 I'd like to introduce Nikki McPherson is going to start us out. She's my better half and she's a woman-owned business, Ozark Forest Mushrooms. And I'm sort of the instigator and trouble-causer and Johann is the brains behind the operation. So that's sort of the general mix of things. So Nikki, if you wanted to sort of start off and kind of explain a little bit what you do in general and sort of the background of this, you guys are all here for learning how to grow truffles. Is that right? Good deal. When you figure it out let us know. We're on our way. Hi everybody. Ozark Forest Mushrooms, we've been growing mushrooms for over 20 years, shiitakes and oyster mushrooms. And so we applied for a SAIR grant in collaboration with University of Missouri Columbia, Dr. Johann Brunn here on the left. And we have put aside about a 50 meter by 50 meter plot on the farm for this truffle project. Ozark Forest Mushrooms has been selling gourmet mushrooms for over 20 years to the St. Louis restaurants, hotels and catering companies. I also actually distribute and sell many other truffle products I buy in from Italy. Butters, honeys, flowers, truffle peelings, truffle juice, truffle butters, you name it. You put truffles with lots of things. So they're high-end, high-expensive gourmet item, which the chefs are very familiar with using. So it would be wonderful if we could grow burgundy truffles here in Missouri. Okay, here we go. And Johann I assume that you snuck, he snuck this slide in here. You want to quickly talk about the different climate? We're a tag team today, both in terms of the presentation and the fact that I downloaded the presentation last night and added some of my own images. So I just wanted to point out, is this working? I just wanted to point out that over the years of driving down through the Ozarks and having the privilege of traveling to Europe and getting to know the truffle growing regions of Europe, and for that matter, China, when I drive through the Ozarks, this is kind of what I'm thinking about. We have a small town commerci in the Lorraine of France. This farmhouse was converted, this orchard is owned by the community, and it is a producing truffle orchard, and they took one of the farmhouses that became available and made a truffle museum out of it, and so there's a museum downstairs, upstairs, there's a small amphitheater, there's an industrial scale kitchen and a bistro, and there's also, yes. And if you walk out the back of the Maison des Cruyff, you're right in the truffier, as we call the truffle orchard. So this has been my vision, and perhaps as this registers, as you see some of the places where we're going to install a truffier on Dan and Nikki's property, I'll point out where the bistro is going to be. So far this is the map of truffle things going on in Missouri. The heart is where the University of Missouri farm where Johann's been doing some of his experimentation. Yeah, sorry, let me, there you go. Is that all right? Okay, I think this will work. The Persimmon Hill farm, I don't know if his Ernie is here. There you go. He's in early stages of putting in a truffle orchard. We're Ozark forest mushrooms. Wordac farm is down near us off the Merrimack, off the Salem, and the farm at Sugar Creek's another area, and we're going to be getting some of our tree stock from forest keeling nursery. So that's kind of the map of things going on truffle at the moment. This is our particular farm. Anybody familiar with the sinks down in Shannon County? We're down in southern Missouri between Salem and Eminence. The farm name is Timber Farms the Sinks. We have lots of trees, lots of sort of low grade hardwood forest. And this is a geological feature on the farm that gives it its name. And actually the creek used to go around where that lake is and it cut a hole through the hillside and made a tunnel through the thing that's called the sinks locally. This is what Nikki does. She has an outdoor production 15, 18,000 logs growing shiitake mushrooms on been doing it for way too long. I think over 20 years. That's showing you some of the mushrooms growing. How many guys are familiar with growing shiitake mushrooms? So a few of you, I know Ernie grows some as well. Johann's done a lot of research on it. We also grow mushrooms in the snow. So we have a winter production. We have a greenhouse where we burn our old logs to heat the greenhouse. We grow oyster mushrooms as well on substrate. Some of the different varieties that we grow. And that's why with what Nikki does of those are forest mushrooms, truffles is the perfect sort of next step in something to add to our product line. When we first looked at this, we evaluated two sites on the farm. There's this area here. Here's our mushroom growing area and this area here. We did some soil tests and we're not going to get too much in as anyone has any more detail on some of the soil testing results. We could probably talk for a couple hours on that one. It'll be over my head, but hopefully Johann could help us out on that one. But basically our pH a little low, our clay content a little low and we definitely had to mitigate the soil. So that's where we have our our two share grants are in a process of converting our area into the proper soil conditions for the truffle cultivation. Here's the actual place that we picked. It's a 50 meter by 50 meter plot on a little sort of knoll and what we call the walnut knoll field at our farm. And there we are taking some of the soil tests. We've been at this. It's taken us two years to get the soil to a place where we want it to be. And as you'll see in a little bit when we show you our final soil results, we're at a really good place right now. This is what it looks like. It's a really pretty area. It's really fun to work out there. Very quiet. We also picked it because we happen to have some electrical lines from Black River Electric. So that's going to come in handy for some irrigation purposes. So we didn't have to run electricity to it. We tried to use in doing anything like this and trying to do it economically. You got to use what you have. And we were able to borrow a moldboard plow to one of the things we needed to do, mitigating the soil. Our clay content wasn't high enough, which is hard to believe in the Ozarks when all we do is grow rocks and clay anyway. So we actually wanted to mix the soil. So we used the moldboard plow to completely turn over the soil. And that worked very well. It went down to what about 12, 15 inches. And so that helped quite a bit. We also had an old disk that we used to kind of put in the lime after we applied it. And here's the field right after the application of the lime. So we've had three applications and we get into the actual amount. I believe our first application was about 15 tons, I believe, all together. When talking to MFA on putting it, they couldn't understand why we wanted to dump so much lime on a small place. And they basically drove around in a circle in our 50-meter thing and dumped the lime down. It gets very quickly assimilated. And you can see here after our first application, our pH went up a little bit. Now, these, the 1, 2, 3, represents depth in the soil. So as you can see as we're going down in our soil, the lime's not getting mixed in as quite as well down towards the bottom. So that's 4 inches, 8 inches, and 12 inches down. And one of the things we want to do is get it really well incorporated. This is after our first lime application. We seeded it with annual ryegrass. Another thing we're trying to do is build up our organic matter. So every time we disc it, every time we lime it, we seed it, we grow a cover crop such as annual ryegrass that gets reincorporated back into the ground again to keep our organic matter up. So that's another important. Took our soil test and we had, we have a second application. You can also see here temperature sensors in here to find out what the, how the ground's freezing over time. So we have a complete record of what the soil temperatures are doing at different depths in the orchard. And you can see after our next application, our pH is slowly going up, but still a little bit too low. We're hoping we'd make it on this one. And we actually have had to do a third application. We're shooting for a pH of pretty much eight, 7.8. So that's a, that's a pretty high number with them. We have noticed we're actually registering on Google Earth. If you Google Earth, you'll actually see this plot on, you know, from, from the pictures they've taken. You notice how green that is. So that's just, that's just as a result of this high lime content. It's kind of interesting. Because I think a lot, a lot of the old timers like to really heavily lime their fields. And you, you can see why it has a really, really big effect on, on what we need to, we also need additional calcium for moisture handling capability, additional organic matter and the CEC being cat iron exchange capability on that. So now you can see after our third lineup, we just took these soil tests what two weeks ago. And you can see we're getting this is at four inches, eight inches and 12 inches. You can see we're really getting right where we want to be. And it's well incorporated deep down into the soil. So we're in a pretty good place. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the other aspects of this? So truffles don't like wet feet. So we need a, we need an elevated area to, we need an elevated area to grow truffles because truffle, the trees don't like wet feet. The truffle doesn't survive well on trees if they, if they're in an area that gets flooded at all. So our soil tends to be a, a silt loam. And as a result, since silt doesn't have a very high cation exchange capacity, we're a little low on cation exchange capacity. The most important element for truffle cultivation turns out to be calcium. And right now we're, we're in a pretty good position. We're sitting around 1500 to 2000 parts per million of calcium. And our target is, our threshold target is, is 3000. And the fact that we're at 7.8, 7.9 with and still not at 3000 is a, is a function of the relatively low cation exchange capacity of the soil. So one of the materials that will raise cation exchange capacity is clay. Another is organic matter. And so that's one of the reasons we're looking to, to raise organic matter. And so now this lake occurs at the sinks right next to Dan and Nikki's home there. And they've had an invasion of, of millfoil and aquatic weed. And one of the things that I really like about working with Dan and Nikki is that, is that they're very resourceful and they, they try to turn their disadvantages to advantages. And as it turns out, this lake, this, this body of water because it's, it's running through, it's arriving through limestone has a very high calcium content, very high lime content in the water. And the millfoil is crusted with calcium carbonate. And so we get organic matter and we get calcium from the millfoil. And so they've, they've rigged this, this boat to be able to drag the, the millfoil up from the lake. And sorry. And so this is a picture of the, of the millfoil weed drying on the floor of the greenhouse. Okay. And then they're milling it. And this is what the chopped millfoil looks like. And then we can use it either as is, as an organic matter amendment. And it can have multiple uses on their farm, or we can use it to produce biochar. And so this just gives you a pictorial of, of the process that the millfoil can go through from, from beginning in the lake as an aquatic weed crusted with lime to flailed and ground dried. And then this is a, an extremely simple, primitive even biochar kiln. But it works. And we can, we can essentially cook the millfoil at about 400 degrees Celsius for several hours. And the gases that are driven off from the organic matter inside this inner drum, travel down underneath the drum and catch fire and help fuel the process. But in the end we're left with a very highly porous material with a very high cation exchange capacity and about 6,000 parts per million of calcium, where our total target is about 3,000. And so we can raise the porosity of the soil, the calcium content of the soil. And it's been demonstrated that this biochar is an excellent habitat for useful bacteria and for, for mycorrhizal fungi as well. So another resource, we consider this a resource, I guess, that we have on hand is the spent Shiitaki logs. In the past they've been, they've been burning these logs, dry, letting them dry, burning them to heat the greenhouse over the winter. But as you can imagine, there aren't a whole lot of BTUs in the logs after the Shiitaki have, have chewed them up pretty thoroughly over maybe four or five years. And so we're looking at, at converting, at grinding these Shiitaki logs and either biocharring them or using them directly as mulch. And it turns out that at one stage in the truffle's life cycle, it actually consumes dead, fine roots of oak trees. And here we've got all this dead oak wood that's, that's ready to be mulched and, and it may find its way into the, into the truffle production process. So another feature of truffle cultivation is, is the need to irrigate. These mushrooms do form underground. They're in association with the roots of, of the trees. And we'll talk about the trees in a, in a few minutes. But we've got to have at least a couple of inches of rain per month through the growing season in order to, in order to keep the, the truffles developing. Our information has changed a little bit of over last years because this year in Europe, in the, in the mainland of Europe, it was as dry as it was here. And so they thought that their truffle production was going to be nil this autumn with the burgundy truffle. And it turns out that where people had irrigation, the truffle production is, is fine doing well. Where they didn't have irrigation, it, it really was impacted heavily. So we're using, we're going to be using micro aspirators, very short overhead sprinklers between, located between each pair of trees along the rows. And the reason for that is because we don't know where on the root system or where on the soil a truffle is going to want to form. And so we have to make sure that there's adequate moisture throughout, or along the rows between the trees uniformly. We've, we've had a chance to, to discuss and, and educate some of our students at the university about truffle biology, truffle cultivation. The University of Missouri established a program called Mizzou Advantage. And they had, they developed undergraduate research teams. And the idea was to find faculty on campus who normally would not be inclined just because of where they're located, institutional barriers. They wouldn't necessarily work together and to bring them together with students who represent very diverse educational programs and, and have them undertake a research project together. And so truffle cultivation was, was very nice because we're dealing with the biology of trees and fungi, mycology. We're identifying the bacteria by molecular means. Some of the students were interested in the sociology of, of agritourism and, and agroforestry. And so it was, it was a great experience, I think. And Henry Helmuth is in the back of the room. He was one of our, one of our students and I think he could tell you a little bit more about it from the student standpoint. This is a burgundy truffle. This is about two inches in diameter, probably weighs a little more, maybe a couple of ounces. And the brown tissue in the burgundy truffle is comprised of spores. Four spores typically form inside one of these sac-like structures and it's these spores that we use to inoculate trees. So the truffles are ground in water and then the spores are applied to the substrate. The roots grow into contact with germinating spores and the tree is infected and then planted. And this is what the, that was what the infected root tip looks like. Can we go back one second? Just a moment. So this is a root tip that's been of a, of an oak tree, a quarkus rober, quarkus bicolor hybrid from our research plantation that's been colonized by the burgundy truffle. I'll say right off the bat that we're still waiting for our first truffle, but we're very happy that we know that we've got the burgundy truffle fungus on the roots of our, of our trees. So now burgundy truffle production in a plantation is not uniform. It's not, it's not, they aren't uniformly present and easy to harvest throughout the plantation. We find that some, even though all the trees were infected in the greenhouse or in the field, some trees produce, others don't. Truffles form on one side of a tree, not the other side of the tree. It's, it's, it's maddening. But, and as a result, we're interested in knowing why this is the case. What are we doing wrong that's preventing us from having more uniform truffle production? And so, some colleagues of mine in, in Bologna, Italy and myself have been isolating the community of bacteria that live inside these burgundy and other species of truffles. I don't want you to turn, I don't want to turn you off to eating truffles, but truffles, like ourselves, host a huge community of bacteria. And it turns out that we were able to determine through molecular fingerprinting that a large percentage of the bacteria that are living inside truffles belong to the same genus of bacteria that fix nitrogen on the roots of legumes. So we've got huge bradyrozobium populations inside truffles. And it makes sense because where are these things going to, where are these fruit bodies going to get all the nitrogen they need to produce spores? And so what we're doing now is we've got another use for the biochar. It provides calcium, it provides water holding capacity, it provides cation exchange capacity, and it also can be colonized by these beneficial bacteria that can be then incorporated into the soil around the, around the trees. We're partnering with, with Wayne Loveless, the president and, and owner of Forest Keeling Nursery in Ellesbury, Missouri. They've patented a process for producing trees. They call it the RPM process root production method. You can Google on Forest Keeling Nursery and learn more about it. But what's amazing about this system is that even though it involves three, three types of containers. First, the acorns are germinated in a tray, then they're planted into a four inch cubic, four inch, four by four by four inch pot. And then mid-summer, they're transferred into a one, into a, what is it, I think they call it, three quart pot, a rather large pot. And by the end of their first summer, they're taller than I am. We're going to take the seedlings at this middle stage and we're going to actually inoculate them in the, in the field. What we like about the Forest Keeling, about the RPM seedlings is that they, the process discourages the formation of an enduring tap root. And it encourages the production of a very highly branched lateral root system. And so these seedlings, normally if you saw a seedling that was a couple months old in, in a normal container, it would have a very long tap root and a few short lateral roots. The lateral roots form mycorrhizae with the truffle. The more my, the more lateral roots we have, arguably the more truffles we will have, the more mycorrhizae will have the more truffles. And so that's why we're very interested in, in RPM seedlings. So a graduate, now we're using a, one of the main hosts of the Burgundy truffle in Europe is Quarkus rober. It's called English oak or common oak. And there are frost tolerant selections that are available. This Quarkus rober is the main host that, that produces Burgundy truffles on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The farthest north distribution of the Burgundy truffle. We're interested in that, in that source because it tolerates very low temperatures down to and about freezing. So forest keeling has hybridized Quarkus rober with, with a North American species called swamp white oak. Swamp is a bad, a bad name. It will grow in swamps, but it doesn't need swamps to, to do well. The reason we've, we've hybridized Quarkus bicolor into rober is because bicolor is very resistant to a foliage disease caused, called powdery mildew. And so the hybrid is, is a healthier plant and it grows better. We're going to be planting 80 of these, of this hybrid on Dan and Nikki's property and we're going to be planting 80 more of another interesting plant selection. This is, we're going to be planting grafted seedlings. The root system will be Quarkus rober to take advantage of the fact that it's a, it's a well known good host for the truffle. The tops are going to be a selection that Wayne Lovelace has developed that produces an edible acorn. So this is a hybrid of, of bur oak and swamp white oak that Wayne has named Kimberly. And it produces the shade characteristics that we're looking for in a burgundy truffle habitat. And it also produces that second crop that people seem to be asking us about. And I can tell you more about that, that hybrid. Anyway, we're, our planting layout will be 10 rows of 16 trees. We've got a quarter of a hectare, 50 meters by 50 meters. The rows will be oriented east-west to provide maximum shade. The rows will be five meters apart and the trees will be planted three meters apart along the rows. So each tree is going to be on a three by five meter spacing. And we've talked about irrigation. I'm going to try to hurry along. This is our research truffier at, at Hark. We've done a lot of things wrong. This, this orchard was established in 2005. We've learned an awful lot in the last seven years. But the soil was limed to 7.2 with, with agricultural lime. I was planted with the hybrid that I mentioned, which was well colonized in the greenhouse. It's a mixture of RPM seedlings and the more typical book style seedlings. And all of the trees were, the better looking trees here were pushing 20 feet this early summer. And I cut them back to 12 to 15 so that I can harvest the acorns off of them for planting stock. And we're particularly interested for the burgundy truffle in open grown canopies that are going to throw a lot of shade quickly. If we ever do decide to work with the paragord black truffle then we'll want the columnar growth form because paragord truffles don't like shade. Okay. One interesting thing about the burgundy truffle and the paragord truffle for that matter is that if you, if you have an appropriate soil and you have a tree that isn't infected, you can infect it even after it's well developed. And so we took an air spade and we exposed the lateral roots around one of the RPM seedlings. And there are practices that are being used in Europe for inoculating these trees with a combination of vermiculite laced with spores of the truffle. We're going to add the bacteria to, to actually convert an existing tree to a truffle producing tree. Okay. There are, there are tools that are being developed in Europe pretty much at the moment. Basically we have a, a very, we're getting away from tools of modern agriculture and we're starting to think about tools that are appropriate to the biology of the truffle fungus. So I mentioned the rows are going to be five meters apart. There'll be a one meter wide central alleyway for a very narrow tractor, small lightweight tractor to negotiate. And the tools will be side mounted on the rear of the, of the tractor. The reason is that we're going to allow some compaction to take place between the rows, but we're going to, we're not going to have any, we're not going to be dragging a tool behind a tractor to try to decompact what the tractor is compacting. Because we, we want as loose a soil as possible because that will not only help truffles to form, but we'll get bigger truffles as the experience in Europe. I wondered whether dogs could, just how good a dog's nose was. And two winters ago, two years ago now, I was in Sweden on Gotland and had the chance to see how good dogs are at finding truffles. There was about four to six inches of snow. This is a hazel clump. And these dogs were running around with their heads under the snow and they were, they were finding truffles under the snow. So we use dogs to, to find truffles. Pigs want to eat the truffles. Dogs want the treat that you give them and the appreciation that you show them for finding the truffle. Big difference. This is, these are a couple of my favorite things to do with truffles. They represent value added products. If I told you that a, that the Burgundy truffle retails in this country for about $500 a pound. It seems like a lot. The Paragord truffle for $960 a pound, but you only need a small amount of truffle to have a really fine truffle experience. So this is a breed that's been sliced and, and made a sandwich of, of sliced truffles wrapped in plastic and set in the cheese drawer for a couple of days. And then sliced onto a, this is truffle butter on a piece of bread, but the best thing to do with brie is to take a small slice, put it on a, on a plate and drizzle truffled honey over it. That is my idea of heaven. Okay. Yeah. So once you've planted your trees and you've hopefully got some truffles and you have a well trained dog to, to, to dig them up, what, what are you going to do with the truffles? The shelf life on them isn't, you know, very long. What is it? Maybe a couple of weeks or so. So value added products as I'm the queen of here with my own mushroom businesses. There are so many things you can do with the truffle. So there's, you know, like your hands talked about truffle honeys. There's truffle sources you can make. And these are all non, you know, they're, they're, you can keep these for a long time. They don't have to be refrigerated. There's a product. These are all from Italy. There's truffle salt. You can get sea salt and put little bits of the truffle in the salt truffles. If you haven't tasted them are very earthy and tasting that also you the experience is also it's like a perfume to it's a smell as much as is the taste. And you just certainly don't want to overcook them. So you really need to read out and train the chefs when you sell truffles to them has to, you know, how to work with them. There's truffle juice. And there's canned whole truffles and canned truffle peelings as well. And chefs really like these products because they can then out of one can make many different other truffle sources, butters and so forth with that. There's truffle flour where if you're making like, you know, a pastry crust or dusting something with flour, you can impart the truffle flavor in your food products. And there's truffle peelings and truffle oil. So there's many different things. And then so what we do is I was up forest mushrooms. I have been making my own truffle butter from the summer or burgundy truffles that we buy from the cans from Italy. And then blending that with a high butter fact, European style butter and a little sea salt. And I've been selling those quite successfully at farmers markets. Once people taste the butter, then they buy the small pot and then they always come back and buy the larger pot. So it's a show me state. So as long as you get them to taste it once they'll come back and get more. So I see this is a great product. We had the similar sort of cast topography as they do in in parts of France where they grow these truffles. I've actually been very fortunate and been to France and went truffle hunting with a Labrador dog which found truffles. They are ready to hunt really around this time of year. You can pick them earlier in the summer, but they'll be much smaller and it seems a shame to harvest them when they're small. So if you leave them in the ground longer, you can harvest them in the fall, which is probably the the best time to pick them or hunt them rather. And when we were in France, the way they train their dogs to actually hunt the truffles was they actually use the truffle oil on the mother dog. And so when the puppies came to feed off the mother, the truffle oil was on the mother's teeth. And so that's how they got the scent for the truffle. And so they satiate it with food, I assume. As Johann said, the old days in France used to use pigs because the smell of the truffle is the pharaoh of the female pig apparently. So unfortunately, the pig would eat the truffle so they don't use pigs anymore. So any other questions? Anybody? Yeah. Quite a great cost. Yeah, it's definitely a labor of love and time time really. We're talking about what seven years possibly. I think Johann's the expert on this. So currently the state of the art is that you spend about two years adjusting the soil, getting the right pH, the right calcium levels. And in the meanwhile, you can be installing irrigation. Well, actually, that needs to wait till you've established the soil. And then if you've done everything well, and your soil is appropriate, you should find your first truffle after three years. Five years is considered acceptable. People used to say it would be seven to 10 years before your first truffle. But now they're pushing it down to three to five years. And frankly, I think that with the RPM seedlings with a better lateral root system, faster growth, the trees will be colonized quicker, and we may be able to realize that three year timeframe after planting. And then we're talking maybe half a dozen years to 10 years to full production. And with a with the burgundy truffle, we're looking at approximately 60 pounds per acre per year. Once the once the trees are in full production. And most of that production would be between September and mid December. The burgundy truffle fruits in the fall, the perigord truffle fruits in the winter. And so one of the reasons we're looking at the burgundy truffle, even though it's less expensive, is because our ground can freeze in the winter. And if that happens, the truffles are destroyed before they can be harvested. If they're perigord truffles. Yes. How long would that, how long would you expect to, you know, have that crop produce for how many years? That that hazel grove that I showed you in Sweden is hundreds of years old. And it is, and it continues to produce. And so we, we believe that that this is a very sustainable, very long term crop, especially when we're using oak seedlings, which are relatively long lived. The same once you've added all that stuff to it or over time, will it start to kind of lose some of that? It gradually as, as organic matters as leaves start to decay in the forest blower, they'll produce organic acids that will, that will mitigate the calcium levels. And, and so you'll, you will say every decade, presumably you'll have to top dress with lime to keep the pH where you want one wanted to add another aspect of this and that another reason we're doing it is for the ecotourism aspect of this is that this is something people are very interested in. It has a nice mystique to it. You know, mystique usually means is another word for a whole lot of work. It takes a whole lot of time. But, but it does have that. I think it's a really fun thing. And the Ozark region has a unique character to it. This matches it very well. And so I think there's a whole nother benefit besides just the crop itself is for the people that are interested in seeing how some of these more interesting crops actually grow over time. But another we're gonna get tangled up in the wires here. But if we if we do have a serious freeze during the winter, if we're growing paragord truffles, the truffles will freeze in the ground. And when the ground thaws, they'll be soup. So they're they're not a waste. They serve to infect the the new truffle roots that that form underground, but they're inedible. But the mycorrhizae, the business end of the fungus on the root system remains intact and functioning. So the the relationship between the fungus and the tree survives. It's just the product that's destroyed. Now it's interesting, Dan and Nikki told us that our winters are really cold down there. We must freeze and we we put soil sensors in at two inches and four inches. And in the last two years, the soil has not frozen in in the sinks area. So I think it I'm thinking now that, you know, we've got space. One of the reasons we chose that particular location is because once we get it right, we can expand on that on that little plateau slope. And we may actually end up or they may actually end up considering Paragord truffles down there. If the soil doesn't freeze, why not? Yeah, that's true. If you harvest all your truffles that you get, when you start getting them, that's not a problem because the bacteria is still on the root system. Exactly. I guess the burgundy truffle doesn't the freeze doesn't bother. No, because the the well, the fun the fungus itself and the relationship with the roots isn't bothered by freezing with any of the truffles. But it's just that the burgundy truffle naturally fruits before the ground would freeze. So you you're harvesting your crop between September and December in the fall. And and so it's not affected in that way. So we're adding the new element to the to the crop mix. As you can see, this isn't necessarily for the faint of hearted. It's a it's a long term process. It's, you know, there's no guarantee of success. It's got a lot of I think Johan's been at it well enough. I think we understand our climate and our soils well enough to have a good fighting chance. The Sarah grants have helped them enormously to get us get us started. We're really excited about getting the trees in the ground. And we really think it has a tremendous potential. And it's something that we really want to share with other people because I think this is a type of product that you never can grow a whole lot of we're not worried about competition. You know, we've been idiot enough to grow shiitake mushrooms for the last 20 years. And that's a lot of work. And we haven't had any, you know, serious competition, except for Ernie. Where is he with it? He's he's he's always moving into our territory with it. But so it's these are longer term things. The shiitake, we thought that was long term, you know, basically waiting a year before you got it and not knowing once you get it up and going, it's fantastic. And that's why when you go to these older plantations, they're just kicking out stuff all the time. So it's interesting. It's not a get rich quick scheme. When you think of the amount of money you're getting, also think about the amount of time and energy and money you're putting in up front. Nicky did the calculation and, you know, wasn't really much different than what she's doing on the shiitake. So it, you know, by the time you really factor that all in. She's a realist. She has to sell them. She has to deal with it all. So, you know, that's, you know, I want to be careful as you think about this, because the wildly high prices, there's a reason why they're wildly high. But any other comments? Yeah, I might might mention that we talk about I do agree that we're there's not going to be a whole lot of competition for for doing this. But on the other hand, a colleague of mine in New Zealand got started in Paragord truffle cultivation about 20 years ago. And his model, the way he sold this to his bosses was that they were going to sell the truffles they produce in the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere during the off season. If you think about it, the Paragord truffle as a season from December 1st to about March, mid March at the longest. And so they were going to sell their their New Zealand truffles in the northern hemisphere to Japan, North America and Europe during our summers. But once they produced their first truffle, the demand and the appreciation sprung up immediately. And they have not sent a single truffle offshore from New Zealand that's been produced. And they they have about a dozen producers down there. And so I think it has I think it's really a worthwhile adventure for people who have the who have land particularly that's appropriate and and and patients enjoy working with the land. Yes, sir. Anything especially good for for you like your current you get a lot of and you know, in other words, any vitamins are not really. No, it's it's the truffle is is the kind of thing that you you simply become hooked on when you experience it. And it's like I don't even try to describe it anymore because it's it's everybody. And I I inquire of almost everyone I I share truffle products with and I asked them. So what do you think it tastes like? What does it smell like to you? There's no agreement. And not everybody likes truffles in my family, my wife and my older daughter don't have any interest in them. My younger daughter floats through the breezes from wherever she is to wherever I have the truffles. She's just completely smitten as I am. And I'd say about 90% of people really appreciate truffles, but I certainly don't worry about a market or about the price going down if we start producing quite a few. We'll be selling them to Europe. Their production has has plummeted. Well, the so I was invited to I went I traveled to Gotland in Sweden last last year about this time and I was actually I went to meetings in France and then on to Gotland to buy the truffles for my research and I was got an email while I was in France already and said you need to bring a tuxedo and I don't own a tuxedo. Well, you have to have a black sports coat and we'll arrange for you to rent it. You need a bow tie and a tuxedo and we didn't know what was going on but a colleague of mine from France and I traveled to Gotland and they had the the first inaugural event of the Gotland truffle society and so we were in the cathedral of the of the city with candle light and and were inaugurated and then had a very lovely truffle dinner afterwards so that's my this is my my truffle medal