Human Powered
Season 1, Episode 4 Transcript

 

Jimmy

Nhoua Duffek loves to talk about food —

 

Nhoua (scene)

And this is how people cook bitter melon...yep, that's how they cook bitter melon.

 

Jimmy

— especially Hmong food.

 

Nhoua

…mostly it's the ground pork or mostly you can do a ground chicken. This is the cucumbers that I was talking about...

 

Jimmy

Nhoua was born in Laos, but when she was 12, moved to good old Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Today, we’re together on Maple Ave. in downtown Green Bay. And we’re sitting in tall grass next to one of the city’s community garden sites.

There’s a factory across the street, and train tracks running nearby. The gardens are bare right now and the soil is rocky. It’s clear it’s still spring in Wisconsin because not much of anything is growing.

Nhoua introduces me to Chao. And she’s one of many many Hmong gardeners who will garden here this year.

 

Nhoua (scene)

[speaking in Hmong]

This is mostly what she grows. She grows dark greens…sugar snap leaves...[speaking in Hmong]...she plants a lot of lemongrass….

 

Jimmy

Chao and Nhoua keep a lot of their traditional food practices alive in this garden. They also have new favorites that they’ve started here. Like spring rolls. I’ve been told Nhoua makes delicious spring rolls.

 

Jimmy (scene)

I want to make spring rolls, what is the secret to…

 

Nhoua (scene)

The hands…

 

Jimmy (scene)

No! I need new hands!?!

 

Nhoua (scene)

When you dice, you have to really dice very fine, because you know the spring roll wraps, it’s not that big, so make sure you dice your vegetables are very fine so you can put a little bit of each in there and then just wrap it

 

Jimmy (scene)

What do you like to put in your spring rolls?

 

Nhoua (scene)

I pretty much put all the stuff. Cucumber, carrots, lettuce…

 

Jimmy

My goodness, there are few things in the world I love more than food. And it turns out, we all eat. But no matter where you are from, food is about so much more than eating. Food is home.

 

But not everyone has the same access to food. Some folks can’t get fresh fruits and veggies. Others don’t have money to make their own choices on what they eat. Some don’t have space to grow food. And some, like Nhoua, are far from home, and it’s a challenge just to find the foods they love.

 

Community gardens, like the one we met in, aren't a fix-all to these problems. But they do address some issues. And they tell a story. Like how people share space. How we cultivate food and relationships across cultures. And how little plots of land can make a big impact in people's lives.

 

Margaret

It really is a place where people come together and meet people. Gardening is such a universal activity that people from all different backgrounds do. And so it's really special that they can come together and be together in that space. I don't think there's a lot of other spaces like that in the community.

 

{>>intro music beat drop<<}

 

Jimmy

I’m Jimmy Gutierrez, host of Human Powered, a podcast from Wisconsin Humanities and Love Wisconsin about how people make places better.

Now I’m from Milwaukee, but my food home spans from my abuelitas tamales to Czernina -- or Polish blood soup. And something I’ve learned, from Bayfield to Madison, is that people all over Wisconsin have their own food homes.

Today, we are looking at the ways community gardens sustain that. We’re going to hear how these gardens started, meet some of the people working in them, and think about the political and environmental impacts of setting aside land for people to grow their own food.

Today, we’re starting in Green Bay with Karen Early.

 

Karen

I mean, gardening is like…what's there not to like about gardening if you like to work, okay? I mean, you get to go out and get food and then eat it, like: pick and eat.

 

Jimmy

Karen means what she says. I can say this because she showed up to our interview with an early harvest of green onions. But this passion of hers to grow things started waaaay back when she was little...in her grandmother’s flower garden.

 

Karen

I loved learning what was a weed and what was a flower. And then I learned that there were these weeds in her garden that were like vegetables that I could eat! Lambsquarter and pigs weed, you know, and nettles…

 

Jimmy

Karen’s interest in food eventually led to a career in nutrition. Which put her on the front lines of debates about food security in the 80s and 90s. Basically, people needed more access to healthy foods.

But during the Reagan administration, federal funding for food programs was drastically reduced. Lots of people...lots of poor people and people of color...were becoming and more food insecure.

To compensate for the lack of federal funds, everyday people took care of themselves. Soup kitchens, pantries, and food banks started popping up everywhere, including in Green Bay. As a matter of fact, over 90% of all food banks started after 1981.

Eventually, the USDA developed a nationwide survey to try to get a handle on the problem. And that survey came across Karen Early’s desk. She read it, added some questions, and went out to learn what was happening at the food pantries in her community.

 

Karen

We asked, what kind of strategies might help you have enough food? And we had a list of six or seven sort of things, and they had to do with affordable housing, affordable utilities, improved transportation, um, having a grocery store nearby, learning how to budget or having a garden.

And we learned that 41% of the people who were food insecure said, “Oh yeah, having a garden would really help me.”

So we thought: we need to bring gardens to people. It's hard for us to do something about housing, you know, and utilities, but the third highest strategy that people were requesting was gardens.

 

Jimmy

In 1994, understanding all of this, Karen went to the city. They gave her a vacant lot and said she could start a community garden.

That first year, they had six families. Three years later, in 1997, there were *176 families,* working across four gardens. This summer , there will be 250 families working on 12 different garden plots. The most people in the program’s history

 

{>>mux / break / transition<<}

 

One of the people that will be in the garden this year is Chao. She’s been a community gardener for over 20 years. She’s originally from Laos, a place where farming and gardening were a central part of her culture. Nhoua interpreted for us.

 

Chao

(Speaking in Hmong)

 

Nhoua (interpreting)

Back in Laos, because the Hmong population all live in the mountains, mostly you just use your hands and your shovel to work...

 

Jimmy

Chao started gardening as a kid in those mountains...

 

Chao

[Speaking in Hmong]

 

Nhoua (interpreting)

Since when I was little—as soon as I knew how to dig, that’s when I started gardening. And yes, I do remember back in the Homeland.

 

Jimmy

...And she still has tools from back home

 

Nhoua

When I arrived to the United States I actually Has some of my own tools or something tool that belong to my parents and yes I still remember a lot of those memories...

 

Jimmy

In Green Bay, Chao grows some of her favorite vegetables…

 

Nhoua

(Laughter) Cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin, and green beans

 

Jimmy

...and turns them into some amazing desserts.

 

Nhoua

The cucumber, we wait until that’s a little bit bigger and we cut in half. Most of the time we kind of remove the seed but sometimes we keep the seeds and we take a spoon and scrape like that until it’s really fine. You add sugar, and so we eat it like a dessert.

 

Jimmy

When Chao first came to Green Bay 40 years ago, the Hmong community here was smaller. Less connected.

 

Nhoua (interpreting)

Okay, she said it was very hard about, what, 40 years ago when we first arrived, it is very hard no matter where you are; but now about 10 years ago it's a lot better because a lot of times you have family, you have relatives. And so it's much easier now than 40 years ago.

 

Jimmy

After the first few gardening seasons, a few Hmong gardeners asked for larger plots. They wanted to feed their families, sure but they also wanted sell their food. Karen secured a federal grant to work with immigrant communities and started an 18-acre garden called Market Gardens. Finding garden space was the easy part. The hard part was finding a home for new immigrant vendors.

 

Karen

The Saturday market downtown Green Bay was full and they didn't really have room to expand. They added, I think, like six more stalls. But then, we're like, we have to start another market. So we started a Wednesday night market downtown. First it was in a church lot. And then it was at a restaurant lot. And then it was at a park. And now it's the third largest market in the state.

 

Jimmy

The Market Gardens project became a launchpad for Hmong business owners. Since then the Hmong food culture in Green Bay has exploded. There are now at least six Hmong grocery stores in the city, and a sizable community of Hmong gardeners still using the Community Gardens.

 

Including a gardener named Sarah Lee. For her, just being in the soil connects her back to family.

 

Sarah

Um, when we got here, we don't have much, we don't know where to gardening. But our sponsors, they are American sponsors. So they have in the backyard, we will have a little plot so we plant a little bit in the back of the backyard.

 

Jimmy

Today, Sarah tends a community plot alongside three other family members.

 

Sarah

Usually I help them with their gardens. my sister-in-law is next to me. And my daughter is next to me to the other one. And then my sister-in-law's mother. It's next to my daughter. So I usually end up doing the four plots together.

 

Jimmy

This family connection bit is huge. But if you already get enough family time, gardening is also a great way to be alone. It’s peaceful. Even meditative.

 

Sarah

The reason what I like gardening is it’s really peaceful. I have a, I have a nephew and his wife came all the way from Madison. And she came to my garden. She says she needs some cilantro.  said, Well, you know, it's a little bit over season, you can go to my garden to see what you want to see what you could pick. And as she came, and I have those sweet peas and stuff and cilantro and stuff in green onions, and she started picking my peas. and keep on picking them. I say, "Oh, do you like to eat those?" "No I just feel so peaceful by picking.” And it is peaceful. Nobody talks to you. Nobody bothers you. The plants don't talk back to you. So it's peaceful.

 

Jimmy

For area gardener Pedro Perez Perez, he feels this DEEPLY. When he’s in the garden, something he loves to do a few times a week, he says it transports him. Alma Torres translated for him.

 

Pedro [Speaking in Spanish]

 

Alma (interpreting)

It's very calm and I can say it’s a place of tranquility. It also keeps you active. I would say even physically active. We have to carry buckets of water or there's no hose. So it also keeps us, not only keeps our mind in a in a peaceful setting, but also our body.

 

Jimmy

Pedro has lived in the area for 17 years. But before that, he was in California and Mexico…two very different growing climates than Wisconsin’s. Pedro says his food home, the food that connects him back to those places, is salsa.

 

Pedro [speaking in Spanish]

 

Alma (interpreting)

I would say tomatoes tomato salsa is one of the foods that I really identify with. Salsa basically goes in every single food.

 

Jimmy

So Pedro *needs* his tomato plants to be hardy. And he’s found Wisconsin’s shorter growing season does have some benefits.

 

Pedro [speaking in Spanish]

 

Alma (interpreting)

And actually this type of weather really helps tomatos grow. It doesn't allow so much plagues to actually attack it. It seems like the cold allows the tomato to grow a little bit better.

 

Jimmy

Tomatoes grow better, but the seasons are shorter. So Pedro hustles to maximize that growing time.

 

Pedro [speaking in Spanish]

 

Alma (interpreting)

I would say around 3-4 days per week, maybe 2-3 hours per day,

 

Jimmy

So you are like a master gardener…

 

Pedro [speaking in Spanish]

 

Alma (interpreting)

…if we don’t work, obviously we will not be able to harvest our items.

 

Jimmy

He even says he can grow and can food for a whole year just through that garden plot.

 

Pedro [speaking in Spanish]

 

Alma (interpreting)

I can sometimes store it and I refrigerate it so it can last me the whole entire year.

Jade

Hey! This is Jade, I’m a producer on the show.

 

Human Powered is made possible by Wisconsin Humanities. It’s a non-profit organization with the mission to inspire civic participation and individual imagination.

 

The people we’ve me this season have all created projects that received a grant to strengthen community life. You can learn more about the grant program, and grant deadlines and requirements, on our website at wisconsinhumanities.org

 

Who knows, maybe we’ll hear about your project in season two.

____________________________________________

 

 

Jimmy

As you can tell, gardeners here *rely* on this land. It puts food in their kitchens and pantries throughout the year. But, the truth about community gardens is that they can disappear at almost any time. And in Brown County, they almost did.

 

Cheryl

I looked at the information and it said, community gardens often hit crises--which we had done--because of lack of funding. Government funding is cyclical, and it comes and goes and you know, you hit a recession and all of the sudden gardens aren't on the priority list anymore.

 

in 2012, the federal funding finally failed and the grant funding that the gardens had been trying to piece together.

 

Jimmy (Zoom)

Could you just tell us what your nickname is and how did you get it? Because I want that story.

 

Cheryl

Are you talking about the ‘Garden Diva’?

 

Jimmy (Zoom)
One thousand percent.

 

Cheryl

All right. So, I think I came off as a diva because I kind of say, no, this is the way it needs to happen in order to grow, or you need to grow because you need inclusivity. And, and so you kind of just keep following the data and you kind of keep pushing.

 

Jimmy

Cheryl Williams is a project manager for a healthcare organization. She also volunteers in the gardens. And, depending on who you ask, might have saved them.

 

In 2012, she was on sabbatical from work and looking to get more involved in community, so she asked a friend for advice…

 

Cheryl

And he said, well, our community gardens are going under. And about 200 immigrant families aren't going to be able to raise food this summer.

And having come from a family where my grandmother had a big garden and I literally viscerally could see what that meant in my mind's eye that, you know, there weren't going to be fruits and vegetables coming out of that. And that, that would mean real things for real people.

 

Jimmy

So Cheryl started learning about how the gardens work, starting with where they are—and where they aren’t.

Because many of the earliest plots, including some of the ones Karen Early worked on, are now gone.

 

Cheryl

Oh, yeah, that happens all the time with community gardens. We lose land to development pressure all the time.

 

Jimmy

One reason is simple: community gardens are on borrowed land; vacant lots that are waiting to be developed—and generate tax revenue.

 

Cheryl

What I've found as I sit in these community meetings are that the cities are not wanting the liability of owning land in general, they want it out and usable by the public, and ideally to generate tax base if it’s in a commercial area.

 

Jimmy

Cheryl started working with the city to identify plots that don’t have much commercial value—pocket parks and pieces of land on federal flood maps.

 

Cheryl

So it was a vacant lot. It had been deemed a federal floodplain, so in a non-commercial area, it really had no future and it was collecting litter. And so in order to beautify that neighborhood, to help give a focal point back to the neighborhood. The city, you know, gave us the land — they eased our way. And they developed a beautiful garden.

 

Jimmy

The project has also found success working with private landowners. Places like churches or even light industrial sites. The garden on Main and Augusta, where we met Chao, Sarah, and Pedro? It’s now one of the oldest garden in the program, and it’s owned by a plastics factory.

 

Cheryl

So adjacent to their plant have a spot and they like to see land utilized to its fullest and there in the shadow of the Leo Frigo bridge and a railroad track, you know, within viewing distance, is this beautiful old community garden.

 

And it’s just a beautiful thing.

 

Jimmy

But not everyone thinks this is a beautiful thing. Because even once you get the land—not everyone in the community wants the gardeners there.

 

Take the Market Gardens. When they opened in 2000, there was significant pushback from white neighbors. There were worries about traffic, or “security.” It’s clear that race was an issue. One woman told the local paper, “these people are not our next door neighbors.”

There are other stories like this around Green Bay. There used to be a plot for the Latinx community, and a Soul Food garden for the Black community. Once these gardens shut down, some displaced gardeners never returned to the program.

But believe it or not, not every garden closure is a tragedy. One garden closed because Habitat for Humanity put up some affordable housing. Another might be closing because a new childcare center is being built.

Still, this is America. And some of the racist undertones persist in the community—and Cheryl hears them.

 

Cheryl

The facts of what they're concerned about, and I think it often gets put in racial tones, but if you dig down there, it's often about lack of control, and just the volume of additional people, maybe more than it is about the race of people.

 

Jimmy

But once the gardens open up, people seem to change their mind..

 

{>>UPLIFTING VIBES MUX<<}

 

Cheryl

One of the churches—I actually saw some people out walking I'm like, “tell me how you feel about the garden being here, because I'd heard early on that there was some concern.” And they were like, “Are you kidding? Best neighbor ever! I love this. I love everything about this. Do more of it.”

 

Jimmy

According to Cheryl’s data, no program does so much on such a small budget.

 

Cheryl

You are getting food to your lowest income individuals. You're empowering them to be involved with their own food security. Show me any program you have that does that, that also beautifies your neighborhoods that, you know, brings health and wellbeing in so many dimensions. And they increase community connection.

 

Jimmy

But there was one missing piece: someone to hold the whole thing together. A person whose job is NOT contingent on the whims of federal funds. Karen asked the city and the county to fund a full-time garden coordinator to run the program. They said yes.

 

{>>Music / Transition to Margaret.<<}

 

Margaret

I love being outside. And I think that was an important part of this. And then the multiculturalism of the gardens was really interesting to me, too, that people of all different backgrounds participate in the program.

 

Jimmy

Margaret Franchino has been working full-time as the Brown County Community Garden Coordinator for the last 8 years. She started through the AmeriCorps program but has been preparing for this job for much longer.

 

Margaret

My family volunteered for the Madison area food pantry gardens. So weekly, throughout the summer, we'd go and there's a big garden that we helped with, and then all the food that was harvested went to food pantries.

 

Jimmy

She was doing that from when she was eight, all the way through college. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that she liked it...

 

Margaret

I was a very very whiny gardener I would say. I did not like it, it was hot and buggy and I think you know underneath I must have liked it because here I am or many years, my mom would drag us, and we’d take really long water breaks in the car. But as time went on…the people who are doing it, I really respect it, and could see as I got older the benefit of it and what we were doing.

 

Jimmy

That whiny gardener now lays the groundwork for others to grow what they need in Brown County.

Margaret

We prepare the land and provide water and then they're responsible for planting, weeding, watering, taking care of the spot and then can do whatever they want with what they harvest. So most people are just growing for their own families. Some people grow to donate to food pantries, some people grow to sell, it really varies from gardener to gardener.

 

{>>music<<}

 

Jimmy

A big part of a successful garden is building relationships. In fact, this whole episode is based on Margaret’s relationships with folks like Nhoua, Chao, Sarah, and Pedro.

 

Margaret

I meet the most people out in the gardens, you know, just kind of organically being there and, and crossing paths with people. But it's so interesting to hear, especially because so many of our gardeners are immigrants and refugees. Just hearing their stories and what gardening means to them and their gardening background. I mean, the vast majority of them are much better gardeners than I am. And so a lot to learn, learn from them.

 

Jimmy

In this spirit, Margaret has been running events to showcase the diversity of people, and foods, --let’s not forget about the food!--, that comes from these gardens. This includes an open house with food samples—like Nhoua’s spring rolls

 

Margaret

So people could kind of stop by and build community that way. And I think we did see that. And people responded in their evaluations that it really was a chance to learn about different cultures. And one person said, like, it helped them feel less suspicious and things like that. So feedback like that is good to have.

 

Jimmy

This year, Margaret is reaching out directly to some of the communities that the garden has lost over the years.

 

Margaret

I connected with the mosque a couple years ago, and we've recruited a number of Somali families, but like, to a family, they've moved away since. So we have lost that population, and then we had like, a church that mostly had black community members as well. And we've just lost people over the years. So we don't have very many black gardeners anymore. So we are making a really concerted effort this year to reach out to more black community members as well.

 

Jimmy

In Brown County, the Community Health Improvement Program identifies community gardens under a social inclusion category—not under food. That’s how much they view gardens as community builders. Cheryl Williams, the Garden Diva, agrees.

 

Cheryl

It's about the social cohesion that gardens create when you're, you know, quietly gardening your plot next to a person who doesn't look like you day after day. And what people find out is if you're there growing your food, I'm interested in food, you’re interested in food, and we're interested in food together. And that's something we have in common.

 

Jimmy

Community gardens sprouted here in Brown County over 25 years ago. There was a time when they were on rocky soil...but it turns out even rocky soil can produce a harvest. Through it all, community has been built, stories and culture have been shared….and the work continues.

 

Cheryl

The beautiful thing is, you get gardens going at the beginning of the year, and gardeners grow food. So no matter what happens in the gardens, one of the things Margaret and I look at each other and say, well, there are people growing food? Well, then what we need to happen is happening.

You know, all these other things can be a problem. As long as people are growing food, we’re good.

The community gardens have a 25 year history, right? But people have been gardening forever. And right now we are, you know, we're all carrying our torch in our time for community gardens and for food security. And it's just, we're all, all doing our part.

 

 

Credits

Wisconsin Humanities and Love Wisconsin have teamed up to make six monthly episodes of Human Powered because we believe that sharing stories about people making their communities better helps us all imagine what is possible.

 

Human Powered is produced by Craig Eley and Jade Iseri-Ramos at Field Noise Soundworks, along with Jessica Becker. Story editing by Jen Rubin. Special thanks to Amanda Chu and Allison Hellenbrand, and to our interpreters Alma Torres and Nhoua Duffek.

 

Dena Wortzel and Brijetta Waller are Executive Producers. The show is mixed by Rob Byers, Johnny Vince Evans, and Michael Raphael of Final Final Vee Two. I’m your host, Jimmy Gutierrez.

 

If *you* know a gardener or someone else who would really enjoy this episode, please share it with them. And be sure to subscribe to our series wherever you get your podcasts, so you can hear them all.

 

Visit Wisconsin Humanities at Wisconsin Humanities DOT org and Love Wisconsin at Love W-I DOT com for more information about this episode and our work.

 

 

 

Maybe mention "green bay" here again as it might be good to reiterate where we are.