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HELPFUL HINTS FOR THE SOW WHAT JOURNEY

West Windsor-Plainsboro Girl Scouts, updated July 2012

Sow What can be a lot of fun because it is ultimately about food. This document includes advice and quotes from leaders that have done Sow What. It doesn’t cover all aspects of doing the journey, just those things that leaders had something to share. We hope you find this helpful.

It helps to plan long meetings that include a meal. One leader kicked off the journey with a sleepover that covered sessions 1, 2, and 3.

You probably don’t need to buy every girl the girl book. Unlike most Journeys, the girls don’t write in the girl book.

Session 1 and 2: Generally, try to make the food prints and food miles activities into games – simple guessing games or game show games.

“We gathered a bag of food from the pantry and threw out guesses about where the food originated and how far it had to travel. The girls were amazed when they found out thefood they guessed was local, had come from overseas and vice versa.”

“Show the girls pairs of items and have them guess which came from farther away. For the last pair, I showed them two oranges – one was from California and one was from South Africa. You can also do a guessing game like this with products made from corn. Surprising items have corn in them.”

“I borrowed the documentary Food Inc. from Netflicks. I liked it, but there are parts you wouldn't want to show the girls.Use this at the beginning of the journey as part of session 1. It has a nice section on the ubiquity of corn, one on Stonyfield (organic yogurt), juvenile diabetes, and the power of the consumer. However, it also has segments with chickens being killed in the background. So, if you use it, preview it and skip certain segments (like the chicken farming one, the one on raising cows for beef, and the one with the nice organic farmer who is killing chickens), and do it at the beginning of the journey. (Some of the meat related segments are gross enough that they might make a sensitive girl become a vegetarian, and I didn't want to do that to families.)This is what I suggest:

Fast Food for all – show it up to the part where they show the cow and pig and the % of the market dominated by the big 5/6 companies
Cornucopia of Choice – show it up to where they start showing the cow farms
CAFO – skip it
Unintended Consequences – skip it
Dollar Menu – show it
In the Grass – show it up to the point when he picks up a chicken
Kill Floor – skip it
Hidden Costs – Show it
Products Expo – stop when you get to the end of the Stonyfield person
Seed to Supermarket – skip it
Behind the veil – skip it
Shocks to the system – skip it
Power of the consumer – show it

This will be about 30 minutes.

If you also get Supersize me, show them one of the bonus feature. It's the last one; I think it's called "the smoking fry." It's about how regular burgers, fries, and McDonalds burgers gradually rot over time. But the McDonalds french fries don't seem to rot - makes you wonder what's in them.”

For the “food forage,” consider taking groups of girls to different stores for comparison – Wegmans, vs. Whole Foods vs. Trader Joes vs. Target. Whole Foods offers free tours (but not in December or January). Contact Cathy McCool at . If you book far enough in advance, you might be able to get an evening tour. If you can set up a tour at Whole Foods, the girls may get a shopping bag full of goodies! It’s worth trying to do.

“I took my troop to Whole Foods last night for the food forage. They really got into it. They answered the questions in the leader guide. We then got organic and non-organic foods and brought them back to my house for a taste test. They also got ideas on recipes to make at cabin camping.“

To use the girl book more, you might want to assign individual girls (or pairs) to read a page, and then present that page to the troop. The girl book has lots of stories about individuals that can be used for this. It doesn’t take long, and exposes the girls to more of the book, without it being homework.

Session 3: What makes a meal really happy? A couple of us combined this session with the food forage. While on the food forage, we challenged the girls to shop for a happy meal/snack, and to do it in a way that exemplified this journey. So they made things from scratch – using fresh materials. In some cases, they did a side by side comparison. They made fresh guacamole and also bought pre-made guacamole.

“We told that girls that they needed to shop for a food that both groups would make and we would eat our 'happy meal' together under session 3. We talked aboutsnacks (for example chips and salsa and we could compare freshly made salsa vs.bottled salsa) BUT the girls voted to make smoothies (they told us it was a meal - breakfast - for many of them). They decided topurchase some local fruits when buying ingredients and chose some organic and some non-organic fruits, some frozen as well. We used half of the produce to taste compare and the other half in the smoothies. A snack/meal made from fruits, like a smoothie, worked reallywell to reinforce this activity!!!”

Session 4: Dig deeper – Since you may get to session 4 in the dead of winter when there will be few farms that you can visit, the Trenton Farmers Market may be a good place to go for that session. Although the farmers market claims to be open 6 days a week, year round (9AM-6PM Tuesday-Saturday, 10AM-4PM Sundays), in the dead of winter it is sometimes closed. Also, some stalls (like the Pennsylvania Dutch one that sells nitrate free sausages and other meat products) are not there 7 days a week. I think they are open Fridays and Saturdays. And don't forget that Halo dairy is there, so if you challenge the girls to buy the ingredients for dinner at the farmers market, they will have lots of choices of ice cream ( If you plan ahead, do this session early – especially if the girls have a day off from school in September – you can take them to the farmers market, talk to a few farmers, and buy inexpensive produce.

The West Windsor Farmers Market is open Saturday mornings at the PJ train station. It closes October 29 2011 for the winter.

Some girls went to Cherry Grove Farm (which operates year-round). It is a sustainable farm. They reuse everything. The cow's milk is used to make the cheeses and the left over cheese products are fed to the pigs. The cow manure is used as fertilizer for the rotating feed areas used for the chickens, sheep and cows. Cheese is made every M-W-F morning.Cows are milked twice a day at 4am and 4pm. They also sell their own fresh farm eggs, cheeses and some other items that are locally produced and organic. At the farm store, you can buy products like cheese, eggs, and honey, which you can then do a comparative taste test with store bought versions. They do offer farm tours for $100 per group, which would only be 8-10 dollars per person if a troop did this. The tour is under 1 hour. They do let you taste various cheeses in the store. Have the girls bring money to buy stuff. Their stuff is expensive – and that’s part of the experience.

You could visit a farm that also has a corn maze in the fall. There are lots of local farms with mazes. Von Thuns in Monmouth Junction has a large corn maze in the fall. Howell Living History Farm also usually has a corn maze.

You could also take the girls to one of the pick-your-own farms (Lee’s Turkey Farm, Terhunes, or there is one in Plainsboro) where they could do some picking and hopefully talk to the farmer a bit as well.

The timing is tricky with the farm visits, since the farms are active summer and early fall. You wouldn’t normally get to this session until mid-winter. So, you might want to move the farm visit up and do it in the early fall. You could probably visit Cherry Grove any time since they are doing cheese and eggs.

It’s not exactly a farm, but one troop visited the Museum of Agriculture at Rutger’s Cook College. They now have a program that traces farming in New Jersey from the original American Indian inhabitants through colonial times to more current times. The girls were able to participate in some hands-on activities including churning butter.

Session 5: Global Outlook – This has several options. Things we liked:

For option 2 – Hunger is local – Help serve dinner at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.

“The girls (and adults) got a lot out of this. You take 4-6 girls to serve dinner at TASK. You need to pick them up from school and get to TASK quickly. They want you there from 3:15 to 5PM. We made it there closer to 3:20-3:25PM and just barely had enough time to get the girls to sign in, wash their hands, and put on their apron/gloves/hair net, and be instructed in how to serve. The dinner line is open until 4:45PM, and the girls will be serving food close to continuously. Adult chaperones will probably hand out cutlery and wrap meals to go. The girls need to be 13 or older. TASKwill only want 5-6 volunteers at a time. You should plan to schedule 2-3 months in advance. You contact Mary Ann Dobson at TASK at .”

Help at the Crisis Ministry store in Trenton. Once a month, they open their store on a Saturday morning and they are looking for about 6 volunteers to help (9AM-noon). You’ll be bagging food items, organizing shelves, and escorting shoppers through the small store. Contact Alisha Morrison 396-9355 ext. 12

For option 2 – Hunger is local – contact farmers against hunger (njagsociety.org, Judy Grignon at 609-462-9691) and do a gleaning project with them. This can only be done while crops are still being harvested, so you’re looking at summer or early fall. One troop was able to do a Thanksgiving related project with them. Also, you can contact people from your local food pantry. For WWP troops, troop leader Ria Benerofe works for the Plainsboro food pantry and might be able to help you with this one.

For option 3 – Eat from another person’s plate

“I did the $1/$7/$25 dinner option for session 5. I had one group make a $1 per person dinner for the whole troop. That was the main dinner. I had one group make a $7 per person dinner - but had them make it for 4 (so we'd all get a small portion to taste). And I had one group make ONE $25 meal, which we'd all get a small taste of. We took the girls to the store, and the groups shopped. I gave each group an envelope with the right amount of money. Then, they came back and cooked the three dinners. They had to include beverages (if they were serving anything other than water) and dessert (but dessert is optional). I let them use normal household condiments/spices, without it hitting their budget. The whole thing took us about 2.5 hours, including shopping and driving time. I thought it was a good activity. You could do it at cabin camping for lunch or dinner (but you'd need to bring a variety of household spices, without knowing for sure what they'd need.) I was impressed with the meal the $1 per person group was able to produce. The girls with the $25 budget had a hard time actually spending all their money. This one is pretty fun – the challenge is to prevent the parents from giving the groups too much advice in the grocery store!”

“We did the $1/$7/$25 dinner option. We divides our troop into 2 groups, one planned the $1/person dinner and the other the $7/person dinner. The leaders took the $25 dinner. At one meeting the girls planned what their meal would be, and each volunteered to bring one item to make it. At the next meeting, the girls assembled their meals and the whole troop shared. For the $25/meal we did it on paper, except for the dessert, which was a treat for the troop then. We had a very interesting discussion about how much a normal family dinner probably costs, what it would be like to always have to budget at the $1 a meal, or even under $5/meal level, and the various impacts of poverty and food.”

For option 4 – Use the suggested videos for girls that need to makeup this activity.

“We found another community resource, Beth Feehan, who started the WW Farmers Market and now the NJ Farm to School Network. The goal of the later is to get more local, healthy, food in the school lunch programs. Their website is . There are lots of links there for local resources. We were able to borrow a video from them titled What’s On Your Plate?, which was created by 2 middle school girls. Our girls really enjoyed the segments we watched (it could have taken a whole meeting, and we had another speaker too). There’s an excellent website for that too, “

“We liked the film Fresh with an intro by Carmen Diaz. ”.

You might actually want to do two of the options, so that you won’t have many issues with girls needing to make up this session.

Session 6-10: Take Action project and assessment: Take action projects that troops did include:

Planting a vegetable garden at the Cherry Tree Club of Prince of Peace Church
Starting Terracycle recycling of chip bags at the two high schools.
Helped with plots in the Community Garden in Plainsboro to grow fresh food for the food pantry. Worked with Carol Miller, a naturalist in Plainsboro.
Planting trees in West Windsor in an area that the township is trying to convert from farmland to forest. The idea is to reduce the local carbon footprint and help reforestation. (in progress)
Creating and distributinginformation on ways to Reduce and Reuse; the troop will set up a table at the WW Farmers Market (in progress).

Try to have the girls really plan/lead the take action projects. The project doesn’t have to be really large. So, don’t be surprised if it isn’t many hours for each girl. Try to make sure that each girl has at least some responsibility on the project. You might be able to do your project at Plainsboro’s Founders Day or the West Windsor Farmers Market. Just know that you can’t hand out flyers at Founders Day, but you can run a craft/game or learning activity.

Sessions 7 & 8: Harvest Time

Career possibilities: The girls figured out how to do this one as a game. They did it like taboo. Each girl drew a slip of paper with a career. Then she listed the things she would do in that job, and the other girls had to guess the career. This was fun!
Monoculture: For the one food/many varieties suggestion, we tried sampling about 10 different types of cheeses. So, I bought 1-2 slices of 8 different cheeses at the deli counter (plus a couple of cheeses like brie that aren’t sold there), and made up a paper plate with samples of each cheese, with the name of the cheese written on the plate. We passed the samples, and the girls got to try a lot of different cheeses. We talked about which ones people did/didn’t like and about why having lots of different varieties available is a good thing. They really enjoyed this activity, and it was relatively easyand not too expensive because you can buy very small quantities of cheese at the deli counter.

Making Butter: While this isn’t directly a journey activity, making butter is a lot of fun. It fits thematically because it is an example where girls can make a fresh food, rather than buying a processed one. So, if you are trying to jazz up a troop meeting, make butter. And if you serve it on cute “mini toasts” which are sold in the fancy cheese section of the giant grocery stores – it will be even cuter. Or, just serve it on regular bread. To make butter, buy heavy cream. Let it sit outside the refrigerator so it is room temperature. Pour it into a container with a tight lid (it is fine to make several smaller batches so that the kids can participate more, rather than one large batch - I did this one batch for every 4-5 kids). Then, the kids take turns shaking the container. The cream thickens a bit. Then it gets really thick (like whipped butter). Don’t stop – keep going. Then it will separate into buttermilk and butter. It works well to open the container and look at it every 2-3 minutes. The whole thing only takes about 7-8 minutes if you’re using smaller containers, and room temperature heavy cream. Then, you drain out the buttermilk. Rinse the butter (in the container) with water 2-3 times to get all the rest of the buttermilk out. Add a little salt, and serve on toast/bread. Fresh, home-made butter! If you want to explain the science of it, you can explain how cream rises to the top of milk, and they skim off the cream. Cream is basically water with fat globules floating in it. When cream is lightly stirred, the fat globules just float around in the water. When you shake it violently, the fat globules smash into each other. The membrane/skin around the globules are broken and they stick together. As the fat globules get bigger and bigger, the cream gets thicker and thicker, and eventually you have butter.