Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today we learn how art and gardening go hand in hand as we visit with three individuals.

We then visit the OKC Food Hub to learn about the critical role that they're providing to producers.

And finally, we visit with Dr.

Joshua Campbell as he shares with us about the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Apprenticeship Program.

So stay tuned.

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We share one goal, to serve the gardeners who inspire us.

That's what makes Oklahoma Gardening true to Oklahoma and true to gardeners.

When we think about gardening, we think about the plants, the design, and the hard work that goes into that.

But gardening is a form of art also.

Like artists, gardeners use color, texture, and form to create a unique design.

And whether you're designing a landscape, you're studying plant material, or you're putting something down on paper to create art, something about art tells us to slow down and appreciate the beauty around us.

Today we're making that connection between gardening and art as we visit with OSU Landscape Architecture Professor, an OSU Horticulture student, and an OSU Master Gardener who is a professional artist.

As they share with us the value of art in today's digital world.

My name is Qing Lana Luo.

I'm a professor of landscape architecture at Oklahoma State University.

I teach students how to design outdoor spaces so when they graduate, they can work in a design firm so that they can design amazing places.

I used to be a practicing landscape architect.

Practiced in Boston about 10 years, practiced in China, Beijing, for a little bit less than 10 years, so total 17 years, and right now I'm an academic.

I really, really enjoy teaching my students, getting connected with my students as well.

So hand sketching, hand drawing is considered a very, very important skill for us designers, for our students, because it's not only a tool, but also it is a way of thinking.

It's also an art and a science combined together.

We are not training them to be the greatest artist, we are training them to learn how to see, how to evaluate, and how to draw down their ideas and their mind.

You can take photos.

With that two hours, you can probably take 1,000 photos, but taking photos is a process to look.

So when we slow down to draw, to sketch, it's a slowdown process, it's a focus process, it's a way to see, not just a way to look.

Students sometimes are scared, and they say, hey, I am scared if I put my ink pen down, and what if I make mistakes?

So a lot of us designers are perfectionists, which sometimes is not 100% blessing.

So there is always something you felt, oh, I wish I did this yesterday, but I have to submit it today.

So there is certainly always things that we could change, we could update.

And in my mind, it's probably never perfect, but the big picture is most important.

The big picture needs to be on the right track, right direction.

That's all we look for.

So my name is Samantha Pratt.

I am a recent master's graduate from Oklahoma State University, the horticulture department.

I graduated with a master's degree in horticulture science recently, and looking into botanic arts more.

Drawing has always made me feel pretty peaceful.

I used to joke when I was young that drawing was very much what Bob Ross said about happy accidents.

No mistakes, happy accidents.

So all the things that I've had to do in science, studies, research, undergrad, graduate, they all kind of felt pressing.

And the mistakes that you could make with those things generally tended to have quite a bit of weight to them.

So when it comes to art, if you make a mistake, you can work with it and kind of go with the flow.

So being able to do that in a very stressful time, but also finding a way to incorporate that into those more stressful settings.

I think there is value to making art for yourself, even if it's not for anybody else.

It can be a personal practice.

Some folks, they journal in the morning.

You know, you can make art in the morning, first thing when you wake up.

That can be a task that you do just for you.

The technology that we have today pretty closely, to some degree, mirrors when technology first came into play with photography in 1839, first commercial camera.

Artists, botanic artists, concerned that what they were doing would become obsolete because the quick necessity of it all became taken over.

Botanic artists found a way to come out of a changing world with technology to begin and have persisted through that.

It's still a very long held tradition and the techniques and tools that are utilized for botanic illustration have been utilized for a very long time.

And that's exciting to kind of connect back with that.

This might sound a little cheesy, but when I get to draw a plant or paint a plant, it's kind of like getting to know a new person.

So usually I'll do quite a bit of research about the different structures of that plant and I kind of get to know more about it and get familiar with it.

And by the end, I have a very good understanding of who that plant is, what that plant is.

So it kind of gives me a chance to study art more, but also kind of further my study and understanding of what plants can do and what they are.

So I can confidently tell you that no matter what, if you consider yourself an artist or otherwise, taking the opportunity to have some time for yourself and draw a plant that's interesting or fascinating to you can not only give you a better understanding, but also give you a chance to kind of find that fun with drawing or with art that you enjoy to do.

My name is Debbie St.

John and I am wildlife by the St.

John.

I'm currently the president of the Canadian County Master Gardeners.

Being a master gardener has changed how I view both animals and plants and them living together.

Whenever I am viewing plants, one of the things in order to identify them, I look at the leaves and how they are structured in the stems and the flowers and what kind they are because of the fact that I also like doing the seeds of them.

So that if somebody sees the seed pods or whatever on a plant, they can idea from one of my drawings.

My work is here in gallery one at North Park Mall, and it is published nationally and worldwide right now using my colored pencils.

I started it as a hobby and I never expected it to make a living because of the fact that I always try to strive and do better than what I do right now.

I don't consider myself the best artist in the world.

There's always room to grow and to learn and a lot of it is what I like.

A lot of people like tigers.

A lot of people are the big cats.

I did my first buffalos because I found out here if I didn't have a buffalo, I'd never set foot and I did.

That was kind of nice.

So I try to do animals that people enjoy.

Scissortail contacted me three years ago and asked me to do one of the banners for the birds that they have and they have those banners out the entire summer.

The banner that's up at Scissortail during the summer months, on one side it has the heads of birds that are common in our area and on the back is a feather that identifies them.

So if you find the feather, you can look for the banner and see which bird it is.

People misunderstand about art because of the fact there's so many ways to do it.

Some people like impressionism where there's not really an object that they're looking at or drawing or painting.

They're just using the colors to insinuate what's going on.

The thing with animal art is you get to have, if the artist does it right, you get the feeling or the emotion from the animal at that time that you were doing a piece.

Usually when I'm drawing, I'm drawing and it totally captivates me, which means everything goes out of my brain except what's here.

I get a lot out of my art.

I get not only the animals themselves but the emotions that go into it, the way that people look at them, the way that people love them.

It's something that I can give back.

My art has been everywhere lately.

The years that I have been drawing and stuff, I never thought about having my art from one end of the world to the other.

So having people like it out there makes me feel like I drew something that they enjoyed.

Today, we're at the OKC Food Hub and joining me is Jenna Moore, who is the director.

And Jenna, let's talk about the role that the OKC Food Hub is providing in this overall structure to help beginning farmers.

Yeah, so we are a non-profit organization.

I guess I could call us a friendly middleman.

And we work particularly with small and mid-sized farmers in Oklahoma to connect them to more buyers, just to make the whole process easier for them to be more viable.

We also, as a non-profit, kind of pay attention to who those buyers are and make sure that everyone can have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Because essentially the old model was I produce it, now I got to go to the farmer's market and spend my Saturday there selling it.

And it's a perishable item you're dealing with.

So you guys provide a place that farmers can bring it to.

Yep, we love farmer's markets, shop at them all the time, and support those as a player in the local food system as well.

But we've noticed that particularly after growers have been growing maybe four to six years or so, they kind of have their feet under them and they're maybe selling out at the market, producing more than they can sell.

And even if they are able to staff multiple markets, they're just not quite getting those dollar figures that they need to be viable.

So we kind of provide another sales outlet for them.

And it's nice because it's a one-stop shop.

It can't be closed if it's raining.

And we're working also to kind of forward contract with them to predict like, hey, grower, you've been awesome to work with.

How about next year you just grow us 10,000 pounds of carrots or something?

And that's really helpful to them too, because if they know what the market is, they know that they're not going to waste what they grow and they can just approach and sell and drop it in one place and move along their way to back to the field probably.

Do what they want to do.

Because that's a full-time job right there.

Yeah.

And I know a lot of times when they're scaling up like that, it's hard because there are summers that are two months of heat.

They can sometimes reduce their availability of product at the end to a larger client.

Right.

But you guys work to sort of be a co -op for all that.

Yeah.

It's been difficult on years like this when it is, like you say, just so hot for so long that it's hard to find an area of the state that isn't impacted by that.

We do work a little bit with our neighboring states like Arkansas to bring in some products when we need to, to keep that consistency for our buyers.

But as you say as well, when we work with a bunch of different growers, I think probably we work with around 40 on a regular basis.

If somebody has a crop failure, if somebody has a drought, if somebody is experiencing a lot of pest pressure, we have three, four, five other growers who are supplying that item that can kind of step in and fill the gap.

So by working together in that way, we are a lot more resilient.

Okay.

And then what about on the other end?

Like, what does it take for a farmer to be a part of this with you guys?

Is there a certain capacity that they have to be able to provide?

Yeah.

So we really don't put restrictions on a farmer for like a minimum amount or anything that you need to be able to work with us.

Like I said, we do work with a lot of small to midsize, and that's a pretty good range of producers.

But I would say as long as you can fill a box, because we sell everything by the case of produce, and you're willing to drive and drop off to this location or the one in Tulsa that makes financial sense for you, then we're willing to work with you.

Right.

And what are you hearing from the more of the customers that you are then selling the products to?

What are they saying about all of this?

Yeah.

I mean, I think far and away, they are very happy to have kind of like a distributor of local foods that's pretty easy to work with and available to them.

We try to keep it very simple.

You know, we have an online website that people can log in and order from.

And I think a lot of the local retailers or schools who maybe have had an interest in sourcing local in the past still come up to a lot of barriers because managing a bunch of different individual growers and everything that's going on from them, getting them onboarded and making sure that they're paid on the time and the way that they need to dealing with the product when it isn't quite what they're used to.

It's too much time.

So they're just unable to often do that.

Whereas when they're working with us, you know, it's one website, place in my cart what I want, and it's delivered to my door.

So it just takes the amount of administrative work and like the process of finding and paying and keeping those relationships down.

So you can really just order from us like you would order from a Benny Keith or somebody else.

So who are some of these people?

What kind of organizations are you working with?

And what's the reach of that?

We work with producers all across the state.

We have a kind of mini hub in Tulsa and down here where farmers can aggregate and then redistribute.

And the same thing with the buyers as well.

So for school districts, that's one of our big customers.

We ship all across the state for different products.

We work with a third party distributor to help expand our reach.

But then we also work with independent grocery stores.

Those are, again, across the state for where things are going.

And we have a farm share program as well where we go to different workplaces and kind of provide more direct to consumer, you know, every other week, a share of fresh vegetables that they can come pick up as well.

So if there's any farmers out there that have our... Call us.

Call us today.

We have a page on our website and you can scroll to the bottom, click farmers.

And there's an application right there.

If you're a grower that you can fill out.

If you're a buyer, you can click on wholesale.

And if you're just a consumer that's like, hey, where do I shop local?

There's a big map too.

As you scroll down a little bit of all the stores and retailers where you can get local products.

So go, go visit one.

Excellent.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

Yeah.

Today, we're joined by Dr.

Joshua Campbell, who has been responsible for leading the beginning farmer and rancher program and specifically the apprenticeship grant program that we've got going on this season that we've sort of highlighted over the past few months.

Let's talk about why that grant's been so important for the economy of that sort of beginning farmer rancher program.

Yeah.

I think beginning farmers and ranchers, folks that are in the first several years of establishing their small farm business faced a whole host of challenges.

One of those is who they can employ, who wants to come work on their farm.

And so this program has tried to address some of that workforce development pipeline piece of the challenge for small scale producers.

How do we give people exposure to on-farm work in kind of a safe and educative way that gives them a taste of whether it's for them.

And it gives those farm sites the opportunity to kind of gauge whether they want somebody to come and maybe be a full time employee down the road as well.

So there's that workforce development piece that we're looking at.

And then also from the producer perspective, the program is trying to really help them think beyond production to kind of a whole host of business strategies and things that they could be thinking about.

I think most producers get into whatever agricultural enterprises that they're in because they are excited about growing food or raising livestock.

And then they run into some of those challenges related to where they're going to take their products to market them, who their customer base is.

And so this program really is helping folks think about that workforce development pipeline and then also helping them kind of broaden opportunity, think about the need for diversification with what they do.

Well, I'm sure you've seen this and I've also experienced this, that everybody involved in this is very passionate about the mission, but sometimes they don't know where they fit in or if they're qualified to fit in.

But it seems like everybody's willing to share their information.

Yeah, what I find is that small scale farmers, ranchers are some of the friendliest and most open people that you'll encounter.

Whether they have a lot of experience or a little experience, they're willing to share what they know and they're excited to do that.

And so the cool thing about this apprenticeship program is some of the farm host sites that we've engaged with this have different levels of experience.

There are different business models, but they're all really eager to share with others what they know and what they've learned.

And then they're also continuing to learn through this process.

And so, absolutely.

And so you're giving them both the actual hands-on, the apprentice, the hands-on tangible horticulture skills, but then helping the business model side for the farmers as well to extend their product.

Yeah, so the intent was to really engage the participants, the apprentices in what I like to call a non -formal work-based experience.

So they are showing up to these farms every single day and they're seeing it throughout the growing season, the good and the bad, the cold and the hot, all of that.

And they are participating in as many aspects of that business as possible.

So they really get a good sense of what it takes to run that operation.

And then as we think about the farm side, we're really encouraging them to think about how they think strategically about their business model.

And they think about opportunities for diversifying.

And so if they are selling direct to consumer, what are maybe some wholesale opportunities that they can also consider?

Or if they're doing a lot of farmer's market sales, then that's excellent.

But what are some other opportunities that they could engage in that might expand and diversify their business so that it's more resilient and that there's opportunity for them to grow?

And the OKC Food Hub has been a part of this also on that consumer end, right?

Or that delivery of the product.

Absolutely.

The OKC Food Hub has been a big partner in this whole project.

They were partners from the beginning in the development and formation of our grant proposal and really helping us identify some of the key farm sites that we would engage with.

And they have really provided an excellent opportunity for small scale farmers and ranchers to diversify in ways that maybe are not as traditional approaches to getting to market and allowing an opportunity for producers to access larger scale buyers that an individual producer by themselves probably would not be able to access.

And can you tell us a little bit about the grant specifically?

It's been going on for a year.

It's going to open up again for another year.

Where can people go to get more information and who's helping support this grant?

Yeah, so this project, this apprenticeship project is funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA NIFA, under their Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program.

And so 2027 is the final year of this project.

So we piloted this concept of an apprenticeship program in 2026, and we're repeating that in 2027 with a new cohort of participants.

So many of the same farm sites, we may add a few additional farm sites, but many of the same farm sites with a whole new crop of people.

And so we are taking applicants now, and we will have a link to that on our program web page.

And we'll also be sharing that out through social media and other avenues.

Well, Dr.

Campbell, thank you so much for sharing this information with us today.

Thank you.

And as always, if you have a question about today's show, feel free to reach out to your local county OSU Extension office or leave us a comment on social media.

There are many great horticulture activities this time of year.

Be sure and consider some of these events in the weeks ahead.

Join us next week as we head down the mother road to see what's blooming right here on Oklahoma Gardening.

And then we turn to each other.

I've got to talk to the camera.

You want me to?

I'll just.

Like I said, you can be over voguing or whatever.

To find out more information about show topics, as well as recipes, videos, articles, fact sheets, and other resources, including a directory of local Extension offices, be sure to visit our website at oklahomagardening.okstate.edu.

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Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

The Botanic Garden at OSU is home to our Studio Garden, and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful Stillwater Gym.

We would like to thank our generous underwriters, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry, and Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

Additional support is also provided by the Tulsa Garden Club.

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The Tulsa Garden Center.

The Oklahoma Horticultural Society.

And the Tulsa Herb Society.