 to look at marketing some less common fruits in our permaculture farms and we were at the sort of slightly past beginning stage of our farms and looking to scale up, looking to move into Aronia, looking at Honeyberry, Saskatoon, or Juneberry as it's called, elderberry and currants and looking to figure out how we could market our fruits that would be reflective of the work that we put into it and see if we could scale up those crops because as you know perennialization is a really helpful aspect of farming. It can help with resilience on floods and droughts. It is resilient to climate change. It works really well integrated with other markets that we have. So that was our gist. I'm going to highlight some of the findings of that grant just to revisit that and then talk about my farm specifically and where I've gone with the findings of that grant and then my colleagues are going to also talk about their farms. The mechanism of our grant was to do some field assessments of our farms, three different places, three different markets, look at how we were producing from a forest garden perspective. We did some surveys online in print. We did tastings with our respective customer bases. We did some field days and we also did some secondary market research just looking at the price point for fruit at that time. That was again 2013 started I think. And then we also worked on a calculator and a decision-making tool coming out of the grant in terms of getting started or wanting to invest in these fruits. How much was it going to take to get these fruits started? How long till return on investment? What was the labor involved? We poured all of that data into the University of Wisconsin's project now which is a fruit and nut compass decision-making tool. If you're not familiar with the compass series from the UW, it's a decision-making tool. They have one for vegetables and they've been working on a fruit and nut one as well. That's going to be a little bit more complicated so there's no working on it. But some initial information about that is in the grant report and then we have spreadsheets that can share with you and probably updates to those numbers. We really emphasized combining learning with celebration. So Erin had a current events celebration on her farm which she repeated for a couple of years. I thought that was a fabulous idea and borrowed it and did this similar thing. And that proved a great way to have people connect with the farm and what I was doing on a perennial basis. We looked at eater habits and for the three of us, our eaters were mostly buying from co-ops and farmers markets as opposed to in an online store or I guess not in the supermarkets. And the most important thing that they were buying for was taste if it was local and what the nutritional content was. So thinking about market messaging then we could emphasize what the fruit tasted like. We could have samples out if we were at the farmers market. We could add samples of up-and-coming crops to our CSA box. Have people try and give feedback. And then emphasizing the antioxidant value of so many of these fruits emphasizing the on-nutrient value was important in our marketing. And then we could also talk about growing practices, what we were doing on farms that made us sustainable. People talked about not knowing what the fruit was when they saw it on our market stands and the fact that it just wasn't widely accessible. And so we'll each talk about how we've taken and run with that idea. The main interesting fact on the income side was that in general before people were educated about these fruits they would pay, they said they would pay $5 per pint, which doesn't really cover your labor if you're picking currants or Juneberries or elderberries. But with education and testing or tasting they said they would go up to $7 per pint and that has pretty much borne out at the farmers market where I'm at. I'm actually charging $8 per pint. I don't sell it by the pint. People are better at understanding the dollar value than the volume. And so I sell half pints for $4 and nobody has any questions about that. And I'm not in an economically arriving area up in northern Wisconsin. So that was important to know. But in general fruit offers better probability per labor than vegetables. It does have some time to get established and it gives us a bigger access to different markets across the board. People will buy fruit from my farmers market stand in the crappiest weather and they might not have bought vegetables if I didn't have fruit on the table. So they'll stop at my stand because I have some interesting fruits and they've come to know that I have interesting fruits at almost every point of the sign. And that allows my vegetable sales to increase at the farmers market. We engaged about 700 people in our tastings and surveys and you know did really spend a fair amount of time collecting data. And so that's something to think about if this is new in your own area planning to spend a little bit of time on research and development and also marketing. And having recipes for people is obviously was absolutely important. And other ways to use it. Having samples of the cooked thing that people could try. Especially in the early market. Again that was a huge hit. We made a berry. I forget now what it was. But it was a berry salsa that went on top of my hard boiled eggs and a slice of cold bacon. And so I could demonstrate all those products and people were like salsa made with berries. We never thought about. So you know you can get really creative and stack a couple functions there. And then think about you know this can be a pretty big upfront investment but the payoff can be pretty nice. And so where do you want to spend your time overall in your marketing or in your enterprise budget. So this is my farm. I'm up on the tip of Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Superior. I am in the middle of nowhere. I'm 500 miles from Chicago. 200 miles from Minneapolis. Duluth is 50 miles away. There's a regional population of about 30,000 people here. And we are two of the most economically depressed counties in the state of Wisconsin. So this is not an urban market for me by any means. This is the breakdown of my farm. I get most of my income from CSAs winter and summer. I have a quarter acre market garden and then the rest of my farm is in production permaculture. So I have five acres of pretty intensively planted forest garden. And you can see I highlighted my farmers markets number there. That's really low and not really worth my time. But it is a huge market by CSAs. And that's the area that I was targeting as we thought about fruit development. If I can have more fruit at the market it's way worth my time to go. And that number could go up by quite a bit since I don't really want to drop that present just yet. So I'm sold out of fruit by nine in the morning at the farmers market. So I could I could easily quadruple the fruit that I brought. And that number would go up quite a bit. I'm just curious. Are these your numbers for like 2018? This is last year's numbers. Not from what we did this week. And that's only the gross. That's gross. Yeah. So half of that goes back right back into the farm. And then I have some off-farm income that I'm editing an academic journal. I'm doing small amounts of guest teaching and ad jumping. And I live pretty mean. How many vendors at the farmers market? There's about seven to twelve vendors at the farmers market. And that's the market that I go to as a population. The city is 8,000 people. It's about like mine. And I go to mine about the same amount of income. And I look at it as outreach and education. It is. And very much. It's my community service. Yeah. I didn't put a dollar value to the pork that I have in the system. But I want to just bring it up here that it is an important part of my markets now. It's just that it's a moving target because that's a fairly new enterprise for me. In terms of permaculture design, just to show you how my farm is laid out. The house and some of the more tender things are located right nearby. I initially had all my honeyberry plantings there so I could track what was a very new crop for me. And that's been helpful because otherwise I would have missed the facts that the the early crops were completely eaten by cedar wax wings. And more recently they were pretty much devoured by robins. And so I got to get on those fruits right away. Zone two is my market gardens. Again, I have about a quarter acre of market gardens. Really intensively planted. And then greenhouse, hoop house space, excuse me. My winter greenhouse is attached to my house. And then zone three is all of the orchard and understory shrubs. And I'll talk about how that's how I'm using that. Just some images of what that looks like in real life. So the overstory trees that I have on my farm are apples, cherries, Korean nut pine, and then burnt slum, white oak. And the understory is basically every berry that can grow in my zone. I've tried out. So one of the outcomes of this grant for me was I can replicate the same project that we had with currants and elderberries and junberries and such. With some of the other lesser known fruits like aronia and cornelian cherry. And high-wish cranberry. And do that same sort of education with people in recipe testing. And then have even further diversity of fruit on my farm. And because I mostly market through CSAs and farmers markets, those are perfect markets to have a smaller quantity of a really diverse set of products from a very diverse landscape. And then in the understory now I've also got herbs which I sell wholesale to since I'm dropping off at restaurants and coffee shops on the CSA boxes, why not bring them $10 a mint every week too. Which can at least paint through the gas adding up over the season. So that's how I've scaled up from the pilot project that we had from the CERG grant. I wanted to show how this breaks down in terms of harvest times and thus cash flow. So our grant was currants, elderberries, honeyberries, and Saskatchewan, otherwise known as junberries. Initially we found that the honeyberries, I think you'd agree with this, just didn't really do a whole lot for us. This was right when the honeyberries were becoming a thing. They were very expensive plants. The fruit wasn't that great. And for us, they really weren't producing very much in the time span of the grant. Since then, the plants have kicked in on my farm. And so it took like five to seven years for the fruit to really get going. I heard you talking smack, right? Yeah, yeah. I was looking at them and I was like, I mean, going. This happened with my apples too. I was talking smack and they all suddenly produced. But honeyberries turned out to be a really important crop at an early season when I didn't otherwise have a lot of fruit. And because I'm in a super cold area, they pre-seed all of the spot of winter stoppula, insect problem that can show up later with soft fruits. My philosophy on my farm is it has to store itself out ecologically. And so I have planted in small patches, for example, raspberries. My raspberry rows are 30 feet long and I have them spread out all over the farm. And there'll be some pictures later in some places where I have them. So I'm using them for different purposes as well as just being a row of raspberries. And so if spotted winged stoppula really takes out my barista blacks, it doesn't seem to migrate over then to my encore or my later berries. There's so many birds, sawbirds on my farm. I think they actually do make an impact. I haven't tested that. But I have such a diverse landscape. You know, I don't have a half acre of raspberries or half acre of strawberries. And so I think that's really helping. And I think it's also helping because they're temperature dependent, the drosophila is temperature dependent. I live in a frost pocket and Lake Superior is to the northwest. And I've got a ridge to the southeast of me. So I'm getting all the western wind off of Lake Superior. And so my apple trees are not even blooming until the middle of June. Wow. And so it pushes back the timeline of the drosophila. But so if I can stretch the time for each fruit, that can stretch out my market. And because the fruit is in such demand that can usually impact my bottom line, I'm looking at varietal differences. So after the grant that we had to say that, yeah, the markets would bear some expansion, now I can go back in and trial a whole bunch more varieties of different kinds of fruit. And stretch out the harvest time. So my raspberries start in mid July and run through the end of August, if not September. And my strawberry season now is expanded because I have a bunch of greenhouse. And so after the plants are out of there, I can have strawberries in there. And I get them a month earlier than they would be outside. And they have no passes either. So the other thing that has happened for me since the Sarah Grant was really incorporating more animals in my system. And for me that means American guinea cogs. This is a small breed of pig. They do not bother shrubs or trees. And so they have completely changed my ability to have a diverse forest garden. Because I can plant all of these things together. They're out there until June 15th mowing everything. My need to mow then in the orchard goes way down. Which means I can harvest all kinds of ground nesting birds. The fertility is matched to the trees and shrubs needs. I get bacon. They're a blast. And so that's really allowed me to look at even more plantings. Because I don't have to be concerned with how I'm going to weed those raspberries. In a tough clay, little sodded soil. I don't worry about that anymore. Because between the pigs and the chickens they get to care of it. Are your pigs seasonal or do you keep them year round? I keep them year round. I have a breeding herd because it's an endangered breed. And so they move around in the orchards in the winter up until June 15th. They usually for the pair, they're in there in October. For the apple, they go in in November after I've taken out the last apples. And then they're in there until June 15th. So they're outside? Yeah, they're outside. No cover? They have, I have covered, let's see if I have a picture, no. I have truck toppers, so they're short animals. So they fit in truck toppers with a bunch of interlocks. But they don't want to be in there, as it turns out. And they use that as a glorified latrine. And so they prefer to bear burrow into round bales in the wintertime. So I provide them round bales. But they want to be outside. So this is what it looks like just with some continual mowing of the animals. This is where my chicken tractor, where my chickens have been. So I feed them in the drip line of the trees. They're mowing that down. And then later on in the fall, the pigs are going to be in there. And they've got this great graft again. Learning how to graft and take your own cuttings. And you can set up one, finishing up here. It is really helpful. So after we had this air grant, we piloted some taste testings. Then I could scale up on the varietals. Then if I decide that these five out of the 20 that I planted are really good, I can take cuttings from my existing plantings and plant those out. And save a fair amount of money scaling up. And I don't know if you've just, I was just, I brought the FedCo tree catalog with me as bedtime reading. You know, an apple tree is $30 a tree now. And so it's worth it to know how to do this kind of work. Our willing thing, Claire, is to like fight pests and diseases to make something work, but not totally willing. So finding disease resistance is a really, is a big priority for us too. Yeah, and I guess I didn't talk too much about it. We also grow elderberries, erronea, and June sasca-tunes or these berries. They're not a big part of our marketing, although, you know, every year I kind of like do some experimenting with them and kind of hit on something that makes them, makes them like big money for us, yeah. So waiting for that. And yeah, I also put down, you know, these pictures are ours, but they're animals in the orchard. This is a little bit about how we learn to do what we do, a lot of which is that the big thing for us was really planting in phases. So starting slowly, learning as we went, and then figuring out what would help us. I'm Erin again. I co-own Hilltop Community Farm. And probably about halfway between La Crosse and Madison. We're in the right on the eastern edge of the Driftless region. That's the area that hasn't been kind of defined by like hills, old soils, and rivers, like miscellaneous glaciation. So we also have a lot of terrain we're dealing with. When I say we, my husband, Rob McClure, is the other co-owner. He's been doing a vegetable CSA since 1993. And we're really pretty small scale. We feed six families and ourselves through the Veggie CSA. And when I came on the Mary Band in about 2007-08, we're sort of making, had to make, you know, it was a good decision point. Like we're, here's another person. What can the land support? What do we have time and energy for? We also, like similar to Rachel, we work off-farm and live in Madison. The farm is in like LaValle. We're kind of splitting our time between urban and rural. So we also, that's kind of been our market space too. All right. So this was also brought up a lot on the production side. So our farm, we, you know, fruits about, we grow food on just under an acre. It's always been part of our existing vegetable CSA. We've grown raspberries, apples, party kiwi. And we were, like with Clare and Rachel with this grant, we're like, well, okay. So we know fruit's a great niche for us. So how do we grow more of it? And how do we help us the best fit for different berries and to expand that? But I bring it back to this, that, you know, for us, like October, okay, we're ready to put our feet up against the wall. And, but I think in all cases, we like to start and end each season with like land gratitude, right? Or just like that, starting with the soil and soil being, you know, a reflection of our, you know, what we eat and kind of how energy is moving through the system, right? And our own bodies as well. So I think it's a good time. I was like, oh, you know, go back and just be like, thank you for trees. I say that because for fruit especially, you clear-bought a food forest. You know, you're sort of thinking like, okay, you're holding in the soil, like you're round, et cetera. I'm kind of rambling right now, but let me bring it back to thinking like a food forest. With fruit, you're in it for the long haul, whether it's berries or trees. But at the same time, there's like a lot of like immediate disruption, which is kind of a weird paradox. But just like we're all designing our farms in some way with diversity in mind, occupying different niches within the field side, but also with our markets. And I bring that up because it's kind of this complementary function and creating networks of mutual support. So you can think, so for us, we've like, oh, well this can translate into marketing, right? So we know what we want. We want it high-yielding, grower-friendly, exceptionally nutritious. We're curious. We're curious people. So how much time and energy do we have? We're not there 100% of the time. Animals don't necessarily work except wildlife, but woodchucks, yes. Had to bring in a woodchuck. So, you know, we're on sloping lands. We're not very mechanized. We're really, we're doing a lot of things by hand. So those are all things like kind of went into our decision about what to do with fruit. And we were going to experiment from there and ask people, what is it about being around fruit for us? So from a market standpoint, we're out there and we're marketing direct. We had an existing CSA. We wanted to expand the palette of possibilities with fruit. So it's, I'm like, it's fun to hear where you all are at in a little bit because we were like... It was a long time ago. It was a long time ago, but what an invaluable thing to be like to come back and share, like, here's what we thought and here's what's happening. What's happening? And like, you know, that's part of the Sarah thing, like they really support, like, you know, like the risk, shared risk-taking and then we can also share that information and it just kind of multiplies out from there. So we, you know, we're like, well, we know CSA. That's what we do. Like, what if we had a fruit CSA? Wow. And I'm so glad you're making it work because we cannot make a fruit CSA work. But that's okay. We sort of came up with the hybrid. We started out with, like, playing with fruit puns. They're endless. We had, we started our own currency system. We're like, okay, money is a tool, right? Like, you can have your own local currency, right? So why not have a fruit currency on our farm? And that was so we did. We gave people fruit bucks. We wanted to come in and they spent them throughout the season and then we learned, like, what people's preferences are and then also for us, like, well, this is a lot of work. We're not, like, ready to manage all that. So we weren't really set up for that. But it was good to learn along the way and because, you know, again, I think that what came out of that is the expectations of your customers, too. And they're like, you know, wanting, they see volume. They don't necessarily translate the volume in terms of, like, you know, your time and effort when you're pricing. So that was a, so what we kind of came up with was a hybrid from there. We had two fruit market shares and, you know, along the way, you find who your current lovers are and, like, who, like, well, okay, sorry. That was pretty soon. It's a hybrid, right? Maybe you find other current lovers out there. So we started from there, like, but then we also, like, we had good luck with restaurants. I think, especially in the Madison area, for us, like, a lot of people have gotten really sophisticated with the bar menu and these berries work really well for the mixology piece. Because we're pretty small-scale, we're not giving huge volumes and they're willing to, like, work with that. So it's been, you know, I think how we sort of navigated, we just lost one of our favorite chefs because she's moving to Portland. But with that, what we tried to do is, like, just, like, come up with a meeting with the staff or the restaurant on the front end of the year and be, like, here's what we're hoping for, what worked, what didn't, what can we do more of or not. So that's sort of how we navigated that a little bit. But that's, berries render themselves really well to mixology and also the flowers. But, you know, we should be able to discover so you can grow it now, right? Let's see. What we've also discovered, I have a slide about emergence and to where we started and where we are now and what's kind of come out of that. So having a market for seconds has been instrumental or just knowing what we want to do with that. We also don't really, like, we market under, we'll do some, like, jam-making guess or just thinking in mind that you're going to have seconds and you're going to need an outlet for that or, like, some kind of processing. Or even if you don't have seconds, like, one, this is, okay, minor tangent, but erronea vary. How many are familiar with erronea? I see some laughs. It's an amazing crew. Look at this color. It's intense. It's pretty. Putting erronea in a CSA box is a really great way to find out if your members read their newsletter. Yeah. So I remember being at a specialty food market or, like, in the Illinois, the conference there, and then there was Tara Brackman, I think who was, she had a farm and she was doing, like, two acres of erronea and she was, I know, and you're, like, yeah, whoa. But one thing, her plan, though, was to do mostly seconds of juices and there's a definite interest there, but even at two acres, she had a hard time finding the custom people to do juicing, et cetera. But even for us, like, I'm like, ah, that'll never be us. We have only 60 glasses of wine. This zero is a purple haze of erronea and we come back to the chefs who usually buy things from us and they're like, we still have this stuff sitting in vodka from last year. We can't get the time. We just got age. So we did have a glut, but what's come along the way, for those of you, you know, the stacking functions piece, I'm also a flower farmer. Like, actually that's where I get most of my cash income from the farm. But erronea is a beautiful, like, if you're thinking of woody perennials and to differentiate yourself, so you're out there pruning anyway, right, or you're hosting the buds. This is, like, an amazing, like, floor snitch, like, people to work with it, whether for your own self or for other. So that's one thing to think about as well. We're putting, like, fruits and bouquets. It's, like, really been a fun design all day. So I do think, like, growing fruits also have a place in other types of market opportunities that we discovered as a result of this grant. And it goes back to the value of beauty and stacking functions and finding something that really works for you and your time and energy. So does the erronea make wine? Because that would be one gorgeous glass of wine. Yeah, there are some people doing that. That's a great, you know... It's really high in cannon. Yeah. Is that good or bad? Good. I mean, it's, you know, just wine is good with cannon, too. We add it to our cider. So that's one thing that if you're willing... I'm not a winemaker, and I'm not... Rob and I both realized on this grant as well. It was, like, we don't want to spend most of our time doing value-added, like, you know, and also, like, Rachel. We're not... We want to be outside, but along the way we have discovered, you know, connected with, like, mostly chefs, but then a few of our customers who like to make, like, their own home canning or batches. But sometime, maybe there is, like, a relationship that's out there that if you wanted to scale it up or a boutique wine-making piece that people are, you know, I think that's a good niche-time point if you want, if it works for you. What else about emergence? Oh, one thing in the current realm, clove currents, we're a new discovery as well. We're, like, just because we wanted to keep harvesting currents. So clove currents come up a little bit later in Riby's odoratum is a species name. They'll kind of come right after your black currents. So if you're thinking of sequencing as well, and they don't have that kind of meaty, nutty aftertaste that black currents do, but they're very similar in, like, habit. Other things that have also come up and that was not planned, again, is maybe you're into, like, one beautiful thing about fruit, right, is, like, you, like, it's willingness to, like, divide and transplant. And the amazing thing you can do to propagate, and so we started to find people that, you know, like, for plants, or that's something we do for when we mentor farmers, like, some beginning fruit farmers, we'll, like, give them their starter kit. I think I had that idea from Claire. Claire and I trade back and forth all the time with plants. So it's just very much this life-giving thing that you're starting out on with perennials, and that's been really cool to see. And you can hone in new school tools around graphene. Stuff does get expensive. People are, like, calling out the amount of the woodwork. And you can fund your plant purchase by selling offshoots the next year at farmer's market, as long as it's not patent protected or something like that. Okay, so that's all that I wanted to say. You taught it, okay. Let's go back. And then, just when you think... You work so hard, like, from last five, I mean, five years, and then, you know, you mentioned a little bit about frost and upheaval and climate change. Like, so even with fruit, something that's, like, going to outlast our lifetime, especially with the tree part, right? We still have to deal with, like, impermanence and, like, the perennial paradox. So we used to pride ourselves. I still kind of do, like, you know, like, oh, all the fruit is sold before I'm picking any of that. Ah, okay. Then, then I was like, oh, crap. Managing anticipation and disappointment in that space because, like, you know, you're ready to go harvest, like, some red currants and have some more things with Claire. Her farm as well, like, you know, the next day you're ready to pick, and then they're all gone. You're like, well, what just happened? And you have to then go back and tell people that all the birds ate everything. And most people, I find that our chefs are just client, you know, members as well, are really, people are pretty forgiving. But internally, it's really hard to kind of, like, feel, kind of, you know, just navigating your own personal disappointment, which will happen. And the picture up there with the little bud out of, like, so it was not part of, it wasn't part of the grant, we grew up, I don't know if I should say past or present because we had a lot of quints and we have a lot of quints in our orchard and it's an amazing fruit. Still is. But this last winter we lost all of them except for two. We thought they were all dead and I cried and I'm like, no, because we worked so hard to build on your market and then we were getting people, you know, there's a lot of good storytelling and, like, some of these groups, the connections they have to, like, you know, home and what home was and immigrant stories and then you just really get that good connection with your clients and they're people from New Jersey to Wyoming and we're like, do you have quints? And you're like, yeah, we should, but you don't even remember, like, 300 pounds a tree and you're like, gosh, no. And then we're like, all right, wait five years. Or just that heartache that can come with that, navigating the impermanence of it all. So I don't, I bring this slide up for a reason. Maybe it's just you, it's like on a personal level to be able to navigate your balance, your personal commitments or, like, managing commitments and sales. It's been a little bit of dance. I think this grant really helped us in being like, oh, there's a sweet spot between what I know I can tell and what I might actually have and just to, like, be on more of the conservative end rather than just be like, yeah, I'll bring it, you know. What happened to your quints? They all died except for... Winter kill, freezing. Winter kill. Yeah. And I was like, you know, I don't know. They started budding out from their trunk. Maybe they're still alive. This was just this year. I don't know. Maybe we'll next year discover that. But, you know, in the spirit of renewal, they're going to be a little, like, trellising system for some vines. I don't know. And to go back another big criteria again by our grant was just the combining learning and celebration. I think all of us have done events or open houses. We used to do, like, turn events for us. It was a great way to, like, kind of balance the grower and the eater expectations. We had a couple chefs come out and we did the tastings and they had a band and it was all day. It was great. And then now Rob and I are like, oh, we can't eat a whole day of bears. I don't know that. So we scaled back a little bit on that and just, like, we have an orchard happy hour. Like, come out for a tour. Let's just enjoy and share some fruit and good conversation. And if you have a bar customer mixologist or someone likes to fruit forage, it's a great way to play with stuff. And what we also discovered is people just want to come out to the farm and chill out. So that was a good thing to notice, too. Not many people talk about pears. Oh, you go. I can talk about pears. I can, too. All right, you go first. We all grow pears. We all grow pears. I'm not one of them. You grow pears for your ears. Not to the ground. Okay. Yeah. So we do have some pears. That was kind of, you know, we've always had them on the farm. They're our CSA and restaurants mostly. They work pretty well for our farm. We mostly eat perhaps favorites and bear schmitz. Ares is really beautiful. Kind of finding a very little disease pressure on our end. We don't have animals in the next dimension, that, too. So we're also pretty, like, not committed to doing a... We gotta get our curculeo down. We have plums, as well. That's how I say about pears. What about for you? I was trying to get my slides over here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have about a hundred pair of trees planted them It was one of the first things I did the farm because I knew they would take forever and then and they did take forever It's been about 12 years of them in the grounds. I had my first commercial crop this year You know in the last couple years a couple trees fruiting a couple things to know about them, so they Pollinators don't like them as much as apples and so they're harder to pollinate And what I've come to is as I have space in the pair Orchard I'm going to be adding in Crab apples because my best pair of pollination is actually on the edge of the apple orchard Yeah, they're not mixing the pollen, but the bees are present And so that's important pairs are also tricky because you need to get the right pollinator for the right other tree and There's some it's not so straightforward there, but there's lots of good resources with the tree fruit growers network and Rachel right here I have varieties I was looking for varieties that would ripen after my cherries and before my apples There wasn't a lot written about ripening time for northern Wisconsin. In fact, there was nothing written about that. And so I went with main dates or excuse me Vermont is Vermont dates which turned out to be not quite right So my parents ripen most of September Going into October a little bit. I was hoping for August And I've got hudar airs summer crisp Patton Manning Miller luscious Seckle and No, I don't have that one yet. I said there's yeah So again looking looking for as a solo farmer. I'm looking for what can I harvest in smaller batches over a longer period of time? Do that with my apples tree and one war Nope standard. So what challenge with pears is that there are not any really good really truly warping pair of root stocks The way there are with apples, which means it's harder to control the size and it's also harder to find Things to get them to bear earlier, right? Because you get apples to bear earlier by planting them on dwarf or semi dwarf stocks And that's not very much an option with pears There's a lot of research that goes on in that which is great in there hasn't been super clear Winner results with any of it that I'm aware of There are some like I would say there's a couple of varieties that are a little bit more like naturally Precocious that we've had luck with the hero sweets and hero delights and hero delights another one You should try because it's an earlier season. Oh much earlier season. That's one of our first ones Maybe after summer crisp that we think So h a r r o w and I think there's others in the herald series But sweet and delight for the two that we have and they will start to bear in their late third or fourth year, maybe Whereas others might take the And also, I think it also made a difference like I think there was a phosphorus deficiency in that field because the pair production really kicked in after I ran the chicken tractor through there and I was also just going to say that I'm playing I planted standard pears and I'm actually replanting my apple orchard that was dwarf and is now Dying the back and so I'm going back to mostly standard trees altogether because the dwarf rootstocks just aren't hardy on my farm So what makes a very naturally precocious? It's just that word. What does that mean? A great set of words Well, so precocious just means that it will start bearing fruit maybe earlier in a lifetime That average right so if on average your pair is going to start bearing in seven years of naturally precocious one would be one that this Will hopefully start bearing earlier in a lifetime. So like I said with those hero ones We've been we started to get you know, I want to say three four five Years to like get a little bit of fruit So can you graft that plant to try and get that behavior? Yeah, or yeah Well, it's just that those varieties happen to have this characteristic Which is that they start bearing a little earlier and you find that with apples, too Like or with any probably with any kind of fruit right like some varieties might just tend that way But we've really found that with those specific varieties of pears They will start bearing a little bit earlier than other varieties It's another argument for the pilot and then scale up to because I noticed that with my apples and the apples that I'm now Grafting on to the new rootstock are the precocious ones just with even within the variety that somebody came up with that word Like a precocious kid Recommendations for short I'm actually out from Colorado Oh, yeah, we have sometimes no more than a 90 day Yeah Yeah, yeah, and so anything I should cross off the list from your side Claire or no I'm Mine could be nice. So our last frost Free date in the spring is June 15th, and we will get we can get frost by September 15 So yeah, and you'll have the advantage may I think Yeah Yeah, so that whole list is good for you to I think and and there I would also check out I haven't done these worked on with these yet But the university of Saskatchewan has been doing a lot of work on bush cherries Which are hardy in a very cold dry place So I'm curious about those I haven't tried