Takeaways

• Think big and share the load. Tracy Ore wants to essentially take over the block around the St. Cloud State University Community Garden, and she is bringing in students, the tech college, and partners so the project is not just hers.
• If you give people what they need, the doubters lose their argument. Tracy's bunny rule: plant 100 cauliflower, then another 100, and around 300 the bunnies get full. She takes the same attitude with people.
• Ice cream makers and gardeners make great collaborators. Freeze-dried strawberries keep water out of ice cream, and a garden with a giant freeze-dryer, plenty of habaneros, and strawberry basil makes for some serious flavor ideas.

Summary of the episode

In Part 3 of this conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer asks Tracy Ore, professor of sociology and director of the community garden at St. Cloud State University, about her ultimate growth plan. She would like to essentially take over the block, acquiring the house next to the garden and redoing it sustainably with solar power and technology designed by students. She is also talking with the tech college about students who could develop a business plan and a marketing plan for the space, and she wants more partners involved so the project is not just hers. Tracy says city officials have told her they want to incorporate the garden into plans to redo the street rather than pave over it, and David describes the garden as a bulwark against encroachments.

Then David asks his favorite question: what was your favorite ice cream flavor at six years old? Tracy remembers family reunions in North Carolina, where her father made hand-cranked banana ice cream with rock salt in the yard. As an adult she is not a sweets person and prefers savory flavors, salty and sweet combinations with toffee, pistachio, and strong black licorice, and she enjoyed the strawberry basil that Jupiter Moon made. David shares the flavor he wants to flat out copy: a Ritz cracker toffee ice cream with chocolate swirls and caramel from Holy Cow Ice Cream, which won the tasting at the ice cream conference he attends every year.

The two talk spicy ice cream, agreeing that dairy counteracts heat. David lists Aztec chocolate, mango habanero, and a Mexican street corn ice cream he sold only out of the trailer ("I loved it. Nobody else bought it."), and Tracy offers habaneros from the garden and describes the chili blend she makes from all of the garden's hot peppers. They then plan a winter collaboration around freeze-drying. David explains why water is the enemy in ice cream and how a freeze-dried strawberry gives strawberry flavor without little ice chunks, and Tracy has a giant freeze-dryer and locally grown strawberries ready to go, plus the chance to make astronaut ice cream.

The conversation closes with the early believers who backed the garden from day one and the doubters who predicted people would just take advantage. Tracy's bunny story sums up her philosophy of giving people, and bunnies, what they need. Both agree that grumblers exist, that it takes a community effort to keep them from being the loudest voice in the room, and that optimism is a choice worth making.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• Big ideas can take years, so keep saying them out loud. Tracy Ore talked about creating a tomato unique to St. Cloud State from 2010 until a botanist arrived in 2022 and said it was easy, and now students have made more than 2,000 crosses.
• A garden with no fences, no fees, and no application can work. After 20 years, Tracy has seen people contribute well beyond what they take, the opposite of the tragedy of the commons.
• Community projects need a succession plan. Tracy is raising money to hire an executive director who can shadow her and carry the garden's core principles forward, so the work lasts beyond any one person.

Summary of the episode

In Part 2 of this conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer and Tracy Ore, professor of sociology and director of the community garden at St. Cloud State University, dig into the Husky tomato. The name honors the university mascot, though Tracy admits a different husky tomato already exists, so a tweak like "husky red and black tomato" may be coming. Tracy had pitched the idea of a tomato unique to campus since 2010, until Dr. Angela McDonnell, a botanist and biology professor who had just been cross-pollinating eggplants, arrived in 2022 and told her it was easy. Students and faculty started with striped and black tomato varieties and have now completed more than 2,000 crosses across four generations, with students presenting their work at conferences. The goal is a flavorful, attractive, consistent black and red tomato about the size of a cocktail tomato. This summer they planted seven seed sets, labeled them in secret, and Tracy and Dr. McDonnell each independently identified two seed sets they wanted. One selection is now growing in the greenhouse, and its very dark purple seedlings showed off a plant science concept called hybrid vigor.

Tracy describes the flavor as sweeter and deeper than most tomatoes, great on a sandwich, and David is already dreaming of a tomato ice cream. He mentions that Crew has recently been experimenting with tomato ice cream of their own. The conversation then tours the rest of the garden: 20 varieties of okra, 30 varieties of eggplant, nearly 100 varieties of hot peppers, bitter melon, snake gourd, 12 kinds of basil, shiso, lemongrass, lemon balm, lemon verbena, and house-made tea blends. Tracy grows a wide diversity of plants so that no matter who walks in, they see something familiar, and she delivers herbs regularly to local businesses.

Looking back on 20-plus years, Tracy shares a Grace Lee Boggs line from her email footer about staying in one place being the most radical thing she ever did. Staying put has given her a foundation and a community that shows up when things get hard. She shares a funny story about being greeted as "Garden lady" by the food sample guy at Costco, and says she feels she has earned a respectable place in the community and has the best job in the world.

The episode wraps up with the future. David is eager to build serious ice cream collaborations with the garden, following the strawberry basil flavor Jupiter Moon made last year. Tracy shares her vision for The Commons, a house between the gardens that would become a food education and food preservation center with a cafe run by a tech college culinary arts program, plus a professional kitchen for community gatherings and ice cream collaborations. She is giving herself four years to raise money for an executive director, and has dreams of hiring a chief jam officer. Part 3 arrives next week.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Mentioned in this show:

PBS Doc on Grace Lee Boggs: https://www.pbs.org/video/pov-american-revolutionary-meet-grace-lee-boggs/

Grace Lee Boggs children's book: https://link.amazon/B01TZGEbm

Takeaways

• Real community change starts when you stay put. Tracy Ore's mentor challenged her to stay in one place long enough to name its problems with authority, and that challenge turned into a community garden that is still growing 20 years later.
• You do not need to know how to do something before you start. Tracy had never grown a vegetable before launching the St. Cloud State University Community Garden, and today it grows 95 varieties of tomatoes and is developing a brand-new one.
• Borrow companion planting for your community work. Instead of seeing other organizations as competition, ask what each partner brings to the table and how everyone's contributions can build on each other.

In Part 1 of this conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer welcomes Tracy Ore, a professor of sociology and the director of the community garden at St. Cloud State University. David opens by explaining why the show exists: community and ice cream, and the people in central Minnesota doing their own thing for the same reason he started Jupiter Moon. Tracy is, in his words, the right guest.

Tracy shares the origin story of the St. Cloud State Community Garden. In 2004, a mentor asked how she liked living in St. Cloud, and Tracy said she hated it and wanted to leave. That mentor, Grace Lee Boggs, told her you can't always just leave, and that you need to stay in one place long enough to name its problems with authority and then do something about it. A year later, in 2005, Tracy started a garden, even though she had never grown a garden or a vegetable in her life. Twenty years later, the garden grows 95 varieties of tomatoes, with a 96th on the way: the Husky tomato, a red and black striped variety being developed with a botanist and students. It has just completed its first field trial, and the sixth generation is already growing in the greenhouse.

The conversation then turns to what it takes to make a community better. Tracy came to this work as a community organizer and a sociologist who studies inequality, and after living in her neighborhood for more than 27 years, she says she understands the community well enough to add real context when someone says "this is what's going on." She borrows a gardening term to describe how she works with partners like Jupiter Moon: companion planting. David connects it to his own reason for opening an ice cream shop, and both land on the same word for what their spaces create: joy.

The episode closes with a look at Grace Lee Boggs, the Detroit activist and philosopher who shaped Tracy's life, the PBS documentary about her, and a children's book about Grace and her husband James Boggs that turns out to have a personal connection to Tracy. It is another in a summer of surprise connections. The conversation ran long, so David splits it into three parts, with Part 2 coming next week.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/