23- Sproutin' Up
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Christa Hein: Hey there. Welcome to the Farm Educators Roadmap. I'm Christa Hein, former nonprofit girl turned farm education entrepreneur. I've spent the last 30 years creating hands-on programs that connect people to the land, animals, and the traditions that nourish our daily lives.
If you're listening, you probably believe what I do, that farm education is needed now more than ever. Not just on rural farms, but in suburbs, cities, and everywhere in-between. In this podcast, you'll hear real stories and practical advice from farm educators all across the country, people who are creating change through their programs in creative and inspiring ways.
Whether you're dreaming about starting your first program, are already knee deep in your own farm education work, or are just curious about how others are impacting their communities through farm education, you're in the right place. [00:01:00] Let's dig in.
Christa Hein: Hey there. Welcome back to the Farm Educators Roadmap. I'm your host Christa Hein, and today we're heading to Fort Collins, Colorado to meet Anne Kuehne. She saw a need in her community and grew it into a thriving youth program that's changing lives.
When Anne began her career as a teacher, she didn't imagine she'd someday be running a non-profit rooted in gardens and food justice. But after working with the Healthy Kids Club and seeing firsthand how many neighborhoods lacked access to fresh, healthy food, Anne started gathering produce from her neighbors and delivering it where it was needed most. That simple act of kindness grew into Sproutin’ Up a community-based organization teaching youth ages 9 to 18 to grow food, gain jobs, skills, and give back, all while increasing food access in their city.
We'll hear how Anne turned that early spark into a nonprofit, how she built [00:02:00] partnerships, and what she's learned about empowering young people through farming and service. Anne, thank you so much for joining us today.
Anne Kuehne: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. So, I want to start at the beginning. Can you tell me about your background as an educator?
What drew you to teaching and how did those early experiences shape the way you approach your work today?
Anne Kuehne: Sure. So, I started as a kindergarten teacher and then, first grade shortly after that. And I knew I always wanted to work with kids and families and so teaching was a great way to do that. And I taught in Southern California and Michigan, but when my husband and I moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, I took a break to be home with kiddos and then found a niche in health education. And so I went back to school and got my master's in public education and I worked for the hospital, the local hospital here in Fort Collins. And my job was to go meet kids off the bus, in mobile home [00:03:00] communities. So typically kids who might be coming home to a house where maybe mom and dad are at work.
And so they're coming home to a home alone. So my job was to meet those kids off the bus and then teach them a healthy lesson, give 'em a healthy snack, and play some games with them. And that's where I started to see the need for healthy food and I started to see the need for lowering barriers to access that healthy food.
Christa Hein: So, when you were working with the Healthy Kids Club, you saw that these neighborhoods didn't have access to fresh food.
Can you share what that looked like and how it made you want to do something about it?
Anne Kuehne: Yeah, so each day I would bring them a healthy snack and that usually consisted of some sort of fruit or veggie. And I remember one day, a couple things stand out still. One day I brought blueberries and one of the kids filled their plate with blueberries. I mean, it was like a mountain of blueberries. And I said, oh, bud, you must love blueberries. And [00:04:00] he was like, yeah, well, I mean, we never have 'em at home. He just devoured them.
And another time I was teaching a lesson on sugar and how sugar impacts our bodies in negative ways if we have too much of it. And so I was talking about jelly - peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, something pretty simple. And I made the comment that we should really be buying a hundred percent fruit preserves if we can instead of another option. And kids said to me, my parents aren't gonna buy that. It's so much more expensive.
And that was a moment where, for me, that really woke me up and made me think, gosh, I wonder if kids will eat all these healthy foods if we could get rid of the barriers to accessing them.
You know, I had seen them eat the blueberries. I've seen them eat all of the snacks that I brought. It wasn't just the blueberries. And so, I knew they would eat it, but then how can we take away those barriers so that these are the foods in their homes, on a more regular basis?
And I [00:05:00] started to notice and make the connection for myself that as a parent, if you are struggling financially, or even if you're just budgeting tightly, and you have some hungry kids to feed, the difference between buying a bundle of bananas and putting them on the counter. The difference between that and buying a big tub of cheese balls and putting that on your counter, which one is gonna last longer and which one are your kids gonna be more excited to eat? And so how do we get kids excited about fruits and veggies versus the cheese balls?
And how do we make sure that families have access to this fresh produce that doesn't last as long as something that has a lot of preservatives in it?
Christa Hein: Yeah. So what was the moment where you thought you could do something about this problem that you were seeing?
Anne Kuehne: Well, at the time I was a part of a health education group that met at - it's called The Gardens on Spring Creek.
It's a city-funded garden basically. So, there's [00:06:00] demonstration gardens in a children's garden, a vegetable area. And every month, a bunch of health educators would get together there and we would present about our programs, but we would also network and learn from each other. And one of the presenters one week was from Denver and she was helping people turn their front lawns into gardens to sort of feed themselves and their community.
And that sparked something in me where I thought, I wonder, I wonder if I could do that. I wonder if I could get extra produce, because anybody who has a tomato plant knows that there's more tomatoes than you can use at a time. Right? Yeah. And so, what could we do with those extra tomatoes and the extra everything?
And so, I started putting up flyers around my neighborhood just basically saying, hey, if you have extra produce, drop it off on my porch. And the first week, my intention was to go back to that same neighborhood where I was working, but go back after work and [00:07:00] set up a table and tell families to take whatever you need for the week.
So at the same time that I put posters up in my neighborhood to collect the food, I put posters up in that neighborhood to let them know that I would be there to distribute all this free produce. And so the first week came when I was supposed to go set up my table. All I had was 15 snap peas and I was like, I don't know what to do.
You know? I mean, but I knew from working with these families that the worst thing I could do was to just not show up. So, I went and bought some hummus and as I was driving in, I could see they are like four to six older women with shopping bags, 'cause they're expecting all this produce that they're going to get to take home.
And I mean, I was really nervous and I set up my table and I put out my 15 snap peas and my hummus and I said, you know, we're going to do a tasting today and then next week I'll have more produce. And they were so gracious to me. They, a lot of them have had actually never had [00:08:00] hummus. So, it was still a new experience for them that they were excited about.
And after that, I would come home to work from work, and my porch would be full of produce. Everything you can imagine. And so it just, after that, we never had a problem with the amount of produce that we were able to provide for families.
Christa Hein: So what were some of the first steps you took to actually start Sproutin’ Up, finding partners, getting land, building a team?
How did you begin?
Anne Kuehne: Yeah, so we've done things I think, differently than some nonprofits. We're at the beginning, and even still now, the majority of our funding goes directly to our programs. So, everything else we kind of scrapped together to make it work. So, when I first started, we were under the umbrella of another organization called The Growing Project here in town.
And that allowed us to at least apply for some grants being under that umbrella. And then I wrote, I did the application to [00:09:00] become our own nonprofit. And that is a hard, that's, it's a long process. It's not hard. It's a long process. It can be a confusing process. So, I was really fortunate to meet someone in the community who would meet with me and sit down and tell me kind of exactly what to do and walk me through that process.
And then the other big thing is I had never gardened in my life. So up till that point, I really didn't grow anything. In fact, when we moved into the house we live in, my husband and I pulled out all the garden beds in the backyard. because we were like, we won't use those. What in the world would you use those for?
And so, I wrote a grant for $300 to the city of Fort Collins and I got the grant and I put three more garden beds back into my backyard that had already been there. And I started growing food to go along with the food that was donated. And Mary Miller from the Gardens on Spring Creek was instrumental in helping me [00:10:00] learn how to grow food.
And, because it was a grant through the city, they even had to do a site visit to my backyard, which was really funny, to, you know, kind of see how we had used the money. But Sproutin’ Up exists because of our community. I am only one person and all of the people that have come alongside me to either teach me how to garden or teach me how to apply to be a nonprofit or teach me how to write grants so that we can get funding.
All of those people have made this crazy idea that I had work.
Christa Hein: Yeah. Mentors and collaborators are so important, especially in those early years when you're starting.
Anne Kuehne: They are, and you know, the other people too, I should say, is as a nonprofit, you have to have a board of directors and man, my friends stepped up and you know, those early days, it was basically me and my friends having board meetings every month.
Until we would expand beyond and have people that I actually didn't know sitting on the board, which was exciting. [00:11:00] So, yeah.
Christa Hein: So for listeners who aren't familiar, can you describe what Sproutin’ Up looks like today, where you're located, what programs you run, what animals you have, who you serve, all of that?
Give us a picture of it.
Anne Kuehne: Yes. So, Sproutin’ Up has moved around a couple times because as a small nonprofit, you go where the land is available and where it's the cheapest and free is by far the cheapest. So, we've been in a couple locations, but about five or six years ago, we were really fortunate to move to an acre piece of land that is in North Fort Collins.
And it's within walking distance from two of the mobile home communities that we serve most, which is absolutely incredible that we ended up there because the transportation barrier that we faced in other locations just went away when we were able to find this property. A local family, the Hansen's, own the property and we just pay for water.
It is in a floodplain [00:12:00] so they can't build on it, which allows us to be there, which is just absolutely the most generous thing on their part. And we are really, really fortunate. So, we now have, like I said, a little over an acre that we farm. We do mostly vegetables. We have some fruit trees. We do herbs and flowers, and then we have eggs because we have chickens and ducks.
We also have goats, Biff and Twig. And we got them to expand our regenerative agriculture so that at the end of the season we could put them in the farm and they would eat everything down. However, they're really just pets 'cause they only eat what people would still eat. And so, we take them on walks on leases and they're really just our pets and they don't work hard enough at all.
But our programs are, we have about 50 kids a summer who join our programs, and kids from ages nine all the way up. We had 18-year-olds this year. We used to just go to 16, but what has happened with every single program that we've had is that as kids get old enough to age [00:13:00] out, they don't want to leave.
And so, we think of what the next program can be. So, our 9 to 11 year olds are in our apprenticeship program, and they obviously learn how to grow their own food, but their other focus is nutrition education. So, each week they have a lesson that they learn about nutrition and their bodies and how to live a healthy lifestyle.
And they get paid a $10 stipend every time they come. So, they can make up to $200 in the summer. And then at the end of their shift we put in a beautiful outwork kitchen. So, we all cook lunch together and then sit and enjoy it together. So, they're also learning how to cook plant-based meals, which is really fun too.
Yeah. Then our middle kids are our budding philanthropists and they're in charge of our flower program. So, they learn about growing flowers. They design flower bouquets each week. They make 10 bouquets, and we partner with Bike [00:14:00] Fort Collins, and Safe Routes to have the kids bike those bouquets over to Salud Family Health Center, which is a local health center that we can partner with different things.
And they drop those off and those bouquets are given to their patients each week. And those kids can earn $15 stipend each day. They come, so they can make up to $300 in the summer. And then our interns are 14 to 16 years old and they can earn $20 every time. But they have some additional opportunities to make more money so that they can make up to $600 in the summer.
Their focus is on job skills training. So, they learn how to write their resumes. We do some educational interviews with them. They learn how to run our CSA program where they learn to talk to customers and that kind of thing. And then they can apply for different areas for their kind of that extra money that they make.
They can apply to be a summer camp counselor. We have summer camp as a fundraiser. So those are kids whose parents can pay for them to come to [00:15:00] camp. And this gives our interns another thing that they can add to their resume.
And they can also apply to be a goods maker. So, we make soap on the farm, which is made with coffee grounds from a local coffee shop, which I'll, that's another program too that I'll talk about in a minute.
So those kids can get extra, kind of to get up to that $600 stipend, which is that maximum they can make without having to worry about taxes, which is why we do that that way. And then, the other thing that's really cool about the intern program is they also get high school elective credit. So, in addition to the money, they get high school elective credit, which is great for them as well.
And then our oldest kids, which now are 18, we have just two girls who every week they take our e-bikes. We have a solar panel on our farm that charges our e-bikes each week, and then they take our e-bikes and they ride 'em to two coffee shops in town, Mugs. They pick up their coffee grounds and they bring them back to the [00:16:00] farm and they process them basically with wood chips and things and put 'em in a special kind of composting bin that we have for the coffee grounds.
And then we also do composting with one of the mobile home communities as well. So they pick those up. We do that, they process the compost piece of it as well, and then we take those coffee grounds and we turn those into soap. Then we turn around and we have available for sale, but we also provide to our CSA members.
Christa Hein: That is amazing. These kids are getting this experience of being on a farm, but then they're also getting this job experience and this community experience. I'm just blown away. That is so amazing.
Anne Kuehne: It's really fun and it's neat to look at how the programs have developed. The oldest program, that my 18-year-old girls, we pay them hourly.
And so that's like a whole other learning step since they went through the program and made everything as a stipend. Then when they get old enough, then they actually [00:17:00] get paychecks with taxes taken out and all of that kind of thing, which prepares them for the real world.
And, you know, the job piece of it, I started because my 14-year-old at the time was working with me on the farm and really was not a great worker. And would go to the rest room and like stay in there for 20 minutes, you know, I was like, hey, you can't do that. Like, that's, you can't do that at work. You can't like, hang out on your phone. And I thought if my own kid doesn't know this, there are other kids that don't know this too.
And we need to explicitly teach kids how to have a job in an environment where you're not going to get fired. You know, I'm able to take the time to say, oh, hey, so at a job that's not how you would do that as an employee, you know, you would make this other choice. And because they know it's a learning experience, they're open to that feedback, which I think is really important.
I live in Fort Collins and so Colorado State University is here as well, and so our kids are competing for those entry level [00:18:00] jobs with college students who have a lot more experience. And so, anything we can do to help them have just a little bit of experience to put on their resume, I think is really helpful for them.
Christa Hein: So where does the funding come from in order to be able to pay the stipends?
Anne Kuehne: So, lots of different places. We have a couple fundraisers every year to raise money. I write all the grants and we get about half of our budget in grants. And then just donations and our fundraisers. I mentioned before that our summer camp is a fundraiser that's a really big chunk of our fundraising and our CSA sales.
Up until this point, what we've done with our produce is we've sold CSA shares and for every share we sell, we donate a share to a family in need. However, next year we're looking at providing free CSA shares only, not selling them. And the reason that we're looking at doing that is because many of our families have lost SNAP [00:19:00] dollars because of federal funding and the need is just greater.
And so, if all of our food can go to families who need it, rather than splitting it up, I think that's really important. Now it will create a little bit of a financial tug for us to figure out how we're going to, you know, replace that funding that we were getting through selling CSA shares. But the board and I will sit down next month and strategic plan for that and figure out how we can move forward and provide more food to families that we know need it, without selling that to our community.
And there's lots of the different ideas that I have around selling flower shares to restaurants for their tables and selling herb shares to restaurants, 'cause we have lots of herbs. And so, I think that it's doable. We're just going to have to rework some things so that our families can get the food they need.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So, what does a typical season look like for you now? And I'm curious what happens on the farm in the winter?
Anne Kuehne: Yeah, so I also am a high school teacher. Now, I [00:20:00] mentioned earlier, I started in kindergarten. I actually teach PE and health in high school now along with running Sproutin’ Up.
So in March, I start all the seeds in my greenhouse. The greenhouse is actually not on the farm. It's in my backyard, which is wonderful because I can regulate the heat that way, and I just have a closer eye on it. So, I start all the seeds in March. In April and May, kids start reaching out to us and we start reaching out to them. It's kind of a two-way street to start getting them registered for programs and making sure that we have room for all those kids that want to be a part of it.
And then as soon as school gets out, we start our programs the following Monday. So usually that's just over a weekend from school being out. Then we have programming all summer. They basically go to programs until the week before school starts. And our CSA starts also that beginning of June, and that goes through mid-October.
The kids stay through the beginning of August, and then [00:21:00] after that they return to school, and some of those interns will choose to get their extra money. Instead of doing camp or making our soap, they'll choose to come on Sunday mornings and help with the market. And so they can do that as one of their options.
And then our markets will go until mid-October and then we wrap everything up. And we have, you know, we have amazing volunteers that make this happen. Just last weekend we had over 20 students from CSU come out and spend about three hours putting the farm to bed for the winter and we have lots of, lots of volunteer groups that step in and help us do all of that.
Christa Hein: That's awesome. I was just going to ask you, how do you manage to do all of this, all the administrative work, the fundraising, and then just the practical parts of running a nonprofit and offering the program? So, it sounds like you have help. Do you have any other paid staff?
Anne Kuehne: So, I'm the only full-time staff. We have an outreach coordinator who, we have that position actually [00:22:00] open right now, but in the spring we'll fill that. And that's really critical 'cause that person does the outreach to get kids in our program. And that's sort of like that like extra thing that I just can't do when I'm teaching. The time of year that that happens would be difficult for me.
So, our outreach coordinator does that, which is amazing. And then I have help leading our programs. Typically, we get CSU students who are maybe getting their master's degree and need, you know, capstone project kind of things or internships. And so a lot of times we get CSU students to help with that.
And really, you know, I mean I'm busy, but I love what I do. And so, I always tell my students in high school, like, you know, I have two, basically two full-time jobs, but I absolutely love it. And, I think, it's cheesy that when you love what you do, you're not working. But it really is true.
I mean, I love being out on the farm. I love being outside. I love the sun on my face and so I'm happy to do it.
Christa Hein: So what has been the biggest lesson that you've [00:23:00] learned about sustaining a nonprofit like this? Either financially or personally?
Anne Kuehne: Yeah. One of the lessons is the financial piece is very hard as a nonprofit, you're sort of at the whim of the economy.
On one hand, you know, right now we're not seeing very many donations come from individuals because everybody's kind of pinching their pennies and making sure their budgets at home work. And as a nonprofit, you have to step back and just recognize that's where people are at. And, you know, writing grants and all of that kind of funding is a huge piece of that as well. But I think that learning to flow with the money as it flows is really important.
And then another big lesson that I've learned it around gardening is just that you're always learning with gardening, you never have it figured out. This year we planted beans five times. We never got one bean plant, and who knows why. Last year we had beans coming out our ears, and we had buckets and loads of them, and every year is like that. It’s [00:24:00] something new and you just have to say, okay, well that's this year. You know, say to my customers, I'm sorry, we don't have, we don't have any beans this year.
That's just the way it is. And learn that the earth will give us what she can and we get to just be grateful for that.
Christa Hein: And what a beautiful lesson for the children that are in the program to see that metaphor for how life just gives us things in some seasons and not in another.
Anne Kuehne: It's so true. And you know, when our first year on the property that we're on now, we were, so we're very close to the river. I said we were in a floodplain. We can actually hear people tubing down the river when we're working on the farm. And because of that, we have a lot of deer in the area. And so that first year, we didn't have a fence or anything and the deer would come in and they would eat things just at the rate of harvest.
So, the kids and I would go, oh my gosh, look at that lettuce. It's gonna be perfect for tomorrow. We come back tomorrow and it’d be all gone. And those early days, the lessons were hard. It was hard [00:25:00] to grow and get nothing in return. And since then, we've put up a deer fence around the whole area. And so we don't have that piece, but we still have, you know, other factors that you have on a farm where your crop just fails.
And you're right, it's kids. It's a great lesson for kids to learn. And every year we learn a different one.
Christa Hein: Yeah, that resilience. So, for someone listening who's inspired by your story and wants to start something similar in their community, what first steps would you recommend?
Anne Kuehne: The first step I would recommend is seeing what else is out there in your area, making sure that there's a need for what you're thinking you want to do.
It's a lot of work and you want to make sure that you know that that need is there. And once you've established that, I think the next step is reaching out to people who can help you or can just be, you know, can provide advice even.
And meeting with people and really building up your network around what you want to [00:26:00] do, and then try get, just go for it, and just see how it goes. I think if you go into something knowing that it's going to morph and change and being open to that, I think you're going to be successful.
You know, those early days when I was setting up a table, offering free veggies. I had no idea that one day I would have a farm - that wasn't, I had no long-term plan for that. My only plan at that point was to get food to families. And I had, I just had no vision that that's where I would end up. So, I think just being open to the change that comes and being willing to work with that will make anybody be successful.
Christa Hein: Awesome. Do you have any advice for finding partners or mentors or community support?
Anne Kuehne: You know, the thing that I did was really look to programs that were already established. So, I said that we were under the umbrella of the growing project. Their organization doesn't exist anymore, but at the time was a really robust [00:27:00] program here in Fort Collins.
Then I looked to the gardens on Spring Creek, that city-owned garden. And so, I think connecting with people that are doing something similar to what you're doing is really important and talking about it with anybody. One of the things I've learned, which I think is so important is you never know who's in the room.
And when I very, very early on, I used to hold cottage parties. This is the way I got the word out about Sproutin’ Up. So, I would say to my friends, like an old Tupperware party, but will you just host me as a cottage party and invite all your friends? I just want to tell them about Sproutin’ Up. And so that's what I did in people's homes.
Christa Hein: I love that.
Anne Kuehne: And one of the homes I went to that were three people and I was like, seriously, I'm giving up my time tonight for three people. And one of them was, I think she was in middle school at the time, and I thought, oh gosh. All right, here we go. Well, here was the daughter of a man [00:28:00] who ran the USDA labs here in Fort Collins.
He connected me with her dad and we had greenhouses, the USCA greenhouses that they allowed us to use for years until we had our own greenhouse. They provided the soil. All I did was show up with the seeds. Their employees helped me plant, and so you never know who's in the room, you know?
Never did I imagine that this middle schooler was going to connect me with one of the biggest connections that I would have going forward. Because from that, I had so many more connections because then the greenhouse manager from there ended up going to be the greenhouse manager at CSU, and then we were with CSU greenhouses.
I mean, it just, you just don't know. It's incredible. So just being open to knowing that you never know who's in the room.
Christa Hein: That's amazing. To wrap up, what is your vision for the next chapter of Sproutin’ Up? What are you dreaming about for the future?
Anne Kuehne: Well, I mentioned making sure we get all our food to our families.
I think that's a [00:29:00] big step for us.
Christa Hein: Yeah, that's huge.
And figuring out how the funding will work for that. And then I'd really like to see our kids -we're getting to a point where kids that have gone through the program are getting old enough that they can come back and work as the leaders of the program.
And that's what I see next is, this full circle of like, you've gone through this and now you can come back and teach the next generation how to do what you got to learn how to do. And I think that would be such a cool cyclical thing in Sproutin’ Up’s lifecycle to make that happen.
Christa Hein: Oh, that's beautiful.
So where can people find more about Sproutin’ Up online?
Anne Kuehne: So, our website is Sproutin’ Up.com. There's no g in Sproutin’ Up.com. So you can go there and we also have an Instagram and Facebook that you can find us. Yeah, and reach out online. Love to hear from people.
Christa Hein: Great! Anne, I just love how you saw a local need and turned it into a learning and working experience for kids that truly feeds your community in every sense of the word.
Thank you [00:30:00] so much for joining me and sharing your story.
Anne Kuehne: Thank you so much.
Christa Hein: To our listeners, I hope Anne's journey reminds you that big change often starts small with one person seeing a need, planting an idea, and growing it step by step. If you've been dreaming about starting your own educational program or nonprofit, let this be your encouragement to begin.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow the podcast. Leave a review and share it with another farm educator who'd love this story. Until next time, keep teaching, keep growing, and keep sharing the farm magic wherever you are.
Christa Hein: Hey farm educators. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Before you go, I've got something special for you. If you're ready to build a farm education program that people are excited to book, grab my free guide, Five Simple Steps to Growing an In-Demand Farm Education Program. It's packed with the same steps I used to grow my own farm education business.
It'll help you get noticed, attract [00:31:00] clients, and make an impact. Just head over to www.farmeducatorsroadmap.com/fivesimplesteps to get your free copy. It's quick, easy, and will make your programs irresistible. I can't wait to see what you create. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
