(guitar music)
- Wagner, South Dakota is located
right on the Missouri River,
towards the south edge of the state.
The thing I love about living in a small town like Wagner
is that small changes do make a big difference here.
- Crow Creek Reservation is definitely
what would be classified as a food desert.
We have this one grocery store, Lynn's Dakota mart here,
which is the primary store for shopping.
We also have a couple of small
convenience store gas stations.
Otherwise, community members have to travel to Chamberlain
which is half hour south,
or Pierre, an hour north, to buy food.
- Some of the challenges the children of Marty face
are, one of 'em is poverty, and one of 'em is isolation.
They don't have access
to healthy vegetables, or healthy food.
The food comes from boxes or cans.
There are some kids that have never eaten vegetables.
- Right now we are seeing higher numbers
than we want to with overweight and obesity,
and especially among our children.
Physical activity, people just are not getting
the daily recommended amounts.
We still see heart disease, diabetes,
a lot of those chronic disease issues
that really drive back to nutrition and physical activity.
- Hoed these, hoed that bed.
- In Wagner, we have two community gardens.
At both gardens we have wild plantains growing.
They have healing oils in them for your skin,
so we've made salves with that,
and we hope to incorporate
more medicinal plants in the future too.
SDSU extension has sponsored our garden programs
around our area in Lake Andes, Wagner, Marty,
we all kind of work together here.
I don't know if we could make it happen
as easily without them,
so it's been a blessing to have them.
- SDSU extension is a part of South Dakota State University.
We're that outreach arm, and it is exciting,
because we can connect what's going
on in the teaching pieces at SDSU,
and the research, and really bring it down to their level
to what's affecting their community
and help to solve those problems, those real world problems.
- Well kids, we have onions, these ones are onions,
these are beets.
Our tribe used to be, there used to be a lot of gardeners.
My grandma was a huge huge gardener,
so I used that as a inspiration
to help me bring that back to kids,
to teach them about gardening.
These lessons that they're learning here,
they're gonna carry on, they're gonna be able to use them
throughout their life
to teach their kids and their grandkids about gardening.
We wouldn't have this if it wasn't for SDSU extension.
Like, if you drive around Marty,
there's no other garden here, so we're it.
- If we can make produce
an affordable choice for the community,
and make it something that they want to choose,
instead of kids surviving on ramen and chips,
choosing a healthy snack like an apple or a banana
on a daily basis can help drive down the obesity rates
and the diabetes rates, and overall make the community
a healthier place to live.
- What we feel like we do a great job
at is that we're not coming in and saying
this is what you have to do,
or we have the answer for you.
We really try to listen to the communities,
bring those stakeholders together
that maybe haven't talked before,
or haven't even thought about maybe
we do have an issue or a challenge.
- After we were able to get the stakeholders together,
we started with a variety of needs assessments,
and then after that the stakeholders were able
to kind of sift through what the biggest needs were
and then choose interventions
that were going to best suit their biggest needs.
Every time we had community conversations
or those assessments, I made sure to try to involve
any of our youth as much as possible.
- Without a doubt the shining star idea
was to improve the playground at the park.
- Part of our hope I think is,
and whether it's through the food pantry or beyond that,
is to help people not just come in and need the food
or need the financial assistance that we also provide,
but to offer them classes and education to move beyond that,
to become more self-reliant in a sense.
- It is so just gratifying just to see
that the little pieces that we can bring,
how they can change people's lives and communities' lives.
- I have never eaten an eggplant until this year,
so because of the gardens and we got eggplants,
I am very thankful for that,
like it opened up a whole new eggplant world (laughs).
(guitar music)