My name is Mike Van De Carr, Kansas City magician - I'm a full-time corporate comedy magician specializing in corporate entertainment. My experience has helped create successful events at: Conferences, Awards Banquets, Sales Meetings, Trade Shows, Holiday Parties and Golf Tournaments. (www.mikevandecarr.com)

On May 1st, Shawnee Mission Rotary club visited the Juniper Gardens training farm. Juniper Gardens is a joint effort between Catholic Charities and Cultivate KC that teaches refugees about farming and how to market their produce. The training farm is a 7 acre plot of land located in downtown Kansas City, KS. Refugees are chosen by Catholic Charities and engage in a 4 year long training program. They then sell the produce that they harvest at Farmer's Markets and through community supported agriculture (CSA) groups. There are currently 16 refugees, mostly from Myanmar, in the program. The land, equipment, and trainers are paid for through government programs and grants so that all of the money that farmers get to keep all of the money that they make through produce sales. Once they graduate from the program, Catholic Charities and Cultivate KC continues to help them with finding and purchasing their own plot of land to continue to farm on.

How can you get involved? The CSA for this season (22 weeks long) starts soon. If you join, you get a variety of vegetables once per week. Pick up of vegetables every week is at one of the four locations/times (see attached flyer) that works best for you. Each week's delivery is big enough for 4-5 people and includes staples like root veggies and greens but then has some unique vegetables (with recipes) that are native to the refugees home countries too. The total cost for the season is $462. You can read a bit more about the CSA and sign up here: https://newrootsforrefugees.org/csa/