 We're at about five hours from here in our house on the Chicago. We've lived there for about almost five years now. So that's where we're at. That's where I just said that our home is more connected. See our production. You can see some pictures of our family. We did have two young children on the find three that helped us out and we also had some challenges. And you can just see some pictures of our farm here as well. We grow about a quarter acre of garlic seed right now. And we're looking to double triple that. I work full time off the farm and we kind of rungs the farm basically. And so we just want to share a little bit of our experience and then talk really about the specifics of our production system. Yeah, I know that. I've been working at Pima's for the past five years. I started at age 12 working there through college. So that was the beginning of my farming experience. That was all conventional. But everything's from your transplanting to retail and that was it. I grew up in Maine and ended up in the Midwest. And so I grew up a city kid actually. And now I went on to manage a couple farms. Just small scale vegetable production apprentice on caretaker farm. You may have heard of that in Massachusetts. I believe it's the second oldest organic farm. About 150, 200 member TSA. Went on to Iowa to start a small farm to support Julie. See if we were right for each other while farming. And then for an eye together went on to six, three acres in Oakland, Indiana, down by Muncie. And took a small farm from about 20 TSA members to about 125,150. We had two houses. We've kind of done it all in a lot of different ways. And now we're at our current location, living a small farm dream. And garlic is hopefully a key part of that. So another part of our farm is a winter resorts program. We just started that season. We built a few houses last summer. We used a 7 feet TSA through the house. Pick up the farm, get the delivery back in his office about a half hour away. And that was really successful. We ended up with a reading list by the end of the season. And also request for more vegetables all the time. People saying, you know, I could only eat your lettuce to stay. So that's great. And we're planning on doing another trial. We just started thinking and we're hoping to house up in April, depending on what weather it lasts in. So in terms of our specific garlic car production, we were looking for a car with organic hardneck garlic. We have to plant by hand because if you go to a non-partisan garlic, it has to be oriented a certain way. Otherwise, the neck gets bent and then people don't want to buy that. So there's yet to be a machine that can do that efficiently. And so we were looking to scale up production that could do that for us and also ease some of the labor fatigue that goes into planting, molting, those sorts of things. Also, in terms of looking for sustainability, trying to find a system that we didn't have to kill as much. We had vegetable farmers that were guilty of probably older killings. So we're trying to move away from that, especially in our really sandy soils, low organic matter. We need to really work on that. So that was kind of one of our goals. We were kind of hoping the car would help us molt the straw and aid in harvesting as well. One of the products we have so far is a review of parts available. So this is a 34-page document that's available on the SAIR website. That kind of part of our grant was working with Purdue University. So their ag engineering department had a couple of students that came up to the farm, kind of figured out what we needed. And it was their job to see what was out there and see if they could come up with a better system, something that wasn't commercially available. So I'm not, I think, well, but I'm not very well there. So this was a great opportunity to partner and maybe come up with something better. So that document is available. So if you're thinking about wasting, increase your comfort level, whether you have strawberries or any sort of crop, it's a really useful document. So just to give you an idea of how our production system actually looks like as we think about what kind of car, kind of machine that we want to help us on our farm. So you can see it. This is our chair from Cannesville. That's from our toll road. But we're going to start looking at Mitchell Island. So if you stand at our vertical pasture and you spread compost on fields. And then first part of it is that's when we do the cover crop. So we brought a forecast for the cover crop. You can see we've got this. So we're going to be able to use radish and we'd like to display. It's about to be the end of August. Then a month later in October, it was over a tractor with most of the cover crop strips. We created some camping beds and then we should have filled them with some kind of camping and we added the amendments at that point. I'm going to refer to you. This is what we're going to be talking about. And this is specifically what we're looking at for the tarp core. This is where we are doing everything right now and raising each hole in the ground. After we've done that, you're covering all that up and mulching it. And you can see there's some good position there that it gets to be a little bit uncomfortable. Then we have the nine months where the tarp is in the ground and we've had early to mid-July. We've also started a future degradation for the water in the ground in the July harvest and cure. So that's the basic production system that we're looking at. We'll take questions at the end. We're just going to do that for a amount of time. So here's some more pictures of us planting. So we have very little pockets around the lace to carry around to where we need to go. And then there's another picture just kind of trying to adjust for that so that we'll be some attention at the end of the day. So that's what we currently do, our system. We're dropping. A lot of hands and knees work, which over a quarter acre, that doesn't sound like a lot. But by doing that for four days straight, it really adds up where and care on the bottom. So part of the grant was to kind of look at, okay, where do we really spend a lot of our time and where can we maximize the use of equipment? We're going to spend money on it. How are we going to use that efficiently? So one of the things we did is looked at our system and timed it out. Okay, where are we spending our time? And if you add it all up, planting, harvesting, and molding is where we are spending 60% of our time. And then we also kind of looked at, okay, what's the most physically hard? Actually, harvesting and hanging it, we spend a lot of time there, but that's actually somewhat, not easily, but it's more upright work and it's going to be done in different stages. So we kind of looked at planting as kind of the big one that we were trying to address. So how do we eliminate back bending, awkward positions? How do we eliminate unnecessary tillage? So this cart's going to have to be able to drive through this pretty heavy cover crop and we'll show you some pictures here. And then, of course, related to that, in our sandy soils, you know, we have about eight inches of topsoil and it's all yellow. So conserving that moisture is really important to us. And then what's a scale-appropriate machine for us? I'm just going to walk from real quick kind of what the student at Purdue found, available options. Here's a cart you found. And looking further details, this cart didn't end up working that well. A hand crank broke and couldn't really do it along. But maybe it has some merits. This is something that currently exists in the U.S. about $3,500. But we didn't know, you know, we're not doing strawberries, we're doing garlic. Could it drive through that type of heavy biomass? We weren't sure. This is another cart that's quite a bit more expensive. You have to import it in the U.S. to find it as far as we could tell. And then here's kind of the cream of the crop, the most ideal cart, kind of like a small tank on wheels. But again, it's pretty expensive. So if you had a lot of acres, it might work. So here's some of the unique features Yeah, these are unique features of how we do our garlic. So we can't give it all to the main cover crop. It's really important on our farm to build the soil, add those nutrients, create the aeration. Maybe garlic, not strawberries, just you saw some of the carts. Having that to the right height for the crop that you're doing. We need something that's small, medium-scale, appropriate. We went into a new quarter of acre that we'd like to grow back, but it's not a full time thing at this point. And then also something that we want to pass. Planting, weeding, harvesting, and mulching. And then finally, we want something that can be built on farm. We have a welding shop just across the street from us. We did work something, and there was mechanical problems, so it's been always a big strength in our community. So it's really important to us as well. And then how the water rise was preferred, but we'll see what happens. And as with most grant projects, we go into these ideal thinking, ideal goals, and how it ends up is often very different. That's okay. That's part of why Sayer does these types of funding projects. You don't have to necessarily accomplish it. Here's a picture of the tall cover crop. These are our two boys here. And some years, that cover crop can be four feet, depending on how the fall goes. And it really provides probably 80% of our fertility for our garlic. So this is really important that we keep this in our system. Here's what it looks like. I've mowed the strip where our bed is going to be. We do two rows of garlic per bed. Our soils are that four. We can't do that any more intensively. And then we wrote a tilt, a strip wrote a tilt. And so you can see the stick mat right here of cover crop that is going to have to be able to be driven over by some sort of machine if we're going to have to do that. So here it is. It pulls up with our drip tapers of after planting and here too we do some planting. And you can see that we have really a lot of cover crop for garlic area plants. We do that again through our soil. And we're actually moving towards a system that we don't wrote a tilt at all, but we just deep rip a row or a shank on our tractor so that we don't get a tilt at all. And so that's kind of, we were trying to think through how we planted that. So here's just our farm all 100s of the shank ripped through. You can kind of see that there. We do have some video on our YouTube channel that shows us specifically. We won't be trying to play that today, but it is good. This is what the garlic looks like around mid-April. May-June, that's when we started doing the water escape, which we harvest and sell or give to parents depending on where they're at. In July we're looking for about a third of the plant round out and then we know it's time to harvest. So the garlic part, here's the actual cart I'm constructing. It's got a canopy here where our tarp can be put and then it's a lay-down design. And we have, you know, a place where we can here's actually a better picture than some of the new students actually driving it around. And we went through about four engineering students and two professors. So turnover was really high, not because the garlic part was that difficult, but that's just the nature of working with, you know, university students. So that's something we learned. I was hoping to be up to about three-quarter acre garlic production by this time, but oh, their cart never really got done, which actually turned out to be the best thing because maybe family structure time-wise we weren't really ready to go out there. So, yeah, you had to get an extension which, you know, Sarah was gracious to understand. And at this point, you know, the cart, they're having some trouble with the design in terms of how the wheels actually swivel when it's going down the road. So we're almost there. But now it's got a new student, new group student working on it. So it is what it is. Some lessons learned. Keep it simple. I think we tried to put too many things into one cart. Maybe a couple versions down the road we could have done that. But I think we should have acknowledged that up front. And the motor ended up being, you know, that was kind of the problem. Yeah. It's one of the problems with that. So... The students really wanted to know more about it. Yeah. You think you can do it? Yeah. I know. I'm an engineer. You found that the review of the cart options, why is it really valuable? That was part of the grant. That's something that holds you, too. And again, it said that you should report and look at that. So that was a great part of this. Given enough time, I mean, if you think the project is going to take two years, maybe two and a half or three, you know, it's not an ideal world. Don't try to do too much. You kind of said that. And it's about the process. We really kind of refined our growing process and really thinking about mechanizing why we want to do that. And then just the concept of working with students is great. But there are some limits to that. Any questions? We've got a couple minutes for questions. Anything at all? Yeah. A few questions. One about estimated cost in petrified seafood. Seed garlic, you guys were raising this food and selling it as a seed garlic. Yeah. So we have a website where we sell our next seed garlic. And then we also do eating garlic. And so we do eating garlic for about 50 cents of all. And then our seed goes for about anywhere from 10 to 12 dollars an ounce. Because we're not certified organic. And we can't charge quite that high of price. But that's certainly where, yeah. Yeah, we're certified actually grown. And our ethro, basically what we have here is customers telling us you're not charging enough for multiple people. It costs us about 30 cents of linear road foot to produce the garlic. So we thought, oh, 50 cents of all is a pretty good cost to produce that. We should do it more. Can we answer any other questions? One of the questions about the price of where you guys are producing our seed garlic. Yeah. Well, fortunately, one of the great things we're working with for you is that they had the students each have a budget so that they can motor some of the materials they didn't have to pay for. So we did like a 50-50 pot share on that. So that worked. I mean, that worked out great. So we were about three grand into the project. Yeah. Let's say that somebody wants to make that product. And if you have a friend, but if somebody else wants to make the product they can do design, or they design, or they can ask me for that without them. Right. And that's where the students have their final report if they'll have their materials with us. Yeah. Still in five. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent question. Yeah. What do you use as a non-mechanized method for that kind of thing? Well, depending where the students end up with this, I'm thinking we might just take the motor off and pull it with our phone. That might be the simplest. No. They thought about that. But I think the students didn't know enough or didn't have the staff to do that. I don't. But yeah. I think that's a viable. Yeah. Those are good points. Yeah. Yeah. And in that 34-page document, there's kind of an assessment of to be used electric, why or why not. So. The one that you were showing before, I've seen that one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The. Sorry. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I thought you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah we have something like. I want my cover top to winter kill because we're not going to. I can't tell. It's oats, radish, and maybe you can feel it. Yeah, we know we burn through that really quick. Any other questions? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Oh, yeah. It's like you're different from others. So part of the reason we do two rows to a bed, and then our beds are 36 inches on center, is because of our soil fertility. Our soil is so poor. Basically sands. And the way our old baby tractors set up, that was kind of the easiest. The cart was then designed for that, yeah, four feet wide. So we could straddle one bed up. And do you consider a cover crop? We could use a roller crimper in the springtime? The question is, have we considered using a roller crimper as a cover crop? Yes. The problem is roller crimping, like, particularly winter peas, it needs to be flowering to actually chill it at crimping. And likewise, the oats didn't have to be at green till. So, yeah, something we could consider. So timing didn't work for us? Yeah. It might, if it winter killed, but again, ripping that narrow shank through, we may not even need to trim it. It's what we're doing. So we're actually trying to not even touch the cover crop. Yeah. Good question. Are we growing more than one side of the garlic? Yes. We have about seven varieties right now. We sell corn. We sell Ukraine, music, German writing and caretaker. And then we have three or four others that we're working on, building soft corn. Are they all generally ones that which were in the early Yeah. Some of our, we'd be like a porcelain, a comb and an asiatic, kind of three categories. Our asiatic is kind of a short stop. The tactic works all at the same time. Is it much stronger? Yes. A wheat straw. We have quite a bit of pasture that I got across for us and it's a wheat strain. Do we need to weed it? Well, we mulch it thick enough so we don't have to. That's our goal. But yeah, if we do need to weed, we are in their life. If there is much difference, if you would cut it around, if there's a little bit of soil? Yeah. I've done a little bit of experiment. We do apply a little bit of nitrogen blood meal because of our safety soil. So I'm starting to try to cut that back a little bit more. We're looking at a soil path. We've only been in the spot for four years. So we haven't seen the record. Increase in the amount of ways we address and access to what benefits will the part that we're trying to increase? Okay, so the question is, what benefit will a part give us in terms of the increase in age? So right now we don't hire anyone for an eye. And so the part will enable us to just, in my thinking, looking at the numbers, to double production and still do that. And also, you know, for a few years we were doing that. To give back problems to the point of even work. And you know, those are fits now, but we don't want that to happen again. So that's the longer time. It's just visible while being exactly. Yeah. And our goal is, hopefully someday, to find the full time, just to take it slow. We're going to do things that are best for our family. Well, the question was, is the part used for the harvest? I don't think it will be. But right now in the harvest, we're able to pull the plants. So it was so light, it's one advantage that it's in. And you pick it right into a wagon, pull by a truck. That's much more efficient. What's your current yield on a quarter acre? The question was, what is your current yield on a quarter acre? So we do, but we plant the bald every six inches. So our rows are about 250 feet long. And so we have, let's just say we have 10 rows. So that's 10 times 250, 5500. And about, probably 640 to 50 percent of that is actual marketable seed garlic in terms of size and breed. And then the rest are in the breed. That's typically what we plant. That varies by variety. Haven't seen it yet. Yeah. It was a few years ago when we had our depth stayed alive. Yes. We do boil your feed. Halcyon particularly, because in San Diego soil, Halcyon, we want the first seed to leach out. And so we, I do a little fish fertilizer and I spray it every month for the end of April. And we found that that makes a significant difference. Do you have business cards? If anyone wants one for contact information? We have a website and a Facebook page. And I'm glad to say a question. I'm always willing to learn and grow from other people trying to grow garlic. It's down. We actually sell out like in October. We do pre-sales. We let our curfew our customers know in June and then they pre-order and it goes moving fast. So that's how we open up our numbers. We like to move it to restaurants and grocery stores. But like we said, it's a slow grow. It just takes a while. Yeah, me and you. And we want to thank Sarah as well. Thanks Sarah. Yeah, thank you.