All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
We've got some great programs for you.
I think you'll find very interesting.
We always want to remind you you can find more about Veterans Radio at its Facebook site
or at the web.
VeteransRadio.org is our new URL, VeteransRadio.org.
Where we're on the web 24-7, you can find a lot of our podcasts there as well.
We post new ones every Tuesday, so you can get a new story, a new interview,
something you didn't know before by going to VeteransRadio.org.
And before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors.
First up, we want to thank National Veteran Business Development Council, NVBDC.org.
It was established to certify both service disabled and veteran-owned businesses.
You'll find out how they can help your business by going to NVBDC.org.
We want to thank Legal Help for Veterans.
Legal Help for Veterans fights for veterans disability rights all across the nation.
You can reach them at 800-693-4800 or on the web at LegalHelpForVeterans.com.
We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today a United States Air Force veteran, Crystal Wiggins.
Crystal, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Hello, thank you for having me.
I'm so excited about this.
Well, this is going to be a great discussion because we're talking to a girl who grew up
in Texas, joined the Air Force for eight years, did some education, and has a really cool job,
which is the focus of what we're going to finally get to, which is she's the Veterans
Program Manager at the Columbia Center for Urban Agricultural Veterans Urban Farm.
That's a mouthful.
We'll break it all down.
But Crystal, how did a nice girl like you from Texas end up in the Air Force?
Oh, gosh.
I just didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up.
I had it pretty well as a kid, middle class, had everything I needed.
I had great parents, still have great parents.
Yeah, let's get that clear right.
They were in our great parents.
I'm definitely going to listen to this.
But yeah, I just didn't know what I wanted to do.
I've always been fairly, I don't know, just wanted to be out on my own.
I wanted to travel.
I wanted to be able to take care of myself.
And so, it's actually funny.
I almost joined the Navy, actually.
They're the recruiters that came to our classes first.
And then my dad had been in the Navy, and he was like, no, you don't want to do that.
And then the Air Force guy came by about another month later, and I was like, dad, the Air
Force sounds even cooler.
And so I ended up joining at 18, and then right after high school, I joined and went
to basic training.
Yeah.
Well, Texas is a big Air Force area, and so that's probably some pull there as well.
But you were pretty typical in that you felt like, hey, I'm in high school.
I'm not ready for college when I graduate.
I don't know what I want to do, but I need to get out.
And joining the Air Force allowed that.
But I should point out, because we're not going to focus on this, but I want to mention
it, you obtained your bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia.
You are just shy of getting your master's in social work from the University of Missouri.
But it all kind of started with this kid who wasn't really ready for college by doing
some community college work.
Tell us what you did.
Yeah.
So I did actually struggle all through school.
I actually recently found out while I was in grad school that I had undiagnosed ADHD.
So school was really hard for me growing up.
I struggled through it, but I did well.
I still got my A's and B's, but I had to try really, really hard.
And I just wasn't excited about college.
So the Air Force sounded a whole lot better, more fun, give me some time to grow up and
make some money and then have the GI Bill.
So I went in thinking I'm going to do four or six years and then get out.
And then while I was in, I started changing my mind and I was really loving it.
I got my, I started taking classes to get my community college of the Air Force Associates
degree in avionics systems technology.
And it wasn't that bad.
I realized that, yes, it's school to school, but I was taking one or two classes at a time
and I ended up knocking it out pretty quickly, the classes that I needed to finish up getting
that associate's degree.
And then when I cross-trained into meteorology, the schooling was so long and I had all the
other prerequisites already done.
So boom, a second associate's degree right after I finished all the upgrade training
and everything like that, I had an associate's in meteorology.
So that, I think those two things really gave me the confidence that I needed to be able
to get out of the Air Force, to pursue my passion for management, for business, for
leadership, all of those kind of things were the things that I loved the most about serving.
And like most of us, there's always good and bad supervisors and you learn a lot from both
if you're smart enough.
And I did that.
And so when I got out, I had the vision that I wanted to eventually become an entrepreneur
and be the leader that not just the people wanted, but that people needed.
And so, yeah, I got my business degree, I graduated in May 2020 during COVID.
So unfortunately, I didn't get my graduation ceremony, but that didn't stop me because
about a year, one year later, almost exactly a one year later, I came back and started
my grad degree.
And I'm just a few classes shy of obtaining the master's in social work.
Well, I think it's a great story for veterans, as they might tell their kids or grandkids,
nieces and nephews that, you know, if you're not ready for college, the military may be
the right way to go.
And did you even know that they have a community college of the Air Force and all the other
services have some something similar to aid in that next step in education as people go
along?
So I want to highlight the community college of the Air Force.
No, I think that that's great.
And I love being a part of that story because it really has been transformative for my life,
going from a girl that really struggled to, and you know, even thought of myself as not
smart for most of my life up to, you know, within the past few years, I was like, oh,
you know what, like, I'm not dumb.
I just, you know, I have some challenges, but that doesn't mean that I'm not capable.
And through getting into grad school and doing really well in my classes, I really learned
to appreciate my own intelligence and what the Air Force set me up for was success for
later in life.
Well, you can just hear the confidence that Crystal has as a result of that.
And I do want to make a poke a little fun maybe at some of your work in the Air Force
because you're a weather forecaster in Tucson, Arizona.
Oh, yeah.
What do you got to say other than it's another beautiful day in Tucson?
Yeah.
Um, funny enough, I actually didn't do any forecasting for anywhere in Arizona.
I was assigned to the Pacific Northwest, and I had an 11 state area that I supervised
multiple forecasters below me.
And so we, we did basically Washington and Oregon all the way across to the edge of Nebraska,
like that whole North, East Northwestern side of the states.
And so we did all the military bases and installations and all of that for Army and
Air Force.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, I have a friend who's a professional meteorologist, TV meteorologist here in the
Metro Detroit area.
It was also with the Air Force stationed at Hawaii.
And I, and I, yeah, I joke with them all the time.
It's going to be the best job in the Air Force.
It's another beautiful day in Hawaii.
But as you say, it's much, it's much broader than where you're based and interesting.
Well, you've had a, you got out in hand of a number of sort of stops along the way, finding
your passion.
And one of them, though, with the current stop where the passion is, is this veteran,
veterans program on urban agriculture.
Tell us about, tell us about this.
Yeah.
So actually when I was in my grad program, I met the previous veterans program manager
and we actually, the reason why we met is that I was looking for some food security
for student veterans.
And I was at the time this Mizzou Student Veterans Association president and was noticing
through my work as in the program and the student body program, but then also my work
as a work study student within the, you know, veteran's center on campus that a lot of veterans
were food insecure.
And they didn't want to go to the resources that were available because, you know, that
like, oh, well, somebody else needs it more than I do kind of attitude, which is kind
of typical for us.
We're kind of stubborn in all of us military folks.
So I met with Dustin Cook, who was my predecessor in this position.
And we got to make a collaboration where the veterans urban farms started bringing fresh
produce to our conference room or our break room area in the veteran center.
And that's kind of where it all started.
Dustin and I, you know, from there, he kind of kept me informed of opportunities and education
in agriculture.
And I kept, you know, trying to collaborate with the student body and community resources
in Colombia.
And so once he decided he was moving on to his next career, he hand selected me for this
position and I jumped on it because it was, it couldn't have been more perfectly aligned.
Like, you know, if you believe in God, that was definitely, you know, there was some kind
of magic happening in the world when this came into my lap.
And so, yeah, I love working with veterans.
I worked with veterans all through my undergrad and graduate degree.
I went into social work specifically to focus on veteran issues.
And now here I am living my dream.
So yeah, so I'm guessing you're going to want me to talk a little bit about the programs
and I'm going to slow you down and you told me I'm a chatter.
You're going to really have to put a bridle on me.
Because this is where I think this idea is really interesting and I think it can really
expand.
So you ran into this as food insecurity for veterans.
Many people may not know that most colleges have a student veteran association and that
that's a national network really active for transitioning vets who do just what you did,
which is, hey, I've now matured enough, I got the GI Bill, I'm going to go to college.
But that's a hard transition as well.
So SVA is there to help with that.
And it's that sort of where the connection becomes because you've got, you know, this
opportunity or this problem that exists for a lot of folks that SVA could maybe assist
with on food insecurity.
You guys do it by growing fresh produce and making, I think I read 15,000 pounds of fresh
produce available each year that gets donated to local veterans and families.
How do you produce that much?
Where do you produce it?
What kind of acreage is involved?
Tell us about the program.
Yeah, so the Veterans Urban Farm started four years ago in Dustin Cook, the guy I mentioned
earlier, he's the one that kind of started it and launched it within Columbia Center
for Urban Agriculture.
So the location was already in the existing headquarters for CCUA and they transformed
it into the Veteran's Urban Farm program four years ago and it's 1.3 acres.
So it's not very big.
It's literally just on the northern side of our downtown area.
And we only use about, I would say, less than half of that acreage to grow crop.
We do everything organically.
We don't use any fertilizers or anything like that.
We use all natural ingredients for the soil, bone meal and just all of these natural elements
to really maintain good soil health because that's where the magic happens.
And then we do crop rotations and we just, I have a co-manager, his name's Joe Walls.
He is in charge of the crop planning for the entire calendar year and he's actually working
on that right now at this time of the year to plan for 2024.
So we have a good idea of everything that's going on in production throughout the year
and most of the work is done through our volunteers actually.
So we have...
How many volunteers are involved?
Yeah, I would say at the Urban Farm we have weekly volunteers.
They come once a week at different times of the week.
We probably have approximately 20 of those consistent volunteers that come once a week
for a three hour shift.
And then we also make available group volunteer opportunities to any local organizations or
businesses, whoever wants to come out and just give back.
We have a volunteer coordinator that leads those initiatives and then they come to the
farm.
I also sometimes reach out to people and get the word out and then that gets people coming
out to the farm.
So we'll get groups from anywhere from four to 20 people coming out to the farm and when
you get 20 people coming out you can make some serious change really quickly.
And these volunteers aren't all veterans but veteran volunteers working outside in the
soil is certainly something that I assume you promote and is therapeutic also I suspect.
Yes.
Yeah.
So currently I just took over the program in May this year.
So currently most of our volunteers are civilians.
Some of them have relatives that are serving or have served but for the most part a vast
majority of our volunteers, our weekly volunteers are not veterans.
However, we are targeting veteran populations and trying to get more veterans to come out
and participate as weekly volunteers.
We have a volunteer shift currently that's on Tuesday evenings that I started once I
got here at this position and it's going really well.
And yes, 100% the environment is very therapeutic not just for the reasons of being outside
on a farm and getting all this delicious food but the people that work there and volunteer
there, everybody has a very open mind, a very like a whole person concept basically.
We view every single individual that comes on the farm as a unique person that has the
opportunity to teach us new things.
And so that's how we treat everybody.
There's a lot of love and support and care for everyone that comes on the farm.
Well, I always think it's great when you do something with your hands and you feel like,
okay, I can look back and see what impact I actually had as compared to something that
you don't know if you ever accomplished anything.
But let's talk about the, you know, what type of food produce in this 15,000 pounds
that are you growing on the annual basis?
Yeah, it's pretty cool because we have a lot of autonomy to grow what we want and what
works well.
So, I mean, the farm's been producing for about four years, like I said.
So we kind of have some data on what's working well, what doesn't work well.
But a lot of the basics, a lot of the basics, so onion, garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini,
peppers of all kinds, carrots, lettuce, mustard greens, collard greens, kale, sweet potatoes,
radishes, turnips, beets, I mean, really just there's a lot.
That really covers the universe there.
Yeah, we regrow a lot.
And then we also have a peach tree that we dearly love because it has some fantastic
peaches that grow off of it.
And we just started an apple orchard about two years ago.
So we're hoping that next year will be the first year that it's really producing a good
amount of apples.
So part of the program here, and we're talking to Crystal Wiggins, who's a Veterans Program
Manager at the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture's Veterans Urban Farm.
That's the last time I'm saying it.
It's way too long.
Yeah, it's too long for me to.
But this all really kind of started in your mind, the connecting some lines and dots was
sort of food insecurity that Veterans were experienced as part of being students.
How is the distribution of this food handled and are you able to have an impact on that
original concern?
Yeah, so we take the food to currently right now.
What we do is we take it to three locations.
We take food to the VA here in town, the Truman VA.
We have a weekly on Thursdays from 10 to noon.
We have a food market, basically a free donation food market where families, Veterans and families
can come and get what they want and leave donations if they can.
And then inside of the VA, we have partnered with the VA here and we have a refrigerator
that we also can go take stuff inside and leave produce at the fridge for people to
be able to gather items at their leisure.
And then so that's our first location which is the Truman VA here in Columbia.
And then the second location is Welcome Home which is a homeless shelter here in town specifically
for Veterans.
And we've been doing that with them pretty much since conception of this idea.
And then the third and final place that we are currently giving is directly to the Mizzou
Student Veterans Association on campus.
So that's what we're doing right now.
We have a few other locations that we're thinking about branching out to next year which is
really exciting but since that's not official yet, I'm not going to say anything yet.
Don't jinx it.
Yeah, I don't think I'm going to jinx it.
I don't imagine many people turning away free produce.
Well, it's a time run short here.
I want to challenge our listeners who are maybe affiliated with Veterans Service Organizations
or SVA at different college campuses to think about how this concept might spread around
the country.
We have so many VSO posts with a lot of land that may not be being put to use other than
to cut the grass.
And this idea of getting Veterans of all ages involved in some farming to make food
available to folks at the VA, great idea, great partnership, veteran homeless shelters,
fantastic idea, and Student Veterans Associations put it on the table and college kids will
show up and take food.
These are ideas that, you know, this isn't rocket science.
This could really spread quite far and wide, I think.
Is there an effort?
Maybe I just don't know about it.
Is there an effort out there to do this?
Well, myself and Dustin Cook, we've both been very much actively reaching out to other
organizations, to other VAs, to other campuses, and are telling them about what we're doing.
We've had some people come directly to us and asking for more information on, hey, how
do we do this?
How do we get started?
What did y'all do?
How does this work?
Yada, yada.
And so, certainly there are, I know that before I came into the picture, Dustin already had
about four different locations in the U.S. and other states that are actively looking
into doing something similar.
And that is something that I'm carrying the baton with.
I want to, I want us at the Veterans Urban Farm here in Columbia to be a point of contact
for people that are wanting to get veterans more involved in agriculture.
I have contacts with the USDA, with Agribility, with several different organizations that
are also looking to teach veterans more about agriculture and farming because we are actually
a really good population, people separating from the military.
We have a lot of the skills and experience and just like the grittiness, I guess, to
do farm work.
And so, and it has been shown that it is in fact a therapeutic workplace environment
for a lot of veterans.
So, we are actively putting together even more than what we're doing.
So like we've just been talking about farming, but part of me getting hired on was the social
work aspect.
And so, a big part of what I'm doing next year in 2024 is expanding what we do at the
farm to be also a lot more veteran outreach in the community.
So more events, more classes and training opportunities for anything that you could relate to agriculture.
So canning and preserving, how to use medicinal herbs, how to cook.
All of these things are all related to self-sufficiency, to having a sense of purpose and meaning with
like having a community and a support network.
And that's what we really, really are looking forward to is creating a space that is known
and loved by the community of veterans here in town and in Missouri in general.
Because that's what we all need is community.
This is a great concept.
I challenge VFW, VVA, PVA, DVA to DAV to get out and think outside their box of what they're
doing currently and think about, these aren't victory gardens if you're old enough, you
know what that is.
These are veteran gardens.
Could you do something in your already existing space that allowed you at the end of the harvest
season to be donating food at the VA to veteran groups, to student veterans.
This is a great idea.
We look forward to it expanding crystal.
And I think we need to talk to you about a year from now about all the expansions that
you have in mind.
But thank you for spending time with Veterans Radio today.
Oh, yeah.
I really appreciate you having me on.
And if anybody has any questions, please send them my way.
Do you want to give an email address out for you or the website?
Yeah, my email is crystal, C-R-Y-S-T-A-L at columbiaurbanag.org.
Okay.
We are glad to have you on.
Thanks again for the time today.
Thank you, Jim.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawcone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans.
And you can reach us at 800-693-4800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.
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And until next time, you are dismissed.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for
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They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
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S. Kettles Chapter, Ann Arbor, Michigan, VFW Graf O'Hara Post 423 in Ann Arbor, and
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And until next time, you are dismissed.
Thank you.