Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (00:00): Hello, and thanks for joining the podcast. My guest today is Dr. Sara Skinner. She's the owner of Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms. And with Veterans Day on Friday, it just seemed appropriate to share her journey to becoming a mushroom farmer because it's directly connected the time that she spent in the Army. And she may have left the Army 12 years ago, but she's never really stopped advocating for veterans. She's now a professor of social work at the University of Georgia. She's even designed courses that help other clinicians working with veterans and military families. And as you're about to hear, while she has no desire to be the mushroom queen, farming itself has really become an important part of her healing process because of the hope that's found in growing things and investing in the future. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (00:46): Welcome to More Than a Mile, a local food podcast from Market Wagon focused on connecting you to local food through farmer stories from across America. I'm Nick Carter, your host, a farmer and CEO and co-founder of Market Wagon. We are your online farmer's market with a mission to enable food producers to thrive in their local and regional markets. Food is so much more than just nutrients and calories. It's actually the fabric that holds us together. Thanks for joining me for this episode of More Than a Mile, and thank you for buying local food. It's one critical step in making an investment in food for future generations. Well, my guest today is Sara. Sara, thanks for joining us. Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (01:28): Yeah, no problem. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (01:29): I love your story. At time of recording, we are coming up on Veterans Day. So it's a time of year everybody acknowledges, you know, the sacrifices veterans have made throughout the generations in our country. Seems like every day's Veteran's Day for you though, right? This is a lived reality. Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (01:48): That is true. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (01:49): So we're gonna talk about your service and how that's brought us around to growing mushrooms. I just want to start at the beginning and first of all, say thank you for serving our country to you and your husband. Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (02:02): Thank you for your support. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (02:04): Of course. How did you get, you know, today you're a mushroom farmer. You started in the Army. How did you get, how did you decide to join the army right out of high school? Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (02:14): . So I didn't actually, So I grew up as a military brat. My dad was a, um, lifelong Army soldier. Growing up I was very adamant of like, I'm never gonna go in the army. No way. Then after high school, I did one semester in college and it didn't go very great . Uh, and so I was like, Hm, Army's not looking so bad now. So, yeah, after I did one semester of college and then I joined the Army mostly to kind of help me get back to college, but it turns out I loved it. And, uh, I really had a wonderful experience. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (02:55): I really love that because I grew up son of a farmer and swore I'm never going to be a farmer. Then I dropped out of college and now I farm. So we have a lot of things in common except I didn't join the military. So you grew up in a military family. You met your husband in the military, right? Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (03:15): That's correct, Yeah. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (03:17): At West Point? Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (03:18): That's right. Yeah. So after I was in the Army for a couple years, so I enlisted originally, and so I was enlisted for a couple of years. And then I was given the opportunity to apply to West Point and I was accepted. And so while I was there, I did meet my husband and we've been married for 20 years now. We just did our 20th reunion this past weekend. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (03:44): Congratulations. Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (03:45): Yeah. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (03:46): And your husband also was in the Army? Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (03:48): Yep. Yep. It's a requirement after graduating. So we both graduated and our senior year was when 9/11 happened. So our senior year of college was 2001-2002. We graduated 2002 and pretty much we were both, you know, immediately deployed to Iraq. Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO) (04:08): So you're newlyweds on deployment. Is that hard? Dr. Sara Skinner (Classic City Gourmet Mushrooms) (04:13): Um, the hard part was most, most of the time we were separated. Yeah. But there was a brief point where we were both deployed to Baghdad at the same time. So I was on one side of the river, he ...
