Episode 30 - Farm Discovery at Live Earth Farm
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. Let's dig in.
Christa Hein: Hello, welcome back to the Farm Educators Roadmap. Today I'm joined by Jessica Ridgeway, the Executive Director and one of the founders of Farm Discovery at Live Earth Farm in California. Farm Discovery has been connecting children and families to organic farming, sustainability, and real food for over 15 years, offering everything from field trips to farm camps, to deep hands-on learning experiences.
Jessica, I'm so excited to hear how this all began for you, how that evolved into founding a farm education nonprofit and what you've built over the years. Thank you so much for being here.
Jessica Ridgeway: Oh, thank you for having me.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. So, I want to start with your story to really understand what you've built. I'd love to go back a bit.
When you think back to your younger self, what first drew you towards environmental work or the land, and what led you to pursue your masters in environment and natural resources?
Jessica Ridgeway: That's a great question. I was really lucky to have a mom who made me go outside when I was a kid. And she really, she just forced us to play outside all day, during our free time and growing up in Connecticut, that meant in the snow or in the heat or in the humidity. And I think from there, you know, developed a love for the outdoors that was just kind of very ingrained.
I took it totally for granted that everybody had these outdoor experiences. After college, I studied anthropology in college and so I pursued a path of just being very interested in humanity and why we do the things we do. And then I worked for a year saving as much money as I could.
I worked about seven jobs, at one time, and saved money so I could travel. I just was really, I wanted to see this world I'd been learning so much about. And it was on those travels - we traveled through the South Pacific and Southeast Asia mostly. And then again in South America and Central America.
I just saw that, you know, people - we all have things in common. We all care for our families deeply. We all need clean water to drink, and we all need healthy food to nourish us. And that food is really so intertwined in culture and in family. And so, when I was applying for grad schools, I was looking for a way to work in either water issues or food issues, but food really drew me because. I mean, everybody eats. And that experience of growing your own food is so fulfilling. Even if it's just a little tomato in a pot that fails because tomatoes don't grow well in pots. It just is a, it's a fulfilling experience.
And so, you know, seeing people grow their food all throughout the world, seeing, you know, a snake harvested off the street and then grilled up, in the restaurant, things like that. It just, it, it made me feel connected to people around the world. And so that's what I pursued was the food in service of humanity.
Christa Hein: Ah, nice. So, I read that your master's thesis focused on participatory action research in northern Vermont. Can you explain what that means and how working collaboratively with the community shaped how you think about education now.
Jessica Ridgeway: Yeah, it's interesting. When I started that project, I didn't even have that terminology. But about halfway through my master's program, I met a teacher - he was actually a PhD candidate at UC, Santa Cruz, who was applying for a job at the University of Vermont where I was in grad school. And I sat on the hiring committee. And he was doing participatory action research through the community ecology network at UC, Santa Cruz. Also, my husband and sister were living in Santa Cruz at the time, so we had this connection and he became a mentor to me and really kind of opened my eyes to participatory action research. And I was already doing it. So, the way participatory action research works is that it's not a person going into a community defining a problem and trying to solve it, but rather, the researcher going into the community and asking the community what the issue that they're looking to solve might be.
And it's a process of communication and iteration and reiteration. And it is limited. I mean, I only had a two-year master's program. There's only so much you can do in that amount of time. But we did get through one iteration I got connected to a farmer in Jeffersonville, Vermont who connected me with a teacher and a principal who were interested in growing food for the school. And we found another landowner that had land next to the school and built a school garden with a fifth-grade classroom, and then also developed a curriculum together that we tested with those students that year.
Christa Hein: So that action of learning together with the community has that molded the way that you do programs at Farm Discovery?
Jessica Ridgeway: Yes, absolutely. We were very intentional about - when starting Farm Discovery – about making sure it was meeting community needs. It definitely grew out of needs defined by the community. And also, I was a transplant to Santa Cruz, so I was in a place of learning the community at the same time. And you know, growing together and building my own personal network at the same time as I was building this program.
We started the nonprofit because schools were asking to come to the farm for experiences. So right away we knew that was a need. I kind of threw out the idea to teachers, you know, does it need to be standards aligned?
And the answer was kind of, well, yes, it makes it easier for us to justify coming to the farm. And many teachers really just want their kids to have a great outdoor experience. So, we continually shape and reshape our programs based on, you know, it can be day to day what a teacher needs that day versus what the teacher the next day needs.
We have so many tools in our toolkit, we just pull different ones out for different programs. In the first year when we were getting the nonprofit started, I was like doing the paperwork to get the nonprofit, the 501(c)(3), I just found every teacher and principal email I could in the area and sent an email out saying, hey, we're already offering field trips - we have a school coming once a week to our farm. Do you want to come too? Do you want to join us in this adventure? We had 800 kids come out that first year. It was such an unfulfilled need.
And there were some things going on. We have an amazing community of farm education in Santa Cruz. We have - Life Lab is based here, which is a school garden program known around the country. But what they can offer shifts. And we happened to be getting started in South County right when they had been focusing on South County and were moving into focusing on more on North County. And so there just happened to be this extra need at that time to serve the South County where we're based and where that's our home.
Christa Hein: I want to back up a little and find out what brought you from Vermont then to California and even how did you even get involved in the start of Farm Discovery? What was that like?
Jessica Ridgeway: So, I grew up in New England and I grew up going to Vermont. My grandparents lived there part-time. And then I went to school at UC, Santa Barbara for college. And always wanted to live on the West Coast and met my husband and we both were ready to go to grad school at the same time. And he got into school in Santa Cruz and I got into school in Vermont - and we decided to spend our first year of marriage apart at different grad school programs. So, when I knew that when my two years were over, I was going to be moving back to the West Coast. As I was finishing my master's degree, he was applying for jobs and we had the choice of the Ventura, Santa Barbara area where we had met, or the Santa Cruz area where both our sisters lived. And we chose to be near our family and landed in Santa Cruz. And I had spent three months here in college on an inter-campus transfer but had never really lived here and didn't have any community besides our family.
So when I landed, I had worked for a summer in-between grad school years on a property with a guy practicing permaculture, just kind of helping like day labor basically in landscaping and growing food. So, I reached out to that network and found another small farm up in the mountains that was growing really intensively on one acre and offering a CSA program because I needed more farming skills. I had very minimal food-growing skills and if I wanted to teach it, I needed to learn it first.
So through that farm, I got connected with Live Earth. And Tom Bros, who runs Live Earth Farm, had basically a couple weeks before told the Montessori adolescent community that they could come to the farm every Thursday and do their school day on the farm but there was very little plan for how that was going to work. And so, when I reached out saying, hey, I'm really interested in farm-based education and I would love to come check out your farm, he said, come on over, come check it out. We had a lovely walk around the farm and talked about the programs and about what I had done and what I was interested in doing.
And he generously took me on to help out with the Montessori program. There was a little bit of income from that program, so that was my first little bit of pay to be there at Live Earth. And I would help on Thursdays with the program, spend another day planning like on Tuesdays, and then the rest of the week work in the fields with the field crew.
And that's how I started there.
Christa Hein: What a beautiful little bit of serendipity that happened right there.
Jessica Ridgeway: Oh yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah, definitely. And that work in the fields was, you know, the best base I could get. Live Earth Farm has an amazing team of crew working in the fields with an amazing set of skills and to learn farming from them was - I mean, their efficiency and their speed is amazing. Their knowledge is amazing. And I just felt so lucky to just get thrown in. A bunch of the women that worked on the crew were raising families and the kids would be around. And about a year in, I got pregnant with my first daughter. So we were, you know, raising our kids together in the fields and it was a pretty idyllic situation and there is no easier way to build community than through children. Children are just community builders, just like food is.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. So, it sounds like the farm was already in existence and then you were starting the education programs. Is that right?
Jessica Ridgeway: Yes. So Live Earth Farm is what started as a CSA farm, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. So that community piece was always very integral to what they did. They started in 1996 and from the very beginning we're hosting farm events. They always had a solstice party and a harvest festival. And inviting their CSA members to join them on the farms, which led to preschools as drop off locations and then preschools coming out to visit. And so, there was a lot happening before I ever arrived.
Christa Hein: So, in those first few months or years, what was that process like on the ground for you to take an existing farm and build onto it with these educational programs that maybe were already started to be planned, but also that were in your mind and in your vision?
Jessica Ridgeway: Yeah, it was very dynamic. There was always something new to work on or to fix or to get better at. I had a pretty solid base of like activity ideas and things that I wanted to incorporate into our curriculum. It probably wasn't even until like 10 years in that we institutionalized in our mission that we teach farming and nutrition and environmental stewardship, but we were doing all of that all along.
It took about a year to get our nonprofit status. So in that first year, I was really doing paperwork but able to focus more on the education piece, slowly building the systems of having an organization. But we really weren't fundraising yet. And I feel really lucky that we weren't fundraising in that first year because it's a whole other set of skills and focus.
But you know, as soon as we got our nonprofit status, that had to kick in too. So, it was just very slowly organically building systems to make that all work. And it was only me to begin with and we had a couple short-term interns along the way and then about a year and a half in, we hired our first full-season intern. And now we're up to a staff of about seven. So, we grew, but we grew slowly.
Christa Hein: So, I want to shift to what Farm Discovery looks like today. Can you tell us a little bit about what the farm looks like and the types of programs that you offer for schools and families?
Jessica Ridgeway: So, some of the changes that happened along the way were Live Earth Farm was farming on the piece of land that we run the education programs on. And then about 10 years ago, they were offered an adjacent property that literally shared a property line and started moving their production onto that property, which is mostly down a large hill.
So logistically, we went from having the farming surrounding our education programs and just walking through it to kind of having to have separate fields that were run by the education programs. For the education programs, that shift changed kind of how we worked quite a bit because we had to put a lot more energy into actually growing food. But that also led to us having food and not impacting the farm in the same way. We didn't have to always be taking from the farm, from the production fields for the education programs.
And there was a lot of, in that period of time, intentional discussion about who's in charge of what and what does Farm Discovery do and what does Live Earth Farm do? And what are we best at and how do we support each other? And now we have Farm Discovery, mainly running that upper property. We have about three acres that we're managing and growing food on and Live Earth Farm really is working on that other adjacent property. And having built that all together, we really were able to establish systems where our students really can integrate into the production farm when it's appropriate, and then also have real work to do in our education spaces.
Christa Hein: So, what types of education programs are offered in your community on the farm?
Jessica Ridgeway: So, I used to throw out the number nine, and then the ecological farming conference visited the farm and they said, it sounds like you have more than nine programs. And I never sat down to count. So, we offer field trips - that was kind of the basis. Our second program we started was summer camps which we grew to a full 10 weeks of summer in the last couple years. And we doubled the number of kids we were serving the last couple years too. So, we used to have about 30 kids per week of camp, and now we're doing around 60.
We used to have a program for moms and new babies, and that was because I was tied to that community and as my babies grew up it seemed to take more and more work to kind of bring in those new moms, so we let that program go. It's always kind of in my back pocket because it was really special, but we try to meet the needs of the community. So, if a program is taking a lot of work to keep going, it's not meeting the needs of the community. It's not being asked for if you have to put a lot of work into keeping it going. So that is how our programs evolve. If there's a need arises, then we try to build into that need.
That looked really interesting during COVID. We got shut down in March. We had a very full spring. We were expecting over a thousand students to come for field trips and all of a sudden, we didn't have students coming for field trips, but we had organizations asking if there was extra produce. The meal and pantry programs couldn't - the way they had gotten produce in the past was basically to go shopping at the food bank, but logistically, they couldn't go into the food bank coolers. So, it was just kind of putting a wrench in the whole system. So, we shifted our energy during those first three months to build up this produce program, and we were basically taking anything that was left over from markets or over planted or over harvested and getting it to partner programs that were serving meals and building grocery bags for community members in need.
And then by that summer, the community was saying, hey, like I have to be at work and I need someone to watch my kids. I'm a nurse. I have to work. I'm a fireman. I have to work. And so we adjusted our camp program to be as COVID-safe as it could be. You know, we worked, we had little pods of kids, and everyone had their own materials to work with, and it was much smaller but we found ways to, again, meet the needs of the community at the time. And that evolved once kids didn't go back to school. It evolved into continuing that program through the fall. It's probably the only opportunity we'll ever have to run summer camp year-round. But it was a really special, and we were lucky to be an organization that already worked outside with kids and already had these skills of managing children and managing them outside and meeting various needs, very different needs with different kids. And so, we just kept doing what we do but evolving it to work and we never really had to stop operations. And then didn't have to restart again as things opened back up.
A couple things dropped off. We used to do these really big community events. We used to have a harvest festival, and we had, I think four or 500 people show up for the last one we did. Same with our sheep-to-shawl fair and we didn't bring those back. I think as an organization, we're in a place where big community events are really great for getting the word out about what you do and bringing lots of people in to see what you do. But you know, we're 18 years old now. People know about us and we're not needing to build the community in that way and instead we can focus on kind of those more intimate experiences on the farm.
Christa Hein: So, it sounds like you're still offering lots of different types of programs for the community. I made this list from your website because it was so amazing. Pickling, candle-making, sourdough, animal husbandry, fermented drinks, watercolor, focaccia, natural dyes, printmaking, mushroom foraging. That sounds incredible!
So, those programs are offered to just public in the community?
Jessica Ridgeway: Yeah, that's our workshop program. The field trips and farm school and summer camp are all really focused, mostly on elementary through middle school age kids. And we felt like there was space to offer something more for adults. We'd also have family events like, U-picks and we work with the Monterey Regional Parks District to bring families to the farm on Saturdays. But these workshops were really a way to give adults something to do on the farm and we're really still just building that up. We've always done a couple here and there. But this season of workshops, that list you just read off, that's the first time we've offered this many.
And I think it's about a four-month period. So, you know, we're piloting.
Christa Hein: That sounds incredible. I want to jump back to your youth programs. You mentioned the farm school and I saw that that has overnights. Do you have overnight accommodations there or do the kids tent? What are the logistics of that?
Jessica Ridgeway: Yeah, they tent. We do have one space that can fit about 20 kids head to toe on the ground on camping mats. And then we have these beautiful straw bale structures that can fit about three kids plus a chaperone. So, it depends on the school group and their needs and the weather and all those things.
But we basically have a garden space that we call Mada Ganza. And it's, it's less than an acre, but it has like built-in ponds, and it has kind of multiple levels. So, when people are staying there, they're kind of spread out around this garden, either in tents or in those spaces. And then they use our kitchen classroom as their main kitchen and either the school brings all the food and kind of coordinates their own food, or we offer that service and we do all the meals with the kids. They have a little bit of choice around the menu, but we do three meals a day and when they wake up in the morning, they come help us harvest eggs and feed the goats and then there's a couple kids helping with breakfast. And then everybody goes and gets ready for the day, and we harvest veggies and plant stuff out and weed all afternoon or muck the goats and just kind of do farm work for the day.
Christa Hein: What an amazing, yeah, what a great experience for them to feel like they're really a part of it for those couple of days and living on site. Oh, that's amazing.
Jessica Ridgeway: It's a really fun program. It's one of my favorites. It's like outdoor school. We basically do outdoor school, but it's on a farm, so it's a little more focused than outdoor school can be about all kinds of things.
Christa Hein: So, I also want to ask about what sounds like was maybe the founding program was the connection with Wavecrest Montessori. Is that still a program that's going on where once a week that school comes out to the farm?
Jessica Ridgeway: Yes, it is. Yeah. So, we have the Santa Cruz Montessori seventh and eighth graders every Thursday for the whole school day, and they break up into four different groups. Student choice and student-led initiatives is a really important part of the Montessori model. So, they have choices. They get introduced to the four different groups that they can join and then they kind of choose based on what the group will be doing in each season. And then in their second year, they get to do their top three again. So, the groups are field studies and it's really working in the fields and taking care of the animals.
Micro-economy - they run a farm stand, so they plan for what they're going to bring. They harvest it. And pay for it, and then sell it on campus and keep the books and figure out if they made any money. There's an art group, very focused mostly on nature-based art, but sometimes it's, you know, holiday or seasonally maybe not nature-based, but seasonally-appropriate art projects. And the last group is health and wellness. And health and wellness makes lunch for everybody. So, the kids spend about 10 weeks in each group. And the health and wellness, for example, they'll plan a whole menu on Tuesday, make sure they get a list from us of what's available so they're very seasonally tied into the seasons, using stuff as much as they can from the farm. And then they budget for a shopping trip and then they make everything from scratch. And they usually make a complete meal plus dessert for about 45 people every Thursday.
Christa Hein: There's so much going on there. I'm curious, after more than 15 years, 18 years, you said, what impact that the farm makes feels most meaningful to you?
Jessica Ridgeway: I think what keeps coming up most recently is the social emotional impact of kids spending time outdoors and in community and in like a different structure. There's none of the like classroom hierarchy stuff happening on the farm. Because it's so different, lifts up the skills of different kids.
Like sometimes it's the kids who struggle the most in the classroom who are like the superstars of the farm. And you just see so much light in the kids. And camp is the, you know, it's the easiest to see because some of those kids are on the farm for 10 weeks all summer, or every summer for one week. But you just see this like relaxation and excitement and just joy. And also, the challenges of figuring out the dynamics of a new friend group. But that all just kind of gets worked through and played through and it's really special to see kids just thriving and not on devices.
Christa Hein: Yeah, absolutely. So, when you look back on your journey from way back from when you were doing your graduate research to founding a nonprofit to where you are today, what thread connects all of that work in your life?
Jessica Ridgeway: Food.
Christa Hein: Hmm.
Jessica Ridgeway: Food, cooking, eating. I have a daughter who has Crohn's disease and is on a very restrictive diet to manage the disease and to me, it was so interesting because it was such a like personal experience of what we're trying to do on the farm for the whole community. It was like she cannot not eat [00:26:00] organic. Like she has to eat organic produce. She can't eat refined anything. And so, it became all about just nourishing her in this like very under-processed way. It was like, oh, I know how to do this. This is what we teach. So, I was having conversations with like nutritionists at Stanford Medicine about nutrition and about getting access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
And it was just like this full circle moment of we are doing this for the community, we're doing this with the community, and everybody deserves access to this. You know, not just my kiddo and potentially as a way of preventing things like Crohn's.
Christa Hein: Yeah. Absolutely. And circling back to what you said at the beginning, that that common thread as well is that everybody eats and so yeah.
Jessica Ridgeway: Yeah. And it's such an opportunity to eat well. Eating is such an amazing opportunity for sitting down together, learning something together, sharing history and sharing culture and like being in charge of our own health, you know, of being able to make choices that make us healthy.
Christa Hein: So as the executive director and one of the founders, how has your role shifted throughout the time that you've been there?
Jessica Ridgeway: Oh, so much. In the early days, I was in the fields with the kids. I have my big farm hat on and my big muck boots and leading field trips. That was my role. It has shifted a lot. I had, you know, I had to learn how to fundraise and do all of that, and I would say around 15 years in, it really became about like institutionalizing our systems so that we could grow and mentor. We hire a lot of young people and there's a lot of movement between jobs when people are young, so there's always turnover. And institutionalizing - what I mean by that is having procedures and having documents and like learning how to teach budgeting and learning how to teach.
Kind of all of those background things became a bigger part of my role. Kind of, you know, I can't do all the things anymore. It's too big. So, yeah, to kind of designing the system so that those things get done well and checked up on. And that's my role now. Yeah.
Christa Hein: All those behind-the-scenes things are so important.
Jessica Ridgeway: They are, they are. They're really not always the fun part. But if I'm doing a good job, then that means my educators they’re out in the garden and I'm getting to hear these squeals of delight because they're able to do a good job out there. So, my office is still like right in the middle of the farm.
Christa Hein: So, what are your hopes for Farm Discovery in the years ahead?
Jessica Ridgeway: I just hope that we get to keep doing what we're doing. You know, we have about oh 5,000 kids and families on the farm every year. I hope that we get to keep providing access to this beautiful space and keep growing food and keep - our newest projects have been with like AmeriCorps and College Core. So, providing more opportunities for young adults to build into this system. And kind of maintaining the capacity. To keep pivoting where needed and meeting the needs where they're needed.
Our most recent project has been a food waste diversion. So, we brought in three California Climate Action Fellows, and they've been building systems within the farm to make sure to really maximize the produce that's going out for donation. And just in like the first six months of them being there, we diverted another, like an additional 20,000 pounds of produce. So, we were hovering around 50 and it went to 75 and it was just like, just by building that capacity a little bit. And you know, that's tied into climate and it's tied into people's health and it's just one more way that we get to do all these things that we want to do for our community and with our community.
So, maintaining capacity to meet those needs, that's my goal.
Christa Hein: Yep. So, I always like to ask people for their advice. For listeners who feel called to start farm education work, what do you think is most important for them to know?
Jessica Ridgeway: Gosh, that's a good one. I would say taking time to get to know the community and the environment, not just the, you know, you have to know what your farm can manage, and you have to know what your community needs. And you have to know the climate of your area. There's like all this baseline knowledge that it really makes sense to take the time to learn before you get started.
Christa Hein: So, before we close, how can listeners learn more about Farm Discovery or connect with you online?
Jessica Ridgeway: Oh, easy. Farmdiscovery.org, that's our website. We're on social media also: Farm Discovery. And my email address is on our website, and I am on our Instagram sometimes, so you can DM us or send an email. We're on LinkedIn too. Find us there. Yep, happy to share. Happy to mentor, happy to collaborate.
Christa Hein: Fantastic. Jessica, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.
Jessica Ridgeway: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I can't wait to hear the others.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. This conversation so highlighted how powerful education is when it's rooted in community, sustainability, and farming. To our listeners, if today's conversation stirred something in you, maybe that nudge to start empowering families in your own community or building something meaningful around food or farming, I hope you'll take that next step.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast and leave a review. It truly helps more farm educators find this community. Until next time, keep teaching, keep growing, and keep connecting people to the land.
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 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.
