(upbeat music) - The fall veggies and fruits are in full harvest at Henry Got Crops in Roxborough.

- How important it is to have space where you can farm and grow your own food.

- It's time to make the pies that keep Nana's recipients receiving nourishment during the holidays.

- I love the idea of people buying pies to other people.

Meet the New Jersey teachers who are feeding the mind and the body.

The kids come up, look, oh my God, you made this.

Plus, we head to Beach Plum Farm in Cape May, New Jersey for a fall visit.

We became the hidden gem in West Cape May.

Welcome to You Oughta Know, I'm Shirley Min.

Soon, the clocks will be turning back and autumn leaves will color our landscape.

But as you'll see in this week's show, fall is still a great time to get out and enjoy all there is to offer.

To Cape May, New Jersey we go to visit Beach Plum Farm, this week's Hidden Gem.

What we're trying to do with our guests is have them immerse into a farm piece.

Where they can come down here, disconnect, be in a relaxed environment, and pull away and reconnect with their family and loved ones.

We became the hidden gem in West Cape May because we're pushed off a little bit from the energy of the beach, the boardwalks, the amusement parks.

What really helped build this experience was word of mouth.

If you find something very unique, you're going to tell your friends about it, and then they're going to tell their friends about it, and they come experiencing that.

We're looking at some hummingbirds earlier today.

You find something new every time you come here.

Really nice.

We're looking forward to tonight's dinner.

It's all farm to the table, so it's all fresh and you don't find this anywhere else.

What I love about Beach Pump Farm and what I'm really passionate about is our idea of regenerative farming.

And that's using livestock and cover crop throughout the course of the year to produce our vegetables.

A good tomato here for this evening.

We have some Swiss chard that we'll be incorporating into the dinner.

And what I love is that we highlight them on our weekly farm to table dinners.

I have a good relationship with the head farmer here, so we're constantly in communication.

This morning when I came in, our head farmer Michael told me that we had some Asian pears.

Some people tomorrow night, they're going to have some Asian pears in one of their salads and maybe some poached pears.

Come in the springtime for a little day trip, and the fall time when you come here, you might be able to go out and harvest your own pumpkin in the back on a hayride.

And through the whole course of the year itself, the farm is always changing, always evolving.

It's a symbiotic relationship with this piece of land and all the people that work here.

We just have an awesome team here and we all compliment each other.

I'm fortunate.

In 2018, we added six cottages to the property.

And a couple years ago, we were lucky enough to be awarded a Michelin key.

The beauty of staying here with us at the cottages is that you can actually help us work at the farm.

our guests can take tours.

You can sign up and do a little chicken class with me.

I teach them a little bit about the chickens, pick their own eggs.

Our cottage guests, they can take them back to their cottages and cook the eggs right then, or I can take them back home with you.

I grew up on a small farm here in Cape May County.

If you would have asked me 15 years ago that I'd be able to do it for a living, I would have told you you're crazy.

A lot of the farms that existed are all gone.

My father and my grandfather, they got out of the business a long time ago.

I just happened to be working for the company, Valley & Cars, and heard that the owner bought this farm out in West Cape May He wanted to start farming.

I was kind of like, "Hey."

So here I am, 15 years later, enjoying my job.

And I'm eating my own food that I produce.

I'm serving people food that I produce.

I feel a connection to the product 'cause I'm raising all those animals on my own.

It's been a dream come true for me to be able to work here and help it grow and get it to where it's at now.

You hear the term farm to table, but we're actually a table on the farm.

So when guests come here, they get to experience the produce, the poultry, the eggs, the pork that we grow here, and everything has a story.

What is special and different about the dinner series here is that you're sitting two, three feet away from What's on your plate and we let the ingredients stand for themselves.

At nighttime it's a completely different vibe.

We have music playing with beautiful food and beautiful people just hanging out.

Everybody comes here with the idea of enjoying a farm to table dinner but the wonderful thing is that we're getting everyone together as a community and then the next thing you know like people are all friends at the table passing food around and wine around.

I truly love that.

I can see myself drinking a warm cup of apple cider enjoying the farm.

Well from apples to green leafy veggies, the fall harvest is plentiful at Henry Got Crops in Roxborough.

I've been a CSA member for 18 years since the very beginning.

I love that it's right in the neighborhood.

I love the people who are here.

Everybody is really friendly.

Hi everybody.

Hi there.

Hi.

Henry Got Crops first started 18 years ago.

Originally there was a Saul teacher that had a greenhouse and they needed somebody to take care of the crops in there during the summer.

Weaver's Way Co-op was already farming at the Aubrey Arboretum and so it felt like them like we were a natural choice to come and sort of help take care of this greenhouse when the students were away and it's since blossomed into over three acres of vegetable production on orchard across the street.

Saul students are involved with their food science and horticulture classes to come out and learn from this space to complement their curriculum.

When I first started teaching and I moved to Philadelphia and I learned about Saul High School, it was the only urban agricultural high school in the country.

And how important it is to have space within a city where you can farm and grow your own food to give students a glimpse of that is like life changing.

I want to become an ag educator.

I just want to teach the next generation agriculture because I feel like it's a very underrated, like, subject in people's minds, like, Some people believe that you go to a store and the food just appears there.

They don't know where it comes from or who put the work in and time in to do it.

I would like them to learn that education part to it.

I would like to be an environmental and agricultural lawyer and I would like to work on the legal side of making agriculture safer, making sure everyone It's a place where everyone gets paid well and it's ethical and safety sourced.

I love being part of building community and so cultivating a place like this allows a greater audience access to a farm.

Walk in the fields and pick some of the produce yourself and see some of the inner workings of it - Peace of mind, healthy produce, and connection to the farmers and other people who are also coming here.

I think it's such a good antidote to just living in a big, busy, busy city.

- Chaddsford Winery is here mixing up fall-inspired cocktails and giving us a taste of this years adult trick or treat I'm Maiken Scott and this is your wellness update.

You Ought To Know fall is here and that means soon we'll be changing the clocks.

We're gaining an hour.

It can feel a little bit like jet lag especially during the first week.

Make sure you keep your bedtime steady otherwise you'll have trouble waking up in the morning.

But really, the bigger issue for many of us this time of year is the lack of light.

It's darker outside and that can really impact our mood and our overall health.

Here's what you can do.

First of all, make sure you get natural light every day.

Get outside if you can in the morning.

That's the best time to do it.

Even when it's grey and overcast, you'll get way more light exposure than you do indoors.

The next thing you can do is get a light box.

If you feel like this really affects you, get a light box.

They've become more affordable and more available.

Make sure it's one that has 10,000 lux.

That's the number to remember.

Lastly, even though it can be very tempting to not do much of anything during the colder months if you're prone to feeling a bit glum, don't isolate Go out there, spend time with friends fill up your calendar and make sure you stay connected.

That's your wellness update Thanks for those tips Maiken Well it is time to get your pie orders in for Manna's largest annual fundraiser that benefits neighbors battling critical illnesses Right now if you walk through the lobby the boxes are being assembled.

People are cooking and people are packing the stuff.

It's the beginning of pie season.

There's pumpkin pie, gluten-free blueberry pie, American Airlines pie, Cheesecake pie.

Pie in the Sky is an incredibly important event here at Manna.

It's a two-month bake-a-thon where we are preparing the pies, making the pies, working with the community to get all these community different pick-up locations.

But really, ultimately, it is to fundraise to make sure folks are getting the medically-tailored meals they need to win the fight for their life.

I deliver every day, Tuesday through Friday.

Wherever they put me, I deliver.

I will continue to be involved as long as I can carry the big, heavy bags into the houses.

Hi, Jackie.

We have your food out here from Manna.

I got involved because I'm a hospice nurse.

Jackie, yes.

And way back, probably 30 some years ago, I had a client who was dying of AIDS.

And I sent Manna a request to give her food.

Ever since then, I've been involved with Manna.

We have certainly come a long way from our grassroots, where we were founded during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Today we serve all illnesses.

We moved from helping people die to helping people live.

If the world were run similar to this, it would be such a better world.

I've been volunteering at MANA for seven years since I retired.

Everybody is just a human being here to help another human being.

When you walk in here, you feel nothing but love and compassion because of the people that are here and showing up.

We take for granted that we go to the store when we order online, it comes to our door, it's no biggie but when you're sick, they can't get the food and when they seem me come up, they smile and they're grateful and it kind of makes my day.

I remember one year a woman came up to me and she said I just want to let you know it's so incredibly special for me to be here this year to volunteer because last year I was a recipient and you showed up.

It's a very humbling experience because I don't think that we realize sometimes how How lucky we are.

It's based on kindness and on love and to give back to your neighbors.

This place just hums with an energy that's hard to find anywhere else.

- Fall is here and that means it's a great time to fire up the smoker.

For two Cherry Hill West teachers, barbecue is more than great food.

It's a way to bring people together and give back to the community they call home.

After the bell rings, these two Cherry Hill West teachers are smoking... Barbecue, that is.

Oh my gosh.

There's meat juice pouring out of it like a fountain.

It's like a meat juice fountain.

With a name like Brian Grillo, maybe starting Smoke, Sizzle & Grill was fate.

How did two Cherry Hill West teachers end up working in the barbecue business?

Really just through a love of barbecue and cooking.

I love the community social aspect, particularly when it comes to barbecue.

Like everybody comes out when the cookers going.

Brian works the smoker while Mike dreams up what to do with all that meat.

This looks so good.

They're not exactly getting rich doing this, but for Brian and Mike, the payoff is about more than money.

For these two teachers, the reward comes from the people they get to feed.

This is something you do out of love and at the end you see what you've created and you're like okay that was a that was a good cook.

Oh my God.

We both work in a community that we live in.

The kids come up and say, "Oh my God, you made this, Mr.

Goulos, this is fantastic."

And just being able to get to see the kids out in the environment, they come up to the food truck, it's just neat.

It's just a fun experience.

The best day of the year is Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve is fantastic.

Christmas Eve is fantastic.

We reach out to guidance counselors in the district, they send us a list of families in need.

And then we drop off essentially a massive feast for Christmas Eve.

That's the most, that's to me, that's why we're still doing it.

Like that's the best part.

I'm lucky enough that I have two jobs that I love to do.

What is the dish that people come back for?

I'd say brisket.

Brisket is, I mean as far as the meats go, brisket.

Brisket is like, brisket's the star.

Cheers guys.

Cheers guys.

Cheers is right.

Thank you.

Brian cheers, don't leave me hanging.

Oh, no problem.

Mural Arts Philadelphia's month-long takeover is underway.

Happening this week, an art and engagement project that pays homage to Philly's Puerto Rican community and culture.

The name of the project is "Vamonos Panmonte" the return to the mountain.

The visual art installation is from artist Wanda Jaimundi Ortiz and costumes and production by Christina Tollefson and Mural Arts.

It's a massive procession taking four miles, traversing through Philadelphia.

Essentially, walking in the opposite direction of where you would normally be going towards the Declaration of Independence, towards all of the things that are iconic of American, of Americana, especially in the 250th anniversary.

Essentially redirecting attention away from the conventional Americana that you see and that's that is associated with all things independence and redirecting attention to the other Americans, right?

The Americans that are living in that are living in Norris Square, that have lived in Philadelphia, 10 percent of the Philadelphia population is Puerto Rican.

And while we are navigating this nether space of Commonwealth colonial status, redirecting attention to the other people that make up the fiber of Philadelphia under this umbrella of the semi-quincentennial.

The final destination, Norris Square Park, is Ortiz's metaphorical mountain.

The last leg of our journey, when we get to Norris Square Park, it's the last mile, and Norris Square is the largest green space within that greater like northern Philadelphia region.

And that neighborhood, that park really does become like people's mountain, their nature.

It's a visual kind of imaginary retreat back to the mountain, Back to home base, back to like nature, right?

Back to Patria, like our homeland.

And the costumes helped to tell the stories.

The costumes were created by Christina Tollefson.

So she's one of the two visiting artists for the project along with Wanda.

Vamonos Pan Monte is happening on Saturday, October 17th, And we are taking over.

Staying with the arts, see what happens when teenagers from Germantown are tasked to create and perform an original play.

Arts and culture reporter Peter Crimmins and photojournalist Emma Lee have their story.

Imagine, if you will, a post apocalyptic world Global disaster where the survivors have split themselves into warring tribes to fight for what's left in that world.

It's 30 years after this big disaster called The Reckoning.

The world has flooded and that's how people are living now and the mindsets have separated everyone into these three factions adaptation restoration and ocean dwellers.

It's like when a whole bunch of communities find a way to clash but in the end learn to come together.

This play called When Tides Collide was made by these kids.

They are the shadow company of Yes and Collaborative Arts.

It's a theater program in Germantown.

{Singing} The program director Gabriel Preston said it's one of the very few programs where teenagers invent their own original play and then perform it for the public.

I am always asking them to reflect in different ways on what kind of story do you want to tell, what are the kind of stories that you resonate with because that's gonna tell you who you are as an artist and also who you are as a person as you move to the world.

So their ability to develop their own stories is integral to our mission of developing them as collaborators and also as people as citizens in the world.

There was definitely a lot of discussions of we want it to be a cautionary tale, but they wanted a sort of like dark comedy style production in order to tell that cautionary tale.

So it's funny.

It is what 13 teens have agreed is dark comedy.

Yes.

Making a play from scratch can shape teenagers to become better adults.

It shows them how to collaborate with others, how to receive other ideas and internalize them, how to make a decision and then commit to it.

But making a play is a messy process.

I mean, yeah, it's chaos.

It's beautiful chaos.

We just feed off of each other's energy.

All together we're like, "Okay, I think I want to be doing something else right now."

So we just make jokes constantly and so we end up wasting time.

And then we realize we have to get stuff done.

Maybe we should just say whatever in "This is a Love Story" now and then it will make more sense.

That makes sense.

This is a romance subplot that we've been getting at.

Yeah, they've been wanting a romance subplot.

I'll just write at the bottom "Yowie."

How's that sound?

I think it's really great for kids just to get that experience of how do you build something as a collective.

So you have to be taking another idea, being willing to change your idea and see where that can take you.

Sophia MacTough from Chaddsford Winery joins me now.

Sophia, thank you so much for making the trip in.

Thank you so much for having me.

Fall is such a fun time at the winery and so today you're going to be making a fun fall inspired wine cocktail using Chaddsford's spiced apple wine, which I have a bottle of this in my refrigerator.

Personal favorite.

It's so good.

What are you going to make for us today?

I'm going to make you our time travelers twist.

So that is our spiced apple wine and we are going to mix it with some ginger beer.

Okay and then is it just one to one or how are you making it?

I like to measure with my heart so I will do a one to one but my one might be a little bit more generous.

Do a one.

Yeah.

Honestly your measurements can be whatever you would like.

So I like just a little bit more of the spiced apple than the ginger beer just so that you get all of the flavor.

Give it a try.

It's good.

It's like a spiced apple ginger spritz.

Yes.

It's very refreshing.

It's actually really easy to drink.

It really is.

Which may be a good or bad thing.

But why does the spiced apple wine work so well in some of these fall cocktails?

Well, so the spiced apples already mold.

So it is an apple wine that we've already added some warm spices to.

So it has cinnamon, clove and nutmeg added to it.

And then ginger obviously is also one of those warming spices.

So when you combine it with the ginger beer, it just works really, really well.

It just screams fall vibes.

And this drink is cocktail or is tied to one of your fun events coming up, the adult trick or treat, which is always so popular.

Talk to us about that.

FOR SURE.

SO THE ADULT TRICK OR TREAT IS A WALKING WINE TOUR AND PAIRING PROGRAM.

SO YOU ACTUALLY WALK ACROSS OUR PROPERTY.

IN COSTUME.

IN COSTUME.

WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND COMING IN COSTUME.

AND THEN WE HAVE SOME OF OUR WINES PAIRED WITH DIFFERENT LOCAL PRODUCTS FROM LOCAL VENDORS.

SO I HAVE SOME OF THE PAIRINGS TODAY.

SO I'M ACTUALLY GOING TO SUGGEST THAT YOU TRY OUR SPARKLING TREMENETTE.

OK and this is going to pair with some passion fruit chocolate from Eclot in West Chester.

Oh this is really good.

It's nice and floral so it's got that nice little bit of bright acidity it's floral and the reason why it works really well with the chocolate is because passion fruit is naturally sweet and tangy so you're going to get the floral notes from the sparkling tremenet and And then you're going to get the sweet and tangy notes from the chocolate.

When combined, it's just heaven.

Yes.

Why do we have cheesy kettle corn on our bar?

So this is another of our stations.

We have our Harbinger dry red blend and we have decided to pair that with Colonel Clark's cheesy kettle corn.

I love that.

Will you pour this?

Because I want to try this with the kettle corn.

Absolutely.

And is the adult trick or treat sold out?

'cause I know it sells out pretty quickly.

It will sell out pretty quickly.

It is not sold out yet, but I do recommend purchasing your tickets.

We have three different days that you can purchase for, so you can do Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and you would just go onto chaddsford.com, and there is a banner that says, "Get your adult trick or treat tickets."

Do it.

Okay, well, I love it.

Sophia, thank you so much for making the trip all the way into Philly for us.

Absolutely, cheers.

That is our show everyone have a good night, but Sophia and I are gonna enjoy some of the drinks and the treats.

Good night [music playing]