Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders

Today I'm talking with El at Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders.

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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. Today I'm talking with El, Minnesota half-assed homesteaders. Good morning, El, how are you? Good morning, I'm wonderful, how are you? I'm great, it is a glorious day in Minnesota this morning. It's beautiful, I always love it when I can go out and do chores in the morning with a sweatshirt on and you have that perfect, like, cool weather. It just...

00:29
It starts the day off perfect. Yeah, it's almost feeling like back to school day, used to feel when I would go back to school every year in Maine. So yeah, it's cool outside, but it's so sunny and everything's bright and shiny. It's lovely here. You are in Pine City? Pine River. Pine River, sorry. Nope, that's not it. And that's north of the cities, right? Yeah, we're in the Brainerd Lakes area.

00:55
Oh, so you're up there. You're in the really pretty area of Minnesota. Yes. It's beautiful up here. Awesome. Okay. So two things, El and I were talking before I started recording. El's real name is Elspeth. And I was saying that that's one of the most beautiful names I've ever heard. And I thought she might be named after a family member, but no, she's named after a person in a book. So do you want to tell me about that? Yeah, absolutely. I don't ever remember the name of the book.

01:25
But when my mom was pregnant with me, she was reading a book that had a good witch who was a steward of the earth and she would go around planting flowers and bringing life back to dead areas on earth. And her name was Elspeth. And my mom fell in love with the name.

01:52
They were going to name me Rowena after my great grandma. Um, but once mom found that name, she really liked it. And my dad liked it because I'm the youngest of four kids and the last girl. Um, and he thought it sounded like a princess name. So he was okay with that. And then gave me the middle name of Prairie.

02:19
Um, because he wanted to name me Prairie Rose. So they both kind of got to pick and ended up with Elspeth Prairie. I, like I said before, I think it's absolutely beautiful and how appropriate considering what you're doing with your life that you are named after, uh, a princess or whatever that, that basically stewards the earth. I, it's come to full.

02:46
come to full fruition for me. And it's one of those things that now, especially since my mom has passed on, and I'm kind of keeping her legacy alive too in homesteading and foraging, natural medicine, things like that, that I realized that maybe she was, she was getting to something and kind of determining my fate before I even knew it. So.

03:13
I feel like this podcast episode is going to be magical. That's how it feels from the start. Okay. So, and another thing, I love Minnesota half-assed homesteaders for a name. That is fantastic. We, you know, a lot of people who end up joining say, I joined because of the name. My husband and I started it about two years ago.

03:38
kind of just as a way for us to document what we're doing on our homestead. Our successes, our failures, our challenges. And it kind of grew into this community. It was originally strictly for people who were in Minnesota. But then we found, you know, we had people who had growing or similar growing seasons that we have.

04:08
and had similar interests and we wanted to have that diversity to be able to compare and contrast. So we started getting people from all over the United States and now we have

04:21
5,000 people, 5,400 I think in two years. So it's kind of grown into this fun little community of people who are like-minded. And our whole purpose for the name of the group is that we're not fancy. We don't necessarily, especially when we started, we didn't have a lot of money to put into.

04:49
our homestead, but we knew that we wanted to make our own food, provide for ourselves and be as self-sufficient as we could. And I was joking one day saying, well, I guess we're just doing it the half-assed way. And that is how Minnesota Half-Assed Homesteaders came about because we do what we can with where we are and what we have.

05:19
using plastic grow bags on the deck because we have horrible soil and we didn't know what our you know sun exposure was we didn't know where our best places to grow were and most of our yard was too shady for gardening anyway so over the last couple of years we've cut down trees and kind of expanded and built our way up.

05:47
to having raised beds and chickens and ducks, and we're just gonna keep seeing where things go. But that's kind of how we started, was just working with what we have and just wanting to kind of build this dream for our future of being able to be self-sufficient in as many ways as we can be with the limited land and resources that we have.

06:17
Yep, absolutely. I'm always saying do what you can with what you have where you are. Yep. And it's better to be half-assed than no-assed. So you're doing a good job. You know, exactly. And the other thing I like about it is that it implies that there's, you know, some amount of work that goes into homesteading. Some people think that homesteading is just, oh, I have this little vegetable garden and I just kind of putz. And

06:47
Homesteading is hard work and it is a labor of love. It's a lot of dedication. It's a lot of heartbreak, but there's also a lot of joy that comes with it. And we wanted that to kind of be one of our messages too, of it's not for the faint of heart, but anybody can do it. And I get a lot of people that I talk to who say,

07:14
Oh, I would love to have a homestead, but I don't have any land. I live in town and I want a garden. And, you know, I always point out, like we started with buckets on our deck. Um, and you don't even need buckets. You can use, you know, empty coffee containers and, you know, like empty food containers to get started. It's not something where you really have to put a big investment in right away.

07:44
And once you figure out what works for you, then you can expand. Um, but that's kind of always been where, you know, I guess kind of the soul of our group and of our homestead has been with.

08:03
being half-assed, but also, you know, it's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of failure. But at the end of the day, it is very fulfilling looking at our...

08:18
cabinets looking at our pantry and knowing that we grew that, that we preserved that. Absolutely and my definition of failure is not doing anything. My take on my mistakes, which people would call failures, is that they're learning experiences.

08:42
Exactly. And, you know, there's stuff that we've done that just has not worked out. But very rarely have we ever went, well, I guess we're done with that. We're never going to do it again. It's okay. Here's how we can do this better next time.

09:01
Yeah, and the other thing is that sometimes things that you try, you can't make go because you don't have the conditions to make it go. Correct. So you can't count that as a failure because it's nothing that's beyond your control. Right. So, you said you started out small. Where are you now? How are you doing now? Now we have... Oh...

09:28
Can I talk? You can talk. Hubby's here. My husband, Eric. Welcome, Eric. The other part of Half-Assed Homestead. Hi. He knows better on where we're at because he does all the building. I just help with procurement. Okay, sure. Chime on in, Eric. All right. Right now we're growing in about 70, 5-gallon buckets still. We have 22 raised beds that are around a 5-foot diameter.

09:57
and 70 foot hugelkultur mound that's doing very mediocre. Okay. I also have just a shelter logic, 20 foot greenhouse with a few various greens and some starts in it. Awesome. Can you, can you do me a favor and explain what a hugelkultur mound is, how you, how you did that? Because I keep hearing about it. I keep reading about it, but I don't know how to explain it.

10:26
Simply, it's just a compost hill you grow on. It's a fancy compost hill in simplest terms. Ours, I didn't do full horticulture because I didn't have the time to do it. I laid out just fresh cut and some forest fall trees we had in the yard in a long line. Put a little bit of dirt on it, let it sit for about two weeks to compress some, and then just pile dirt and straw on it. Okay.

10:54
It so it ain't fully composting it has some hot spots where he just kills everything because some of the stuff is composting a little too well. I figured in five years, it'll be a good mound to grow crap on. And the whole kind of concept of a Hugo culture is that you basically create a self feeding self sustaining environment for whatever you're planting in there. So the

11:22
tree fall and whatever you're putting underneath the soil ends up composting, which feeds your plants. And then because you have all of the extra wood and it's in essentially a stack or a mound, as it rains, that wood absorbs the water. So theoretically, you should never have to touch your hugelkultur. You shouldn't have to water it. You shouldn't have to fertilize it.

11:53
this microclimate for whatever's growing on there. So right now we use that for our potatoes and then our squashes. So we did squash all along the top so that as they grow, they'll go down the mound so that they're easier to harvest. And then I also have my blueberry and my raspberries in the end of the mound. And then we just have wildflowers all over.

12:21
I bet that's gorgeous right now, because this is the end of the season for wildflowers. It's mostly our zinnias and some of our nasturtiums. It was really pretty when all of our potatoes were blooming, because then we had the purple flowers all over the mound. We do still have quite a few squash blooms, but next year we're going to start over and really put down a lot of tack mulch.

12:49
because the hardest part about maintaining it because it's kind of this, you know, natural microclimate is there is a lot of weeds. Yeah. So we're gonna do tack mulch at the beginning of the year so that we can kind of use that for some weed control to make it a little easier on ourselves so we're not spending an entire day weeding. Yes, because weeding is terrible.

13:17
I hate weeding. I hate it. I don't want to do it and I don't do it because I'm not the gardener my husband is but I remember weeding with my mom in her garden and I despised every second of it. When I'm growing up with my mom in her garden, I also I hate weeding. I don't like it. I never have.

13:40
And I, but I always wanted all of the goodies that came out of the garden. I wanted the fresh tomatoes and the fresh peas. And so my mom would be like, you didn't pay the weed tax, so you don't get any. You don't work, if you don't work, you don't eat. Yeah. If you don't work, you don't eat. And so I would go out to the garden and I would be more than happy to help pick stuff. But when it came to the weeding, I was like, I don't want to do it. And so my mom would.

14:04
finally get to the point where, you know, she'd come in with these gorgeous peas and I'd want to eat them and she's like, you didn't come out to help weeds so you don't get any. Oh, that's, that's mean. I mean, I know it's tough love, but it's mean. Tough love and it teaches you that, you know, you need to work for what you want. And if you want it bad enough, you'll do the things you don't like. Yes. Yes, you will, because that's how it works.

14:31
So how did you guys do with rainfall this summer of never ending rain in southern Minnesota? Because I don't know what it's been like for you. You know, we were pretty... Obviously, it was a pretty mild winter, so we didn't have the snowfall to start out the season with adequate moisture. But we did have a lot of rainfall. And...

14:58
For us, in some cases, that's been nice because one of our biggest challenges with expanding the homestead and the gardening has been water sources. So last year we ended up putting in a well at the other end of the yard that's run off of our solar generator so that we can water everything at that end of the yard because that's our direct sun. It's, you know, it gets Northeast sun.

15:28
Um, and that was our biggest obstacle. Uh, we, we didn't have a lot of success the year before last down there because we just, we were running hoses and our well that we have here wasn't enough to support it. So we're thankful this year that we have it, but we've had to use it very rarely because of

15:57
the rainfall. Now, the other way that we designed our beds is it's a raised bed, but then in the middle of the bed is a five gallon bucket that has holes drilled into it in the bottom. And the purpose for us doing that is that when it rains, we can take the cover off and let it catch rain. So it'll help to water, kind of disperse the water throughout from

16:28
the middle of the bed. But then we also, when we are weeding, or if we have, you know, a tomato that's gone bad, we put our compost into the middle of the bucket so that it can put the nutrients back into the soil so that we don't have to do as much soil amendments. That's brilliant. We also have started a couple of colonies of worms that we've kept going of red wigglers.

16:57
And so each spring, we'll get a pretty healthy batch of worms going over the winter. And then we can just put a handful of compost and worms in the bucket in the spring. And then they help to aerate and spread the nutrients out, eat the compost. So that has helped having that set up so that it's not as

17:26
you know, these solid beds that have to be watered. Um, that really has been beneficial for us too, even with the rain and having that, I think also helps with some of the drainage because we haven't really had overwatered stuff. We haven't had anything that's really drowned because of too much water. And I think that that's because of how we designed our raised beds. That whole.

17:56
story of what you've done with that bucket and how you're using it sounds really simple, but it's also ingenious. It's really smart. It's, it is in the spirit of half-assed homesteaders. We try a bunch of different things and see if they work. And if they work, we ramp them up. So one of the other things that we did this year is we were gifted from somebody in our group.

18:24
a water catchment system that had four large barrels. We decided it doesn't really work with our setup and we're going to do a water catchment system in the future. But we ended up taking one of those barrels and while I was at work one day, Hubby went and drilled holes and

18:53
from the top to the bottom, I think we have six rows. The top was cut off and then we used a heat gun and actually a wine bottle to heat up the slits and then push the wine bottle in to kind of make it a cup. Yeah. To turn it into a planter for herbs and it's kind of my like salad planter. So I have chives and tomatoes in the top.

19:20
Um, and then all of our herbs and lettuces around the side, but we did the same concept that we did with the five gallon buckets in that with using a four inch PVC pipe. So there's actually a four inch PVC that runs from the bottom all the way up to the top that has a cap on it so that when I need to water, just because, you know, it's a little closer together, it's a little bit harder to water all the way to the bottom.

19:50
I just stick the hose in the middle and I let it fill up until it starts spouting water out the top. And I think I've probably only had to water that thing three times this summer. But then we can do the same thing with the compost too. So we just, you know, put a leaf matter or any weeds, anything like that down into the hole and between the water and the...

20:18
the compost and the worms, it's been really, really healthy with all the plants. So we're hoping to do another one or two of those for next year. But we looked at it and it was just stuff that we had laying around. Most people have a chunk of PVC pipe and an old tub or something around to do it, but it really helps, we've noticed.

20:47
you know, retaining moisture, being able to water easier, but also with our soil health. The ones where we kind of had bad soil to start with because we were using what we had. After two seasons of using the bucket with the compost and the worms, the soil is beautiful, and it is healthy. It's balanced, and we haven't really had a whole lot of issues with

21:17
either because we do a lot of companion planting. So I think that all of that, we've kind of hit a sweet spot, so to speak, knock on wood. I hate to say that because I feel like we're deeming ourselves for disaster next year. But it's been a good year. And despite the lack of water in the spring, and then the constant rain all summer.

21:45
I think our setup is kind of the perfect system for that. I am so glad that you have had a good growing season. We have not had a good growing season here in Lesor, Minnesota. No, Minnesota is rough. Yeah, I've talked about it a lot on the podcast already, so I don't want to get too far into it. But the one thing that it did teach us that we didn't know is that you don't have to

22:15
to stake your tomato plants. We couldn't go stake our baby tomato plants this spring because it was a soupy mess in the garden. Could not get out there without sinking up to our ankles. And the tomato plants didn't die, they just stalled out. And we're pulling in tomatoes off those plants and they are literally laying on top of straw because we had to put straw in so that the fruits that were on the ground wouldn't rot. So you know.

22:44
Our tomatoes are that are in our raised beds, the ones that are in the buckets we stayed up. Um, but our raised bed ones, we did not stake and they are, you know, taking over, they're laying on top of other stuff. They're hanging off the side. They're, you know, growing, laying on the ground and they are coming in like mad. Um, we had no idea that you didn't actually have to stake them.

23:14
You don't. Generally when people recommend staking your tomatoes, it is so that you can get the appropriate airflow so that your, your vegetables, your tomatoes don't end up rotting, but you know, if you think about commercial tomato fields, they don't stake theirs, they don't trellis theirs, they don't do anything. They literally just.

23:42
put them in the ground and they grow like bushes. Yeah, yep. So it hasn't been a total loss that we thought it was going to be this year. That's good. We have some, we have 50 young tomato plants that my husband Jess put in the actual garden, like a month ago. Oh wow. Cause we had them growing in the greenhouse. We put up a greenhouse in May.

24:08
a hard side of greenhouse and my husband was smart and planted 50 more tomato plants from seed back in mid-June because he knew that we were going to have issues with the plants that were in the garden already. And those tomato plants look gorgeous. I looked out the other day and I was like, oh my God, look at that beautiful row of tomato plants. You know, and it's funny that you mentioned that because our tomatoes that we actually put in the bucket.

24:38
did not, granted the sunlight that they get is a little bit different than the ones that are down in our actual raised beds. But the ones that we put in the buckets did not do well. Our plants didn't do very well, but they were the...

24:59
the little, kind of the more, so we learned a big lesson this year that the soil that you use for your seedlings is vital to the health and abundance of your plant. Oh, yes. We had a bunch that we had used some compost mix that we had gotten from the store and it wasn't composted enough. So we ended up...

25:28
burning all of our seedlings because they got too hot. So we started just doing our own mix of taking a big giant tub and doing a third potting soil, a third compost and a third perlite. Yep. And those ones, when we did our second start, our second set, because we saw that our first ones weren't doing very well.

25:54
those ones did amazing and they're continuing. Those are the ones that are producing. I mean, the plants are so full. I don't know how I'm gonna get all the tomatoes out of them. But the ones that were in the first set that were in the less nutritious soil just did not do well. And so I'm glad that we went and we did do the second round of starting with new soil

26:25
everything that we started with that first set just didn't do very well when we, you know, planted it with a hope and a prayer. But even the same tomatoes, the same kind from the same pack of seeds, the ones that were in the soil that got too hot were having a lot of issues with blossom end rot and with cracking.

26:49
But the exact same ones that were started in the better soil, we haven't had any of those issues with. So it really is kind of amazing how you can just make one change, you know, with seed starting in a couple of different batches and really see the difference that that change makes either positive or negative. Absolutely. I can't agree more. And

27:18
I end up talking about tomatoes a lot on this podcast because I happen to love tomatoes. I love spaghetti sauce. I love bruschetta. I love just a cucumber and a tomato cut up with some dressing on it. I love tomatoes. So if it seems like I talk about tomatoes on this podcast a lot, I do because I love tomatoes. Not everybody loves tomatoes. So I'm sure that I've had people like...

27:46
leave because they're like, I can't listen to tomatoes anymore. Funny because I adore fresh tomatoes. I always have. Eric does not like them. So a lot of people who know that they're like, why do you guys grow so many tomatoes when he doesn't like tomatoes? So we grew one cherry tomato plant this year for me for like fresh tomatoes to have in salads or just to eat, however. Yeah. But we use a lot of tomato products as well.

28:15
Um, and we love making last year. We did catch up. We did pizza sauce. We did pasta sauce. Um, we did our own barbecue sauce last year and you know, it's the stuff that we use on a daily basis and a lot of it is condiments, but you know, we're Minnesotans and it gets cold here in the winter and sometimes you just want to have, you know, spaghetti once a week. Um.

28:41
So yeah, we talk about our tomatoes a lot as well, just because that's, I think, what we grow the most of, but it's because it's what we use the most of. Yeah, exactly. That's us too. And I would talk about cucumbers a lot, but cucumbers are not easily preserved. You basically preserve cucumbers by making pickles. That's pretty much it, because you can't freeze them, because they go to mush. And you can't just can a pickle. I mean, a tomato. I can't even talk. A cucumber.

29:11
because it doesn't taste like anything if you just can a cucumber, you have to make them into something. So I love cucumbers, but I don't talk about them a lot because I don't use them in a lot. I eat them in season and that's pretty much it. So I was going to say about tomatoes, the other reason tomatoes are important is because they are a huge source of antioxidants and that's really important for your body. So that's the other reason that I eat a lot of them.

29:40
I talk about tomatoes more than I talk about Maggie my dog. So I guess that's okay. Just change her name to tomato and then people- No, no. I can't do it. She's been Maggie since before we picked her up. So I can't change her name now. Yeah, we're known around town as the dog people and the garden people because that's-

30:06
That's pretty much what we talk about. That's pretty much our lives is our dogs and our gardens. What kind of dogs do you have? We have three. So we have Bert. He is a King Corso Mastiff. So he's our big boy. Oh, yeah. Loves just this morning we were out in the garden. He loves fresh vegetables. And so his favorite thing is garden snacks. And even this morning, he was.

30:33
sticking his head in the bean plant, pulling beans off of our bean bush. Oh, he even picks them himself. Oh, he will help himself to those and cucumbers. And he's not a huge fan of tomatoes, but his beans, cucumbers, he will help himself. He thinks that it's the greatest thing that mom and dad built him and all you can eat buffet. Okay. And then the other two dogs? The other two we have Sally. She's our golden doodle. She's our little...

31:00
our little rescue we found actually Burt found her running down the middle of the road by us. Oh my. And went to save her. And then we have their not planned baby that we call our canoodle because she's a cane corso and a doodle cross. And Abby's so she's kind of the the best and the worst of both of us. Your canoodle I love that. That is so cute. Okay. All right.

31:29
Well, if it makes you feel any better, Maggie loves winter squash. She loves slices of zucchini. She loves slices of cucumber. She loves watermelon, more than anything in the world. Our dogs are melon fans. I kind of thought that they would be. My other dog, Emmett, that I used to have, he loved melon, but Bert never really liked it and I think it's a texture thing. Yeah.

31:59
We can't eat watermelon without Maggie sitting at our feet, being very, very well behaved and just staring at us like, can I please have a piece? And she doesn't, she's not a begging dog. Like we trained her not to beg. So her version of begging is just sitting politely beside you and waiting for a piece to be offered to her. Bert doesn't beg, but in the true nature of a mastiff, he will just sit there and drool. Yeah.

32:28
two laces down the side of his face until you give him some. So that's his way of begging for food. Yeah. Maggie's way is being very pretty. She's a mini Australian shepherd and she's the classic black tri. So she has the gold beauty marks above her eyes. And she's beautiful. And she knows the face to put on to be like, I'm just waiting patiently. I'm being good until you give me some. Right.

32:57
So she doesn't beg, she doesn't whine, she doesn't try to get your food, but she definitely makes herself available. They'll get someone when you're done. Yeah, and she just loves watermelon. If we cut a watermelon open on the counter, she hears the snap when it comes apart, and she comes running from wherever she is in the house and sits down and she's like, I'm ready and I'm pretty. Cool, good, we'll get to you when we get to you.

33:27
So yeah, I try not to talk about Maggie too much anymore because I really talked about her the first six months of the podcast. So I'm like, it's gotta be relevant. So- Well, we talk about the things we love and the things that are important. And honestly, our dogs are a central part of our homestead. So it's kind of, we don't have kids, we've never had kids, don't ever wanna have kids.

33:56
So it's, you know, our dogs are our babies, and then we have our chickens and our ducks, and they take up our time, so. Oh yeah, yep. We have four adult kids, and the youngest one still lives with us. He's 22. He'll be 23 in December, oh my God. And I don't talk about the kids much, mostly because they all, one lives in Florida, one lives in Nebraska,

34:26
Minnesota not with us and then the youngest lives with us and the youngest doesn't want me to talk about him on the podcast. He's like, it's your podcast, don't talk about me. I'm like, okay, that's fine. So I don't really have little kids to talk about. I don't have medium kids to talk about and the grown kids don't want me to talk about them. Well, and that's why you have Maggie. I do. She's the kid that doesn't tell me not to talk about her.

34:55
Usually she barks in the background. She's been real good this morning. I haven't heard her yip yet. So anyway, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me, Elle. It's been a pleasure. I apologize that it's taken us so long to connect. This ended up working out. I took a couple of days off from work to do the fall stuff. We're working on stew and soup this weekend. Hubby planted leeks.

35:25
Yum. And they're doing amazing. So we are doing our beef stew that we put up. We are gonna try freeze drying that this year too. And then it's soup weekend. So we have chicken wild rice soup that we're gonna be making and potato leeks. So. I am so looking forward to fall soup season. I just mentioned this to my husband yesterday.

35:55
I was like first cold weekend, I am making French onion soup. I am making chicken, wal-braise soup. I am making bacon potato soup. And if Cameron doesn't want it, he's our son, you and I are gonna eat it and I'm gonna freeze the rest of it. Because we didn't really do a lot of soups last winter. I don't know why, but we didn't. And I have just been craving soups. So as soon as it gets cold, it's gonna be like three weekends of soups going on. I am.

36:23
eternally and will always be a soup girl. I used to say that I could live off of soup. Oh, me too. Eric is not a soup fan. He's not a chili fan. He likes everything that goes into them separately. Yeah. But he likes stew. He'll do that. But I am the soup person. So I know how you feel there. I did. Actually, we just pulled him out of the freeze dryer the other day.

36:51
because last winter I made ham and bean soup and I made chicken enchilada soup for me for lunches for work. And I just, I made too many, you know, starts getting hot and you don't wanna eat soup. So we freeze dried them so that we can take them out on the ice this winter when we go ice fishing. So that'll be a new adventure for us too with our first actual like freeze dried meals. So we're really looking forward to doing that this winter.

37:20
That's so fun. You're gonna have to message me and let me know how it was. I'm really, really hoping we have some winter squash growing out in the garden. I haven't dared to ask because I'm afraid that they didn't make it. But I love making squash soup too. So that's gonna be on list for like January, if we have any, I will roast it and freeze it. I'm looking forward to that too. And just fresh squash. Luckily, ours is doing okay.

37:48
Emerald pumpkins are taking over everything. So we're going to definitely have a lot of pumpkin, but I'll have to figure out what to do with all that. Yep. And we're going to have to, the husband and I are going to have to get up to the apple place in Jordan and get some apples so that we can do some apple crust here in the next couple of weeks. Cause that is like the, the thing for September. Cause I make a killer apple crust. Where you're talking about and their apples are divine. Mm hmm.

38:17
Yep. Um, I'm not talking about the, the apple barn though. I'm not talking about Minnesota's biggest candy store place. I'm talking about the one further up 169. And I'm not talking about Sponsles either. Uh, maybe that's one that I'm thinking of. But they do. Sponsles has great apples as well. They actually sold an apple called Minnesota 1666 about eight years ago. And they ended up renaming it, whoever developed it.

38:45
renamed it the Renaissance Apple, which I thought was so funny. And it's an early apple. It's really hard to find because they aren't, there's not a lot of supply yet because it's a brand new variety. It is so good. It's great to eat. It's great to bake with. It's great to dry for like, you know, fruit leather or apple wedges that are just dried that just eat. Yeah. It's fantastic. Crack some of those down. Yeah. I love them.

39:14
We won't get any this year. They're probably sold out by now because they're they're really early apple Okay, but anyway, we've been talking for almost 40 minutes. I try to keep these to half an hour So i'm gonna i'm gonna cut you loose. I'm sure you got stuff to do Yep, we gotta run to town and do some errands. So All right. Well again, it was an absolute pleasure talking with you l I appreciate it. Thank you so much You too. Thank you. And if you ever want to do this again

39:43
would be more than happy. All right we'll have to set it up for spring so I can find out how your winter went. Yeah that's a great idea. All right cool thank you. You're welcome. Bye. Bye.