 in Herpster, Wisconsin. I received a Sarah Grant to look at marketing research for small fruits. We had elderberry, we had currants, we had saskatoon or juneberry, and we had honeyberry. So we were looking at how do we set the price for those fruit products that were that was fair to our labor and also was acceptable to the market. We looked at processed food, we looked at fresh sold, we looked at different ways of educating the consumer. So we had new fact sheets that we developed. We talked with the people who were buying the food. And what we found was really once people knew what the fruit was, once they had tasted it, they were very excited about it. They were fine paying the price that we needed to recoup our labor costs. And it also mattered how we packaged it. So smaller quantities at the farmer's market for processed food, having information on the label about the value of that fruit, both in terms of ecological niches on our farm and also broader health, and finding the right place in the market. So the three farms that participated in the project all ended up with different products at the end. Mine was still mostly fresh fruit. Once I tap that market out, it'll be more juices probably mixed in with my cider. Erin at Hilltop Farm is doing more processed fruit jams and fruit juice. And Mary, a dirty-faced farm, Rachel Henderson is doing more syrups and juices for the Twin Cities market. So we found different niches in each of our places. I think I'm still, we're still at a more frontier setting up here. And so there's still a lot of fresh fruit fruit market here, not so much in Madison and the Twin Cities. But what we learned was transferable to a lot of other small fruits. So we've been using that same pricing structure for the berries that weren't part of the grant. But we could look at Highbush cranberry, kiwi, gooseberry, and really extended beyond that. We've shared that research with somebody who's doing wildcrafted foods. And that really helped him figure out how to market his product better. And it's helped us decide, you know, the honeyberry for all of us really didn't work that great. And that was more just, it didn't grow that well for us. So we've really been able to hone in on, you know, currants as being a top seller, saskatoons being a top seller, elderberries being a top seller. So those beyond the sort of traditional strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, those seem like the next tier for us of fruit that we can really ramp up production. So my farm is a 40 acre farm. This is zone four. And I live in an area of about 37,000 people. This is not the food growing, you know, area like southern Wisconsin is, in terms of vast acres of loamy soil and vegetable production, we also have really increasing extremes in terms of weather. So what this farm can demonstrate is how to produce food in a cold climate with extreme weather on both ends, drought, floods. What does it take to produce food with all of those conditions? And also what does it take to produce food as a solo farmer? So I'm one farmer, I'm spacing out my production in a way that will give me revenue throughout the season that is manageable for one person's labor. So all the fruit that I have covers the entire season of fruit. And I'm not crunched at any one point to harvest, you know, say, an acre of apples, you know, at one fell swoop, they're coming in sequentially. And then the fruit, the other fruit fits in the different spaces. I'm also looking at water quality. So we're in the Lake Superior watershed. I really want to protect that quality of that water. So any way that I can do perennial crops, I'm not disturbing the soil, or if I am disturbing the soil, it's in heavy mulch and it's intensive vegetable production at a very human scale. This is also very low mechanization. So there's not a lot of fossil fuels that's going into this farm. I had a tractor when I started, I sold it. I moved to a walk behind tractor that I share with two other farms. And we got it with a microloan from the local co-ops. So incredibly efficient in terms of machinery and capital expenses. This is a great way for a farmer to get started and figure out how to grow crops, so my vegetables, before all the fruit comes into production. So it's a good example of a startup situation. And it's also a way to think about biodiversity. So I put in this orchard and the understory shrubs, and just anecdotally, I would say the bird species doubled within a year. I've been able to add more ponds and the amphibians out of the what, 14 species of frog in Wisconsin. I probably have 10 or 11 just by listening to the sound and identifying the sound. We have, because I've got market garden that's in permanent raised beds with flooded aisles, I've got wetland birds that nest out here. And this grass in the orchard isn't mowed until later in the season, so the grassland birds can finish their nesting cycle. So just thinking about how to build a diverse system, I've got multiple products to fit a retail market here in the Bay. And really the last piece is the economics. So in the western Lake Superior region, we lose about $2 billion a year because we don't have our own local food. That's $2 billion leaving this economy. In Wisconsin's counties of Ashland, Bayfield, Iron and Douglas, we're losing about, well not Douglas, so Ashland, Bayfield, Iron counties, we're losing about $95 million a year just in food to consumer. That's not counting the middle retail establishments, the truckers, all that other stuff. So $95 million a year is leaving our local economies. We're some of the most depressed economies in the state of Wisconsin. The first thing is to plug those gaps, right? So we need thousands more farmers here. And this is one way of demonstrating what's possible to get started.