 My name is Abby Turner, and I am a chief maker with Lucky Mending Farms Creamery. And this subject today is to talk about our 2009 Cerebran, which is best mentioned was a farmer rancher grant. I'm going to talk a little bit about the history, I'm going to talk about what we did, and then I'm going to talk about what happened since then. Obviously, 2009, 10, and 11, a few years ago. And it actually is a very good thing because it allows us to see what minimum investment that Cerebran made, really what it's turned into, which is fantastic. So I'm going to go prior to Cerebran, and I'm going to re-do the harder everybody knows, the harder D-Club, which is never doubt that our group of communities in Cerebran is going to change the world, indeed, you know, it's the only thing that ever happens. And we were part of a summit, a summit through OSU in October 2009. And who's attended that summit before? Anybody? Okay, so they vote on projects and award funding to projects that are voted upon by the community that is there that's in. It's part of that little space project. So everybody's supposed to be there, that is there. Everybody gets one vote, and they put little staples on projects that get funded. So people in the room stand up and they say, I'm interested in two projects. I'm interested in cheese, I'm interested in whatever the agricultural project that they're interested in. And then people go to that corner. So let's say you want to do something and you would say, okay, so you go to the corner and everybody wants to go spinning, goes over and will walk. And then you'll kind of create a project, all right, out of company. So in October 2009, a project that was created by Brian Schlatter and myself was Ohio Cultures and Cheese Cheese. This is a piece of paper that was stuck upon the wall in October 2009 to try to create a project that we'd be using Indigenous Ohio Cultures to make cheese. Okay, so that's where this project started. And it lasted there for about 25 minutes, where it was like, well, this might not end up being something that is commercially successful because it's very hard. You know, we want to maintain consistency and it'd be very hard to work with multiple farms. So, you know, what is another daring thing that we can work on? And the next thing was sheep cheese. But huh, well, this is kind of interesting. Ohio has a wonderful opportunity for sheep cheese. At the time, there were nobody was helping sheep, all right, and there were no artisan cheeses that were made hopefully on the market. First producer was Ben Zippel, back here, Ben, Coco Borrego. They were the first folks to get licensed, and I'm sure General had quite a few thoughts to add to whatever we talked about here today. So in 2009, there were none. So, more people came over to the group. Chef came, Parker Bosley. Katherine Bielic came over, who had done some serif projects before with parasite resistance in sheep. Sarah Horowitz came over from the Ohio-Israeli cultural initiative, just because she likes sheep. And Israel has a great, you know, large sheep dairy culture. And Leah Miller came over from the Small Martin Institute, and he sat around the table and just said, what can we do to, you know, build sheep dairy in Ohio? So we talked about it, then got up and presented our ideas, and so did the other ten people. We had, like, I think, seven state recipients today, you know, everybody else, and all the other projects were funded. So it's like, well, what do we do? And Katherine said, you know, there's a standard grant deadline coming up. I think it was December 3rd, it was October 9th. And she said, let's consider applying for it. Who wants to take the time to write the grant? Well, unfortunately, I'm a fundraiser by trade. And I said, okay, I'll handle it. And I said, but I need your help. And I went back and said, Parker, can you quote, you know, did a group of individuals do anything that happened? Everybody said, sure, I'll work on it. So we started with a four group of five people from a variety of different places on the agricultural map that met, and that's the other one's mom. We talked about the initiative, we wrote the grant, and we're delighted to find that Sarah actually did fund this grant. And the grant was based around the fact that the man who started the cheat sheet does exist. And in Ohio, we have the wonderful raw material to make beautiful sheet sheets, including water, we have a lot of fantastic climate for great. We have all the things we needed to go ahead and do this, yet nobody was doing it at this time. So the Sarah grant, which did you guys all get out for sure? Okay. In fact, I think we're going to provide the non-native grant on the grant, so everybody can look up online if they need to. That is something that you mentioned, is that Sarah Grant's project reports are on our national SAIR site, and you can see the reports from all the Sarah grants, but we'll get that in the end. Okay. So the goal was to, the goal of the Ohio cheat sheet minister, because this was what became known as under the Sarah grant, was to turn the feasibility of the production of cheat sheet in Ohio to explore the possibility for value-added processing in the local orders of cheeses and local orders of dairy products, because the market has been expanding even wider to include butter and ice cream, and there are requests in non-fluid milk. We'll take that out. You'll be like, oh, I love that. But the great progress has been made in this. We talked to farmers, we talked to consumers. We did a lot of work with a variety of academics from a variety of different places, and then we had non-profit partners as well. So this grant had, and you'll be able to see when you put the book in the grant in the budget, had a variety of outreach opportunities. Okay. Our first outreach opportunity was something that we did at OSU, an OARDC, an OA2-ATI, and we brought in Need Verge, who is a rule-pronged cheat dairy expert, to come and speak to folks in Ohio that were interested. And we did a lot of workshops with Need Verge there. Need Verge was in Wisconsin, a student at research station. We had Pat Elliott from Everon, who unfortunately sits next. She came and talked about Everoka Berry and some of the beautiful cheeses there. She was the granddad of cheat milk cheeses, having been at it probably for 20 years. And we had a day-long session on cheeses and anything, enterprise budgets, nutrition, grades and management, and at this workshop we had 85 people in there. In addition, the day prior, we had all of these lecturers speak to the students at OSU-ATI that were in the Intro to Needs and Sheets class. So we had 50 students as well. Had a day-long session. And when I go back and I look at the attendees from that workshop, I'm delighted to say that of the eight businesses that are in Ohio right now that are actually working with cheat milk, the majority of them won't physically understand what's going on. So that was the Stair Fund initiative. $16,000 was the total of it. Secretly, Honorary InfoCover by Stair that we could educate Ohio producers on making fantastic cheat milk. Again, a number of times there was nobody doing anything. And we felt as in Stair that there was great possibility here. At the time there were about 150 dairy sheep farms in the United States. And they're all over. But even with these cheat dairy farms, the United States still imports 66 million pounds of cheat milk cheeses a year. That's unbelievable. That's a fantastic amount. This amount, which was a gross of seats, is about $118 million of input and bringing other people's cheat milk cheeses into the United States. It's a huge farm. So we went to pizza, we went to consumers, we went to the chefs. Next, with the survey. Survey, we put up a survey on me and it asks questions to consumers. Would you learn to pay more? Well, the answer is cheeses. Would you learn to buy cheap cheeses? It asks questions to farmers. Are you considering a very milking operation? Are you hoping right now? You have sheep, but you want to kind of expand your operation? Well, we ended up getting 263 responses. Of these responses, 35% were from farmers, 10% were from the food industry, 4% were retailers, 51% were consumers of cheese. We'll talk about the other 498 cheeses. But we found that 86% of people said that they would pay more for a locally produced cheese. And interestingly, of the people that were farmers, over 65% of them said that they would be interested in starting a dairy sheep operation in Ohio. So, this gave us a little bit of a boost. That we said, okay, what else can we do to build cheap dairy in Ohio that falls in our parameters for our families? Well, we had the ability to bring in consultants, keep making consultants, Peter Dixon. And we had a keep making class at Sylvia Ziverman's at Holt Street, Georgia. And had the opportunity to train as a post on working in a small batch. Small batch are important. Every milking cow is in here. So we have one. Every milking sheep in here. One. Every milking goat. Okay, okay, okay. So, working on the small quantities. Regardless of the quantity of milk that you're working with, the cheesemaking scientists were really listening. When I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I was sitting next to a gentleman who worked at Sargento. And he does things in a 56-pound bag. Okay, that's pretty big. You know, I've been thinking about this thing. But even if you're at home doing things on your showtop, okay, the science is the same. All right. The sell-outs that we offered ventures to small producers that were used in cheap dairy were to encourage us to learn how to work on a small scale. Okay. The average cow could sell much a day. Okay, of course, 155. The average goat would sell much. A good goat is a gallon. That's right. Okay. And the average sheep. Okay, I figure that's big. That's a good sheep. That's a good sheep. That's a really good sheep. That's a dairy sheep. Right. Right. Yes. So the answers were a good cow gives you between 40 and 100 pounds. A good goat will give you about a gallon which is 8.6 pounds. And a good sheep will give you 6 to 9 pounds depending on the stage of lactation. 6 to 9 pounds depending on the stage of lactation. So the Seattle equipment that you're going to be working with is going to be very, very different. And these are some of the things that we did, that we did talk about during the early stages of our educational offerings for the Sarah, Ohio State Health and Cheese Initiative grant. Okay. So we determined that there was interest. And we determined that there was consumer demand. We determined that there was perspective demand. So the next thing to do was to continue the educational offerings. And we did this in October of 11 with a secondary workshop which about 30 people attended. And that was co-hosted by our friends at Hartle High RCMD. And there we talked about raising management, about nutrition, and about small equipment. I believe, please send back to me by some speakers that are here. Talk about the different things to consider when starting a dairy sheep operation. The benefits for them were very, very important and that agreed. Milking sheep is a very, very challenging thing. You only get across the day four today and make up a more than four, right? Four and a half? What? She comes 8.9 pounds per gallon. Okay, 8.9 pounds per gallon. So if you're getting six to eight, that'd be two to three quarts. Two to four quarts. Now, that's a lot of work for two to four quarts in a row. And you want to make sure that if you're going to start in a dairy sheep operation that you have the right genetics or that you're working towards the right genetics. That's obviously going to be seen from the budgeting and business planning that you are doing in the beginning of your exploration of this mission. It's hard enough to make money with the best genetics and the best nutrition and the best land and the best chefs and the best market. You really want to make sure that you're stacking your own deck in your own favor and that's by going in with the right genetics. The genetics would be very relevant in the United States in terms of what genetics we do have available to us for dairy and sheep. Many folks will cross or breed up with each region or the comb. And are there folks who can come to the lawsuit too? Yeah, but very little. Okay. Yeah, I know that they're looking to bring in some additional sheep genetics this time. So genetics are a very, very important thing and that is one of the things that we did cover in addition to milk production, small equipment and as I mentioned, the enterprise budgets. Okay? You want to have a base that you have very realistic projections in your budgeting for the sheep milk. And we had a great workshop by Steve Berger who came in to talk about the specific numbers. Okay? You know, what's the average price of cow milk going for 100 weeks? Can you hold on? 20 to 25. Okay. 20 to 25. What's the average price? That's for every 100 pounds of cow milk, you're going to make 20 to 25 dollars. Okay? That's gross. Okay? For goats, what's the average price for goat milk? In a wheelchair? In a commodity. Okay. I can tell you that I can say that it's between 25 and $4. That's 40. Based on quality of milk and components. Okay? Sheep milk, the average price for 100 pounds of sheep milk is in the 80s. Okay? In our house. All right? In York, it supports 210. All right? Now, remember, that sounds like a lot of money, right? Okay? But when you're pulling it down to as much smaller quality of milk, the numbers very quickly can change. One of the advantages from a cheese-making perspective is that sheep cheese, because of sheep milk, sheep milk, because of the higher components and the higher solids, tends to give you a higher yield. So one gallon of sheep milk will make more cheese than one gallon of goat milk or one gallon of milk. So the numbers do change a little bit. Um, this initiative was also very, very keen to make sure that we talked about, um, about making sure that there was not only processing capabilities, but that there was, um, distribution. Okay? And the grant, the original seed money, it's about $16,000, I think the amount is like $16,000, um, really was fantastic seed money. Um, it ended up spurring in Ohio, um, educational offerings, people's interest, and, uh, people to really jump in to the business. It's as simple as we started, uh, prior to, uh, the, the whole Sarah funding, correct? But you guys kind of came along with us in terms of attempting some of the educational offerings. Um, as of this moment that I know, um, I believe there's eight or nine, um, businesses that are using sheet milk in some way. Okay? In terms of licensed farms and berries, in terms of processing capabilities, screen rates, and, um, those that might be re-crazing breeding something. So, when the grant was written in October 2009, to this very moment, there are eight businesses that didn't exist. Right? Prior to, uh, this particular grant. So, 2009 and 2011, in 10, I wrote a secondary grant, which did not get the funding. 2010 was a four-week effort, but it was miserable. 2010 was for everybody, in terms of funding, and, um, questions. Uh, 2010, we wrote a secondary grant, which was to build more infrastructure. Okay? It was to take the Ohio sheet milk and cheese initiative and to formalize it into something that continued to offer educational offerings. Okay? At that time, we didn't get that grant in 2010. And I say that because, um, I don't know how many of you are considering writing a grant to Sarah or any other funder, but if you get a ding or a no, uh, continue to apply. Okay? As a professional manager, I've written many successful grants, and I've also written many failed grants. Okay? Um, in case you're able to go and just continue to write. And, um, when you write that application and follow the application guidelines, get it in on time, make sure that your project is clear, make sure that the funder is appropriate, and though really funding what you want to fund. Um, but, the Sarah grant for us was a wonderful opportunity to, to build an industry and to have a variety of farmers work together. Okay? Doesn't mention this was a farmer, this was a farmer, rancher grant. So, it physically came to the farms, not to the businesses. Okay? So our farm, most of any farm, um, was one of the farms. Uh, Brian Schlatter, the canal junction farm, um, Cowell producer, uh, uh, in clients, Paul McKnight, was another farm, he was also an extension agent. Um, they were raising, um, uh, thin, um, uh, all the other things that they had, but they were trying to milk. Um, they had churros for a while. And, uh, so, one, and then there was one more farm that was, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, the, the upshot of all of it is, is that now we have a very healthy and growing Sheet Milk Initiative, um, in terms of businesses in Ohio, that are, that are providing Sheet Milk Jesus, um, providing, um, whether it be internship and training opportunities at the variety of our farms, and providing fantastic quality products to the chefs. So where do we go from here? Well, one of the challenges is that we build the product and we have it successfully built in life. Okay? As I mentioned, it's something at $80 a hundred weight. Okay? When you're going to a chef, and you're saying, this Sheet's wholesale is $18, $19, $20 a pound. You know, they're looking at you and you'll get a question of, why should I buy that set up? You know, instead of, you know, I can show it to the store right now by cow for $3.29 a pound for both the wholesale. And you can use the local argument, but there still needs to be, uh, a group of committed chefs and folks that truly understand the value of, the value of supporting local farms and the value of supporting, uh, the new industry. So, that's one of the things that I see as a challenge right now. And, um, maybe that'll be a future share project. Um, we're trying to build the market. I know that at the end of the season last year, I had excess inventory. Okay? I know that the two Sheet farms that I work with this year are, okay, they're replacing, they're replacing yours, are going to be limit. So, I know that I've gone wrong with what I had last year. I had no fruit last year. How do we deal with this? Okay? I want to grow, I want to grow, but we need to make sure that there is a market for the product that you will be producing. Again, that will go back to your business plan. Um, although business plan wasn't required for this particular Sarah project, um, we did craft one, um, a small, um, I think a business plan for producing Sheet farms which is by far the latest entity. Um, but it's a very important thing. And, it forces you to answer the questions that you find in my answer or that, uh, if you're distributing your money, you want to go through and you want to actually do I have a way to produce this product? Do I have a way to distribute this product? Do I have someone that's going to box it? You know? And, and can I do it? So, um, when looking at your venture, uh, I, I can't start on the enough to suggest to you, uh, just the importance of the business plan. Uh, often, when I mention this, I think we'll say uh, online, one that is simple and free, which the folks at RangTree often recommend, you know, that is. Um, the, the answer to that was that, yes, they're, they're many who take a look online and, uh, see what you can find out. But it is important to mind because you want to make sure that your farmers can communicate fairly. You want to make sure that, um, you can distribute money on your product, you know, because, um, in terms of, you know, the definition of sustainability in terms of protecting the soil and water and paying our cultural workers fairly, uh, sustainable also means sustaining in terms of being in business. And, you know, if you start a project and if you don't continue, you know, it's really cool. So, business planning. Um, again, uh, I can't mention, I can't mention not the importance of it. You know, for our framework, I can tell you that businesses are, you know, living breathing entities. And, uh, you know, we want to make sure that we're doing the right strategy to be able to grow not only our business, but, uh, making sure that we're working to really be opportunities for the farmers that we're working with. Okay? Um, so, we want to do that. Uh, make sure that we can support our farmers and support those that might be interested in processing and making sure that we are producing, um, a beautiful farm. I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about, um, about the, uh, the survey again. Now, the survey was very important, but obviously it was something that, um, couldn't be one-sided because, you know, we're targeting some of our farming friends and our farming community. One of the most important things that we found was the, the ability to do, um, their willingness to pay more for a local product. Okay? And I know that we probably talked a lot about this weekend already, but people are willing to pay up to 30% more to buy local. And this is something that's particularly important when we are producing a value-added product that is not only 30% much what the average cost is, but in many instances it could be double, um, what the commodity price, you know, cheese acts in a supermarket, maybe. Right? Why are we going to do this? Well, we know that local foods, people in the state in local foods, because not only does it feel that this is supporting the farm that they have been working on or supporting their local community, it makes them feel good. So, we want to make sure that, um, in our market that we're thinking about what we're doing to be sustainable, that we can justify their, their, their ability to to pay more. They want the their ability to pay more. Um, you know, uh, some of the marketing messages you use, um, this makes statements in terms of some of the things that you do for your CSA. Throw one out. We, we do things like pop-ups with our, we also do a batch of the CSA on our farm too. So, um, with people so they can see their food, um, that level of transparency that you have to have when you're marketing a local product. Um, I mean, in the case of our sheep dairy, um, our sheep dairy is, is a farm set of cheese. So, I mean, we like to talk to animals like everything is happening in our control is not a good term of the way to whether it's been the last couple of years, but, but this makes very, very important point in terms of some of the benefits of this list that they're talking about in their marketing. And, we mentioned farm set. Okay? So, when you're looking at artisan cheeses or farm set cheeses, farm set cheeses are made and produced at the location where the sheep are. So, the sheep physically are part of the farm there, the milk there, and then the cheeses are made there and then distributed out um, into whether it be or, in service or farmers markets, for example. Um, that's slightly different than artisan where things are still, still made, still made primarily by hand in small batches, but, uh, the animals do not necessarily live across themselves. And, in Ohio, we have, uh, our wonderful cheese community, we have many farm set producers, we have many artisan producers. And, it's a wonderful thing to let your customer know that, you know, it's like, yes, we are doing this all the time, yes, our animals are born there, you have to care for them. Um, it's a very important thing. And once again, justifying that increased cost for a one-day event. You have to tell people why they should spend a little more money versus your product. Some folks will be able to have folks understand why the price of that cheese exists in that way. And we know from our survey that, um, the customers are willing to, um, do that. Um, so, where, where is all going to go from here? Well, um, our original intent was to understand the opportunity for cheese in Ohio. And to understand that our academic institutions could bring. And we also started to understand our consumer in terms of their ability to support and promote Ohio cheese. Whether they cheat those, um, water buffalo, I know there's somebody one person trying to do water buffalo on the island. Um, that didn't go very far, very fast. But, um, but there really is a lot of people looking at that, and it was moving because it kind of moved our industry forward, um, in, in that capacity. From a sheep perspective, many folks, what are you to raise a sheep? From a, not there, I see, that's all right. Um, the sheep perspective was very interesting because many folks, when I went and spoke to a shepherd to pose him, or I went to Ohio sheep day, many folks say, well, why would you think of, of sheep as wool or meat? That, we forget, that this animal, he gave us to get one more gift, and that is beautiful, high quality milk, okay? Sheep milk is the highest in vitamins, it's the highest in minerals, it's the highest in fat, and it's the highest in protein, correct too, right? Of the commonly known mammals. Okay, of the commonly known people, you could know a bat if you wanted to. A bat? Male. Okay. I actually, years ago, like 15 years ago, I heard West Jackson, um, spend the idea of milk meat bats. That's not something I wanted to. You could know bats, you could know whales, you could know Americans. It's hard when you call your dairy equipment supplier, though, when you say you want to know some of these animals, some of these not commonly known animals, uh, there are wonderful, even in Ohio now, I think that you could see a tendency change in terms of the ability for people to answer your questions in regards to milk in a smaller range, okay? Um, when I first started, you know, when I would go in to, whether it be a farmer or a foot person, and talk about why would you milk a goat? Well, okay, if we can make tea, why would you milk a sheep? Now, normally we get this much. Um, well, it gives us a different milk and a different profile that needs a specific need from a chef worker. So, um, because of that, it gets something strange to keep on moving forward. And, um, and trying to put a manufacturer. There's many things that you can do in the right direction for equipment. And, um, and people that will be helpful for milking on a smaller scale. Because the equipment does need to be right, um, because you're dealing with much less quantity. So, um, we can make sure that we can talk about specifics after this. In closing, there's a couple things that you want to say and they find her. Um, in regards to our, uh, grant, um, there have been changes along the way that we have. And, Sarah was great in terms of kind of turning on the dime or letting us take advantage of the particular opportunity. Um, some of us went to um, the Department of Agriculture Conference, and, you know, Claire of working with Dairy Sheep, tried until we had any of them on the ground here. Um, I had the opportunity to go to Dairy Sheep, uh, school in Switzerland, and it was in April and I quickly learned that I, I, I'm probably not the girl who'd be nulking, you know, 400 sheeps twice a day in ten-degree weather in, what, snow. Um, to, to really bring something back to Ohio that started, um, a, what I believe today is a thriving and growing industry now. So, I encourage your, your, I encourage you to apply for whatever project it is. Um, take the time to do it. If you do not get the first time of play again, it is a wonderful example of how something can go from, you know, something on a sticky note to, um, eight businesses that are now contributing to the Ohio economy, um, with a 16 month. I want to thank you for that ample time of questions. So, at this point we've got 20 minutes for questions and, uh, I'll just talk a little bit about how definitely there seems to be men in the market for this. Um, I was wondering about, how, how do the farmers, um, how did they become they're in fighting the right hand of equipment for a small scale sheet there? Is that, is there, is it hard as mine? Is it easy to find? Um, the question is, uh, how can farmers and, uh, there's an association of North America uh, puts on a, uh, wonderful conference every year and at the trade shows, uh, they are often a variety of manufacturers that, um, they have two things for a smaller equipment or, um, for gates, chutes, uh, small farmers. Uh, so, I would, and you'll find a few different things and places. There also are, um, that at conferences such as this, uh, there often is a group of manufacturers that will be, uh, fabricating for you. Uh, and that I've worked and I'll have an applicator and, uh, you guys have done this and posted applications up to, uh, so, um, there, they have it. So, it is a lot of reasonable for a person to think that they would do this. You can milk sheep by hand for, like, yourself, but to milk sheep by hand and make. I mean, if you go, there's a book you can download from Wisconsin. All the research pretty much is about Wisconsin. There's a little out for now. Um, and they will give you scale, kind of, under 20 sheep you're probably gonna milk by hand up to under what the bucket is with a pneumatic falset or an actual cloth. Um, above that you're gonna start milking in pipelines. We're actually, we're in the process um, putting in a pipeline so it'll be the first sheep pipeline in Ohio. Um, and as far as sourcing equipment, there's a lot of stuff out there, a lot of junk. Um, the first clause that we bought, they sell them as ever, which may clean and everything at nightmare, but that's what they'll I won't not gonna say what it is, but that's what they'll sell you if you go into any number of Ohio Dairy's equipment places. We're actually having the clause sent from Germany for our new Highland Parler. Um, and dealing with that, the distributor said, oh, like 20 pounds of stuff. And so when I said, well, I'll call a farmer friend in France and he can go to the deal and bring them up for me. They're like, oh, we can get them here a little quicker than that. Um, so the equipment is, I mean, in general, though, other than your actual setup of your facility, clause and stuff are really not many people put in a parlor but receive it first. So, and there's big luck because of the collapse of small family dairies in the country that's logical and also about there. So, um, so it can be, it can bootstrap to be here. And that's what we've done. I mean, we started out buckets and we had a six to eventually be a double 10 parlor where we can build. And the biggest thing that you'll hear about Milky Sheep, it needs to be done in about an hour. Um, if your sheep go nuts, if it takes more than an hour, you go nuts, you make mistakes, and there are some people we run into or like, and it's the same with Milky Cows, you'll run into people who are like, oh, it takes me, it takes him five hours a day. Five hours of milking to milk all these cows in the Tysol barn. And he's going to robots. He has no idea what he's going to do with his life. He's going to get into, he's like a kid, he's going to get into trouble. He's going to get in trouble. So, we're going to milk about a hundred this year. Um, The question was, how many, where it will come apart when it comes out? Well, we, we have seven, seven acres, and we've loaded the sheep. Um, and by having that kind of new gross manual cover crops, that we can create, we can either plow down or raise them. So, I mean, in that kind of weather changes we've had, there's no idle grazing. You've got to be flexible. Um, and with sheep there, and because it's so geographically diverse in this country, when you go to Desan, or something, I don't remember when we went to Desan the first time, you hear about these guys because you, all that kind of information when it's so geographically diverse you have to take the grain and salt. At, at the Spooner Research Station, the research flocking is constant. They raise 300 youths on 30 acres of irrigated pasture. We move every 12 hours in the Great this season to get a kind of flavor profile consistent thing, consistent diet, everything. Most grazing dairy farms move. So, it looks it looks crazy too because you know people drive by and they see 100 sheep on this tiny little thing and they're like what, what's that person doing with all those sheep with a tiny little pasture? Right. And it's a political, and you can get people to fight. The protection of grazing is this key and moving animal along is key because parasites are, you know, it helps when your animal is in the volume so I've brought you up a little bit more. So, that's first and foremost. Very well, let's take back even one step and you know, healthy your animal is going to be a quality of, you know, your grazing and health of your soil. Take back that good farm. So, you know, it's, you know, managing in this way is a holistic picture. And in order to have the highest quality cheeses you need, you know, highest quality milk coming from good forage and a balancing forage. Anyone in the back talk, um, the, um, as I mentioned, we started with the cow. We started milking goats for a long time. Okay. And I worked for a little bit um, in terms of the scale of how many goat cheese or cow or sheep, whatever it is, how many you can milk in a set amount of time. You know, I was comfortable milking 40 a time by myself. I went to surpass that. I just didn't feel, it wasn't comfortable for me. She, I, you know, in like, in a sheep situation, we're starting out with five claws on a high line of hardware. And because of the speed of milk out of a sheep, one person can own without automatic cluster removal. You can only handle about the six claws. And so it's those kind of things. And the information's all out there about designing a hardware over milking this one. But it, it's fast. I mean, we've had, we have, we're also an employee about a cow's milk from a family grazing there by us. And the first time cow people watch a sheep farm, milk sheep in a parlor, it's so fast. And like, even the sheep, like cows kind of mosey and they walk through the head gays and this and that. And I mean, you have to design your sheep handling for rockets. Because when you open the, the gate going out of parlor, they're taking off. And actually, one of the problems with sheep and one of the health issues we do with our sheep every year is we mope 95% of our mastitis cases have been because we're dealing with rockets in our parlor and they will shoot somewhere and get an injury or something like that. And that's what you said to try to have. I actually now basically don't let anyone in the parlor know me. And lots of cattle, old dairymen swear by the same routine, the same people. It's not a spectacle. These animals are working. It's kind of like the difference between a herring dog and a guard dog and your pet that curls up on the foot of your bed. These are working animals part of giving a human environment to a farm animal is keeping their life stress free. And so we basically milk by ourselves. We have kids too which even they milk with us so that sometimes is okay. So a great place to start doing some research is there's a local publication which we'll see a well-turned called The Principle of Sheep Daring in North America. It is a University of Wisconsin publication. They sell it but if you dig hard you can find a PDF in there. It's easier to find a PDF than it is basically out there. Okay. So principles of sheep daring. So that's always a great place to start too. It's a nice publication and it's you know if your wheel's turning on the right way if it's milking sheep it's something that you are interested in. I guess. Yeah. People who are milking sheep usually making sheep or are people milking sheep and turning the milk over to you? Well in the state of Ohio we have two farms that are milking that milking sheep and then three farms that are milking sheep and turning it over to processes to make sheep's. That's probably the answer. We get that question a lot of farmers market usually there's a question that from had sheep's milk the majority of them I mean sheep's milk is mostly made of cheese and yogurt. We're actually the areas on tests which means we have one monthly DHI test and we had animals last year approaching 9% of our fat in 6.5% of protein it's high fast milk it's not really it would be kind of light drinking. Most people in my farm that asked me I said what kind of milk do you normally drink do you drink sheep's milk? I'm like yeah A lot of the last things they don't know what they're asking for. Okay Bob You were talking earlier about the sustain availability of the business itself was it the business model Canvas that you were Okay what is the name of the tool? Business model Canvas and sometimes it's called the lean startup Canvas and essentially it takes a business plan what might be a 50 page business plan and it still to them is one chart where you can very easily look at who are your resources who are your customers what's your value proposition what's your revenue stream and it gives you how sustainable that business is And that is called the business model Canvas Canvas to lean startup to lean startup I have seen it and it's actually it's a beautiful beautiful document you know just to be able to to crystallize all of your thoughts goals and aspirations on one page you know that's a beautiful document So many times when people have been small users nearby and share some of the resources that you're interested in so there was an amazing blog that I'm not quite sure about it and then sometimes where a lot of people go is joining with other people where they're actually co-owners of the business and try to decide you know how low 30% and go low 50 and you'll do this and that I think one of the pricing things that when they talk because I remember being like the earliest in the early 90s to the university was kind of looking at how much the thing about the importation of seafood products in this country lots of them are from Eastern Europe or Wazai second third world countries where where they're bringing in very cheap stuff we had a distributor one time who brought in stuff from Eastern Europe and he was asking about FedUp and he's like I can bring FedUp two dollars a pound we're like right and I give that as well too it's like I can get that cheese for X and then when you get to Europe like in Italy that has lots of Pecorino's and stuff we work with a distributor who only carries American artists in cheeses and that's his like you get him going on the import of European made people cheeses he will flip because he's like people could not realize those are industrial cheeses like the non branded Pecorino's that is an industrial cheese there's not some quaint woman probably got a milky 20 sheet by hand and making these beautiful Pecorino's do you even know that might be the picture on the way well no of course thing is it's a tour it's a tour they take you on a lot of so I hate to cut this up we just had 10 minutes to switch I want to make sure they have these are meant to generate more discussions so I hope you'll be talking about the only good opportunity and thank you for watching