 Historically, we think about agriculture in Vermont and dairy is up where it was at 1.85% of the ag dollar, but people forget that we had two other major crops that were export crops in Vermont, maple and apples. So we were a pretty major player, major player in a minor market I guess being New England for, you know, 50 to 80 years. Okay, so what I'm doing is I'm counting the flower blossoms that are on the trees, and I keep track of them with a counter. And I start with the bottom branch and then I work my way up. My name is Jessica Foster. I'm a research technician in the Grape and Apple Lab. So I work out at the UVM Horticulture Research Center, or Catamount Farm, and I manage the apple orchards and vineyards. I'm working more with the return bloom. So as you can see, we have another tree here that is having an off year, so there's no fruit on it, whereas the tree next to it has lots of flowers, which will lead to more fruit. So with the hormones, we're hoping that we can stop it from becoming biennial so that we don't have every other year without fruit. If you can sell your fruit for $24 a bushel and you get, you know, 800 bushels to the acre, that's great. But if next year you get zero, then you've pretty much just sold them for $12 a bushel, and you've got two years of growing costs out of that. Markets are very different. Macintosh does not dominate like it used to. You know, when you go in the grocery store, you see galas, you see fujis. Even those are old hat. Now you see pizzazz and ruby frost and all these newer varieties that are somewhat leaving the older traditional orchards in the dust. So how do you adapt, right? These newer systems are really expensive to plant, but they get fruit much faster. And in theory, if everything is done right, can produce more fruit and higher quality fruit. But with great reward comes great risk. You plant this, you better plant the right variety. And so that's some of the work we're doing here, this movement toward hard cider apples. We're answering the questions that Vermont apple growers have. So that's why it's important for us to do the research because it allows us to do research for the growers so that they aren't having to always try to figure it out themselves. It's important to do research at other orchards as well because it gives you exactly what the growers are doing. So it's one thing to do at a research farm, but it's nice to work with farmers because these are questions that they have and that they need answered. You know, I've worked with the UVM apple program for since I was an undergrad, 95 is when I started here. And even as a kid growing up on a dairy farm, you always had the extension agent. You always had some connection to the land grant. Our extension agent, Bill Snow, what he said went. He was our connection to a world of information and support that you couldn't get on the hillside. To be able to funnel research and expertise onto individual farms is huge. The rising tide lifts all ships. Anything that we can do to answer some of these little questions. I'm not the guy who's going to say, do this and all of a sudden the industry will turn around. But if we can all collectively share our experiences, well, I'll be better for it.