(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Farm Connections".

I'm your host, Dan Hoffman.

On today's episode, we head to Farmamerica to talk to Executive Director Jessica Rollins about Farmamerica's mission and future plans.

Shar Roos talks about her RV centric volunteer program, A Year to Volunteer, and how they're helping to restore rural America.

And the University of Minnesota provides us our Best Practices, all here today on "Farm Connections".

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Welcome to "Farm Connections" with your host, Dan Hoffman.

- [Narrator] "Farm Connections" made possible in part by... - [Narrator] Minnesota Corn, working to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers, enhance quality of life, and help others understand the value and importance of corn production to America's economy.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] EDP Renewables North America, owner operator of Prairie Star and Pioneer Prairie Wind Farms in Minnesota and Iowa.

EDPR wind farms and solar parks provide income to farmers and help power rural economies across the continent.

- [Narrator] Northern Country Coop, a full service cooperative in grain, agronomy, feed, and lumber.

For the latest news, job openings, and podcasts, you can go to their website, ncountrycoop.com.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] R&S Grain Systems, a family-owned business serving its customers for 50 years with leading designs in the manufacturing of grain handling equipment and grain storage systems.

You can call in for a quote today.

- [Narrator] Employee owned AgVantage Software, Rochester, Minnesota, 47 years designing and developing agribusiness software for grain elevators, feed manufacturers, producers, fertilizer and chemical dealers, co-op seed companies, and fuel distributors.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Mower County Farm Bureau Association advocates for agriculture based on the policies and beliefs of its members.

It's dedicated to making the voices of its members stronger.

You can learn more about membership benefits at fbmn.org.

- Welcome to "Farm Connections".

We traveled to rural Waseca, Minnesota, to Farmamerica, the State Interpretive Center for Agriculture.

And with us today is the executive director, Jessica Rollins.

Jessica, welcome to "Farm Connections".

- Good morning, welcome to you guys for being here on the property.

- Thanks for having us, this is awesome, and you have a lot of things going on here, but specifically, what is the mission of Farmamerica?

- Yeah, so Farmamerica started 45 years ago, I believe, when some folks got together and realized that Minnesota needs an interpretive center to celebrate our rich agricultural heritage.

And not just the heritage, but also how far we've come and where we are going as an agricultural industry.

So, thus the Minnesota Ag Interpretive Center was born, and we go by the name Farmamerica.

- Well, and you're authentic because you're a farm girl, right?

- Yes, I did grow up on a farm in southeast Minnesota and then ended up marrying a farmer who lives pretty close to Waseca, and working at Farmamerica is passion of mine, personally and professionally, because of those reasons, because I grew up on a farm.

And we're raising our family on our farm.

And to know that Farmamerica's mission is to connect Minnesotans to the evolving story of agriculture through hands-on experiences is so important because we love to learn with our hands, and I think when you're doing something, it sticks in more and it resonates more with people.

So, if we can excite them about where we've come in agriculture and where we are going into the future by doing something hands on, then I leave the day happy knowing that I helped change lives.

- It's a work of love, but it's also very difficult work, and you've done great things here, particularly lots of new displays.

Can you share a little bit about that?

- Yeah, so as a nonprofit organization trying to tell this huge story from over 200 years of agriculture's history, we've done a great job talking about the history of agriculture through some exhibits that we have that you can walk from the 1850s to the 1930s.

And then we recently in October completed the Ag Around You Discovery Center, so that's a whole new exhibit space inside our Visitor Center, and that's going to allow folks to come in and experience that agriculture really is all around them every day in their homes.

Sometimes we take that for granted, and they'll walk into these new exhibit spaces and they can push buttons at the kitchen table and hear farmers sitting at the table with them, telling a story about why they do what they do and the products that they're raising.

They can open the fridge and watch a video of milk getting from the dairy farm to the refrigerator and start to feel that personal connection to agriculture even if they didn't come from a farm.

- I love it.

So there's indoor things when the weather's not so great and outdoor great, right?

- [Jessica] Yes, it is wonderful year round now.

- And you certainly appeal to many age groups.

Tell us a little bit about your audience.

- Yeah, so a lot of the field trips that we offer in the spring and the fall are for third through fifth graders, and that's our Agriculture Evolution field trip opportunity.

And usually through grant funding, we're able to offer that at a free or reduced price for the students to come.

And they get to walk around from the different farmsteads that we have from the 1800s, to the country school, to the 1930s farm site, and then they end the tour either at the blacksmith shop or the prairie or the Ag Around You Discovery Center.

And we've interpreters at all of those sites to help them feel connected to the story in that time period.

That's a really fun field trip for the elementary age.

We're offering a field trip for the junior high students to take it one step further to help them understand the supply chain and all the job opportunities in agriculture, 'cause it is not just a farmer in a field.

There are so many people behind that, and the Ag Around You, or excuse me, the Ag Career Exploration Program allows junior high students to come in, do six different hands-on activities around specific careers in agriculture to have that aha moment that no matter what their interest is right now or as they look into the future, there's probably a spot for them in the ag job market, because every career can somehow connect back to agriculture.

- Well, as our farmers and farm people and communities have gotten more efficient, sometimes we need less producers, but we certainly have other jobs.

You recently shared a story about a student that went through that exploration program and went, "I want to be a welder," I think it was.

- Yes, it was, that was last summer, and we did a pilot program for the high school students, and we actually took them to job sites in Southern Minnesota so they could see the ag industry in action.

And he came into the program from the Twin Cities, and it was a three day day camp, and he came into the program and wasn't really sure what he wanted to do.

We visited a couple of different sites.

Multiple sites actually showed us welding.

And one day at the end of one of the welding visits, he told his mom as he was getting picked up that, he's like, "Mom, I know what I wanna do.

I think I wanna do welding, and I have a plan, like, I can go to school, or this business will even pay for me to get the training while I'm working," and we all just wanted to cry.

We were so excited that we felt like right there, we could see we'd been making a difference and help somebody understand that connection to both what their passion is and a career opportunity in agriculture.

- And certainly, agriculture uses technology, machinery.

We need people to design, operate, maintain, we need all of 'em in agriculture.

- Yep, and they are all there, and there's so many students who are interested in a lot of those things but don't even realize that it can connect to the ag industry.

So we enjoy helping them see that when they're here on site.

But we're not just for kids, I gotta stop you there.

We also offer fun activities for adults to come and do tours, guided tours, self-guided tours.

We have themed events on the weekends.

Acres of Pizza is a really fun event where we have a wood fire pizza grill on site, and folks can discover the origins of their favorite pizza ingredients.

So that's a really fun event for all ages.

And Meat-a-Palooza is our adults-only event where grownups get to meet the experts behind the products that they love, behind the meat, behind the beer, behind the wine.

So you can talk to a chef, talk to a brewer.

There'll be a butcher on site talking about the different cuts of pork and how you can utilize them for cooking.

And we want folks to have fun while they're doing something hands-on, and then they'll accidentally hopefully learn something about agriculture.

- Well, with so much going on, how does the audience learn more?

Do you have a website?

- Oh, yes, of course we have a fabulous website, farmamerica.org.

But if you really wanna know exactly what's happening day to day, you'll find us on social media, on Facebook or Instagram.

We do post quite a bit on there of what's happening around the site or what's coming up to be looking forward to.

- Jessica, you do a great job, and thanks for sharing the website.

I hope our audience looks at that every day or whenever they need to know what to do, right?

- Right?

Yes, yes.

Because we have online booking for tours or events, and we're such a family friendly space, and the outdoor opportunity is just incredible.

You can only sit inside so long, especially in the summer, and then you just, you need to just stretch your arms and get out, and this is the place to do it.

And you'll have some fun and you'll maybe learn something along the way.

- We've got a ton of RVs and some wonderful volunteers here.

How did this all happen and how do they coordinate and lead through the process of helping?

- Yeah, so our sites needed love, and we didn't have the resources, financial or labor-wise, to take care of some of our sites that have been aging, as we all do with time.

And so my program director at Farmamerica had mentioned this group of people who all get together with the same common goal to do good around the 50 states.

And they want to volunteer at nonprofit organizations, they wanna volunteer at state parks, they want to help give back to their communities.

And she said to this group, "My parents were part of it for a mission, it's called A Year to Volunteer.

Maybe they could help us at Farmamerica."

We have so many projects, so many places that could use some love.

The blacksmith shop is rotting on the outside, the church needs paint, the house needs paint, the school needs paint.

This building is kind of, the poles are rotting.

How do we make sure the building can stand to showcase our collection that we have of antiques?

And we reached out to this group, A Year to Volunteer, and their coordinator, Shar, and her husband, Phil, and we said, "Would you consider us as a stop in Minnesota?"

Because they hadn't stopped yet in Minnesota and they're trying to hit all 50 states, so we pitched our organization, we pitched all the projects we have to them, and they said, "Yeah, let's do it.

Let's bring some people to Farmamerica for two weeks in the summer so that..." The conversation I bet started almost a year and a half ago with Shar, and we started the list of, here are all the things you can do.

I bet you can't get to all of them.

Though the first list we gave was not big enough.

She said, "That's not enough.

We need more.

We're gonna come with 20 some people, 15 RVs.

We need lots to do.

We have highly skilled people.

What can we do for you?"

So then we thought bigger.

We thought, "Okay, maybe you don't need to just paint.

Maybe you really can help us with this pole shed.

Maybe you can build this fence that we need.

And maybe you can reside the blacksmith shop so that we don't have to try to paint over rotten wood, we can just put siding on it to make it look good and keep it, and keep it historic."

And she said, "Yes, we can."

And we were just in shock.

And we are so blessed to have this group of 28 people from across 12 states coming together to Farmamerica.

They are choosing to be here and give their time for free to our organization.

It's humbling and it's exciting.

- Fabulous, and not only all the things you said, but with the scarce resources here, you're leveraging and using good people to do good things.

- [Jessica] Right.

- I know you're in charge of fundraising here too.

How do people say, I wanna be part of that and send in some kind of funding?

- Yeah, so we're always looking for either additional volunteers or additional financial support to help us further our mission and help youth and adults connect to the story of agriculture.

So, we do have a donate button on our website.

We have a donate button on social media.

Some folks aren't comfortable donating that way.

We also would take additional donations in person or in the mail as well.

We are not actually taking many donations of collection items at this time, but we appreciate the funding to help us display and inform and create signage for the antique collection that we do have.

- No matter how small or large, the donations are welcome.

- [Jessica] That is true.

- And speaking of large, this site started with a man donating some farmland to get it started.

- That is right.

Roy and Marcie Lukken in 1970, probably six, probably the conversations probably started, Roy was a farmer and a seed salesman, and he was passionate about sharing the story of agriculture, and when he heard the opportunity for an agricultural interpretive center to be in Minnesota, he raised his hand and said, "You need to choose this location.

In fact, I'll even give you some of my land to start it."

And with his support, some support from the state of Minnesota and the neighboring communities, here we are.

And not only are we here with the land he donated, but when he and his wife passed, they donated the rest of their land, so that is how we have 360 acres, thanks to his vision and mission and foresight of how we should connect people to the story of agriculture.

- A fabulous story and interesting journey.

Thank you so much for the work you do.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Jessica Rollins, Farmamerica, Waseca, Minnesota.

Stay tuned for more information on "Farm Connections".

- [Narrator] "Farm Connections" Best Practices brought to you by Absolute Energy.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Ryan Miller, crop extension educator with the University of Minnesota Extension, and this is today's Best Practices segment.

Well, we're getting late in the year here.

We're out scouting some soybeans.

They're in the reproductive stage.

So we thought we'd take a little bit of time today to talk about best practices around defoliating insects.

And there's one particular insect out here today that's causing some damage to the soybean plants, and that's the Japanese beetle.

They're small, probably about the size of a dime, dark color, and then they kinda have a metallic green orange appearance.

Very easy to identify when you're out in the field.

But these pests do cause some foliar damage, they feed on the leaves.

In this field, they tend to be pretty distributed throughout the field, but then they kind of aggregate on individual plants and feed, so they're not completely uniformly distributed, but they are out here.

And so soybean defoliators, there's kind of three different thresholds for defoliating insects.

First is those early vegetative stages.

We can tolerate more leaf loss at those stages.

Now that we've moved into the reproductive stages, the tolerance for loss goes down.

Early in the season, we can get 30% defoliation before we need to institute a control measure to control that insect and stop it from feeding.

We get to these later reproductive stages, we can tolerate only 20% defoliation, and so it's human nature to kind of overestimate foliar damage of the soybeans, and so what we're gonna do is take a look at a plant.

Our general recommendation would be to on a field, to look at 10 plants.

If you're on a very large farm, you're gonna need to look at more than 10 plants.

But typically, you can look at 10 plants and get away with that.

Actually see some beetles on this.

And normally I would move throughout the field and pick another random plant out here, but for the cases here to explain kind of what we're looking for, we can see the beetles, they're gonna now fly away from this leaf here.

But we're looking at this top leaflet, or set of leaflets.

And you can see there is some damage here.

And it's not very high.

There may be, you know, five to 10% leaf loss on this particular leaf.

When you look at all three leaflets, it's probably closer to 5%.

But again, if we go down in the mid canopy, select off another leaf, we can see there's 0%.

And if we go down to the lower canopy, again, we're not gonna see any damage.

So, if we were going to sample all of the plants in this field and kind of come up with an estimate of defoliation, I'm sure we'd be at or just below 5% defoliation in this particular field.

So again, it would not warrant a control measure.

Other things to think about when we're trying to decide, if we do cross that defoliation threshold and decide to make a treatment, the thing to consider is pre-harvest interval, to choose a product that's not going to put us out of our desired harvest window because we have to wait longer than we'd like to do the harvest.

So we've gotta pay attention to that when we get later in the season here.

So one last thing to think about when we're talking about some of the insects that cause defoliation damage, and there are a handful of insects we have in Minnesota that can feed on the pods and cause some damage there.

And so we've gotta be considerate of that, to look for damage to the pods.

We don't have any of those pests out here, but things like bean leaf beetle, stink bugs, as well as grasshoppers can actually cause some damage to the pods.

Bean leaf beetle can spread a virus.

So those are some things to consider too when we're out evaluating late season insects or in the reproductive stage to kind of limit damage to the pods.

And generally, the kind of rule of thumb there is to institute some kind of control when you have 10% damage to pods.

So, pay attention.

I know in some places in Minnesota this year, it's been drier, they might be seeing some damage to pods from things like grasshoppers.

Again, in this field, if we looked around, our pods are intact.

It's been just primarily that defoliation on the upper canopy here in these soybeans.

I'm Ryan Miller, crops extension educator with the University of Minnesota Extension, and this has been today's Best Practices segment.

- Welcome to "Farm Connections".

We're in Waseca, Minnesota, at the State Interpretive Center for Agriculture, Farmamerica.

And with us is a co-founder of a great volunteer group, Shar Roos.

- Hi, thanks for having me, Dan.

- Shar, what is this volunteer group, and what are you doing here at Farmamerica?

- Great question.

So, back in 2018, my husband was retiring from the Navy after 36 years, and he used to run an embroidery business, doing logos and stuff like what's on your shirt, and he always had YouTube playing in the background.

Well, one day he stumbled on a couple who was sailing around the world, and he thought, "Wow, wouldn't this be a great idea?"

So I came home from work and he throws this at me, and I said, "No way am I going around the world in a boat!"

(laughs) Not a water person.

I generally, you know, go to Hawaii and I look at the ocean, but I don't ever go in it.

And I said, "But I might do an RV though."

And that kind of is what started the idea.

Now, I did a lot of volunteer work back in Arizona, in our hometown of Scottsdale, and I said, "You know, I have to have some purpose.

I need a reason to get up in the morning.

So, how about we take a year to volunteer?"

And that's pretty much how the idea started.

From there, we planned our first project, which was in February of 2020 at Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna, Florida.

And we had this guy come by and gave us a solar quote.

He brought a friend who had a big Facebook following.

He said, "You know, I bet you a lot of people would like to join you."

So we posted it on his Facebook page and on our own, and the next thing you know, we had 39 people join us at Florida Caverns, and we realized, we're really onto something here.

People wanna join, people wanna volunteer and give back, but they want it to be easy.

So by planning these projects, people just show up, swing a hammer, and do a whole lot of good along the way.

- So you went from thinking about being on a boat.

- Uh-huh.

- Sailing.

- Well, I didn't think about it.

He did.

(laughs) - You went from resisting being on a boat, sailing around the world, to pivoting to RV, from a group of just you and your husband, a small group of two, to something much bigger than that.

And now, where are you at now?

- So, so far we've done 22 states and 35 projects.

We've done over 47,000 volunteer hours all throughout the country.

And yeah, our mission is to go to all 50 states and volunteer in each one.

- Well, certainly you've made an impact at Farmamerica.

There's a lot of aging buildings, you've done a lot of work, but I'm particularly interested in the leadership part.

I watched you as you talked to the group.

You're like a cheerleader, you're like a president, you're like a chairman, chairwoman.

- Kind of done all of those things in my past career, so.

- The team really came together.

You did a nice job.

- Thank you.

- And the impact is amazing.

How many hours of work will be accomplished here at Farmamerica alone?

- Right here at Farmamerica, we should have around 1,500 hours.

- So, put that in perspective.

The average work week and the average year for most people, not farmers, they're more usually, but- - Right, right.

- It's about 2,000 hours.

- Correct.

- So, 3/4 of a year's time, so that is fabulous.

- Yeah, we're really excited to be here.

Jenny Delnay, who's the director here, program director, her parents were actually at a project with us in Louisiana.

And it was Sam Houston Jones State Park, and they'd been badly damaged by Hurricane Laura.

And so we had heard about them, and so we reached out, and then her parents came and her parents said, "Hey, our daughter runs this program in Minnesota.

Have you guys done Minnesota yet?"

And at the time, we had not.

And we said, "Well, yeah, we'd love to talk to them."

So they watched some of our YouTube videos and they invited us out and they told us all of the work that needed to be done here, and it was significant.

And so they showed us pictures and we said, "We can do that, we can do that, we can do that."

And by the time we leave here, I believe we're gonna have eight buildings that had been repaired, structurally repaired, painted, prepped, and a couple of fences that have been built as well.

So, we're really proud of the work that we've been able to help out with at Farmamerica.

- It is impressive, it really is.

I've watched the group work.

We also had a chance for the board to meet and break bread, have a dinner with the crew.

They're all genuine, wonderful people from all over the United States.

- They really are.

- And you mentioned Jenny as program director, and she worked with Jessica Rollins, executive director.

You see the teamwork here, and they're impressed with your teamwork.

(Shar laughs) What's the real thing that drives these people to give up basically their vacation time and give back?

- Yeah, really, really great question.

I think just when you've had a career and you were good at that career, just to end it and go to nothing is sad.

And you know, a lot of times people quit, you know, then they retire and quit their jobs, and then they die a year or two later, and nobody wants that.

So I think it's just that purposeful feeling.

A lot of times, it's the work that people enjoy, it's the planning and the arranging and the researching and the finding the places that is kind of the humdrum stuff that a lot of people don't wanna do.

So by us taking on that role and allowing people to just show up and do the work that they're good at or that they enjoy, it just fills people with a sense of purpose.

And honestly, if we all gave back and did a little bit of good along the way, wouldn't the world be a much better place?

- Absolutely.

And we need a better place.

- Absolutely.

- So the efficiencies an organization you give allow them to plug in where they can give back what they can and then move on to the next thing and maybe come back again.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So we have a program that's called YTV2, and that's oftentimes where we will go back to the same place that we've already been, 'cause it's hard to do everything a place like Farmamerica needs in two weeks, so sometimes we'll come back.

But we have a mix of what we call newbies and twobies, those are people who have been with us never before or they're on their second time, and then we have repeaters.

And we have a healthy mix.

We have about six repeaters at every project and about nine newbies at every project.

And that's RVs, so that's not people.

Normally a project has about 30 people.

And it's amazing that the synergistic, you know, effects that happen when you put all these people who have skills.

And you know, some people can't build a building, they don't have construction skills, they don't know how to pour concrete or any of that.

So we'll find things like cleaning, painting, landscaping.

We always say we hire attitude.

If you wanna help, we're gonna find some way to put you to work.

- You've got a nice mix of skills, but also demographics in age.

You go from about 18 to... - Well, at this project, our youngest is 18, but honestly, Dan, our youngest volunteer ever has been three years old.

Her mother was out raking leaves and the little girl was scooping 'em up and putting 'em in the back of a gator.

So, even if you've got kids, we're absolutely happy to take them, we'll find something for them to do.

And so far, our oldest volunteer has been 82, so we'll take anything in between.

Like we said, if you wanna help, we're gonna find some way to put you to work.

- Well, talk about sustainability and transition.

If you've got skillsets being trained and passed on to three-year-olds, we have a fighting chance.

- Yeah, absolutely, yes.

We're sending a good message that there's hope for the future.

(laughs) - [Dan] Togetherness and family.

- Absolutely.

Yes, indeed.

- If we were to look forward, Shar, you and your co-founder husband, what would be your vision for the future of this organization?

- Oh, wow, gosh.

So many directions we could go.

Of course we, at the end of this year, we will have finished 25 states, so we'll be halfway through.

So really, our vision is that we will be able to finish the other 25 states, and we would like it for places like Farmamerica and state parks and other nonprofits to start calling us.

We're still in the let's find the work and who needs what.

If people were calling us and people were banging down our door saying, "Can you come here, can you come there?

", that would be ideal for us.

That would make our work a little bit easier and we could just focus on who needs the most help at what time, and maybe have two or three projects going on all at one time.

- What a gift you're giving to the RVers, and also the people that you help.

- Thanks, Dan.

- Stay tuned for more on "Farm Connections".

That's going to do it for today.

I'm Dan Hoffman.

Thanks for joining us on "Farm Connections".

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