Technology in City Forestry with Minnetonka's City Forester Hannibal Hayes

This episode took some time to get out there! Blame vacations and some tech issues, but I am finally dropping the 7th episode in Season 2 - and its a good one! Super fan and Tree Nerd Hannibal Hayes from the City of Minnetonka, MN joins me to talk about using technology to better manage the urban forest. We go off on some tangents about Emerald Ash Borer and tree species diversity and even birthing calves!

This was a fun episode to record with a true renaissance man, Hannibal Hayes. Sit back and enjoy!

Here's the AI generated description for the episode (scroll to the bottom for some good links in the show notes):

Embark on an enlightening expedition through the lush avenues of urban forestry with our esteemed guest, Hannibal Hayes, Minnetonka's city forester and a connoisseur of all things arboreal. From his formative years on a hobby farm to paving the way in managing a bustling city's canopy of over 40,000 trees, Hannibal's narrative intertwines personal anecdotes with professional prowess. Our latest episode captures his innovative strategies, rooted in horticultural sciences and arboriculture, which propel Minnetonka's green infrastructure towards a more diversified and climate-resilient future.

Delving deeper into the technological forest, we unravel the advancements revolutionizing tree management from AI-infused 3D LiDAR scans to the proficient use of drones. These groundbreaking tools aren't merely enhancing tree inventories; they're redefining the very fabric of urban forestry operations. Discover how these high-tech aids combat threats like the emerald ash borer and foster the meticulous care of our urban jungles, ensuring they thrive amidst the challenges of a changing climate.

We round off our arboreal adventure with a narrative on the transformative journey of fallen trees through Minnetonka's wood utilization program. Hannibal regales us with tales of giving these timber giants new purpose, fashioning everything from benches to Instagram-worthy lumber slabs. So tune in, as we not only explore the intersection of technology and environmental stewardship but also inspire you to join the conversation on social media, where sharing the love for our urban forests has never been more vital.

Show Notes:
City of Minnetonka Natural Resources Division
https://www.minnetonkamn.gov/our-city/natural-resources-3502 

 Greehill Tree Inventory and Analysis Platform
https://www.greehill.com/about

 Minnesota Dept of Agriculture – EAB Information
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialanimals/eab/index.html 

https://mnag.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=63ebb977e2924d27b9ef0787ecedf6e9

US Dept of Agriculture Information on EAB

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth/plant-pest-and-disease-programs/pests-and-diseases/emerald-ash-borer 

Transcript

Hannibal Hayes: 0:01

Welcome to the Public Works Nerds Podcast.

Marc Culver: 0:07

Welcome to the Public Works Nerds Podcast, a Public Works Podcast of the nerds, by the nerds and for the nerds. I'm your host Marc Culver. As always, thank you for joining us. Today we are joined by one of the podcast biggest fans, hannibal Hayes. Um, hannibal Hayes I've heard from from your boss, will Manchester, early in the days. I, oh my God, my Forrester, just loves your podcast. You've got to meet this guy and uh, and I did, and uh, I really enjoy talking, talking with our guests Hannibal Hayes, really enjoy talking with our guest, hannibal Hayes, who's the city forester with the city of Minnetonka.

Marc Culver: 0:47

Hannibal, like I said, truly a public works nerd and specifically a tree nerd, big tree nerd, yeah, and we're going to nerd out about trees today, some forestry stuff, some forestry management items. So you manage over 40,000 trees within the city right away and parks and city property. I've also heard that you have a hobby farm and are quite the farm animal nerd as well. I heard a little story. You can add a couple of hobby farm stories as well to the podcast. So welcome to the podcast, hannibal, and thank you for joining us. So let's just jump right in. How did you become a City Forester? What's your background?

Hannibal Hayes: 1:29

Yeah Well, first off I'd like to thank you very much. I am a huge fan of the podcast. This has really hearing from public works professionals in the industry, sort of scattered throughout the state, has been very helpful to me in my job in understanding where Will Manchester, the public works director, is coming from, where Phil Olson, the city engineer, is coming from, and has really helped me gain some insight on how to interact better with the professionals around me.

Marc Culver: 2:01

So thank you for that. I thank you. I love that perspective.

Hannibal Hayes: 2:03

Yeah and yeah thoroughly enjoyed all the episodes. So, yeah, this is a fantastic podcast and I've been recommending it to to a bunch of people. Well, good, We'll keep recommending.

Marc Culver: 2:13

Yeah, absolutely.

Hannibal Hayes: 2:15

So my like we, like I mentioned the, the path to becoming a city forest or at least mine has been a pretty winding road. I grew up in southeastern Minnesota on a larger hobby farm than the one that I currently live on, and slowly made my way into college. I started in what was called the General College at the University of Minnesota. That college is no longer there, but it allowed people to take classes without having to be admitted into the university, and so I just got my foot in through the door that way, took what I viewed as a bunch of general courses, and then slowly worked my way into the natural resources school and I was studying traditional forestry, so trying to manage forested lands out in, you know, a rural space, and I found it difficult to pay attention to that, to really grasp the concept, while studying those techniques in an urban environment.

Hannibal Hayes: 3:10

And so I was working on the landscape crew at the University of Minnesota's land care at the time, and so it's getting exposed to all kinds of different plants not only trees but shrubs, perennials and annuals and fell in love with plant material. So I ended up transferring over to another college and studying horticultural sciences, and to graduate I needed to do an internship, and the traditional internships were working for local nurseries, greenhouses, things like that. I wanted to continue to be outside and I was working in the research nursery lab for Chad Giblin and a professor named Gary Johnson, who's well known in the tree care industry, and he mentioned that he was out tree climbing as a hobby over the weekend and we got to talking a little bit and he told me about the agriculture industry and how people climb trees professionally for pruning but then also removals, and so I ended up being the first intern at a small tree care company called Northeast Tree.

Marc Culver: 4:10

Oh cool.

Hannibal Hayes: 4:10

And got fully trained in on climbing techniques, on removing trees with cranes and all kinds of fun and crazy equipment, and so that sort of just led me into the industry and I've slowly worked my way up and became the city of Minnetonka's first forestry technician in 2015. It was a brand new position, and then my predecessor, Emily Ball. She ended up leaving within about a year after that and I got promoted at that point in time.

Marc Culver: 4:37

Awesome.

Hannibal Hayes: 4:38

Yeah.

Marc Culver: 4:38

Awesome. So how Hannibal got here besides being just such a huge fan and a nerd, um is, we did a. Hannibal and I presented recently at the city engineers conference, so we had a. I was putting together a smart cities session for the city engineer association and it was funny because I originally had uh, Phil Olson we'll drop names here pegged to do a presentation on a stormwater application and he was like I do not want to do this.

Marc Culver: 5:14

And I put a few words into his mouth a little bit, but that was basically it, like I do not want to do this presentation, and so we started to think about some other ideas and he said well, you should really be talking to hannibal. He's doing some really cool things, um, with forestry. Uh, will and phil both said this. So, yeah, I reached out to you and, um, we talked a little bit about it and, yeah, you came in and made some presentation, made a presentation on a couple of really interesting and innovative ways to manage your tree inventory in Minnetonka, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

Marc Culver: 5:49

So just a little bit of background on the city of Minnetonka. Minnetonka is a suburban community in the Minneapolis-St Paul area out in the west-southwest area of Minneapolis-St Paul. Just over 53,000 people for the population. It's rounded up a little bit, but 28 square miles I think it was like 27.9 square miles and, like I said earlier, so you have 35,000 trees in the right-of-way and 5,000 on city property. So that just kind of puts City of Pinatka into a little bit of perspective. Of course they're on the, you know, along Lake Minnetonka there as well. But a great community and you've got some really great people working for you, so love to see things come out of Minnetonka. So that's just a little bit of context, a little bit of background. So let's talk about, let's jump right into the tree inventory applications that you're doing out there in Minnetonka and talk to us about how you found this, in particular, this drive-by inventory that you're doing with your trees right now.

Hannibal Hayes: 7:00

Yeah, yeah. So since you touched on the city of Minnetonka, I just wanted to highlight the uniqueness of the city structure itself. Yeah, so since you touched on the city of Minnetonka, I just wanted to highlight the uniqueness of the city structure itself, in that we have an entire natural resources division. Most cities within the metro area have just a city forester or a natural resources manager. There's only a couple other cities that have an entire division dedicated to the management of all the natural resources, and so I have two full-time staff, two forestry technicians underneath me Josh Obermeyer and Diana Pryson and then I have anywhere between three and four seasonals, sort of scattered throughout the year, to help out with projects, seasonal projects and things like that. And then I have typically well, the past couple of years had two AmeriCorps members through the Climate Impact Corps initiative, and they've been instrumental in supplementing and helping us out with projects and coming up with new ideas and different perspectives.

Marc Culver: 8:02

So those have been really interesting. We had a Green Corps member in Roseville, um did, did a few things. So I'm just kind of curious uh, what were your green core members focused on primarily?

Hannibal Hayes: 8:12

So it's most of the time the the things that they focus on are inventories, so updating the, the current inventories that we have of trees that are in the mode, maintained areas of the parks, but then we've also ventured out into the wooded spaces and some of the parks that we have. We're undertaking a large scale forest restoration project in a park called Ford Park up in the northeast side of the city and to get a sense of what we would be replanting with, I actually sent two AmeriCorps members into that space, olive Colangelo and then Jackson Touchberry, and had them inventory essentially the forest, so anything that was four inches in diameter and bigger, and it turned out to be about 1,100 tree points the diameter classes of the trees, because they collected the diameter, but then also the tree vigor, the conditions of those trees, but then also the species composition, because we wanted to plant for resiliency in the face of climate change.

Hannibal Hayes: 9:16

We needed to improve the biodiversity of that forest, and so what that's helped us do is to guide our planting efforts, and this is in conjunction with Hennepin County. Their foresters have teamed up with us. They're actually donating about 10,000 trees and shrubs that we're going to be replanting in that space in this coming May.

Marc Culver: 9:38

Since we're on this topic, let's dive into a little bit more the biodiversity in particular, dive into a little bit more the biodiversity in particular. So you know, with the, we're seeing, I think, an extreme right now this year in our winter, but I don't think that what we're seeing this winter is that uncommon of what we're going to see in the future, like we're going to have more mild winters, and that gets into a conversation with EAB and it being able to go further north, um. But I'm just wondering are there species of trees that you're surprised that you're planting in minnetonka? Be to and to do that biodiversity become more resilient because of the changing climate be.

Hannibal Hayes: 10:19

The answer is sort of yes and no. Yeah, because of my background, I've studied, studied plants. Um, it's, it's not too surprising that we can start to plant a whole group of different trees that are found just to the south of us. It's more, I guess, more exciting that we finally can do that. Yeah, um, that's sort of a silver lining on right of a very narrow view of the effects of climate change that you know. All of that. Most of climate change is is very bad and um, but as far as planting, uh, for biodiversity, the warmer it gets, the more different types of species of trees that we can plant. That doesn't mean that the forest is going to look, you know, kind of crazy with 30 or yeah, yeah, with 30 or 40 different types of tree species.

Hannibal Hayes: 11:06

It just means that, you know. It mostly means that when we plant trees in a boulevard area, the native trees that potentially won't be able to survive in those locations because it's no longer a native space, it's all disturbed soils. We now have a bigger planting palette to choose from of proven, hardier species to our south. What are some examples of some of those species that you're looking at? First one that pops into mind is American sycamore. This is one that's found just to the south, naturally in the state of Iowa. But then there's an oak that is actually native to Minnesota called the Chinquapin oak, but it's only been found in the southeast portion of the state. Slow grower grows on rocky outcroppings in higher pH soils, which is fairly common in a disturbed urban landscape. So there's yeah, those two pop, you know, come into mind. The industry has been planting northern catalpa, ohio buckeye trees like that for a number of years and having great success. Great.

Marc Culver: 12:09

Are you working actively with nurseries as far as trying to encourage them to bolster the number of different species that they do offer?

Hannibal Hayes: 12:32

That's sort of out of our control. We do for the city of Minnetonka. We have a limited amount of buying power and therefore a limited amount of influence. We're actually working with a nursery just to the west of the Twin Cities called Wilson's Nursery. We're actually entering into a contract for them to contract grow some trees for us so that we can actually do just that and boost the number of species that we can actually offer at our city's annual tree sale.

Marc Culver: 12:56

Yeah, that's a good idea. That's a way to increase your buying power is to make it a part of that program too. Well cool. So let's talk about the tree inventory. How are you figuring out what you have, how are you managing this, and how did you find this advanced tool that we're going to talk about here? I'll let you introduce it.

Hannibal Hayes: 13:17

So the inventory that we originally had entered into GIS is from a survey and then also a survey of the right-of-way portions of the road in Minnetonka, but then also an actual inventory conducted by Rainbow Tree Care, which is a local tree care company, and they collected all the data, entered all of that information into ArcGIS and that's the original inventory that we have of all of the trees in the modem maintained areas of city property, and so we've been updating that with seasonal helps as time permits and that inventory was usually just it was all tech space, right, it was a GPS location, maybe it was a species and it was maybe a general condition statement, right?

Hannibal Hayes: 14:03

Yes, yeah, a condition statement, the collection of the date or the assessment date, but then also the diameter. If there's any issues in general in a tree or in a tree, then we would list those as well. Right, and then the tree points. More specifically, I guess the trees that we're going to be removing, those were entered into the inventory under a different icon and all of that data gets pulled into our work order management software and so we're mostly updating trees that we're going to be removing and then trying to update the inventory as time permitted for the trees that we were still actively managing, for the trees that we were still actively managing and I'm ashamed to say I can't actually remember how I came across the smart tree inventory. I know that I came into contact and must have been through the Davie Resources Group, through Gail Nozell. She knows that I like technology, that I'm open to trying new things or at least discussing new, uh, new context. I can't, I, I know.

Hannibal Hayes: 15:08

I know I spoke to gail at at, uh, at davy resources group, um, about this, because she's the the one leading this, but I just can't remember exactly how. Yeah, uh, it was introduced. So, um, but what this is, uh is using artificial intelligence uh to to build a an actual 3d model of a model of a city's tree inventory. And this is so, davie Resources Group, or DRG. They're teaming up with a company called Grehill that is based out of Budapest, hungary, and what they do is they drive a 3D LiDAR scanner around your city wherever you want to have the inventory conducted, and they collect I believe it was 30 million data points per minute, wow To construct a 3D model of all of the trees that they scan and then, coupled with machine learning, but also ground truthing, with data With field staff, they're able to not only build a 3D image of the trees but also identify tree genus and species, and then you can program in to evaluate the data that's collected to give youar image.

Marc Culver: 16:28

And and there will, uh, we'll put some links to um green hills, gree hills website, uh, in the show notes, so check that out. Look at some of the images that are as a result of this um in hannibal's presentation he actually had some really cool rotating uh 3d images of it, but I was, you know. It just amazes me, and this is just, you know, the evolution of ai in general. It's it never ceases. It continues to amaze me on what we're able to do with this. But the way it's able to identify the species, you know, um, do you what? What about it? Because I'm not a tree expert, I'm a public works editor, I like trees, but I'm not a tree nerd. Yeah, anyway, but what is it about the tree that it's using to categorize it or identify the species of the tree?

Hannibal Hayes: 17:21

We didn't get into exactly how they identify it. I know that analyzing different infrared signatures of trees that people are able to decipher that. I know that that can be done with multispectral and hyperspectral imagery and that can get you for the most part to the genus level, so oak trees. But then, through a process of machine learning, you teach the most part to the. So the, the genus level, so oak trees. Okay, um, and. But then through a process of machine learning, you, you teach the tree how to to tell the difference between a white oak tree and a red oak tree.

Hannibal Hayes: 17:57

And I know that they have to do some of that. I'm not sure to what extent they have to do that, but that you know it's never. None of this technology is removing Arborist the human component, out of tree evaluation and tree identification. It's making things more efficient, honing that skill set and giving Arborist the power to collect not only more data but do a better job evaluating that data.

Marc Culver: 18:28

Yeah, and part of AI is and you use the words machine learning and part of AI is the machine learning aspect, and so you mentioned ground truthing in that, and so I imagine that's a continually evolving process too, and you're actually helping the AI engine get better at it by ground truthing it, and it's going to get better at identifying the specific species, um, as time goes on and it gets more experience. So it'll be interesting to see in a few years where, where that's at and how much of how much ground truthing still needs to be done for. But but it's really cool. I mean the image. What's really cool about the image is you really get to see the whole canopy of the tree. You know again, it's pretty amazing how it's able to figure out the backside of the tree, what that looks like. You know, again, probably using some AI stuff in that, and then it can help you identify what you need to do to maintain that tree right.

Hannibal Hayes: 19:28

Yes, yeah, so it not only helps to identify the tree but, like you said, it shows the crown of each tree but then also the branch structure as well, and what you can do is run an analysis. Once you have all this information, you can run an analysis street by street and you can estimate based upon whatever pruning specification you have. Ours at the city is pruning to anywhere between 16 to 18 feet over a roadway. Once you have this, you can run an analysis and insert that pruning clearance recommendation or specification and you can then, out of that evaluation, you can estimate how much biomass that is going to generate, which will give you a sense, or eventually can give you a sense, of how long is it actually going to take to prune that straight. That gives us a better idea of how much it would cost using a, a contractor. Um, and just get a. Give us a better sense of how much time would that actually cost? Yeah or take, excuse me where?

Marc Culver: 20:35

where has been a taka in your, your trimming needs, like, like, what's your, what's your plans? Um sequence, or how often do you want to get to trim those trees and where are you in that like, are you behind? Are? You caught up on that and is this tool helping you with that?

Hannibal Hayes: 20:54

so, like the the vast majority of other professionals that I've spoken to, not only in the in the metro area, but, uh, nationwide. Yeah, um, again, I haven't spoken to all of them, but, uh, everybody's behind, unfortunately. Yeah, there's, there's a lot to manage with tree pruning. Some trees you could prune every year, those that are extremely healthy and young and vigorous. Those are trees that can really get out of hand really quickly. But then you have your old, mature trees Think of a mature cottonwood or bur oak. There's really not a whole lot to prune more than every 10 years. So you're trying to balance getting through all of the young trees versus the established trees, versus the mature trees. The general rule of thumb is try to get through your entire tree inventory in 10 years.

Hannibal Hayes: 21:42

We are well behind that, unfortunately, and Minnetonka is also heavily wooded. We have a lot of vegetation along the roadways, including buckthorn, but also a lot of trees, and there's been some instances four or five years ago when we were receiving a lot of rain where the pruning that we did wouldn't last more than three years, wow. And so crews are having to go back out into areas that we were just in five years ago and actually prune back the vegetation away from the backside of the road. Wow, that's crazy.

Marc Culver: 22:15

Yeah, but I would imagine this helps you at least determine that Is this winter helping you catch up a little bit. Are you doing more pruning this winter?

Hannibal Hayes: 22:27

We're actually doing about the same amount of pruning work. Our streets crew is heading back out after a little bit of a program hiatus over the past three years. They're back out pruning, so that is helping them catch up with pushing the vegetation back so it doesn't hit the plows or anything like that, which we haven't really had the need as of now. But it sounds like Thursday, yeah, Sounds like in a couple of days, yeah. So what the winter is or this past snowless winter has really helped us catch up on is emerald ash borer removals, so all of the infested trees that pose a risk along the roadways. Our streets crew has been instrumental in reducing the numbers of those trees and providing a lot of public safety for the general public because of that.

Marc Culver: 23:17

Well, you touched on it. I was going to come back to this, but let's jump in and spend a few minutes on Emerald Ash Borer. And spend a few minutes on Emerald Ash Borer with your new inventory. I don't know if you found any new ones, but how many ashes do you think you have in your public right-of-way and in your public spaces?

Hannibal Hayes: 23:39

That's a very good question. So just sorry. Going back to the smart tree inventories, we actually haven't ran that yet. We're seeking grant funding right now through Hennepin.

Hannibal Hayes: 23:51

County but then exploring other areas as well.

Hannibal Hayes: 23:55

We did get a quote from Davey Resources Group for that inventory work and we are you know I'm pursuing it as basically as much as I can at this point in time.

Hannibal Hayes: 24:06

The city of Pittsburgh is one, if not the only, city in the United States that's already had this work done. Those were some of the photos that I included in my presentation, but I ran into a forestry professional in the city of San Jose and they were a couple weeks ago. They were working with Davie Resources Group to develop a contract and have that done as soon as possible. So we're hoping that we'll have this done and completed by I mean ideally the end of this summer, but certainly by the end of next summer and we're currently wrapping up or in the middle of completing our community management, our community forest management plan, completing our community management, our community forest management plan, and so this is going to be one of those components in that management plan is breaking down. You know what are all of the benefits, the different types of evaluations and analysis that we can run with an advanced inventory system like this. Okay, yeah.

Marc Culver: 25:05

So sorry, back to Emerald Edge work, but again, Matt. So how many do you think you have?

Hannibal Hayes: 25:08

So we know that back in 2010, when we had a survey completed of most of the city, nobody really could afford to do a full-scale city inventory and it's still quite expensive which we haven't done yet, but continue to explore to. But we figured that there's about 6,000 ash trees in the right of way portion of the road, so anywhere between six to 10 feet behind the edge of the or the backside of the road, and then, in general, about another 60,000 trees scattered throughout the city as well. 60,000 ash trees On private property in the wooded areas and everything else Okay.

Hannibal Hayes: 25:47

Wow trees On private property, in the wooded areas and everything else. Okay, wow, which is a fair amount of trees, and that can include anything six inches in diameter and bigger, but the interesting thing is that is now about 14 years old, so trees that were not counted in that inventory would now be of a size class that, if we were to do that exact same inventory again, there would be additional trees as well Got it, but we did discover emerald ash borer in the city in 2019. For the most part, once you find it, you figure that it's been there for anywhere between three to five years, and so we were losing ash trees prior to that. And so that starts know, starts to to monkey with the uh, with the inventory numbers, right um any idea what percentage of your overall tree inventory those ashes are it was just above 11 okay yeah, which is still, I mean, that's a pretty significant number.

Marc Culver: 26:44

if you just erased 11 of the trees in your city, yeah, absolutely, that's a pretty significant number. If you just erased 11% of the trees in your city, yeah, absolutely, that's going to be a pretty substantial impact. So what's Minnetonka doing proactively to manage the EAB program?

Hannibal Hayes: 26:59

Before Emerald Ash Borer was discovered, the city did a lot of preparation work, so that started in 2012 with my predecessor, emily Ball.

Hannibal Hayes: 27:09

She started removing those ash trees that were poorly formed or in poor health this is from the city parks is where she focused on and then began to immediately replant, like with a large planting palette, like we just discussed.

Hannibal Hayes: 27:25

So planting for biodiversity, focusing on native trees in the right place, but then incorporating new trees as well out into the city parks just to diversify. And she came up with a plan and that was systematically implemented. That's part of the reason that the forestry technician position was created was to assist the city forester in acting those plans, and we moved systematically through all of the city parks, which there are now 55, I believe and so we removed all of those trees that were poorly formed and of poor health and then immediately replanted, and so that took about five years to complete replanted, and so that took about five years to complete, and as of now, we are removing ash trees that are infested with emerald ash borer in the right-of-way at no extra cost to private property owners, and we've started to increase our numbers of trees that we offer in the city's annual tree sale as well. Okay, so just as a little bit of background, you probably know more about this than I do.

Marc Culver: 28:25

So, just as a little bit of background, you probably know more about this than I do, although I'm pretty sure that my neighborhood St Anthony Park neighborhood was ground zero.

Hannibal Hayes: 28:34

Very close to EAB. Very close, yeah. It was on the border of Minneapolis and St Paul. Yep, yep.

Marc Culver: 28:40

So kind of in my backyard, is where that pallet I think they figured it came on a pallet or something like that yeah, some type of shipping material, yep. So maybe give a little bit of background about EAB in Minnesota. Like when was it first that you remember that you know of? I assume you know a lot, but when was it first identified here and how's the progression been going?

Hannibal Hayes: 29:02

It was first discovered along the yeah in St Paul, I believe officially, but right along the minneapolis st paul border in 2009 I was actually working at the university of minnesota at that time and, um, they received grant funding and started a uh, an ash tree removal crew of which I was put in charge of, and so I removed trees, and you know both minneapolis and st paul yeah, you probably removed some trees not too far from my house, maybe, yeah on the campus? Yeah, definitely.

Marc Culver: 29:30

Hey everyone, I just want to take a quick moment to thank our sponsor, Bolton Mink, who is producing and editing our podcasts.

Bolton & Menk: 29:38

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Hannibal Hayes: 30:03

It slowly progressed out of there. I believe it was discovered in Minneapolis proper the following year, in 2010. And then it has slowly expanded out from there. It seems as though it did go into St Paul, Roseville and then Richfield a little bit faster than anywhere else, but I know it's now found pretty much all over the entire metro area and nobody really knew how it was going to progress. We didn't know how it would progress in the city of Minnetonka. We actually ran a couple simulations as far as well. What if it was found, you know, in the very center of the city and then just sort of ballooned out from there? Or if it was multiple areas scattered throughout the city Eden, Prairie, the city, just to the south of us? They actually got it a lot worse than us, faster. Yeah, Interesting. Yeah, it was very, very bizarre. So, but it just it depends upon you know how, basically where all the ash trees are.

Marc Culver: 30:55

Yeah.

Hannibal Hayes: 30:55

The the twin cities metro area is not a homogenous zone of of ash where it would just radiate out from the very center. You know, the EAB needs to have a food source and it just simply goes wherever that is.

Marc Culver: 31:08

Yeah, and I just read an article in the newspaper this weekend, I think it was that they have identified an infestation up in northern Minnesota, okay Up near the national forests up there. So now there's some concern about the spread there and trying to contain it. But it's kind of you know the writing's on the wall that you know they're trying to use a bee, a certain type of bee. I think that they'll release that feeds on them.

Hannibal Hayes: 31:41

There's some parasitic wasps that they're releasing that have. You know that? I think the science is still kind of out on how effective those are. They have been finding them reproducing in the southeastern portion of the state. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has been releasing them for a number of years and they are finding them back out in nature or maintaining a population out in nature, which means that they are finding emerald ash borer larvae and so they're able to complete their life cycle. So they do know that it works, but to the best of my knowledge, it's been sort of hit or miss as to how effective it is. But it is effective.

Hannibal Hayes: 32:21

But just how much it is, nobody still really knows, at least as far as I can tell. Yeah, much it is. Um, nobody still really knows, at least as far as I can tell. Yeah, so the I know that it's been found that emerald ash borer has been found in cloquet and then it's been in the city of duluth for a number of years and they're managing them, uh, as best as they can as well.

Hannibal Hayes: 32:36

The, the, the true the. The interesting thing with northern minnesota is that the, the ash population up there transitions away from green ash and is more into black ash, which is a lowland bog type of deciduous tree, and so nobody really knows how that's going to play out. The vast experience that we have with emerald ash borer is with the green ash species, and so there is a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota who are they're testing new well, a new fungus out on how effective it is in controlling emerald ash borer. But that has been in green ash, but that is something that they reached out to us and that we have provided a site with a very healthy population of ash trees but also emerald ash borer too. Yeah, so hopefully there'll be more coming out about that.

Marc Culver: 33:36

Cool, that's interesting and it'll be interesting to see how that. How does the emerald ash borer like black ash, right, right, right. That'll be interesting to see. But you know, in the show notes I've got some links to both Minnesota's Department of Agriculture as well as US Department of Agriculture with some maps about the spread of emerald ash borer, and the US Agriculture Department of Agriculture site actually has a pretty cool timeline showing the spread of emerald ash borer across the country. So if you really want to nerd out about it, check that out. I'm pretty sure that in the not-too-distant future we will also have another podcast episode focusing on emerald ash borer removal programs, removal and replacement programs. So we'll come back to that. But coming back to the tree inventory thing, I don't know if is there anything else you wanted to say about the Gree Hill application. I think it's really cool. It's kind of like, from what I've seen, it's kind of like the Google Drive car that drives down the streets and captures that.

Hannibal Hayes: 34:47

So if you see something like that, it may be for a tree inventory and not just google, the google drive or street view, um they also have a, a rover yeah, that they that they'll drive around out in the parks too. So it's, it's very um, I can't remember the name of that movie short circuit oh, yeah, looking, yeah, so that that's something to be forewarned about too. If you see somebody driving around trees. You don't have to worry about it, wally too. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.

Marc Culver: 35:14

For the younger generation. You were born after the 1990s and you don't know what short circuit is.

Hannibal Hayes: 35:23

Yeah, the main thing that, or the biggest thing that I'm excited about with the smart tree inventory is the ease, at least, of running analysis. So one of the other one of the analyses that you can run is the amount of stormwater that you would be able to intercept with the tree inventories that you have.

Hannibal Hayes: 35:43

Oh cool you have, so you can calculate how much in a one inch rain event, how much will these trees actually slow down, how much the rain hitting the ground and going into the stormwater infrastructure. So that's something that's very interesting. You can calculate easily the amount of canopy cover over a roadway for those urban heat island areas. It allows you to evaluate. You know, it looks like we're meeting whatever percentage goals we have over in this area of the city, but we're not meeting those over here. And it gives you the ability to direct your resources more efficiently. And there's one other, oh, the application that I'm very curious about is this company Grehill and Davey Resources Group. They recommend re-scanning your inventory every other year or every three years, something like that.

Marc Culver: 36:36

That's that much that was one of the questions I had on here.

Hannibal Hayes: 36:38

Yeah, yeah, because then you can start to evaluate, in effect, how healthy is your forest? How much has your forest grown? In effect, how healthy is your forest? How much has your forest grown? If you have carbon sequestration or carbon storage goals set by your climate action plan, you would be able to calculate those. How much extra biomass has your forest added onto it? And then, as well as that, but you'd also be able to look individually at trees after you prune them, able to look individually at trees after you prune them. And so in the tree care industry, the recommendation is to not remove more than 25% or 30% of the crown of the tree every single time you prune. And there's caveats with those with hybrid elms that grow very vigorous, four to six feet a year. You actually want to remove 50% to 75% every time. Yeah, and you can prune those trees almost annually as well.

Hannibal Hayes: 37:30

Otherwise they get completely out of control. They're a fantastic tree, but so right now, though, if you tell three arborists you need to remove up to 25%, and we really want you to meet 25%, it's virtually impossible for an arborist to say I have met that goal. You can speak in general terms, where it looks like I've met that goal, but each arborist is going to not only prune differently, but view that in a different fashion, and so, with this type of AI, we can actually evaluate them, scientifically speaking, and get a, get a number of how much of the biomass have you actually removed from this tree? And then we can go back and look at our pruning specs. Uh, over the over the years, to re-evaluate the pruning specs to see if they're meeting our targeted goals cool, but you can't really do that right now, because everybody perceives trees a little bit differently.

Marc Culver: 38:28

Yeah, yeah, well, and we, the city of St Paul is actually pruning the trees in my neighborhood. Oh, no, kidding, this month, okay. And we have a neighborhood email list and you know they started at the first street and the neighborhood list just went holistic okay with people just saying that they're just completely destroying these trees. Okay, you know, they're taking too much off, they're going too high, and okay, and I'm just staying quiet. I stay out of these conversations, you know those are common remarks um yeah but you know and and I couldn't tell you what the species are.

Marc Culver: 39:17

I know there's a lot of maples, sugar maples and such in the right-of-way and we have a lot of oaks set back further in the private property and I'm sure I have confidence. I know, when I worked at Roseville, our went through certification, training for uh pruning in that. So I have confidence that the guys that are doing the work and gals that are doing the work are know what they're doing.

Marc Culver: 39:37

Um, but it can. It can look pretty dramatic. Absolutely, the average person absolutely see the after. But listen, you talk about. I mean you want to take at least 25 when, when you do that pruning and it's still, that's a healthy tree. The tree is going to be just fine.

Hannibal Hayes: 39:53

Yeah, when arborists go through certification training such as the International Society of Arborists Certified Arborist Exam, it's extensive training and you need a certain number of years of experience and education in order to obtain that credential. And then same thing with there's an organization called the Tree Care Industry Association, tcia. And same thing. They have training programs that require a certain number of hours of learning, of experience, both book learning and field experience as well. So, yeah, the vast majority of people out there do know exactly what they're doing. There are pruning specifications. They do change from city to city based upon any number of issues, mostly the amount of time between prunings.

Hannibal Hayes: 40:45

Right the frequency, yeah, so the longer between each pruning cycle, the more that we typically do need to remove, just because we won't be returning to that tree for over a decade, right?

Marc Culver: 40:58

right. So that kind of leads me then to you know, you've got this new inventory system that you want to use, but you're doing something right now. You are using some technology to help with the inventory of your system. So talk about how you're using drones right now.

Hannibal Hayes: 41:19

Yeah, so the drone use that we have stems out, or comes out of a project that we that we initiated with the university of minnesota back in 2019. It's called the conservation arbor culture study, and what this work revolves around is identifying trees that would normally be looked at as too risky to retain out in the, in the urban environment, whether that's on city property or, uh, on private property, something that has, like you were mentioning earlier with your black walnut, before we started that, it was starting to tilt, there was root plate failure. We haven't looked at a tree like that, but this could potentially go into something and look into a tree like that, but otherwise it's a tree with a significant amount of dieback but still enough of a healthy crown to preserve. Or a large hole in the tree, a big cavity with a lot of decay, um, any, any number of issues that that trees are facing. So there's also a large split. So when a tree is co-dominant um, and it is doesn't have proper structure, can actually split open. Um. This, this study, is looking at ways and trialing different new or new protocols, but also different protocols, um, and and actually testing those out in the field and seeing how a tree reacts. And we've we teamed up with the university of minnesota we've done about 25, maybe 30 trees so far on different sites, mostly out of or some out of public view, but certainly out, retaining trees out of the, out of the busiest areas of the city so that we're not putting anybody at at real at any more danger than they would normally be.

Hannibal Hayes: 43:06

And where the drones come in is that we wanted to monitor the trees. Essential reaction to the, to this type of pruning, and the drones offer us a, an aerial view, something that we couldn't, that we'd never had, that we didn't have before. And so and it's very unique, and there's a, the where we ended up deploying this or utilizing this technology was over by a park called Jedana, and this is in a city-owned outlot, it's amongst a neighborhood, so there's private property surrounding it. And on this parcel of land are the biggest American basswood trees that I've ever seen. Oh, wow, one of them is 53 inches in diameter, so about four and a half feet, wow. And instead of removing these trees, we wanted to enter them into or put them into this study and evaluate them for structural integrity and then prune them in a way that will increase the or decrease the risk that they pose and increase the longevity of those trees. And so we ended up pruning this cohort of American basswood in 2019, or the winter of 2019-2020.

Hannibal Hayes: 44:20

And then in 2022, we hired a company called HCI Hughes Innovations out of Edina. We hired a company called HCI Hughes Innovations out of Edina, and what they did is fly monthly flights over this site to photograph, or take high-resolution photographs of the trees and monitor them from month to month. This was April through November. And how big of an area was this? This was A little over an acre, okay, and what we found was that the first year, there's nothing to compare it to, except for the month to month, and what the consultant, jim Hughes, was able to do is run a red, green, blue analysis of the leaves, of the leaves, and what we found was that we were able to doing that type of an analysis.

Hannibal Hayes: 45:19

We were actually able to detect tree stress with this analysis before you could actually see it with your own eyes, and these trees were so large.

Hannibal Hayes: 45:22

They're about 100 to 105 feet in height.

Hannibal Hayes: 45:26

It was virtually impossible to see any of that from the ground because it's so far away, but using the drone, jim was actually able to highlight some of these areas of tree stress that we would never have been able to see before.

Hannibal Hayes: 45:41

And where this becomes very interesting is when you do a follow-up application of the drone, so taking photographs in uh throughout the years, and so we hired jim hughes to come back and collect additional monthly data um, in the year and last year, so 2023 and so when you begin to compare the month to month over the past two years, it becomes really far more interesting to do that, and so you start to notice phenological changes in the site and in the trees themselves. So last year we had a much earlier spring and a much later fall, so the trees were green for a longer period of time, and that becomes interesting in how much growth they would put on, or that they do put on, versus the years where they don't have as much green on them. But then couple that with the third year of drought. We started to notice last year during the middle of the summer that the trees actually looked far more stressed out than they did in 2022. Interesting.

Marc Culver: 46:49

And so when you've got those images images you've got a lot of images each month and you've got two years worth now of monthly images is and you're, what tool are you using to analyze those, and is there any automation going on with that, or is that all just like somebody is looking at month, you know, or February of 20 versus February of 22? Is it human interface or is there some automation going on there? It's a little bit of both.

Hannibal Hayes: 47:19

I'm not as familiar with it as Jim Hughes, the consultant. He's the one who put all those evaluations together, but then he lays those out for us side by side, got it, and so then we're able to see those as well. He also he lays those out for us side by side, got it, and so then we're able to see those as well. He also provides all the data to us on a monthly basis, and so all of those photographs that he takes are it's not stitched together, but I forget what the actual term is, but that's something that he does, and then we can just view that with our own eyes Cool.

Marc Culver: 47:51

Are you thinking of doing this anywhere else in the city? We?

Hannibal Hayes: 47:56

actually included the Ford Park Forest Restoration Area last year as well, and we always have hopes and ideas to expand this project as well. But actually for this year 2024, we're taking a hiatus from collecting additional data and we're just taking a step back and doing a program evaluation, trying to figure out what we're actually well, how we're going to use all of this data and how we're going to incorporate it into management decisions. And one of the other reasons that we're putting this on hold is because we're trying to figure out how it fits into the community forest management plan, which we're still working on completing, and we've also gotten to a point where we're interested in expanding. But we have, you know, just like every other city a finite amount of resources to spend, and so we're actually exploring.

Hannibal Hayes: 48:48

what would an internal drone program actually look like? Who could use those services? How many people would we need in order to get a drone license? How would that fit into everyone's workflow? Those are, ironically, the easiest portion. It's the data management. After you collect all this interesting stuff, how do you store it? Where do you store it? How long do you? How? Long you keep it.

Hannibal Hayes: 49:12

Yes, yeah, how does that fit into data practices with, with the city regulations, and then who's going to analyze it, who's going to evaluate it? And then how do you incorporate all of that data into your, your normal operations, and how do you use that to enhance your, your data management?

Marc Culver: 49:30

Yeah, and so, as I understand and those are all really good questions and those were questions that were in my part of the presentation about smart cities is keeping in mind the data component of all these cool smart cities applications. But as I listen to you talk about this, it seems obvious that you know. So the Gree Hill application is going to allow you to build this inventory of trees and these really cool images and everything in the areas that you can get to yes, that you can drive, that you can have your WALL-E drone device go through, in that this drone application is going to allow you to do a similar, at least an inventory and a comparison in those areas that you can't drive and are just inaccessible, right, and so they kind of complement each other.

Hannibal Hayes: 50:23

Yeah, absolutely. And the one thing that we're really or one of the components of an internal drone program that we're really excited for is how much it will enhance our tree inspecting abilities. Yeah, there's a study that came out last year out of the University of Minnesota that explored the use of drones in detecting oak wilt so new oak wilt pockets and they were using multispectral imagery, so additional wavelengths than what the human eye can see, and what they found out was that, or what they figured out was that they could detect oak wilt in a tree a week or two before it actually was showing symptoms. Oh, wow, and that, you know, a human, an inspector, could actually see.

Hannibal Hayes: 51:12

And the inspection window for my inspectors is pretty short, it's only a couple months. They have 28 square miles to cover, and then they have interactions with homeowners, alerting them to the fact that they have an insect or a disease on their property, and so they're driving the entire city and scouting the entire city this way. But they're also doing this on city-owned property as well, and if we were able to increase our efficiency of a park that's hundreds of acres, such as Purgatory Park I don't know if Meadow Park is quite that large, but I know Lone Lake is as well. If, instead of spending an entire day scouting one of those parks, we could spend 30 minutes, that would greatly increase our efficiency, in fact, so rapidly that we'd be able to scout these parks multiple times throughout the growing season instead of just once. And what that does is allows us to use different management strategies to manage oak wilt. The earlier we can detect it, the cheaper it is actually to manage it, and that's in both human time but also capital expenses as well.

Marc Culver: 52:22

So a 90 second tangent on that. What causes oak wilt is is it an insect, is it a fungus? And what? What is oak wilt?

Hannibal Hayes: 52:33

so oak wilt is a? Uh a fungus that uh gets transferred by insects. Okay, uh so it's both.

Hannibal Hayes: 52:39

So yeah, it's both yeah, in, uh, in oak wilt. For oak wilt management you have, you need to have a wounded tree, and that could be in the form of, you know, a wound, but also a branch that's damaged from a storm or something like that, and then you need to have the fungus present in that area, wherever you have oak trees. But then you also need to have the beetle, the sap-feeding beetles, that transfer the oak wilt fungus as well.

Marc Culver: 53:08

Interesting and is oak wilt pretty common in in minnetonka then unfortunately yes yeah, yeah, we have a plenty of fungus around.

Hannibal Hayes: 53:17

Yeah, yeah, we have a plenty of fungus, but then also, uh, plenty of oak trees. Yeah, uh, as well. And with climate change, um projected to increase the number of storms that we have, um, the the chance of of oak wilt increasing is, uh is quite real how that all plays out, you know? Um, nobody, nobody quite knows yet, right?

Marc Culver: 53:39

all right. So two other topics before we end our podcast today. Um, on the city side, the sawmill. You guys have a pretty cool operation there. Yes, you are managing this forest and, unfortunately, part of managing an urban forest is removing trees, and I think it's a pretty cool thing what you guys are doing with that then. So talk about your sawmill.

Hannibal Hayes: 54:02

So in 2021, we put together a wood utilization program, and this had been discussed for a number of years, and one of the components of this was actually purchasing a portable sawmill. And the sawmill that we ended up buying is called the Lucas Portable Swing Blade Mill and it's their largest model. It's model 10-30.

Marc Culver: 54:26

And so For anybody who wants to look it up, on whatever site you buy, this yeah, we also bought the slabbing attachment, in case you looked that up too.

Hannibal Hayes: 54:35

So what this is is essentially this frame that's entirely portable. It all breaks down into separate pieces, so you can actually just put this on the back of a large size pickup truck oh cool and you take it to a site or leave it up, but you assemble all these pieces together and then you put this mill carriage onto these side rails and then the mill carriage moves back and forth over this log. So it's similar to a bandsaw mill, but the advantage of this style of mill is that it cuts in both the vertical and the horizontal pass over a log, and so with this type of mill you're always cutting, whereas with a bandsaw mill you're always cutting in the horizontal position and then manipulating the log. Got it? It's just the reverse with this style of mill.

Hannibal Hayes: 55:22

Now, both mill styles exist for reasons. There's advantages and disadvantages to both. The reason we ended up going with this style of sawmill is that I have familiarity with this mill because I own one personally, and this style of mill specializes in dimensional lumber, so anything up to about 10 inches in width and then in depth, and then anything in between.

Marc Culver: 55:49

Okay.

Hannibal Hayes: 55:50

So you can. You can really hammer out one by fours, two by fours, uh, up to you know, a two by 10, or, uh, really, a 10 by 10 inch, can't Wow? Um. And then this style of sawmill can actually handle a log up to five feet in diameter.

Hannibal Hayes: 56:04

Those are pretty rare in uh, in Minnesota, and especially in Minnetonka, but if there was any type of unique material that was coming into our wood yard, we wanted to have the ability to mill that up with the sawmill that we ended up purchasing, and I mentioned the slabbing attachment just a minute ago. So what you end up doing with that is you take the circular blade off of this mill and then you mount this gigantic, essentially a five foot length chainsaw bar onto the mill, and then you are. Then you can produce these large. What are typically referred to as live edge slabs of this mill is that it's then powered by a 30 horsepower engine, versus a uh, a chainsaw mill that would be powered by, up to you know about a seven or eight horsepower engine. Cool, yeah, it's been super fun so far yeah, so what?

Marc Culver: 56:59

so then, what have you been doing with this wood? So so you're out there, you're, you're, you're milling, your the trees that you're cutting down. You've got this product. Now what do you do with it?

Hannibal Hayes: 57:11

Right now we've been, we sold I'm trying to just over 300 board feet to the city of Anoka and they redecked one of their trailers with ash Cool. So lumber from ash trees that had to be removed because they were infested with emerald ash borer, and I just saw the photos and it looks fantastic. That's awesome. Yeah, we and I just saw the photos and it looks fantastic. That's awesome. Yeah, we've also donated a little bit of lumber that's on display at the League of Minnesota Cities. In their St Paul office there was a bench that was made out of a red oak tree that had to be removed because it posed an unacceptable risk to the roadway. But then also some ash lumber is on display as well and, again, ash trees that were killed by emerald ash borer. We've also we have a number of about 2,000 board feet of ash lumber that was finished into a final product that was going to go into the community center remodel, but that project is on hold. But that lumber is still available.

Hannibal Hayes: 58:18

And right now we are in the process of slabbing a bunch of green ash because we're working with a new local company called Storm Trees. They're based out of Eden Prairie and we're going to send them a bunch of ash slabs, and they are going to dry them in their kiln and then we're going to post them on a government website and uh and auction them off. We've actually done that before, just once with, um, some Scott's pine um slabs, but those were not kiln dried and so we, we made that abundantly clear when we posted them and things like that, but we we still felt a little bit guilty. We don't know what the quality actually is going to be, but our park staff actually used some of those Scots pine slabs and built tabletops for one of their park sheds, so we're going to keep an eye on those. One of them was about four inches thick, so it'll be interesting to see how that drives.

Marc Culver: 59:05

You're going to get some contraction or expansion of it or something.

Hannibal Hayes: 59:09

Yeah, yeah, some cracking or cracking or warping, but the, the, the area where we've been able to have the the largest impact so far is the sale of logs, and so we've been selling a lot of uh mostly oak to that same company. Storm trees uh, they're the one they're the primary buyer of uh of logs so far we've sold to a couple other um couple other companies. Holistic tree has purchased a lot of black locusts, which makes gorgeous lumber, and then we are still in talks with a company called wood from the hood to uh sell green ash logs to them. So but we we're still working out the particulars of getting delivering the logs over to them in the most efficient way.

Marc Culver: 59:51

Yeah, so how much are these logs or slabs and that selling? For Just some rough numbers.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:00:01

The logs we sell for 10 cents a board foot and that's going to depend upon the length and also the diameter of the tree, but in general it's anywhere between $25 to maybe up to $75 per log. Okay, which the feedback that I've received is that that's extremely affordable. Yeah, and so that's good feedback. And then the lumber just air-dried, rough-sound lumber we've been selling for about $1 a board foot, but then the slabs we're selling for about $5 a board foot, but then the slabs were selling for about $5 a board foot, okay.

Marc Culver: 1:00:33

So if you take a I mean if you take a pretty fair sized trunk tree like how much revenue can you make off of of that tree? Just like really roughly?

Hannibal Hayes: 1:00:43

Yeah, I'm trying to remember all the, the calculation, I think it was about a 24 inch diameter log, yeah, eight feet in length, I believe, produces about 200 board feet. So for you know, for selling the, the sale of logs, it's the, the revenue generated is fairly minimal, but then we don't have to pay a contractor to grind that and then also to haul it away.

Marc Culver: 1:01:11

Yeah.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:01:12

And you're not just grinding them, correct, yeah, yeah, we can grind the rest of the entire tree for mulch and for biomass and for other products. But, yeah, we're really trying to focus on that higher end use for those merchantable logs. Yeah, oh, that's great.

Marc Culver: 1:01:26

It kind of gets into a reuse, a better reuse Absolutely Of oh, that's great. It kind of gets into a reuse a better reuse Absolutely Of the tree. Well, great. Well, that's a lot of information, some really good stuff there. I'm really looking forward to seeing your guys' inventory. I can't wait to see you do that Gree inventory and see how that comes out. Um, but, uh, let's spend a couple of minutes here at the end and talk about your hobby farm. Oh yeah, so what, what's? What is your hobby farm, Hannibal? What do you got on there? How big, like how many? I'm assuming you live on a few acres of land somewhere.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:02:07

Yeah, yeah, so we live just east of Zimmerman, just outside of city limits. It's on five acres and three and a half is in pasture. All of it has been fenced in, and that was at the price of I think it was about $5,000, but then also two knee surgeries it's a great way to blow out your meniscuses, um, but luckily those were, you know, one was in my left knee and one was in my right knee um, so we've had, uh, pigs on the farm, yeah, um, but those, uh, it is a. It is a. It is a hobby farm, but the the purpose of it is to try to raise and produce as much meat that we consume, okay, and so we did, uh, consume those, those.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:02:49

And then we have four cattle, so right now it's two cow-calf pairs. We did birth them last year and we're taking a year off this year because we actually started the farm three years ago, which was the very first year of the three-year drought that we've been in. And we're in the sand plain, and so the fields every summer look like they're going to burst into flames pretty much. And so we also have sheep. We're down to 10 now, just all ewes, and they're Shetland sheep, so they're teeny, tiny sheep, which is actually really, really fun, but then currently we have 37 chickens as well. Wow, yeah, so a lot of animals running around. But the best part is is that my wife Naya she is the farm boss, so I just come home and do chores and she directs me to do any special projects and things like that. Well, that's great.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:03:48

Yeah, I just get to come home and hang out with animals. Do you guys like sell eggs and stuff like that?

Marc Culver: 1:03:52

Yeah, we do.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:03:53

We have been selling eggs $5 a dozen. They didn't go up during COVID either, so we held the price firm and yeah, it's been quite a dream. I grew up on a hobby farm. I always wanted to get back to that. Quite a dream. I grew up on a hobby farm. I always wanted to get back to that. I married my spouse always wanted a dairy cow, which is funny in two ways, because she grew up in a neighborhood just outside of downtown Minneapolis called Brenmar and I'm lactose intolerant, so I helped with milking but couldn't really partake or enjoy.

Marc Culver: 1:04:28

That's funny. So do you sell the milk or does she make?

Hannibal Hayes: 1:04:32

stuff out of it. She made a ton of well, we made butter and then farmer cheese as well.

Marc Culver: 1:04:38

And then you said you're taking a pause on the cow for a little bit.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:04:41

We're taking a pause on birthing anything at this point in time. We foolishly bred all the sheep last year. There were nine ewes, which produced 12 baby lambs, which was very cute, but over the course of several days, so very little sleep then. And then we're first time farmers. And so the first cow gave birth perfectly. Everything was normal, like my wife came out in the morning and there were three cattle instead of just two, and then the. The second uh cow had significant um problems birthing, to the point where we had to jump in and actually uh, pull the the uh the calf out. Yeah, uh, and a sister and uh. That was a lot of work, but I got to, got to use a tree climbing rope instead of other resources, and so I helped pull the calf out at that point in time, and then I sent an email off to the rope producer to ask them if they wanted to broaden their product line to farmers, and they said absolutely not.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:05:46

You market this to farmers. Yeah, I told them I'd send them photos too.

Marc Culver: 1:05:50

Yeah, and this is a dramatic left turn from Public Works. But how did you gain confidence in that birthing experience? I mean how did you feel confident, just like almost literally diving in there to pull that?

Hannibal Hayes: 1:06:07

calf out. It was mostly Naya's research. Yeah, she'd been reading about it for a number of years, and I grew up around farmers. I'd heard not horror stories but stories about having to assist and things like that, and so we read a lot of books. Youtube is a very good and interesting resource as well, but we were actually on the phone with the vet, um, during this whole process and so, uh, that was a that was a huge help, but at some point in time, you just sort of, you know, rely on your instinct and what you, what you do, know, uh, and just jump in and try to do the right thing yeah, and it came out okay, mother and calf, okay yeah they, they both survived.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:06:49

She didn't really like him very much, yeah so, but they've come around since then that's good.

Marc Culver: 1:06:57

That's a lot of pain. Yeah Well, that's awesome. You are a very, very interesting person, Hannibal. I'm really happy that we got to know each other. We presented together and we're finally doing this podcast episode together, so thank you for joining us.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:07:14

Absolutely. Thank you again for the invite. It was fantastic that you're putting together this podcast. I've thoroughly enjoyed every episode and, yeah, thank you again for the invites that come on. I truly appreciate it.

Marc Culver: 1:07:26

Well, thank, you, thank you, and we may see and hear more of Hannibal in the future. We shall see, as Minnetonka continues to do some pretty cool and innovative things. So one last thing before we go. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode and the podcast in general, we ask that you help us spread the word. If you're on LinkedIn in particular, that's our mainstay, although I'm trying to build an Instagram audience.

Hannibal Hayes: 1:07:52

Excellent.

Marc Culver: 1:07:52

So I'm working on that Comment on one of the Public Works Nerds posts. Find us on Instagram. I think I have an ex-account for Public Works Nerds too. Find us on those. You know the 80 people that are listening.

Marc Culver: 1:08:07

We're going to get like 200 people that listen to Hannibal this first couple of weeks, but, of course, we're on YouTube as well, so if you want to look at us, uh, you can find us there as well. But uh, as always, thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next time. Nerds out.