Having a farm with proximity to many of the country’s largest cities, Jennie Schmidt says her family’s Maryland farm has some opportunities to diversify their operation. They are growing tofu soybeans, wine grapes and grain along with vegetables! This transcript it the companion to the podcast audio, video & blog post Growing Tofu Soybeans, Grapes, Grain & More: The Planning It Takes to Be a Truly Diversified Farm. The transcript was generated by Otter.ai.
37:10
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
farm, grapes, maryland, crop, grow, year, acres, soybeans, vegetables, tomatoes, irrigation, corn, vineyard, wineries, green beans, people, field, soil, farmers, harvest
SPEAKERS
Jennie Schmidt, Janice Person – Grounded by the Farm
Grounded by the Farm 00:03
Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it and so much more. Join me, Janice person, your host on grounded by the farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love. For this episode, we’re going back to the Delmarva Peninsula, you may remember we started season three on the southern end, we were in Maryland talking to Dana about agritourism. From there I drove north to Jenny Schmitz farm, we’re going to talk to Jenny about what it’s like running a larger operation in that area. She grows a lot of grain, but it’s highly diversified. And I love talking to her about all the different crops we’ve grown over time, and how she makes those decisions about what crops to plant, why, how to grow them, all of those things. I had the chance to visit with Jenny in the combine. So that video is going to be on the website, but the audio isn’t great. So we waited to record this episode. So let’s go ahead and just get started.
Jennie Schmidt 01:03
Yeah, so we are pretty diversified. Predominantly, our main crops are corn and soybeans. Those are mostly for poultry feed, because Purdue is headquartered here. In Maryland, there’s quite a number of culture companies in the area. Within the soybeans, we still also grow tofu plating, so food grade soybeans, which are different in nutritional content and commodity. We also grow vegetables. So we grow some, a couple 100 acres of fresh market grindings that we sell to a distributor on the eastern shore of Virginia. And we have in the past been canning tomato growers for a cannery up in Pennsylvania. And we have 22 acres of wine grapes, I have about five different varieties of wine grapes, and those mostly go to Maryland wineries, although somewhere My farm is I can get to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, or anywhere in Maryland within an hour or two. So I do have a broader base of of options for selling to to the winery, but we’re wholesale, you can’t come to our farm and buy anything. I when I talk to consumers, I tell them that we’re a grocery store farm, we grow ingredients. And that’s how that’s how I describe our farm.
Grounded by the Farm 02:23
And in the last year or two, you said nephews have brought a different operation into the farm as well.
Jennie Schmidt 02:29
Yeah, so 50 odd years, my father in law was a hog farmer. And we also had a cow calf operation for Black Angus beef. But my husband and brother in law and they took over the farm from their dad, we got out of livestock completely. And then in 2021, with my nephew coming back part time to the farm working full time for a fertilizer company, we got back into Hawk not to take what we used to do, which is called Pharaoh and giving birth, raising sounds and breeding them to give birth to piglets that you then raise for market. We have pigs brought in from Pennsylvania, they’re, I don’t know 15 pounds or so. And we grow them out to 280 pounds, which is their market weight. And so that’s new, we just shipped out our last batch of pigs the first week of January and our second batch of pigs is arriving tomorrow. So we’ll have a round two of growing feeder pigs.
Grounded by the Farm 03:32
I love it. I love it. So when I go to the grocery store, I could have some pork chops and green beans. Some tofu said to me is another level
Jennie Schmidt 03:42
of carbs on them though.
Grounded by the Farm 03:46
I understand the only
Jennie Schmidt 03:48
thing that actually has our name on it. So hermanos is intensely Yeah, we are on their label. Their cans are a picture of our family is on their label they do what’s one of the nice things about some of the comes some of the food companies will feature their growers at various times. And so that is kind of cool when you do get that recognition and consumers can then actually connect to a real person.
Grounded by the Farm 04:15
Yeah, that’s cool. The farm in Maryland, it’s your husband’s family. Can you tell me how you ended up? You know, sort of getting there to be a farmer,
Jennie Schmidt 04:24
your hon cuz I’m a hustler thing upon so we met after college. We both participated in a four h exchange program, and then an actual exchange program. And then after a couple of years, we were dating and I had done my dietetic internship. So my first career is as a registered dietitian, then I moved to Maryland. I worked in the hospital as a registered dietitian and I got married. I worked as a registered dietitian and started helping out on the farm when the kids came along. I really didn’t want to keep doing hospital dietetics. And I really did enjoy working on the farm. And it was really an advantage for me to have actually a lot of science training in my degrees in nutrition. And just tried to make myself indispensable for being able to drive whatever they needed me to drive. And so that’s, I guess, kind of worked my way into a position now my husband actually works off the farm. Now he took a job at the Maryland Department of Agriculture a little over five years ago. So I’ve been working full time in his place with my brother in law. And it’s actually worked out pretty well. He hasn’t fired me yet.
Grounded by the Farm 05:42
I love it. I love it. And for a while on the farm, you were basically focused on the wine grapes or
Jennie Schmidt 05:50
Yeah, so when Hans was home and full time on the farm, I worked, I managed mostly Arvin here. And then I did custom work for other vineyards in the region. So I had an a part time on farm job and the part time off farm job helping wineries and other folks who wanted to grow grapes get started in the industry.
Grounded by the Farm 06:13
Yeah, and your A mentioned, the nephews and the pork. That goes along with the story. I think we were talking with Debbie Lyons Blythe about how to bring in other family members back into the farm when they’re younger, and sort of getting them to find ways to contribute to the farm, and the farm does help help support them as well,
Jennie Schmidt 06:35
right, because there’s not necessarily a 40 hour a year round, 40 hour plus workweek for additional people just randomly, you know, you’ve got to be able to have the work load for them to justify salary. And then, you know, be able to support that person, year round. And so right now, even though our farm is, at least for Maryland, fairly large scale, we operate with just the two of us, myself and my brother in law. And, and in part time, you know, like, in busy season at harvest time, outside of the vineyard, you know, my husband pitches in when he can we have a guy who comes drive trucks for us. But as far as far as full time operators go, it’s me and my brother in law, Allen, and everybody else is kind of on a part time basis. And you really need to have that workload to justify additional employees, whether they’re family or not.
Grounded by the Farm 07:34
Yeah, yeah. And the the payroll and salary and benefits and all that stuff adds up really fast when you start putting people I don’t I don’t know of any farm that’s just willing to put people on the payroll and not have productive work. The profit margins aren’t there to just start paying people.
Jennie Schmidt 07:54
It’s just like any other business. I mean, it’s yes, it’s a family operating business. But you’ve got to be able to make those financially intelligent decisions that don’t negatively impact your overall business.
Grounded by the Farm 08:08
Yeah. So what I wanted to talk to you about for the bulk of our conversation today is it’s something you and I’ve talked about several times, it’s how do you decide what crops to put on the farm, you say you used to grow tomatoes, or you have grown tomatoes for canning? Let’s talk about how your farm navigates all of that kind of stuff. Where do you where do you guys start?
Jennie Schmidt 08:32
So we actually sit down about this time of year, every year and go over what our crop rotation is. We rotate our fields just about every single year, there’s rarely a year where we have consecutive identical crops. So we don’t do corn on corn year after year, we don’t do soybeans, year after year, we don’t we every field gets something different. The following year, what we need to juggle is the 700 or so acres that we have that are under irrigation, we need to be able to rotate our vegetables because you cannot get a vegetable contract with any company if you can’t guarantee a crop. And you can’t guarantee your crop unless you can guarantee water. You can’t go through you can’t go through a drought and not be able to produce vegetables under contract. So you decide how many acres of green beans fit how many acres of tomatoes fit within that rotation, and then look at what the fields had the previous year. And whether or not is going to be quarter soybean. So if it was soybeans in 2021, it’s going to be corn this year, and the only thing that will really change that is where are we going to grow the vegetables and how we’re going to rotate that around. Now even within the vegetables, we have to keep a lot of records on that because you can’t grow. Go back to vegetables for four years. So you need to be able to allocate your acres on a four year rotation. And that’s because vegetables are so susceptible to bacterial diseases in the soil, that if you do vegetables too many years, or even close to being, you know, every other year, something like that, they develop a lot more disease, resistance to disease, and then you just don’t get a healthy crop off of them. So I know that really extends our rotation compared to a lot of other other farmers who don’t have to throw vegetables into the equation.
Grounded by the Farm 10:39
I think for people who garden that makes absolute sense, right? Like, I never put tomatoes in the same place in my garden, or in the same container that I did last year or something where I change out the soil or something if I’m using containers. So I think that makes sense. I am so confused by the idea of how you rotate all of that and decide how many acres at the same time. So would you be able to put both green beans and tomatoes on a field in that four year period? Or does it? Does it just have to be out of tomatoes for four years? Or does it have to be out of vegetables?
Jennie Schmidt 11:18
It has to be out of so has to stay those for four years? And it has to be out of green beans for three. Okay, so we so we just stick with four because it’s easier. But so green beans can follow tomatoes because they’re not related to each other.
Grounded by the Farm 11:37
So you could have corn, tomatoes, corn, green bean, right? Or something right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I’m just trying to understand it all. And part of that is the disease pressure and, and usually on corn and soybeans, you’re saying you rotate. And that’s based on the root structures, the soil health, what are you looking at on
Jennie Schmidt 12:00
both relations? What’s the fact that grain crops are not as disease susceptible as vegetable crops are? They’re also not as I mean, they’re a valuable crop, but it’s a different level of value, it’s more of a commodity as opposed to a specialty crop. And while they they do develop disease, they’re not nearly as susceptible as vegetable crops are. And so that, that’s for us, and they the main difference there for corn and soybeans, we are looking at, you know, the fields that they’re going into whether they’re irrigated or not, it’s a big deal because soybeans generally can do fairly well in not super dry conditions, but they are more drought tolerant than Korean is. And so we we can’t forecast that. But if we were to put a crop under irrigation, it would more likely be corn and soybeans, because corn just needs more water than ventilating if we need to juggle a crop around because the field needs a certain rotation and it can’t go to vegetables, it’s likely to go to corn, because corn is a higher value crop as far as irrigated goes.
Grounded by the Farm 13:16
So okay, I’m going to ask you some other questions. And it may not even impact your decisions. But what about the role of like different types of soil z, you have different soil types under irrigation, or it’s all your farm sort of similar in soils? Yeah,
Jennie Schmidt 13:33
our our soils are very similar. There’s some minor differences in terms of how Sandy they are or not so the Delmarva Peninsula is a coastal plains. So we’re not farming on beach sand, but we’re not farming on heavy clay soils like they are, or in the Midwest where they’ve got two feet of topsoil and we have three inches of topsoil, I mean, there’s a big difference in our, our organic matter is much lower, because it’s just a much more sandier soil that our as far as those crops go across the board, there’s not a lot of difference that the crops need compared to what we have soil life. Now we might need to build up our organic matter a bit a bit more, which is what we’re trying to do with no till and you know, using mushroom compost and using poultry litter, which has all of the bedding, the sawdust, straw, all of that stuff in it. So it’s a fertilizer, but it also helps contribute to the organic matter in the soil, which is, you know, a healthier way of having better soils.
Grounded by the Farm 14:46
Yeah, and organic matter really is like anything you can put back in there that’s like plant based or anything like that, you know, it’s on that on the video, people will see that you harvest the corn and There’s a lot of the corn plant still left in the field that all counts is organic matter. And it kind of gets composted on top of the soil. And exactly, we all know what composting is. So that organic matter really does help us out. Alright, so how did you decide perennial crops like grapes, because once you plant grapes, you got them for a while, right? versus doing annual crops like corn and soybeans and tomatoes and stuff where you plant one year and you harvest that year.
Jennie Schmidt 15:33
So back in the late 90s, is when we got out of livestock. And so we were looking at what can we do to add value to the farm without livestock and corn and soybeans by themselves, really, we’re not going to cut it. And so we put up, we didn’t have any irrigation at the time, we put up some center pivot irrigation and went looking for vegetable contracts. We knew several of our neighbors who are growing vegetables, so we, you know, tapped into their network of vegetables. And were able to get into that. We were also, you know, through extension and those types of newsletters, there was some information that went out that Maryland winery association was looking for more Maryland grapes, because the whole by local thing really started a couple decades ago, really. And they were looking for more Maryland grapes. And we attended a couple of meetings and visited a bunch of wineries and vineyards to see is this something that we want to try, we took one of our smallest fields, which was eight acres, we took three of those eight acres and put them into grapes to try and try our hand at it. And after a couple of years, we were in had a crop because it actually takes three or four years to actually get grapes to produce to begin with. So you have a heavy upfront investment with a very slow return on that investment before you actually start getting crops. And because we’re farmers, because Maryland is such an urban state, we don’t have a land issue as far as being able to add more acres. So when we got reasonably good at growing grapes, and people knew that we grew quality grapes, and we’re asking for more grapes, then we started to expand. So now we finished out that eight acre field. And then we did another 14 acre field in the front. So we have about 22 acres of grapes. And the line is has really grown. When we started in the early 2000s. It was there was 12 wineries in the state of Maryland. And now there’s over 100. So I don’t have a shortage of customers.
Grounded by the Farm 17:53
wineries are up everywhere, like anywhere you go in the US, there’s a lot more local wines and and people are learning a lot more about the grapes that grow well in one region versus another. So not everybody expects the same grapes that they get in Napa anymore, right? Just it’s pretty nice. So what would it take if you guys want it? You know, if people came in, they were begging you to grow more grapes? What would you have to consider? I would assume labor is a big consideration.
Jennie Schmidt 18:26
Labor’s my biggest restriction. Yeah, we had a real difficult time this past fall, getting enough labor because we hand harvest to all of our grapes. And the grapes are our most labor intensive crop and most of the work is done by hand. And so getting enough workers to harvest all those grapes was a real challenge. So that has limited our expansion because I have been asked by several wineries to custom grow more acres of specific varieties that they want more volume of, and we certainly have the land to expand, but it doesn’t make sense to expand and then not be able to grow a quality crop because you can’t fit the labor in to help you get that work. That works done. It’s partially resolved hopefully this coming year. One of the local wineries actually bought a mechanical harvester at the end of the season this year, and they’re going to be offering custom mechanical harvesting. So for our bigger orders, we have a couple of wineries that we ship grapes to buy the tractor trailer loads. So when we’re trying to fill a tractor trailer load, you need 15 or 20 odd people and I just couldn’t get that many. So it’s a much slower process to fill a tractor trailer load and get it out on time to the winery. So hopefully that will be somewhat resolved this year and then we can revisit expanding the vineyard for for more great Production.
Grounded by the Farm 20:01
Yeah, and it kind of sucks that that still like such a one time of year that you need that extra help. So bringing extra family members and stuff in doesn’t really make sense. And I will say this hiring skilled labor is probably important because I went out and tried to pick grapes for somebody who really needed extra help here. And it was like 100 degrees so humid, and I’m just not very good at it. I mean, it I hated that I I was dying. But it is, it is something that a lot of people would think may be fun. I thought, well, I can be helpful. I’m I’m not in the office. So I could go help. But I really wasn’t very helpful. I know, in reality, especially trying to fill an 18 Wheeler crepes.
Jennie Schmidt 20:53
Mind something I’m doing and it’s hot and humid. And yeah, it’s tedious. People think it’s fun, they think they have a glass of wine, and they’re going to walk around twirling their line and enjoying their beautiful vineyard, but it’s a hell of a lot of work.
Grounded by the Farm 21:10
Yeah, and do the Lucille Ball thing where they get to stomp grapes. That’s what I would really like to do one time. So So can you tell me as you guys look at the future now, right now, you’re not looking to add in more grapes? It sounds like but are you? Are you looking at different opportunities? because of things like climate change? And? Or how do the opportunities shift for you guys.
Jennie Schmidt 21:37
So we have tried to see companies are coming out with some of these crops that have drought tolerant traits, that’s probably our biggest limitation is, even though we have not quite half of our ground under irrigation, the other half is dependent on Mother Nature for sufficient rain. And while we have
Grounded by the Farm 22:04
and do not hold water, that water just goes right down into the water table down deep.
Jennie Schmidt 22:11
Yeah. And typically we get very dry between the Fourth of July and sometime in August. And that’s the most critical time when corn pollination starts to develop, you know, the kernels on an ear of corn and whether or not you get enough water is going to dictate how big that air is and how many kernels it has on it. So looking at the the breeding traits that companies are looking at to either naturally or scientifically breed in drought tolerant traits, to try a few of those seed varieties just to to look at what if it was, you know, any more advantageous, and it’s hard to figure out because if you use drought tolerant traits, and then you don’t have a drought that year, really if it was beneficial or not so you know, it’s a crapshoot, but that’s farming.
Grounded by the Farm 23:06
Kind of like buying snow shovels, whether you have snow or not, you know, they pay off, right?
Jennie Schmidt 23:11
Right. You know, for the temperature thing, because I like I’m looking at putting an irrigation on about a four acre block of my vineyard. Because this past summer, grapes are very drought tolerant, they generally speaking, don’t need irrigation. But I had a variety that’s not particularly drought tolerant, and that the heat index plus the drive temperature, it started to defoliate. So the leaves turn brown, and they started to just fall off the volume, which is a sign of stress on the plant, and that shortens the life. Life expectancy of those plants over the long term great should live healthy, great plants should last 30 to 50 or more years in production. So so that I think it’s the the extremes that we’re seeing in terms of volume of rain, when we get it not always at the right time. And then the extremity of the heat index. That is I think probably for us the most noticeable thing I know other places on the Delmarva, they’re having you know saltwater intrusion because of a sword I’m looking for. Right rising sea levels, you know, but we’re inland we’re inland enough we’re not coastal farmers that were experiencing anything like that but other farmers in this region are for sure.
Grounded by the Farm 24:42
Wow, I hadn’t even thought about that saltwater intrusion on your fields and in salt them growing plants don’t work. Well, yeah, no, it’s really tough. You guys are so close to the water though the environment and making Things work in a way that continues to protect the water. And things like that are a big focus on your farm. So how does how does some of that work in these different crops? Yeah,
Jennie Schmidt 25:12
so we have probably taken out over 120 acres out of production. And we’ve put that into conservation, we’ve put in grassy buffers, so that along ditches and along streams, we have a 50 foot grassy buffer between the field and the stream, to you know, catch sediment Catch, catch nutrients. We have a lot of regulations in state of Maryland regarding nutrient management. So right now, you aren’t allowed to apply fertilizer I see on social media, lots of guys in the Midwest are out top dressing wheat right now putting fertilizer on wheat, and we can apply fertilizer until March 1. I just finished what I submitted yesterday was called our a ir, which is our annual implementation report, where we report to the state every single pound of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that we use the previous year. So everything that we did in 2021, I had to compile and submit a report to the state. Because that’s that’s a mandatory requirement.
Grounded by the Farm 26:25
And that’s looking at things like the Chesapeake Bay water and things like that, right. Yeah. That is pretty complicated, I guess. Can you help me understand the role of the local market? So let’s talk about those tofu soybeans. How did this an opportunity like that come up? I said, I love soybeans. I love tofu and my nieces and nephews, we, we love it. But you obviously don’t. But how did you figure out that that’s a fit for your farm? I mean, so
Jennie Schmidt 26:55
about 20 odd years ago, back when this is actually all relates to nutrient management. This is the funny thing. So about 20 years ago, when nutrient management became regulatory in Maryland, the poultry company started making noise to the government that they might leave the state of Maryland, if things got over a regulated, and a group of farmers in our area got together and decided to look at what could we grow in this region. If we don’t have the poultry industry, hey, there’s no reason for us to ship corn or soybeans to the Midwest. We don’t have ethanol plants around here. We don’t have humongous export markets in this area. So you can’t all suddenly grow lettuce. And there’s not that much of a demand. But what do you do with the equipment that you have, because you can’t just go out and capitalize expensive specialty crops equipment, but something that you can grow with your existing tractors and your existing harvesting machines for a local market. And so they started they formulated this Farmers Cooperative. And they looked into developing this tofu market in the area because there are a number of Asian food processing companies in the DC Baltimore, Philadelphia, nice, even New York City in New York City is only three hours from here. So we have really broad access to a humongous market. But you can grow a hell of a lot of soybeans before you need that much for tofo. So it’s still actually kind of a limited crop in terms of the number of acres, each grower that’s in the cooperative we have, we all grow 100 acres of soybean of coconut soybean and that’s because the market isn’t that big. And you can get a lot of soybeans off of one acre make a hell of a lot of toeses. And so it’s an opportunity for diversification but the market is where we’re selling me soybean find a pallet they’re bagged in 50 pound bags, and they go to the food processing companies by the pallet. We’re not shipping a shipping them by the tractor trailer loads like we are for poultry feed. So it is a still a different scale of market. So it doesn’t mean it kind of answers the question. And you know, 20 years ago, we still 20 years later we still have the poultry industry. But that’s what really drives our markets around here is the fact that we have access to the poultry companies that need to be there for the chicken industry.
Grounded by the Farm 29:48
A little bit further down on the peninsula on the Eastern Shore. I met some people at the extension service that were looking into various ethnic foods, I guess, you know, some some pepper First are especially loved in the Caribbean and the Jamaican markets and things like that. So there’s always some possibilities, especially based on the population dynamics in your region of the country, there’s, there’s always something else that probably needs to be grown. But that the issue is is finding the right farms. The people who have the right equipment like for green beans do you do you pick all those green beans or
Jennie Schmidt 30:29
so the reason why we actually got into vegetables, both creating and canning tomatoes was because those companies provide the specialty equipment, they provide the harvesters that we don’t have. And if we grow 200 acres of green beans and 100 acres of tomatoes every year, that doesn’t cash flow, a half million dollar tomato harvester like it would make, it would make no sense to buy such an expensive piece of equipment. And so both vegetable companies that we grow for, provide the harvesting machines, and they provide the trucking, and so they haul their they haul the green beans and the tomatoes away in their own trailers with their own truckers and that, you know, we would again, when we’re harvesting tomatoes, we’re harvesting 10 or 15. tractor trailer loads a day for about two weeks straight. And so we don’t have that many tractor trailers or drivers. And so that, that really, we can get the plants planted and we can manage the whole growing side of it. But we would not be able to do the harvesting and the hauling of the of the produce to wherever it’s going. On our own.
Grounded by the Farm 31:43
Yeah, it’s, it’s funny, I’ve actually been to a tomato processing plant out in California, they grow a lot of tomatoes out there. And everything about it felt different. First off, the smell of tomato harvest was radically, radically different than the smell of other harvest. But to see it, I’m going to have to find some photos and things of, of tomato processing being done. Because it is it is truly amazing. But it does feel like it’s one of those things that like, you know, you start thinking, Well, can we do this? And there’s so many different factors that you have to figure out. So for you, you’re like, Well, do we have enough irrigation? How many acres do we have last year? So we do we have your irrigated land that’s coming back into the ability to have tomatoes, right, like planning on that four year basis? And how are you going to get it planted, harvested? All those kinds of things? It’s, I guess it’s why you’re really busy in the winter months. A lot to figure out and
Jennie Schmidt 32:48
figure out and plan for you.
Grounded by the Farm 32:51
And that the days aren’t necessarily as fun as cutting corn and watching those harvest numbers.
Jennie Schmidt 32:57
No, no, we’re in a response driving combine. It was my favorites.
Grounded by the Farm 33:03
Oh, love it. I know the DC area got hit hard by snow. This episode’s gonna be up in the next week. So I think a large part of the US is dealing with snow on the farm, what’s the biggest problem for you when you get a lot of snow all of a sudden
Jennie Schmidt 33:20
struck? I mean, so you know, around here in the mid Atlantic in Maryland, we’re not really used to much volume. And so you know, a lot of places don’t even bother to plow there just because you know that the next day, it might be 48 degrees, it will all have melted away. So you kind of get like, frozen in place because there’s, you know, a period of time where you just can’t even really get out and then the temperature warms up and the snow you know disappears. Or like tomorrow it’s supposed to rain. It’s supposed to be in the 40s or low 50s and rain so the three or four inches that we have on the ground right now will disappear tomorrow. Well,
Grounded by the Farm 34:03
those were the questions I had for you. If you if you want to find Jenny, she’s on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, where are you at?
Jennie Schmidt 34:15
My limit those three places. Tick tock, I don’t know you to
Grounded by the Farm 34:22
your farm girl Jin. Yeah, I’m on Twitter.
Jennie Schmidt 34:26
Yep. In the dirt dietitian on Instagram. Don’t ask me why I didn’t stick with one thing. I just didn’t find the foodie farmer on Facebook. Facebook is where I probably am the most active.
Grounded by the Farm 34:39
Yeah, yeah, man during the year it’s it’s easier during the year to share pictures and have more things happening and Instagram. But planning your four year rotation isn’t really Yeah, I mean, kind of Instagram fun.
Jennie Schmidt 34:55
I’m doing a talk tomorrow at the mid atlantic fruit and vegetable convention on advocacy. See online for your farm, right? And it’s like, I haven’t really posted anything. Very good example. But what I what I do is I post pictures of what we’re doing. And right now pictures of fertilizer records. I can post a picture of the vine that I just ruined, but you don’t want to see that every day. And that’s pretty much every day if it’s not raining or snowing. I’m in the vineyard pruning. So you know, you can only post so much right now because there’s just not a lot. There’s a lot going on, but it’s just not photographed.
Grounded by the Farm 35:36
Exactly, exactly. Well, thanks so much. We’ll be sure to have everybody see some of the photos and stuff it it was fun to be in the combine with you. Having me watching the video was a lot of fun to we saw a lot of the different animals on your farm, right? Fat leafs off some foxes, Lisa Gosh, their deer were everywhere and they kept coming back to like see us it felt like several raptors that were flying around and everything so it was a lot of fun. Alright, with that we’re wrapping up this episode of grounded by the farm. You can catch us online and all the places we did think ahead and get grounded by the farm on all the channels so easier on that one and Jenny, but always check our website grounded by the farm calm. We’re putting up more blog posts and stuff now. So if you want to get alerted to some of the extra things we’re putting on the site, there’s a subscribe here area on the website, easy to find, just go ahead and give us your email. I promise not to overload you. And finally, we just ordered some really cool grounded by the farm stickers. So just send us an email grounded by the [email protected]. Give us your address and we’ll be glad to pop one of those in the mail. said thank you Jenny again for being here with us. Always a pleasure to chat with you. You’re welcome. Great to be here. Have a great week.
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