extension Agent (406) 353-2656 Edwin C. Doney Sr. (406) 353-2607 Submission date: 11-26-2008 Methods used to identify outcomes-impacts. Collected data from sign in sheets that was used for each training sessions. The demographic areas covered were Fort Belknap Agency, Hays, Lodge Pole, and Dodson.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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