highlight of the ninth annual conference was lunch time opportunities for farmers to tell their stories about why they found what is good about farming and to describe the challenges to farming in the united states their stories of the strength behind this conference california my farming experience as far as growing food for farmer's market in the community started four years ago with the with my with food movement in north minneapolis  health issues the lack of quality food and just the lack of organization to improve conditions when i got into it i didn't have a lot of understanding and there are a lot of people who help me and last year the first year i volunteer at a lot and i volunteered at garden and i got a lot of support from different organizations and my business partner she taught me a lot and so two years ago i became  the coordinator for a community garden and i noticed it was a lot of children in the community children of color and so those became our farmers and around the same time that's when the projects sweetie pie was developing a program for you to farm and so we've been doing now for the past two years with good success and last year last year i had mung farmers to join us and i thought that was a breakthrough because of the communications and  the things we think of each other so that was really helpful for me they taught me a lot about growing food and how to get a better yea and it it improved relationships in the community for the k the good thing about food that it brings people together and i just want to back up a minute three years ago i learned about the farmer's market through community table and i met a lot among farmers i learned a lot about putting the products together to make a more attractive and then two years ago we work together me and some ladies to process the food because there were such large quantities and they had the right person when they picked me because i hate throw anything away so we process bows and pounds of food for our sales for others and then we'd like to expand that market and so over the last four years i've learned to grow i've learned to market i've learned to educate and i've taught you how to make  to this country with a lot of kids my husband back in laos was hurt and the war and so when he became here in this country he wasn't able to work so i have no choice couple i have the ability to just talk with different races of people and i find it a way to feel less depressed you i come to this country on two thousand and four i i get a factory job making or she was for for the last ten years  mexico grocery store i see the quality of the produce there and for the mexican couture we have some kind of arabs sometimes he's very hard to so when i start to doing my credit i get the computers first then my twenty four horse power truck door and then the next thing i get high toenails and then the next scene where they get with my crazy was my farm so from the beginning so i am still learning when some people ask me questions sometimes i don't know i don't know what they say but i feel so happy that in farming north minneapolis is going green give us a call and learn what we mean where once lie urban blight now sits luscious garden sites gardens without borders classrooms without walls architects of our own destinies access to food justice for all my name is michael chaney i'm an artist poet farmer organizer three years ago when north high was threatened to be closed myself to say i'm grant cali graphic in a bunch of folks we made a commitment that to kill a school was to kill a heart of a community and we weren't interested in that happen in north minneapolis so we formed a program called projects we and the first year we had five gardens we had fifty partners second year we had ten gardens we had seventy five partners this past summer we did twenty five gardens we had one hundred thirty five partners we had folks from burpee seeds gave us saw over ten thousand packs of seeds that i gave away to people like they were candy and we frame it in the reference that we hear all this rhetoric that it takes a village to raise a child let's do a national demonstration model what would it look like if we were all committed to the future development of our children and providing them a pathway to success and so we join forces in typically in america you know it's every man woman dog for him self but we decided that we were going to collaborate in and convene and work together to make a better stronger community and so one of the projects that we're doing now that i have the reason i wanted to speak to y'all is two years ago i went to the council on black minnesotans and which is an advancement group you know they got an asian pacific council they got a latino council and so this year we're going to be putting for some legislation before this upcoming session and if we're successful we've got karen clark who was a state representative and we were calling that in populations where there's sixty thousand people or more that land would be set aside for urban farmers because none of us will grow in this room unless we have access to land we also are asking that just like the department of natural resources gets money every year from our tax dollars we're asking that money be set aside for urban farm pilot projects and another revenue stream so that we can feel each and every one of you and help you realize your own personal and your collective during so at the end of february we're going to be put in going to the capitol and we're going to be meeting be with the state legislators there and try to get them to set aside land for urban farming at the turn of the century in minneapolis there were those pioneers there who felt that a park system was a valuable asset for future generations to come and so those wise visionaries put together the park system which is now the pride and joy in america you know it's a park system that everybody looks to when they talk about park system they look at minneapolis in the park system that those people hundred some years ago put in place so we're hoping that our our activism that we're trying to set across bourbon farming land for each and every one of you we've asked you to come join with us and we've asked that we get the state legislators to help support us in our efforts to grow food for ourselves for our families and for generations still to come thank you produce i've helped her many times at her farm she is the person who when she farms girls there they're all not lined up perfectly they're all actually intersecting with each other growing here and there i asked her to please grow her veggies in a straight line she would drain line across and try to make it straight but then she would make them really  short so we told her if you're just going to farm like that we don't know how to help you anymore and mom said son why do you say that i farm for thirty years i know more than you do  held mom on hers and you know mom she planted her stuff not in straight lines there all interest acting with each other so when i went and i used to tell her i would awful she would come to my farm and even say oh you're your guard your farm just looks so plain and bare like there's nothing growing i don't have any hope for you at  fast as they grew so what she would do is sit and cry i wanted to be a farmer and farming help me and my children and what my goals were the reason why i wanted to become a farmer also because all of us we do like to farm the elders but we just don't know how to do it to many of the elders they only like to use their hands to weed their farm they don't like to use the tools so us the younger generation we actually we have a time to rest and a time to farm and know we need to know how to use these tools to help us so that we have the time to you know rest with their  family so also farming helps me and my children my children especially because once i do grow to produce my children i will to sell the produce over at the farmers market what happens to all my children oldest to the youngest whatever they pick whatever they sell it's theirs and let them keep it and even my two oldest daughters they are in college right now but when they don't have money they call me and i do pick up the produce and they come during the weekends bring it to sell off at the farmer's market for themselves  so the only thing i take from what they sell is what i paid for the table otherwise whatever they sell beyond that they can keep it to my vision and my goals for the future is i want to go get all the training necessary for myself to come and buy a plot of land to see if i am able to do gardening  us and they don't know how to grow their food and when they go to sell at a farmers market they sell for really cheap and when i total it out for the entire time of farming we only get paid ten cents or less per hour actually go out there so even if you if you think of it that way no matter if you farm you will not get any money ok back to thailand farm they would say they would tell us that we're lazy because we don't want to go far but then they would see is over a different farm helping them out and they say that you're lazy to help me but why are you helping them over there we said oh we're just there for fun we're just helping them for the fun of it but they don't know that we're getting paid for it did touch up at the hollow log and even then we also get candy too that guy he's just a farmer he doesn't have money and if they have girls daughters they don't want the daughters to marry so back and this is what they tell us i mean the parents will say you have to not a farmer i'm going to grow my own produce in my backyard so called to all and also the second reason why i wanted to become a farmer is because i can learn from them and i can also teach them how to become a farmer who's going to be growing our food farming is within our culture we need to keep it going we've been i would say refugee because the burmese are wanting to take over our land where we are farmers that is the way of life for our current people and of course united states is foreign to us but for me farming is even more foreign than united states just because fifty years ago i graduated  the invitation of the korean refugees in akron after they heard that i'd come back from the refugee camp to come assist them and i just happened to be in the right place at the grow and it was very supportive very much supported by the studio back when and later on i got hooked into left group akron another community garden project that the city had and that's when i was able to connect with  to find them some land to grow gardens and then for some another reason i got the good fortune to hook up with ages services and then asia services has these garden projects in fact because of that project we were able to bring come here and also the good fortune that i have bought a property there and then i started to that's when i got my hand do it i didn't want to do it even had the full but now but but the do it was wonderful the first speed that i put in my crown and the property that bought brought up owed deep for me so while and through the friends of american friends as well as asian friends i was very fortunate again they brought all the starters for me so i had it easy and helping me get that garden going and i was able to find property that another community organization donated so we were able it was on wall street so we got to occupy wall street th and there we had an area of about what thirty feet wide by eighty feet long that we started and it was the pride and joy of the community and we introduced asian vegetables to americans utilize these shoots that come out of the tender to come out of and they've made a salad out of that and they really enjoy that of course to meet along beans was something new to them clooney way i b h just into the brotherhood homes run by a catholic institution heard about the good work that the koreans have it doing and the diligence that they put into the efforts so the and invited us to come talk to them they residents you know it's an alcohol rehabilitation program and they wanted them to have some training in growing to skein of both food and pretty ok we'll be responsible for teaching them how to grow sustainable gardening i myself like i said i'm still i always be a fit person because i will always be in training because i have so much children and coming here thanks to asia services we were able to all right now he has to work you know he he works from two in the afternoon till twelve at night and in the early mornings he goes to the gardens and books he he walks about three gardens and here is such a encouragement to all of us koreans and hopefully we'll have more career and participate in such a program and we're thinking of later on getting a twelve acre farm which we are exploring the finances and introduce asian vegetables he has already found a market actually because every he doesn't even have to go out and have a stand people are waiting for him  changes that our people will have in this country thank you or plant a seed into the soil i am holding or planting dreams like somehow every seed contains in it a dream for a plant a dream that will feed people and or a dream that will build a stronger world and community my name is reaching a low roche i live and have a micro farm called diaspora gardens in northern wisconsin on the south shore of lake superior and i am here because of so many gifts there is the gift of my father who was born and raised in haiti  i in the west indies and his family was a strong family they were preachers and journalist and politicians but always they were farmers even when they lived in the city they grew their own food my father in the late mid and late fifty's ended up a deep political trouble that threatened his life with the president for life in haiti papa doc and he was arrested a number of times and tortured and finally he was snuck smuggled out of the country to north america and when he got here he had to do what many of the people in this room had to do he had to learn a new language he had to learn a new way to live and a new way to deal with the world and as a small child as i grew and watched him and watched him your own for his home for his tropical island for his parents and his brothers and sisters the times where i saw him most at peace was when he was growing food and watering flowers and he always took me and the other children in our family to visit farms and that went deep in my heart my mother grew up sharecropping in south carolina and that the first farmer that they know of in our family was her grandfather addison bry and then his daughter farm and the man she married farmed and then my mother and her seven siblings also farm but at that time the system of sharecropping was very hard and it was hard to make a living and there were some of the same things that we just heard about and they all decided to move up north to the land of milk and honey minnesota and when they got here all of the children found different jobs and different ways to make a living and some of them stayed as far away from the soil and the gardens and the plants as they could but some of them were always sneaking little seeds and plants and to their home and into their life and always i was hearing stories of the pigs and the neighbors and the cotton and the boll weevil and so when i was a young child my parents the farmer from haiti the farmer from south carolina moved us out to a small farm just north of the twin cities north of st paul and i grew up on a small farm where most of the food that we ate for much of the year came from the land there then i moved to the city with big dreams and big plans i was going to be a city girl in new york and get around the world but as a small child i had gone to haiti twice once with my father's brother and his family before my father had become an american citizen it was not safe for him to go back to haiti but then to see his aging parents he became a citizen so that he would have the protection of the united states government and then he took me back again so what i saw there what i learned there also entered my heart about fourteen years ago i moved from st paul with my husband and two small boys to madeline island on the south shore of lake superior with all of those things in my heart and with the same kinds of dreams that can grow out of all kinds of sea when i got there i began to plant the soil so i would feed my family shortly after moving there i traveled to south africa and learned from some people there and saw the work that they were doing to try to help people grow their own food who soil and the drought in their villages had them starving and i was introduced to a principle called perma culture when i returned home with that also in my heart i began to build my garden differently and began to use that simple way of growing my home is also very simple we heat with fire wood we heat with we haul our water into our home and pump it we live in a small community in the winter there is two hundred fifty of us and many are very very poor and it costs a lot to take a boat over the water to go buy your food so i soon found myself in a group of people who were trying to figure out how to take care of our community and to grow food so that people of all incomes and ages would have enough to eat and to be strong and be healthy i love stories i love song i love dance and as i studied those things one of the things i discovered is that most creatures with most living things on this earth with most cultures all of who we are as human being grows out of how we gather collect grow and share our food so as my dream began to grow into diaspora gardens remembering my dad yearning for home remembering how he got closer to home when he grew his food carefully from the earth i created this diaspora gardens and it's a place in this great lake and i often say because my father's from an island there is part of my heart that needed to go to an island and i just turned the wrong way and  went to a cold island but there i've studied the soil i'm still learning i studied the people i'm still learning and we've begun to build this micro farm this very small scale farm to nourish bodies to nourish the earth to nourish spirit to nourish love of learning to nourish community and i started with the bigger dream we bought a bigger plot of land it still would have been a very small farm thirty acres all together and then we ran into the hardships that many people did it was hard to pay the taxes it was hard to make the land payments so in the in the middle of a farm beginning program that i was in for one year we had to sell that land and i was heartbroken i thought my dream was over and then we looked where we were living we had a simple homestead and six acres of land much of with each was woodland and we thought about the things that were most important to us what i'd been inspired by in haiti and in south africa and living in the twin cities and i realized that a lot of what i wanted to do with this dream of diaspora gardens was to model a very simple way that almost anyone or any community even with very little money and technology could grow food so we thought this is a gift being small being simple and so that is what we do and we invite children we invite adults young adults to come and experience we have young adult internes who live with us for a short period of time and assist we have young people come and help us build very simple tunnels and plant things we have small children come and help with harvest we offer a small number of shares were every week members of our community receive food and one of the aims of that is to believe that we're forging connections between the people in the community between the people and their food and the earth we also believe in connexions food our need for food for soil for rain for community is a universal that somehow means for me if i dig deeply into the soil i am digging deeply into something that connects me to everyone else so it was with great delight my my two boys no longer live at home the youngest one is in his second year of college and i was shocked this winter break when he announced that when he had told the students at school we lived and how we grew our food ten of them wanted to come home with them and they did and and w lovely and also one fortunate in some ways eight of them were from korea south korea one was from and then the other was american north american and so that is part of the vision part of the dream of connecting with young people connecting with people of all ages and people all over this globe with something that is a dream for all so i give you thanks i give thanks to my family in the cultures that have taught me i give thanks to the people who have been teaching us here our presenters our organizers to each other i have learned so much from just listening to you all talk i give thanks for people who plant the dreams and i give thanks to those who let us talk to one another our interpreter's thank you ok thank you to everyone for sharing your stories i think we all even rich when we learn about people we all come from different places and what we learn through sharing of stories is that we have so much more that unites us than we have that divides us so i personally take a lot of hope and inspiration from these stories i hope that you all do too and ready to move on to the next part of the conference