UK Extension Service teaches life skills such as nutrition in drug-treatment facilities; 10 counties have grants for gardens

By Katie Pratt
University of Kentucky

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. -- Program assistants and agents with the University of Kentucky's Cooperative Extension Service are teaching life skills to help individuals recovering from drug and alcohol addiction live healthier lives once they leave treatment facilities.

In January, the UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment hired recovering heroin addict and doctoral student Alex Elswick as extension specialist for substance-use prevention and recovery. He has started a program with agents in three counties; two other programs with agents in four other counties are to start next month. Elswick is co-founder of the UK Collegiate Recovery Community.

In Taylor County, program assistant Angie Freeman offers nutrition-education programs to clients at The Healing Place, an addiction recovery center in Campbellsville. She has led programs at the all-male treatment facility since 2013, presenting topics such as meal planning, MyPlate, food budgeting and food safety.

The education programs are funded by the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which includes what were once known as food stamps. This part of the program is known as "SNAP-Ed."

“Our eight-week class series is geared toward trying to have a healthy family and a healthy lifestyle on an economical level,” Freeman said. “Hopefully, they will take the things we have talked about and go home and actually meal plan using the weekly grocery ads, so they can make a really good shopping list and eat on a more economical basis.”

Freeman discusses ways clients and families can eat healthier.
(Photo by Steve Patton, UK Agricultural Communications)

The Healing Place staff report that the eight-week class greatly helped participants, so they now require all of their clients to complete the class before leaving the treatment facility.

Steve Croghan of Columbia has been a client at the center for six months, recovering from an addiction to suboxone and methamphetamine. When interviewed, he was days away from graduating from the program's first phase. He said Freeman’s class gave him information that will help him as he moves forward with his life.

“Angie and Kara have been tremendously helpful for us,” he said. “Angie actually takes the time with us to make us understand what is going on and gives us a lot of good nutritional values. It helps us live out there healthier.”

In addition to nutrition education, Freeman’s class tends a small, raised-bed garden on the property. Taylor is one of 10 counties that have grants from SNAP-Ed to install and help manage gardens at addiction recovery centers. 

Extension agents and program assistants in Jefferson, Pendleton, Daviess, Martin, Lawrence, Pulaski, Boyd and Madison counties have received funding to partner with local addiction recovery centers to install gardens at the facilities.

Christopher Browning is a Healing Place client from New Haven, recovering from a heroin addiction. Even though he was raised in rural Kentucky, he said the gardening classes have been eye-opening. He enjoys tending the garden.

“It’s something different to do in a place like this,” he said. “It makes us not so sheltered in. We get to get out and do some things that we might enjoy doing on the outside.”

The Healing Place started out with one raised-bed garden in 2018, with their clients raising cool- and warm-season salad ingredients. They added another bed this year and plan to add another in 2020.

“I really hope they gain basic knowledge about how to grow their own fruits and vegetables,” Back said. “Some of them have never really done this before, and it’s just a way for them to see it firsthand. Maybe later on down the road in their life, they may be interested in growing some on their own.” 

Recently, 17 men graduated from Freeman’s series of classes. Two of them were Croghan and Browning, who were excited about their accomplishment.

“It’s nice to actually complete something,” Browning said. “I have not done so well with that the last few years of my life, but I have actually had the patience and the time to do something productive.”

If you're digging, using sharp tools or handling plants with sharp points, make sure your tetanus vaccination is up to date

Photo from MountainX.com

"Gardening this summer?" Medicare asks. "Did you know that gardeners can be prone to tetanus infections? Tetanus lives in the soil and enters the body through breaks in the skin, especially when using sharp tools, digging in the dirt, or handling plants with sharp points."

Medicare offers some advice that is useful for everyone, not just Medicare beneficiaries: "Make sure your tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (Tdap) vaccination is up-to-date. Use a good set of gardening gloves, which can help lower the risk for skin irritations and cuts."

Medicare says its prescription drug coverage (Part D) generally covers vaccinations needed to prevent illness. And for people not on Medicare, vaccinations are relatively inexpensive.

Boyd County extension agents teach children healthy living

By Katie Pratt and Jeff Franklin
University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment

Young children in Boyd County are learning healthy habits thanks to programming efforts by the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service that include planting their own vegetables.

Susan Grimmett, program assistant for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program education, has worked with 300 students at four schools within the county to teach them about the importance of nutrition and physical activity within the school year. To do so, she used Organ Annie and other characters from The OrganWise Guys, a program initiated by two doctors to spread awareness about the importance of a healthy lifestyle to battle childhood obesity. Grimmett has used the program with Boyd County preschool through second-grade students for the past three years as students and teachers continue to request it.

“The students have enjoyed it, and they have learned a lot,” said Kelly Smallwood, a preschool teacher at the Early Childhood Learning Center-North in Ashland. “Every time Susan comes, she has something for them, and they enjoy that also.”

For one of the program’s culminating events this school year, Grimmett collaborated with Lori Bowling, Boyd County horticulture extension agent, to help the children grow their own pots of leaf lettuce. They chose lettuce, because the students could very quickly see growth. After the lettuce sprouts in the classroom, the children will take their pots home with the goal of sharing the message of nutrition and healthy eating with their families, many of which have limited resources and low incomes. The ultimate goal is for the children to harvest the lettuce and work with their parents to incorporate it into a family meal.

“If we teach them at this age about what’s healthy and the kind of diet they should be eating, hopefully as they progress through school, they will make wiser food choices and have a healthier lifestyle,” Bowling said. “We also want them and their parents to understand that you can grow your own food, regardless of where you live, as long as you have a container, seeds, sunlight and water.”

Even though their pots of lettuce are still small, Grimmett has heard many of the children are excited about growing the produce as some teachers have already received positive emails from parents about the project.

“They are eating healthier, and their parents are getting involved more and buying healthier foods at their children’s request,” Grimmett said.

Eastern Ky. jumps on national gardening bandwagon, big time

In response to the downturn of the economy, people in Morgan County and the rest of Eastern Kentucky have turned to their roots — getting down in the dirt and growing a vegetable garden, reports Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times. The offshoot is that people can improve their health by increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. (Times photo by Luke Sharrett)

Vegetable gardening has been on the rise nationally since 2008, which was around the time when Lehman Brothers collapsed, starting the turmoil ion the nation's financial system. "Our sales have skyrocketed," said George Ball, chief executive of Burpee, one of the country's major vegetable seed retailers.

Unlike in urban centers, where buying locally grown vegetables often comes with a exorbitant price tag, eating in rural areas is usually cheaper. Teacher Rebecca Frazier said she "she had cut her food bill in half by growing her own and preserving and by buying in bulk from local farmers," Tavernise reports.

Timothy Woods, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Kentucky, said the number of farmers' markets in Eastern Kentucky has doubled since 2004. "You won't see certified organic products or any fancy marketing" seen in urban areas, he said. "It's a very different world."

Sarah G. Fannin, on ground in photo, is an agriculture educator for UK's Cooperative Extension Service. She said the service has fielded twice the number of calls from people who are asking for gardening help in the past three years. "Ten years ago, we hadn't really been thinking about where our food was coming from other than the drive-through or the grocery store," she said. "Now there's more concern."

Though Tavernise points out gardening does not necessarily lead to improved health, Bridget C. Booske, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, said County Health Rankings show Morgan County people are living longer and a smaller number of babies are born underweight. Obesity and diabetes rates remain high, however, and locals believe those rates won't significantly improve until there are more jobs and less poverty in the area.

But to create another source of income, Fannin is urging farmers to turn to gardening. The first time Robert Bradley, a former coal miner who turned to farming, planted sweet potatoes, he doubted the effort. But they grew so well, it was has prompted other farmers to try it out too. (Read more)