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Twin Creek Gardens, CSA

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内容由Mary E Lewis提供。所有播客内容(包括剧集、图形和播客描述)均由 Mary E Lewis 或其播客平台合作伙伴直接上传和提供。如果您认为有人在未经您许可的情况下使用您的受版权保护的作品,您可以按照此处概述的流程进行操作https://zh.player.fm/legal

Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.

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 Beth at Twin Creek Garden CSA. Good morning, Beth. How are you today? Good morning. In this beautiful snowy weather, I am wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, have you guys not had a lot of snow this winter? No, it was crazy. Everything was awake. My gardens were beginning to bud, and now we just got a pile, I think almost 17.

00:29
18 inches in the last three days. So I'm a little worried about my lilacs and my other little bushes out there, my blueberries, but hopefully they'll be protected and they'll come through it anyway. This is the first... You're in Superior? Yeah, we're south of Superior, about 10 miles. This is the first big snow we've had all year. Yeah, it feels like Christmas.

00:56
Yeah, we were supposed to get six inches to a foot in this same storm that you guys are getting in Wisconsin. And we ended up with only like a couple inches here. Oh. So I don't know what happened to our Christmas snowstorm. It didn't happen. I'm kind of glad because we were in the same boat as you. Our maple tree has started to flower out and we had onion sprouting and stuff. So I don't know.

01:24
Anyway, tell me about yourself and Twin Creek Gardens, CSA. Well, this is kind of amazing because this is a long dream, long time dream come true in a short amount of time. I actually, for 34 years, was a classroom teacher and a reading specialist in particular. And in working with kids and with literacy and with writing and reading, I always had, you know,

01:54
the desire to have them learn more about who they are as people through what they were reading and writing, not just the ability to read and write. And so my passion for gardening and my love for people and helping the world become a better place, my son calls me the biggest liberal hippie in the world, which I wear as a badge of honor, by the way. You know, and so I've always had this desire to.

02:24
help others find their goal, or reach their goals and find their path to the healthiest life, the best life that they could have. And so I've been having kids listen to podcasts and watch videos in middle school and then write about how that affects them in their thinking and their process of who they wanna become and that kind of thing. And so CSAs have been...

02:51
Um, not very prevalent up here, but I love the idea because my father has always had a garden when I was young, I grew up digging in the dirt. My favorite thing of, of gardening was always the, the digging of the potatoes in October because I knew we were putting the garden to bed then, you know? And so, um, you know, I grew up south of Superior here, just about five miles from where I live right now. And my sweet husband grew up about.

03:19
mile and a half from this house, and we grew up together. We were 10 when we met, and we both loved gardens, we both loved horses, and nature, and just being, we're both country kids, let's put it that way. And we grew up and went our separate ways when you go to school in Superior. If you go to the Catholic school, you kind of lose touch with your friends from the country school.

03:44
And at least that's how it was. And so he went one way, I went the other. And then we met back at high school. We hardly had any friends in common, so we kind of went our separate paths. But he and his first wife loved gardening as well and raised three children in various country homes doing gardening and raising horses. And they had cows for a while. And so very much a farm family.

04:14
after college moved down to the Green Bay, Manitowoc area where I married and had my son. And then when my marriage fell apart, I came running home to the northern woods of Wisconsin. And my parents were still here in Paterson Park at that time. And so cable is where I landed because the school that I found that needed me was Drummond.

04:44
which all these sweet little towns up here are just, it's like going back in time. It's such a beautiful, fresh air. I'll never forget when I came home to do the interview in Drummond and I got out of the car, the air smelled different. I left Green Bay and the big city area, I came home and the trees up here, the air up here, I knew I had to come home.

05:13
We had a kind of randomly meandering here, but we had a school garden at Drummond that I helped organize and participate in. It was actually a high tunnel. And so I fell in love with that kind of gardening because it extended our season so nicely. And so that's kind of building blocks. My cable house had a third of an acre right in town.

05:42
I had a ring of cedar trees around my yard and so gardening in ground was really not possible. The cedar trees had taken over the ground and so it was more of a forest floor. So I learned to garden in raised beds and also in a lot of pots and green stock planters and such on my deck.

06:10
And so my little third of an acre there, I dreamed of a greenhouse. And so when it's a 1930s house, so the original garage was a little bit dated. And so as the roof started to collapse, I started to see a skeleton of a greenhouse instead of another garage. And so we had been working on that for several years, trying to make that come true. And then, um, through the course of.

06:39
the last 10 years when Rob and I found each other on Facebook, God bless Facebook Messenger, we became adult friends and kind of walked each other through a lot of really hard loss. And he lost an adult child, I lost an adult child, both of whom left little babies behind. And so

07:07
You know, we just kind of went through grief and friendship online for several years. And I dreamed of gardening in a bigger place, but had no, I mean, I actually looked at, at different plots of land out near cable to buy, to put up a big greenhouse, because I've always wanted to be able to continue that work with kids and the community to find a way to locally source healthy food. And

07:37
The work I did with students made me realize just how important nutrition is in terms of not just our bodies, but our brains and our education and being able to learn and live together in a healthy community has always been a goal of mine. And I collect people as well as lots of plants. And so I had a friend and her mother living with me at the cable house for a while.

08:07
after her father passed and we were trying to garden there and build community. We had a neighbor who had a big green lawn and so we talked her into putting in the beginnings of what I wanted to make a food forest. That wasn't big enough, didn't pan out, but I've had these dreams. I used to listen to, well I still do, Roots and Refuge Farm. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

08:36
Yeah. Oh, you've got to get into what Jess is amazing. She and Maya are awesome. I feel like I know them and I've obviously never met them. But what you know, what she talked about that resonated with me the most was this quote, she said, make your waiting room into a classroom. So you say that to a teacher who has the dreams that I've always had about growing a community of people working together to

09:06
grow local healthy food and build community. And I've always wanted chickens, but cable wouldn't let me have them. And just this whole thing snowballed into what became a huge dream of mine to have a CSA. And meantime, my husband Rob was here on 10 acres of this beautiful land doing his thing with his family. And

09:36
Um, shortly, it's been almost three years now, his first wife passed away. And I reached out, uh, you know, to comfort, provide comfort as we had to each other when our, our children passed. And.

09:53
One thing led to another and we decided, what are we waiting for? We've cared about each other forever. And so we started spending time together. And at our 20th class reunion, we decided to spend our lives together. Aw. And, yeah, it's really, everybody says we have like a storybook, fairy tale love story, but the irony is that we've gone through the battlefield to get here, you know?

10:23
That's another one of Jess's quotes from another one of her Roots in Refuge vlogs. It was, we were created for a garden, but are living in a battlefield. And I want to make a community of a community place for people to come together to make whatever dreams they have come true. So if it's planting flowers, wonderful, let's plant flowers. If it's raising food together.

10:52
And, you know, we're getting some chickens. Finally, I get chickens. I want goats, but Robbie keeps saying no goats. But I know I can change his mind eventually. I hope he doesn't hear that part of this. I think he already knows you're working on it. So it's okay. Probably. So anyway, last summer we got married and we're selling my house in cable with the

11:22
greenhouse still in the backyard looking at the house. So I'm having an emotionally challenging time letting go when I'm there. But the moment I'm here, I know I'm home. And this is where it's supposed to be. This is supposed to be a community of plant lovers, friends, family, just living life on 10 acres in the Northern woods of Wisconsin.

11:50
What a wonderful story. Oh, and congratulations on your wedding. That's fantastic. Thank you. We had a big farm, you know, front yard party with tents, and it was incredible. It was everything I dreamed of. We drove a mile and a half down to the country church where we became members and got married and everybody followed us back here.

12:17
We even had pictures taken at the Little Falls where we used to hang out when we were kids. Aw, that's so cute. I'm so in love with your love story. That's fantastic. Thank you. Okay, well, that was a very, very big about you. And I love it. Thank you for sharing all that. So tell me about the CSA. Has it already started? Are you doing the CSA now?

12:44
We bought the greenhouse, the first, the big greenhouse, I should say, two years ago and have been trying to figure out how to be greenhouse farmers and we're getting pretty good at it. And he built me a little greenhouse, which we call the nursery. And so things are moving there. When we, I've incorporated or not incorporated, I'm sorry, we're a nonprofit. So whatever it is that that is, I guess it is incorporation.

13:14
Um, so we're waiting on our tax number and we're, we're, um, signing up memberships and things are rolling. We have nine people so far who are our members, which is way more than I thought I'd have in the beginning. And only half of them are family. So that's kind of cool. Nice. Yep. So yes, we are right in the beginning. It is just being born and, um, for our, it all ties to.

13:44
the wedding things too. Our store slash classroom is actually a gazebo in my front yard where we're going to then be building the cottage garden around it. My potagee kitchen garden is going to be in my front yard, which is interesting. But through that process, when Rob made the dance floor for our wedding, we just made it the floor that became our gazebo.

14:14
I'm a really big, sappy romantic, as you can probably tell. I think so. I think you've got it down to a science. And I have married the perfect man who can build or do anything, and he can just imagine these things, you know? And so he has made this beautiful gazebo, which has a little propane furnace in it, and will have an air conditioner in it when needed this summer so that I can be in there all year.

14:42
Nice. And so that is where I'll have classes. We want to do everything from, you know, like fairy garden plantings with kids to growing garden, you know, having classes where kids come and learn about seeds and seed planting and how to understand how to care for a garden, how to harvest and what to prepare. We're going to be doing in the fall, of course, we'll be doing lots of canning and

15:11
preparations for winter and storing the food. In the meantime in the winter then I'm also going to be doing, I'm working with, I forgot this part, I'm working with the Superior Crafts School which is just also being born. It's been in the works for about a year and a half, maybe two years now, and we are becoming a part of that as a satellite classroom. Fun.

15:37
You are so excited. Like, your joy is just screaming at me through my headphone. It's amazing. I'm so, I am. I'm just, I can't believe that this gets to be the second act of my life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what an act. What a great act to follow the first act. So when you say non-profit for the CSA, does that mean that...

16:04
that all the money you make goes back into the business or does that mean you're not charging? Okay. Yeah, no, all of the money that will come in from the membership shares and any sales of plants or whatever that we do, there's gonna be, through the craft school, we're having a farmers market and we're gonna be participating in that, which will allow us to disseminate information about the classes and the things that we do out here

16:34
farm and allow people to get involved with the CSA to whatever level or degree they can and want to. And all of that profit will go back into classes and gardens and food for the community. Okay. So what's the benefit of it being a nonprofit only because I know nothing about it? Well...

17:00
I sort of have a little bit of business experience in an LLC that we created when that friend of mine and her mother came to live with me in Cable. We created an in-care family home because her mother had dementia. And so we needed support from the community and from her family to provide her what she needed. And so we created an LLC, which had a whole bunch of...

17:29
business stuff that I did not understand and did not care to learn about, quite frankly. I just wanted to be taking care of people. And so that experience, while it was wonderful, the business piece of it got overwhelming. And so a nonprofit, you have less regulation, not really, you have different regulations. And so

17:57
Um, you know, we are, we do have a quote board of directors kind of thing, but it is the members right now it's the nine members plus Rob and I, and, um, you know, those kinds of, of elements are not as restrictive because everything goes back into the, to the CSA. So it's, it's more, I kind of liken it to a, um, like a PTA at school.

18:27
or the women's club, the women's group at church that I'm involved in. You know, we have officers, we keep track of the money, we have fundraisers, but all of it is to go back to supporting the community and the church. So it's kind of the same idea here is how I'm approaching it. And so, yeah, it just makes more sense to me because we're not in this for the money. I'm retired, he's in what he calls his retirement job.

18:56
which is a janitor at the school nearby here, which he loves and it's where our grandkids are, so that's so cool. So it's not about the money for us, it's about community and just growing gardens and being happy. Yeah, I was just curious because we did do a CSA last year and the year before, and the year before, I guess we're coming up on the fourth summer here. Wow. And...

19:25
We decided last year to become an LLC because we had people coming onto the property and there are things that when you become an LLC, you want to have protections and we ended up getting insurance, farm insurance because if someone gets hurt, we wanted to make sure that people would be taken care of. And so when we did all that, we had to learn about what we were doing.

19:52
And so I know about that side of it, but they didn't know about the nonprofit side of it, which is why I asked. Because if I don't know, I'm sure other people don't know either. I'm sure. And I'm still learning. I don't know hardly a lot about it that, you know, but I am doing, we are doing farm insurance, which is different from our, you know, homeowners insurance. It sure is. Yeah. So, um, that's just really, I wanted the nonprofit.

20:21
status too because of the link to the craft school, because that is a nonprofit. And I think that it's good if we're affiliated to kind of be in the same category, the same mindset, I guess. So we're going to be doing farm to table for the chef and the cooking classes, which is exciting to me. So I'll get to it.

20:51
plant some funky things. Rob says I have some weird taste in vegetables because I love things like kohlrabi. Me too. Me too. I love kohlrabi. And okra and eggplant. And he's like, these are weird. Where are the potatoes and tomatoes? I'm like, I'm growing them too. We're going to have them too. See, we kind of are like, I'm the, he's the hardscape and I'm the landscape.

21:20
You know, I do the plantings and he does too. He waters them for me and takes care of everything and does the hard work of the digging of the big holes. But I do the choosing right now of what goes in them. That's the best place to be. That's what I do too in our marriage. I'm like, I would love to plant these things. And my husband says, okay, let's go get them or let's get them planted, you know, the seeds. So we're like in that way, Beth. Yeah.

21:47
I kind of love that my husband does the dirty work of the gardening. I used to. I don't love it as much as I used to, but he still does. Well, I find that planting, like when I started my seed starts in here this year, instead of doing them in soil, I went completely soil-less with coccocore and perlite. And it's so much easier and lighter.

22:16
to get them out and put them into the, you know, pot them up. And so, you know, I still love to get my hands dirty, but not as dirty. Yeah. I am, okay, I have said more weird things about myself in the last 50 interviews that I have put out than I'm comfortable with, but I'm gonna do it again. I really hate things on my hands because I'm always doing things with my hands. So I'm constantly having to wash my hands.

22:45
to go to the next thing. And it makes me crazy. And I don't have OCD. It's not like I have to wash my hands six times. But when I'm cooking, if I'm cracking eggs, I have to wash my hands after I crack the eggs because I inevitably get the egg on my hands. If I'm using an oil, I end up spilling oils. I had to clean that up. It's just a thing. So when I say I don't like my hands dirty,

23:12
I don't like my hands dirty because it gets in the way of moving on to the next task. Does that make sense? Yep. Oh, totally. Totally agree. Okay. Because sometimes people are like, do you have OCD? And I'm like, I don't think so. Because when I leave the house, I'm not wondering the entire time I'm gone, did I lock the doors? Did I turn off the coffee maker? I'm not. I'm not obsessing over the thing that I might have forgotten. So I don't think I have OCD.

23:38
but I just don't like my hands to not be clean. I don't know why. It's a weird thing. I've discovered my hand washing, it's different now because I wear my rings. I never wore any rings and I never had nails. I just kept them short and whatever. And so now that I have this beautiful diamond ring on my hand, I don't wanna get anything on it. So I've started actually wearing gardening gloves.

24:07
when I'm out in the greenhouse, like yesterday when I potted up a bunch of romaine lettuce and I put them in the green stock and that has soil. And so here I am with a glove on my hand and I'm thinking, who are you? Because that never was me, you know, but I did try to have like nice nails when I had my, you know, wedding and whatever. And it was hilarious because it didn't work. But I know what you mean. Yeah, I

24:36
I thought about getting the press on nails for a while because my nails are always broken because I'm always cooking or typing or something. And I looked at the price of press on nails and I thought, you know, I'm going to spend the 10 bucks to get them.

24:53
and they're going to look nice for about 10 minutes and then I'm going to be doing something and it's going to pop off anyway. So yeah, I just have pretty beat up nails all the time. And I think that's part of homesteading and CSA and growing absolutely, absolutely doing doing actual work with your hands. It is just inevitable. So I play the piano also. And so they have to be short for that. Because otherwise they click and click and sound like I believe it.

25:22
So, yeah. Okay, so do you guys have like critters too? You have chickens? Well, we're getting chickens. We did have a chicken who survived through last winter, but is no longer around. We are free range, so they just kind of go and come and whatever. So we're actually going to put up a chicken coop with a chicken run over by the big barn.

25:52
purchased one of those little sheds you can get that they just bring it and put it in your yard kind of thing. That's our farm stand. That's what we have for our farm stand, yeah. It's so awesome. I mean, it's taking me forever to pay it off, but it's this beautiful thing called, what I call the cottage, which everyone calls my she shed. And I wasn't about to leave it in cable. And so we took down a fence and dismantled my berry patch, which was a raised bed garden

26:22
high posts and yeah, it was crazy. Because I put all that infrastructure in after the cottage got there, but I was taking it here. So it is over by the barn. And so eventually I'd like to have that be like a, a bunk house, I guess you'd call it. It's 28 by 12. So it's, there's room for a lot. I mean, right now, a lot of my craft stuff is stored there from cable house as I go through things.

26:52
because we're working on selling my place. But we're gonna put a revive his chicken shed, or chicken coop, which was a snow ice fishing shack, I guess, at one point. So we're gonna give it another life again as a chicken, and then add a run to it over there. And that's where I think my goats need to be, is in that barn area with the chickens. And so,

27:23
Right now, that's kind of where we're at. Over there, near that also, we have started a, what Rob calls the vineyard. We have six grapevines. And I hope that, yes, I hope that they're okay in this snowstorm. But the dream of Rob, since he bought this place, since they bought this place was,

27:50
to have grapevines, because the house faces south. We have this gigantic two-acre yard in the front that was just grass. And then there was a cow shed, and he took that down. And so over in that area, on that side of the driveway, which kind of splits it in two, we have the cottage garden and the potage garden coming around the gazebo on the one side. And then over on the other side is going to be my sweetie's vineyard.

28:20
Oh, I'm so excited for you guys. You're so happy. And it's so much fun planning these things. I mean, when we got ready to move here, it was a blank slate. The only flowers here were hostas and I'm not a fan. So we dug up a bunch of our peony plants from the old house and brought them down here. And down here is half an hour away from where we live. So we didn't live very far away.

28:48
But we brought those and we brought some rhubarb and I think that was it for plants because I had a bunch of lilies at the old house, but I didn't think lilies would do great here. Plus we were going to get a dog and lilies are dangerous for dogs to eat and I figured why bother? Why bother? Yeah, for sure. And we did. We ended up getting lilies for free from someone and we put them away from where the dog is so she can't go over there and dig them up and eat them.

29:17
And we put in lilac babies from a friend and we put in, oh my god, 150 tulip bulbs and 150 daffodil bulbs and crocuses, which I'd never grown before. The crocuses bloomed three weeks ago. Oh, yeah. They're now frozen, but they bloomed. They looked really pretty. But you know, sometimes if it's not too long, they will survive a snow. They'll go again maybe or continue.

29:47
discontinue because it's almost like it's they're insulated. Yeah, they're so low to the ground that they don't really freeze as solid as other taller things do. Okay, good to know. They're so tiny. I had never seen a crocus in person until mine bloomed and my husband said, there's these little yellow flowers blooming where we put the crocuses and I said okay and I went out to look and I could not believe how dainty and how tiny they are. Yes, they are just delicate.

30:17
And I love that they open like so early. They're like the first smell and whiff of spring coming, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know I had put in hibiscus at the old house. I think it's a little grapey looking. Yep. Plants and those smell amazing too. Who knew? Yeah. I love those, but I'm not spending any more money on bulb plants because out of that 150 tulip.

30:46
bulbs and daffodil bulbs, I think we might get five tulips now because the voles eat them. Oh no. Mouse creatures. Yes. Oh, we had that in cable. We had a problem with them. I got those traps or not traps, but like you put the bulbs in a little box that almost is like mesh. And you have to bury that to keep them from eating the bulbs because they

31:16
The bulbs can come up and the roots can go down, but the bulb itself is safe from those little monsters. Uh huh, yeah. So we're not buying any more bulb plants. If somebody has bulb roots that they want to give me, I will take them and I will put them in, but I'm just not investing any more money because it just costs too much to replace it. We also put in some irises, and the voles don't seem to like the iris bulbs. So I think they're the...

31:44
rhizomes or whatever they're called. So maybe they'll be irises this spring. I don't know. Whole point of telling you all about my flowers is when we moved here I was very sad because there were no flowers that spring. Oh that's heartbreaking. And I cried like that spring when everything was starting to green up. I was crying. I was like we don't have any flowers honey. And he said we will next spring because we're gonna put in...

32:11
bulbs this fall because I know this is killing you and I was like thank you. So the whole point of the story here is that when you are dreaming about your life and what you want to do down the road, when you finally get to that first step into the thing you want to do, it's amazing. It is. It's like watching a movie and having an actual happy ending.

32:40
You know, but it's really a beginning. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. When we move here, I was like, we finally did it. We finally bought, you know, three acres has a house on it. That's nice. And it has a big old pole barn and has room to grow a big garden. We did it. We did the thing we said we're going to do. Yeah. And then I sat down a week later after we had moved in and I was like, Oh my God, we did it.

33:10
now what? Now what are we doing? How do we make this go? You know, it's that that realization of, okay, so we took the first step. Now what comes next? Exactly. Yep. As we've been changing things here at the, you know, he we did a whole new kitchen plan. And we were really blessed with a whole new set of beautiful cabinets that, you know, Rob just reconfigured and

33:39
you know, redid all of that this winter. I've been, you know, as he's doing that and he's putting things in and doing whatever, I've been planning all of the things he needs to do outside, you know, and all of the infrastructure that we need out there for garden beds and whatever. And he was doing the same thing, only he was looking out the back window, thinking about the backyard while I was dreaming and planning the front yard, you know? And then we'd share our thoughts and ideas at night and we'd be like, oh, I was...

34:07
Yeah, that would work over there. And, you know, it's just so much fun to dream and plan with someone who thinks and feels, I mean, not exactly the same, but so similar. I've never experienced this in my life. Yeah. It's wonderful. It really is. It's incredible. It really is. I just, sometimes I wake up in the morning and he's next to me and I'm like, Oh my God, it wasn't a dream. This is my life. I get to play in the dirt with Rob Christman. Yeah.

34:37
Exactly. So with the CSA, with the business that you're creating, it's basically going to be a nonprofit, interactive community of people doing the things. That would be my elevator speech and people would be like, what do you mean doing the things? And I'd be like, oh, that's why I say doing the things because it's everything. Yep. We're going to be planting. We're going to be making decisions.

35:05
I sent out a document to everybody saying, you know, tell me what you want us to grow for you this year, the people who are members, and please feel free to share with others, you know, that you know, who are looking for, you know, healthy, locally grown produce. Let us know what they would be interested in, but here are the things that are so far in the greenhouse. And then I gave them a list. And I've gotten feedback from two people that,

35:35
They love everything that's on the list, but could you also blah, blah, blah. And so that sends me on a seed hunt, which is fun. And so I'm right now the worker of the CSA. I'm with as far as the produce. But like, for example, I have a wonderful sister-in-law, shout out to Laura, who has a granddaughter who...

36:02
was so helpful when we were planting things and doing stuff to get the yard ready for the wedding. And I'm thinking, man, I wonder if Peyton would like a job this summer. So she's gonna come out with Laura and they're gonna just work in the gardens, work in the greenhouse and putter and do stuff and then their pay will be their produce. And so that kind of an option is what we're also looking at doing.

36:31
One of the things that I want people to know is, if they've never set foot on a garden or ever planted anything, or they think they have a black thumb, they don't have to worry because this place just, you can't hurt anything, nothing dies here. The plants that were here when I got here in the house, his first wife, Maria, was an incredibly gifted gardener. She had the most beautiful houseplants I've ever seen in my life.

36:59
I walked in and I was intimidated, let me tell you. But they are so prolific still, and I have tons of those that I have learned how to, I never could handle houseplants because I had cats. And so I just have learned so much by growing and maintaining her houseplants. And so people can come and do whatever of the stuff they want to do, I guess is my point.

37:26
If they want to be a part of helping Rob figure out and build some in-ground garden beds, great, let's do that. If you want to plant flowers, let's do that. Whatever people want to do, this can be their canvas. That's so fabulous. I'm so excited for you. I really am. I keep saying that, but I really am. My heart is swelling listening to you. It's great. So exciting. Okay.

37:55
Beth, I appreciate your time today because we're running almost to an hour here. We're at 37 minutes. Oh my word. Yeah, because you're so excited. You have so many words that I'm like, I don't want to jump in, but we need to cut this off. So thank you for your time and I wish you so much luck in building this and I think it's a wonderful idea. Thank you so much and you'll have to come visit.

38:17
I will. We'll have to get out there at some point and we are going to be doing all kinds of things this summer too. So it probably won't be this summer, but I'll be watching to see how it grows. Wonderful. We're on Facebook, Twin Creek Gardens, and we have a website coming that is twin creek gardens dot org. So look for that and you can email me my brand new email at Beth Chrisman at

38:45
Twin I cannot believe I'm finally Beth Christman. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha. You are and you will be for a while. Yes, it's wonderful. All right. Thank you so much for this. You have a great day, Beth. You too, Mary. Bye bye. Bye.

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Today I'm talking with Beth at Twin Creek Gardens, CSA.

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 Beth at Twin Creek Garden CSA. Good morning, Beth. How are you today? Good morning. In this beautiful snowy weather, I am wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, have you guys not had a lot of snow this winter? No, it was crazy. Everything was awake. My gardens were beginning to bud, and now we just got a pile, I think almost 17.

00:29
18 inches in the last three days. So I'm a little worried about my lilacs and my other little bushes out there, my blueberries, but hopefully they'll be protected and they'll come through it anyway. This is the first... You're in Superior? Yeah, we're south of Superior, about 10 miles. This is the first big snow we've had all year. Yeah, it feels like Christmas.

00:56
Yeah, we were supposed to get six inches to a foot in this same storm that you guys are getting in Wisconsin. And we ended up with only like a couple inches here. Oh. So I don't know what happened to our Christmas snowstorm. It didn't happen. I'm kind of glad because we were in the same boat as you. Our maple tree has started to flower out and we had onion sprouting and stuff. So I don't know.

01:24
Anyway, tell me about yourself and Twin Creek Gardens, CSA. Well, this is kind of amazing because this is a long dream, long time dream come true in a short amount of time. I actually, for 34 years, was a classroom teacher and a reading specialist in particular. And in working with kids and with literacy and with writing and reading, I always had, you know,

01:54
the desire to have them learn more about who they are as people through what they were reading and writing, not just the ability to read and write. And so my passion for gardening and my love for people and helping the world become a better place, my son calls me the biggest liberal hippie in the world, which I wear as a badge of honor, by the way. You know, and so I've always had this desire to.

02:24
help others find their goal, or reach their goals and find their path to the healthiest life, the best life that they could have. And so I've been having kids listen to podcasts and watch videos in middle school and then write about how that affects them in their thinking and their process of who they wanna become and that kind of thing. And so CSAs have been...

02:51
Um, not very prevalent up here, but I love the idea because my father has always had a garden when I was young, I grew up digging in the dirt. My favorite thing of, of gardening was always the, the digging of the potatoes in October because I knew we were putting the garden to bed then, you know? And so, um, you know, I grew up south of Superior here, just about five miles from where I live right now. And my sweet husband grew up about.

03:19
mile and a half from this house, and we grew up together. We were 10 when we met, and we both loved gardens, we both loved horses, and nature, and just being, we're both country kids, let's put it that way. And we grew up and went our separate ways when you go to school in Superior. If you go to the Catholic school, you kind of lose touch with your friends from the country school.

03:44
And at least that's how it was. And so he went one way, I went the other. And then we met back at high school. We hardly had any friends in common, so we kind of went our separate paths. But he and his first wife loved gardening as well and raised three children in various country homes doing gardening and raising horses. And they had cows for a while. And so very much a farm family.

04:14
after college moved down to the Green Bay, Manitowoc area where I married and had my son. And then when my marriage fell apart, I came running home to the northern woods of Wisconsin. And my parents were still here in Paterson Park at that time. And so cable is where I landed because the school that I found that needed me was Drummond.

04:44
which all these sweet little towns up here are just, it's like going back in time. It's such a beautiful, fresh air. I'll never forget when I came home to do the interview in Drummond and I got out of the car, the air smelled different. I left Green Bay and the big city area, I came home and the trees up here, the air up here, I knew I had to come home.

05:13
We had a kind of randomly meandering here, but we had a school garden at Drummond that I helped organize and participate in. It was actually a high tunnel. And so I fell in love with that kind of gardening because it extended our season so nicely. And so that's kind of building blocks. My cable house had a third of an acre right in town.

05:42
I had a ring of cedar trees around my yard and so gardening in ground was really not possible. The cedar trees had taken over the ground and so it was more of a forest floor. So I learned to garden in raised beds and also in a lot of pots and green stock planters and such on my deck.

06:10
And so my little third of an acre there, I dreamed of a greenhouse. And so when it's a 1930s house, so the original garage was a little bit dated. And so as the roof started to collapse, I started to see a skeleton of a greenhouse instead of another garage. And so we had been working on that for several years, trying to make that come true. And then, um, through the course of.

06:39
the last 10 years when Rob and I found each other on Facebook, God bless Facebook Messenger, we became adult friends and kind of walked each other through a lot of really hard loss. And he lost an adult child, I lost an adult child, both of whom left little babies behind. And so

07:07
You know, we just kind of went through grief and friendship online for several years. And I dreamed of gardening in a bigger place, but had no, I mean, I actually looked at, at different plots of land out near cable to buy, to put up a big greenhouse, because I've always wanted to be able to continue that work with kids and the community to find a way to locally source healthy food. And

07:37
The work I did with students made me realize just how important nutrition is in terms of not just our bodies, but our brains and our education and being able to learn and live together in a healthy community has always been a goal of mine. And I collect people as well as lots of plants. And so I had a friend and her mother living with me at the cable house for a while.

08:07
after her father passed and we were trying to garden there and build community. We had a neighbor who had a big green lawn and so we talked her into putting in the beginnings of what I wanted to make a food forest. That wasn't big enough, didn't pan out, but I've had these dreams. I used to listen to, well I still do, Roots and Refuge Farm. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

08:36
Yeah. Oh, you've got to get into what Jess is amazing. She and Maya are awesome. I feel like I know them and I've obviously never met them. But what you know, what she talked about that resonated with me the most was this quote, she said, make your waiting room into a classroom. So you say that to a teacher who has the dreams that I've always had about growing a community of people working together to

09:06
grow local healthy food and build community. And I've always wanted chickens, but cable wouldn't let me have them. And just this whole thing snowballed into what became a huge dream of mine to have a CSA. And meantime, my husband Rob was here on 10 acres of this beautiful land doing his thing with his family. And

09:36
Um, shortly, it's been almost three years now, his first wife passed away. And I reached out, uh, you know, to comfort, provide comfort as we had to each other when our, our children passed. And.

09:53
One thing led to another and we decided, what are we waiting for? We've cared about each other forever. And so we started spending time together. And at our 20th class reunion, we decided to spend our lives together. Aw. And, yeah, it's really, everybody says we have like a storybook, fairy tale love story, but the irony is that we've gone through the battlefield to get here, you know?

10:23
That's another one of Jess's quotes from another one of her Roots in Refuge vlogs. It was, we were created for a garden, but are living in a battlefield. And I want to make a community of a community place for people to come together to make whatever dreams they have come true. So if it's planting flowers, wonderful, let's plant flowers. If it's raising food together.

10:52
And, you know, we're getting some chickens. Finally, I get chickens. I want goats, but Robbie keeps saying no goats. But I know I can change his mind eventually. I hope he doesn't hear that part of this. I think he already knows you're working on it. So it's okay. Probably. So anyway, last summer we got married and we're selling my house in cable with the

11:22
greenhouse still in the backyard looking at the house. So I'm having an emotionally challenging time letting go when I'm there. But the moment I'm here, I know I'm home. And this is where it's supposed to be. This is supposed to be a community of plant lovers, friends, family, just living life on 10 acres in the Northern woods of Wisconsin.

11:50
What a wonderful story. Oh, and congratulations on your wedding. That's fantastic. Thank you. We had a big farm, you know, front yard party with tents, and it was incredible. It was everything I dreamed of. We drove a mile and a half down to the country church where we became members and got married and everybody followed us back here.

12:17
We even had pictures taken at the Little Falls where we used to hang out when we were kids. Aw, that's so cute. I'm so in love with your love story. That's fantastic. Thank you. Okay, well, that was a very, very big about you. And I love it. Thank you for sharing all that. So tell me about the CSA. Has it already started? Are you doing the CSA now?

12:44
We bought the greenhouse, the first, the big greenhouse, I should say, two years ago and have been trying to figure out how to be greenhouse farmers and we're getting pretty good at it. And he built me a little greenhouse, which we call the nursery. And so things are moving there. When we, I've incorporated or not incorporated, I'm sorry, we're a nonprofit. So whatever it is that that is, I guess it is incorporation.

13:14
Um, so we're waiting on our tax number and we're, we're, um, signing up memberships and things are rolling. We have nine people so far who are our members, which is way more than I thought I'd have in the beginning. And only half of them are family. So that's kind of cool. Nice. Yep. So yes, we are right in the beginning. It is just being born and, um, for our, it all ties to.

13:44
the wedding things too. Our store slash classroom is actually a gazebo in my front yard where we're going to then be building the cottage garden around it. My potagee kitchen garden is going to be in my front yard, which is interesting. But through that process, when Rob made the dance floor for our wedding, we just made it the floor that became our gazebo.

14:14
I'm a really big, sappy romantic, as you can probably tell. I think so. I think you've got it down to a science. And I have married the perfect man who can build or do anything, and he can just imagine these things, you know? And so he has made this beautiful gazebo, which has a little propane furnace in it, and will have an air conditioner in it when needed this summer so that I can be in there all year.

14:42
Nice. And so that is where I'll have classes. We want to do everything from, you know, like fairy garden plantings with kids to growing garden, you know, having classes where kids come and learn about seeds and seed planting and how to understand how to care for a garden, how to harvest and what to prepare. We're going to be doing in the fall, of course, we'll be doing lots of canning and

15:11
preparations for winter and storing the food. In the meantime in the winter then I'm also going to be doing, I'm working with, I forgot this part, I'm working with the Superior Crafts School which is just also being born. It's been in the works for about a year and a half, maybe two years now, and we are becoming a part of that as a satellite classroom. Fun.

15:37
You are so excited. Like, your joy is just screaming at me through my headphone. It's amazing. I'm so, I am. I'm just, I can't believe that this gets to be the second act of my life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what an act. What a great act to follow the first act. So when you say non-profit for the CSA, does that mean that...

16:04
that all the money you make goes back into the business or does that mean you're not charging? Okay. Yeah, no, all of the money that will come in from the membership shares and any sales of plants or whatever that we do, there's gonna be, through the craft school, we're having a farmers market and we're gonna be participating in that, which will allow us to disseminate information about the classes and the things that we do out here

16:34
farm and allow people to get involved with the CSA to whatever level or degree they can and want to. And all of that profit will go back into classes and gardens and food for the community. Okay. So what's the benefit of it being a nonprofit only because I know nothing about it? Well...

17:00
I sort of have a little bit of business experience in an LLC that we created when that friend of mine and her mother came to live with me in Cable. We created an in-care family home because her mother had dementia. And so we needed support from the community and from her family to provide her what she needed. And so we created an LLC, which had a whole bunch of...

17:29
business stuff that I did not understand and did not care to learn about, quite frankly. I just wanted to be taking care of people. And so that experience, while it was wonderful, the business piece of it got overwhelming. And so a nonprofit, you have less regulation, not really, you have different regulations. And so

17:57
Um, you know, we are, we do have a quote board of directors kind of thing, but it is the members right now it's the nine members plus Rob and I, and, um, you know, those kinds of, of elements are not as restrictive because everything goes back into the, to the CSA. So it's, it's more, I kind of liken it to a, um, like a PTA at school.

18:27
or the women's club, the women's group at church that I'm involved in. You know, we have officers, we keep track of the money, we have fundraisers, but all of it is to go back to supporting the community and the church. So it's kind of the same idea here is how I'm approaching it. And so, yeah, it just makes more sense to me because we're not in this for the money. I'm retired, he's in what he calls his retirement job.

18:56
which is a janitor at the school nearby here, which he loves and it's where our grandkids are, so that's so cool. So it's not about the money for us, it's about community and just growing gardens and being happy. Yeah, I was just curious because we did do a CSA last year and the year before, and the year before, I guess we're coming up on the fourth summer here. Wow. And...

19:25
We decided last year to become an LLC because we had people coming onto the property and there are things that when you become an LLC, you want to have protections and we ended up getting insurance, farm insurance because if someone gets hurt, we wanted to make sure that people would be taken care of. And so when we did all that, we had to learn about what we were doing.

19:52
And so I know about that side of it, but they didn't know about the nonprofit side of it, which is why I asked. Because if I don't know, I'm sure other people don't know either. I'm sure. And I'm still learning. I don't know hardly a lot about it that, you know, but I am doing, we are doing farm insurance, which is different from our, you know, homeowners insurance. It sure is. Yeah. So, um, that's just really, I wanted the nonprofit.

20:21
status too because of the link to the craft school, because that is a nonprofit. And I think that it's good if we're affiliated to kind of be in the same category, the same mindset, I guess. So we're going to be doing farm to table for the chef and the cooking classes, which is exciting to me. So I'll get to it.

20:51
plant some funky things. Rob says I have some weird taste in vegetables because I love things like kohlrabi. Me too. Me too. I love kohlrabi. And okra and eggplant. And he's like, these are weird. Where are the potatoes and tomatoes? I'm like, I'm growing them too. We're going to have them too. See, we kind of are like, I'm the, he's the hardscape and I'm the landscape.

21:20
You know, I do the plantings and he does too. He waters them for me and takes care of everything and does the hard work of the digging of the big holes. But I do the choosing right now of what goes in them. That's the best place to be. That's what I do too in our marriage. I'm like, I would love to plant these things. And my husband says, okay, let's go get them or let's get them planted, you know, the seeds. So we're like in that way, Beth. Yeah.

21:47
I kind of love that my husband does the dirty work of the gardening. I used to. I don't love it as much as I used to, but he still does. Well, I find that planting, like when I started my seed starts in here this year, instead of doing them in soil, I went completely soil-less with coccocore and perlite. And it's so much easier and lighter.

22:16
to get them out and put them into the, you know, pot them up. And so, you know, I still love to get my hands dirty, but not as dirty. Yeah. I am, okay, I have said more weird things about myself in the last 50 interviews that I have put out than I'm comfortable with, but I'm gonna do it again. I really hate things on my hands because I'm always doing things with my hands. So I'm constantly having to wash my hands.

22:45
to go to the next thing. And it makes me crazy. And I don't have OCD. It's not like I have to wash my hands six times. But when I'm cooking, if I'm cracking eggs, I have to wash my hands after I crack the eggs because I inevitably get the egg on my hands. If I'm using an oil, I end up spilling oils. I had to clean that up. It's just a thing. So when I say I don't like my hands dirty,

23:12
I don't like my hands dirty because it gets in the way of moving on to the next task. Does that make sense? Yep. Oh, totally. Totally agree. Okay. Because sometimes people are like, do you have OCD? And I'm like, I don't think so. Because when I leave the house, I'm not wondering the entire time I'm gone, did I lock the doors? Did I turn off the coffee maker? I'm not. I'm not obsessing over the thing that I might have forgotten. So I don't think I have OCD.

23:38
but I just don't like my hands to not be clean. I don't know why. It's a weird thing. I've discovered my hand washing, it's different now because I wear my rings. I never wore any rings and I never had nails. I just kept them short and whatever. And so now that I have this beautiful diamond ring on my hand, I don't wanna get anything on it. So I've started actually wearing gardening gloves.

24:07
when I'm out in the greenhouse, like yesterday when I potted up a bunch of romaine lettuce and I put them in the green stock and that has soil. And so here I am with a glove on my hand and I'm thinking, who are you? Because that never was me, you know, but I did try to have like nice nails when I had my, you know, wedding and whatever. And it was hilarious because it didn't work. But I know what you mean. Yeah, I

24:36
I thought about getting the press on nails for a while because my nails are always broken because I'm always cooking or typing or something. And I looked at the price of press on nails and I thought, you know, I'm going to spend the 10 bucks to get them.

24:53
and they're going to look nice for about 10 minutes and then I'm going to be doing something and it's going to pop off anyway. So yeah, I just have pretty beat up nails all the time. And I think that's part of homesteading and CSA and growing absolutely, absolutely doing doing actual work with your hands. It is just inevitable. So I play the piano also. And so they have to be short for that. Because otherwise they click and click and sound like I believe it.

25:22
So, yeah. Okay, so do you guys have like critters too? You have chickens? Well, we're getting chickens. We did have a chicken who survived through last winter, but is no longer around. We are free range, so they just kind of go and come and whatever. So we're actually going to put up a chicken coop with a chicken run over by the big barn.

25:52
purchased one of those little sheds you can get that they just bring it and put it in your yard kind of thing. That's our farm stand. That's what we have for our farm stand, yeah. It's so awesome. I mean, it's taking me forever to pay it off, but it's this beautiful thing called, what I call the cottage, which everyone calls my she shed. And I wasn't about to leave it in cable. And so we took down a fence and dismantled my berry patch, which was a raised bed garden

26:22
high posts and yeah, it was crazy. Because I put all that infrastructure in after the cottage got there, but I was taking it here. So it is over by the barn. And so eventually I'd like to have that be like a, a bunk house, I guess you'd call it. It's 28 by 12. So it's, there's room for a lot. I mean, right now, a lot of my craft stuff is stored there from cable house as I go through things.

26:52
because we're working on selling my place. But we're gonna put a revive his chicken shed, or chicken coop, which was a snow ice fishing shack, I guess, at one point. So we're gonna give it another life again as a chicken, and then add a run to it over there. And that's where I think my goats need to be, is in that barn area with the chickens. And so,

27:23
Right now, that's kind of where we're at. Over there, near that also, we have started a, what Rob calls the vineyard. We have six grapevines. And I hope that, yes, I hope that they're okay in this snowstorm. But the dream of Rob, since he bought this place, since they bought this place was,

27:50
to have grapevines, because the house faces south. We have this gigantic two-acre yard in the front that was just grass. And then there was a cow shed, and he took that down. And so over in that area, on that side of the driveway, which kind of splits it in two, we have the cottage garden and the potage garden coming around the gazebo on the one side. And then over on the other side is going to be my sweetie's vineyard.

28:20
Oh, I'm so excited for you guys. You're so happy. And it's so much fun planning these things. I mean, when we got ready to move here, it was a blank slate. The only flowers here were hostas and I'm not a fan. So we dug up a bunch of our peony plants from the old house and brought them down here. And down here is half an hour away from where we live. So we didn't live very far away.

28:48
But we brought those and we brought some rhubarb and I think that was it for plants because I had a bunch of lilies at the old house, but I didn't think lilies would do great here. Plus we were going to get a dog and lilies are dangerous for dogs to eat and I figured why bother? Why bother? Yeah, for sure. And we did. We ended up getting lilies for free from someone and we put them away from where the dog is so she can't go over there and dig them up and eat them.

29:17
And we put in lilac babies from a friend and we put in, oh my god, 150 tulip bulbs and 150 daffodil bulbs and crocuses, which I'd never grown before. The crocuses bloomed three weeks ago. Oh, yeah. They're now frozen, but they bloomed. They looked really pretty. But you know, sometimes if it's not too long, they will survive a snow. They'll go again maybe or continue.

29:47
discontinue because it's almost like it's they're insulated. Yeah, they're so low to the ground that they don't really freeze as solid as other taller things do. Okay, good to know. They're so tiny. I had never seen a crocus in person until mine bloomed and my husband said, there's these little yellow flowers blooming where we put the crocuses and I said okay and I went out to look and I could not believe how dainty and how tiny they are. Yes, they are just delicate.

30:17
And I love that they open like so early. They're like the first smell and whiff of spring coming, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know I had put in hibiscus at the old house. I think it's a little grapey looking. Yep. Plants and those smell amazing too. Who knew? Yeah. I love those, but I'm not spending any more money on bulb plants because out of that 150 tulip.

30:46
bulbs and daffodil bulbs, I think we might get five tulips now because the voles eat them. Oh no. Mouse creatures. Yes. Oh, we had that in cable. We had a problem with them. I got those traps or not traps, but like you put the bulbs in a little box that almost is like mesh. And you have to bury that to keep them from eating the bulbs because they

31:16
The bulbs can come up and the roots can go down, but the bulb itself is safe from those little monsters. Uh huh, yeah. So we're not buying any more bulb plants. If somebody has bulb roots that they want to give me, I will take them and I will put them in, but I'm just not investing any more money because it just costs too much to replace it. We also put in some irises, and the voles don't seem to like the iris bulbs. So I think they're the...

31:44
rhizomes or whatever they're called. So maybe they'll be irises this spring. I don't know. Whole point of telling you all about my flowers is when we moved here I was very sad because there were no flowers that spring. Oh that's heartbreaking. And I cried like that spring when everything was starting to green up. I was crying. I was like we don't have any flowers honey. And he said we will next spring because we're gonna put in...

32:11
bulbs this fall because I know this is killing you and I was like thank you. So the whole point of the story here is that when you are dreaming about your life and what you want to do down the road, when you finally get to that first step into the thing you want to do, it's amazing. It is. It's like watching a movie and having an actual happy ending.

32:40
You know, but it's really a beginning. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. When we move here, I was like, we finally did it. We finally bought, you know, three acres has a house on it. That's nice. And it has a big old pole barn and has room to grow a big garden. We did it. We did the thing we said we're going to do. Yeah. And then I sat down a week later after we had moved in and I was like, Oh my God, we did it.

33:10
now what? Now what are we doing? How do we make this go? You know, it's that that realization of, okay, so we took the first step. Now what comes next? Exactly. Yep. As we've been changing things here at the, you know, he we did a whole new kitchen plan. And we were really blessed with a whole new set of beautiful cabinets that, you know, Rob just reconfigured and

33:39
you know, redid all of that this winter. I've been, you know, as he's doing that and he's putting things in and doing whatever, I've been planning all of the things he needs to do outside, you know, and all of the infrastructure that we need out there for garden beds and whatever. And he was doing the same thing, only he was looking out the back window, thinking about the backyard while I was dreaming and planning the front yard, you know? And then we'd share our thoughts and ideas at night and we'd be like, oh, I was...

34:07
Yeah, that would work over there. And, you know, it's just so much fun to dream and plan with someone who thinks and feels, I mean, not exactly the same, but so similar. I've never experienced this in my life. Yeah. It's wonderful. It really is. It's incredible. It really is. I just, sometimes I wake up in the morning and he's next to me and I'm like, Oh my God, it wasn't a dream. This is my life. I get to play in the dirt with Rob Christman. Yeah.

34:37
Exactly. So with the CSA, with the business that you're creating, it's basically going to be a nonprofit, interactive community of people doing the things. That would be my elevator speech and people would be like, what do you mean doing the things? And I'd be like, oh, that's why I say doing the things because it's everything. Yep. We're going to be planting. We're going to be making decisions.

35:05
I sent out a document to everybody saying, you know, tell me what you want us to grow for you this year, the people who are members, and please feel free to share with others, you know, that you know, who are looking for, you know, healthy, locally grown produce. Let us know what they would be interested in, but here are the things that are so far in the greenhouse. And then I gave them a list. And I've gotten feedback from two people that,

35:35
They love everything that's on the list, but could you also blah, blah, blah. And so that sends me on a seed hunt, which is fun. And so I'm right now the worker of the CSA. I'm with as far as the produce. But like, for example, I have a wonderful sister-in-law, shout out to Laura, who has a granddaughter who...

36:02
was so helpful when we were planting things and doing stuff to get the yard ready for the wedding. And I'm thinking, man, I wonder if Peyton would like a job this summer. So she's gonna come out with Laura and they're gonna just work in the gardens, work in the greenhouse and putter and do stuff and then their pay will be their produce. And so that kind of an option is what we're also looking at doing.

36:31
One of the things that I want people to know is, if they've never set foot on a garden or ever planted anything, or they think they have a black thumb, they don't have to worry because this place just, you can't hurt anything, nothing dies here. The plants that were here when I got here in the house, his first wife, Maria, was an incredibly gifted gardener. She had the most beautiful houseplants I've ever seen in my life.

36:59
I walked in and I was intimidated, let me tell you. But they are so prolific still, and I have tons of those that I have learned how to, I never could handle houseplants because I had cats. And so I just have learned so much by growing and maintaining her houseplants. And so people can come and do whatever of the stuff they want to do, I guess is my point.

37:26
If they want to be a part of helping Rob figure out and build some in-ground garden beds, great, let's do that. If you want to plant flowers, let's do that. Whatever people want to do, this can be their canvas. That's so fabulous. I'm so excited for you. I really am. I keep saying that, but I really am. My heart is swelling listening to you. It's great. So exciting. Okay.

37:55
Beth, I appreciate your time today because we're running almost to an hour here. We're at 37 minutes. Oh my word. Yeah, because you're so excited. You have so many words that I'm like, I don't want to jump in, but we need to cut this off. So thank you for your time and I wish you so much luck in building this and I think it's a wonderful idea. Thank you so much and you'll have to come visit.

38:17
I will. We'll have to get out there at some point and we are going to be doing all kinds of things this summer too. So it probably won't be this summer, but I'll be watching to see how it grows. Wonderful. We're on Facebook, Twin Creek Gardens, and we have a website coming that is twin creek gardens dot org. So look for that and you can email me my brand new email at Beth Chrisman at

38:45
Twin I cannot believe I'm finally Beth Christman. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha. You are and you will be for a while. Yes, it's wonderful. All right. Thank you so much for this. You have a great day, Beth. You too, Mary. Bye bye. Bye.

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