 I just want to remind you with the SAIR program, I'm one of the state coordinators for the SAIR program, and this is supported from a rancher workshops. The outlet of the project they did, and our grant cycle starts from Labor Day and they're doing around the first movement. About $7,000 at grant level, and if you get three farmers together, you can get up to like $22,000. So the detail to come out on our website SAIR.org, and this is just for example to talk about, you know, how that helps get an idea started, takes some risk away to get it off and running. So with that said, we have Dan and Bonnie Blackdudge here talking about the NOAA oil and all the good aspects of that. Okay, thanks, Alan. And just to start out, we got a SAIR grant in, oh let's see, I think it was about December or January, maybe 2011, probably January 2011, for $7,000, like Alan said. And you know, we probably would have done what you're going to see here today anyway. It would have taken us a lot longer, it would have been more work, it would have been, you know, it just would have been a lot tougher for us. We got the grant, we were able to move ahead fairly quickly with it. And I gotta tell you, if you've never applied for a grant, this is a grant you ought to go for. It's like 10 pages long maybe. Anybody can sit down and write it out, the questions are common sense questions. You don't need to get a dictionary out to do it. And so it's just been a great grant for us. And we were lucky and got it. So I don't know what the competition is, but it's been a great grant. Well, kind of the beginning of what we're going to talk about here, we started growing canola in kind of a project with Michigan State University. They were looking for somebody to grow canola for oil for one of their biofuels projects. And we started out with that. And that kind of went by the wayside. We kept growing canola. And what we discovered is that we were sending our canola to a processor over in Canada, Windsor, Canada. And then they were processing it and sending all of the oil and all of the meal back to Michigan. And Bonnie and Aaron just kind of scratching our heads one time, you know, saying, this formula doesn't seem quite right here. Is there is there any way to make this a better process? And so that's how we started talking about pressing our own oil out. It was kind of a backwards way of approaching it, I suppose. That's how we started out. So that was the description. You have to come up with a project description for your grant. And this was the one that we had on our grant application. And probably the key thing there is, since then, we look at the value added aspects of that. What do we do that can have value added to it? You know, so there's our farm. We're located in Marion, Michigan. So Michigan, as you know, is shaped like a mitten. And Marion is just kind of right in the center of the state. Farm them family for 100 years with dairy farmers to start out with. And we've grown various crops on it. Today we've got about 115 acres of canola and about 115 acres of wheat. We do a rotation with them. And then the rest is alfalfa and some grazing land for cattle. There's the wheat and canola. Canola ends up, you know, beautiful fields of yellow, as far as you can see. And we have one field 70 acres. And it's quite a sight to look at right around the 1st of July. One of the things that we've embodied for about the last, you know, five to 10 years is really looking at sustainable farming from a grower standpoint. How do we do as effectively as possible work with the land and work with our crops? With minimum disruption to the natural cycle of things. And so as a logical extension of that, we started a no-till farming last year with 40 acres of no-till. We did some test plots of cover crops last fall. By the way, neither one of which did very well. And everybody's been telling us, you know, take five to 10 years to get into a no-till. And year one was, I would say it was maybe not a disaster, but pretty close to it. We're coming back this year, going to try it again. You know, we've learned some things. But we're longtime cooperators of the Soil Conservation District. And Michigan's got a certification program called the Michigan Agricultural Environmental Assurance Program, voluntary. But farmers can do this. And they come out, the state comes out and helps you look at how you're handling fuel, look at how you're handling chemicals, look at how you're handling water, runoff water off your fields and off your farmstead, you know, all those different areas. And so we'll get certified with that this spring. And here's how we started out growing canola in 2008, which was our first year really of, I would say, you know, focused canola growing. We started out with 20 acres. And then each year, we've just increased up to about 115 acres. So that's all I have this year, about 115. And each step of the way, what we've been able to do is learn a little more about it. We started out here with zero knowledge. And we learned a little more about it and just kind of grow as we get smarter. We're growing our oil business exactly the same way, starting out small and just growing and learning and growing. So as I mentioned, we've done some work with MSU over the years. And today, there's almost no canola growing in Michigan. And so we've kind of learned along with MSU and some of the extension people there. We changed over to the food market in 2009. And one of the things we've tried to do is involve other farmers in the process. Now, we've had, gosh, I don't know, we probably had four or five farm meetings, some winter meetings and some summer field days, like the one you see up here. Today, I think there's still only one of the person in Michigan growing canola. So we haven't been very good evangelists for it, I guess. But we keep trying. Was that shipped over to Canada, too, for processing? Yeah, the situation in Michigan, from what I understand, was back in the 90s, there were several farmers growing canola, but it was all shipped to Canada for processing. Farmers all migrated back towards corn and soybeans and wheat. So and that's about what it is today, especially over the last couple years of high corn and soybean prices. Maybe you want to just talk a little bit about what kind of conditions seem to favor growing canola for those that might be interested in growing it. You know, Hio, you probably want to look at winter canola. We're growing spring canola where we're at in Central Michigan. Winter canola will yield a little more. You've got the same situation with it. You've got with wheat and that's winter kale and potential deer problems over winter. Deer love canola. They'll travel right through cornfields or soybeans fields to get the canola fields. But outside of that, growing it is very similar to growing any other field crop. What I use is, I use an older John Deere drill. I put the canola seed in a cedar box on it, and so it comes out and drops on top of the ground behind the drill and then I pull a color packer behind and that packs it in. So my process is about as simple as you know, as you can get, and I had on hand, you know, the drill and the color packer, so I didn't have to buy any new equipment to do it, so that's always a bonus. Now we're looking into a no-till drill, which is going to be a little different process. Yeah, yeah, we're talking good many thousands of dollars there. We're looking at it. It's about as far as we've got. What's your soil? We've got the glacial till. So it varies from pretty heavy clay all the way to light sand. Rolling, gently rolling, you know, not hilly by any means, but gently rolling. Canola likes cool weather. Canola does not like a lot of water, so you know, it's one of those crops. We try and get it planted around the middle to the latter part of April. Last year we had a tremendously wet spring in Michigan. I couldn't even start planting till May 8th, so very late, and our crop suffered greatly because of it. What happened, the main reason for that is that Canola loves to grow and flower in cool weather, and I know when we get into July we're going to start having hot weather for the blossoms to appear, and hot weather will blast those blossoms, because they're about 85 degrees, and you'll start losing blossoms just because of the heat. So we try to plant as early as we can get on the ground. So we'll run through some things that we've learned with the project, with the SARE project. One of the things we found out early on is you got to get Canola seed real dry. Nobody in Michigan can dry the seed. In fact, I'll pass this around. This is a little container of seed. Some of you might not know what Canola seed looks like. Feel free to open that up and look. It's about like alfalfa seed, real small. So grain dryers in Michigan, none of them can handle it. It's just too small a seed to go through that. Corn you can get by with, what, 13, 14 percent moisture? Canola, you get much over 10 percent, 10 and a half percent, and you're in trouble. So the first thing we really had to deal with is how do we get Canola seed down to that dry, and you almost got to wait till about one o'clock in the afternoon, and you want as long a days as possible. So again, by planting early in the spring, I can get my Canola to ripen the last part of August, when I still got fairly long days, and fairly clear weather yet. And so we can get it down. We got down to 7 percent before in August, and we started coming around 11 percent, and by 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock in the afternoon, you've got it down to, you know, 7, 8 percent. Other thing we tried to do, we thought we'd grow Canola year after year, and we noticed that on a second year, our yields were lower than they were on the first year, and the third year, they're lower yet. So I started doing some research and found out, sure enough, you know, they don't recommend Canola two years in a row. So right now, we're doing a Canola wheat rotation. It fits well with our rotation on the land, and also Canola is a broadleaf, a brassica, wheat is a grass, and so you break the insect and disease cycle. So far, we've had good luck doing that. The only thing we might do with rotation is go to a three-year rotation, find one more crop to go in there, and so we actually got every third year we grow Canola. And of course, marketing, we could find nobody in Michigan to press it, and I spent a lot of time out on the phone a lot trying to find somebody to press Canola, because there's some soybean pressers in Michigan. They don't want to do Canola. They will not shut their plant down to do Canola. And so we finally bought our press to do it ourselves, and then we have a lot of excess that we ship over to ADM and Windsor. Just call a truck to come in all over there. Got an egg oil press built in Wisconsin. You see a picture of it here in a little while. If I were to do it again, I would take a real serious look at the German presses. One of the reasons being is the United States is on a soybean standard, you know. So all the presses and processes and everything here based on soybeans. Germans are on a Canola Rates seat standard, and so everything's a little bit different over there. And Canada is rapidly swinging towards Canola too. So most of my Canola information actually comes out of Canada. So back to the why Canola thing, instead of doing soybeans or one of the other oil seed crops, one of the reasons was because Canola is simply a very healthy oil. And so Bonnie and I talked about it. If we're going to be growing an oil seed crop, let's see if we can grow the healthiest one there is. And so I don't know if you can make this out very well or not, but this top line here is Canola oil. Only 7% saturated fat. So very low saturated fat content. And you can look at the other oils. Here's soybean oil is 15% for example. And olive oil is 15%. So they're higher in the saturated fat content. Canola oil has got 21% polyunsaturated. And actually these two here, the 21 and 11 are all polyunsaturated. And then at 61% monounsaturated or omega-9 oil. So you get 93% of the healthy oils in Canola and only 7% of what we would call unhealthy oil in Canola. So it's not being a healthy oil for us. And I do have more information. In fact, I'll pass this around to, this is another chart laid out pretty similarly, but it breaks it down a little more closely. And anybody wants to know more about fatty acids and so on. I'm happy to do talk to you afterwards and we can talk about you know what fatty acid contents are and how that relates to Omega's and so on. It looks that way. So in our research, after growing Canola for a couple of years, we discovered that there was a nuclear Canola variety out called Omega-9 Canola. And so we investigated that, found that we could get the seed. And that's an even healthier oil. Yeah, it's still got the 7% saturated fat content, but you can see the monounsaturated fat content went up to 72%. So we now grow all Omega-9 Canola and we now grow all non-GMO Canola. So we've converted our farm entirely over to that standard now. This is where I was. Okay, Bonn is going to go through the goals for the project. So will we first, will we apply for the grant and come up with some goals? And so our first goal was to use a mechanical press to extract the oil from 1500 pounds of Omega-9 Canola seed. And I was going to change that last night, never did. And how many bushels is that? Do you remember? It's about 40 bushels. So if you keep that in mind, you'll see where we're at now. But that's what our original idea was. And so we purchased the oil seed press and we did a lot of research on that. We found this ag oil press and you can see it in the picture. And we run it space at an incubator kitchen in Michigan. I don't know if they have those in Ohio. I'm sure they do. And it's actually was through all of our work that we've done. It was really through Michigan State University. They helped us everywhere, every place along the way. So we were working with their product center and they actually have a hand in the incubator kitchen that we were at. And they really helped us get going. But we, if you can see how, you know, we kind of Jerry rigged this together. It's, you know, we've got the oil collecting in this picture and, you know, our meal collecting here. And we have things piled up to make sure we could put the picture on, you know, collect that oil. And so that was our basic, let's get started. And a little funnel up on top. We've got about a cup of canola seed into the tie and run it through. So, yeah, but hey, we were producing oil. We could produce about a gallon an hour. And, you know, somebody asked us earlier about regulations and we had to be licensed by Mdard and have to wear the little bonnets and the gloves and the whole deal. So, you know, it's not the most flattering picture, but it just gives you an idea. We had to meet their criteria and in order to get licensed, even though we were using a licensed kitchen, our process had to be licensed. And it really wasn't that hard because we did our homework ahead of time. So if you're thinking of doing anything where you're adding value to a product and you're, you know, for commercial use, definitely do your homework ahead of time. Because we've talked to, we've got our, we got our license on the first try. And a lot of people that we talked to said, you know, they did it and then they were told, okay, you got to change this, this and this. And then they changed it. And then there was like a couple more things that they didn't do. So they had to go through their inspection like three or four times before they got licensed. So if you do your homework up front and found out it's a lot easier. So anyway, our second goal was to refine the canola oil to commercially accepted stand, acceptable standards. When we first started, we thought of using doing like a refined oil, like you would find on the shelves in a typical grocery store. Then we, the more we thought about it, we decided instead of trying to refine all the good stuff out of our oil, we would go the more natural route. And so the oil we press, as you can see, has a more golden color than what you're going to find in most grocery stores. Because it's, we decided not to bleach it or refine it. Now, if you'd like to sample, let me know because we have some samples here. If you only want to smell it, that's okay. I feel like you have to taste it. But you don't have to drink it or anything would just even just take your finger and you might want to try it. So we found that our process then became, we ran it through the press, we let it settle for a couple weeks, and then we'd skin the oil off the top. And we found that we did some test sampling, mostly to friends and relatives to see what they thought of it. And most of them liked it. There were some that didn't. They thought the smell and the taste was a little strong. I found it was interesting. I went to a presentation earlier today and they talked about the millennial generation, which is your, I think, 18 to 34 year olds. And we find that really, my kids are all like in their early 30s and so are Dan's older girls and they love it. And we found that my son, well we'll get to that later, but I'll tell you about my son later. But so anyway, that was our second goal. Our third goal was to bottle the oil in one quart plastic bottles, but we found that people that buy natural food products don't like plastic. So we decided to go with glass bottles and we found that we consider ours a specialty oil and because it is cold pressed, it is non-GMO. So it's different than the kind you're going to buy in the grocery stores. So we found that at the pint bottle size was better to market it. And a lot of this advice came from the Michigan State Product Center. I'm sure, are you associated with a university in Ohio, which is which university? Ohio State. We're kind of rivals, aren't we? Not anymore. We took care of that. That's right. We took care of that. But anyway, good one. So they have help there if you need it. We got them. Yes. Okay. So anyway, so we changed and went to glass and pint size. And I'll pass it on one of our bottles of oil that you can see what it looks like and what it looks like. The other one, another goal was to design a label that incorporates grown locally and healthy oil information. We actually got our nutrition facts through MSU. They helped us with that nutrition part of it. I love the ingredients canola oil because there's one ingredient and that's the big thing now is, you know, the less additives, the better. We don't have any additives. So we've got the label was designed by one of Dan's daughters. I actually took the canola picture and the little one of our silo on our farm and it's so funny because Dan and I keep arguing about the silo. It's an old one and it's no good for anything anymore really. And it's by a kind of dilapidated structure. And he says, well, now that it's on our label, we can't get rid of it. So I'm like, yes, because I just think of that character. So we've got our website on there. We've got a UPC. We added later. We found a lot of stores wanting a coa product code on it. And we added just their last addition was the QR code. So you can scan that if you have a QR code scanner on your phone. And so see why our oil is unique, because we figured we were going to do a net label. And then we thought, you know, it's to tell people because if they see it on the shelf, you know, why should you buy our oil instead of somebody else's? And so now what we did is use the QR code so that people could scan that. And it takes them to a part of our website where it explains why our oil is better. Next goal, five, was to test market to three small food processors. Originally, we thought, well, we knew some people that were producing granola. We knew some people that were making some sort of a potato chip. We thought, let's try to sell it to people that will use it for a product they're making. And then we found out that we went to a networking. We had just gotten licensed the week before the conference. And then we went to making it in Michigan conference in 2011. And that was like, we were thrown into this huge room full of all these people making Michigan products. And we found that our real niche would be wholesale sales, because that's all the interest in our oil seem to come from stores that wanted to carry it. And so we changed our focus again, and we decided to market more as a wholesaler to retail markets. And since 2011, we've expanded our wholesale. We tried to do a little bit. I work full time in addition to trying to do this business, and I'm supposed to be the marketer of the group. And so I don't have a lot of time to cold call and do things like that. So we've just been expanding slowly, but we are expanding and seem to do a lot through networking. But we found an online market that carries our oil and it started very slow there. We sold, I think we started in March of 2013. We might have sold a case in two months. If that, it may have been even three or four months, it took forever. And then all of a sudden it took off. And now we're selling, we've sold like one time right around Christmas, we sold a case in a week on this online market. So that's been a real good boost for our sales. We last summer did the Grand Rapids Farmers Market. Originally we talked about doing it, but farmers markets are hard to do. How many of you have done farmers markets? A couple of you. It takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of time commitment. We did it, we committed to one of the days last summer was Thursday afternoons. And we committed to that and we did it all summer long. And good experience, but we decided it's probably not the best use of our time for our product. And we now are looking to offering larger sizes. We're looking at doing something with restaurants, offering gallon sizes. And we've actually just this month started with an organization in Grand Rapids called West Michigan Farm Link. And it connects farmers to producers. And so we just sold our first two gallons this past week through Farm Link. It connects farmers to consumers, restaurants and retailers. And so right now we're doing ourselves limited retail. I have a lot of people I know that buy from me regularly. I keep a case at my office and I have people coming to the counter and they'll say I want to buy some canola oil and we're a government office. And it's like oh, but everybody knows it's in Bonnie's office. Okay. So goal six was to select a farmers market to test the retailing of the product. We were supposed to do this in 2011. We didn't get to it that year. We just didn't. We weren't ready. 2012 we were busy. I had an election to run in 2012 in Tom Chip Clerk and I didn't have time to do a farmers market. And my son lives in Chicago and he asked if he could sell it in one of the Chicago farmers market. We retail it now. We retailed it in Grand Rapids at $8 a bottle. He was getting $15 a bottle for it in Chicago and he was selling a lot. This is Dan and this is the farmers market in Grand Rapids. If you ever get up to Grand Rapids it's Grand Rapids downtown market. It's a nice little farmers market and then they have an indoor market now too. So we did that in 2013. My son got married and decided that he's too busy. So goal seven was to work with farmers to get four farmers to grow Omega 9 canola in 2011. That was a goal that was in the grant. I'm going to let Dan talk about that one a little bit. Well there's really not much to say. I kind of said you know we're still the only person Michigan really grew on canola so it was a good goal. But we were unable to get farmers to grow canola so yeah. And I think the reason was it's what you guys told me was because they could get much more money with soybeans and corn in our area than they could with canola. So a lot of them just weren't as committed to it. No actually to begin with we started out even thinking in terms of that I would broker it resell it for them. They didn't like that idea because I was going to take a commission for handling their canola you know. Well I'm going to do it for free right? What have you done about pressing it? Well we we saw most of our canola anyway because we can't even press all our own you know. We're going to grow probably in excess of 200,000 pounds of canola this year and we're going to press out you know maybe 12,000 pounds or so. Okay goal eight was to develop and maintain a website to promote canola oil and to inform the public of health benefits and to disseminate information to farmers who may wish to grow it. So one of the big we just happened to have a connection from Dan's former business a guy that did websites and we have our website is we sat down with him and you know we were going to be B&B farms or something like that on our website he says no no no when it go people start searching you want the name canola to pop up first so we did we ended up with canola oil products.com and it's been good I mean when I look for every once in a while I google myself if you guys have a website I'm sure you know you or should I google yourself and see what comes up in the search engines and it usually comes up near the top so I don't know if that's because he's still on my computer that bring it up but you know try it sometime google canola oil and see if if ours pops up but we have now let's see if we can do this if I click on the link that should bring it up okay so this is our website and we have up on the top you'll see we've got canola research canola products canola blog contact us and about us so I do have to confess I don't give it as much attention as I should my goal this year was to put at least one blog up every I forget if it was a week or a month but I never I just don't seem to be able to do that the one part I do tend to go do the most is canola products this is kind of light oh this is a fun one is recipes a lot of people like recipes and so we've come up with some recipes that we use for our canola oil and that people like and we can direct them to our to our website if you guys like homemade croutons and see I have all these places that are pending so I have coming soon I have to work on but the zucchini bread is a big hit so if you don't know what to do with your extra zucchini but that canola oil croutons are just incredible and they're so easy to make so anyway but you can go to so if you're gonna do something at you know we get a lot of hits on our website canola research we have so it talks a little bit about growing canola plants detailed information on growing canola can be found here so you can go to this link and get you know information I don't even know what it oh okay sorry don't leave I hope it's okay if I accept it so here's like a handout that we put on there that has um this isn't my computer so I'm not anyway you get the idea we've got a lot of information on your key part interested in growing canola so I'm going to get off our website there's also a place on there that you different with different links and so most of the information I use in growing canola comes from the canola council of canada um great information on all the how to which you know pest control and planting and all of that um there's also the united states canola association that's a good resource there's a northern canola growers association on a north dakota that's a good resource so for anyone interested in growing there's a lot of resources one of the things that you know I've heard again a couple times today is that farm that people that are buying your product um you know they want to get to know the farmer they want a face to put with the product and so the website was a good way to do that um so another way to disseminate the information learned which was goal nine um was obviously through our website we have flyers we do have some I'll let Dan pass these out we've had a couple we were printing some we're to bring in our printer ran out of ink and um so we've got I think we we've got two of our better ones that we give to you but we found that flyers especially when we're at the farmer's market or when we're doing some trying to do some marketing it's nice to have some a mark or a flyer for people to take with them press release um we've we had a couple little hometown type newspapers do some articles on us especially the area where we're growing the canola so you know that helps and presentations here we are we've done a couple different presentations since we got this grant basically um and networking I think that's one of the best ways that we found new customers is through other farmers other producers that are making products that connect us like they say oh we have our product in like one of the stores we're in it's called under the binds and one of our guys we met at the conference said oh I have my product in under the binds I'm going to tell her about you and then you can get your product in there and that's how we get our product in a lot of different places so get to know people and um you know try to work together and help each other it really does pay um and that's kind of goes along with the relationship with other vendors and producers um then we had we have some articles that have been done we had a recent one done that is um with Michigan land use institute and it's an article tasting the local difference and this was in their newsletter and it talks about us if we have time at the end which I'm not sure we will there's a video that's there did on us that's from the video and um we can um play that at the end if we have time but this this is an article that was written about us picture of our farm picture of our oil um and then this went out to all of their the people that get their newsletters so it's a way to get our get your name out so um I think we joined them the membership was like 20 dollars and we you know we're getting a lot of a lot of people interested in our oil from that 20 dollars well spent giving a chance later we'll play that video um okay uh recent accomplishments did I have you helping with this one or not yeah so what you've seen so far was kind of during the the project the actual um serra project so um that ended in march 2013 and since then um one of the things we found out about using the incubator kitchen is a heck of a lot of work to back up canola seed haul it over there press out the oil then haul the oil in the canola meal back again and so after about six months of doing that we said we gotta figure out an easier way we're ever gonna grow beyond you know a few bottles of canola oil and so we begin planning for our own on farm commercial kitchen and that was the michigan department of agriculture and had them come out to our farm and went through everything with them and got you know initial go ahead yeah go ahead if you do it you know according to our our guidelines why we'll prove you and we did that so um just about exactly a year ago last february we got licensed for our own on farm commercial kitchen so now we press all our oil around the farm um this past summer um we we were using those one ton tote bags um which is a great way to store the small quantity of canola seed we were using um as long as it was a small quantity but last year we had to keep six of those back that becomes really unwieldy to try i mean you got to keep it road and proof and you got to keep it in store under right conditions and everything so we put up a new grain bed this year just for our food grade canola seed that we're going to press out um we converted one of our old buildings on the farm for a seed cleaning house so now we can clean clean our seed right there we got one place that that happens um we're looking at going to gallon containers because we got to we got to build beyond the pint bottle that you saw you know it's just too small for any kind of volume use so we're going to gallon the five gallon containers um and we're now just beginning so we built this kitchen on the farm you know it was a nice little kitchen a cute little thing and it works wonderful but you know what already we're bumping elbows with each other when we're now working together so now we're just starting to lay out plans to expand that um and convert another one of the outbuildings into um Michigan Department of Agriculture um licensed kitchen only on a bigger scale so it's easier to handle the seed it's easier to handle the meal it's easier to handle the oil so um we we've been able to take the project you know and just continue slowly you know frustrating some size but keep building it um and so that's kind of our model for the future now yeah we're still using that little press we're still using a little press actually that little press I ran the calculations on it that little press would do all of the canola we grow if I run it 24 seven for about uh 48 weeks of the year so we're going to keep using it for quite a while yet you know so this is just a picture showing that when we first started putting together the kitchen I was looking for pictures for this presentation and I'm like I can't believe I did not take a lot of pictures of the kitchen so but then we do have a little video to show you that we'll show you a little more uh we don't even have our sink faucets on I believe this is the one that has the video so this is Dan operating the press and his cute little bonnet that's a heater in our um we had some people there so that's why you guys see that I warm it for about five minutes with a heater or what the nozzle which warms the seed just to get it started once it started you can see it takes it off well I thought I'd run this five minutes or so with um to kind of make sure things clean out so I just put a little pan down here to cut the oil so what do you do with that pan after you've collected the oil I just I think we love the jar I've got right over there it's just oil that you can use in your chainsaw for a chainsaw chain or um for reading mountain food I mean I decide there's a barrel so the nozzle actually sticks inside it um there's two women down the way there's a big barrel up here that's where we put our canola in now so we can get you know about eight hours of running yeah instead of taking a cup and pouring it in my uh to turn it on and get it started so we think should be heated up in here so we'll turn it on here to start um the process is actually running that's how quiet it is and if you want to go over here you can watch this and see when the wheel starts to come up look here and you can see when the wheel starts to come on these holes you think it's just going to have more to run seated in there you can have a sure process here comes the meal that should start putting space in the wheel coming out of it because it's still just some some oil and some seed zoos and out what do you do with the meal livestock feed it's about 34 protein so it's a good high protein and we don't get all the oil out of the meal so the meal's got um meals about 20 fat content so it's a real rich feed okay that we stopped it there but um as after it's collected in the little uh container then we hook it up to um a little um a five gallon pail that it runs into and you made some a little device so it runs from there and collects it to the pail so it's five gallons so you only really have to uh empty it about every um five hours because it produces about a gallon an hour so and the press works it's got it's got just a screw auger in there and a pressure plate and it pushes that seed against the pressure plate and so it's a combination of heat and pressure it bursts the cell cell walls and the canola seed they're about 43 44 percent oil so pretty high oil content bursts the cell walls and then the oil comes out as you saw it and the meal goes right on on through a small harvest there now and we use the oil press for canola but we've had we used it for soybeans we had some problems with the press at first it didn't like canola it wanted to press soybeans so we actually have a friend that grew soybeans so I got soybeans from him just to run because the guy that we bought the press from to kept saying well run soybeans through it it'll get you know work itself and get it going so the press starts functioning which should so we ran a bunch of soybeans through it at times to scour it and um anyway so for a while so we run soybean through it and collected some soybean oil I know you can use it for any is it mostly for seeds do you think that we use for nuts yeah so you can use it for you know what we're doing you can do if you're growing up a nut crop or or a different kind of seed crop um I may try I don't know you know because you've got so much setup for um canola seed but I kind of like to try pumpkin seed through it just to see what that way over tastes like because the people in our area all of a sudden are really getting into pumpkin seed we're going to go in five minutes okay uh sales and marketing um I think I talked about a lot of this we we got in a lot of specialty stores and from that first conference um you know it was like smaller stores so they weren't buying a lot from us we're working now at getting into some retail grocery stores um and uh some restaurants we do have one restaurant that buys a lot of oil from us it uses it for just about everything they're big into getting Michigan products I think what's happening here is everybody wants Ohio products because you're local they want Ohio in Michigan everybody wants Michigan products so we're getting into a lot of places that want local Michigan products um we've got the online story told you about um the farmers market farm link and uh there were a few vendors that were at the farmers market that we're running a community supported agriculture and they wanted our oil for uh their customers so we did sell to a few of those too um lessons learned um be flexible as you can see our goals a lot of times were changed and ser was fine with that I mean here's our idea here's what we got the grant for we ended up doing the final what we did was what the grant said we were going to do we just did it in a different way we originally looked for somebody else to press the oil for us that didn't work so we ended up buying our own crops um you know we went to different kinds of bottles so you know we had to have that flexibility um you know everything costs more you think it's gonna just just costs more that's all there is to it everything takes longer than you think it's gonna it's just the way it is it seems to be um and number four vision and persistence I think of everything we did the most important thing we had was persistence you know every problem we had we just managed to overcome it sometimes we didn't know how um and and um I know there was at least once I told Bonnie I'm done I'm quitting this is it I've had it we were on our way home from pressing at the commercial kitchen in heart which was probably an hour and a half from where we lived it was snowing so the roads were cruddy and um it and we had been up there for like eight hours and we got one gallon of oil that the the press did not want to cooperate at all that day it was we were just so frustrated and he said I'm done the pendulum again so he was driving I had no pad of paper I said okay let's go through this you know and we just listed everything possible we could think of to fix this problem and we you know we just because I'm like we can't stop every time I think we should stop he'd say no we can't every time he thought we could stop you know I'd say no you can't so um we just brainstormed everything we could think of on the way home we didn't we went through that list and tried it and we it ended up working so um you know there was a time we thought we were going to I even put the oil press on Craigslist that's how mad we were at it we were going to buy one of those German crosses we were actually looking into those I listed that Craigslist to see if I could get anything for it nobody wanted to pay you know we paid like $8,000 for it new I we thought well we'll take a little less nobody wanted to pay more than a couple thousand for it it's like forget it so um you know we still have it we think it found out we were gonna get rid of it and it started working it's the only theory that seems to work so as it is with life I think it is with business you know persistence is the name of the game you just you just stuck with it you just stay in there if it's worth doing anyway you know I mean something you do give up on life but you know if it's worth doing you just stick with it and keep going um I just make a couple of closing comments if you have any more questions you can take them I think that that there were two keys to our are getting that Sair Grant um and this is me okay it's not Alan talking um one was we had very very specific measurable goals we did nine of them you can see what they were they were clear cut they went right down the line okay and I think the reviewers liked those the other was is we got um two or three what I consider really dynamite letters of recommendation one was from MSU okay and a couple from other people who had credibility you know and we enclosed those with our application and I think those really helped us get it so if you're looking in terms of a of a Sair Grant um think about those couple of ideas at least and the one closing thought I have if you remember I asked Dan I was how much 1500 pounds was and he said about 40 bushels so we started out our goal was to press and bottle 40 bushels which is about 80 gallons I face 30 bushels oh really did I say wrong or did you say wrong well anyway it's 30 bushels so that was about um so it's about 600 60 gallons so anyway we've gone from 60 gallons to hopefully this year doing our goal is now I've got 800 600 600 gallons sorry anyway what I'm just trying to say is we in three years we've really grown as far as what we can do and what we can sell because we all produce any more than we can sell so question you didn't say much about the cake because I looked at one time and the return of the cake was as good as not better than the oil except for more bagels in smaller units yeah that's that's one weakness with our business right now is we're really not doing much with the cake um in fact you know it's a good livestock feed I'm so far I've given most of it away to people you know we've had small quantities and stuff and I haven't really gone out and tried to sell so I mean I pay for the first so I mean other protein and then grain from still grain it's pretty expensive oh so I mean meals like 450 a ton now it's it's how to say yeah so you figure about six percent of that product is going to be in a cake yeah about 70 percent seven percent because we leave about 10 percent oil in the cake so yeah that's about a 30 70 ratio and if you do your analysis of it you can actually sell that back to that so did you do the analysis as far as whether rheumatoid or non-release do you adjust that you have to prep it like no you have to you have to you have to cook it no yeah I have I haven't done any analysis um it's I've just I've done an analysis on the meal but not animal specific so you might want to look at that's a good point you might so I think you you want to just yes make your models