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Cindy Chastain & Emily Toner
Agrability Toolbox: http://www.agrability.org/Toolbox/ | Purdue Extension Newsletter on Urban Agriculture: egglest@purdue.edu | chastai1@purdue.edu
Amazon Echo can be customized for specific commands, devices with this free tool http://buff.ly/1LByHHA
America the Beautiful – National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass http://buff.ly/1o29cDR
App – Free Speech www.BridgingApps.org
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CINDY CHASTAIN: Hi, this is Cindy Chastain and I’m the veteran outreach coordinator for AgrAbility.
EMILY TONER: Hi, this is Emily Toner, and I’m the urban agriculture educator of Purdue extension Marion County, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 252 of assistive technology update. It’s scheduled to be released on March 25, 2016.
Today I have a cool conversation with Cindy Chastain and Emily Toner who are both with Purdue University. They are focused on urban agriculture for people with disabilities. Fascinating topic.
We have a story about how to get Amazon echo to do a little bit more what you want; a way for people with disabilities to get the passes of national parks in the United States; and an app called free speech from BridgingApps.
We hope you’ll check out our website at the www.eastersealstech.com, give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124, or shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project.
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Did you ever wonder what are some good apps for Samsung, android, and accessibility? Or have you ever got in Windows 10 stock when you are doing the installation? These are questions that people have about assistive technology, and they happen to be question that we are going to address on next week’s episode of ATFAQ. It’s the panel show where we take your questions from all over the world and enter them and try to give some helpful information on the more practical and tactical side of assistive technology. Head on over to ATFAQshow.com or check iTunes or wherever you find your podcast for ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions.
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We were in our lab last week playing around with Alexa, and there were times when I could get her to do what I wanted her to do and there are times when I couldn’t. If you’re not aware, Alexa is the caricature or the avatar for Amazon echo, that in-home device that allows you to do different things like order stuff from Amazon or check the weather or play music or those kinds of things. There is a group over at UCI, unified computer intelligence, who has created a new thing that will allow you to create custom Alexa commands. The example they use in his article is that if you have any Internet connected smart folder and show them that both Snoopy, you could say something like Alexa, tell portal to turn off Snoopy, which would turn off that lightbulb. They talk about the fact that this portal is a web-based thing that will allow you to create all kinds of, what they call, lessons which is kind of like computer programming but you don’t have to be a computer programmer. They talk about built-in integration to include things like Samsung Smart things devices, Google dust, and Logitech Harmony and other kinds of things as well. If you’re playing around with Amazon echo, you said Alexa a lot, and you want it to do something that you can’t get to do now, this would be an opportunity to check it out. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to www.eastersealstech.com connect.com and you can learn about this new product from UCI.
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Here in the US, it’s starting to get warmer. I am someone who likes to go outside to do hiking and picnics and all those kinds of things. Did you know that if you have a permanent disability, you are eligible for a federal access pass? That’s a free pass that will get you into federal parks, national parks, fish and wildlife services, Bureau of land management, and those kinds of places. It’s a one-time approval process that doesn’t cause anything if you actually go to one of those federal parks and turning your documentation. If you decide to do it through the mail, it will cost you $10, but it is expire. It’s available to all US citizens and permanent residents of the US who have been medically determined to have a permanent disability, not just necessarily a physical challenge but it could be vision or intellectual disabilities, those kinds of things. They seem to use the ADA definition of having a condition that severely limits one or more major life activities. With accessibility, increasing and being good at the federal and national parks rather, that might be a pretty cool way to spend a portion of your summer. So I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to the USGS, United States geological survey, and they have a link to the access pass. Get yours. Check out one of those national parks. It sounds like a blast.
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Each week one of our partners tells us what’s happening in the ever-changing world of apps, so here’s an app worth mentioning.
AMY BARRY: This is Amy Barry with BridgingApps, and this is an app worth mentioning. Today I am super excited to be sharing the Free Speech – Build Language and Learn Grammar app by Avaz. Developed by an interdisciplinary team including speech limit pathologists, educators, researchers, and software engineers, with over 100 collective years of experience, free speech is the most advanced language learning technology available. The technology behind free speech was the subject of a Ted talk by its creator, which is been viewed more than 1 million times.
If your student or child sometimes struggles to form complete or correct English sentences, the set up. Free speech is designed to help children build language three pictures by composing with the most basic building blocks of language: their thoughts. This app is ideal for English language learners, children with specific language impairment like autism, children with hearing impairments, and anyone else who enjoys playing with language. This app allows English-language learners and people with limited impairments to explore language in a way that is visual, engaging, is natural, and also fun. Free speech is a revolutionary phrase and sentence composition tool, and it builds language by expanding it, provided users with questions to expand their substances; scaffolding, intelligently predicting words that they are likely to use; contrasting, visually modeling tense and sentence modifiers; re-casting, automatically inserting prepositions and articles as needed; and errorless modeling, automatically predicting grammar to assemble a map of pictures into a grammatically correct English sentence.
Free speech is aligned with common core language, speaking, and writing, branching goals and allows children to create grammatically correct sentences by visually mapping teachers which we love, all the while learning the structure of language. Because free speech automatically provides the link between ideas and words, children can say anything they want with pictures. When used with the guidance of a speech therapist or a special educator, free speech has been consistently shown to boost a child’s English-language skills. Free speech and the reasons behind it have been featured at leading assistive technology conferences including closing the gap, ATIA, a.s. HA, and I as AAC.
The Free Speech – Build Language and Learn Grammar app currently costs $9.99 and is available at the iTunes Store. At this time the app is compatible with iOS devices. For more information on this app and others like it, visit BridgingApps.org.
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WADE WINGLER: So I have to admit, it’s the time of year when some seed catalogs have shown up in my metal box and I’ve been looking at them and there is a little bit of green popping up in my yard that makes me think spring, at least here in the United States, is just about here. For me, I’m an Indiana farm kid, I grew up in central Indiana on a farm. I was trained by Purdue University as a master gardener, and have been long interested in how disability figures into the issue of gardening and agriculture and those kinds of things. What’s more, recently I’ve seen some really cool TV shows about rooftop and urban gardening that makes you wonder how to the city slicker pull that off on the roofs of buildings and those kinds of things. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and I’m excited today to have Cindy Chastain who is a veteran outreach coordinator for the AgrAbility project house deputy university here in Indiana; and also Emily Toner who is an urban agriculture educator in Marion county, that’s the Indianapolis area, in Indiana. Both cities are joining us from Purdue today. We are going to talk about the stuff.
Before I get too excited, first of all Cindy and Emily, thank you so much for being with us today.
CINDY CHASTAIN: Thanks for inviting us.
EMILY TONER: Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here.
WADE WINGLER: So I needed to know a little bit about the who before we talk about the what. Cindy, could I ask you to tell me a little bit about your background and how you kind of got to where you are dealing with this topic of veterans and agriculture and those kinds of things? Emily, I will ask you to do the same.
CINDY CHASTAIN: I grew up on a farm. I have an agricultural degree from Purdue University. And then I was in the Army for 30-plus years and retired in 2010. Now I work for the AgrAbility program at Purdue, which is the national AgrAbility project. We have programs in 20 states. I am the veteran outreach coordinator – I’m using my expertise with veterans that are farming or wants to farm and especially those with disabilities. There are a lot of them out there, so that is what I do.
WADE WINGLER: Family?
EMILY TONER: I grew up in Iowa and have a bachelors degree in agronomy from Iowa State University. Going to Iowa State and choose my major was where I even thought about agriculture for the first time. I had a strong interest in several health and then went on to graduate school in the University of Wisconsin Madison and studied geography which took my agriculture more towards the urban context and think about people and population and agriculture. So this is where I went after that to Indianapolis to work on urban agriculture for Purdue.
WADE WINGLER: I understand, and the reason I got connected with you ladies, and that there was a webinar on this topic. Cindy, can you tell me a little bit about this recent webinar?
CINDY CHASTAIN: It was probably over two weeks ago, February 25, we did a webinar. Emily did a portion of it on urban agriculture in general, and then I focused on urban agriculture and how it fits with veterans and veterans with disabilities.
WADE WINGLER: So how did it go? You have a lot of attendees? I think you mentioned an IV archive somewhere so that folks who learn about it.
CINDY CHASTAIN: There is a YouTube video with it, and it is archived on the AgrAbility website, AgrAbility.org. It’s archived there, and both presentations are archived on that website.
WADE WINGLER: I’ll pop some things in the show notes over to that so that our listeners can link directly to those and check it out. Kind of a big picture question, why should – and this is a loaded question – why should we care about gardening when it comes to folks with disabilities? Cindy, can you tell me a little bit about that?
CINDY CHASTAIN: There are several reasons. People with disabilities may not be able to handle large acreage. That may not be able to purchase large acreage. Urban agriculture may fit into their time schedules and their abilities. There are a lot of assistive technology tools that can help with gardening.
WADE WINGLER: Can one of you ladies talk to me a little bit about what urban gardening looks like? My perspective is that this is either rooftops or in a small backyard. I work near Broad Ripple in Indianapolis, and I hear a lot of chickens in the neighborhood these days, so I kind of have an idea of what my perspective is on that. But Emily, could you tell me a little bit about what urban gardening looks like, sounds like, feels like, those kinds of things.
EMILY TONER: Within urban agriculture, you are right, there are the crops we grow and also the animal livestock element of it. Just because you’re in the city doesn’t mean that animals will be involved. In Indianapolis, it’s legal to have chickens, rabbits, even a goat in your background, so if you’re interested in working with animals, that can definitely be a part of an urban farmer garden. And then of course all of the different food crops people grow.
Urban agriculture is kind of a wide net in terms of the term. I will tell you a few of the common types of gardens and found rehab here in Indianapolis. You have a community garden which is a space where more than one person is gardening together; four of the market from which people do as an enterprise often with some revenue and maybe some profit involved there; and that the institution driven garden is something like more of a school garden, or we have a cool – and you mentioned rooftop –Eskenazi Hospital has a sky farm, they call it, and is a public space to visit, but it is really managed and driven by the hospital, so I call it an institution driven garden. And you have even the urban homesteaders who are really producing no more than just a plot or two in their backyard. Some of these people have completed their whole residential lot, maximizing each square foot. They might be producing eggs with poultry but then also 50-plus types of crops. There are a lot of varieties and a lot of different types of interest that comes together in urban agriculture.
WADE WINGLER: Some of my first memories about gardening were with my granddad. He was a big gardener in the town where I grew up in Coatesville Indiana, and he had acres and acres of sweet corn and tomatoes and different kinds of tomatoes and green beans and those kinds of things. He probably wasn’t growing a whole lot of different crops, but he was the kind of guy who would draw a whole bunch of tomatoes or zucchini. Everybody grows a whole bunch of zucchini. And he would give them away to family and friends and take it to his church. So when I think of gardens, I think of big, expensive places. He was riding a tractor down between those rows to create that kind of garden. This sounds a little bit different to me.
EMILY TONER: It is. In terms of scale, you’re thinking about an acre or less. Often that urban homestead will be down to the size of a city lot. You are rarely going to see a tractor driving down the road here because it’s at the hand tool scale. It doesn’t mean we are talking about a low level of production. You have people using hand tools on an acre and acre and a half that are getting the whole living out of that space. 50-plus thousands of dollars of revenue coming from an acre. It’s going to be diversified crops. Some of the crops you mention your grandpa would have had are the same thing people might be drawing in town but also a lot more diversity. We counted up recently the number of greens that one farm had, in over 10 varieties. You’re going to see a really strong level of diversity among what people are growing, and yet as you are saying, what is the scale here. You’re thinking about hand tools and an acre or less.
WADE WINGLER: So that gives me a couple of questions, and that I want to look back. One of my questions is, is this hobby gardening or are there people making income doing this? You just said that people are making $50,000 a year doing this kind of gardening?
EMILY TONER: I said $50,000 of revenue. Just trying to get you a sense of the amount of production and intensity of management that can happen on an urban lot. There are a lot of costs involved but if maybe more than just a hobby for some people. We do have a cohort of people in Indianapolis who don’t even have off farm income. They are urban farmers.
WADE WINGLER: Wow. That really has gone into something that is more than my kind of gardening which is something I puttered around with on the weekends.
EMILY TONER: Yeah, it’s a whole new realm of social entrepreneurship. The hospital rooftop garden that I mentioned, or the sky farm at Eskenazi, that person is an urban farmer, but in that case – and this is something that does happen within urban agriculture – the salary of the farmer garden is actually coming from the institution and not just from sale of the crop. It’s a space that encompasses a lot of different goals for people, whether it is educational or socially focused in terms of supplying food to a certain population. But it is not always the for-profit farm, although we do have market firms that are solely driven on profits as well.
WADE WINGLER: We talked a little bit about the things that are familiar from the memories got corn and sweet corn and tomatoes and green beans and those less diverse. But you also mentioned Asian greens and other kinds of things. Are there interesting crops that folks are growing and have caught your attention?
EMILY TONER: It’s really fun to go to some of these from stands or farmer markets and see what people are up to. Because of the scale of growing, they have the chance to try out some really unique crops because maybe they are planting a row of this crop instead of an acre of the crop. Radishes are another area where you’ll see really fun diversity. I don’t know, have you ever heard of a watermelon radish or beauty heart radish?
WADE WINGLER: No.
EMILY TONER: Its lights green on the outside and almost has a rind look to its cost of the light screen has a white room as you move into the center of the radish, and then almost the whole inside is a bright vibrant pink color. They are so beautiful.
WADE WINGLER: Is a flavor similar to a regular radish?
EMILY TONER: You are thinking of the red-on-the-outside, white-on-the-inside, radish.
WADE WINGLER: Right.
EMILY TONER: There is one difference: it’s a little bit, the texture is a little bit tougher. So the white radish is almost a juice, you bite into it and there is a little bit of water coming out. These are more like a carrot I would say. There are purple radishes too. As soon as you start decreasing the scale of production, you start seeing a huge increase in diversity of crops. We have purple potatoes, purple carrots, yellow carrots, white carrots. There are all sorts of fun things. Even if you’re going to grow them, you should stop by a farmers market and look at what people are up to. It’s really cool.
WADE WINGLER: That’s fascinating. Cindy, talk to me a little bit about the kinds of gardening that lend themselves to accessibility, or some of the accommodations we talk about when we are dealing with urban agriculture and folks with disabilities.
CINDY CHASTAIN: We are talking about small acreages, small lots. We could be talking simply about arthritis, not serious disabilities. And there are tools that can help with just arthritis which probably most of us past the age of 50 are going to experience some form of arthritis. Especially garden tools, which either have different handgrips than the number once you will buy at the department stores, handgrips that are pistol grips where your thumb is above the tool, a bright. It puts your wrist in a more natural position. So there are a lot of tools that are adaptive with pistol grips on them. Or with handles like on shovels where you have a handle halfway down the shaft of the shovel. It’s easier on your back. Container gardens are really good for not just disabilities but good for everybody because he can move them around. You can put them where either the weather or landscaping permits. You can throw them out when they are not producing any more. You don’t have to do a lot of things into the ground. Elevated beds for those in wheelchairs or with back problems. We build elevated beds that are easy to garden in. Livestock, if you have a small pen that can be moved around your property called a tractor, a livestock tractor, it’s a contractor. They can be moved around, easily pulled by a lawnmower or it can be pulled by hand. There are thousands of tools for gardening. If anyone is interested, we had the toolbox on our AgrAbility website, and you can do a search for gardening tools and it will bring up a multitude of tools on the market specialized for disabilities.
WADE WINGLER: That’s a lot of cool ideas there. Cindy, I know that there is a specific link to the toolbox and the AgrAbility program. Do you happen to have off the top of your head or do you want me to pop it in the show notes later?
CINDY CHASTAIN: Could you pop it in? If you do, AgrAbility.org and click on toolbox. It is there. It’s probably AgrAbility.org/toolbox but I would have to look it up.
WADE WINGLER: I’ll pop it in the show notes later so that folks can just click on it. It is easy to find. If you ladies were to look into your crystal ball a little bit and anticipate what might be coming down the pike when we talk about urban agriculture and folks with disabilities, what kinds of things come to mind?
EMILY TONER: I’m so glad we are on this podcast today because I think the more people hear about urban agriculture, the more people that will be involved. You can do just about anything. There are different crops you want to grow, small-scale livestock you want to try out, neighborhood programs you want to link up with and help expand their education and to garden. The scale and scope of urban agriculture is so diverse that I hope what happens is that more and more people hear about it and get involved, because the matter what your interests are cut it there on gardening and food production in an urban setting, you can probably find a great way to integrate it into your community and maybe even into your business community as well.
CINDY CHASTAIN: I kind of focus on veterans. There are veterans out there all of the country that are working in their own gardens or maybe just for therapeutic reasons because they want to give back to their community and want to get their hands into the soil. It’s a feel-good activity for a lot of veterans that are suffering from PTSD or traumatic brain injuries. There are veterans all over the country that are already doing gardening and want to expand that to maybe an urban garden format. But it’s accessible, it is easier than purchasing large pieces of land to farm, especially for someone with disabilities. I think it is limitless for the veterans that are out there that have an interest in farming and agriculture. Is a way to get into it if nothing else, or it can be all.
WADE WINGLER: I think that is an excellent point. That’s a great segue. If people want to learn more and wanted to figure out those resources, I will pop AgrAbility.org/toolbox link into the show notes that folks can find it. Are there other places where they should start looking around for information on this topic?
EMILY TONER: One thing you could do, if you’re really interested in getting periodic updates, is you’re welcome to sign up for the Purdue extension Marion county newsletter that we have. I do want is an urban agriculture. I put in funding sources, job opportunities, resources, conferences, that kind of something. So if you’re looking for a way to just start plucking in information, you can email me at eegglest@purdue.edu.
WADE WINGLER: I will pop it into the show notes as well. Cindy Chastain is a veteran outreach coordinator for AgrAbility, and Emily Toner is the urban agriculture educator here in Marion County, Indianapolis, Indiana. Ladies, thank you so much for being with us today.
EMILY TONER: Thank you for having us.
CINDY CHASTAIN: Thank you.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. Looking for show notes from today’s show? Head on over to www.EasterSealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more shows like this plus much more over at AccessibilityChannel.com. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.