- [Stephfond] Tonight on WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories.

With Earth Day just around the corner, we'll take you to Kingston where an independent startup is bringing hydroponic farming to area communities.

- For lettuce, you can grow up to about 800 to 1,000 pounds of lettuce within our units every four weeks.

- [Stephfond] Shared agriculture.

More and more North country residents are taking advantage of brown bagging fresh veggies.

- Earthy taste.

Now this is the fun one.

- Wow, look at that.

- Isn't that pretty?

- [Stephfond] It saves money and your local farmer will thank you.

All this and more coming up on WPDS Weekly, Inside the Stories.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories is brought to you by the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, Garland City Beer Works and Land Of Lakes Shoppette And Gas.

- Good Tuesday evening, everyone.

I'm Stephfond Brunson.

Welcome to another edition of WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories.

Earth Day is just a few days away.

The theme this year, restore our earth.

The theme is in reference to looking at natural systems and emerging green technologies that aid in restoring the world's ecosystem and what better way to begin that restoration than our own backyard.

Take a journey with us to Kingston, Ontario where hydroponic gardening is all the rage.

(upbeat music) - I'm Mark Van Dusen for OBJ Regional.

It's the traditional way of growing food, siege, earth, sun, water but it's increasingly jeopardized by climate change, virus spread, land shortages.

Now there's a futuristic option that may help.

Sumi Shan and her family of innovative entrepreneurs have brought their experiences from halfway around the world to Kingston.

Their promising approach to food production may soon see us eating more of this without this or that.

- It's a pleasure to be on and speak with you, Mark.

Dunya Habitats is a responsible mission-based agritech startup here based in Ontario and we're looking to deliver commercial grade, year around, modular, climate controlled hydroponic farming solutions.

What we wanna is to help farmers and growers wherever they're suited the ability to be able to grow in any climate irrespective of it and in any conditions.

What we have is a tiny farm, which is a scalable modular unit that will allow you to grow year round.

- Where is it, it's an experimental farm?

- We're an early stage startup at the moment.

We're working out of Kingston.

We've been fortunate to be able to be part of the Queens Universities Accelerator Program as well as partner with the Kingston Economic Development Office and their front neck CFTC.

That's been a amazing experience for us and hopefully, we'll be deploying shortly on a farmer's field who's looking to increase his crop production when it comes to leafy greens.

- Well, basically in simpler terms, what are we talking about?

- In simple terms, it's a miniature greenhouse that's been optimized to allow you to be able to grow in any climate.

Whether you're in freezing condition in (indistinct) or in drought prone areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, you have the ability to grow certain fruits and vegetables year-round within a four-week cycle.

Hydroponics using water to grow is a proven method.

It's not something that we invented, we've just helped optimize it and the ability is to be able to scale at (indistinct).

As a farmer, as a grower, if you want to start growing hydroponically, our unit allows you to start off small and then you can add multiple units as you wanna grow your footprint.

- What sorts of vegetables can you grow using this method?

- Hydroponically, you can grow almost up to 200 different variety of produce.

Our current units are vertical farming, so vertical towers.

In those, you can do leafy green vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, kale and such.

You can do strawberries, you can do cherry tomatoes and small onions, chilies, herbs, micro greens.

There's quite a bit of variety that you can still grow within these units as well.

- Does it do anything to advance the cycle of growing things?

Is it an equal growing period or a shorter growing period?

How does that work?

- With our units and in most hydroponics, you actually quicken the harvest cycles.

For lettuce, you can grow up to about 800 to 1,000 pounds of lettuce within our units every four weeks.

That's 12 harvests versus maybe eight or however many that you would do normally.

Through our units, you'd have at least a minimum of 12 harvests in one year.

- How big can it get?

Are we talking acreage here or is that going to far?

- I mean, you could do an acreage if you want.

(Sumi chuckles) It's totally doable but generally the folks that we've been speaking to, they range to do one unit or a five-unit cluster or a seven-unit cluster to start off with.

- Very interesting and best of luck in your project, Sumi.

I can talk about this all day but I have to get back out to the garden.

There's lots of produce still waiting for me out there.

I'm gonna head back out and we expect to hear more from you on your fantastic project and as I said, all the best.

I hope it works out for you.

- Thank you, Mark and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you.

If anybody is interested in learning more about us, visit us at dunyahabitats.com.

(upbeat music) - For many of us, we weren't born with the green thumb which means when it comes to growing plants, trees or food, we're at a bit of a loss unless, of course we take advantage of our local CSA or Community Supported Agriculture.

CSA is a crop sharing system that connects local food producers with consumers.

Instead of shopping at the grocery store for fruits and vegetables, you get them fresh from the farm.

- Community supported agriculture.

That is one thing that you're involved in through Cornell Cooperative Extension and Miracles by the Acre.

Today, where we're talking with them, seeing all that they are doing and all the customers coming in.

Tell us what is community supported agriculture?

What's that all about?

- Miracles by the Acre is an excellent example of a really nice CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, where it is one of the many different strategies that somebody who wants to grow food can produce local food and get into the hands of consumers.

In a CSA, you would buy a share.

The farmer's gonna grow this and you're going to buy your portion of it.

The wonderful thing is that you get to experience the natural growth of what happens over summer over a season.

This time of year, we're still a little bit early in the season, you're gonna see lots of these beautiful greens and beets and all these early spring foods and early summer foods.

Later in the season, get all those late fall types of crops.

You get to experience the season as you go through-- - The whole growing season?

- Yeah, not only do you understand the season but you also get to understand some of the very many challenges that a producer or farmer might have.

If this is gonna be a dry season, the products that she or he might have to offer is gonna be a little bit different than if it's a wet season.

If we experience a certain bug infestation, you might lose a certain crop and that's one of the beauties is that consumers get to learn and understand and they also share in the risk.

- [Jay] For those that qualify, Miracles by the Acre CSA accepts WIC and senior citizen vouchers.

This helps families get healthy, nutritious and local foods.

Delta, it looks like you've got a lot of great things here to eat.

Can you explain what you've put into the shares today that people will be picking up here shortly?

- Sure, we have two different sized shares.

If you're a family of four or with your son, probably 12, you would probably buy this bag.

This is what we consider for a family of four.

In this bag today, we have scallions, you have dried onions.

There are a few bags with choices either.

You might get some onions and we'll say, do you want onions or would you prefer kale?

There's a little bit of a variety.

Now, if you were a smaller family, say maybe two people and a child, you would probably buy one of the half shares.

You're getting 14 weeks local products, like here's the kale and you get beets and you get rhubarb.

- Now we've gotta take a look at the beets.

Is there something special about some of the beets in this bags?

- Some of the beets in this bag are technically gourmet beets.

These are four of the beets that are in the shares this week.

This is our gold beet, this is our Chicago beet, which is an Italian beet, a white beet and the traditional Detroit beet.

The Detroit beet is the one that has a more earthy flavor.

- That's the one right there that's (indistinct).

- That's right, this is the traditional one.

These are the three newer ones that many of the chefs are using.

Although most of them aren't that new but they're new to the general public.

- Yeah, because I've never seen beets that color before.

- Right, now if you cut into each of these, this one's gonna be dark red as you probably remember.

- The standard beet?

- Yeah.

Pickled, like probably your mom did.

This one will be nice and creamy and white inside.

This one's the fun one.

It has actually white circles and it's pink inside.

- The flavor?

- Very sweet.

- Oh, really?

- Yes.

The gold one, very mild taste, great for roasting and that's bright gold inside.

- Oh, really?

That sounds really good.

- Okay, here's the white one.

- [Jay] Wow, that is creamy on the inside.

- [Delta] Isn't it creamy white?

- [Jay] Now the flavor of that you said is very mild.

- [Delta] Yeah, not the earthy taste.

Now this is the fun one.

- Wow, look at that.

- Isn't that pretty?

This is great in tout salad because it's so pretty.

- Really, in tout salad.

I've never even thought about that.

- Here's the gold one, look at that and they retain their colors quite nicely.

- With the shares, are people being told, you're gonna get this, this and this ahead of time or is it somewhat of a surprise?

- It's like Christmas, it's a surprise.

- Now, do you give recipes, too?

- We do give recipes.

As a matter of fact, today I have a recipe we're gonna pass out.

It's for a kale quiche.

- A kale quiche, is that these right here?

- Yes, those are it right here.

Our kale, excuse me, kale frittata, similar to a quiche.

For the bags that get kale, they get this.

Then also on our Facebook page, we have all the recipes for the rhubarb.

We have great rhubarb recipes this month.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah.

- Your Facebook page.

- Miracles by the Acre.

- Miracles by the Acre on Facebook.

- Now, the other thing too is we give away herbs.

- Is that the fragrance that I'm picking up?

- No, you're actually getting fragrance from the flowers.

Everybody gets a bundle of flowers.

They get to pick it out of the bucket.

That's kinda nice, something for fun.

- [Jay] That would keep me out of trouble at home.

- [Delta] It would, you'd be on the good list.

- Well, only for a few minutes.

- Until the following week when you get more flowers.

- Well, this is true, I outta do this.

This is really neat.

I love this idea.

It's basically subscription agriculture.

You subscribe to Miracles by the Acre and you get a lot of great food.

- You do and it's all local.

In this case, the local definition is in the county.

- In the county, absolutely.

If you don't have time to grow vegetables at home like me, think about a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture.

It's a way of getting fresh local food every week.

You get to meet the farmers that are growing your food and it creates a wonderful bond between our local neighborhoods and the farming community.

- For some families, food is not so easy to come by.

This is true of hundreds of struggling families and seniors across Eastern Ontario.

The virus has only exacerbated this need.

Our Jolene DesRosiers sat down with Bhavana Varma, the CEO of the United Way in Kingston to talk about how things have changed since the onset of COVID.

According to Varma, their greatest challenge isn't the virus or lack of volunteers, it's feeding the hungry now more than ever.

(people clapping) - Well, thank you for joining us on our new show.

We're very grateful for that and we just wanna give an overview of what this organization is doing now especially.

COVID-19 has not slowed down.

It's been over a year and I'm sure your role has changed quite a bit.

You said you've been in your role for about 20 years?

- Yes, we've never seen a year like this one.

It's been absolutely crazy.

I think everyone can say the same thing.

I think what's really impressive is how a community comes together and we're local, so you're not always a local in their community.

We really have the trust and we respond to local needs.

We understand local needs.

It was really great for us to be able to bring everyone together.

That's what we do well and really find a way to channel donations but also to work with agencies on how we can help them, really, not just survive but thrive at a time when the needs are greater than they've ever been.

- Well, let's talk a little bit about that because before we hit record, we were talking about how volunteers are reaching out.

They want to help but they can't help the way they used to do.

Talk to me about how that shift has moved in a different direction.

- Well, the first thing is we wanna make sure everyone is safe and many of our agencies are in tiny spaces.

It's not safe for volunteers to come in.

A lot of volunteers are older.

Again, thinking about how to keep them safe, it really was a challenge.

We had a lot of people contact us wanting to help.

A lot of it was donations, so helping them understand that they could donate product and then finding a safe way to have volunteers sort that.

Now as we've evolved, we have a lot more volunteers able to do things like drive meals to people or food boxes to people.

We're trying to find ways but it really is wonderful to see this overwhelming response of people wanting to help and it's a little challenging to be able to find as many volunteer opportunities as they want.

- But you're learning in this role and it has shifted dramatically for you.

Can you talk to me a little bit about, we were talking earlier, what that's like?

This is unprecedented as they say, that's what they're calling this pandemic.

How have you managed it in your role and how has that role changed?

- Well, I think I've never been so much on the ground and the detail ever before because we fund program but really now it was understanding what programs we needed.

For example, we started getting calls from seniors who were hungry, who didn't have food.

Finding a way, we created a seniors food box.

We've never designed a program before, so we worked with agencies on what is the best way we can serve the most vulnerable and how can we do it simply, effectively and quickly.

- What else has emerged as far as communities in need since the pandemic?

- Oh, it breaks my heart, food.

Food has emerged right across the country as one of the highest needs.

We have people who were precariously employed who don't have savings.

They don't work, they don't eat, so really paying the rent is essential but then they have food needs.

Helping kids who would normally get meals at school, helping families, helping people who suddenly have no employment and who'd never access social services.

Really helping people understand where they can go and the beauty is how well our agencies treated them with compassion and caring.

It didn't matter.

You could come, you could feel comfortable.

You could be helped with dignity and that was important.

How do we get prepared firstly, to deal with this need right away to collaborate and bring all the food together and distribute it better but now we're working on a long-term solution to have a centralized food hub where if this were to happen again or even just to deal with food security, we're in a better position.

Same thing with recognizing that the people who thrived, who survived were really those were a little more resilient.

What can we do to help people and families be more resilient for the future?

Getting our agencies ready, helping them be sustainable, fundraising.

Most agencies, that fundraising was decimated.

How can we help find resources to replace that because it is more expensive to serve meals and provide shelter in a time like this.

Everyone's restricted with space, shelters have to move to a place where they can actually isolate the fewer beds.

How do we find alternatives?

Really working closely with our agencies who are, I cannot say enough about the frontline workers.

They are essential to our community.

- Absolutely, 100%.

When the task force was developed, was it based on a model from a different United Way somewhere?

Talk to me about how that was developed in May of 2020 to come to this aid for folks.

- Well, we knew we had to work together as a sector because no one can do it alone.

Really it was just thinking about, do we combine forces and work with businesses or do we really look at our unique needs?

I think the agreement was we really need to work together.

We need to understand...

The social service sector, many of them don't have stable funding.

How do we help them survive this?

How do we help them get the resources they need to provide the services?

All of them, we were seeing a huge demand, the demand for counseling, domestic violence, sexual assault.

These calls were coming in fast and furious.

We really needed to find a way to build their capacity.

I'm really glad we did start the task force and has really paid off in terms of how we've been able to respond collectively.

The other thing we really learned was that this is an essential service and now we are on the path to talk to our governments about, these are basic needs.

You cannot rely on just charitable support to help these agencies through.

These are providing some really basic needs.

These are essential services and I'd like to see that these are recognized as that so that everyone understands that these frontline workers are really essential for the basic needs of our community.

- Well, thank you for leading the charge and being a part of it and thank you so much for your time.

We really do appreciate it.

- Well, thank you very much.

It's a wonderful community and it's really great to be partners with you.

- Fantastic, we'll check in with you soon.

- Thank you.

- Sharing regional destinations with you is one of our favorite things.

This week, we take you on a tour of Jacques Cartier State Park in Brier Hill, New York.

If you love fishing, this is the place for you.

(horn beeps) - [Joseph] Jacques Cartier State Park has a sheltered bay protecting a sandy swimming beach and camper's dock.

Unlimited boating opportunities and excellent fishing draw visitors to the park from all over North America.

The park's large open lawns encourage games and picnics.

A playground and another picnic area, this one forested are nearby.

Located on the St. Lawrence river near Morristown, New York, Jacques Cartier has 99 nonelectric and 34 electric campsites.

Hot showers and flush toilets are available at multiple locations across its 463 acres.

(calm piano music) - Hi, I'm Sharleen Machold.

I'm from the Utica-Rome area and I've been coming up here to Jacques Cartier State Park since about 1957 with my parents.

We love the fishing and the camp site itself is very quiet.

You can go to Brockville and get fresh bread and things like that.

- I'm Tom Potucek.

I've been coming up here with my wife, Jamie for geez, about 20, 25 years.

This is... - Thomas, I have been coming up here since I was born with my parents, my sister, Kayla and my mom and my dad.

- [Joseph] Many popular game fish are prevalent, largemouth bass, Northern pike, walleye, smallmouth bass, muskellunge and panfish.

The park also provides deer and waterfowl hunting in designated areas only by permit.

Jacques Cartier State Park is named for the French Mariner who was among the first Europeans to explore the coastline of North America, West of the grand banks fishing grounds and within the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Montreal.

The land was later purchased by James Olds who built a grist mill for grinding grain for the farmers living along the river.

The Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation purchased the park in 1957, opening it to the public in 1959.

(calm piano music) - This year, I had both my daughters and her friends came up, we had six trailers.

We had a little family reunion and we have one man, he's from the Utica-Rome area.

He said this is the best place to come 'cause of the view and the quietness.

- And of course, the fishing.

- And of course the fishing.

(calm piano music) - That just about wraps it up for us this week but before we go, music fills the soul.

This week, our souls are filled by Andy Taylor, a multi-talented performer who sings, plays guitar, banjo, harmonica, the flute and no, we're not done, double trumpets.

The former owner of Tin Pan Galley in Sackets Harbor closes us out tonight with his song, Sway.

Here is Andy Taylor.

(upbeat music) ♪ When marimba rhythms start to play ♪ ♪ Dance with me, make me sway ♪ ♪ Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore ♪ ♪ Hold me close, sway me more ♪ ♪ Like a flower bending in the breeze ♪ ♪ Bend with me, sway with ease ♪ ♪ When we dance, you have a way with me ♪ ♪ Sway with me, stay with me ♪ ♪ Other dancers may be on the floor ♪ ♪ Dear, but my eyes will see only you ♪ ♪ Only you have that magic technique ♪ ♪ When we sway, I go weak ♪ ♪ I can hear the sounds of violins ♪ ♪ Long before it begins ♪ ♪ Make me thrill as only you know how ♪ ♪ Sway me smooth, sway me now ♪ (upbeat music) - Oh, that Andy Taylor has some good stuff.

That does it for us tonight.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Tune in next week for another look Inside the Stories in your region including songs of protest, songs of hope.

That's what you will be a part of when you join Gills virtual Hootenanny in Ottawa and thousands of households across the world know the name, Wilson Bickford.

He's today's Bob Ross and his show is produced in the North country.

We get up close and personal with the artist.

If you have a story idea that you'd like to see us explore, email us at wpbsweekly@wpbstv.org.

Until then, good night, everyone.

- [Narrator] WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories is brought to you by the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center.

Offers confidential business advice for those interested in starting or expanding their small business.

A public resource serving Jefferson, Lewis and Oswego counties since 1986.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Land Of Lakes Shoppette And Gas located on Route 37 Theresa, New York established in 2016 and focuses on celebrating the region by collaborating with local businesses.

Offering a fully stock store and deli, Land of Lakes is more than a convenience store.

(upbeat music) (gentle music)