 know that you're here and we're glad to have you. One of the things we like to do is kind of kick off with a little bit of an icebreaker conversation piece. And today I wanted to ask you all to maybe chat in if you wanna just speak in for a minute what you have been doing to build immunity lately or what are ways that you are creating resilience for yourself in this time. So if you got recipes for immunity what do you do right now? We'd all love to hear it. So let's take a minute and share and read what people have to say and we'll jump into today's conversation. Eating healthy food. Someone better have said that. Thank you. Awesome. So for today's conversation I'm really excited because we have about seven great farmers of different skills, different products, different experiences, different markets that we've brought together and just figured it was a really good time in where we're at to hear back on how our farmers have dealt with this last season, what lessons have been learned, what they were able to do to fortify themselves and some thoughts on what we can be thinking about collectively for the coming year as we know that we're all preparing now and it's such an uncertain time. So I'm not gonna waste too much time talking. Let me introduce myself. My name's Fatima Amad. I sit on the steering committee for the response team and I'm the president of Mile High Farmers and ED of Frontline Farming, a POC-led farmer advocacy and food justice organization. And with that, I'm really just gonna let our farmers speak for themselves and we'll just keep that conversation going. Since we have a lot of farmers, if you guys can all put your questions in the chat box and at the very end we'll take some time to really go through them and I'll monitor and make sure that we get to those questions. We'd appreciate questions. And we are gonna start today with Sarah from Highwater Farms and SILT. So Sarah, if you're ready, I'm gonna pass it to you to introduce yourselves and talk to us and I'll keep time. Hi, thank you Fatima. I'm excited to be joining you guys today. Can you hear me okay? Okay, great. Awesome, so I'm gonna just dive right in. We are out in SILT, Colorado and just for ground in April of this year. So I am, well, so first I was asked to start with pronunciation of my last name. So my last name is Tim Chisholm. It can sound like a sneeze if you don't pronounce it right, but it is, it's Tim Chisholm, it's Polish. But you can just call me Sarah. So to dive right in, my background is in youth education and urban agriculture. And now I live out in England in spring. So I'm in more of a rural setting and I'm excited to be applying my skills and background to this setting. So I ran a job training program for teenagers on a farm in Salt Lake City. I did a farming apprenticeship in Massachusetts to learn how to manage great acres of vegetable production, and then have been working on farms and with folks out in the Roycourt Valley. So we broke ground in April of this year. We did some fundraising last winter to start Highwater Farm. And Highwater Farm is a community driven farm project. And so what that means is that we started with building out farm infrastructure with funding that we've gotten to really establish the farm and establish our farm operation. And then next year we anticipate starting a youth program. We brought 25, at least 25% of our produce to local hunger relief organizations. And the farm to food pantry program and lift up has made that extremely possible. So has the farm collaborative and the Two Forks Club by offering grants that then we've been able to route produce to Rocky Mountain Soonbanks and then the Wake program has been really supportive. So through those two programs, we felt like we've been able to make an impact. And I actually like to say that we feel really fortunate to have gotten our start this year because we've been able to adapt with the circumstances as opposed to having started last year and implemented sales and things that might have fallen through. That being said, COVID has made things particularly challenging. So in the spring, we had a hard time getting a hold of the tool of the materials we needed on time in order to really get moving. And then we had anticipated building up some relationships with local restaurants for wholesale and that fell through as well. We were able to establish this year, first year, a half acre of production that's enclosed in three acres of wild life-sensing. And then we have a five acre land. So we have room to expand. And that is on publicly conserved land at the Silver River Preserve, which is owned by the town of Filp. So that's the context. And on that half acre, we had an AmeriCorps VISTA that worked with me and then two part time farmer apprentices we hired halfway through the season. And we grew 8,000 pounds of produce, which was awesome. And so we're really excited looking forward to the year ahead. We haven't gotten any COVID response or really funding yet, but we did apply to the last round. And we are really grateful for this community of supporters. I would say that we, as we look to next year, we will be having a CSA in our region that will have about 35 members. And so that's something that we're seeing a lot of farms pivot into to know that they have sustained income for this changing market. And then we're also doing a crowdfunding campaign the first of December to raise funds for our youth program. So if you follow us, Highwater Farm on social media or check out our website, we would love to have folks kind of follow along with the journey and support us where we can. And then we're happy to be a part of this conversation. Thank you, Sarah. And like welcome and congratulations on that first year and cool, we'll come back to some questions. Awesome, I'm gonna move on to Don from Green Junction, from Green Junction Farmstead in Clifton. Don, are you here? Yeah, can everybody hear me? Okay. We can. Awesome. Well, thank you Fatima for hosting and Wendy of course, for all your hard work through all of this respond and rebuild grants that we've, you know a lot of people have benefited from this through all this crazy COVID. I am with Green Junction Farmstead here in Mesa County. Me and my husband, Brian, we run a, we produce on an acre and a half and this season we're at 100 members for our CSA. That also included the WIC program and we were able to help the mutual aid and the solidarity, not charity, food distribution. So when COVID hit, we decided to make a huge pivot in our business model and that was to an online farmers market. So that entailed us getting a platform for that, a online store platform, getting some online marketing, trying to attract our customer base that we had already established over the last five years at the farmers markets to try and follow us through that and also go through a repackaging system through our CSA. Normally we would set up market style for our CSA to kind of pick their produce through and with the COVID we were unable to do that. So that included a lot more packaging, expenses and things. So we did get granted in round two of the response and rebuild and that's what we used it for, was the packaging mostly and some labor. In the beginning of COVID, we weren't able to have our normal volunteer base here and so we had to shift once things, we were able to kind of unlock and get out of our homes and people were not as worried about getting around other people. We were able to hire some help this season. So that helped with that a lot. Just the business model pivot was not as successful as we wanted it to be. It was, people got let out sooner than we anticipated to be able to go and shop in the grocery stores and things again. So I feel like we lost a lot of our revenue through that. And so we made another business decision to start a farm stand here and try and attract our normal farmers market customer base to our farm. And so that's always a hard thing to do when people are in lockdown and scared to kind of go out. So that's been one of our biggest challenges this season through COVID. And life now as a producer is, I feel like we're not as scared as we were when this all hit because now our business model has changed. We are already gonna make this a long-term pivot for us. And so we can plan ahead as opposed to trying to do it in March when we're trying to do our farm production plan. So I feel like that that's an our benefit this season. And just to, the things that I saw that went well as a communication between producers, these respond to rebuild funds have brought a lot of people to the table to be able to communicate about small and mid-sized farms and food scarcity and how to get funds and grants and help out to those producers and processors and people that really need it to keep this food security and this food movement continuing forward. And so that's what I feel like in 2020, excuse me, 2021. That's where our business is headed towards just sticking with the new model that we have and also being able to reach out to producers and people even on the statewide level. So that's I think the bright side, the light at the end of this tunnel is that we will all still be in communication with each other and continuing forward with this food movement. Thanks, Don. And I like that solidarity, not charity and for bringing that spirit with you today. Well, thank you guys so much for all you do. Cool. I'm gonna come back around to some of these questions. There is one in there for you at the end and I'm gonna move us on to or we can just take a minute maybe. I do see this question from Casey here that says, Don, would you do the farm stand again next year if we were still in COVID and then just a quick question of what plant farm did you use? That's for your online market. Yeah, so we use the barn to door platform and that was a huge challenge. Also trying to learn this whole online process where farmers and we're not good at technology and so that was a huge monster that we had to, it's a great platform. It wasn't as successful as we want. I feel like our community is kind of small for that and I feel like we were able to go, the community was able to go shop freely too soon but and then I will do the farm stand again. That is a permanent and I do it in a way that I handle the food and I package the food and bags for them and I'm only allowed a person or two. So, it's a small farm stand, it's just the beginning of it. So, yeah, I'm just trying to go by the rules and keep things safe and stuff. So, yes, I would do that again. Thanks, Don. All right, I'm gonna keep us moving on to Roberto Mesa here and go ahead, Roberto. Thank you, Fatimum. Hi, everybody. Hope everyone's having a good morning. My name is Roberto Mesa. I am co-founder and one of the farmers of Emerald Gardens we're a microgreen farm operating in a sustainable commercial greenhouse year round on 35 acres in Bennett, Colorado. Our primary market streams since 2017 have been restaurants and independent grocery stores throughout the Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins area. And now recently have been, well, I would say the work has been incubating for a long time, but one of the challenges that we faced as a small producer on the Eastern Plains was solving our distribution challenges because at the time when we were growing we were still too small to be taken up by a major distributor and also too large to handle our own distribution. So, we were in that in between kind of no man's place where we're just having a lot of difficulty trying to expand, trying to leverage the resources we have to be able to make our business financially viable because we are looking at large-scale production. And so we leaned into our collaborative and cooperative partnerships with an organization called High Plains Food Co-op that allowed us to pull in our resources and then start essentially democratizing the work of distribution. We realized that we were going to the same places, that we could help them increase their market outreach and their access to different revenue streams. And so we started using our farm. This was about a year before COVID as a way to pilot alternative distribution methods based on collaborative values. And that's how we were able to really learn a lot about the flow of food and the mechanics of food distribution and aggregation through our communities. And when COVID hit, we realized that we already had this wealth of knowledge to be able to make this happen in a time when supply chains were being interrupted and communities were having trouble accessing food. So through the partnerships that we built in that previous year with Fondadosa and High Plains Food Co-op, we already had a model that could come in to help us mitigate the economic fallout from COVID. And one of the things that we started to do was piloting the direct to consumer model, which not only helped Emerald Gardens, but also the producers in our immediate regions and in High Plains Food Co-op. And one of the beautiful things that came out of that was just the resiliency and the stubbornness to make it work and to remain here as viable components of our communities. And that was a big kind of wake-up call for us that we actually had a model that could satisfy both the immediate needs that were being created by COVID and that they were affecting local producers as well as communities. And we realized that Emerald Gardens as a farm producer was more equipped to focus on production, whereas the aggregation, distribution, and the kind of knowledge that we were generating doing the work of a food hub was basically an entity into and of itself. And so we created and launched the East Denver Food Hub to solidify that work. And that allowed us really to partner with organizations, mostly groups that were doing food access work, especially live well, now nourish, and food pantries. And since I'm also part of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council, as well as a regional food coordinator with Hungry Free Colorado, we kind of already had a good assessment of the landscape of food access and how to engage and activate those partnerships that I had been cultivating prior to COVID. And all of this kind of came to fruition in a way that actualized the network and the mechanics and the knowledge that we had been generating by doing the work on the ground that was now informing our perspectives on a high level of what our food system actually needs to build in resiliency, equity, and justice. And so now we have this wonderful synergy between Emerald Gardens, which is the for-profit kind of year-round operation on our farm, and the East Denver Food Hub, which is also a social enterprise for-profit to create some economic sustainability in the work that we're doing to feed communities. And so we essentially try to rapid prototype new models for our food system that were built on partnerships with LiveWell through the WIC programs and local procurement strategies for food pantries. All of that food access work has now enabled us to scale into an analysis of what it would take to actually have a brick-and-mortar location in Denver that can encapsulate a lot of the things that we've been working on, scale our food hub model focused on food access, while at the same time addressing economic justice and leveraging the resources that we have on Emerald Gardens, at Emerald Gardens to remove as many barriers of entry for young beginning farmers, BIPOC farmers, community members who want to actually address their own kind of farming operation. And now they have the option of either going through the Emerald Gardens brand, which we now have a partnership with a major distributor or through East Denver Food Hub, which is still addressing and trying to lift up communities through local procurement strategies and policy initiatives. So we're really looking at actually solidifying a location where we can incorporate the kind of economic assessment of food access currencies and programs, as well as leveraging our resources, incorporating and integrating the local food system and generating research analysis markers and metrics for this ultimate project of food sovereignty that we're trying to institute and execute. So I think all of that just relies on building partnerships, coalitions and increasing our network and outreach. So we're here to explore more as we continue into the next year. Some thanks Roberto, it's a lot going on and just a lot of amazing work. Thank you for sharing. I'm sure we'll have questions at the end. I'm gonna move us on to another region as well. Mr. Bai from Southwest Farm Fresh in Cortez, do you hear with us? I'm actually not seeing only. I'm not either. All right, I'm gonna keep us moving. That's all right. We're gonna go on to Greeley, Derek Hoffman with Hoffman Farms, are you here? Yeah, yes I am. Awesome. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, we can hear you, welcome. Thanks for being here. Yes, so I'm Derek Hoffman and myself and my wife, Hanmeh Hoffman. We operate 100 acre, or about 100 acres north of Greeley in 2020, 52 acres of it was in vegetable production. This is, we just completed our sixth season. So we're still kind of a, you know, a young operation still finding our way. Coming into this year, 2018, you know, we had some challenges where we lost 60% of our crops to weather events in 2018, 2019 was a good year for production, but we were only able to sell about 60% of what we grew due to lack of market, maybe lack of demand. So we had real questions coming into 2020, what we were gonna do. So we actually cut back acreage, we cut back about 26 acres of vegetable production coming into 2020. And we had this idea of doing a farm stand to try to generate new customers in our area. There's really no farm stand north of the Brighton area along the 85 US 34 corridor. And then COVID hit about March and then started the kids going to work with you every day for five months. And our questions really were, okay, the dye had been set. We had already purchased everything. We had our plan in place for what we're gonna do. We, our markets, about 75% is institutional selling. Then we still were doing two farmers markets and a little bit with distribution, not too much. And then we worked with a lot of aggregate CSAs in the Denver Metro area. So the question was, is do we have a place for our product? And so we went ahead with what we had planned in 2019, what our 2020 year was gonna look like. And we didn't pivot. When it came to the farmers markets, they were delayed opening a little bit. And we opted, since we're doing two, we opted just to do one. The thought was, is do we know if customers are even gonna show up to the farmers markets with the new requirements and will they come out? So instead of losing money in two locations, we decided, well, let's just chance that I'm on. And we did the Fort Collins Lama County Farmers Market. And I think our assumptions were a little wrong. The Fort Collins Market, we saw not necessarily double, but about a 40 to 50% increase in traffic and revenue. And the restrictions, they changed through the summer and became less. And so it was easy to work through that. The institutional buying, we talked at the school districts we had worked with in the past. And they said, when we open, due to COVID falling health guidelines, we won't have our salad bars open if we're in in-person learning. So we won't be buying as much as what they told us. And so it's like, okay, well, you know, what do we do? Well, what ended up happening is is whether they were in in-person or online learning, there was a sudden surge that these school districts started, for lack of better word, packaging food, packaging meals and sending them home with the kids. So right when we were worried about our business to kind of the September, October timeframe when we make about, I'd say about 75% of our overall gross revenue, we had numerous school districts step up and the purchasing was much larger. And we actually heard from four different school districts that we hadn't worked with before. So we saw an increase in institutional buying. Then on the other side of it, through the summer, working with aggregate CSAs, one of them actually started an emergency food box program. So we saw a high demand on that side as well. So working through the summer, we didn't know what to expect. We really were worried about what do we do with our product and overall, I can say as our season is done, we've sold, I would say about 95% of everything we harvested. And in some cases, we couldn't meet the demand for these emergency food boxes, the USDA one food box, the aggregate CSA saw a large increase in membership in the March, April timeframe. And these schools operating, trying to do some sort of fresh fruits and vegetables for students, whether they're online or in-person learning. So I'd say overall, when season's done, I think our sales are up and I think our overall gross revenue is probably up by one or 2%. The real concern going into 2021 is that we know 2020, there was a lot of federal funding behind of what was happening, grants, private funding, things like that. So we're kind of, what's gonna happen in 2021? We know our personal belief is that this is gonna be identical to 2020. We don't see much changing. We do hope that maybe by fall of 2021, schools are online again, or not online, in-person again. Sorry, we just switched online here this week up here in Greeley. So we hope more normalcy next year. And then when that normalcy returns, the question is, is will we have the customers? Will we go back to 2019 where there isn't that local demand? So the concern in 2021 is customer base. And for the grants, we did take part in the PPP only because our bank that we bank at said, hey, we noticed you didn't take part in any of this. You need to apply it. So it was like the third round of PPP. We did apply for the employee protection, just a little bit of money. And then for the car to rebuild fund, we did apply in round one, and that money was applied towards cold storage, which actually did help with us working with these institutions and school districts. So that's just kind of the overall, definitely challenging year. One thing I'm grateful for is the weather wasn't challenging, which was the first to many. But yeah, looking to 2021, yeah, what will the customer base look like in 2021? Thank you. That was a lot of information. Some things I didn't expect, like about institutional buying and certainly appreciate you sharing about like the concerns you have. And that resonates a lot for me as well. I just wanna go ahead and address one of the questions to you where somebody asked, what about the labor situation on your farm this summer? Oh, good point. So in the springtime, we had, I mean, just we're creatures of habit. So when that disruption happened in March, I mean, it interrupted everybody's daily habits. So there was a lot of panic and I was concerned, but we were, you just don't want panic and fear to take over. So we were steadfast in what we're doing this year, what the labor part of it is is we actually held off hiring any employees. And so it was just my wife and I up until about mid June, mid June was about when you saw things kind of settle down that fear and a retraction of the panic. So we actually brought a full-time employee in on that. And then once we were in the field kind of July through September, we couldn't go a day without somebody pulling in looking for work. And I don't think it was related to the pandemic so much as the collapse in the hemp industry. The hemp market fell off in 2019 and there was a lot of people that had worked vegetables, had switched over to hemp due to higher wages that were being paid and then they were coming back to vegetables. So we were actually put together a good team about five employees to do the field work and it worked out well. I think if there was something that we could do going into 2021, if there was funding or grants, I think ideally if it could focus on labor because I think that is actually an issue, small, medium and large for all farms is labor. I didn't have the impact in labor we thought. So going back into 2021, I suspect at least two or three of those employees are gonna return next year. And yeah, I mean, I guess there is still another uncertainty going into 2020 because yeah, general labor is not somebody, people are just clamoring to do, but so yeah, I guess it would be still a concern going into 2021. Awesome, thank you. A quick last question, how many acres do you all operate? It's 103 and it's 52 in vegetables. I think we're gonna stick around about 50 acres next year but we are bringing two more farms online. We do have just standard commodity operation on the side, which does help with rotation. So I suspect we're gonna be about 137 next year, but again, about 50 in the vegetables, it could change. I mean, there could be all sudden, there could be over the winter contracts coming in through distribution or something that may change our minds, but right now ideally about 50 is about where we need to operate for our customer base. Awesome, thank you so much. I'm sure we'll have some questions at the end. That was wonderful. I'm gonna shift us to Nancy Roberts of Low Point Cattle Co. I know you're here Nancy, so I'm gonna pass it on to you. Hi, good morning. I hope everybody's having a great day. So what do we do? We're a little different from everybody else that has spoken. We raise grass-fed, grass-finished highland beef. We have about 75 mama cows and because highlands mature so much later than your commercial cow, we have that many yearlings and that may calves as well. We raise highlands for many reasons. First, they're great moms. They're easy cavers. They are very resilient, very disease tolerant. And they love our winters here. I really don't have to worry about predators. They've treed bears. They've chased off coyotes. I mean, they're very resilient. It's really great. Also, my dad had them before I was born. So we have cows from that same lineage all the way through until now. So that was a long time ago. Although I still feel like I learned something new all the time. We were really lucky and thrilled to get a respond and rebuild grant in round one. Our primary customer is a local restaurant and of course due to COVID, they had to shut down in the spring. So we had to make a pretty swift shift to direct sales and revamping our website, doing some marketing. We went to a farmer's market and that the grant really helped us pay for the website and a bunch of marketing stuff, which we really hadn't done very much of, to be honest, and we should have been doing it for years, but we hadn't. Life now on COVID, on a day to day basis for us, it really doesn't impact our day to day because we spend almost every day outside. So it's not such an impact, but it impacts all of our customer base. The biggest issue that I see is that we're all getting pandemic fatigue for lack of a better thing to call it. It's harder to get things done. It's harder to get supplies that you need because of the systemic fatigue, I think that we see throughout our whole world. A particular nightmare for us this year was processing. Our processor that we used for the last 10 years went out of business and is now reopened, but he's no longer doing USDA. So all of ours, because they go to a restaurant or direct market, have to be USDA inspected. And because of COVID, all the processors were completely filled. I mean, it was just really a nightmare. We drove a long ways, went to processors that not necessarily would want to in the future, but any port in the storm. So we feel better for next year as far as that goes, but we feel really lucky. The owner of the restaurant that we supply really thinks outside of the box. And when he saw that the restaurant was gonna close, he shifted his business to do a bunch of carry out meals and meal that were already prepped so that people could come by and pick them up and take them. So that really helped us, that took a little while, but and really the people that we have, and we have one full-time guy and one part-time guy. So they have really pitched in and been really positive through all of this, which is, it's the positivity and the optimism that things will be okay and that we all feel that way has made a huge difference for us. The restaurant had a really good summer, all things considered, what they sell changed. And so we've had to change our products to match that a little bit, which is really hard, but they do take the entire animal, they just had a little different use of different parts of it. I worry with resurgence of COVID that the restaurants will have to close again. That's probably my biggest fear. We have made a shift to the direct market and have increased that and seen an increase, but we're a long, long ways away from where we should be and from where we can sustain ourselves if the restaurant's actually closed. That's our biggest challenge really is the market. That's not what we're really good at. We'd all rather be outside, doing stuff with the cows than we would be inside working on marketing, but it's part of it. I am really excited to see 2020 in my rear-view mirror and looking forward to 2021 hopefully being better. And I have to say, I'm super impressed with Virgo from Emerald Gardens. How do you manage to have the time to do all of that volunteer, all of that other work along with farming? Because it's a challenge for me to do volunteer work and to do the ranch. So thank you all very much. Let me know if you have any questions. Awesome, thank you. There was a lot of gems in there. You do have a question here from Casey that if you do know, can you speak more about the processor that closed and reopened? Like, have they closed before the pandemic and then the need reopen them? And then I don't know if you know about the USDA like reason why they didn't, was it just the significant barriers that that poses? So yeah. So he was a USDA facility before and they closed for health reasons, but he reopened without USDA because he said that the USDA paperwork and coordination, and I know I was on a call last week of USDA and it's harder and harder to get the inspectors timely and, but mostly from what he said, it was mostly the paperwork. Wonderful. Yeah, and I really take your point on, you know, how when the pandemic hit, we really kept trying to be humble and count our blessings of like just the ability for our days not to change, you know, and getting to be outside. And so we knew also for us being like vegetable producers that this time would come where we'd be coming back inside too. So it's a shift in realities that a lot of people have been in already. So thanks for bringing that like reality to it. You have another question here that's how do folks find your direct market website and is that local to your area or are you shipping? We've shipped a little bit, but most of it is local or to, we've delivered to Colorado Springs and to Denver because we have people going there anyway. But we've done a lot of Facebook ads that seems to be the predominant. We also did a CPR, radio ad for a while and we've done some flyers, some direct mailings. So we've tried a little bit, everything. Thank you. I wanted to open up this time and just really quickly let me also check in case our person is here from Fire Runners Hotchkiss. Is anyone here from there? I don't think so. All right, that's all good. So this was truly wonderful, just like such an array of different things going on and sounds like just so much resilience and in some ways still finding ways to succeed, which I feel like farmers would tell that story all the time regardless, you're out there doing the works of bless you. That said, I just wanted to open it up and see if anybody had any questions for our speakers today. And even from the speakers, if you guys have questions for each other, I wanted to give a minute for that. And I also have some. Yeah, this is Oli with West Farm Fresh, can you hear me? Oh yeah, Oli, you made it. Please go ahead, go on. Yeah, I'm here, I've been here. Go ahead. Thank you. Well, I know, do you want me, do you need me to give a rundown of what we're doing? Yeah, we would love you to. We would love you to, please go ahead. Okay, great. Well, my name is Oli and I'm the general manager at Southwest Farm Fresh Cooperative down here in Cortez in the bottom left hand corner of the state. And we are a producer-owned co-op and we do marketing and distribution of products from our member farms and other local and regional products as well. And our main market now is an online farmers market that we opened up in May. And historically, we've been focused mostly on doing restaurant wholesaling and we decided to get away from that this winter. And that was a good choice. And 2020 was very good for our business. At least historically, we're still not, I wouldn't say we're not struggling, but finally feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel and the online market model has been promising for us. And it's a pretty good fit for our producers as well. We've seen a lot more, a little better variety and when there's fluctuation in supply, it's a lot less risky for our marketplace now. And we have a lot of, we've developed a really good customer base over the summer and feel like we have a lot of loyal customers who might not otherwise have joined our CSA in past years. And it's been really huge unburdening to get away from the CSA model and particularly to get away from restaurant-based wholesaling. And the pandemic's been really challenging in terms of being able to plan for the future. But it's not as difficult to deal with as the unpredictable nature of the restaurant market and the turnover in chefs. And we have dealt a lot with resort restaurants and it's just impossible to keep up with who's supposed to be putting in orders and really being on top of people on order day to get away from that. It's been a huge blessing and we've really embraced the online market. And we were scared of all the logistics and all the sorting when we went into it and I was really skeptical. And in fact, it wasn't even my idea and I kind of pushed back on it. And I was unsuccessful and that's probably a good thing in hindsight. I think we've really seen that it has a lot of potential to reach new customers in our area. And we're really optimistic, I think about the model going forwards even not knowing what's gonna happen with COVID. So and we did get a little one of those grants I think in the first round and I think it was applied to some of the marketing and outreach that we've done that's been different and some PPE stuff too. We just, you know, and all that's been very difficult to find as I'm sure everybody knows finding packaging, binding gloves and masks online is not easy. And we're just making the switch over to using N95 masks for everybody, all our volunteers and staff and drivers. And I would recommend that for everybody else too. And I think that's about all I can think of to summarize kind of where we're at and what we've been doing. And I'm in the vehicle driving. So if there's questions, maybe the moderator can relay them to me. Yeah, thank you, Arnie, that was great. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, so some of the questions, we have a question here that's kind of to everyone as well but Mel says, you know, that they've struggled with dissonance with COVID when it's at bay. So fluctuations with people buying online and then going gangbusters for online shopping when COVID meter is in the orange and red, safer at home. Any thoughts on things that have worked for brand loyalty for anyone? So kind of, you know, how COVID is, when COVID's high, people, you know, really actually start caring and thinking about food again, I'm in that way. So have you guys seen fluctuations like that? And, you know, like you said, Oli that you guys just going into that online marketing and also what platform are you all using? Yeah, we started using local food marketplace again this year and we've used them in the past for wholesaling. And it's, you know, it's an affordable software that's created with small scale food systems in mind. And it probably is the best out there. I mean, we spent so many hours researching software over the years and have used a number of the different, what I would call entry level options, local orbit. We used that for about a week and a couple of other things that we researched pretty heavily. And at one point we went two years just using spreadsheet. And so it's really frustrating and difficult to find a software that can work for whatever it is you're doing because they're, you know, designed to try to work with everyone and everyone has different needs. And there's almost like too many bells and whistles and not enough core functions on a lot of these softwares. And we're making local food marketplace work for us. We still have to like print out long list of items and cut them up with scissors and staple them together and put them in different bins. And, you know, various low tech sort of hacks like that. So I don't think there's a magic bullet unless you're willing to spend, you know, $100,000 on customizable food hub software. But, you know, I think local food marketplace is all right. And it can work for a lot of different distribution models and to return to the core of the question, what do we do when people aren't as afraid of COVID and aren't as excited about shopping online? I don't know if I'm really worried about it. I feel like it has introduced us to a lot of potential customers that might not otherwise have come our way. And, you know, I certainly want open air farmers markets to kind of come back into their stride once it's safe to mingle again. But, you know, I don't know. I think that the buy just gets bigger and, you know, we've reached, like I said, people we wouldn't have. And, you know, I am concerned about fluctuations and people sort of losing interest. But, you know, I guess, too, we just have to move forwards and realize that the future is almost totally unpredictable. So I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to retain our customer base in future years through this model that we're using. So thanks. Thank you. That's, like, reassuring optimism is helpful right now, you know? So thank you for that. It is so hard to answer questions and everything is in flux and we're just responding to it. So thanks for attempting. And should I take this last one? Yeah, I'm just going to quickly, if anyone has any insight. In some ways it's a little philosophical, but have you all, any of our speakers today, what, you know, have you asked your customers or even in your own thinking, what do you all think is going to help, you know, keeping buyers buying from local producers right now and not returning to, like, conventional grocery shopping for the future? Does anyone have thoughts on that? I would chime in on that if I may. I, it was kind of hard to reach our clientele that we had built up at Farmers Markets to redirect them, excuse me, to my online store and then also to our new farm stand because maybe it was lack of us trying to keep track of those customers, but, you know, that's a sense of community when you're at the Farmers Market. And so I think that what one is they know that when they come to my farm and they buy my produce, it's fresh and it's going to last them a long time. And that's really one of the things that my customers say most, but they also really appreciated the safety measures that we took when we did to have contact and the business model pivot that we had for our CSA, it was a pre-packaged box that was delivered or a drop site that they had no contact. And then, you know, our practice is with a drive-through pickup for our CSA or even our online Farmers Market customers. So I think the safety issue was really tantalizing to keep our customers coming back to the farm stand. And so that works for us in the future because that I feel like COVID really put us fast forward into a direction that we kind of wanted to go anyway, but it really kind of lit that fire. And so we, our intention really was to have our customer base come and be here at the farm to see where their food is grown anyhow. So that was the benefit of that. And also, you know, our safety measures to just protect everybody and keep everybody safe was the reason, one of the reasons they've come back. Thank you. That was thoughtful. And like, yeah, we don't often think about how the difference between the safety measures we're taking and just going to the grocery store. So I appreciate that insight. So I feel like I could keep this conversation going all day, but out of respect for everyone's time, I'm going to pass it to Wendy to close us out for today and get us out by 12. And just want to take a minute and give our speakers a round of applause, some thumbs up and just give you our gratitude. Like, you know, we know that you're all farming, we see you all out there, keep up the good work. And thanks for sharing your knowledge and wisdom that's priceless with us today. So with that, I'll pass it on to Wendy. Awesome. Thank you, Fatima. And thank you all of our presenters for taking this time to be with us today. So I just want to close this out with a few, sort of quick reminders and updates about what's coming next. One is I just posted a reminder in the chat there to join our Slack channel. If you have not already, it is a good place to post a lot of these kinds of questions that you're asking of each other right now for ideas and resources. You can always share on Slack any day of the month. A couple of quick updates as well. The third round of the respond and rebuild fund, as you know, have been closed. And just a quick update on what we have received there. So we received a total of 320 applications that representing 226 producers, 33 processors and 61 intermediaries for a total of $5.8 million worth of requests. So that actually brought up that alone brought up a lot for me that I'm glad that obviously this is resonating, this is the resource that is needed and we're addressing a need. That is also a pretty significant response that to me also demonstrates a pretty big gap in resources and support for a lot of you. So those applications are being reviewed right now. Reviews should be done by December 3rd and the funds and hopes to make announcements on that early the week of December 7th. Plus the update there. Also I will chat in, there's a lot of this posted on Slack which is a reminder that CFAP 2.0 applications are being considered September 21st until December 11th. So I will chat in some resources as well around that CFAP 2.0 resources and the guide that explains a lot of how it's operating now and it's different than the first round. So I will chat that in as well. And again, these are always on Slack. And then I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what we're going to be doing next together. So save the date and I will put this in the chat box as well. Save the date for our next call. Similar to November, obviously there's, you guys are always busy but also with holidays and other things going on we're only having this one call in November and then only one call in December and may get back onto a every other week call schedule in January. But we'll have one call in December and it will be sort of a special session, a special call. It'll be Thursday, December 17th. I'm chatting this in now. It is going to be an hour and a half long call. It'll start at the same time. So still Thursday starting at 11 we're going to go until 12.30. And as I've chatted in here mobilizing rapid response with Colorado farmers and ranchers COVID 2020. So we're just going to take some time that day with several members of the team to do an hour long panel presentation really sort of reflecting on the intent and the actual maybe impact of this response team. So take some time to reflect on our process which from the very beginning has aimed to be very data driven and very people driven. So from the beginning we have aims to both listen and learn and adapt and respond but also do data collection from the funds from other efforts that are going on across the state to then drive the work of this response team. So it truly can be responsive to you all and your partners. So we want to take some time to reflect on what that process has sort of led to in 2020 and sort of maybe what that is going to inform us to do our path forward in 2021. So to have a good, pretty rich panel and then have a good half an hour for some Q&A. So we can do this in partnership with you and just stay on track together and know that we're listening, we're adapting and we are being responsive as we move forward. So I just chatted that in and yes, thank you, good question, Anne. So we are asking for RSVP. Do not worry, you get plenty of emails from us. We're not requiring registration but we are asking for an RSVP for this one. We just want to kind of have a sense going into it. How many people to expect who's going to be there and we will be sending out an actual more formal invitation in the coming days here that we ask you to share far and wide as well. So please RSVP, even from this list but don't worry, you won't get lost. Just we have a sense here to be there. And with that, I will let you all go. Thank you so much to our speakers and all of you for all of your time and great questions. Good Thursday afternoon to you all, bye-bye. And Amber, are you still on the line? Yes, I'm here. Hey. Hey. Great. As some of you know, some of us kind of just hang out for a few minutes here to make sure we've captured everything. So feel free to jump in with questions as we just make sure we got the recording and we can capture all the chats before we hang up. And unfortunately I had to record today which means I'm going to have to help me figure out what to do. So, yes. Casey, I saw your question. Yeah, Amber, let's send this recording directly to Casey for sure. Yeah. And Wendy, you can just start recording now. Okay, I'm going to hit stop. Okay.