Cultivating Community Through Agritourism: Is it the right step for you?

Kristine Reiner October 16, 2024 No Comments

Cultivating Community through Agritourism: Is it the right step for you? By Nancy Kirstein, The Good Earth Farm & Peggy Schlechter, SDSU Community Vitality

Cultivating: Building Markets with Community in Mind

Friday, November 8th, 2024 – 2:30pm MT – Wells Fargo Theater

Join Peggy and Nancy for an engaging panel discussion exploring the vibrant world of agritourism, where agriculture meets adventure! Peggy will delve into the myriad ways agritourism is transforming rural economies and enhancing community connections. Nancy will discuss her experience in transforming her farm in eastern South Dakota into an agritourism operation.

Nancy Kirstein is the owner of The Good Earth Farm in Lennox, SD. Nancy is a former English teacher turned vegetable farmer, event planner, and animal sanctuary executive director.

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For the past 13 years with SDSU Extension, Peggy has focused on entrepreneurship and agritourism as well as other community programs such as grant writing workshops, strategic planning sessions and the Marketing Hometown America program. She grew up on a ranch in central South Dakota and now makes a ranch north of Rapid City her home. Peggy possesses both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in education from SDSU. Peggy loves small towns and rural life in South Dakota and promotes South Dakota every chance she gets.

Dakota Food Rx: Connecting Local Foods and Healthcare Using Produce Prescriptions

Kristine Reiner October 16, 2024 No Comments

Dakota Food Rx: Connecting Local Foods and Healthcare Using Produce Prescriptions by Geb Bastian, SDSU Extension & Jared Lukens-Black, Budding Moon Farm

Connections Across the Generations


Saturday, November 9th, 10:30am MT – The Joe Rovere Minnilusa Pioneer Room

Imagine going to your doctor and instead of getting a prescription for a medication, you get a prescription for fresh fruits and vegetables! For more and more South Dakotans with low income and dealing with diet-related chronic conditions, this dream is becoming a reality through produce prescription programs.

Join Geb and Jared as they discuss how the Budding Moon Farm Veggie Rx program has expanded into the larger Dakota Food Rx program, and how local producers and healthcare providers have come together to improve healthcare outcomes through the power of local foods.

Rx Program

Geb Bastian is an assistant professor and extension nutrition & health specialist at South Dakota State University. His research and extension outreach aim to bolster local food systems and improve access to healthy foods for all South Dakotans. Geb is the principal investigator of Dakota Food Rx, an expansion of the Veggie Rx program originally started at Budding Moon Farm.

Budding Moon Farm Info

Jared has been operating Budding Moon Farm – a mixed vegetable farm distributing through a sliding-scale CSA and Prescription Produce Program – since 2018 in Spearfish, SD. Before learning vegetable production from a number of farms in the Pacific Northwest, Jared was a middle school teacher in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN. The goal of Budding Moon Farm is to implement innovative programs that increase nutrition security in the community, while also supporting a healthy ecosystem and maintaining financial viability. Jared continues this work beyond the borders of South Dakota by collaborating with the Fair Share CSA Coalition and CSA Innovation Network on improving equitable access to healthy food.

SARE Panel: SOYL (Sowing Opportunities for Youth Leadership) Sustainable Agriculture Project

Kristine Reiner October 7, 2024 No Comments

Connections Across the Generations

Friday, November 8th, 2024 – 9:00am MT – The Joe Rovere | Minnilusa Pioneer Room

SARE Panel: SOYL (Sowing Opportunities for Youth Leadership) Sustainable Agriculture Project

SOYL (Sowing Opportunities for Youth Leadership) Sustainable Agriculture Project

SOYL is a Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE)-funded project for youth in YFS’ Middle School Program. Participants studied sustainable agriculture through a series of class activities and field trips to local farms and ranches. The final project activity was to showcase their learning by teaching their younger peers at YFS’ Girls Inc. about a sustainable agriculture practice of their choice.

  • Youth Led Sustainable and Ethical Beekeeping
    • Marla BullBear, Lakota Youth Development
      • Marla C. Bull Bear, M.A. is Sicangu (Burnt Thigh) Lakota, a wife of Naca Charles W. BullBear, mother and grandmother and has been sharing traditional knowledge with youth for over 30 years. Mrs. Bull Bear, founding Executive Director of Lakota Youth Development (LYD) received her Master’s in Community Counseling from a tribal university located on the Rosebud Reservation Her passion is the work of Lakota Youth Development and its culturally specific prevention program, teaching self-sufficiency with land stewardship and youth development through Lakota language immersion, apprenticeships in bee keeping and cultural heritage tourism enterprises
  • SOYL (Sowing Opportunities for Youth Leadership) Sustainable Agriculture Project
    • Sharon Oney & Destiny Durham, Youth & Family Services
      • Sharon Oney is Chief Grants Officer and Garden Project Director at Youth & Family Services, Inc. (YFS) in Rapid City who is an enthusiastic gardener and beekeeper with a consuming interest in healthy foods. Destiny Durham has a degree in Environmental Physical Science from BHSU and has shared garden education activities with hundreds of kids, pre-K – 8th grade, at YFS for nearly two years. She has a passion for stewardship of the land and enjoys sharing her passion with others.
  • Multi-state safe and humane shearing workshops
    • Jaelyn Whaley, SDSU Extension
      • Jaelyn Whaley has served SD as the Sheep Field Specialist for 4 years in Lemmon. She grew up raising sheep and cattle and throughout graduate school, helped coach wool judging. Her passion for both lamb and wool production continues through her extension efforts.

Keynote Feature: Celebrity Chef Justin Warner 

Kristine Reiner September 25, 2024 No Comments

Everything You Wanted To Know About Food Television But Were Afraid To Ask

Cultivating: Building Markets with Community in Mind

Saturday, November 9th, 2024 – 1:00pm MT – Wells Fargo Theater

What To Expect: Celebrity Chef Justin Warner will give a fun yet organized overview of what goes into making a Food Network show and highlight the local and sustainable approaches to food sourcing that is used on set.

Justin Warner was raised in Hagerstown, Maryland and developed a curiosity for cuisine at a young age.  He moved to Colorado to work in a sushi restaurant where he would meet his future wife and business partner, Brooke, who hailed from South Dakota.  Along the way he became recognized by Michelin, the New York Times, and many other publications.  He won season 8 of Food Network Star and is currently the culinary ambassador on Food Network’s #1 show, Tournament of Champions. Justin and his wife own and operate Bokujo Ramen and bb’s Natural in Rapid City, SD.

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Keynote Feature: Mariah Gladstone, Piikuni (Blackfeet) and Tsalagi (Cherokee)

Kristine Reiner September 25, 2024 No Comments

A Recipe for Resilience

Cultivating: Building Markets with Community in Mind

Friday, November 8th, 2024 – 10:30am MT – Wells Fargo Theater

What to expect: Locally harvested, pre-contact foods are a testament to the resilience of Native lifestyles and should be part of our modern kitchens. Mariah will discuss how to prepare nutritious meals using readily available and affordable foods in new and easy ways. Her presentation will also examine traditional Indigenous foodways, the impact of colonization on our diets, and the health and cultural benefits of reconnecting to our traditional foods.

Mariah Gladstone, Piikuni (Blackfeet) and Tsalagi (Cherokee), grew up in Northwest Montana on and near the Blackfeet Reservation. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Environmental Engineering and returned home where she began her work on food advocacy. She developed Indigikitchen, an online cooking platform, to revitalize and re-imagine Native foods. She then earned a Master’s degree at SUNY-ESF in the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Mariah has been recognized as a Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellow. She has shared the importance of reconnecting to traditional foods at events throughout North America and abroad, as well as through appearances on the Today Show, CBC, and more.

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Native Tea Time Workshop

Connections Across the Generations

Friday, November 8th, 2024 – 12:45-2:15pm MT – The Joe Rovere | Minnilusa Pioneer Room

For thousands of years, Indigenous people have hunted, fished, farmed and foraged for food on this continent. Mariah practices many of those traditions today and teaches others how to incorporate indigenous foods into their contemporary diets. She will bring a variety of plants she has grown and foraged that have traditionally been used to make tea, such as cedar, yarrow and mint. She will make some teas for participants to sample, then work with them to create their own personalized teas to take home. Throughout this hands-on workshop, Mariah will also discuss traditional Native foodways, changes that took place with colonization, and what is happening with the Indigenous Food Movement today.