(inspiring music) - Welcome to "Digging Deeper with Backyard Farmer."

I'm your host, Kim Todd.

On "Digging Deeper," we have in-depth discussions with extension and industry experts about those important landscape topics.

Tonight, we are talking about Yazidi farming, university, Community Crops, all sorts of wonderful things that go together, with Gwyneth and Shahab.

So, take it away.

We wanna know exactly everything about the history of the peoples, the farming, the connections.

- So Shahab is one of our Yazidi farmers here in Lincoln, Nebraska, and so we have the largest Yazidi population in all of the United States.

Now, a lot of you people are probably going, "Who the heck are the Yazidi?"

(laughs) And this was kind of the main question a lot of my students had.

Well, the Yazidis are an ethnoreligious minority from north of Iraq, so they're non-Muslim.

Yazidism is its own religion.

And they live around the mountain known as Sinjar or Shingal there.

And during 2014, Shahab, correct me if I'm wrong, August 2014, there was a terrible, terrible- - [Shahab] August 3rd, yeah.

- August 3rd, 2014, there was a terrible genocide committed by ISIS.

And so ISIS started to surround the mountain, and a lot of people fled up to Sinjar mountain or they fled the area.

And a lot of men, old people, horrific, horrible deaths.

A lot of the children were kidnapped, women and children kidnapped.

And so we've got a lot of Yazidi refugees that came to Lincoln to find peace and stability and farming and gardening in our beautiful state.

So that's been one of the best things, is we've gotten to meet our new neighbors.

And Shahab's been kind of the lead farmer branching between YAZDA, which is also the Yazidi community center here in town, and Community Crops, a local nonprofit focused on community gardening and farming.

- Yes.

- So, perfect.

So, Shahab, let's talk about the farm, and what you do, and why it is so important, and what you love about it, and what your people love about it.

- Yes, thank you for having us.

Yazidi back to, back to Iraq, it's the north of Iraq, we have a lot of experience farming.

We depend on the farming, special crops like tomato, eggplants, and yeah, some flowers, most of the other things, like vegetables.

So during the section of the Iraq wars, under the sections from '92 to 2003, so Yazidi was, everyone was in the poor situations.

They have to find source of life, so most of them, they become farmers in an area close to our city.

So they have a lot of experience.

After they came to United States, they tried to bring their experience to the United States.

So they, Community Crops and the Yazidi cultural center, both of them, they tried to bring some Yazidi, and their experience in America, in Lincoln, Nebraska.

So in 2018, 2019, YAZDA, Community Crops worked with two leaders to find some Yazidi farmers.

I mean, I was the first person from the community here hired by the Community Crops to find some families to start farming.

They have experience, they are enjoying it, and there's more.

- So, oh, go ahead.

- The first farmer to do this in Lincoln, Nebraska, and to find other families that could connect back to what you grew in your homeland, connect to the people here, create a sense of community, right?

- [Shahab] Right.

- This is an urban area.

So talk about (laughs) how you found the space, and where the space is, and what's so cool about it.

- Well, even, and finding the right crops.

- Right.

- Yes, I think we need these farmers, because there was special produce we couldn't find in the market.

I mean, we shop, like all the rest of our peoples, from the markets and the local foods, but there was special food, special produce you couldn't find in the local stores and the market.

So we tried to get the seeds, I mean, grow-eat, I mean eat-eat, introduce the community to it, and sell to the local stores, which, the good thing is to introduce people in the community to this produce.

We're gonna talk about this produce, I mean, that our... - [Gwyneth] Yeah, get started.

- One of them, I mean, we couldn't find cutting celery- - Yeah.

- Right here is the cutting celery.

Yes, we couldn't find, in Lincoln, Nebraska, this kind of cutting celery.

So we looked at for seed this.

Matt Pirog was a manager, he was the manager at Community Crops, and I, we looked for the seeds, and we brought, I mean, we get the right seeds.

So now we are selling 1,000 bags a week to the local market.

- [Kim] 1,000 bags a week?

- 1,000 bags.

- [Kim] That's a bunch of business.

- About, I mean, 500 to 1,000, a lot of bags of it.

Similar to the parsley.

- [Gwyneth] Yeah.

- But the taste is bitter, the smell and taste is different.

- And I love this, 'cause when you're at the farmers market, a lot of people mistake it for cilantro, and poor Shahab, every time, he has to be like, "No, no, no, it's cutting celery," and then you have to explain what cutting celery is.

- [Shahab] Yes.

- Because you know, we're used to seeing the stalks like what you're gonna throw peanut butter, and on during your Thanksgiving holiday.

But this is really tasty.

They use it for salads, and soups and... You use it like parsley.

- Pickling.

- [Kim] Yeah, like pickling.

- [Shahab] Yeah, decorate the foods, and it keeps fresh, and there's a lot of ways, you could say.

'Cause I mean, it goes to a lot of meals.

Salad, fresh, and- - [Gwyneth] And it's just like celery, like a really good- - People confuse it for the shape of it, but the taste and the smell is totally different.

And people believe it's really good for hands and the source of the hemoglobins, and- - Oh, yeah.

- I mean, yeah.

- And you just picked this, right?

So this is, I mean, you just harvested what is in your little, in your beautiful basket here, right?

- [Shahab] Okay, we have the- - [Kim] Yeah.

- We tried to bring these eggplants.

It's kind of the... - [Kim] If you could bring this this way.

Yes, yes, show us.

- This is what we- - [Kim] Right in front of you.

- Okay, yeah, this is green eggplant.

The purple, there's some lines of it.

We tried to harvest first years, but we couldn't find the right seed.

So we get some seeds, but it wasn't a success.

So last year we tried it, it wasn't a success, but this year, it's good.

I mean, we tried other seeds and it looks the same, we have back to our country.

And it's kind of success, but not like that.

Nadia eggplant is the black one, but people, they- - [Kim] So what is the difference?

So is this what we would find typically in our grocery stores?

- Yes.

- [Kim] And this is- - [Shahab] Yeah, the color.

I mean- - [Kim] Does it taste different?

- The taste, I don't see a lot of difference, but the color.

So people used to eating these get the variety, just the colors.

So yeah, people like it a lot, so we try to grow more of these.

Another thing is the pickling pepper.

It's a very sweet Italian pepper, which is, what, called the Lombardo here?

- [Gwyneth] Yeah, the Lombardo.

- We'd never seen, didn't see, in Lincoln, Nebraska, this variety of that paper, but Matt Hartley looked for it, and we found it online, we bought some, and then it was so hard to find this year due to the COVID.

This comes from Italy.

- Sure.

Oh my goodness.

- This thing is, people in our community, I mean, Middle Eastern community, they cook it, they cook like, how they cook it?

It is pickling it.

It is fresh, in salad, but mostly they are pickling it with cucumbers and other stuff, so Matt and I, we call it the pickling pepper.

(Gwyneth laughs) - Is it hot?

Or is it sweet?

- It's sweet.

- It's a sweet one.

- Italian sweet pepper, but, I mean, we just name it here in Lincoln, Nebraska, as pickling, because our community is pickling it.

Another thing is the sorrel, fresh sorrel.

- [Kim] Sorrel, huh?

- So when I found the sorrel here, Matt showed me this, I was so surprised.

- [Gwyneth] It's so good.

- Back to our mountain.

So we are growing little bit more each year.

For next year, I get a lot of seeds, which is so our farmers will grow it in large quantity.

Maybe we will sell hundreds of bunches of it next year.

But we have some, we sell some to the store.

Another thing is shishito pepper, which we didn't grow a lot in Iraq.

But we try to grow produce here, the community likes it.

So we are growing not only produce our community likes, we try to grow the produce the Lincoln community likes, which if you all like it, we could sell it also.

- Sure, yeah.

Introducing us to it as well as your own- - Oh, yeah.

- Yeah, community.

- Yeah, things like tomatoes, everyone likes it, I mean, our community and others.

Daikon radish, we never grew it, like the green daikon radish.

- Pick that one up again.

- Pick it up and show it.

I love that!

- There's the purple daikon radish, there's a white daikon radish.

There's no, it is like that, and it's longer, the size.

But we have the round, purple daikon radishes.

Pink, but we call them purple daikon radish.

We learned about it in the United States, which is one of the produce we try to introduce our community to, this comes with the produce.

More connections between two communities and creating kind of the creative meals.

Yeah, I mean... - So, do you cook, Shahab?

(Kim and Shahab laugh) For our audience.

- Unfortunately, no.

- It's a planned question.

(Kim and Gwyneth laugh) - No, I'm not a good cook.

I mean, when my wife is not home, I just cook eggs.

(Gwyneth laughs) So my wife, she's a good cook, and she does a lot of stuff.

I work a lot, she does cook a lot, I mean- - You grow the food, she cooks the food.

- Yes, she helped me.

Also, she mostly also grew.

She's with me in very good hands.

- So we want to make sure our Facebook audience is giving us good feedback on what we're talking about, of course, whether you love it, whether you hate it, whether you want us to do more of this kind of thing, because we can't dig deeper if we don't know what to dig.

And in this case, it's digging the soil so we can plant those daikon radishes, right?

- Right.

- So that little, thin purple eggplant, that one, yeah, that one that you got in your hand, left hand.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- I love them, and I just put that in a ratatouille last night.

And it's so flavorful and you can use those kind of long, thin eggplants for stir fries.

And even with the radishes, I've been roasting radishes and potatoes.

It's so good.

- [Shahab] Yes.

- So is this Hansel or Gretel or one of those?

'Cause we have Hansel and Gretel eggplants here, which is sort of interesting.

And you said the daikons come in different colors?

- I mean, back to Iraq, we just grow the purple.

- [Kim] Yeah, the purple one here.

- But here, I mean, we learned about the different varieties.

There's a lot of options where you could get seeds.

And so we are trying to learn more about the produce, grow different produce for our family, for the community.

You could say introduce you to the food, the different varieties.

- Do I see tomatoes in here?

- Yes, I just wanted to tell you some things about this produce, how we make.

About the eggplants, especially, and the tomato, eggplants, and zucchini to have- - Basil?

- We dig, eat on the field with rice.

We make a donut from it.

So a special meal, our community likes it.

Yeah.

- [Kim] And you grow all sorts of tomatoes.

So not just the big, we call 'em slicers, like that.

- [Gwyneth] Yeah, I mean- - This is the vine tomato, this one, and there's, we have a Black Krim tomato.

- Is that a Black Krim?

Yeah!

- Also, we grow cherry tomatoes.

So only these three varieties, we are growing it.

Vine tomato, which is slicing tomato, and Black Krim tomato- - [Gwyneth] And the yellow one.

Show the yellow one to the audience.

- And there's a yellow one that, just, yeah- - [Kim] Oh my goodness.

- [Gwyneth] Isn't that beautiful?

- Yeah.

- Isn't that gorgeous?

And I'm guessing that one is really sweet.

- Yes.

- [Gwyneth] Out there, Shahab was telling me earlier this week is that they brought naan bread, like Indians have naan bread, but the Yazidi also have naan bread, and so they brought that out with salt, and you had cucumbers and tomatoes, and just had sandwiches out at the farm.

- [Shahab] We did like that.

A couple times, we would go out and we'd make a party of the tomatoes.

(chuckles) - [Gwyneth] Just some salt and just eat the tomatoes just right out of there.

- [Shahab] Yeah, we do sometimes, just for the produce, real simple, just slicing it, some salt and some onion, like tomato and make great sandwiches.

(Gwyneth laughs) - [Kim] I'm hungry.

- Right?

Oh my gosh, yeah.

So Shahab, what was the hardest part when you guys were learning in your first year planting at Prairie Pines?

It's out at 112th and Adams.

- Right.

- It's only open Saturdays for the general public, but the farmers are there almost daily.

So when you were out at Prairie Pines digging the first time, tilling the soil and getting ready to put the seeds in the ground, what were the biggest challenges the first year?

- The first year?

- Oh, fairly, there was a couple of challenges.

The first one, we didn't know about the soil a lot.

- [Kim] Yeah.

That's so important.

- The second, the winter, the season is different.

(Gwyneth giggles) - What's it like?

What's it like in Sinjar?

- I mean, in summer, it's so hot, dry hot, at 100, about 110 to 100.

- Oh my God.

- Yeah.

- Degrees Fahrenheit.

I mean, winter is not that cold.

It's cold, not that cold, like here, there's a lot of snow.

(Kim and Gwyneth laugh) - [Kim] 31 below was a little cold for you last year?

- So cold.

Actually, when I came, I came in 2017, when I came it was, February 17th and 18th, when I arrived to Nebraska, there was a lot of snow.

So the winter.

The winter, soil, weathers.

I mean, we didn't know about the moisture a lot.

This thing is, we've seen to be a success here.

I mean, like I told you, the first year when we growed the eggplant, it wasn't a success.

But in general, the soil is really good.

So the first year, I mean, for farmers, the communication.

I tried to, I mean, I was an interpreter between the farmer and the Community Crops.

So when they need something, for the farmers, it was a challenge, because they don't speak English.

Knowing about the soil.

They are learning every year.

So last year it was building, the first year, and this year it's better like that.

So, yeah, every year they are discovering things and they are learning more about the soil.

And I think we are, because I am out with the farmers, day by day, after days, months, years, there's more connection between our soul and the soil.

- Absolutely.

- We are having that.

For me, when I came to the United States, I just wanted to come back, because it was different.

Everything was different.

But since I started to put the seeds under the ground, day by day, I like this soil more, this community more.

There are some things between myself and the nature of Nebraska.

So I like it a lot right now.

And I told her going on that there's some things between me and the plants that would make me, yeah, made me so happy.

- So that's a great note to ask you one final question on, which is, where do you see this heading with Community Crops, with Gwyneth is leaving us for a different place, (Gwyneth laughs) the program isn't, and that connection?

And when you say community, what do you think of as you think about this five years from now?

(Shahab sighs) (Shahab speaking in foreign language) (Gwyneth speaking in foreign language) - Yes, I hope we could expand the land.

I mean, this year we, we get Megan McGuffey, our executive director for Community Crops, she gets other lands in April.

Maybe you heard about that.

So it's a lot of lands.

Hopefully, we could bring more farmers out.

Yes.

(coughs) I am optimistic about the future of the farming.

I would say we would provide more produce to local markets, to, I mean, day by day, months by months, we are become kind of famous with our produce because we are nature growing, and hopefully, we could provide the community.

I mean, when I say community, all communities, I mean the community of Lincoln, I mean Arab community, Yazidi community, and hopefully, we could provide the Yazidi markets, Saturday markets and other markets with produce.

I mean, these markets, the local markets, our community shop from them, and there's also Lincoln community.

So hopefully we could provide them with all kinds of tomatoes, eggplants, celery, and things like that.

I mean, hopefully, 'cause they wouldn't buy from California or Argentina or another- - Source local.

- Source local.

- Source local.

I'll always tell that the fresh produce is totally different from the frozen produce.

(Gwyneth laughs) People, when I was in my country, people told me that the food in America is not good, or, "Oh, if you go to outside of the country."

I told them, "Why?"

They told me, "There's no taste and flavor."

Unfortunately, when I came, I realized like that, because I was buying from a store.

- [Gwyneth] Yep.

- But after Matt Pirog took me to the Sunday markets, introduced me to the local food growing in Lincoln, in Nebraska, the smell difference, the taste difference, I mean, it was- - [Gwyneth] You can taste Nebraska.

- There you go.

- Yes, exactly.

- And that's a great note to end on.

- Yes.

Then I brought some to home I told my wife, "Hey, I get produce, same as back to our country to grow."

(Kim and Gwyneth laugh) And decided to grow, and I told peoples- - I love it.

- You could grow produce.

The taste will be amazing.

The smell will be amazing.

It will be healthy.

- [Gwyneth] Yeah?

- I said things like that.

- [Kim] I love it.

- So, yeah, I encourage people always to grow and taste the local food.

- I love it.

And that is all the time we have for "Digging Deeper with Backyard Farmer."

But I wanna say thanks to Gwyneth and Shahab, and mention that the produce is available at Sunday market, 10 to 2 in Lincoln, out in College View, which is really a fabulous place to go anyway.

And there you'll be, right?

We will be back another time with another in-depth discussion.

Do be sure to watch "Backyard Farmer" live every Thursday at 7 PM Central on Nebraska Public Media.

Thanks for "Digging Deeper with Backyard Farmer."

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