Okay, okay, we're going to go live now and open the webinar. We are definitely live now. Welcome friends we'll get started momentarily as we let folks filter into the room. Welcome. Thank you for joining us this morning. Putting in the chat a link to today's document which will contain links to library resources as well as links to our panel.  And all of the events we've done since shelter in place pretty much. So check out the YouTube it's very robust. We've had amazing folks like Angela Davis Chanel Chanel Miller is not on there but we did have her. So definitely go seek out our YouTube channel. We'll give it just a moment for folks to fill in before I give my library announcements. Welcome friends. Today you are here for a panel discussion about edible food recovery during COVID-19. And this is a continued partnership with the San Francisco Department of Environment. And as I mentioned this will be available again on YouTube. We welcome you to the unceded land of the Eloni tribal people and acknowledge the many raw mutish Eloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards of the lands in which we work and reside here in the Bay Area. We welcome you to put in the chat what native land you belong to. And I'll, I'll in a bit put a, I'm going to put it right now. If you don't know what land you're from you can use this map to find out. We also want to acknowledge the horrendous violence against our Asian and Asian American communities and we stand in solidarity with those communities. And the library is not a neutral institution. We want to acknowledge that the entanglement of anti black and anti Asian stereotypes, all uphold white supremacy, and that we believe everyone has a stake in dismantling white supremacy. Um, let's see. We have a lot going on at the library. If you haven't heard we are reopening very, very soon, May 3. But the pandemic is still happening so don't forget to wear your masks and protect all my library family out there and all of our families and friends working in the streets and serving the city. Thank you very much and we have been partnering with SF environment we had a great Earth Day program on Thursday night which you should catch on YouTube. Jane Kim and Thayer Walker of Inkedwell Studio. So amazing couple and all of their work was great and they did a great presentation so go seek that out I'll put the link in the chat in a bit. Wednesday, next Wednesday we have essayist poet, cultural critic, Hanif Abder Kweep, in conversation with our poet laureate Tongo Eisen Martin discussing Abder Kweep's new book, A Little Devil in America, a partnership with Moad. And we, I can't even believe it's May but it is May, like just right around the corner, and we'll be celebrating AAPI month, and I concentrate mostly on adult programs but we have all intergenerational programming happening at the library virtually. So I will breeze through these I might stop at a few that I really am excited about a partnership with Kearney Street Workshop. Another poet, Mariel DeWong, will be presenting her new book, along with a whole group of poets so please come check that one out. Martin Yan. Tressay is a graphic novel that's been just been optioned for Netflix. And the good thing about one of the good things about sheltering in place and doing virtual programming is we get to bring folks from all over the place, which is an example today as well. One artist and author, one from Holland, one from the Philippines. So these are, is going to be amazing. And like I said I'm breezing through these but you get the idea that we have a ton of events happening throughout May, and throughout summer we're about ready to launch summer stride as well. Heather Knight and Peter Hartlub from SF Chronicle and Total SF Podcast are now doing a quarterly book club with us and we're launching it off with home baked, our own Alia Vols, and talking about her mom, Marijuana and the Stoning of San Francisco amazing book, it's got humor, but it also has some deep SF history involved. On the same page author for May is Vanessa Hua. They're not familiar with on the same page it's where we try to get the entire city to read the same book at the same time, come out to the other talk and come out to the book club. It's really the book clubs have been a really great way to reconnect with our community. So please join us. If you don't follow Chinatown pretty on Instagram I encourage you to do so amazing photos of stylish, stylish and wise elder elders of Chinatown. All right, and now today, along with the SF environment we present a panel of amazing organizations who are recovering edible food for people in the community who need it most. And I'm going to pass it off to so go made of the SF environment. Fantastic. Thank you so much and he says so many exciting things going on at the library. Give me a moment while I share my screen with you all. Beautiful. Okay, good morning everyone again I am so come on with the Department of the environment. And today I have my colleague Alexa Kilty, and we will be talking about how zero waste is connected to food recovery and food waste prevention. But to start off, as I said we're with the San Francisco Department of the environment and our mission is to provide solutions that advance climate protection and enhance the quality of life for all San Franciscans. So this is our agenda for today, Alexa is going to go through a zero waste overview why we're tackling food waste prevention and food recovery. And then we're going to have four amazing organizations share what they have been doing in this realm, I'm really excited because some of these I do know but didn't know the extent of work that they were doing so I think this is great that we understand what's going on in San Francisco. So if you have questions Q&A afterwards, feel free to put your questions in the Q&A portion or in the chat and we will try and have someone respond to you if we don't get to it in the chat then we will definitely have verbal responses and then we will have closing remarks. So with that, I am going to turn it over to my colleague Alexa to start. Hi everyone, I'm Alexa Kelty and the residential zero waste senior coordinator at Department of the environment at work with SoCo, and I'm super excited to be here with you all to talk about one of my favorite subjects. But I wanted to create a little bit of groundwork for you all to understand how this fits into the city's overall goals. As you know, the city of San Francisco is striving towards zero waste, and we had a zero waste by 2020 goal that we did not need. So more recently we've sort of shifted our, our priorities, where we still want to cut landfilling in half by 50%, but we also included additional piece we want to reduce what we call generation. We want to reduce what we're putting in the compost bin, the recycling bin and the landfill bin by 15%. Because we know we're not going to meet our climate goals by just recycling and composting alone. And we've also discovered there's a lot of edible food going in our compost. Next slide please. So to give a little background, some of you may have heard about 40% of all the food grown in the US or raised, including meat is landfill or wasted in some capacity that's a huge amount of food and that means greenhouse gases are being emitted through that process. They're saying it's about 18 million tons of greenhouse gases are emitted from our wasted food, and much of that is edible. So we know and recently with the COVID pandemic, I talked with our partners as a food bank, and they were serving about 30,000 families every week who were food insecure prior to COVID. And then since COVID started those numbers went up to 50 to 60,000 families in San Francisco every week. So the need is huge. We all know this. And it's going up around us. So what, what is San Francisco doing the department environment around this. Go ahead. Next slide. So there's sort of two prongs we want to reduce wasted food right we shouldn't be producing and purchasing food that we don't need over production. I'm sure you all have seen it at the University cafeterias or tech cafeterias where there's abundance of food being produced that's not necessarily being consumed so we want to be called that food waste prevention. The other arm we want to maximize is food rescue and food donation. One of the partnerships we've joined is the Pacific Coast Collaborative. This was started by Governor Brown, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gases and there's a number of different program areas I work with the food waste reduction group. So we partnered with British Columbia Vancouver, Washington, Seattle, Oregon, Portland, State of California, Oakland recently joined we're super excited and stop waste Alameda County and Los Angeles and of course, San Francisco. The goal is to approach supermarkets and other supply chain generators of food and ask them to join our goal of 50% food waste reduction by 2030. And it basically is an opportunity to collaborate with supermarkets to reduce that food in a non competitive atmosphere. And they're sharing their data with us we partnered with refed is a fantastic group working in the space. World Wildlife Fund, if you didn't know is doing a huge amount of work in the food space because they know wildlife need land and right now we're cultivating a lot of the land that could be used as habitat and that food is then getting wasted. And then, yeah, there's all the jurisdictions involved that I mentioned, working towards this goal. Next slide please. So we're working with the state of California in 2020. State of California passed a short live climate pollutant bill as the 13 a3 the big summary, I'll give you there's a lot in that bill but basically it's requiring all large generators of food to donate their, their food to people in need, and that has to be an environment is going to be working with all these large generators when I say large generators I mean big huge kitchens institutions hospitals that are generating a lot of food, and we're going to be tracking their donations so that's super exciting. Next slide please. I also received a grant from Cal Recycle about two years ago for $500,000 we're super excited to install food waste tracking and donation software so there's three partners we're working with lean path. So if you guys are interested in the idea and replay encourage y'all check them out. They, they do some great work around matching donations so for food generator has something they want to donate they can put it in this app, and the app automatically connects it to organization so that way we're not donating or dumping food on organizations that won't be able to consume it. And then lean path is more food waste reduction focus so upstream they're they're looking at how to how do chefs maximize their ordering or reduce their ordering so they don't have ways to begin. Next slide please. So next steps forward for Department of the environment would definitely are going to be looking at legislation, how to support the state bill I mentioned, and I'm really interested in potentially, you know, mandating certain types of software that are maximizing donation and food waste prevention for certain generators so there's a lot of pathways forward but we know this is critical if you all follow climate issues at all we all know food waste is like close to the top of the list and what we can do to preserve our climate. So now I wanted to hand it off to all of our fantastic partners who are doing a lot of the work on the ground we really appreciate you. Thank you so much Alexa great overview of what we're doing at the department in terms of food waste prevention and food recovery. And so now I want to turn it over to our wonderful organizations today who are going to tell us about what they're doing and we're going to start with Olio. Hi, hi and Charlotte. So quick intro to Olio and Charlotte Mornington was introduced to Olio a few months after its inception and has been part of the team ever since. Her focus is on international expansion partnership and special projects. After instigating Olio communities in Sweden, California and Mexico. She recently obtained an innovate UK ground to develop food poverty map to local authorities address to help local authorities address the rising challenges connected to hunger and during the pandemic. So I will turn it over to you and Charlotte. Thank you very much. And so maybe if we can, should I tell you next slide every time we. Okay, so perfect. Great. So, as we just said, I'm going to tell you about Olio. I totally understand that this has this presentation has a specific focus to COVID-19 and to how solutions have been able to work in the adversity and the challenges represented by COVID-19. But with Olio, we've actually seen a threefold increase in engagement in our in our platform. So what I'm going to tell you about is really about the platform itself. And what are the small amendments we've made, but mostly the platform has stayed and as it is and as it was prior to the pandemic. Next slide please. So that'll start with the story of how did all your come about so perhaps some of you have never heard of Olio I presume. What is the what was the aha moment so the lady on the right is Tessa Cook she's the CEO and as she was moving back from sweet living in Switzerland. She was moving back to the UK and she was packing all her boxes. And as she was packing the removal man told her she couldn't put any food in the boxes. And that was something that was completely unexpected to Tessa because she thought that it would, you know, that's how she was going to put her food away. So she panicked she grabbed her toddler and her newborn and tried to like give away the food in her local community. And as long story short she failed. She ended up going back and smuggling some of the food in the boxes while the removal man was not looking. And as she was doing this, she realized that perhaps what she was doing was slightly illegal, but somehow it felt much worse to her to have to throw away food than to put it in the in the bin. So that's how she thought that there was a problem here that you know she should have found a way that was easier to just give away this perfectly edible food. So when she came back to the UK she told Sasha the lady who was on the right about the story and they started investigating the issue of food waste. So two slides forward please. And as they investigated, unfortunately, one site more. The information that they found was absolutely horrific. Some of it was just described in the introduction so apologize if there's a bit of a repeat. But globally, one third of all food produced doesn't get eaten, which means that when this one third of all food produced doesn't get eaten all the resources injected in producing this food also goes to waste that's 25% of the consumption. That's all the packaging or the transport or the labor, all of it, which is an absolute tragedy so we know that there's tremendous amounts of food being wasted. Next slide please. But the other thing that we know is that there's also tremendous amounts of hunger in the world. There's 800 million people who are living in food insecurity that's one out of nine of every single one of us. And they could all be fed with less than a quarter of the food that's being wasted in the Western world, which is pretty striking. And I think it's quite easy. I mean it was said in the introduction, but for many it's easy to think that food poverty is something that happens like far away and in countries are less stable have less development but that's totally not the case. In the UK we have 8.4 million people suffering from food insecurity. And that's a piece of data that's pre COVID so I'm sure it's grown. And that's exactly the well very close to the population of people in London which is the UK's biggest capital city. So that's a lot of people struggling. Next slide please. So it doesn't really make sense. So we know that there's a lot of it we know that it could all be consumed. As to his worth food waste is also an absolute tragedy for the environment. If food waste was a country, it would be third in place in terms of green gas emissions just after the US and China, which is really quite something. The reason for this is that when food is wasted and ends up in nonfields. It creates methane and methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Next slide please. So to make matters worse. So I'm aware I've shared like pretty bad stats with you but to make matters worse as the population is growing. The number of people that will be in the world are predicted to be in the world by 2050 would require us if we keep on consuming at our current rates to increase our food production by 50%. So we have absolutely no idea how we would be able to do this. So we're really on the cusp of being in a world where there's too much food, so much so that people put it in bin to a world where there isn't enough food. And that obviously is a very serious issue that we need to all be considering. Next slide please. So this is all pretty depressing, but I've kept the worst part for the best part for last is that in the Western world well over 50% of all food that's wasted, it's in the home. So well over 50% of the whole issue is caused by every single one of us in this call and every single households in the Western world. So while we are have the problem we can also be have the solution. And this is why we came up with a nap that would allow individuals and households to be the solution that they might want to see. So it was a really simple platform that allows individuals to share any unwanted resources, our main focus on food but also works for non food. All you need to do, if ever you want to use it is snap a picture of whatever item you want to give away or food item, write a description submit it this way anyone in your local community who has the app will get a notification saying Paula is giving away a pineapple and you can message Paula and go get the pineapple and that's as easy as it is. Next slide please. And so how is all your doing and how is this proposition of free sharing growing while we started in 2015 in a very small neighborhood in London and progressively opened it up to eventually being a global offer. And we now have four million all yours using the app, which we're tremendously proud of. Next slide please. And this means that we've managed to have over 18 million portions of food being shared. That's the equivalent of 52 million car miles taken off the road which we're obviously extremely proud about. But arguably what is the also equity as important is what happens when an exchange takes place. And this has happened a little bit less during COVID, but it's still an important part of our proposition is the communities that are built. Because when those 18 million portions of food of being shared it means that there's been over, I think, 6 million if the numbers, updated in my mind, door to door meetings or exchanges, which means that individuals in the local community start meeting and each other and creating links, which is really really important to foster communities support and avoid loneliness which we are suffering from more than ever. At this point. Next slide please. And this would really not have been possible without our ambassador growth led model, which is whereby anyone who has heard of the app so far and felt like it was a project they wanted to bring to the community has reached out to us. And given them some materials and information about the app so that they could in their own community starts spreading the word. And this has, there's over 40,000 of them right now, globally spreading the world in the community and trying to make all your thrive. And really we wouldn't have achieved that success without the help of those ambassadors. Next slide please. All use vision is a pretty bold one we hope to have billions of hyper local sharing communities all over the world, so that supply can meet demand and that are most precious resources can never go to waste again. Next slide please. And the one before. Yes, that one. And so here you can see some of the pictures of our volunteers collecting foods they're all using face masks so the type of amendments that we've made during the pandemic is having a no contact pickup. There's been quite a few publications on COVID not being transmittable through food packaging. So what people have done is leaving food in front of their homes or in a safe place. Just before the person coming to pick it up comes so that there's no contact pickup and that you know the exchange can happen very safely. We've also heavily encouraged and provided guidance on wearing masks and being as careful as possible to not have contacts or make the community vulnerable in any way. The quote here is also something that highlights the power of the community and how being able to support each other through technology has changed a lot of people's life in this case, someone who used to suffer from homelessness was helped and supported by our local community of food waste heroes who could help supply food and, and support to this individual. Next slide please. So I'd like to leave everyone was Dr Jane Goodall's quote, which I think is very inspiring. I like to envision the world as a jigsaw puzzle. If you look at the whole picture is overwhelming and terrifying. But if you work on your little part of the jigsaw and know that people all over the world are working on their little bits, that's what will give you hope. That's all for my presentation. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you will all download the app and start sharing your surplus. Fantastic. Thank you so much and Charlotte for sharing your story with us. Just so amazing to hear what's going on around the world. So next up, we have move for hunger, and our presenter for move for hunger is Adam Lowy. Adam is a fourth generation mover whose family has owned a moving company for nearly 100 years. After seeing so much food go to waste, he launched move for hunger to mobilize moving and relocation companies to rescue food during the move. To date, move for hunger has delivered over 22 million pounds of food to food banks, enough to provide more than 18 million meals to individuals in need. Adam probably represents the New York City hub of the world economic forums global shapers community, where attended, which attended the forums annual meeting in Davos, 2015. In 2014, he was honored among Forbes 30 under 30. In 2011 he was honored at the VH one do something awards for his commitment to creating social change. So with that, I will give you the floor Adam. Thank you so much. You can head over to yep. As you heard my name is Adam Lowy I have been in the moving business longer than I've wanted to be. I grew up on a moving truck because that's what you do when dad owns a moving company. For those of you that have never worked on a moving truck. I do not recommend it. Don't do it. It's not fun. But at a very young age, I kind of learned the power of hard work and got an appreciation for the industry. And you can head to the next slide over, you know, generations of moving. We found that when people moved, they threw away a whole bunch of stuff. You know, clothing furniture, you name it, and Charlotte noticed it as well. And, you know, really what we were seeing happen every day was customers were asking what should I do with this food. You feel guilty about throwing it away, but also when you're moving it's a little bit crazy so no one really wants to go through that hassle. So we started asking people if they wanted to donate their food when they moved. It was meant to be I didn't, you know, think I was going to launch a nonprofit organization we were just trying to do a good thing, switch slides. And in a month from doing nothing more than asking a simple question, we collected 300 pounds of food. Basically customers got super excited about it people want to do good they don't know how but you have to make it easy. In this case we were bringing food drives into people's living rooms, each and every day. Next slide. And that was really the first time I learned about hunger in my community. I took a tour of my local food bank. They told me that there are 140,000 people just in my community that didn't have enough to eat. And up to that point hunger was a problem that was maybe very far away in my mind, maybe in a different country or a big city. I'm not counting New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi. I mean you look around. You don't see a lot of poverty or homelessness. You don't see all the stereotypical things people think about when they think about hunger and food insecurity. Next slide. But as it did more research, I realized that hunger and food insecurity really touch every single community not just here in the United States but but across the globe. And as you do more research, you know it's one in five people in San Francisco, one in seven children domestically go to bed not knowing where their next meal is coming from. And I realized kind of in that moment that there's so much more that we need to do. Next slide please. I'm not going to go into a ton of stats on food waste today because we've got a ton of other panelists that are going to give you a really great definition of that. But while so many people are struggling, we are wasting a ton of food. There should not be this food loss, if you will, this food waste, especially from the home when so many people are going to bed hungry each night. Next slide please. So for me, it was really getting that realization that a people are struggling locally and then it became a national issue. And it's also understanding that food waste was an issue. And education became a really important part of what we're doing at Move for Hunger because you cannot fix problems, unless you know they exist. So we want to educate people at that local level. And because when you take a big problem like hunger or food insecurity in the United States it's 45 million people struggling with food insecurity which is up from 37 million by the way which is with the number we were at pre COVID. And if you take a big number like that, it seems almost unsolvable. When you shrink it down to your community, and then you give people really easy ways to take action, whether it be through Move for Hunger or some of the other examples you hear today, it all of a sudden becomes you know what we can tackle this we can fix this is no reason that hunger or food waste should really persist in these communities. Next slide please. So the idea of Move for Hunger was really simple. Really, what we did was we teamed up with moving companies, we encourage them to educate their clients about the need and basically offer the service to their customer to encourage them to donate their food when they move. We only rescued non perishable food items from the home. They picked the food up they brought it to the warehouse and once a month, they brought it back to a local food bank in their community. So the food always stayed local across California we've delivered more than 1.5 million pounds of food over the past decade I think last year we collected enough to feed over 100,000 people in the state of California alone. Next slide please. To do this, we created a really simple process. So you can see a sample of our educational letter we provided a how to guide we sent out welcome kits but then we also gamified the experience. Moving companies and band lines next against each other to see who could collect the most food. Head over to the next slide as well. And then we also teamed up with the leaders in the space, right so all there's different trade associations and band lines, you've probably heard of allied or North American band lines. So many different moving associations the California moving and storage association yes there are moving associations and they are awesome. By the way, if you're ever looking for professional movies they're great place to go to. And basically we got this entire industry involved because we said this is the thing that everyone should be doing. And as we started collecting more food and we started talking to food banks. I realize there are a lot of similarities. Next slide please. As you talk to a lot of the nation's food banks, they'll tell you, you know that they're using warehouses are using trucks are using crews. A lot of the things that are here that that food banks are using are also happening that are also resources that moving companies have. Next slide please. One of the biggest costs for food banks and pantries is transportation. So it's not just an issue when we're talking about food banks and distributing food to individuals in need, but it's also a pretty big issue we're talking about food recovery. Transportation is hard logistics is challenging it is expensive. It is one of the ways that food is wasted when it's going long distance. There are so many transportation and logistical challenges to getting food to where it needs to go, whether that be from the farm to the distributor to the grocery store to the home, or from or into the food bank and then out to some of the smaller agencies and pantries to where it needs to be. Next slide. So really what move for hunger was doing was just connecting the dots. We expanded from there to go beyond moving companies. Next slide you can go actually two slides if you'd like. And we started teaming up with apartment communities because 74% of people move without a moving company so we were missing a huge percent of the demographic, and we actually piloted our multifamily program in Seattle with just 10 properties, collected about 1200 pounds of food just over a few months. And basically what happened is if you're living in any apartment community that we're working with currently move for when you give your notice that you're moving out you'll receive a paper recyclable food collection bag. You can leave your food in there, and then we will have our transportation partners pick that food up on a monthly basis regular basis get that food out to local food banks. We have more than 130 apartment communities are working with across the state of California, about 300 apartments nationwide which translates to 300,000 individual units. So really it's not just about rescuing and recovering this dude which is certainly a big part of it, but it's also about educating all these people, people that did not sign up for a food banks mailing list people that aren't interested in food waste or hunger relief fairly, but now they all get a taste of this now they're all learning what the meat is, and how they can get involved. Next slide. We also provided our multifamily partners with very similar letters to again educate and make the process easy. At the end of the day it needs to be easy for the customer, I you listening in on this call today, but it also has to be easy for the companies that are participating because if it's hard if it's extra work, if it is not creating value for profit companies are going to stop doing it so process for us has always been really important. We want to ensure that everybody every piece of the supply chain feels really fluid to your creating value for the customer, the company and ultimately the community as well. You can head to the next slide. Similarly to what we did with the moving industry. We also started partnering with all the big names on the multifamily space. So a number of the larger and mid rage property management companies actually just on Earth Day. Two days ago, the week is blurring COVID has blurred all sense of days of the week for me. But just an Earth Day we launched a new partnership with Quirtland partners, who has almost 200 apartment communities across the country. And they have made the commitment to make that move out process more sustainable to recover food. So you might not think of in the past, moving companies van lines apartments necessarily caring about food waste. So we're changing that narrative we're changing the way that these companies operate to incorporate it into their process. And what's always so exciting with move for hunger for me anyway is, it's not about creating an organization that's going to be around for 100 years. It's about changing the process.  Next slide please. And over the past 12 years, we've grown our network from one moving company to 1100. We've got 1200 apartment communities we work with corporate partners we do food drives fundraisers we have a race team collectively we've delivered more than 22 million pounds of food, feeding 18 million people and COVID. You know, if you watched some of those really horrible news stories of food rotting out in the fields on so many farms. We began working with some refrigerated transportation companies as well as using our non refrigerated resources for some short distance halls of food. And last year we actually were able to deliver more than 300,000 pounds of fresh food, which is up from the 60,000 pounds of fresh we had done just the year prior. So fresh food was not where we started, but we're seeing a real opportunity here, and we're planning to continue to explore opportunities to get more fresh nutritious healthy foods that would have gone to waste into the hands of the people that need it most. Next slide please. For those of you that are listening in today. There's plenty of ways to get involved and do not list them out all out on the slide but if you're ever interested in holding a food drive. We got you will do the heavy lifting from the flyers creative campaigns and ultimately delivering that food, picking up one of our trucks and getting it to a local food bank in your community. We have fundraisers we have a team move for hunger. If you are moving, you can find a socially responsible professional moving company and our find a mover tool on the website. And if you're living in our apartment community you can also donate your food when you move out there. Next slide please. If anybody is interested in learning more, please visit move for hunger.org. And that's where you can learn more about all the great things our organization is doing. Thank you for having me today. I excited to share a little bit more about what move for hunger is doing to fight hunger and food waste. Thank you so much, Adam. This just great information I never had actually thought about moving companies being able to move food. So, this is just, just great to learn about it and hear all the things that you've been doing. Right. Our next presenter. Okay, come on slides. Okay, our next presenter is quaysa. I'm excited about this because I've only known about quaysa because of the farmers market at the embarked arrow so like learning more about what they do as an organization has been a joy for me. Christine Farron is the executive director of quaysa a nonprofit dedicated to growing thriving communities through the power and joy of local food by operating farmers markets and education programs. She is responsible for managing quaysas overall operations and performance, implementing implementing policies and deliverables set by the board of directors and leading quaysa to achieve annual goals and objectives. Christine feels that shopping at a farmers market is one of the most life affirming and community building activities possible and enjoys interfacing with numerous members of the food community here in San Francisco. I'm a B.A. in American Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz. So, welcome, Christine. Thank you so go and thank you, San Francisco department the environment for hosting the conversation. It was really lovely to hear from Charlotte and so thanks for all the information you shared before I love how we went from a very international focus to now quaysa and who we are regionally and locally here in San Francisco and the work that we're doing within the food system and specifically with food recovery and with food access. So, next slide please. I feel like we already shared our mission but I feel like it's always great to just ground in like what are we doing as an organization why are we here why do we exist and that that growing thriving communities part is really key. It used to be about supporting farmers and educating people and we realized that not only was that kind of a bifurcated approach and we wanted to integrate it but it was really about what's underneath all of that and that's healthy thriving communities and how we do that is through food. Next slide please. The project that we're best known for is what everyone knows us for which is great it's the farmers market so we've been operating the very close of farmers market since 1992 is a one time pop up and then 1993. We've kind of moved around as they've been renovations along the embarked arrow, but that's our flagship location and operate those farmers markets three times a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays on the weekdays from 10 to two Saturdays from 82. So with the weekday markets have really been struggling and it makes sense we've lost our downtown just financial district workers, chefs who were shopping in abundance and needed to resupply weekday and tourists.  Next slide please. We started operating the mission community market we were asked to take it over it was started by a group of wonderful volunteers who realized that in order to keep the market going they wanted to bring in sort of management group and so we took over the community market and have been really thrilled to be to continue to steward that community connection that was already existing. And that market operates on Thursday afternoons from three to seven and is on 22nd and Bartlett Street and operates it's a seasonal market but it's a really long season so we run that market march through November. Next slide please. It's not that people don't know us about as much as our education programs, so we have them both for youth and adults, and they're very community based so the feeling is the knowledge is in the community and it's not top down. So yes we are going to have experts that will come in to teach about a particular topic, but the general focus of the class is, and the idea behind all the classes is the wisdom is in the community and how do we share that, because when we're sharing knowledge we're also sharing power. That means inspiration and connection I do I've worked for quaysa for a long time and I still pull out cookbooks for inspiration and watch our look through our website for recipes and our seasonality charts. So I love that that we're all we're all in a different place and learning how to cook for ourselves and we always need inspiration and there's always more to learn. So one of the pretend attendees for cooking demos, they're usually free that hands on classes are low cost. This is also of course all pre coven. Next slide please. Obviously during coven we had to really shift and move a lot of our programs which I'll talk about so just to give a sense of context, we have about 130 farms that participate in our market. There's food crafters, about 100,000 shoppers on the weekdays or who visit our market every week, over 300 chefs, representing so many amazing restaurants that buy from the farmers and that's been really key because they'll buy in a large quantity and they'll also come whether it's rain or shine. So we love having them as a part of our constituency, and then over 3000 youth come to our free programs. Next slide please. So here's our team, you can pass on to the next one where a small group for 16 people that's all of us with our masks in the wintertime taking a photo. And so how did we respond to coven. Well first was actually advocating to keep the farmers market open because there was some really scary moments last year at this time where there was concern that coven can be a more transmissible and in the dense environment of a farmers market and we had to really advocate for that it's outdoors and change a bunch of things about how far apart the space everyone and all of that. So here we are a year later, we've managed to keep our markets open and really rally that they're essential, and that they're a healthy place to shop. Lots of adaptations for customer safety, and that has been key. Next slide. So food access is something that's really a key part of farmers markets that I don't think a lot of people realize how much they're a lifeline so they're a lifeline for the small scale farmers that are selling at farmers markets, and they're also hugely important for people who are on any kind of food assistance programs. So EBT electronic benefits transfers or snap supplemental nutrition education program, all these acronyms right they're just about helping people who are under resource to need food. Those programs doubled in the usage during covid. We actually have a program called market match where if you are recipient of Cal fresh which is California food assistance dollars, you can swipe your card take $10 out of your account and get it matched for an additional $10 for free for foods and vegetables. That program went through the roof and we saw people deliberately coming back every market day so they could get that match so they were willing to take their time to come to the market. That's how strong the need was for fresh food and on their tables. And then we've also partnered with new programs like eat SF or excuse me, eat SF program which is through SF General Hospital, and that's part of the women. WIC women infants and children program that is also a federal program so farmers markets are key they're like a scaffolding that that supports so many different parts of the way that the food system interacts. They're also a wonderful way to how we connect with each other and someone was brave enough to mention the loneliness that we're all experiencing right now and I'm here to tell you, you know, I feel it to even though I've been going into the office every day and I get to have the privilege of being at the market and connecting but I feel like you know what there's a status. There's a staff that says it at a grocery store. Now with self check out you may not talk to anyone, or if you click online and order through Instacart you're not talking to anyone. Maybe you'll talk to one person the person who's checking out your groceries if someone's helping you do that at a farmer's market you will have 1012 interactions you will talk to strangers you will be asking for advice there is a whole fabric of community connection that is really wonderful at a farmer's market and I really appreciate that. And really I'm here to say that farmers markets are not just for people who are middle and high income that farmers markets are absolutely and we have quite a lot of work to do in terms of even just making sure signage is in multiple languages and is more inclusive and so it's it's key that farmers markets are important and they have room to grow into being even more inclusive spaces and less white spaces. Next slide please. So, along with food access is food recovery which a lot of people have talked about so we partner with both food runners and as a community fridge so any farms who have produce that would then go back and they would compost on their farm. They're able to donate and then food runners is an entirely volunteer run I think they have like two paid staff people who will pick up the produce and then deliver it to lots of different kitchens and food banks. So, like I said the farmers market is this scaffolding where everyone comes together and how do we sort of build on those existing resources, and that panel, the pretty turquoise. One is a part of a whole series called the food change and so this is one where we were highly, we wanted to highlight people in the food system that we're making positive change to really like lead with hope. And so this is our zero waste panel. Next slide. Man 10 minutes goes fast and I want to make sure you guys have time for so chi after this so I'm going to hurry myself through two things we did in the pandemic so farmers, small scale farmers could not just immediately pivot and go start selling to a whole foods or a safe way or something along those lines they they grow for direct marketing and it would be really hard for them to all of a sudden start on these long contracts, they lost sales. So what could we do so please jumped in. We set up an online store for produce delivery, and farmers were able to recoup that income and then people were able to buy that that program was really geared towards more financially well resourced people so it was a great program, basically paid for itself and now we're looking at moving it online in partnership with another company, but we're glad we did it, but at the same time it really gives me great respect for the people that manage all of those logistics. And what we also started was a program called feed hospitality where we were able to give free produce boxes to out of work hospitality professionals you know if there's any industry that was so uniquely hurt by this it's people who work in restaurants bars and hotels. And so, this program was born out of a close relationship that we have with spirit companies they couldn't sponsor parties anymore and then we're like well hey how about you, you know sponsor these boxes of food and so the farmer wins, and the bar to out of work bartender wins and it's just been a great program and we're going to be able to keep running at the end of the summer. Next slide. Hope the idea is that when the need subsides a little bit then we can point out the program but we're learning the meat and the need might not be subsiding for a long time. Okay, youth programming near and dear to my heart. We have two programs, the one that we adapted during COVID was the team program because they we could move it to distance learning through zoom but we still kept the farmers market work dates so the teams were still having to show up. Engage with one another engage with customers learn all of these transferable life and job skills but also really be connected to food and learned about cooking and sharing food with each other. The elementary school program was a little slower to translate because it's really hard to be teaching cooking to kindergarteners through television but we're working on it, and we're also thrilled that by August. We're hopeful that they'll be back in the classroom and able to take field trips again. Okay, next slide. And the food waste teams program is one where they were they were previously growing food in their school gardens, and then selling it at the farmers markets and we translated that to the where they were growing food at home in their growth boxes, and then eating it and so we've transitioned from like a grow to sell aspect of teaching about food systems to grow to eat and then working in the farmers market and other capacities. The idea is like, how do we find the solution right so what have we learned farmers markets, we always only were essential now we really know they're essential and they're essential to local food systems because they're nimble they can adapt quickly. They're resilient and they're very community focused right the problem as the previous speakers have said the problems are so big. So how do we narrow in and focus on what's in our what's you have to have that big vision but what it can you tactically do and farmers markets are really great. I also want to say like I would love to hear in the chat from people telling me their favorite farmers markets, I grew up in Sacramento going to the one under the WX freeway. That was a great community market. Alameda is near and dear to my heart because it was one of the first in the city part of the city farmers market civic center is awesome they serve such diverse clientele that are so in need of food so like, you know, then there's Clement Street like there's so many markets right they all have their own little flavor so I love it okay and I thought Alameda heart of the city mission Ricardo I love it.  I'm definitely farmers market agnostic when it comes to which ones are the best I love mine and I love all the others to. Okay, so food systems are regional you set to support yours because it matters. Call the action. Oh, that's fine. And the other thing about local economy I mean I think we all realize the money cycles all the studies show you supported a farmers market you shop and market then you're going to shop with the local stores. The ones that have survived, you know the death of retail is pretty tragic right now. But there are still many many retail places you keep your money in your local economy you keep the jobs in your local economy when you're buying locally and it just makes a difference. We have something on my website I'll post it in a minute if I can. I'm still not great at talking and adding to the chat the growth, my growth edge on this one. We have a tips and lists and everything I want to say like yes, love your leftovers in the order when you bought things. You know the freezer is your friend learn to label there's so many great tips out there, but what actually helps us make behavior change, and it's hard. And so I feel like the thing to take away from this is, and changes hard and you have to have the mindset that I can do hard things. And it might not seem that hard to label something or to stick the things that's going to expire first to the front of your fridge. You know what those small changes over time will matter, because right now I'm just talking about the individual changes you can make to reduce how much food that would go into your compost. I'm definitely not dissuading against the importance of all the institutional and structural changes that need to happen the way the larger companies have to measure, and have the metrics in place for what they're, they're tossing and all getting it takes all slices of the pie but since the farmers market definitely deals with individual consumers and sort of speaking to the individual person at home like me, who goes shopping gets excited by everything buys too much, and let's have a bit rock like I do that and it's criminal right so how do I not make that a part of my and especially now that we're not looking for as many people are having as many people over so lots of like, you know, life skills that even we as adults are working on. And so, and I saw someone put something in the chat about a buddy that just popped up I love that idea. I also love the idea of like, prepped team, you know each person does does one piece of the meal and you prep for the week and definitely tried that on a few times and it's been great. Next slide I want to make sure there's time for so G the end. Thanks. I really appreciate getting to share this with everyone and I appreciate everyone who's gone to their local farmers markets. Fantastic Christine Thank you. That was amazing. I really resonate with what you're saying. We think that things are hard and if we just take the time we can make it easier and I think every individual can make a difference so. That's what we all need to do. Okay. Our final presenters and I'm excited about them as well I've been excited about everyone think that Saturday just makes me really excited is stewards of urban nutrition network. I just learned about them during the SF Green New Deal and heard them speak and was just so blown away that I really wanted them to be part of this panel series. So today we have Jen and so she we're going to be presenting about son. This is the first generation Chinese American born and raised on Ramatouche alone land, also known as San Francisco. She began growing food for her community to address social injustices, fueled by the industrial agricultural system. And she is blessed to experience urban farmers, urban farms as spaces where life from all ages diverse backgrounds, speaking different languages come together to rejuvenate the earth, feed and grow community with each other. So she is currently an urban farmer with son spending most of her time at hummingbird farm, learning from and fighting for a future that lets everyone fulfill fulfill their potential.  So she is our manager at hummingbird farm, a collective organization six acre farm and the Excelsior district in San Francisco, as an urban camp. I hope I said that right, and artists so she raises awareness on the importance of flowers as resistance tool tools to colonialism and climate chaos while healing the bodies and spirits of queer and trans people of color.  So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and allow so she to share his screen with you all. Okay, good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. Good morning. All right, so we are here Jen and I are here both to talk about stewards of urban nutrition, which is a new organization that it's a, it's a network coalition that really was built out of what was happening at the coven. So, there's three official representation urban sprouts, which works with his five school gardens around the south San Francisco area, Alameda farm, which I believe is a four acre farm and then hummingbird farm, which is a six acre farm in Excelsior. So when we first started when we first formed and came together as or and as organizations, it was at the beginning of coven when we were trying to figure out what was, you know, what do we do as farmers in this in the midst of all this chaos of like not knowing what's safe what isn't safe. And so our first conversations were really just farm safety discussions of what, how do we move forward trying to grow food, urban sprouts. You know, they were working within schools and the schools were shut down and they had all this infrastructure.  So we came together and we started really discussing like what is the, how do we move forward with this and do that we we really came to realize that food. So it was a way to both organize our communities, but also to help back and give back. So, I just want to talk a little bit about each organization before I move on urban sprouts promotes a flourishing of historical marginalized populations in San Francisco through five other gardens. There's about 2000 people each year friends will Alameda farm grows about 25,000 pounds of food, and it's free fresh organic produce and then they give around their, their neighborhood and the constituents. Baudet at these three farm structures hummingbird farm is the youngest. And so one of the things that Baudet did as an organization they started working on food distribution to people in the in the neighborhood. And we can't hear you. The co cobit brought us together and then we started figuring out, okay, how do we build from this? What are the adaptations that we need to do to really let us survive and move through the rest of this paradigm shift that we were all going through together. So, as of now we're growing, gathering and distributing our produce and trying to give it to our neighbors who are experiencing the highest food insecurity as a result of cobit. Our vision is to help community in the context of food production while growing the next generation of eco farmers. And so that is really what we're not only are we trying to really address food security but what are the foundational blocks we can work with our youth. They can not just look at food production as part of the future, but take their own personal dreams and desires and aspirations and integrate food carbon sequestration into what that looks like through partnerships of low no cost. Interchips. We've been able to teach small cohorts and we're trying to expand that a little bit more. To really build a deep relationship with the land so seeds of environmental stewardship facilitate the revival of ancestral foodways, promote food sovereignty and break ground a new green spaces in the southeast part of the city. So, um, general go on this one. Okay, hi everybody, I'm going to stop my video I think my internet's a little spotty so it might be better for me to not be cut off. Okay, so how did our organization pivot during COVID-19. So she mentioned we are coalition formed during the onset of the pandemic to address an amplified food shortage issue that we noticed happening amongst our communities. When COVID first started I was working as an urban farmer helping out at food pantries in the tenderline. And we noticed a lot less food coming in, and a lot more people showing up. So what we realized was that the band aid which are, you know, our food pantries, the band aid on our broken food system was coming off and that we really needed to be able to set up a more secure food system. And so other members of Sun, who are all amazing community workers also noticed to that our black indigenous people of color or BIPOC identified communities were disproportionately affected by food shortages. Community living in southeast San Francisco, who are already experiencing difficulty accessing healthy food due to historic and contemporary systematic inequalities. We're also now in the front lines of an unprecedented food insecurity crisis. So we forecast this food insecurity crises continuing for at least the next six months, and it will likely, you know, be well into the next two years. And in order to address this issue we are using our farms to grow and distribute healthy local organic food to build a more secure local food system and to meet the needs of our community. So more than just feeding our communities, our coalition also identifies this as an opportunity to start providing free and accessible education about growing food and plant medicine. So that community members who are most affected by food insecurity are able to produce healthy foods, healthy fruits, vegetables for themselves, boosting food security and health in the near and also long term effects of COVID-19. So currently our coalition has been together doing this work for one year, and we've recorded successful collaborations in the relationship building phase of our movement building, but we still have a lot of work to do in the realm of building our infrastructure over the next six months. And what is happening as places begin to open, so she will continue with that. Okay. So, what is happening now is as spaces begin to open, we are still trying to grow food. And we are, again, using our spaces to welcome people in show them the importance of why these spaces need to exist, but really integrate like how food production green spaces is part of the solutions to the climate crisis that we're all in right now. COVID is just one element of how in balance we are at an ecosystem level. It's not the viruses fault that we had to shut down our economic systems. It's the way the economic economic systems have set up.  So, we are still working together. We recently started hosting ask a farmer online. So it's a way for us to take the expertise of our of our coalition and operate as a resource to the community. And we've been doing the first Saturday of the month and believe. But and we're, we're also looking at how to create a joint apprenticeship program so that we can have youth work at all three of our sites and help us better weave our collaboration by bringing their experiences and their questions and to really help us create a better notice the picture here to the right was that a recent women's empowerment event.  But it was a really great way to integrate the growing spaces with the community and also just share what we're doing and the role that local farms have in navigating the climate chaos. We're currently trying to work on our local food resource guide to have a little bit more. Direct information of how people can take this information and grow in their own home grow in spaces around them, whether it's food production or flowers. We're really trying to integrate this idea of carbon sequestration. On a more personal level, like what are the commitments that we can make as individuals to help sequester carbon in our spaces. So, you know, like I mentioned, we're trying to do with this online resource guide, we're trying to include BIPOC led or gardening how to videos cooking videos. Just education videos. And have a space for people to have, you know, come ask us. You know, we're building a third project that will begin in July, hopefully. And then we're with that we're hoping to have, we did have a few breakfast programs or breakfast kitchens. And we're really trying to expand a little bit more on that. It really part of the the the barriers that we're having is just resources, you know, where a lot of us are trying to do this on the side. On top of trying to sustain ourselves and then trying to give the surplus to the community. Best practices. For best practices and our lessons learned since coming together. We've got quite a few, but the first is, and most importantly that the community knows what's best for community. So the members of our coalition, we've all been in community work with organizations that are on the ground, and who already have an established relationship with the community members. To identify needs. Right. And so this ensures what we're doing is helpful and necessary. And so can emphasize the importance of working with community enough, because how do you, how do you serve right without giving space and space and power to the communities that you're serving. Community powered is the solution. So a lot of work at Hummingbird Farm are powered by volunteers right and folks living in the local area already. And also, because we have a lot of elders visit the space. There's a lot of information sharing. There's a lot of trading in traditional traditional ancestral methods about how to cultivate land, how to grow food. This helps us diversify our methods, which are methods and our foods right and so that lends to a more stable food system because we have we're not just working with like one methodology right there's multiple techniques and information being shared within our farm spaces that makes it a more, you know, resilient space. And collaboration is important to spread limited resources right so again like our coalition. Started from, you know, we're all volunteers right and so sun is made up of alimony farm Hummingbird Farm urban spouts and other local farmers right we're all sharing skills we're all sharing our time. We're all sharing food how to grow food and ideas. And we're, we've also been very grateful to be able to work with other farms that aren't directly within San Francisco right the permaculture skill center in Sebastopol has been donating starts to Hummingbird Farm throughout the pandemic so shout out to them. We have a lot of our string and summer vegetables in the ground because farmers are willing to share their resources to so that we can grow food in different areas right and create abundance of food in different areas. And food security and building a more sustainable and responsible food system really takes the work and effort of everybody. So any walk of life, coming into the farm sharing their time their hands it makes a really significant impact on the work and the amount of food that we're able to grow in these spaces. And so really getting the involvement of everyone in our community to keep sharing what we're doing to keep, you know, amplifying the importance of this work and why people should care is really, really important to keep this work going. Yeah. Let's keep doing this. Yeah.  Physical commitments if any of you are in the San Francisco area come and you know occupy a lonely territory come visit us volunteer one of our working farms, or volunteer to local garden again, getting your hands in the soil directly is just that's taking thoughts and turning into action. And then if you know for the folks that are able resource investment, you know, with our collaborative effort we have, we were able to do what we've done is by spreading our limited resources. And so, you know, it, when we have volunteers, you know, whether we just give them something quick to ears or you're providing something to make them feel comfortable sunscreen all that takes resources. You know, we're limited we're working on limited infrastructure so we don't really have a greenhouse irrigation system is in up to date. And then just building all the stuff needs materials we need seeds compost, you know, that starts, etc. And then staff. You know, this is more like bigger asking but you know there might be someone on this call that can help with that. And, and just, you know, when we're working on all this we're really working on the next generation we really want to help integrate this understanding of where growing plants and organizing together is part of the solution. Okay, thank you. So she, I know you cut out so it was awesome. It's okay. But thank you all to our panelists I hope you all have enjoyed the conversations. We do have a few minutes I see most of the questions have been answered in the in the chat but if any of you have like final thoughts questions comments that you'd like to share. I'll put them in the chat and I can respond. I just want to say that I like feel really honored to have been on the call with you all today on this panel. I've learned so much I thought I knew some stuff. I think it's good though like always learning and growing from different communities and organizations and partners. I just understand that we're not in our own bubble, and we need to work collaboratively, and it talks about diversity, right, like we're all doing the same, we're all have the same goal we're all doing it differently and that's really important because there's no one size fits all. Yeah. Alexa, any final thoughts any of our panelists do you have any final thoughts parting words, things that you'd like to share if not I can give you all back your time in your Saturday. I'll just share real quick a couple observations. First of all thank you you all are doing wonderful work I just commend you. This is where the rubber meets the road. But yeah just to summarize some of the themes I heard were you know we're all trying to repair and heal this food system. We're all working on it at sort of different angles. So food waste, obviously reduction and getting food to people need and growing food and so it's just beautiful to see that there's so many different approaches to how we heal our food system or food web. And we need everybody and the somebody made a comment about we're all working on a big saw puzzle right within our community and we know we're all working together. It's great to know and and then the second thing was obviously food justice but I was thinking, yeah, food access healthy food access to all people, you know justice to the people. But, and also justice to the food right how do we really learn to really respect our food more. And I think about you, you yourself working this phase we over by and sometimes don't realize it so like how do we all really learn to honor our food more. And so justice the food justice to the people. And then the last thought was, you know, all the co benefits, everyone brought this up, but it was pretty remarkable to hear you know food, working in the space, we help alleviate loneliness we're all working and we build community so that was pretty cool to see all of you talking about that, especially in during this pandemic. So, thank you again. And I don't know if there's any more comments or questions in the chat. So go taking a look now great. Like Julian said that wanted to share this regarding earlier I found out about the app via presenter at one of our neighborhood association meetings here in San Francisco that person might have been an ambassador she gave a presentation on how to use that and I now have it on my phone, which is awesome. And yes, thank you Nina for being here like saying that we need more discussions like this we really do. I think, thinking about community like we need to take it to the next level where we incorporate community because community does know best so how are we keeping it local how we engaging our community how are we collaborating together and tying all the pieces of the puzzle together I really appreciate so she talking about carbon sequestration it's not just us talking about it at the department of the environment anymore, which is great and refreshing really appreciate that because you're connecting the dots in a different way that maybe we would not be able to so really appreciate it. I appreciate everyone being here today so with that I know one of my colleagues break just put in the survey so before you all leave today please please complete our survey for us, other than that check out the rest of our speaking sorry. It's Anissa. Yes, go ahead Anissa, and just thank you all I want to I mean there was so much like overlap between us really our organizations and everybody out there serving the community we're all doing the same work. And if we can do it together how powerful could we really be be amazing. And yes just so many like the band aids being ripped off of so many things us you. Yeah, I appreciate you all being here and sharing your knowledge and all of our power together yes. Yes, it's amazing I'm feeling very energized now like yes they've got so much work to do but I feel reinvigorated to do it yes. On a Saturday, even better. Yes, I'm glad that you're inspired. Okay, so with that I'm going to close us out. Thank you so much for being here everyone. Thank you for doing this work with us and you know the environment is about not just it's about people and it's about, you know, nature so I think we should really remember that that we are the environment is not just human beings and then the environment. I think the pandemic has taught us that but I think as we come out of this pandemic it's really important that we remember that right and this is just the beginning so thank you all again. Have a good Saturday and the rest of your weekend.


I am feeling so good today, and I have such good news. Yellowstone, episode 10 of season four got released. A final episode of that season, I think. It was so good. It was so good. Washed it last night yet. Stayed up a little bit late to get her in, but worth it. We're on our way into work again today. Pretty much doing the same thing we did yesterday. We're going to grab unit 3099. That's that Peterbilt 579. Going to get her warmed up. I got to grab a roll tight trailer, and head up to two long grabs and freight. That's headed down to the States. But man, if you haven't seen Yellowstone yet, it's a really good series. She's running. That's good. Block heater's working. This truck actually has a bunk heater in there too. Well, all the highway trucks have bunk heaters as far as I know. And it's very handy because on a day like today, I can warm that cab up a whole lot faster because not only is the engine like once it warms up, not only is that going to warm up the cab, like by turning up the heat, that bunk heater will start blowing heat a lot sooner. That's filling that cab with nice warm air so I'll be able to get going a little sooner. I like that. Very handy to have. If you have a highway truck, you always want to have a bunk heater. It's better to have an APU that also does air conditioning and also warms the coolant, but those are about $12,000. Bunk heater is, it runs off very little energy. So you can run it all night, usually. They say a bunk heater uses about as much energy as leaving like an LED tail light on all night. Uses about the same power. So you should be able to turn your truck over in the morning as long as it's not too cold outside.  Eight hours, and if you don't have this thing plugged in, you're not starting that thing. You're not turning that engine over. You're gonna have it plugged in or keep it running all night. So all these trucks along the fence here, all the way back there, and all the way around, oh, we got our trailers here, but we got more trucks out where the old P to spark, all of them plugged in. So then you have to plug them in or you're not gonna start it. If you forget to plug it in and you plug it in, they say at least four hours. It takes at least four hours to warm up the coolant enough just from the block heater to be able to start it, but you might end up having to tow it into the shop and thaw it out that way to get it to start. So it's best always to plug in your truck in the wintertime overnight if you're not gonna be running it. Unless you can park it inside.  That would be nice in a perfect world where money grew on trees, but I haven't found that tree yet. And if you find it, send me a private message, okay, it'll be between me and you. I'd like to know where this money tree is. I've been looking for it. We got that truck warming up. I'm gonna come back here, check on the old Pete, see if they did get it fixed last night yet or if they moved it or thawed out or whatever we wanna call it. Oh, it has moved. Nope. No, I can tell. Has it moved? Okay. I can tell because there's still snow at the bottom of the rims there. The old Pete's not quite ready yet, but that's okay. We have another truck to drive which is actually way nicer that Peter built 579. I forget what year these trucks are. It's exactly like the truck I used to drive on the highway. I'm pretty sure they're all the same year. I wanna say, I wanna say 2017s, 2018s maybe, 2019s. That truck's got just under a million kilometers on it already. So that's pushing what, 600,000 miles, 200,000 kilometers a year on average. If it's running, if it's running hard, it's two, four, six, eight, it's about five years old, say five years, it's 2022 now. One, two, one. Yeah, probably in 2017. My best guess. But I'm happy driving this truck or I'll drive that truck as long as they want me to. And then they probably got some trucks in the shop right now that need to get out right now. Probably got loads that are waiting to leave and we need to get them out of here. So I'll drive the 579 as long as I need to. I like these trucks. I like all trucks though. You'll probably notice that. I don't care, I'll drive them. Peterbilt, Kenworth, Mack, Volvo. What else do we got here? Why am I, what am I missing? International. We don't have any internationals in our yard though. That's something I noticed. I always forget about them because we don't have any here. We got Volvos. Oh no, there's an international right here but that's an owner operator. That's an owner operator. There's a blue international right there. I haven't driven it though because it's not one of ours. One of our guys owns it. But yeah, there's all kinds of things. I wish, I sort of wish we had the option of buying these European trucks over here in North America like Scania and Mann and you know, the Volvo European trucks. It would be pretty cool to be able to drive them here but they're not even available here. I've seen one on the roads here in the last 15 years of me driving but as far as I know, I think I got ahold of the guy or someone who knows him anyways and he had it shipped over.  It was a long, probably expensive process but hey, he's the only European trucks on North American roads or one of the only ones, right? So you turn heads. You turn heads with that. The only thing is with the European trucks, the interiors are so small but I know that you can get the longer extended bunks and what if you get a European front end, right? European truck with an extended North American style wheelbase and then put a custom sleeper on there, right? I think that would turn heads. I would drive that. I think so.  You want these big Mark trucks, right? But having a European truck, the turning radius on them and just to be different, I think would be pretty cool. That's a topic for a different day. So I'm waiting for my truck to warm up here and we're gonna go find a roll tight and hook up and head up North. Hopefully it's warmer there but I bet you it's colder. Isn't she nice? I like it. I'm all hooked up to a step deck roll tight. It's the only one we had left. We have a flat roll tight over there but it's red tag which means we need some more pairs. Here she is. Let's go make sure all the lights work. Oh wait, let's fill it with air. Almost forgot. Let's fill it with air just to make sure. Ah, there we go. Go air leaks. There you can hear the air compressor come on already. You can hear the air going through the line there and it's shooting air into this trailer. It's gonna fill up the airbags and release the brakes. Lights are all working here. I wonder where we are here. There's the signal. It's hidden behind that a little bit. Signal's working though. There is premium winter air in the tires as usual. Hopefully these brakes aren't locked. Just started lifting up the bags. Good. Good, good, good. What do we got going on back here? Everything sounds as it should. As it should be. Signal's working. Yeah, that looks good. Nice, I like it when everything works. It's a good day when everything works. I mean, we make it a good day regardless, but oh, there's lots of snow in here. Please don't let these brakes be frozen. Just wanna make sure they're not flat. Let's all them check in for it. Oh, a lot of snow on this side. Okay, you know, we've been complaining the last couple of years that we haven't gotten enough snow. Maybe we should have kept our mouth shut. Oh, we got lots of snow. Just gotta kick the snow off of my shoes. Otherwise, when I get in the warm truck, the snow melts, turns to water, and then my shoes are wet. You don't want wet shoes in winter time. That's a good way to freeze your feet off. That's noisy. That's the air going into the compression tank underneath there. There's nothing to worry about. It's just not usually that loud, but hey, I don't like waking up on cold mornings either. I understand. The guys over here are very busy. There's a dump truck there. There's a front-end loader behind me there. I probably can't see it in my mirror. It's back there. They're very busy bringing snow from there to there. Serious stuff. I don't know why they didn't just pile it back there in the first place. I guess that would be difficult to do, because they piled it all in like one part of the parking lot, way over there. Now they're bringing it out. Now they're loading it back up into trucks and they're piling it all back on the other side of the fence over there. Wait one second for this container guy to get out of my way here. You'll be able to see. Oh, they got big piles back there already too. Look at that. There's another dump truck there. So they've cleared this whole yard and put it into a big pile over there. You see? They're doing that pile. I mean, it gives you something to do, right? When you run out of snow to clear, well, you just start moving the piles. Move that pile from there to over there. And then tomorrow, you move that pile from over there back over there. See? Keeps you busy. You gotta keep moving, remember? That's our secret to how we stay warm up here. You have to keep working and when you run out of work, you just make up work to do. Just move the snow around.  So this is a big deja vu for us. It's the exact same thing as we did yesterday, except yesterday we loaded up a flat bed in the morning and this morning we loaded up a step deck but with the exact same stuff at the exact same place. And now we're back here at the exact same place with another van behind us. Loading this up, bringing it back to the yard and that's probably gonna be my day. Almost exactly the same as yesterday.  I showed it to you yesterday. May as well show it to you again. Other than the Kenworth T680s, actually I was gonna say this is my favorite truck. I spent a lot of time in 3101, which is exactly like this truck. And they're very comfortable and smooth to drive. I was gonna say this was one of my favorite trucks but I say that about every truck I'm in. I mean, it's not that hard to impress me, just as long as it goes, it's got lots of room, looks good. There they go, they're loading up that snow. Oh, there's another big pile back there behind them. Bring that snow and they're gonna put it over there. What's even more funny about that is I talked to some people who work in that building, another, not where I was going, but they were outside as well and they were looking at those guys, asking the same questions as me and we're sort of chuckling to ourselves. Apparently, like every two days they move the snow from one part of the yard to another part of the yard and they can't figure it out either. We just came to the conclusion they must just be making themselves look busy. I don't know, maybe there's a reason to it. Really? Maybe it's because the best explanation I can come up with is that they clear the yard as fast as possible because it's a very busy yard. There's like hundreds of docks there, right? So you have to have it clear so that the trucks can get in and do their cross-talking. That's the companies can get in there and it's a big place. So what I think happened is they get in there and just clear it all as fast as they can, just get the snow out of the way and just whichever way they can put it anywhere they can, just get it out of the way. Then, once they have it all clear then they start managing it into bigger piles. They sort of take all the snow from this side, put it into one big pile on this side, take all the snow from that side, put it onto one big pile on that side and then after that, they come and then they move those piles all into one big pile and then they call in the dump trucks and the dump trucks come in one day and they move that whole big pile, all the snow from the whole yard to where it's actually supposed to be behind the fence where it's completely out of the way so that they have their full yard back again. So it seems that this is like a four-day process and maybe that's just the way they do. That's the best explanation I can come up with in my mind and that would sort of make sense. I don't know if it needs four days. I can understand how they just wanna get it out of the way the first stage, just get it out of the way so we can open our business and get our trucks in and out. I would just say do everything else the same day or the next day. Maybe there's different logistics in it. Maybe they need different equipment for different jobs. I just thought it was funny we're talking about. I don't know what's going on. I'm not a snow clearing guy. That's not my role. But I do appreciate the work they're doing because without them clearing the snow, it would be very difficult for me to do my job. So who am I to question their ways? Right, Chevy? Right, Chevy? Hey, come here.  Come here. Stretch it out, buddy. Come here. Come on up here. There you go. What do you wanna say to the good people? What do you wanna say to the good people? Hi, I was sleeping and I was having a good dream. The fridge is that way, that's where the treats are. If you were wondering, that's where they keep the treats. It's... Chevy, you wanna treat? Yeah? Oh, okay. Talked me into it. Talked me in, how about you, Diesel? Diesel, you wanna treat? Who else wants a treat? Hey, I'm gonna give you a treat. That's all I gotta do is rustle with that.  Oh, they're already here. Hey, guys. Is that the one, Chevy? That's the one. Yeah. Okay. What do you wanna say? Let's put this down here. Oh, hey. Hey, hi, guys. What's up? Eating some treats? Okay. We're gonna put this. All right. These are freeze-dried liver. Boy, careful, buddy. Don't just swallow it, you gotta chew it, save it. Diesel. He always takes it so gently. Big Frank. Why do you grab it so hard? That's a big one, Wiener. Chew it. Chew it. He didn't chew it. That's why I don't give you those big ones usually, man. Freaks me out. You guys happy now? No, you want more? That's all you get for now. I'm cheap. Okay. Gotta save some for later. This delicious beef liver. Mmm. Mmm. At least they don't gotta worry about me stealing any of their treats. Thanks for hanging out with us today, everybody. It was a good day. I'm just closing this up here on the weekend. Hope you have a good one. Take care, and we'll see you tomorrow.


What's up Freedom? Today we're talking about how to continue to motivate yourself and stick to your goals. This is part of my How to Create a Successful Network series on Freedom. If you missed the first episode, it's going to be right behind me. Just click on the square and get situated and kind of learn what I talked about in the first episode, but it's the second episode, so let's get right into today's topic. So today's episode is a little bit personal to me and maybe George Manus as well because he's kind of involved but he might not remember this at all. Basically, back in September, October of 2011, I wanted to start my own YouTube network and I was looking for some advice and I'd been following TGN ever since it was founded and I loved George and what he was doing and I thought he was so cool and taking us around the office tour and it was just awesome and I wanted to be a part of something like that and I was like, hey, I reached out to him through email and I was like, hey, I want to start my own network. I want to be able to do what you're doing. I just need some tips. I need a point in the right direction. How do I do this? And he got back to me like a day later saying, yeah, I don't want another competitor in the network space on YouTube, so I can't help you. And that at the end of the day was kind of a bummer because it's like it takes all of your drive and motivation away saying, hey, we don't want you in this space because you just be another person that we'd have to compete with and that's tough. But at the end of the day, you are your own motivator and that's all that you really need to rely on because when you start doing like a startup or something just like new and obscure, especially in tech, a lot of people aren't going to understand what you're trying to do. That happened to me when I started necessary gaming back in 2012, even after George said, hey, we don't want you to join this space because you're going to be a competitor to us. And even though he couldn't give me the tips or the guidance that I wanted, I still pushed through that. And that's so important for a network owner to do because a lot of people aren't going to be motivating you and pushing you to go where you need to go. And at the end of the day, you've got to really rely on yourself to meet your own goals and you can get there. As long as you believe in yourself, if you can find people to work with that maybe they'll believe in you at some point, that's really important as well. Just building a great team, believing in yourself, believing in your brand, your network, whatever it is that you're actually trying to build, that's the most important thing. So guys, believe in yourself, be free. I'm Alex Adams, senior manager at Freedom, and you've been watching. Click the first video for a fireside chat with George, where he shares our future and how he grew from $20,000 to $120,000 in just one month. And click the second video to see how to monetize all of your videos with just a few clicks to enable all ad formats and monetize in all countries. And we will grow together as a family because this is the freedom family. You are part of it. We are all part of it. And we're all growing together. So grow with us and partner with Freedom. That play now button right there on the video bar is all you need to click to get started.


If you grew up in an environment where the probability, the base rate of a loud bang being a gunshot was very high, then when you move to a new environment, it's perfectly rational, perfectly rational to predict that those loud bangs are gunshots. The thing is that when you move to a new environment, what you have to do is forage for information to tune your predictions. Scientists call it your internal model. Your brain is running a model of your body in the world, and you have to update that model, and that means learning new stuff. But if you're metabolically encumbered, if you have a lot of stress in your life, if you actually have a metabolic problem in your body, you will have a hard time learning new stuff. You'll have a hard time updating that model. And so again, I would say it's not because people lack the will. It's because there's something interfering with their ability to learn, and that's the important thing to focus on. So we've heard the phrase, can't teach an old dog new tricks. Oh yes, you can. Oh yes, you can. Yeah. It just takes a lot of energy. What does neuroscience say for us to actually rewire these pathways if we've grown up in these environments or had certain patterns of behavior that have been tuned to the environment we were in previously? Well, I think learning is like driving, really. It's like learning any skill. You have to give a lot of energy and effort at the beginning, and then eventually, over time, stuff becomes pretty automatic. So if you grew up in an environment, you're not responsible. Here's the sucky thing about the way things are with the brain.  It's not your fault, and it's not your responsibility as a child.  But here's the sucky bit. As an adult, it may not be your fault. You may not be culpable for the wiring that you have, but you are responsible for it. The reason why you are is because nobody else can change it, but you. That feels unfair, and it is unfair, but it's also the way things are. Also, I would say it's very easy for me as a scientist to say, well, you just have to curate new experiences for yourself. You just have to expose yourself to new information. You just have to practice but a lot of people don't. I grew up in poverty, and I know how hard it is to claw your way out of it. I'm a woman, so that was a mark against me. But I'm also in this country, you would call me white, so that was a benefit. I had some advantages, but a lot of people don't have a lot of choice in their lives. But I guess what I'm trying to suggest to people is that even though very few of us have as much choice as we'd like or want, we all have more control than we think we do. That means that it's not as easy to change that wiring as we're making it sound.  You have to invest a lot of energy, practice a lot, and then eventually it becomes pretty automatic, but it takes a while. Sometimes it feels bad because think about when you're exercising. For me, maybe it takes me, I get to about 20 minutes into a workout, and then I'm feeling not like I just want to stop. I'm not feeling good. I'm not one of these people who has a runner's high or whatever. I've never been that person. I wish I was that person, but I am not that person. I'm the person who wants to stop. I'm the person who doesn't even want to run to begin with. I know that sometimes feeling bad doesn't mean that something's wrong. It just means you're doing something hard. I think about the Marines, pain is weakness leaving the body. I love that. I love that saying because it's really, you're doing something hard. It feels like shit, but you have to push through it. In the end, you will be stronger and healthier for it. It's the same thing about retraining your brain, so to speak. When you're learning something new and you're learning a new skill, it sometimes doesn't feel bad. It doesn't sometimes feel good. It can feel bad, but it doesn't mean that you're doing the wrong thing necessarily. It doesn't mean something's wrong in the world. It just means you're doing something hard.