SPEAKERS

Paul Ronsheim, Pete Lammers, Jason Fischbach

JASON FISCHBACH  00:00

This is a podcast about new crops. You’re gonna love it. Join us on the cutting edge, a podcast in search of new crops for Wisconsin. Hello and welcome to the cutting edge podcast in search of new crops in Wisconsin. This is our 25th episode and we are going to do something a little different. This is going to be the first in our series of a day in the life day in the life of researchers working on emerging and new crops. And this episode will be a day in the life of a hazelnut researcher, me, back on April 23. I spent some time across the state of Wisconsin working on our various hazelnut projects. So, bring you along for a ride in the day of a life of a hazelnut researcher. Hope you enjoy.  Alright, it’s 6:15 Friday, April 23. And like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, we are fully loaded snacks and supplies. We’ve also got 600 pounds of hazelnut shells and 800 pounds of in- shell hazelnuts on the back of the pickup truck here ready to take the Gays Mills, Wisconsin. That’s my first stop of the day. Hopefully all as well in the house just snuck out hopefully I didn’t wake anybody up. I’ve got five hours of windshield time. It’s always always fun. But this time of year it is actually kind of fun to go from winter because it’s still winter here. We are so far behind. But it’s springtime in the south I’m told, so that’s always fun to to make the trip. I’m heading down to Gays Mills to drop off all these hazelnuts for a researcher that I’m working with, Pete Lammers that is doing a hazelnut feeding trial. After Gays Mills, I’m heading to West Madison and Stoughton to visit a couple of trials and then back North to do the same thing. So if all goes well, I should be back home here sometime before 10pm I hope, all right let’s go.  Okay, so far so good trips going well about an hour hour 15 into it. And cruising down 63 and you know this is always a it’s a fun time of the trip because it’s so pretty. I think I’ve crossed the Namekagon like 13 times and I always wonder why have I not paddled it yet, the reason is because I’m always driving in this car this truck heading south to do work across the state so one of these days I’m gonna do the Namekagon. It’s tough to leave such a gorgeous country. But it’s also fun to to get on on these road trips and see these hazelnut trials that we’ve got spread across the state and all the cool projects that they’re doing. It’s also fun just to see what what else is happening in Wisconsin.  Okay, where are we? We are on highway 53. And somewhere near Chippewa Falls, I think and been driving through corn and bean country and reflecting on a bit. Prepare yourself here, I’ve been reflecting on you know, why why are we doing the hazelnut project? And, you know, I look across this landscape, nothing but corn and soybeans and I just think, Really? Is that? Is that it? Is that our agricultural system going forward forever? Or is there more that we can do? Are there other opportunities? Are there other ways that farmers can make money? Is there something better we can do for the ecosystem and the landscape out there? And that’s what motivates me, right? More so than anything else, just like there are other opportunities, other fun things to do. And we don’t have a nut crop in Wisconsin, you know, we have a little bit of almonds, or sorry, walnuts, we certainly don’t have almonds, a little bit of walnut production. There’s some wild harvesting of hickories, some wild harvesting of hazelnuts, but we do not have a commercial crop. And states that have a commercial nut crop. They love it right. So California almonds, hazelnuts in Oregon, pecans in Georgia, it’s a big industry. It’s good for the farmers, it’s good for the post harvest processing. It’s good for marketers, it’s good for Agra-tainment, on farm sales, all that stuff. And that’s what I’m after. I want to see that kind of economy here in Wisconsin. And it’s a good place to do this work because culturally, at the University in the grower community, we’ve long embraced diversity within our landscape, but it just seems in the last, I don’t know since I’ve started last 15 years or so that we’ve kind of lost that enthusiasm for diversity and I don’t know why that is, or some diversification. So, there, sorry about the ranting, but just thought it would be helpful to hear why we do hazelnuts, why we’re excited about it and what we can do by bringing this new crop to the state. Alright, we just ran the gauntlet down 94, I don’t know who we is, who do I keep referring to we, I just ran the gauntlet done 94 survived, just exited here at Black River Falls and we’re gonna head down 131 we’re gonna work our way through what is an amazing part of the state, the driftless region is just gorgeous. It’s so fun to drive through here especially compared to the flatlands that I just came through. So we’ll head down through Sparta, make our way to Westby and Viroqua, see what’s happening in that region with Organic Valley with the windmills and all that stuff it’s just fun to see. See the energy and the excitement in that part of the the state and then we’ll end up cutting down through 14 there through Readstown,  Soldiers Grove and head on over to Gays Mills.  I did it I made it in just under five hours. It’s 11:10. And without stopping and my back teeth are floating. So you’ll have to pardon me for a minute and we’ll get right back to this and see who we see here in Gays Mills.  Alright, so I’m here in Gays Mills, Wisconsin at the Kickapoo Culinary Center. And we have just transferred about Oh, Any guesses? 4000 pounds. 4,000 sounds better. Oh, 1600 pounds of stuff from one truck to the other. I’m here with Pete Lammers. Pete, what are we what are we doing?

Pete Lammers  06:33

Well we’re getting ready to do another round of feeding trials and pigs. We’re gonna be feeding a mix of hazelnut, hazelnut shells, and then henschel hazelnuts to pigs to see how they grow in meat quality on those hazelnut fed pigs.

JASON FISCHBACH  06:52

When do we expect results? Are the trials or when do the trials start? Were they being held?

Pete Lammers  06:58

Yeah, the trials are being held out at the Iowa State University Western Research Farm in Castana, Iowa. We will be starting the first round in May. And we expect to have two rounds of trials completed proximately end of September.

JASON FISCHBACH  07:16

Gotcha. So this is the second round of trials, what happened in the first round?

Pete Lammers  07:20

On the first round, we fed either a corn soy diet, or a diet corn soy diet diluted with 10% in Shell hazelnuts, and tracked growth and performance of the pigs. In that earlier trial, we found that the pigs fed the 10% hazelnut grew about the same rate as the regular fed pigs. There were slight differences in fatty acid profile in the two different types of pork.

JASON FISCHBACH  07:50

I know you’re a researcher and testing hypotheses here, but any guesses on what we might find in the second round.

Pete Lammers  07:56

So I would think that when we feed the shelled hazelnut at 10% in a corn soy diet, those pigs are probably going to grow a little bit faster. Probably have a higher level of oleic acid in the pork fat. We’re also really curious about we’re feeding 10-20 and 30% in shell hazelnuts, and we’re curious how that’s gonna impact their performance.

JASON FISCHBACH  08:23

Great. All right. All right now inside with Paul Ronsheim. And Paul, What’s your relationship with American Hazelnut Company?

Paul Ronsheim  08:34

I’m a member grower and I’m here helping with the production of the oil and roasted hazelnuts.

JASON FISCHBACH  08:43

So the hazelnuts are all cracked and sorted and cleaned up in Ashland, then they come here as clean kernels. Hopefully if I did my job right, with no shells. And this is where they’re turned into the amazing products the American Hazelnut Company makes. Paul Can you just kind of show me around what what facilities so this is a shared use kitchen facility. So you just have some equipment that you have here but otherwise the rest of the stainless steel and sinks and all that stuff. This is part of the kitchen right that we just rent.

Paul Ronsheim  09:12

That’s correct. We have great workspace though with these tables. And cleaning, to clean up the equipment. We have two convection furnaces, ovens for two convection ovens for roasting the hazelnuts so we can do 100 pounds at a time. We also have our new oil expeller and flour mill, the mill isn’t new, but we’ve replaced the expeller with a much more robust model.

JASON FISCHBACH  09:44

So people are always asking me you know, what oil press works best for hazelnuts. I shouldn’t say everybody a few people, so what what oil press did you guys get and how did you decide which one to get?

Paul Ronsheim  09:58

This is a Kraft Kern, made in Germany, you can get them with with two screw heads, which doubles your productivity. It’s relatively low cost and a very robust design, very heavy, this one is 260 pounds and just runs quietly and smoothly. It’s quite an operation.

JASON FISCHBACH  10:25

Any idea how many, say gallons per hour you can extract with this?

Paul Ronsheim  10:30

Well, we are still in development on the throughput, we had to replace get a upgraded heater with more wattage because our temperature was not stable. So now that we have that assembled, we are going to continue with production. We’re matching what we were doing with a previous expeller.

JASON FISCHBACH  10:50

Gotcha. So you’re squeezing out the oil, then the leftover meal is ground up into flour. Could you do this where you’re just making the flour and have whole hazelnuts go in here? Does it have to be roasted kernels?

Paul Ronsheim  11:04

It would really have to be, they don’t have to be roasted. They can just take a regular raw hazelnut squeeze it if you want to do it that way.

JASON FISCHBACH  11:15

But you can you put a hole in-shell hazelnut in here?

Paul Ronsheim  11:18

Oh, no. Well, perhaps you could. I’m sure the screw is strong enough. Some people have done that. But that’s not our course. We don’t want the hazelnut, because we’re making flour, we want our pressed cake to remain clean.

JASON FISCHBACH  11:31

So right, if you squeeze it with the shell on then you’ve got shell in the meal and nobody wants that. So what’s in the cooler.

Paul Ronsheim  11:41

So in the cooler we have storage for both types of kernels, the midwest kernel that comes from Ashland, and the Oregon kernel that we buy in 1000 pound quantities and store here. We also store oil it settles though. cleans up and then we pour off the oil.

JASON FISCHBACH  12:03

Gotcha. So you’re doing an Oregon Midwest grown blend? Is that to make the oil product? That’s correct. Were 91% Oregon in our blend at this point. Gotcha. And why is that is there’s just not enough Midwest kernel, or?  It was at this point it’s a cost issue. These are about half the price of the Midwest kernel. So still financially useful to include them in our product. Okay, gotcha. Otherwise that price point would probably be pretty high for oil, even if it was pure midwest at this point, huh?

Paul Ronsheim  12:36

Well, the pure midwest has a better aroma and flavor. I would like to see us launch and a premium product line, which was 100% Midwest, it’s it’s better than what we’re getting from Oregon.

JASON FISCHBACH  12:50

What else are you selling? Are you doing any, can customers buy whole kernels?

Paul Ronsheim  12:57

Yes, customers buy whole roasted and also raw kernel working on new products which are flavored kernels in four ounce packs. And so that’s that’ll be in just a few months we should be launching those new products as a snack. Hazel snackers, their called.

JASON FISCHBACH  13:15

Have you made any yet here, you have any samples?

Paul Ronsheim  13:17

Yes.

JASON FISCHBACH  13:19

Okay, I’m back on the road. I enjoyed my time in Gays Mills. And just worked my way through the the apple orchards outside Gays Mills, gorgeous part of the state and I’m now 61 now I’m on 60 almost, I guess I’m just outside Gotham, following the Wisconsin River headed toward Madison, heading east and it is beautiful down here. The buds are just starting to break and see some baby leaves out and man and this is definitely a perk of the job is being able to drive around the state and just see what a beautiful state it is. Well, I must say that was good. I pulled over here near Spring Green on on highway 14 and had a good conversation with my colleague of more than decade, Lois Braun, the University of Minnesota who has been instrumental in developing the new germ plasm. And working with growers to get these, really move this hazelnut project along and one of the things we talked about was hazelnut propagation, it is the number one bottleneck bottleneck facing us here in the upper Midwest. We have identified, through great work by growers, private breeders, by Lois and her crew, by my crew. Great work identifying some top genetics that we have shown are capable of producing or supporting a commercial industry but we can’t get them propagated. We can do it through mound layering, but that’s just too slow. And we’ve been trying tissue culture and that’s driving everyone crazy. In particular those who are doing the work. I sympathize with them a lot because so many people are looking over their shoulder and waiting for them and they’re doing everything they can but this is a plant that is difficult to propagate, does not root very well. The rooting tricks that we can use tend to result in lateral bud abcission. And so we don’t get good survival, we don’t get good bud growth. Anyway, there’s a long list of challenges with this crop. And there are labs that have been working with hazelnuts, with American Hazelnut and the parentage accross the US and all share the same struggles. So we’ve got to figure it out. We just have to do it. So we are investing in some new technologies this year. They’re relatively low tech, but we’re putting everything we can on the table to see what we can do. So we’ll be doing more softwood stem cuttings. We’ve, you know, people have tried this in the past, there’s some good publications out of it. And it’s this trick of using hormones to get rooting, but then you counteract the bud growth. And so we’re going to try it again with soft wood stem cuttings, we need to generate good solid productive stock plants, which is not easy to do. Because you can’t just take these cuttings out of the outside, there’s just too much contaminants, bacterial fungi and all the rest of it got to do this in sterile lab cultures, otherwise the cuttings will rot. We’re also going to try a new method that has been done with some success in China, they have used it to propagate their Pingu hybrids. And it’s semi softwood cuttings taken from stool beds. So this is the first time we’ve tried it. Lois will be pioneering that work for us. And we’ll be doing some of it here in Wisconsin as well. There’s also some interest in doing some seed grafting as another low tech, you know, the growers are saying, Where are the plants? You guys have been doing this for a long time. Our funders have been saying, Where are the plants, you’ve been doing this for a long time. So we’ve been able to get small amounts through our stool bed layering, to get those out to growers. We’ve got trials now across the upper Midwest, but we want big production numbers so people can start putting acres and acres. And we’re you know, unapologetically ambitious about 20,000 acres by 2030. That’s about the scale of cranberries in Wisconsin, and we think the markets are there. We think the production capacity capacity is there, we certainly know the grower interest is there, we just got to get these things propagated. So we’ll see how it goes. But we’re doing more finally to move this along.  And we’re moving along nicely here on highway 14 heading to Madison. And we’re driving by quite a few of these direct consumer, Agra-tainment venues and gets you thinking about hazelnuts and how hazelnuts are positioned in the marketplace and what we do as the University to try to facilitate that market development. And you know, the The reality is that production is going to be pretty limited, production costs will be pretty high. So it’s not as simple as just dumping them on the nearest grain elevator, right, that’s not going to happen. What we need are growers maximizing the revenue potential. And that means selling direct to consumers. It means adding value to these hazelnuts using hazelnuts as an ingredient with some other ingredients or other flavorings or whatever it takes to be able to command a higher price in the marketplace and improve that gross profit margin to make up for a limited scale. So that’s that’s why the American Hazelnut Company is so important, for example, because they are taking their members hazelnuts, and trying to maximize value in the marketplace. And they will pioneer the way for other growers as we as we develop the industry. So it’s exciting. We’ve got a long track record here in Wisconsin selling direct to consumers. We know how to do it. We have business professionals that can help build those businesses. We have farmers that know how to do it. So it’s going to happen fast once we once we get supply ramped up.  Man, there’s just a lot to talk about here on Highway 14, we’re driving around or through Spring Green here and exciting developments with the Savannah Institute have purchased what they now call the North Farm in Spring Green, which will be a demonstration and research facility, a learning laboratory for agroforestry, which is the intentional use of livestock and woody plants. So trees and shrubs in a diversified agricultural landscape trying to maximize productivity from an acre of land using diversity, right, we call it niche space utilization. So if you grow one, crop, corn, soybeans, wheat, flowers, whatever it is, one variety is you have one rooting depth, you have one sort of growth spurt during the season. But if you look out in a natural ecosystem, if you look at a tall grass prairie, you have different sets of plants growing at different times of the years doing different rooting depths, and so they’re making better use of that space, if you will, that growing environment. The idea with agroforestry is do the same thing. Adding a tree component or a shrub component to your grasslands, for example. And hazelnuts are going to be a cornerstone species for that kind of work and we’re excited that the the Savannah Institute is really championing this and running with it. And they’ve got great partners with the Grantham Foundation and other funders. And as they get their their farm scaled up, it’ll be a great laboratory for others to learn, and we look forward in the future, establishing some larger scale research projects on their properties that we can’t do on the university stations that just don’t have the room.  So, lots happening here on highway 14. Okay, just crossed, crossed the county line. I’m in Dane County and my, my blood pressure’s rising. You know, I live in a part of the the, the state where in Bayfield County, there are zero stoplights and Ashland county what are their three, maybe four. And yeah, I don’t like it here. But we got work to do. So we’re going to do it. So I’m heading to West Madison, the research station, we’re going to sneak in here on the the west side of town and the West Madison Agricultural Research Station is host to one of our what we call a joint performance trial. So we are establishing a trial with the top genetics from the our breeding program, the Upper Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative, the top genetics from the Grimo nut breeding program in Ontario. And it includes some of the entries from the Nebraska Consortium, it’ll be both some of their hybrids. And eventually, later this year, the top European hazelnut sessions from or selections from Rutgers. So the goal is to put all these in the same location and grow them out and see how they do compared to each other. And it’d be an opportunity for growers to see these plantings in action. Now the Grimo material and two of the selections from the hazelnut Consortium, the Nebraska, Rutgers, Oregon crew are starting to produce nuts. We had our first small crop last year, and this year, we’re excited to see what they can do. So my, my job today is to take some growth and vigor ratings, certain survival in some of the newer material that we planted last fall. And we’re also going to do some pruning, which we’ll talk about when we get there.  So here I am at the West Madison Research Station, the hazelnut plots which are under what must be the world’s tallest tower. I don’t even know what this tower does, but it’s huge. And yeah, well anyway, so we got the trial going on here. And I just had a good consultation with Amaya Atucha, who is our fruit crop specialist with UW Extension. We’re all learning together on hazelnuts, right, there’s no track record. And so what we’re interested here in the Midwest is growing these hazelnuts as shrubs. They’re normally in Oregon, they’re growing as trees and the nuts fall off out of the trees onto the ground and you sweep them up. We can’t do that here. It rains in the fall. And in Oregon, it’s dry, so they can sit there for a while before they sweep them up. If we drop these things on muddy ground, they’re just gonna mold and be be a mess. So we are going to grow these as bushes so that we can harvest over the top with a straddle type harvester, like you would use in blueberries on a smaller height or even as big as olive trees can be harvested with this mechanical equipment. So that’s what we’re after. But how do you maintain the plant size and form to fit that harvesting system, and that’s what we, we have to figure out. So what we’re doing today is implementing three treatments, we’re just leaving these younger plants alone, or we are cutting out all but the the two or three most vigorous, dominant stems, or we’re just doing some interior thinning to make an open vase shape on these plants to let the sunlight get into the interior of the plant to make sure we get enough production throughout the plant. We’ll see what it looks like in a couple of years. Well, as you can probably hear, we’re on the Beltway here, going around Madison, heading down to Stoughton now, finished up in West-Madison where we did some pruning, which I explained earlier. So it’s about four o’clock on Friday. Traffic is as you’d expect, and hopefully we get to Stoughton by 4:30 if all goes well. Do a little herbicide work and then head on North, back to Ashland. And here we are bumper to bumper traffic who is the idiot that decided to go across Madison at four o’clock on a Friday. It was me. Well, this is why I live in Ashland pretty much. All right, we’re moving again. All is well. The tunes up. We’ll be to Stoughton in no time flat. Here we are Stoughton, Wisconsin, on a private farm. And it is one of three plantings that we call the Wisconsin production trials. These were funded in 2010 by S.A.R.E. A USDA program the S.A.R.E farmer rancher grant program, which is still around I highly encourage farmers to look into it and look to apply. So we used the funding in 2010 to establish three of these plantings in Wisconsin 2011. And they consist of full sibling offspring from a Cross made by Mark Shepherd and Forest Agriculture Enterprises basically, they took their two best plants created crossing block, let them self or cross pollinate and then harvested the seed, grew out the seedlings and then we have been growing them in these plantings since 2011. Here in Stoughton, one up at the Spooner Ag Research Station. And another one up by Bayfield. Wisconsin The goal was, well, there are many goals. One was to just evaluate how well the plants do and how they do across a range of environments. And what we found is that there are some amazing individual plants in this population. But on the average, the the average of the the progeny family, if you will, just really is not high enough to support commercial production. There’s too many duds too many plants in here that just haven’t produced or they didn’t really start producing until year eight, and cash flow on these types of plantings is hard enough as it is and waiting for your first nut till year eight just isn’t going to work. So we are mainly interested in the top plants. We have selected the top six from each of these plantings and we are propagating them. We did it last year, we’re going to do it again this year if we get good growth through mound layering, and we will then establish another round of trials using those top plants because this is why it takes so long in hazelnut breeding is we plant 2011 it’s now 2021, it took us 10 years, nine years technically, to find the top growing individual plants. However, we have no idea if that individual plant is actually good genetically, such that it’ll perform as well in different environments, right? It could just be it’s growing in a really nice spot here in the planting. And so we’ve got to do this, we got to go through this next round of trials. The other thing that we are doing with this planting and I can almost guarantee you the USDA, you know they’ve funded a lot of these SARE projects over the years. And this one has got to be at the top of the list in terms of bang for their buck. I mean, we have gotten so much out of these trials, we’ve used them for field days, demonstration plantings, harvesting trials. So the other thing we’re doing, no way we could have done this in 2010, 2011 is we now have these genetics or genomics tools, where we’re actually genetically fingerprinting each of the plants in this planting, we can then use that genetic information paired up with all of the phenotype data that we’ve collected. So all the stuff on nut yield, nut shape, nut size, shell thickness, plant form, plant size, all these different attributes that we’ve measured. And then we can use this genetic information combined with that phenotype information to develop these models that we can then use to be more informed, more targeted, more efficient in our next steps with breeding and when with respect to control crosses starting to cross different plants together to combine the traits of interest. So that is underway. The other thing that we are doing here is a size management trial. And that’s why I’m here today. So a couple of weeks ago, we went through here and implemented three different treatments to control plant size, right? Because the question is when these plants get so big, what do you what do you do? Do you cut them to the ground and let them grow back? You know, what happens to the plant when you do that? Does it get too big again, do do you reduce yields, if so by how much? We’re also looking at what if you just cut half the plant. In other words, you take half the stems to the ground and leaves the other half. And then a couple of years later, you take the rest of those plant the rest of the stem, so you’re sort of regenerating at one half at a time. So we implemented that trial a couple of weeks ago, and I’m here today doing some weed control. To allow those suckers to grow freely. We’ll have a deer fence installed on this planting as well to try to keep the deer off the those suckers so we get good data. So again, this is a gift that keeps on giving in terms of the the funding that we were able to turn and leverage into all this great data and results for for growers. It’s exciting to see.  Okay, so I am on highway 39 flying north. By flying I mean driving the speed limit. And it’s 6pm, the day is still young, and somewhere just south of Wisconsin Rapids I guess, and we are right in the middle, the central sands and this is veggie country. And one of the questions that we are wrestling with is, is there sort of a Goldilocks zone if you will in Wisconsin for growing hazelnuts. We know it’s widely adapted, we tend to see it on sandier ground because that’s where it can be competitive. But it does fine on clay does very well as we saw in Stoughton down on the the deeper, more organic soils or corn ground if you will, but where would it fit best economically? Where would it fit best for other production systems? Where does it fit best in terms of, of industries that can utilize equipment? Know how processing know how all that stuff. And, you know, I think the central sands is a candidate, right, it grows wild in the region. And we know that the central sands struggles with wind erosion. And it struggles with some nitrogen problems in groundwater groundwater supply, and hazelnuts are drought adapted, can grow in sandier soils. The other thing is, hazelnuts don’t get that tall where they could fit under a central pivot irrigation system. So the challenge though, would be can we convince producers in the industry to look at establishing some sort of, say, an alley cropping system with really wide rows, if you will, wide, wide alleys, and maybe double rows of hazelnuts, so add some income, diversity, add some, a little bit of, of wind mitigation, and it should fit into their systems, they know how to use the big equipment they know how to use, or do post harvest processing. They know how to grow and sell value added and high value crops. So I’m excited to see if this will this will play out here in this part of the state.  Alright, it’s 7:50 in the PM, and I gotta be honest, I’m starting to feel it, a little tired here, we’re doing the grind from Tomahawk to Prentice. It’s pretty country, but it’s a long drive. And it usually is, because I’m coming back from Madison. But it’s good time for reflection, one of my favorite podcasts that I listen to is ‘How I Built This’ with Guy Raz, and he, he walks through all these, you know, big name companies and how they got started. And it’s always exciting, because in a lot of cases, they got started by people, you know, really with nothing, they just had a tiny idea, and they just grew it in this big, big, big business or big, big movement. And at the end of the day, if hazelnuts are gonna, gonna happen, it’s gonna happen because of entrepreneurs and risk takers that are willing to say, you know what, it doesn’t scare me that there’s no hazelnut industry in Wisconsin, you know, there’s certainly growers out there that are risk averse, and say, Show me exactly where I’m gonna sell this show me exactly how it’s gonna grow. Tell me exactly how to do this. And I better expect to get exactly what you told me, right? Otherwise, I’m not doing it. They’re not going to do hazelnuts. So we we want growers, and we want people that see an opportunity, that see a challenge and thrive on that, and are willing to take this crop and turn it into a viable industry. And I’m excited to see how that plays out. We have no idea who’s gonna step up, right? That’s the fun part of this job. It’s like, who enters my world tomorrow, who who, who calls me and says, Hey, I want to do hazelnuts. And I’ve never met him before and we just see where it goes. That’s the fun part of a new crop and a new industry. And this is why I do this stuff. We can do, we can do this. It’s 8:45pm. I’m just south of Mellen, grinding our way up through through Ashland County. And I’ll tell you, it’s you know, this is the tricky part of the road because I’m tired, plus you’ve got all the deer. So I like to get behind a pulp truck or logging truck, let them plow the deer off the road for me. So it works out pretty well. Just thinking about what’s coming up this next week. Right and one of the big projects are our half sibling starter plantings. One thing we are doing is while we wait for the clonal material to get propagated is to get growers used to growing hazelnuts, those that want to try it out, get them some, you know, lower risk, lower reward seedlings. And so we’ve saved seed from our top plants. no idea who dad is, but we know the moms are all pretty good. So we are going to sprout those here over the next coming weeks, grow them out in a nursery up in Bayfield. And then they’ll be made available to our grower networks. And we have seven networks so far across the upper Midwest, and each cluster has got a coordinator and the coordinator is in charge of pulling together a group of growers that can work together to grow hazelnuts, because that’s one of the essential parts of a hazelnut industry is being able to work together with other growers to share equipment, to pool supplies when they’re relatively limited, to share in costs, for example, like a harvester. And by working together, so we are intentionally trying to facilitate that by creating these grower clusters. And then we have growers within the clusters that apply or have applied for these plants and once they’re ready. In September, they’ll go out to…