Blooming Health Farms

Today I'm talking with Sean at Blooming Health Farms.

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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. Today I'm talking with Sean at Blooming Health Farms. Good morning, Sean. How are you? Hey, good morning, Mary. How are you doing? I'm good. It's, is it nice in Colorado, number one? It is gorgeous. It is chilly, but the sun here makes it feel like it's tropical.

00:31
Well, we have sunshine in Minnesota too, but it's not tropical. It's probably 10 degrees outside. Oh, that's fair. That's fair. And I always ask about how the weather is, where the person is that I'm talking to because how I show my esteem for the people I talk to. So that's why. Okay, Sean, tell me about what you do because I know it has to do with chickens. Yes.

00:59
Blooming Health Farms is a nonprofit aquaponic chicken farm in northern Colorado. We're located in Greeley. And I use that word aquaponic chicken farm, A, to get a little bit of attention, but it showcases some of the neat stuff we do. We actually grow some of our own chicken feed using aquaponics and hydroponic methods, as well as take care of our chickens in some really humane, compassionate way.

01:29
that we do with chickens, partially to run an egg laying operation and sell chicken feed. But we also work with at-risk youth and teach them entrepreneurship and give them mental health support so they get themselves out of those cycles that they find themselves in. That is stellar. Okay. So what is, okay, first off, what's the difference between hydroponic and aquaponic? Because I didn't know.

01:58
that they were separate things. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of like, you know, big funny fancy words in agriculture these days. So I like to say that hydroponics is an umbrella form of agriculture, like the big thing. And it really simply means to use water to grow plants that aren't growing in a soil medium.

02:22
So we're growing plants with a nutrient-rich solution, a solution that has all of the minerals and vitamins plants need. And we're doing that in something like just water or something that has an inert media, a media without nutrition. Aquaponics is a subset of that, a part of hydroponics, in which we

02:47
grow fish in a body of water and then we use the fish water to actually fertilize our plants, if that makes sense. So the fish are eating this really highly nutritious, high protein fish food and their waste product is going into the water. There's a bunch of naturally occurring bacteria that live in the atmosphere and they turn that fish waste from their ammonia waste into usable plant nutrients, mostly nitrates.

03:18
Okay, that helps. Thank you. Because I was listening and I'm like, I didn't know there was a difference. What's the difference? So you just defined it. Thank you. All right. So Sean, what brought you to doing this? Because everybody has a reason. Yes. You know, years ago, I found myself living up in the mountains here in Colorado. I lived in an area called South Park and I was a professional photographer.

03:46
And I would meet a lot of people that I was taking pictures of that was saying like, hey, Sean, you're living the dream up here. And I would reflect on the things that I was doing. And I was living as a poor ski bum, if you will. And I really did a lot of thinking and stuff. And I decided to get myself back in school. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that, to be honest with you,

04:14
I grew my first pot plant while I was up in the mountains and I did a terrible job at it. I tried to grow it hydroponically in a way that I mentioned earlier and the plant came out and it was, for lack of better words, just very poor. There were no flowers on it. So if I wanted to use it for marijuana, it was pretty much worthless. And it drove me down this path of trying to figure out how to do it better.

04:44
if that makes sense, to try to grow a better plant. Well, while I was researching and studying, I saw this picture in a book of a hydroponic tomato growing in the Epcot Center. And it was this tomato in a large pot growing over the size of a tennis court. And there were these tomatoes the size of baseballs. There was like 30,000 of these tomatoes on this tennis court size.

05:12
spot and I said to myself, oh my goodness, I think we should be growing food this way. And it led me down this path of trying to grow tomatoes hydroponically. So I literally rushed down from the mountains and enrolled in a community college and started studying agriculture, studying biology, studying chemistry. And I fell in love with just this whole world of trying to grow things.

05:42
hydroponically. Well, I rushed off to the University of Hawaii to learn how to do all of this stuff. And while I was there, I got to work with local farmers on the islands who were trying to figure out ways to enter into the market, who are trying to use novel ways to grow plants, to save space, to save water.

06:11
doing research to help farmers install hydroponic and aquaponic systems so they could grow different plants. And my whole goal was to come back here to Colorado to start my own tomato hydroponic farm. So I went through this really, really good experience in Hawaii. And when I came back to Colorado, I was struggling with trying to get this idea off the ground.

06:39
And one of the reasons that I was struggling is that I personally had a problem. I used to be a really bad alcoholic. And for a long time of my life, I made a lot of poor choices that got me in a lot of trouble. And I found myself in and out of jail for many years because I would get drunk, I would do something.

07:08
I'm stupid, I would get in a fight, I would find myself in jail, and then I would repeat that pattern over and over and over again. It was me, and it was falling in love with tomatoes. That changed it. It changed everything for me. And when I came back to Colorado, quite honestly, I was still struggling with my alcoholism. I was still struggling with drinking.

07:34
And I ended up getting my third DUI in 2014, which really sent me down this downward spiral, which ended up being a really deep soul-searching path. And while I was sitting in jail all of these times, I ended up meeting a lot of individuals in and out of these places that I recognized had similar backgrounds that I did.

08:03
that had hopes, that had dreams, and they were struggling to find what it is they wanted to do in life. And while I was sitting in there, I came to this realization and this epiphany, if you will, that I wanted to be able to help people get out of tough situations. I wanted to help people like myself who were struggling with addictions.

08:30
I wanted to help people become self-sufficient. And I say that really pointedly because I got out of jail. I got sober in 2017. And shortly thereafter, I met a gentleman here in Greeley, Colorado who's a clinical counselor. And he said to me that while he was studying in graduate school...

08:56
that he was learning about this prison in Canyon City, Colorado that had a farm and they had an aquaponic system. And the prisoners that were working these systems, when they got released from prison, they were less likely to come back to prison than their other inmates that weren't working on this farm. And when he told me this, I immediately got goosebumps. And I was like, it resonated with my story. And then he said to me, he goes,

09:25
I want to start a business, a non-profit, helping people learn how to get life skills, learn how to learn job skills, and support their mental health recovery on the medium of a farm. And I want to do this aquaponics stuff that I read about, but I don't know how to do it. And so we met soon after, and we formed this idea that I mentioned at the beginning called

09:54
started to use our skill sets to develop a working business model to try to help kids that are young adults age 15 to 24 break that cycle of getting in trouble and getting stuck in the criminal justice system.

10:13
Wow. Sean, I say this to everybody who actually makes me, moves me when they tell me their story. I love you. That is fantastic what you're doing. Thank you. I'm blessed to be where I am. I had a lot of people along the way that believed in me and supported me. And now I see this opportunity where I get to do the same thing. It's really cool. It's more than really cool. It is phenomenal.

10:40
what you're trying to do for people and what you're doing for yourself too. Thank you. You're welcome. So tell me where you're at with it, with Blooming Health Farms.

10:56
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when I tell that story, a lot of times I purposely leave out the chickens, because when we start talking about Blooming Health Farms, I mentioned that we're a chicken farm. We never expected, I never expected to be a chicken guy. I never expected to have chickens in my life. As a youth, I had chickens in the backyard. As a young adult, I had chickens with parents' backyards, or backyard chickens with my folks and whatnot.

11:22
So chickens have always kind of just been pockmarked, scattered throughout my background. Well, while we were developing our business model, quite honestly, we were trying to take these concepts that we had in our heads, and we're trying to essentially take, you know, like a square peg and shove it in a round hole, for lack of better words, that we knew that there were people out there that needed help.

11:52
And we wanted to build an aquaponics farm and bring kids in and teach them how to do the things that we needed to do to operate that farm, how to feed fish, how to grow plants, how to sell those produce that we grew. And while we were developing that, we had a lot of start and stops and start and stops from the different things that we were trying to do. But most specifically, one of the biggest obstacles that I initially saw

12:21
was in getting the buy-in from the youth over the long term in what it takes to grow plants. So to say that differently, I got to see that when we would bring the youth in to have us help them try to grow plants.

12:43
there was a desire to see things happen almost instantaneously, or in another way, we could say there's like a desire for instant gratification. Of course, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And as many of us out there who have grown plants or have tried to grow plants know that it doesn't happen instantly. It takes days and weeks and months to get something from one stage to the next to getting that product. And we knew when we started down this path that

13:13
delayed gratification is something that is missing in a lot of our youth. And it teaches discipline. It teaches a lot of these core soft skills that we believed are necessary to help kids stuck in the criminal justice system. So what ended up happening is... So for context, I turned...

13:41
my house in the city of Greeley, Colorado into an urban farm. We converted a garage into an aquaponics farm, a vertical aquaponics farm. So if you're going to, us and the listeners can imagine like a 200 square foot garage that we put a fish tank in. It had filtration system and then vertical hydroponics. It looked like there were bunk beds of

14:09
plants growing inside of a garage. And we would, I also had backyard chickens at my house. So while working with some kids, I would occasionally be like, hey, can you help me go take care of the chickens? And what I started to notice was more engagement and curiosity with what was going on with the chickens. What were they doing?

14:37
what's going on with their eggs. I mean, there's actually a more instant gratification nature in raising a chicken because they would be able to get an egg, if that makes sense. And so what ended up happening is in our development of creating the business, I met a local teacher, a high school teacher who had a few youth that she thought...

15:06
would benefit from what we were trying to do at the time. She recognized, hey, it looks like you guys are trying to do these neat things with aquaponics and you're still trying to figure it out. I have some kids that need some help. This one kid is running a gang, selling drugs, not showing up to school. Maybe you can help him. So this kid's name is Kewani and I met Kewani when he was a 16-year-old kid and he came

15:36
wooden bunk beds flowing with water. And he looked at me and he goes, is that a tomato? And I said to him, yeah. And he goes, can I eat it? And I looked right at him and I say, yeah, of course. And he goes, you mean, I can actually eat this thing? And in the back of my mind was like, hmm, I don't think he's ever had a live tomato before. And I said, oh yeah. So I took one off the tomato tree and ate one and he did the same thing. And he got this.

16:04
smile on his face and his eyes looked up and to the left and he was like puzzled and he's like, wow, this is a tomato? And I go, have you never had a fresh tomato before? And he goes, no. And I was like, wow. And I knew right there, you know, boom, I had him hooked on what we were trying to do. So I showed him around, I showed him the fish, I opened this fish tank, these fish jump out.

16:31
We throw some fish food in there. I tell him a little bit of what we're doing. I go in the backyard. He sees some chickens and him and the teacher and I talk and we come up with an idea, a plan, and we decide that we are, that we could help him. And we, this is really one of the first ah-hahs in a big business development thing that happened. The teacher and I formed a partnership between myself and the local.

16:59
between Blooming Health Farms and the local high school to have this kid come over twice a week for a few hours each time. And he would learn how to help me take care of the aquaponics system, how to take care of the fish, how to grow some plants, and then learn how to start selling some of those plants in exchange for getting school credit. So he would get credit for biology, for mathematics, and for a home economics course.

17:30
And then the school was conveniently like three or four blocks away from my house. So we had a chaperone that would come walk in to and from school. And we did this for a whole semester. And it was actually during this time, this kid, he approached me during one of these moments and said to me, hey, Sean, do you think you can teach me how to grow a marijuana plant?

17:58
And I looked at him and I said, you know, I don't think your teacher would really like me doing that. That would ruin our relationship. And he looks at me and he goes, he goes, yeah, but we don't have to tell her. And I go, how about this? How about I teach you how to grow tomatoes and then you can do whatever you want with that. You could probably use those skills to learn how to grow whatever you want. Maybe even a marijuana plant. And he looks at me and he goes, let's do it.

18:27
And so it started us down this path. And that's how, what I was alluding to earlier, seeing the struggles with trying to teach these individuals, these young kids that are working with how to grow plants in an instant gratification. I was trying to teach this kid, Kewani, how to grow tomatoes. And it would be a lot of like, you know, one week we'd plant the tomatoes and two weeks later he wouldn't water them.

18:56
They would die, he would complain that the tomatoes aren't growing, Sean, you don't know what you're talking about, this doesn't work, and etc. etc. So it was just this start and stop. And in one of those days I got, to be honest with you, I got a little bit frustrated with the misunderstandings and I couldn't communicate what was going on in those moments.

19:20
So I said to him, hey, I need you to go take care of the chickens today. Your job is to go clean up the coop, clean up the yard, and I want you to just, here's a Bluetooth speaker. You go listen to your music, do whatever you gotta do. And so I handed him a rake, and I expected three hours later for his chaperone to come get him, and then I'd be done with him for the day, and I was like, oh man, I'm done. Well, about an hour later, you know, I hear the music out in the backyard.

19:49
really, really peaceful, like energetically, if that makes sense. And I go out there and I just look and this yard is immaculate. The chickens are just happy and doing their little thing. They're right near his feet. And he's just kind of dancing and swaying to his rap music. And he starts asking me these funny questions, at least at the time they seemed funny, about the chickens. You know, Sean, why is the chicken walking this way? Hey, Sean, why do the chickens rub their beak on the ground like this?

20:18
Hey Shawn, why are their feathers different? And I'm looking at him and I'm like, wow, you're really paying attention to what you're doing out here. I didn't realize it and he goes, oh man, these chickens, there's a lot to that. And so I kept encouraging it. I kept encouraging him to lean into this. Well, I invited this kid, Kewane, to the farmer's market. A few months after that, we were taking care of the chickens for a while. He was doing a really great job. And I said, hey, how about we go to the farmer's market?

20:48
And we showed up at the farmer's market. It was an indoor winter market, November of 2022. And I bring that up specifically because of the bird flu pandemic during that time. And we went to the market and I have this teaching style, a lot like Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid, where I like to say, hey, go paint the fence. Hey, go wax the car, go Sam the deck. And then say, hey, let's go do kung fu.

21:16
So with him, we walked into the market and I challenged him. I said, hey, why don't you go set up the table, how you think it would look good, and we'll go start selling eggs. I'm gonna go say hi to the other vendors and see what they're selling. So when people come over, we can say, hey, so-and-so has this, so-and-so has that. Do you need eggs? And he's like, all right. I leave the kid for about 15 minutes and I come back and I come back to the table, it looks great. And he says to me, hey Sean, I sold all your eggs. And I look at him and I go.

21:46
No way. We brought like 20 dozen eggs. And he goes, he goes, oh, he goes, oh, yeah, I sold all your eggs. And I called it I called his BS. I look in the coolers and there's no eggs. And I was like, wow, well done. So here really, our rules with the farmers market are our vendors have to stay the whole time that that the farmers market runs to keep the market full and our obligation and in our own this is to bring enough produce so we can sell the whole time.

22:15
And I was explaining that to him. And he looked at me and he goes, oh, you mean we can't leave? And I go, no, you can't sell things that quick. We can't leave. He laughs at me. He goes, well, Sean, you know what? We need more chickens. And I say to him, I'm like, you know, we have six chickens. We already have more than the city allows. We can't have any more chickens in the city. And he goes, well, Sean, but check this out. If we had two more chickens, we would get two more eggs a day and we could grow this business.

22:44
And I looked at him and I was like, wow. In my head, I was like, this kid just gave me the most brilliant three sentence business plan I've ever heard in my life. And I immediately said to him, no, we can't do that. That's not gonna happen. Well, Mary, later that night, I went online, I got on Craigslist and I found a local farmer about an hour north of us in Wyoming, who had 100 hens, mature hens for sale.

23:13
And I phoned him up and I said, hey, can I buy all your chickens? I had no plan what to do with these chickens at all. I was just like, this was a brilliant idea. So the guy's like, yeah, come on up. Pick up whatever you want. I call him back the next day, hey, can I have half? And he's like, yeah, sure, no worries. I show up and I was like, yeah, I'll take about 30. And he's like, no problem. So I bring these chickens back down to my house inside Greeley in the city of Greeley. And I

23:42
and I put these 30 chickens in my backyard in a very makeshift yard. And Kewane comes to report for his next thing a couple days later and he walks out into this backyard and he looks at me and he goes, Sean, I was joking with you. And I look at him and I go, no you weren't. That was a brilliant idea. And he goes, what are we gonna do now? I go, well, we're a chicken farm now. And he goes, okay. And he puts on his boots.

24:09
And he goes out there and he goes, all right, well, what do we have to do? And I go, well, the first thing is we've got to fix this fence. It's a really bad fence I made. And we started, we started to be in the chicken farm on that day. And now two years since then, we have expanded on to, um, we have partnered with some homesteaders on the north side of Greeley who have five acres and they have leased us about an acre of their property.

24:37
where we now have 150 chickens laying organic eggs. And it's been a wild ride over those two years. That is the longest answer to the first question I asked that I've ever heard, but it was beautiful. Okay, I have two things. Number one, as the mother of four grown children, raising kids is a trip, and you're doing a great job raising other people's kids. Good job.

25:07
Number two, you are a fantastic teacher. Well thank you. Yeah, I love, I've found my passion for teaching through this. You know, I never thought I would be a teacher, but during these things I've reflected on, you know, when I was a little kid, my teachers would often assign me to reading for other students.

25:31
And I eventually was actually a ski instructor when I was living up in the mountains. I joked I was a ski bum. I actually was a ski instructor, a real ski bum up there. And there's something to teaching people through doing that I really enjoy. Yeah, yeah, no, I can tell. I mean, listening to you tell your stories, you sound so full of joy about everything you're doing. So the third thing is you need to write a book. You are so good at.

26:00
at telling stories you've got to write a book about your experience.

26:06
Well, I think that's, I really appreciate that. I do have a book called Thinking Outside the Soil. And it talks about how hydroponics helps farmers save water, improve livestock quality, and helping us all become better stewards. And I do weave in a lot of the story and journey that I've mentioned here. If any of your listeners are out there interested in reading about that or yourself, I'd love to send you a copy of the book. And you know, I can personally,

26:36
autograph it to you Mary there and yeah, it talks about really how hydroponics is helping small scale farmers and stuff like that. And we discovered a lot of that. While I was telling Kewane to help me, we were selling vegetables at the time and our main crops were microgreens and sprouts. That's what we really were making ourselves known for.

27:03
In Greeley, Colorado, for context, we are very rural. We are conservative from a political, we would be red or maybe more libertarian. We're very much, you know, we raise the food we eat, we don't eat the food we eat in a sense kind of a thing. And so for saying that pointedly is that we were selling microgreens, which are kind of, you know, what our animals eat. And...

27:33
It was really, really interesting. So we were having a lot of challenges. And what one of those challenges was is sometimes we didn't sell all of the microgreens that we were trying to sell. And I naturally, like any resourceful farmer, throw them out to our chickens. And one of Kewanee's job was, hey, take some of our waste produce this week or even our leftover medium and go give it to the chickens and they can clean it up. And what happened was people started,

28:02
Like now, people were like, oh, you got any eggs? You got any eggs? Where are the eggs at? And when people started telling us, man, they're like, Sean, you guys got some really, really good eggs. And we started noticing that what we were feeding our chickens was really affecting their eggs. And I encouraged other farmers to do it. And when I started telling other small scale goats and

28:30
and cattlemen and those people, what we were doing, they were like, you know, it would be really great if we could, you know, grow some of our own supplements, especially during the drought or the winter times for our own herds rather than sourcing these from the big box suppliers or something like that. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, you know. And so it really, it's really started to shape.

28:58
my journey of where we're at today and one of the reasons we're here on the outskirts of Greeley is A, that we can have this many chickens where we're at now. And I met a couple who has aspirations to be homesteaders. They want to be very self-sufficient. They too have four kids and are hyper aware of what...

29:26
They want to be putting in their kids bodies, what they want to be putting in themselves, how they want to be interacting with other individuals, and really trying to build community amongst themselves and of like-minded individuals. I was just tickled when I got the invite from your podcast, from your show. I was like, wow, this just really fits in with some of the things that I'm getting to learn. So I got my playlist started.

29:55
to play out with what I'm going to continue listening to on the tiny homestead here. All right, good. Yay. It's, it's so funny when you when you say that, because I started the podcast as a way to not go through emptiness syndrome, because my youngest was going to be moving out. And started in August of 20. August of 2023. Okay. I think it was 23.

30:25
And I thought it wouldn't go anywhere. And all I wanted to do was have something to focus on. And you're not the only person who has told me that they're gonna start listening to the backlog of posts because they're interested in learning about homosteading from other homosteaders. So when you guys tell me this stuff, it makes me feel really good and like I'm doing something good. So thank you for saying that.

30:55
It's an important, I see a huge movement back to it. And people like yourself are mediums for others out there to share how we can all do it together. I've started to understand more and more as I've been building a business, that successful businesses and individuals and communities that work together find ways to thrive.

31:24
a lot more than those that are trying to compete, if that makes sense. When we come together, we all seem to win more. All boats rise with the tide, yes. Absolutely. And when you can start to come to these different things by being able to bring to the table these different ideas and then recognizing, all right, it's okay to...

31:47
disagree and then not worry about it and not use it if it doesn't work for you kind of a thing and And well, that's one of the draws for me to homesteading is that idea of that we can find what works for us others have trailblazed paths before us and and you get to share those stories of how others have you know, you know how they've sunk their ship how the ship is now rising and and

32:15
You know, one of the things I know we're really starting to find with us is that what's really set us apart is how we're feeding our chickens and our, for instance, the folks I'm working with, their names Ethan and Shay. And as I mentioned, they have four kids. The Ethan is a full-time business owner. He owns a painting business. And his, the matriarch, Shay, the wife is,

32:45
portrait photographer and then a homeschool mom. And like 13 other things, because she's a creator and entrepreneur. She makes a bunch of the different things. She does, she's like a lot of us out there, I'm sure that are listening to this, that we're just, we like to do those things. Point being is that when I met them, I explained to them, I was like, I've got this really great way to work with kids, but also to get a really great product and to really.

33:13
Help the Earth and the community. And I showed them how to sprout. And Ethan, without any background in biology or anything like that, took to it in a few days and has taught his kids how to do it. And we sprout in a space the size of a wardrobe or a little closet. And we're able to grow. I think we're growing about 15 pounds a day of live sprouts. And it takes them about 30 minutes.

33:43
to do all of it, to go out and feed the chickens and then go about their day. And it's really cool to hear. When we started, I would go out with my chickens and I would throw the sprouts on the ground and I would go, sprout time, ladies, it's sprout time. And they would run in from wherever they were. And then people started to joke, they're like, man, your chickens are like addicts. They just come running. And we started calling our sprouts chicken crack.

34:12
because the sprout, the chickens would run from all over. And now I hear Ethan's kids coming out there and they're banging on this bucket and they're like, Sprout time ladies, sprout time ladies. It just tickles my heart because I just like, I don't know, I find it kind of funny to just see the silliness of enjoyment and doing what you love translate out into different areas of life.

34:42
And that's, I see that's the, what homesteading and this attempt to live this lifestyle offers at a way, there's that just pure enjoyment for whatever they're doing. And it's really neat to see. It's really neat to see and it's really neat to experience because we do, we have our little homestead here. That's why the podcast is called The Tiny Homestead. And I really, really am not a gardener.

35:09
and I'm really, really not into chickens, but my husband is into both of those things. What I'm into is my dog. I love my dog, she's amazing. What kind of dog? She's a mini Australian Shepherd. Oh. I love her, she is my fifth kid, I swear to you. But we also usually have a batch of barn kittens every year, maybe two. Now you're speaking my language, I love kittens.

35:34
And I really, really love the baby stage. I really love watching the mama cats, you know, grow in their pregnancy. The last mama cat we had, we lost her this summer. She looked like a basketball this summer with her last litter. And just watching her go from this skinny barn cat who was hunting mice to this round mama ready to give birth was really neat. And then seeing all the babies is always a joy. So for me, it's the dog and the cats.

36:03
It's also cooking. I love cooking. Okay, so when my husband brings me in tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff I'm like, yeah, what are we having for dinner? And Then I make that work So that's a skill. I I appreciate that I am the more like your husband it sounds that I admire people who can just take those raw ingredients and Are you one of those types of people that just takes the same thing and makes?

36:32
four or five different types of things out of it? Well, it depends on what it is. I mean, I love basil. And so we make pesto. We make, I always forget the name of it. I love it, but I can't think of the name of it right now. The appetizer you get at restaurants where it's diced tomatoes and garlic and chopped up basil and olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I can't think of what it's called. But anyway, it's an appetizer. And you put the chopped up stuff on the

37:01
the toasted bread and just eat it and it's delicious. I make that. I will remember what I'm trying to think of an hour from now. But anyway, bruschetta. I make bruschetta. Oh, bruschetta. Yes. Pesto and bruschetta. And I use tons of basil and spaghetti sauce that's made from scratch. I just, basil is like my favorite herb ever. So I do a lot with basil. And we can tomato sauce, we can tomato paste, we can diced tomatoes.

37:30
when they're coming in. Radishes. Radishes are great in salad. But did you know that you can make a quick pickled radish? I have heard that me personally. I don't I'm not a big pickled anything person. Well, pickled radishes are wonderful if you like pickled stuff. So yes, so there's all these things that you can do with what comes in from the garden, but my favorite thing is just to have him bring in a bunch of different leafy greens.

37:59
and some tomato and some cucumbers and just have a salad. You know, it's easy.

38:06
Yeah, I love salads. As I grew up, one of the things that was very impressionable is I had a grandmother who would always eat her salad at the end of the meal. And in traditional Americans, most of us eat our salads as an appetizer. And as a little kid, I would be like, grandma, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? And she would always look at me and she would be like, Sean?

38:34
because it's like nature's broom. It just cleans everything down when you're done. And I was, and it's so for me, when I was a little kid, it shifted and it's always been an impressionable thing. And I know it's influenced me. We would be in the garden and picking all the little things until I grew up in the garden as well.

38:54
Yep, exactly. Sean, we could talk for hours. You are the chattiest person I've ever had on the podcast, which is wonderful, but I try to keep these to half an hour. So would you like to come back in the fall and tell me where things are at then? I would love to, Mary. I really appreciate all of your time, and I do enjoy talking, so thank you for allowing me that space. Oh, absolutely, and I have one more question if you can make it a short answer.

39:21
How old are you? Because you sound like you've lived a hundred lifetimes and enjoyed every one of them. You know, I've wondered how many past lives I've lived, but in this one, I am currently 39 years old. You've done a lot in that time and you've done a lot of good in that time. Keep doing that. Well, thank you, Mary. Thank you. Keep sharing the journeys that we have. I'm trying. This is an awesome show and I can't wait to come back. All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Sean. Thanks, Mary.