PKG ((ORGANIC FOOD))   
((Banner: A Passion for Organic Foods)) 
((Executive Reporter:  Marsha James)) 
((Camera: Kaveh Rezaei) 
((Map: Minnesota, St. Paul))    
((Main characters: 1 Female)) 
((NATS)) 
((May Lee, Certified Organic Hmong Farmer and Mentor)) 
I can tell that organic produce it really help. People they don’t know what to eat and I 
really, really worry. (Ohh) I like to work outside. I raise vegetables to feed my family and 
educate the kids, my grandchildren. Cucumber  my favorite plant, but I don’t like to pick. 
Too hard to pick, too much to pick. 

My name is May Lee, I’m a Hmong, I’m a farmer in Minnesota. 

I’m a Hmong, nobody know much about my people because we’re a really small group. 
And so, we are from Laos. We are refugees to Thailand and so were refugees to 
America. We arrived in the United States in 1981. It’s really, really different. I don’t see 
animals around like chicken, pig, cow, and so it’s really, really different to me. I applied 
for a job with Minnesota Food Association, but they not hire me because I don’t have 
enough education. Instead, they let me farm over here, because they are training 
farmers who want to become organic. And I leased two-acres (.8 hectares) land and I 
plant bell peppers, heirloom tomatoes, grape tomatoes for the store. 
Sometimes you really worry at home, then you come to the field, they make you feel 
good. Because soil have a, we what we call glacial and so we see, which area is good.  
I like searching for it. That made me happy that this area is good for vegetables, this 
one’s good for corn and this is good for potatoes. And so, I say to my kids that I am a 
master, I graduated my masters because I know so much in my mind. At the same time, 
I don’t know how to write it, and so I don’t have any record. It’s really, really bad 
because I just keep it in my brain and when I’m gone it’s gone with me too. 
I never go school and when I arrived in the United States, I didn’t know how to write my 
name. I’m not shy at all; I need to go and talk to who speaks English.   I don’t care if my 
mouth open, bad or good, I learn from verbal, not from class. 
My hours, my time, nobody controls me I control myself. And so that’s how I like farming 
over here. I also a mentor for the farmers here. Now I started working for them. It’s 
really fun and we have different people like, Latino, African American, Burma, Hmong, 
Laos all in here. This program really help me. I hope, in the future, the kids who want to 
learn it, and do the same thing what I like to do.