Renville County Soil & Water Conservation District

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Holly at the Renville County Soil & Water Conservation District. You can follow them on Facebook as well.

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you.

00:15
Today I'm talking with Holly at the Renville County Soil and Water Conservation District. Good morning Holly, how are you? Good morning Mary, I'm fantastic. How about yourself? I'm good and I'm not quite sure how to start this because I don't really know what you guys do exactly. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Sure. So, the Renville County Soil and Water Conservation District is a local government unit.

00:43
And what we really focus on is working with landowners on promoting sustainable use of water and soil resources. So things that are going to have a direct benefit on water and soil for the county and the state. Okay. And does every county have an organization like yours or are you alone in this? Sure. So while I think we are unique and special.

01:13
five Soan water conservation districts across the state. So almost every county has a Soan water conservation district. Okay, I'm in Sibley County, which is I think right next to Renville. It is. You are a neighbor. I am terrible at counties in Minnesota because there are so many of them. Yes, there is a lot. But yeah, you're directly east of us. Sibley is a Soan water district that we've partnered with on projects in the past and wonderful team over there.

01:43
Okay, so tell me how this works. Sure. So really what a Soil and Water District does is we provide education and resources to stakeholders. And when we say stakeholders, that's anybody that uses water or soil in the state. So the bulk of our customers or clients that we work with on a regular basis are farmers, just because we're in a heavy ag region.

02:12
And, but that doesn't mean that we can't help somebody who's got a tree in their yard that they think is sick, or if they want to do something to change water flow through their property, things like that. So, we really can kind of just do anything, like I said, related to water or solar resources. Okay. So if someone has a tree that they think is sick, how do they contact you? I mean, do they.

02:41
Do they just ask around until they find out about you or do you guys promote what you do or how does it work? So it's interesting you bring that up, Mary, because even like my whole childhood and going through college, till I was in my senior year at college, I didn't really know what a Swinwater district is, right? And I don't know if we've always done a fantastic job of promoting ourselves. Historically...

03:07
In Minnesota, soil and water districts really cut their teeth on tree programs. So if we back up just a little bit, we're a product of the dirty thirties. So what happened is the dust bowl and we had massive erosion and the government, US government created our partners, the natural resource conservation service. And as a result of that federal partnership.

03:36
locals got involved and said, it's great, we have this federal partners, this federal money, but we also need local buy in and local support for programs. And so Soin Water Conservation Districts got organized, usually sometime between 1938 and 1960. And again, that varied on kind of those local stakeholders and just momentum of getting those organized. And so

04:05
part of that was is our USDA partners would say, okay, you have this massive field erosion, you tore out your trees and you broke up all the prairie to farm it. And so we need to plant some trees here to stop that erosion. And that's really where Soan Water Districts got their feet under them was selling trees and designing and installing that. And then we expanded that to also designing and helping with installation.

04:32
of structures out in the field where we would actually move soil to slow water flow or just adjust where wind would blow in a road soil.

04:44
Okay. So like last year, we're surrounded by what used to be an alfalfa field. Sure. And is now a corn field. Yay. Um, I'm not a fan of corn. I, I sneeze when it does its thing in. Oh yeah, all that pollen, right? Yeah. Kind of kicks my butt every summer, but it's okay. Um, they put in drained hyle. Uh huh. I can't remember what was last summer or the summer before. I think it was the summer before.

05:15
And is that something that you guys are involved in, or is that just something that the farmers just do on their own? So how we're actually involved with Green Tile is on the level of making sure that whatever is installed has no negative impact on what we have today for waters of the state, which includes lakes, rivers, and wetlands.

05:41
So our involvement is a landowner wants to install tile. They first start with the USDA Farm Service Agency and say, I wanna put this tile in because the federal side of our partnership has to say, if you put in tile, you won't be impacting any wetlands. And then that request also flows to us because the state has different wetland rules than the feds. And so we need to make sure that locally, they're not.

06:10
potentially going to alter a wetland by putting in this tile. So tile, I mean, we're in the prairie pothole, right? Yeah. And just west of you, Bird Island was truly an island. That's why we named that town Bird Island, because it was surrounded by water and wetlands. And now that we've altered and drained it with drain tile, our role in tile is to make sure that we're not gonna put any new tile in that could-

06:39
negatively impact what we have left for weapons. Okay, that makes sense. So this is all very sciencey. There's a lot of science here. Okay. All right. All right. So I wasn't sure whether this was going to fit with my podcast, but I think that it does because I had no idea that you guys existed, number one. And number

07:08
A lot of people don't know. And homesteaders can be a tenth of an acre a lot with the people living there growing a garden, or it can be a hundred acre or a hundred thousand acre, I doubt that, but it can be a humongous property where people are growing crop things, like commercial farming. So it does fall under that, but I'm not quite sure.

07:38
what to ask here. I was going to say, obviously, good soil grows good plants, which means good food, which means good nutrition for people. Good water is extremely important. We all know this. So what do you have to say about that? Yeah. No, and it's interesting you say that because when you had asked if I'd be on your podcast, I then...

08:07
hopped on and found some of your podcasts and listened. And to be candid, I kind of had the same cat. I'm like, oh, really different than her other guests. But really where we fit in is kind of like where we started our conversation. We're here to help anybody that is a stakeholder. And if you use water or soil, you're a stakeholder. We might not have all of the answers, but really we would have that network to hopefully find you the answers.

08:35
And really where our niche is with homesteaders is that we can provide resources and education on things related to improving their soil health. We can also provide them with resources for potential grant funding. If they're looking, maybe they're a small homesteader and they want to put up a high tunnel to extend their growing season, we can help provide them some of the resources and tools to hopefully find some financial support for that. Or for example, maybe they're having trouble.

09:05
with a certain pest in their garden, and we can come out and visit with them and talk about maybe changing that rotation or what are some other less intensive ways to manage that pest and talk about crop rotation and looking at, you know, reducing tillage in that scenario, things like that. So it's all scalable, everything we do. So that's where I think our niche is, is to help people with those resources.

09:32
It's interesting you bring that up. I'm actually working with a customer right now that is taking a building site that has been abandoned for seven years. And we're basically mapping out their homestead plan and where they're going to put up some fence and how we're going to manage that grazing system and water development, all of that A to Z is what we can help with on the technical side to give advice and recommendations.

09:58
And is that fun for you? Because if I was in your shoes, I would be so excited to help them. It's so fun. It's just energizing and just wonderful to be around that energy of trying something new. And just, I've been in my career a while and working with people that are excited about what they're doing is really fun. And that is a group of people that are usually really energetic and excited about it.

10:26
And so it's really fun to be around and just to be creative. Sometimes we don't get to be creative enough and it's really fun to just throw out scenarios about what about this or have we thought about this? And yeah, no, I love it. Especially around the side of soil health. We do on our YouTube channel have several videos that we've done with landowners, just educational tools to share with customers. And it's just really fun to be around that energy and see something improve and change that.

10:56
maybe we got to help advise on. Yeah, in you saying that, it makes me think about the fact that when we're doing this, whatever it is, cooking from scratch or growing plants or raising animals or anything like that, it's like when we were five and learning about the world on literally a small scale because we were all small at five years old.

11:25
And I feel like homesteading and baking and cooking and raising animals is it really allows that child inside of us to come back out and, and dream and think through. I think that's exactly how I would describe it as well. So I grew up, um, I have a large family and I'm the youngest. And when I was three, my mom had to get a job off the farm. And so I spent a lot of my childhood.

11:53
with my dad wherever he was. And if I wasn't with him, I was playing with the cats. I was plunking around in the grove, digging around, climbing trees, and just that excitement and trying new things and turning over a rock and finding a bunch of worms then, it's still thrilling for me now in my career. And so I completely agree. It's just that whimsy, that excitement of new, and also really your encouraging life versus maybe some of the

12:23
other conventional systems of looking at making our food in that system. It's really more trying to figure out how to control or kill. Yeah. I guess I'm really glad that I'm talking to you because I have been trying to put my finger on why all the people that I talk with sounds so excited. Even if something bad happens, something good is around the corner and they know it and it's because it does, it brings that.

12:51
I don't know that whimsy and that excitement and that why not to the front of your brain again. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Well, and... Go ahead. Sorry. I do want to recap and I didn't mean to cut you off, but you talked about, just touched on the health of what we're producing. One of the other cool things about a Soan Water District is we're governed by a local board of elected officials. And it's really that local impact.

13:20
And so our board here in Renville is really creative and really open to just giving the staff the reins and letting us come up with ideas. And what we've been doing locally, just as a team on a small scale, is doing a nutrient density assessment with soils that are reduced till that have a diverse crop rotation, really a healthy soil system versus something that's a monoculture corn and soybean rotation with a lot of tillage. And what we've been doing is we've been growing sugar snap peas in those.

13:49
environments. And we have found that local data is that soils that are in a healthy system where we're trying to mimic Mother Nature's historic tall grass prairie with diverse covers and not stirring the soil, we can grow produce peas that have 46.4% higher protein than if we're in a system where we're stirring the soil and doing conventional tillage with a monoculture. Wow. Yeah.

14:18
That's kind of great. Yeah. Yeah. And like, it seems silly, but like, that's so fun. It gives me goosebumps every time we talk about it, because it's so fun to see, like, there's our measurement, there's our change, right? Like, we can be healthier, and we can produce less and be healthier if we look at trying to regeneratively farm and focus on soil health.

14:42
Yes, and it's a quantifiable number, which is really hard to get when you're dealing with animals and plants. So yay, that's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, we think it's super fun too. Yeah. So I've heard a lot about no-till, no-tilling. And we grow a veggie garden, pretty big veggie garden every summer, and we sell it to farmers market, blah, blah, blah. This is my thing that I talk about all the time.

15:12
And we do till because when we moved here in 2020, the yard, field, whatever it is, it's not big enough to be a field, but it's a very big, open, flat space. It was all grass and weeds. And there was no way we were going to be able to plant it without tilling it. And so we tilled it the first year. And

15:37
We ended up buying a tiller attachment for our little tractor that we have because there was no other way to do it. What is the problem with tilling?

15:49
So the challenge with tilling is what you're doing is you're actually breaking the soil aggregate. So if you think about where tall grass prairie here historically, and so there was always a living root in that system that was creating open pore space, that was creating areas for air and water, all the biology to move through the soil profile.

16:19
iron or tillage, we create a scenario where that pore space collapses because we break the aggregate. And then what we end up with is a fluffy, fine, soft textured soil. And really what we want to see in soil is something that looks a lot more like cottage cheese or chocolate cake, some people like to call it too, where it's really erratic. There's lots of open holes and pore spaces. And that's a system that...

16:49
is going to be more reactive to allowing things to cycle in more of a natural way. It's also going to prevent wind erosion because if you break the soil, like when you till your garden, I'm sure running the tiller across it, it's really fluffy and light, right? No, not, not especially. No, not unless it's been terribly dry. Sure. And it's like a conventional field. We often see though what it does in that scenario. Is it

17:19
creates a system that breaks that aggregate, that soil aggregate, collapses in on itself. And then what happens is the silt, sand and clay particles that are in that soil separate. We're in an aggregate, they're all intermingled and hanging out together and supporting each other in their natural system. But now when they're separate and independent, they can erode and blow and they separate. Okay. So then that leads me to my next question, because I know you know the answer.

17:48
How do we not till in a small vegetable garden? How do we not do that? Yeah, so there's not a right or wrong. There's just lots of options and opportunities. Some of the easier ways to do that is to look at planting more of a three sisters approach. Are you familiar with the three sisters? Yes. So

18:13
something like that. And that's exactly what that scenario with the three sisters is doing, where we've got a grass from the corn. So you think about that root structure, then we've got a legume that's fixing nitrogen and feeding that corn in that system. And then we've got a broad leaf, some sort of squash or vine. So we've got a corn, a pea and a squash, for example. So we've got different leaf shapes that are photosynthesizing, we have different root structures as well.

18:43
and those root structures are doing the tillage for you. Mm. Okay. And so that's maybe like just the first to start thinking about what that could look like. Okay. Go ahead. No, please. So what if we're not doing corn? Cause we don't grow corn. It could be any other thing too. Like in my garden, I tend to kind of just put like all the peas and the tomatoes and everything kind of all together.

19:10
and everybody just kind of finds its balance. I also can appreciate though if you're on a commercial setting it's a little bit different right you need to be able to go down the whole pea row pick all the peas so you can take them to the farmers market. Yeah. So what we would look at in that scenario is we try and encourage people to plant something in between the rows that's going to be a low moisture competition or even as simple as like mulching it with straw or we've

19:39
customer that's using chop up alfalfa bales to mulch in between the rows. And then basically what they do is they move over their row the next cropping year. Okay. And so they just kind of move in, it might only be four inches, six inches, but they're then not disturbing that soil in that scenario. What we're finding is then everything is cycling, right. And it's breaking everything down to continue to.

20:09
remove that residue in between the rows. Okay, that makes sense. My dad has grown a garden forever and his take on healthy soil is when he sticks a shovel in the dirt and pulls a shovel of dirt out, if there's earthworms, it's good soil. Is that true? He's right. Yep. So earthworms are a really easy biological indicator. When we go around and dig around, we can find them.

20:37
And what they're doing is fantastic, right? They're taking in residue and breaking it down. And it's now becoming carbon in your soil, which is then nitrogen. So fertilizer for your plants. Um, and so yeah, earthworms he's right, are a fantastic indicator, super visual. You don't need a microscope to find them. But honestly, if you think about earthworms too, sometimes if you find a spot that if you go out into your trees, maybe for example, and dig up a shovel

21:06
historically we tend to find more in that undisturbed shovel full versus in an area that's tilled up. Okay. All right. That environment is different. So yeah, that helps. Thank you. Cause I've heard more about no-till and and hugelkultur. I don't think I'm saying it right, but heard about that, heard about spaghetti or lasagna method for growing stuff and

21:35
Honestly, my husband tills the garden in the fall after he puts it to bed and then he throws some goat manure or chicken manure or some kind of animal manure on the garden. He lets it sit all winter and then he tills it one more time before he plants it in the spring. That's how he does it. So the other thing is too, as far as those that are no tilling in their garden, instead of doing that tillage in the fall.

22:04
They're actually using some cover crops on their garden and then spreading their manure because if you've got that living root, it's going to take up and capture that manure and basically tie it up in its biomass. And then over the winter as it dies and breaks down, it releases that just like what he's doing kind of with the tillage by burying. So yeah, there's lots of ideas. I'm glad to visit with you.

22:31
with other techniques or get you in contact with those that are doing other things. Yeah, I just, I never, I never know. He's, he's always watching videos on YouTube and he's like, I saw this thing, it's a new thing for gardening. And I'm like, yay. Because there's so many. And every winter he's like, I want to try this new thing this coming spring. And I'm like, uh-huh. Okay. Have at it. Let me know how it goes. Because

22:59
There's so many things he's done and I'm like, I don't think that's going to be good. And he's like, no, it'll be great. And then it's not good. Um, one year he, when we lived at our old house, we had a very small garden, like very small and our neighbor had a bunch of leaves and, and seeds that have fallen from, I swear it was an ash tree, but I could be wrong. Sure. You can be right. And they have those little plot little helicopters at full.

23:28
Yeah. And my, our neighbor was like, if you want some of the leaves to put on, you know, on the garden for the winter, come get them. And my husband was hell bent that he was going to do this. And I said, you know, you're going to have baby trees. Oh, it's so full of seed. Yeah. And he's like, no, no, no, they'll, they'll biodegrade. They'll be fine. I'm like, okay. Worst garden of our lives that following year. So

23:56
Now when he says, I want to try this thing, I immediately, when he goes to work, I sit down with my computer and go on Google and look it up and see what's involved and what it does. Because I don't want to lose a garden again. It was terrible. Right. Well, and that brings up a really valuable point that you're talking about. Every time you're stirring that soil, you're actually bringing up hundreds and thousands of years of residual seed bank that's in that soil profile.

24:25
We know sweet clover seed can lay dormant in the soil for up to 200 years and still be a viable seed. Wow. And so tons of other weeds in that same environment. So that's part of the challenge with every time you till your garden, you're actually creating more work for yourself all summer because now you've brought this seed to the surface, this weed seed, where it can get sunlight and water and grow. Exactly. Yep. And so that's exactly what happened with the leaves.

24:54
when you brought in all those ash seeds. Yeah, luckily we don't live there anymore. So it's somebody else's problem now. It would have been nice. Have we not lost, well, we didn't lose everything. It just made it really difficult that summer. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah. And then just one pulls out easy and then the next has a little bit deeper root and they're just not even easy to take care of when you're trying to hand deal with them. Yeah. My mom loves holly hot.

25:22
and she asked me if we grow hollyhocks here and I was like absolutely not. Oh. And she said, why? They're so pretty. And I said, because they spread like wildfire. I said, I don't need a thousand hollyhock plants. I don't need a thousand morning glory plants because morning glory spread like wildfire too. Same thing. Yep. And she was like, oh, well ours just stay put. And I was like, well, where are they? And she said.

25:50
down by the tree line and I said that's a really good place for them to be. So yeah, you've got to be aware of how things grow, not just that they grow, but how they grow and how they spread. So yeah. So we've been talking about a lot about soil. Tell me about water.

26:20
is when we started a podcast, I should back up. We started a podcast on Earth Day, actually, April 22. And it's called Armored Soil Podcast. And it's really because everything that we do in the soil still directly impacts water. So if you think about a raindrop hitting the soil surface of the earth, if it hits the surface and runs off, now we've moved water and soil and potentially nutrients if it's a crop field.

26:48
and into an environment we probably don't want it to be moved into. If that raindrop falls and hits the soil surface and infiltrates into the soil, now it's regenerating down into aquifers that we're drinking from. So, um, really it all does come back to the soil, everything that we're doing, even though we talk about water a lot. But what we help customers with is, um, access to water.

27:14
We can provide support as far as like an advice on if you need a new well, we can get you connected to the resources to get a new well if it's failing. Helping customers find and abandon old wells, right? So we're capping off potential contaminations going into our aquifer. We also can help with if people have erosion on their crop field that has maybe been a result of too much water being in the wrong place. We can provide advice.

27:43
and details on, you know, maybe some sort of structure, earthen structure needs to be installed there to slow the water down a little bit and allow it to infiltrate to prevent erosion. So those are kind of the pieces when we talk around water. We don't do much with irrigation. We only have one pivot in the whole county. So we don't regionally, we don't do a lot with that. But we also work with landowners adjacent to all of our open waters.

28:12
We have the Minnesota River along our southern border and so we work a lot with landowners to make sure that we're not going to have an impact of water moving too quickly, leaving their property too fast to create erosion or to move things off of the field that we don't want to move like nutrients or soil. Okay. So because you're Renville County, are you limited to helping people in Renville County?

28:42
We are not. Part of that is to just, you know, as a state, we all have different local goals and priorities. But as a state, in the last five years, we've moved more toward water planning on a watershed boundary versus a political boundary. So most of us do work in projects outside of our political boundary, but on a watershed boundary. But collectively, we still...

29:09
visit with landowners anywhere from around the state and offer advice. It's just we might not have all the resources beyond our borders to know what's out there. If that makes sense? Yep. Yep, it does. Okay, I have one more question for you because I know you have a meeting at 10 and I'm sure you would like to get prepared for that too. This past winter, everyone who lives in Minnesota knows that this was a very, very strange winter. What do you think about that? Because I am...

29:38
I am starting to get really concerned about the weather patterns because we've been here since 2020, where we live now. And the weather has been so erratic and it's either been lovely and calm or it's been intense and not calm. And I was told when I was 15 by my biology teacher that, well, our whole class was told.

30:06
He said, I am going to step away from normal curriculum today, and we're going to talk about climate change. And I'm 54. 15, no one was talking about climate change in a very direct way. And he said, by the time you guys are in your 50s, you will see the actual effects of climate change. And I was 15.

30:31
my classmates were 14, 15, 16, we didn't really know what he was saying. And now that I'm 54, I know exactly what he was telling us. So what do you think about this past winter and how bizarre it's been?

30:50
So it certainly has been bizarre, and this is a personal opinion that I'll offer. We have seen and we know that we can have a direct microclimate change on areas, and we've seen it. Say for example, there's a customer that I met several years ago that has a ranch in the Chihuahuan Desert. And by increasing

31:18
his stocking rate and starting to mob graze by putting more pounds of beef per acre on his ranch, he was able to increase the amount of vegetation on his soil and increase his amount of rainfall because now he created an environment, a microclimate where he had plants that were then impacting his direct climate because they were photosynthesizing. They were respirating and evaporating moisture.

31:48
and created a scenario where he was actually getting seven inches more rain than neighbors five miles away in his microclimate. So I do think we are making some sort of changes. We know we've obviously changed the landscape, right? In an effort to grow crops, we've changed that landscape. And so I think we need to really think about trying to balance that back out, right?

32:18
Maybe it's as small as every farm having a few acres of pollinator, right? That's constant green vegetation to balance that out, or maybe widening field borders to have green vegetation growing. Um, but I certainly think that we have made some sort of change in the atmosphere, um, with how we're operating on the planet today that is impacting us. Whether you call it global warming, climate change, whatever, um, we're doing something and I think we need to take a look to see.

32:48
What do we need to do to change that, right, or try and correct? So I don't know, did I answer that? It's kind of, it's such a loaded question and it's something we talk about all the time at work just because we see it, right? And we know examples like the one I just gave where we can really have a positive change and impact. Yeah, and I know it's a loaded question, but I really want people thinking about it and talking about it. Yeah.

33:16
Maybe in prompting the discussions, maybe someone who we don't even know yet will come up with something that everyone can get behind. Yeah. I want people to be thinking about this because honestly, it makes me upset. Sure. I have kids who one has a kid, so I have a grandchild, and I want there to be a world for my...

33:44
descendants and at the rate we're going, it makes me really worry. I can't disagree. You know, we see it just in my career. I've seen fields, farm fields, and I'm sure you see them in your neighborhood as well, that the hilltops used to be black, but now they're tan and gray because we've eroded off that topsoil. And that's left. Where did that go? Right? Is that now in our atmosphere? Yeah. Is that in the river? Where? And so things like that. It is

34:14
upsetting, especially on the visual side of things and like you said, extreme weather patterns. So I do think it is a conversation to have. Definitely. I just wish I had the answer. I wish I was the person that had that answer, how to get there. I think it's a lot of little things though, Mary. I think it's a lot of little changes. I think a lot of it's education as well. And just part of the thing that seems like with getting large scale

34:44
It's really hard to think about what you're doing and maybe even admit that you haven't been doing it the best. Yeah. And, and then making that change, right? Like as humans, oof, I don't just ask my husband, I don't like to admit when I'm wrong. Uh huh. I certainly don't want to tell him. Yeah. But that's the piece of it too, right? And then changing that pattern. And that's really what we're trying to do here in the soul and water. And I think across the state, soul and waters and

35:12
our partners at USDA are trying to do the same thing is really look at large scale adoption of soil health practices where we're not stirring the soil and trying to keep it armored as much as we can to kind of hopefully re-stabilize that entire environment and the globe. Yeah. I think part of the issue is that recycle, reduce, reuse, homestead, sustainability, blah, blah, blah. All those words.

35:42
sexy. We need to figure out a way to make it sexy and shiny and new and bright so it gets attention. And it just makes me laugh because there is nothing sexier than seeing people outside in the fresh air working on things. And I don't know why people don't think that that all of this is is sexy and attractive. I don't understand. Yeah, I'm 100% with you like

36:12
Absolutely. How do we change that mindset as a society that that's, that's a good look having dirt under your fingernails. Yeah. And sweat on your brow. And part of it is that it's dirty work. You're going to get sweaty and dirty if you're doing stuff. But we watch sports figures run down the football field and get sweaty and gross and they have the black stuff under their eyes.

36:42
sexier than somebody outside working in the sunlight in a garden. What we really need is a marketer, right? That's what we need. Yeah. As a marketer. Yeah. To get. And I need, I understand how marketing works because I worked in marketing for a while. Sure. But I also know that it takes an idea and a story and then money to make the thing that people see. So if anybody out there is interested in

37:11
Holly put out a really great video about gardening. Let me know. Yeah, definitely. That would be awesome. I doubt that there is. I love the awesome because that's what we wanna do. Yeah. I think it'd be great. Find some really handsome man and some really lovely lady and have them out in the garden planting things and then spraying the water off their faces with a hose. That'd be great. There we go. Why not? You've even got the intro right there. Sure, why not?

37:41
Okay, well, I was mostly trying to lighten this up because that whole global warming subject gets real serious real quick. It does. And like you said, I'm not afraid of that either, but it's just, it's a loaded question. Yeah. And I'm going to keep asking it because there have to be conversations going on about this. That's what I say. That's what I think. And it's my podcast. So I can say it.

38:11
All right, Holly, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. I didn't know how this was going to go, but I think it was really important to talk to you. Good. Well, I appreciate that. I'm really glad you reached out. I wasn't sure exactly what you were looking for either. So hopefully we got some good content for your listeners. I'm not sure I knew what I was looking for, but I was like soil and water conservation. This is important. How did you find us, Mary? Can I ask?

38:37
I think just like I find everything else, I was scrolling through Facebook and it got fed to me in my feed, I think. Oh, cool. Okay, no, I was just curious. I don't remember. I am constantly looking at my phone. I should not be, but to find people to talk to, I kind of need Facebook to feed me more of what I'm looking for. And God love Facebook. I mean, it's probably not.

39:03
great in some ways, but when I'm trying to find homesteaders and cottage food producers and crafters to talk with, it's fantastic. Oh yeah. No, it's a great way for them to be out there and marketing. Yeah. So, but that's how I found you, I think. And I was like, what is this? And then I thought, hey, I should talk to them and see if it's a fit. Cool. Well, I'm glad you reached out. I'm glad I did too. And thank you for your patience with my questions and thank you for

39:30
walking a fine line on the answers of the loaded question, because I know you need to be careful and it's important. Yes, because I want to keep my job. Please, yes, keep your job. I think you're doing a fabulous thing. All right. You have a fantastic day. Sounds great. Thanks. You too, Mary. All right.