"Rooted in tradition, blooming with fun—Red Clover Farms!" Katztracks.net Radio Show!

If you're looking for a charming New England farm experience, check out Red Clover Farms on South Benham Road in Seymour. This historic family farm features a farm store, local produce, honey, artisan goods, workshops, live music, open music jams, and seasonal events. The farm dates back to 1918 and has become a favorite destination for families and visitors looking to enjoy the countryside. 

📍 Location: 174 South Benham Rd, Seymour, CT
 🌾 Farm Store • Local Products • Live Music • Community Events
 🐝 Honey • Fresh Produce • Artisan Vendors • Family-Friendly Atmosphere

 #RedCloverFarms #SeymourCT #ConnecticutFarms #SupportLocalFarms #FarmLife #VisitConnecticut #CTEvents #LocalHoney #FarmStore #FamilyFun #NewEnglandLife #CTAgriculture #ShopLocal #LiveMusicCT #KatzTracksNet  #ExploreConnecticut #CTWeekend #SmallBusinessLove #CountryLiving 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alright, she's live, guys, here in the studio. Alright, so let's begin with your journey. 111 years on the farm.

SPEAKER_04 0:10

Yes. So um, so my family, we started um Red Clover Farms back in 1915.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 0:18

Uh we were one of the original uh dairy farms up on Great Hill in Seymour.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 0:24

And um we are actually, I'm fourth generation, we're on the fifth generation.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 0:29

And um yeah, uh we have just been providing for the community for so long. So about maybe 20 years ago now, um, I moved back to the family farm. I was not expecting to stay there. Um, my grandmother, um, I remember when we were kids growing up, she would always say, Kimmy, never get a cow because you'll never leave the farm. And one day you'll know that you made it when you have a desk. And so my whole life I was always like, one day I'll have a desk. And then, like, you know, 20 years ago, I was like, I'm back on the farm. I don't have a desk, you know, but here I am. And so what I decided to do is that it's really just been a lifelong mission of um re-establishing the family farm.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Absolutely love it. Love it. So many good things are coming out of what you're doing. Yeah, I gravitated. I mean, this isn't something new, guys. I grew up here in Seymour. Yeah, true story, Kimmy. Yes, you are uh brilliant, she's brilliant. Touching the soil, making recipes, bringing it back to life, and being able to explore so many avenues. You can grow things. We were talking about it in a laundry basket.

SPEAKER_04 1:37

You can, absolutely, and these are these are some of the workshops that we te actually teach people how to do. Um we I want to get in that soil. Yeah, yeah. Education is just it's so it's so important these days. Um, but I moved back and basically my farm was just in really um, you know, it was in disarray. It was like, you know, the barn was falling down. It was like everything was overgrown, and you know, like my family throughout the years, like a lot of farms, unfortunately, you know, the families just couldn't keep up.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

Um, and a lot of farms actually, even in this area, got developed and now they're just neighborhoods. And so, you know, it was really just a passion of mine to just preserve this piece of legacy, um, not only for my family, but also for the town and the community in the valley area, because I just think it's so important for people to to um grasp on to this bit of nostalgia and classic New England history, so we can teach future generations what it is really like. Um, you know, and the importance of growing your own food and shopping local and um canning and making pictures.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

You said the key word canning, preserving, preserving, preserving, preserving the land, preserving their vegetables.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

Yes, and so so uh we restored our barn and we got the fields prepped and you know we started doing all of these wonderful things at our farm, you know. And um for me, being an artist by trade and also a musician, um holding space for other artists has always been um a passion of mine and just holding space really for anybody to tell their story. And so the farm, just like many farms were back in the day, um, they're very different when it comes to the community because it just becomes a hub and it becomes a space where people come and they share and they encourage it. Like your home, like you're sitting in grandma's kitchen, right? Absolutely. It's like I always am like I'm open to the public, but really it's like what is the public when you, especially when you live in this area. They're your family, they're your friends, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Christmas time, you come up with something, you make something. Absolutely. You know, pine cones go a long way.

unknown 3:39

They really do.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

So, um, so that is pretty much what I've been doing um for the last you know few years, maybe five, six years, that um we opened uh the barn up and um just started um trying to see like what we can do within this town. Um, you know, we have done things as as um wellness uh seminars and workshops and educational series for adults and children teaching them how to get back to the land. Um and we've also tried to um we thought we were gaining some momentum with it um last year um by incorporating things like farm to table dinners or weekend lunches. Um we started uh bringing up a food truck. We um, you know, thought that a lot of this stuff it was being encouraged by the town actually. Okay. Um about town officials and you know, just to do good things for the community because there's not really a lot to do around here. No, there's no. We're in the woods, as they say. Yeah, and so it was just really special for me to be able to open up um, you know, my family farm and offer a place. Um, our holiday barn was absolutely amazing last year.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

We had like the holiday, the donkey was out. I got proof, guys. I went. I didn't get to pet them, but I definitely enjoyed the eggnog. We talked about the eggnogs the eggnog. I'm lactose intolerant, but I bitted on that one and I said, I'm getting it, and it was good.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

Yes. So um, so yeah, so you know, we do we've done a couple of these really wonderful um, you know, events on our farm for seasonal, um, where it really just brought the the town together and it just brought so much joy and happiness to adults, to children. Um, especially I love the old timers that live in town and they forget the stories, right? You know, and um, you know, we have the animals, um, we have the chickens, we have the donkey, we have the pig, we just um rehomed some goats. Um, I just got a rooster. You did.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

I had I gotta tell you a story about a rooster. I don't want to interrupt, but my best friend was a rooster growing up.

SPEAKER_04 5:35

Oh my yeah, you know, they're so comical. So it was his first night at the farm, and um his name is Gregory, and uh he's just like fitting right in. He was hanging out with the donkey and the and the goats all day. I love it. So um, so anyways, so uh story book.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

We need to get to his book written.

SPEAKER_04 5:55

Is and you know, we did story books, you know, we did story hours. We had old farmers um from the community come out and they were reading stories to little children. I mean, it was just so precious. Right?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

You know I bet you had Santa Claus at Christmas time too.

SPEAKER_04 6:09

We did, we did. We um we have friends that have um horse-drawn carriages, and uh, we brought the horse-drawn carriages up and we were doing uh loops around our fields, um, you know, while they were singing carols, and it was just a feel, feel, feel home good, you know, hometown feeling, and it was just wonderful. So, um, so anyways, and I'm I'm I'm seasonal. I'm there from May until December. So it's a very short window of time that I'm there, and I don't know how I can get into so much trouble in such a short period of time.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Well, I'm a DJ and I won't get you in trouble, I promise. We want to get the good word out. We got lots of great information for you tonight. Yeah. And uh yeah, it's gonna continue on and on and on until we get to where you need to be.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

Yeah, true story. You're welcome. Um, so, anyways, um, so w what happened this year is um we started doing wellness um um retreats last year. And it wasn't anything crazy like a huge wellness retreat, it was a series of back-to-back workshops, maybe like three workshops or so where maybe people would go earthing in the fields, just going barefoot. Maybe they would make how cool is that. I'm I'm getting an herbal tea blend um out of herbs that they picked from our herb garden. Uh maybe an aromatherapy rollerball scented with lavender or your favorite essential oil. Right. Yes. So um, so anyways, one of the biggest things that we were so excited about, um, and was in really the planning stages for about six months, was um a cancer uh wellness retreat for um cancer survivors in the area. And so we were um really excited. So we had a bunch of holistic practitioners coming in. Everybody was pretty much, you know, like volunteering time. Our farm opened up to host them for free.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Wow, how cool is that!

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Yeah, and uh it was just we were looking forward to it um for for so long. And um, out of the blue this season, right before I opened, I was issued um it's it's always kind of funny when you're at home. I mean, it's not really funny, but I'm kind of used to it. Ironic, yeah, yeah. Ironic where you're walking across your driveway and all of a sudden like the police barrel up and it's like you're jumping out and it's like, what did I do this time? And um, you know, the zoning officer was there and basically started sticking signs in my ground and uh, you know, with cease and desist and taping up cease and desist orders on my barn and basically closed down everything um from wellness retreats, music, art series, open mic nights, um, any type of seminars, classes, um, and things that we were even looking into do in the future, like farm to table dinners. We've we've tried in the past with like a food truck, we've tried other ways where they were like private type um membership things we were like talking, like how could we do this, you know, on our farm. Sure. Um, it's always been very, very, very hard in this town, believe it or not. It's like I've always been yeah, I don't know why. It's um, you know, I would think that it would be very encompassing and very encouraging to have a farm and somebody willing, like myself, to be a steward at the farm. Exactly. But it's just been constant fighting and um always being told, like, I can't do this, I can't do that, I can't do this. And so I'm just always trying to navigate my way to say, like, okay, well, what if I did, you know, this?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

And so, anyways, you try to bend a little bit in it.

SPEAKER_04 9:23

Yeah, we thought, you know, getting a food truck up there would like solve a lot of problems for farm to table. And then this year we were looking. Um, we've done a couple like weddings in the past where it was like friends and family. Sure. Like, maybe like I want to say maybe two or three in the course of 20 years that we've been up there.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

You did weddings? Uh well.

SPEAKER_04 9:38

Yeah, but just I mean, so we're not a wedding venue or anything like that. But I was I was looking into it, like, well, now that we have a food truck, like, can we do weddings?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Right, and that adds up, right?

SPEAKER_04 9:48

And permits well, the thing is, is that there was there's nothing really in Seymour that's saying that you can't. You can't, you can. It was it was always just like I was just asking this year to say, like, hey, well, this kind of makes sense. And now if we could have a food truck up here, well then what do we do? So it was just a whole bunch of things, whole so many questions. We're always we had this meeting in our barn where we were asking the community what they wanted to see. And those were just a lot of things that came up. Okay you know, also like people were saying things like kite flying and kite making and you know, so many different types of of ideas that I was really just researching.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

And you were open to that. I bet you asked the people, you know, what do you think?

SPEAKER_04 10:27

Yeah, absolutely. And so, um, so, anyways, we got a cease and desist order um uh that was submitted by a neighbor and his wife. Um, and I just could not believe that they actually did that. Um, and basically how it worked was I didn't know anything about it. Um, he walked in as a walk-in to a zoning meeting as a public comment, and basically presented all of these printouts from my Facebook as evidence of all of these things and to cease and desist.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

What a shame, what a shame. Yeah, you know, you have to bring it back like like Kim said, guys, to the land, bring it back to normalcy. And uh, you know, if you want to teach people kindness, why don't you give it back that way instead of taking away from somebody? You can't, you know, yeah, you have to show people the love, and like you said, you're an educator, you're you're uh uh a realist, you know, talking about the dirt, talking about people, it all comes together. And if it wasn't for the farmers, we wouldn't have half of the stuff that we have in the grocery stores. Absolutely. You need that. You have a produce department, you have a grocery store, Market 32.

SPEAKER_04 11:41

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

You know, instead of importing and outporting, like, okay, so here's an example. We'll talk to my dad in a little while, he's gonna call in. He's a beekeeper. A lot of the local beekeepers here will be distributing out into the grocery stores. Let's keep it right here, let's keep it right where it needs to be, and that's all it's all about, you know, education.

SPEAKER_04 12:03

Absolutely. Um, we do have an apiary on our farm, so we do have local honey.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 12:09

Um, and what I have been saying for years, and maybe it's just not falling on the right ears, but now that I'm saying it on the radio with you, and I heard you go to 87 countries. 86.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

87 countries. 87. All right.

SPEAKER_04 12:24

Well, after tonight it's gonna be 87. There's gonna be like one country that's like, how did I not know about this?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

So um between six and a thousand listeners daily. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

Well, even if it's even if you were, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 12:40

Even if it was six, we're just getting our message out. Um, but you know, my farm has been there and um for 111 years. And for the last few years, I've really put it out there that I am open for collaboration. Especially um, you know, I've reached out to people who are involved in local food banks or people that are involved with kids' programs where they can possibly grow for other kids. Um, I've also local high schools like catalog, Seymour High School. Absolutely. All the surroundings. Um, you know, there's so much opportunity, um, especially having a farm in your community, and it doesn't matter where you are in the world, but like, you know, teaming up with the local educational systems and the schools and getting the fresh produce into the school systems, um, also having the farms be classrooms, um, open classrooms where and you can germinate and do all that learn about photosynthesis and all that good stuff. Yes, I mean it's absolutely amazing. And we have a small little uh kids um like farm kids, we call it. There's just a handful of kids that come out like once a week, their parents are there with them, and the kids just light up. And each week we learn something different about chickens, we learn about eggs, we um they've all have their own garden rows where they're growing tomatoes and peppers and eggplant, and they're learning about the honeybees, and they're learning how to take care of the animals and to be kind. And you know, they just light up. And the thing is that when you bring kids to the farm, they want to help. And the parents are always just like, How do I get them to clean their room? Scoop the poop first, exactly, and they love it. When I was a kid, I used to fight with my cousin over who was gonna like scoop the manure, you know, like it was a game, and so only chickens here at one time. Yes, yes, so it's it's really just amazing. So I had this happen to the farm, cease and desist, all of these things, basically just saying, you know, like keep it just to her agriculture and um Connecticut grown, which was also on the chopping box like two years ago when a zoning official came to my farm and said, Oh, by the way, if you can't even sell Connecticut grown in this town and you have to stop. And I had to challenge him on that. Wow. So this town has not really been very favorable of what's going on with that. No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

So um I know there's a lot of farms around within the area. You know, we gotta get you guys all on the same page, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

All in the same room. And you know, um, a lot of the other farms are doing the same or very similar things in this town on different levels because you know, everybody's just trying to diversify as a farmer. Like what a farmer means today isn't just sitting in your barn and trying to sell your potato. Um, you know, nobody is going to make a living doing that, and so you either have to find different ways to diversify to bring it up.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

You are very diversifying. I love what you say on it.

SPEAKER_04 15:29

You know, it it's it's diversifying, but it's still relating to like farm activities. And so one of the things that we had talked about at one of the meetings where people were saying, um, you know, things like why do things like art and music have to stop on a farm and um these community things. This was part of farming. It's not that it has to be reintroduced as a new law to say you shall be able to sing a song, you know. Don't make it law, just go with it and have fun. Um but but farmers have been singing since the beginning of time, you know. It's like, you know, there's this whole debate on who was the best yodeler on uh Great Hill, you know? And um there were square dances Indians, yes, and the peach farm that was up here back in the day. Yes, and so it really goes way back, you know, it goes back to square dancing and having dances on the farm and haying your fields and having community and and canning together and making pickles and making strawberry jam all together, and then you want to know what happened when you were done at your farm? You went to the neighbor's farm and you did the same thing, and that is just how it worked, and that is what we are missing, and so here I am trying to hold this space to have people still experience that, and there's just been so much resistance, and so the good thing is that um the even though we have a cease and desist right now on our farm, and this isn't a one-time thing from this neighbor, this has been 10 years plus of him calling the police on our farm for noise, for nuisance, for uh animal welfare checks, for all of these different things that we've had the police, I don't know, 50-60 times, dog wardens. I mean, it's just been constant, constant surveillance, um, videotaping, um, audio recording, photography.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Like it's just I've Isn't that against the law to be able to stalk somebody via the camera thing? Isn't that an evasion of privacy?

SPEAKER_04 17:26

Um, you would think so, but you know, the police um uh that I've talked to um said basically that it's not stalking or um harassment to do what this individual um and his wife have been doing to my farm for the last ten years plus.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 17:47

That there really are no laws against it, like it's not desirable, but um, you know, I did bring a copy of you know, like all of the police reports and I mean and not to just like want to talk about like negative things that's going on. Of course so it's just you know, it is all related and just you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

You want to get the word out because you don't want this anymore, you're done.

SPEAKER_04 18:08

It's I am done, and um, so constant police reports, bark logs, um, of just being monitored um every time a noise is heard on the farm. I don't even know what I did with those. I mean, the the stack is just so thick. Um, you know, going into the zoning meeting, it was things just like greenhouse cold frame rental opportunity, like that was a problem. Wow. Um, you know, cattle. I was like, does anybody have any cows? Maybe we'll put cows in the fields, maybe I get cows. Um, that was a problem. Um versus a watercolor uh what is the square footage of your land? We have about 35 acres left of a farm that was probably a couple hundred acres that my grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

You had it subdivided up and we sold it.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

They sold it to the town back in the late 70s or 80s because it's when all the dairy um uh regulations uh started. Yeah and a lot of the the dairy farms you see around here actually Yeah, Chaffield Dairy, isn't that still in existence?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

That's I don't know if that is still in existence. We used to get milk as a as a kid delivered to the house. I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 19:10

Um but I don't I don't know, I don't know if they're still there, but a lot of the farmers went out, and so you see a lot of the land that's actually developed up on Great Hill because they were all dairy farmers. I know. And so nobody could really keep up with the homogenization laws and the pasteurization, and so most of the dairy farmers went out, and we were fortunate enough that the town bought our land and that it's at least preserved as a town park. So there are walking trails, which is is really great.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Oh, that's good.

SPEAKER_04 19:36

So I'm doing what I can, you know, everything that I can to try to. Um, I'm doing everything that I can to really try to preserve these like 35 acres that we have, and um, that's been a battle in this town too. Um, there was a previous tax assessor that was always coming up saying that you know, your your hay fields aren't um being hayed enough, so farm status is gonna be taken away, and then you'd have to go and you'd have to appeal that through zoning board. And it was constantly fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting to keep your farmland. And now as land is getting scarcer up on Great Hill, and we are constantly being approached by developers and people that want to um you know subdivide our farm. And um, you know, I mean, we know all about it. I mean, pretty much I think a lot of people in town know about it. They know how many houses can be fit in, they know that the road can open up. Oh, yeah, it's all mapped out, you know. I've I've heard all about it. So the thing is, is now it's like you know, trying to preserve your farm so um it's protected, and also to be able to diversify, to be able to at least make an income, to afford the taxes, you know, to so that's really what farmers are doing. Um and that's where I am at. So uh the the meeting is on the 11th of June at 5 30 at the community center next week, guys.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

In the Bing Hover.

SPEAKER_04 21:04

Yeah, and um it's basically going to decide really at least the immediate fate of our farm, um, whether the cease and desist order will be um enforced. Yep, removed or enforced. Um, the good thing is that the first select woman did lead uh the zoning board with a charge to say that the town is in support of agritourism and bringing things um like pick your own, hay rides, um, you know, farm events, farm to table, like all of these things that other farms within the state are doing and having a like success stories, she's really for bringing it here to this town.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Good, good, that is positive.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

Yes, and the zoning board um was really on on board too. And so they are currently in the process of amending some of the text that is very antiquated in the definition of farming and And reintroducing a language that is encompassing and exciting for farmers and exciting for the community to get involved and to still have these farms that will have some sort of preservation to continue for generation to generation to generation. So the first thing that I have to get through though is this cease and desist order to see whether I'm going to be allowed to continue offering these things to the public in the time being because you know it's going to take a while to get all of these amendments made.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Fully noted kind of thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:36

Yeah, or I will be basically um probably shutting down then because it for where I am, um, every farm is different. And that is the the beauty of farms too, is that if I was on a main road and if it was like people, I was in their face and it was like, oh, I need to get bread, I need to get milk. You're up on the hill, you're away from everybody. It's like to just do Connecticut grown and your own produce. Well, then it makes a little bit more sense. But when you're on a dead end road without a sign, and it's kind of like this like little hidden gem, that's that's what a lot of people call it. Yes. Um you need to do things that incorporate um into the land as well, you know, so it's like you know, to offer things like education or hands-on or little mini retreats where people are going out to do. Cooking too.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

I saw the cooking, you take all your ingredients stuff from the ground and put it down to your table.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

Yeah, and and and we show people, we show people how to how to do this, you know, like really like a field to force.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Well, what would be better than a family going out as it like say if it was a you know, like a class trip for your family, getting out there, cooking, putting something on the table, and these kids see it and they go, Oh my gosh, I grew that.

SPEAKER_04 23:48

It's so exciting. Even last night we had an herb um planting workshop.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:53

I mean, the ladies were just like over the digging their hands in the dirt. Yes, they loved it.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

So it's therapy too, guys. It really is. Your earth is very therapeutic.

SPEAKER_04 24:02

It is. So basically, um, we're gonna they're gonna be deciding, and then I will, you know, I I won't be able to stay open if it's just I no, you're gonna stay open.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

We need her to stay open, guys. If you're seeing this, share it on Facebook. This is Connecticut grown right here. Yes, honest to God, it's a true story. I've been to the farm several times. She didn't know who I was, but she does know who my dad is, who's up in Maine.

SPEAKER_04 24:24

Yes. I love I love your dad. I met your dad at the pumpkin festival. We were talking about honey, yes, and uh, he was telling me all about these wonderful things that he was doing um with children and teaching them about honey. I mean, it was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

I walk through the bees he has at his house with no gear on. Yeah. True story.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

My husband took off. I was there. I was in there, and he has all these boxes with 70,000 plus bees, as you know. Oh yeah. And they're all in one big circle. I'm walking around, and he says, Do you want to learn it? I said, Of course I do, right? So it's nothing more beautiful than being with nature. I'm sitting there and the bees are coming by and they're stinging him, and they're nothing for me. They love me.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

So excuse me, the whole time I was in there, I was sitting there looking at them. You know, I'm like, okay, well, again, I'm not gonna get stung because you respect the land. You respect the bees. They have a job to do. And if you didn't like your wife or your husband, you bought somebody flowers, where do you think it came from? It got pollinated.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Do you like fresh flowers? I know I do. Sunflowers, whatever, seasonal.

SPEAKER_04 25:31

Yes. One of the most beautiful things um that I really realized about our farm and just how things were, just going back, and when you keep the same methods of farming, um, is that there was a buzzword that came out when I moved back and it was called permaculture, and I didn't really know what that was, and how it was described is that the whole farm would work as one ecosystem. And I was like, wow, that's kind of cool. And I started thinking about it, and I said, It's always worked as one ecosystem, and it's one of the things that I like to point out to people when they come because it's like we have a pollinator field for our bees so they could eat and the pollinator field, and then we plant the vegetables, so they're pollinating the vegetables as well. We have a natural spring on our farm, so then the bees can go get a little drink from Does it come from Roxbury?

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Where does the spring come from? I'm not quite sure where it comes from. We gotta do some research.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

We do have to do some some research, but it's been there since like the beginning of time, oh yeah, like the farm, the time. But um, but what we we do is we actually use that water to water our fields, and so everything is just kind of watered recycled spring water, and so it really does work as one ecosystem. I love it. Ecosystem. And then when you take that concept, and what I try to um have people imagine is that we can take this concept of an ecosystem and we could take it and apply it to our towns. And so, wouldn't it be wonderful if our town um operated as an ecosystem?

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Oh, geez, yeah, cleaner.

SPEAKER_04 26:56

Yes. The closest thing that I've ever seen to it is in Pennsylvania when I was down visit visiting the Amish, and um every yeah, and every farm really could grow um everything, but they didn't do that. So, like do something. So, like each one farm grows corn, one farm grows cucumbers, one farm grows tomatoes, the women are getting together and exactly, and it's operating as one ecosystem collectively, and it was just such a beautiful thing to see. And the women are all baking pies at the same time, or they're all doing sauerkraut one day, and it was like this is just so amazing, and there's just so people are missing what they're missing, is the connectivity, and so when they come to places like farms and they're able to connect, I mean, those 20 women came in as strangers last night, and it's like they all left as friends, you know, and it's just it's just amazing, and so so, anyways, that is what I have been doing up here. So she's been putting on the table, she's been putting it on the table on the table, and I'm always, you know, uh, I don't know, getting in trouble. But um, the good thing about this, the good thing is that I have had farmers um and uh people who are in politics and um people who are involved in zoning. I mean, really from around the country. It's amazing the list that I have, the phone numbers that I have of people who are reaching out because they're hearing my story.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

And they want to help.

SPEAKER_04 28:23

They want to help, um, or they have been in the same situation and they have solution. Um, and it's amazing. And so what I decided to do, I don't know how I'm doing this. I don't know how my brain is piecing this all together. I don't know what I'm running on here, but I'm just doing it. And um, I'm just like, everybody has a story, and I don't want anybody to have to go through what I just went through.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

No, and because you're trying to get the word out. You don't want to be able to do this.

SPEAKER_04 28:52

Because this is this is very, very serious. This isn't just like um a little mishap. It's not a misshold. No, this is a cease and desist. This is like, you know, shutting down these farm activities, shutting down this livelihood, and shutting down this model and and um concept that is part of who I am. It's who I am, who we basically. Yeah. Let's help each other out. And so I'm good neighbors. I'm like, I I just can't imagine. And so it's like everything, if this cease and desist stays, everything will have to stop. Workshops, classes, music, music that has been on the hill forever, art series. Um, and I'm just like, what am I gonna be doing? Sitting in my barn alone on a dead end road, trying to sell a potato with nothing else going on to try to get people to my farm, and that is gonna be my life. And what what is gonna happen? And I just refuse to accept that. And so what I decided out of the blue, I don't know, but um, I'm like, I don't want families to have to go through this. And if my town is willing to change some of the rules and regulations, right, then I know the people of the valley, I know the heart of this town, and I know that if they said that they're gonna do something like this, then then we can actually put Seymour on the map. Yeah, and we can really be a shining example for other towns to surrounding towns, yeah, to jump on board and so come together. So I'm going to be hitting all the towns. I'm going to 169 towns. Um, my goal is to uh speak to each to one farmer or a couple different farms in each town and uh to get their story. And it could be like some people in a town that you know the town has accepted agritourism and so they're thriving and they might have like a vineyard, they might have pick your own, they might have hay rides, they might have all these like really fun things that are going on in the state that I see that I was like, why can't I do that with my donkey? You know, like just like really fun, like little things, and so it can be stories like that that are stories of inspiration for other towns, but it also can be the farmer that's forgotten in some small town somewhere that is like losing everything, that can't do anything because it's uh whatever they want to do that makes sense for that farm in that area, the zoning has never been um adapted uh uh to agritourism. And so, so how do we how do we do this? And so, how do we get people's stories heard? And then these packets that are being created by really smart people. How do we get these packets into municipalities' hands where they could look at them and they could say, Hey, you want to know something? This isn't a bad idea to start promoting farms because it's gonna bring tourism, it's gonna bring people in the tar the people, yes, and it's going to increase the revenue for local shops and businesses and restaurants local grocery stores, yes. Yes, and so so it's just a good thing all the way around. And so my plan is Monday through Thursday, I'm thinking, I don't know, nothing is set in stone to maybe to hit the road and uh to just start talking to people and uh starting to have a YouTube channel. No, but I think I need to get one.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Oh, cat's got you hooked up.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

Okay, good. And um and then um maybe recap every Friday, and um, I would love to include some type of um local music to highlight them on Friday too, because we're always holding space for musicians. Um, you know, one of I one of the the young kids that uh came years ago when I was downtown, um, he had a CD release party. I think he was maybe 14 years old and he went on to win the voice. Yeah, and um yeah, so it's just it's exciting, and it's like so many people they they um they come to the farm, they want to stage, they they've never sung in front of anybody, they've never told their poetry, you know. They just they want to be heard, they want to connect, and so we've always just been there. So that is what I'm doing. It's um it's uh called um save connecticutfarms.org is the website. It just launched tonight, and um the little thing that I'm doing is called uh Back to the Land.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

I love the title of it. And if anybody can come up with anything and wants to sing with her with that, please let us know. Yeah. Seriously.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Because I know there's a lot of artists that I've had on here. Yeah, again, we talk about some of these people, and they'll definitely be game to come to your farm.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

The musicians the musicians um really do step up, and um, you know, I was even thinking that maybe at the end of the summer, um, you know, I have no idea how this is the whole thing. So yeah, maybe some type of just like Connecticut 169 farm event where it's like there's a huge farm market and there's um yeah, and like you did at Christmas time with all the vendors that you add. But maybe, maybe each farm in one farm from each town can come and vend at this, and maybe there's a huge uh dinner or concert um, you know, with local artists or other artists.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Campfire, everybody sitting around the campfire.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

You know, to benefit um, you know, the farmers. The farmers and to help them get to that next level of where they need to be, and um whether it's restoring a barn, or I know that there are certain grants within the state right now, especially with dairy is making a comeback. And so, how do we just get everybody on the same page? I don't know how to do any of this. I'm just simply I was gonna ask you about that.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

The state the statue and uh the laws. How does that work? Is it is it the same, like you said, with everybody in Connecticut, or is it just what I really I think folks you need to know about that. There's a lot of uh sacks, they call them, right?

SPEAKER_04 34:38

Yeah, I had a friend um send me this. I'll just kind of brief it. So it says Connecticut has 169 towns. Right now, each um town has a different set of rules to what a farm can or cannot do. So if you're a farmer in one town that wants to run a pumpkin festival, do a cooking class, host a wedding, do a pick your own strawberries. Um, in one town, it could be completely legal, and the next town over, it's completely legal.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 35:05

It goes by the each individual town. Um, and so um for the reading, it says that's the problem right here, just within um, you know, the state that farmers are trying to fix um through a Connecticut right to farm law um to just have it be a little bit more across the board. Of course, every farm is different and there's different um variances and you know, as far as the location of the farm. But just is there a way to get us all on the same page? Um it says Connecticut took a first uh step last year passing a liability protection law for agritourism. The zoning patchwork remains. Um, and so basically this 169 town tour is basically we're going to be putting in the hands of each municipality a packet on agritourism for them to hopefully read to um to hopefully get people on the same page.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

So uh what about writing to the governor? Simple concept, yeah, yeah, that too. Um, get a petition going and sending that over his way. Yeah, and pulling up what his statutes are as far as you know, because it all goes back to politics. It's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_04 36:13

It really does. I didn't realize, like you know, like it really goes back to politics.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

Um but something like this shouldn't be a question with a question, especially if you're doing something good. I don't understand. I I it's I know I I scratch my head because I grew up in this town, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 36:30

Like I've heard I've heard a lot of people say, which is um it's so true, and I never thought about it this way, but farms were here, you know, before all of these news.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Oh, yeah, the Indian reservation back in the day.

SPEAKER_04 36:44

Yeah, before all of these neighborhoods came in. And so now, since the neighborhoods came in and the zoning through all the years, I don't even know when. I mean, my farm's been there from 1915, they're now considered residential zones. But like, what what about the farmer, you know? So it's like these residential zones actually kind of started encroaching on our farm, you know, and it's like so we've been there doing these things and and um you know for years and generations, and so there has to be a way for um farms and residential areas haven't you need a safe haven that's what it is? To work together and to come up with solutions for each location that is going to keep everybody happy, but also farmers' rights just cannot be taken away because their language, the language of a farmer that has been, you know, a constant for generation to generation, to all of a sudden you're told that you can't sing, you cannot um host, you can't show somebody how to have a class on um making jam, you can't, you know, do all of these other things. And so, so, anyways, it leaves farmers kind of just wondering the the fate of their farm, and um if I could help other farmers at least have their voices heard, um, hopefully it can make a difference. Hopefully, more people will jump on this movement, and um, we can just bring um you're a voice, Kim.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah, thanks. Uh uh no true story. I I'm so intrigued. You know, we need to get this word out. We really do. I want to touch the soil, I want to be there with you, I want to see your journey and keep your farm where it needs to be. Thanks. And the rest of the farmers around. Honest to God. You know, it's a simple concept, guys. You know, if you know anything about life, like I always talk about on my show, and again, bringing it to Kim's light as well, kindness goes a long way. Uh, let people do what they have to do to help others. And then this starts with everything that you've talked about from growing, you know, seeing families coming together. You get away from your phone for a little while.

SPEAKER_03 38:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

You know, like electronics. Yeah, they say it's causing cancer. Things are happening with all of us. Oh, the reason why we're doing this, folks, is so you could see what it's all about. It has to be real.

SPEAKER_04 39:01

You know, one of the things that we did last year, um, it was so cool. It was like there was like some meteor shower, there was something, and so we just offered stargazing on the field.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah, and just lay on your blanket or your towel.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Yeah, and it was so simple, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

It was we do that in Maine, up at my parents' house. We go out when I go up to my dad's house, we've done it over the past years. Yeah, and it looks like a planetarium.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

It's just it's amazing. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

And um I'm always posting about the bone. Look, what's my back screen? Am I bored?

SPEAKER_04 39:30

I love it. I love it. And um, you know, one of the things I was kind of like going on, just like laying in bed, um, you know, just like thinking like over and over and over, just like, okay, well, these epiphanies are coming through you. Well, they they are, and because so one of the things that I always think about is just like sound and music, you know. And um, you know, we've had a lot of you know, like open open mic nights. They're they're about like one once a month, and sometimes we've had um like featured artists come in on occasion really cool stuff. It's been really cool. But one of the things that we do is we actually I have this little apparatus where I could hook up to plants and I could hear um it measures the vibration of the plants. You were telling me about this, how cool is that and um it basically it translates that the plant's vibration and oscillation into music, and so it is tell you if it's high enough, yes, it's the decibels, yes, and so it becomes like a garden symphony, so you could actually go out there and you hook it to speakers, and so I've done this before where it's like we've had a lavender symphony and you need to put a video. Do you have a video up on it? Yeah, I may. We've done a chamomile symphony, and so I was thinking to myself, even the plants sing, even the lavender is singing.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

And if you don't talk to your plants, they won't grow.

SPEAKER_04 40:46

Yes, and so I was thinking, I was like, what do I do with all the plants? I was like, are they allowed to sing? You know, so it's just like how my brain goes. I was like, the whole farm is alive, the birds are chirping, the frogs are the frogs are singing their song. It's just there's music up on the hill. I love it. And so, um and so one of the things that I was uh talking, I brought my guitar tonight because a few years ago I just this the sound, the song just came to me. I think I wrote it in like five minutes, and I've been kind of waiting for the right moment, and I've I've I've sung it a few times, but um, I really think that this is the moment here on your show because this the song is such an inspiration, guys.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

I swear. I got the goosebumps I told her. Soon as she pulled up. True story.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

The song is called The Season of Singing, and um it's like and it's it's also called the sound of love. It's called the sound of love, the season of singing. And so I think about just like love and the vibration of the heart, and what sound does that make? Like, like, why am I trying to be silenced? Yes, it's the heartbeat beats.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

So your music you have a heart, your heart has a beat.

SPEAKER_04 41:52

Your heart is is in sync. They are, and so the music of your heart is really what is painting the world around us. Absolutely. So it comes from the love. Absolutely. We're in sync. I love it. And so, um, so I recorded this song. We do have uh an MP3. I think I put it on Spotify, and I think maybe two people have like purchased it's like.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

It's gonna go up on Cash Tag Radio. You're gonna be able to hear the rotation.

SPEAKER_04 42:18

But we did it in a studio. We did it in a studio right in Shelton. Paul Black. Yes, he actually joined us, and so I went in with like five friends, and we just like laid down this song, and it's wonderful. And it's about the sound of love, it's about it's the season of singing, and so for me, it's so sad to think that somebody is trying to take away music, to take away singing, you know, like on our farm.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Especially if the plants are singing.

SPEAKER_04 42:43

The plants are singing, I know.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Um you grow an aloe plant, you sing to it.

SPEAKER_04 42:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

True story. My mother used to tell me that when I was a kid. So talk to them, you and you and you wipe them off. Only certain ones, right? Plants, you wipe them off too. You, you know, if they're a little sad, try to, you know, whatever you can do.

SPEAKER_04 43:00

There's a there's a whole study of one of my how it affects you. Yes, about how talking to plants, talking to water. Dr. Emoto is one of my favorite um scientists, and there's just um so many scientific studies about like how when we speak kindly, when we speak lovingly to these plants around us, the animals around us. I mean, it's just it's amazing. Like sometimes I feel like I don't know, I feel like um it's snow white up there sometimes because the animals, like, you know, they just like follow people around, and it's like, you know, there's like little birds that are like chirping. We actually had a a concert, a not a concert, but like maybe like maybe like eight or nine of us that got together and we were just kind of practicing and singing and doing the stuff in the barn, and the songbirds came in and they were singing with us. It was beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Oh, see, I would have probably cried. I know. I appreciate good music, as you guys know, definitely. So I have a quick question going back to your theory. We're talking about different situations and music and yeah, how the the plants do sing, and you were talking about how high, so as a DJ. And you probably appreciate this, we're not allowed. There's a blight in law, I guess they call it, if you will. You're only allowed like a I think it's 10 o'clock at night, you're cut off with music. So that being said, along with m uh music theory, um, we're not allowed to go over 500 mm, my faith gets 500 megabytes of a hertz because it interferes with the EMS.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

So with our microphones.

SPEAKER_04 44:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Is that the same thing-ish with the music as well? Do you know?

SPEAKER_04 44:31

I'm not quite sure. I know that the music that what we play like in our barn, like when we have like open mic once a month, um, you can't really hear it outside of the barn.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

It's mostly solid.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

Yeah, it's mostly just like a um a banjo player.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Like an acoustic.

SPEAKER_04 44:44

Yeah. I mean, they're mic'd, you know, they are they are mic'd, but um it's it's very, it's it's very low.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Um, you know, like so there should not be any complaints, is what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_04 44:55

No, no. In fact, um our one of our neighbors was just like, My band practice is louder than your open mic ham. There's never been a complaint um from our neighbor who issued the season desist about anything, any noise with music. He just does not want anything like that happening. The only noise complaints were ever were always just the dogs. Um, what's really, really ins interesting, like talking about decibels, is that and and this is really something that I really feel like that I need to really dive into like separately, um, to really kind of just like touch base on all of this too. Because I have talked to the police in the town and um, you know, about like how could somebody call so the police so many times, like how could you have somebody show up at your house like police like 50-60 times for something that's not good, not even um not even um illegal because we are a farm and we have a we uh these are livestock um dogs, and I do bring my dogs in between the noise ordinance now. It's not always perfect.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Um a lot of times nobody's perfect with that, even off up the hill, too. We have a dog.

SPEAKER_04 46:02

Like I'm up in the morning, like uh this morning I was up at five in the morning to uh let the rooster out, and um the dogs have to go out, so I'll let them out. But this neighbor in the logging, if he hears like a woof at and it's before seven o'clock, it's like it's goes into my file, you know, and so it's just this constant monitoring. But getting back to it's like so the police have been called out for this and they have to respond, they said over and over and over and over and over and over and over, they have to respond, and it doesn't matter who he is. So I'm like, so if somebody has a neighbor that's a cat and uh I hear a meow, like, does that give me the right to call the police over and over again?

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Meow, I gotcha. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 46:40

For like a meow and say, Well, the meow is bothering me, and how many times would the police really come out to my house to say, go over there, wake them up, get them out of bed, tell them that their meow bothered me. And it kind of sounds silly with a meow, but it's really not that silly because a friend of and I we went up to this road, which is far. It's like you can't even get to this house from my farm. Like you have to go, not like you even have to go by my farm, it's on a completely separate road. Yeah, it's like the size of a football field, it's far away. And you heard and um and we were there because we knew that um a woman was picking up a package at the farm, and I said, There's a good chance that these dogs are gonna bark. So we were there, and we're like, let's stay maybe 10 minutes or so, 10-15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Okay, you were trying to prove a theory.

SPEAKER_04 47:25

Yeah, so we had just a handheld decibel reader, um, and the town doesn't even have a decibel reader, so there's nothing really to even prove measure this on. But um the dogs finally we heard a faint like woof in the background, and we're like, is that the dogs? You know, like is that a dog? Is that a dog? Yeah, and I'm like, I think it's a dog's, and so we're measuring it. It was coming up 0.29 to 0.3, and it was so low, and it came up on the top, it was reading it as rustling leaves or bird church.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

So, what are you gonna do when the wind blows?

SPEAKER_04 48:01

Hello. So I was like Seriously, I mean, but I was like, this has been 10 years of my life, yeah. And it's like 10 years of police coming out to my house and dog wardens and for the sound equivalents of rustling leaves. And I just couldn't believe it. And so this needs to be addressed, I believe, somewhere down the line. Also, where if you are being monitored and you are being video recorded and audio recorded, and you have cameras on you, and it's not just like a ring that is what is is just observing the outside perimeter, but the person that is watching you is able to know specifically that you're in the back shed, you're in the house.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Oh, that's stalking then. That's considered stalking, huh?

SPEAKER_04 48:51

According according to um the people, the police that I've talked to, it is not a definition of stalking.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Oh, oh boy, oh boy.

SPEAKER_04 48:59

So, um, and then the you know, the Facebook printouts and just this what I would say is obsessive, um, it's I guess not really an issue. It's not against the law to do this. And so my take is as a woman who is pretty much alone on my farm um and I do not want my neighbor video recording me, audio recording me, taking pictures of me walking alone in my fields with my dogs, um, I feel violated. I feel like also having the cops, like every move that I do, like I put a Facebook post up and then I see all these prints outs in my file and submitting these evidence. I'm just like, what is going on? Like what is the what is the what is the point? Like what is the end game? What is the end game? Was the end game the cease and desist? Was it just to close me down? Like just no activity on my farm? Like, like what is the end game? And then what? Then do I have to sell my farm? Then do I go out of business? Then am I in violations? Then do I get sued? You know, like like what is the end game? Why would one person do this to another person so intensely?

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Like just leave it alone, knock it off.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

Yeah, and so that's just being straightforward. Why do you have to and it's also like um I said this for the first time and um like a month ago or so when I did my first Facebook about it, and it was really hard, and um, it was like I'm like I have a cease and desist order, I have to stop everything, and you know, you're always feeling like I'm so bad. Oh my god, what am I doing wrong now? Like, why are the police here again? Why are they coming up again? Oh, there's a new dog warden because the other dog warden I'm gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

And you're working so hard to have just peace. That's all she wants, guys. That's all she wants is peace.

SPEAKER_04 50:55

If you're a farmer and you're watching we had this this uh dog warden that came to our farm about 10 years ago, and she came crying because um she did not want to give me a ticket. She said I wasn't doing anything wrong, but because she kept on getting called out to this individual's house, and he is a politician in town and an attorney. Um, she was crying to me as she gave me the ticket, and she said it would be thrown out um in the Derby courthouse. And by the time I got to the Derby courthouse, I already had a whole file like this prepared. Um and it yeah, it was already submitted, and so it wasn't thrown out, you know? So um, so that was uh that was about 10 years ago when the new dog warden came and she started looking at my file. She said, You should have never been given a ticket. You didn't even do anything wrong. She's like, It's not illegal, this isn't an infraction.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

And so it was like, yeah, and so basically Because when you have a connection, is that what it boils down to? Because you have a connection in town, the person that's doing this. I mean, seriously, guys, it's called maturity. Show your children how to be peaceful.

SPEAKER_04 51:59

Yeah, so um I don't know, leave her alone. So basically, this uh the second dog warden was really, really uh she was she was she's wonderful. She is currently the dog warden. She is um she's an ethical person, she's a good person. She cares about the animals, she's there to do her job, and she's also just not gonna take anything from anyone who tries to boss her around. And um, she actually took this all the way up to the commissioners of the state to say that she's a farm leaver alone. And um for her for standing up for you and she ended up getting injured on the job uh this past y uh last year, yeah, and um a substitute came in, and as soon as the substitute came in, talked to the neighbor again. Oh boy, and here comes the cops, and she comes flying up to the farm and uh you know said basically that she knows she can't um give me an infraction because I'm a farm. Um, but she could uh I'm a nuisance. Do I know what the nuisance is? And I said, I'm not a nuisance.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Oh jeepers, creepers again, huh? Yeah, it's no uh end of the tunnel, but we gotta make it.

SPEAKER_04 53:03

We gotta get it. We're gonna make it. So, anyways, so that's where I am now. And so then out of the blue this year I get a cease and desist with zoning. And so here I am.

SPEAKER_01 53:11

Well, we're gonna make sure that you don't keep that, and we wanna get her out there. And again, if you're listening in, whether you're listening around the country, around the world, if you've got any advice for Kim, uh please let us know. Um, I know my dad said he wanted to call in too in a little bit. I'm watching my other phone gracefully. You have so much information in your little brain. You need rest. I do. I really you need to get a little bit of RR yourself.

SPEAKER_04 53:39

I really do. Um, while I'm here, yeah um I would love to sing you a little bit of the song. I can go grab the guitar.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

You can go grab the guitar, yes, absolutely. And uh I'll keep the folks entertained both on Facebook and over here. So, Kim Warner, just to recap, if you're listening in over at Cash Track Radio, we're going over all the information. Um, she has trying to keep her farm going here in Seymour, Connecticut. Red Clovers, you can go over there and follow everything that she's got going on. She's had wonderful artists such as herself uh with music. She's teached kids how to grow things and teach families how to come together. And this little community we call Seymour, Connecticut. And uh on what it the 11th, you said, Kim, there's something going on. You're gonna go back to Town Hall and Seymour.

SPEAKER_04 54:27

Yeah, it's actually at the community center. Um, it's at the community center in the bingo room, which I think is just so funny. I'm just like, come to the bingo room, always have my arm in the bingo room. Um, and uh, you know, it was wonderful. The the uh the last couple times, I mean, we had over 2,000 signatures on yeah. In your favor, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 54:49

And um we had maybe two two hundred or more people show up. Okay. Uh many people spoke, and uh, you know, because it's just people in this town, they they just they they want to have something to do. They they know the farm, they know the farm families that have been up on Great Hill for over a hundred years.

SPEAKER_02 55:07

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 55:08

And so um, so yeah, so it's on June 11th. It is at 5 30.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 55:13

Um, at the community center in the bingo room.

SPEAKER_01 55:16

So the community center is the old middle school. I know that because I went to school there.

SPEAKER_04 55:20

It's on um it's on Pine Street. Pine Street and Symorp. Yeah, yeah. China's gonna be a little bit more. Come closer and I'll move it over. Okay. So um, so this song, I'm just gonna do just a little bit of this. There she is live right now. I'll introduce you. It's so it's so funny because it's like I know like four chords, you know, and it's like, um, you know, so I uh guitar is not really my strong point, but anyways, I wrote this song with four chords because I know these chords. So I'm gonna just sing a little bit of it. So um, but I I am gonna give you the link to the full song.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_04 55:51

But this song is called The Season of Singing, and it's the sound of love, and it's about um really just painting um our our the world around us through our imagination, what we can see, what we can feel, what we can envision, and through our heart with love to create and to transform these things that are in the world that we want to just bring goodness and kindness.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

So yeah, you're my soul sister tonight. I feel it, I feel it, because I'm all about that kindness with cat all the time.

SPEAKER_04 56:22

Okay, so if I can't get it on the guitar, it's it's almost like rubbing my head and stuff patting my stomach at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 56:28

But okay, you're multitasking.

SPEAKER_04 56:30

But I'm just gonna sing just maybe the first like couple verses, okay? Here she is. All right, so it goes.

SPEAKER_03 56:36

Can you hear it? A new song for the generation streaming from our hearts, the sound of love.

SPEAKER_02 56:49

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

Can you see it? Living color painting waterfalls with the sound of love. This is the season of singing where the grasses grow and the flowers bloom where kindness has a sweet perfume where beauty is fair as the moon. This is the season of singing.

SPEAKER_01 57:30

Woohoo! I got the goosey bumps all over my head.

SPEAKER_04 57:34

I'm sorry with the chords. I haven't played it for a while. But um, but it is. It's like it truly is the season of singing, and the other thing about this song is that we ask ourselves, when is it the season of singing? Is it tomorrow? Is it the next day? Is it next year? When is it? And when we can get to the point that the season of singing is anytime you want to make it the season of singing.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

365 days a year.

SPEAKER_04 58:01

The season of singing is now. Bring it on. The only difference between here and there is just movement. It's just getting there, it's just getting there, and so the timing is now, the season is now, the season of singing is now. And so this song really just inspires people to move from the heart, to move from love, and to recreate the world around us.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

I love it. Yeah, I love it. I'm all about it. The kindness. I think I found my soul sister, like I said before. She is not the potato eye. I'm paying attention to what's going on over here. I love it.

SPEAKER_04 58:40

I love that you have this right in Seymour, you guys. This is Jazzy Cats. I mean, it's amazing that you are right here in Seymour. That you are I grew up here.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

I grew up here.

SPEAKER_04 58:50

I know, I know. I was listening to your radio station today. I was saying I was in the kitchen, and I was like, all right, let me see how to get this link. And then I heard you talking, and I was like, ooh. I was like, this sounds so good. And then I was like, wow, what is she talking about? And then it was just your voice. I was like, you have such a beautiful voice. Thank you, thank you. You really do.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

Delilah, if you're listening.

SPEAKER_04 59:11

Yes, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 59:12

I like to bring people together. I'll give you a little synopsis about the show. Um, I was invited eight years ago to broadcast on another network, and I have since regrown myself from previous radio stations that I did have, and um, it's a joy, like you, you know, when you feel it in your heart, like you do with your music and your potatoes, you give it back to the people. Yes, and that's what we're all about, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 59:41

Keep it real. I love it. I love it. You know, many years ago, so say like 15 years ago, when I had the general store in downtown Seymour with our open mic, we used to have a man um and he ran this broadcast called Connecticut World Service Radio. And it was it was like really before people got into podcasts and things like that, and you have this like old-fashioned like microphone. I love it. It was like we could have Elvis one. Yes. I got my eye on one of those. It's kind of like um, I don't know if you've ever been to like Nashville, but it's I have.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:09

There's pictures I'll show you after. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:11

Um, but you know, talk about Nashville.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

This is Nashville.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:14

If you go to the Grand Dilopery and it's like, you know, they'll kind of cut to the commercial and they'll just be like, Goo goo for goo goo clusters. And you know, they'll do the cocoa pubs.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:23

I have that commercial somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:25

Yeah, and it's it's just like it's just it's so fun. And so um, I remember at the time we were getting listeners in from around the world, and so this really reminds me of that. That it's like old school, new school. It is, and it's like here we are in 86, possibly 87 radio uh countries tonight. Yes, yes, and they're hearing, they're hearing our voice, they're hearing our message, and I just think that what an asset to this town.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

I think we need to make it a TV show, we series.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:51

We really do, and I would love, I love your little van out there, and you're definitely gonna be hitting arms with me. I will and we could just broadcast live from the um I'll be the girl in the back of the truck with the camera. But I think what a great opportunity for local businesses to come in to promote themselves right in.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:09

Always, always.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:10

Um, also um musicians. There are so many talented musicians in this area um to do some type of feature um here, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Um I've had somebody here that actually was part of the WWF.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

So I'm also an a uh I've been in extras and movies. Cool. So I actually got killed off on movie, but I'm still here. True story. Connecticut TV Film and Alliance gotta give them a plug.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:34

Wow, that that's amazing. And so what I was um thinking of is that, you know, once I get out there on the streets, I don't know if I'm gonna be leaving this coming Monday. Um, and it's not like I'm gonna be leaving and gone. It's like Connecticut is a small enough state where it's like I could do a little road trip, I could maybe have some friends, you know, like watch the animals on the farm. Um, you know, and uh I haven't really been doing all that much. It's like everything's so behind between the weather and stuff, but all of our vegetables got in. The corn was just planted. It's like all right.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:03

Shame on me, I did not plant corn this year, but we did zucchini and squash and eggplant and tomatoes, and uh, we actually did an herb garden this year. Good for you. I haven't shame on me that I haven't done this before. You know, like I had a huge garden when we first moved in, and uh, you know, inspiration to you and my friend Gina. I said, I gotta get back. And my husband brought home this packet from work. Yeah, they're literally thinking about like you're thinking about all these folks. You could do it. So literally, I I didn't realize you can grow a potato inside of a laundry basket. And it gives all the vegetables.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:36

Yeah, it's really, really great. And we teach a lot of classes like that in our wellness thing, where it's like you're using like different essential oils from different herbs, you're creating like some type of um you could use it, you could take it at home and dry it, and you could use it as a cleaner or as a soap or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

Mint.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:52

Yeah, and it actually helps in your belly for bloating.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:54

Like mint tea is us women that are in menopause, mm bloat. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

So the stories go on and uh so what I was thinking is um you know, however we set this up, um maybe we have like a back to a back to the land or a safe Connecticut Farms separate podcast where every um maybe Friday or once a week I can recap and then bring in a local artist and we could feature them because I know so many artists, you know so many artists.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

I do.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:22

And um, there's nothing better than just giving somebody's page and bringing it back and to giving them a platform where they could just go ahead and shine.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn't cost you anything, it's free. It's free, it's free. Food is free from the land, so are we. We will help you out however you can. I love it. Yeah, and so just so everybody knows, real quick, if you are interested in talking with us or being part of the podcast, I will give you the locations of where all of this, including this episode, will go up on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Index, Overcast, YouTube, iHeart Radio Podcast, Podcast Addict, Castro, Castro Box, Cast Box, uh, Pod Chaser, Player FM, Good Pods, True Fans, and yeah, I did say Spotify.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:13

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:14

This is where all of this is gonna go up to.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:16

It's amazing. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:18

Um, I'm just gonna one woman show, but we're gonna make it too.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:21

I mean, it's just I mean, I really commend you with all that you're doing here.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

I commend you for everything you're doing.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:28

And you know, you really do have um just like a similar mission and a similar heart with what you're doing because you want to showcase people just for them, not for anything else. Yes, because you can see it, you know, you see the energy, you feel it, and and you want to get them out there into the world because you want to, you know, create a movement or create a change, and just it's just it's a really, a really um powerful thing that you're doing. Um, I commend you. I think it's absolutely beautiful, it's brilliant. And um, what a resource you are to just be right here, right here in Seymour. And that's what she said when they first called her. Why isn't anybody? Like you should have a line out your door, like that on air sign. It should be lit up all the time. Like, I think we should do it. Like, you know, like when you um you uh you watch those old movies and it's like um uh where it's like they have the little studio with the on air, and it's like some, you know, like country boys that like live down the road, and it's like one got a banjo and one got a fiddle, and they're just like, let's go down to the radio station, and there's one tower that's how the seal is in here. There should be a line I see it like out the door. Like, we're gonna do something like that in here.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:36

We should just we should just do it. Blow it up, we'll just take it. And on the other side, you guys haven't even seen the other side. I actually have different lounging areas, so you can lounge a lounge right there.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:47

That's like the green room. Yeah, the green room over there.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:50

Well, the gray, okay, yeah, and antique chairs on the other side, too. You see the little funny chairs, so and there's some Frank Sinatra stuff on memorable. I love Lucy on the wall. You know, some of these things you can see. Um, and back of me actually. Let me see if I can hit the button here. You can see the stop sign. There's a lot of different things going on. The traffic light going on.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:13

It's like a real, real, real studio. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:16

I've been working my tail off, uh it's been in the making.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:19

It shows, it shows.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:21

And transformation station, I call it, because my son's in the army. So this was his bedroom, and I made this whole thing a studio.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:28

Wow. No, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:30

Um, you know, one of the things that I'm so excited about is that, you know, yeah, like for me personally, like I'm going through all this stuff right now, and like, you know, some days I'm just like, oh my god, how am I gonna get through this day? Like, what am I gonna do? Like, what am I gonna do if my farm closes down and all this kind of stuff, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

And then I reach out to you.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:47

Yeah, and it's it's just amazing how everything just kind of goes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:50

She's like Jewel, the singer. That's what she reminds me of. She's in love, but I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:55

Yeah. Um, you know, and it's like it's amazing. Um just the people who have have come, you know, together and come forward and have kind of just helped me along the way. It's like the right people at the right time.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:07

And um there's a plan.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:09

There there really is. And I'm just like, I'm so excited. I'm so excited for this movement that just I don't know. I just created just in I don't know how it's like.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:21

That's why because you're a realist and I love that.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:24

So many people are reaching out to me now and they're like, Can you come to my farm? Like, you know, I have a story to tell, and it's just how exciting. It's just to experience the entire state of Connecticut, to experience the authenticity of so many real things that are out there. And I just think about um even highlighting and how far this could really get. Like, am I gonna meet some farmer in the middle of some town that just their thing is rhubarb jam? I don't know. Maybe nobody knows about their rhubarb jar jam, but maybe it's the most fantastic thing that you can do.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:55

I like green tomatoes and jam at the end of the year for Max Gelaton.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:59

But imagine the people, imagine the people that that are going to come on this on this ride. And um I'm just so excited. I'm so excited to hear their stories. It's it is a movement, and you know, you think about like all these things that things that happen to us in our lives, and why do they happen? And like, why have I been through this for 10 years?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

And why has Why does this happen keep happening so we put uh like an even Steven, if you will, and call it a balance.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:27

Exactly. And now I think about it, and I'm just like, yeah, it's been really hard for 10 years, it's been really hard dealing with all this stuff. But is it the catalyst? Is it the catalyst that I needed to come to this point? Because you know You're being tested. Yeah, if I didn't have all this happening, you're being tested, I would just be doing the things that I love to do in my barn, offering to the community. But which is a great thing, which is a wonderful thing that I'm hoping to still be able to do, but here is this catalyst, this this situation that I'm looking at that is so devastating, but it all gets turned around. Like, how can all these bad things be used for good?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:07

Right and um take a negative and put into the positive, and I always say this, and I don't know if anybody's a believer, but I am. Yes, the man upstairs works in a mysterious way.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:16

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:17

Take a negative, put it into a positive.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:19

Absolutely. Like God turns all things around, absolutely, like everything that was meant to harm us or destroy us, he turns around for good. Absolutely. One of the things that also that I really, really, really realized is that when I say like I don't know how this has come together, this movement of going to 169 towns, and I don't know where I came up with it. I really just feel that it's not really me. It's just that I pray every day and I ask God to guide me and I I ask him to he returns the favor. Yeah, to just like you know, fill me with inspiration and just you know, I just like employing I'm pouring everything out, you know. I'm pouring everything on my face.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:58

Put it out into the universe, he heard you.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:00

And and I'm just you know, I'm saying, like, I don't know, I don't know which way to go. I don't know what to do. I don't know, do I fight harder? Who do I call? How who can help me in this and that? And I just it's like just being still, just being still, knowing that God is going to just come and provide the right people at the right time, and you know, it and just to have faith, and just to have faith. And one of the things, just really quickly, this was so beautiful. So it was like we did this thing. One of the things it was so funny. So this woman, right? She's this famous woman, she's on tour right now in Europe, but she sings at Carnegie Hall, she sang at the UN for the Dalai Lama. I mean, she is a beautiful soul.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:44

Shall I be Googling this?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:46

Yes, yes. Her name, I'll send you her link. Her name is uh Teresa uh Thomas. I know who she is. And um so she came up to my farm last year, and uh she jumped out of her car and she's like, Are you Kim? Kim. I was like, Yeah, she's like, I found you, I found you, and I was like, You did? And she gave me the biggest hug, and she's like, I have been searching for you for years, and I was like, You have? And she's like, Yes, and um she's like you're one of my favorite people, and I was like, I am like I don't think you I just gotta know this, yeah. And so she said, I used to come to your general store in downtown Seymour, and I never sang. Um, she goes, but I would listen to your open mics, and uh she goes, I loved it there, it was my favorite place in the universe. And she goes, I finally she goes, I went to your old space and I asked the new owner of the who's in there, the new business, and so she got my address. So she said, I want to give you a gift, and I want to give you a gift of music, and I want to give you this free this free music thing here. And I was like, Oh my god, you know, this is amazing. And um, at the time I was just like, Well, could they put out a tip jar for you? She's like, No. I said, Well, can I just put like $10 suggested donation? No. Uh well, let me just do it. Okay. So, anyways, we go. Well, that's in my file. That's in my file here as evidence that I'm charging for concerts and on this big concert arena at the farm.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:06

And um yes, tickets, please.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:09

Yeah, and um, so anyways, so she was there and um I forgot where I was going with this, but um but that's oh no, this is so funny. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

So the song that we sang last year was um that song where it's like uh three little birds on the doorstep singing sweet skull. Does it access no no melodies pure and true? And then don't worry about a thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:35

Yeah, go everything going to be alright.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:38

It's gonna be alright.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:39

I can't hit a note, but she can.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:49

So she's in trouble for saying good things. And then this year, as soon as it happened, there was a girl that ran over, and she's just like, look at my arm. I just got this tattoo, and it was three little birds. Yes. And somebody else, it was like three little birds, and I kept on getting the verse where it's like, look at the birds of the field, like they're taken care of. Like they don't worry, like, why are you so worried? So it was like, don't worry about a thing, these three little birds. And it just started showing up everywhere, everywhere. And I even started posting about it, and I walked into a doctor's appointment, and right there was this little like airpod right there. And it was like three little birds on, and I was like, that is the message.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:28

The message is clear, worry going, don't worry about a thing, everything is gonna be okay. Do you see that little boy that does that video? No, have you seen? Oh, I'll have to send you the link. He makes you cry too, like yeah. So, long story short, you may or may not know. I had a son who passed away years ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:47

And they're in 99. It was an unfortunate circumstance due to negligence. My son died of asphyxiation. So you talk about birds. So this is my son Jason. I had it tattooed on my arm because my son Jason is named after the blue jay. So, in relevance to your story.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:04

I just saw two blue jays. No joke. No joke. I was coming down my street, South Benham Road, and there were two blue jays that flew in front of my car, two of them. And I said, Oh my goodness. I said, I have never seen blue jays like that. And they sat in the middle of the road a little bit, and I had to stop to let the two blue jays go. True story, it just happened on my way over here.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:26

So that's my story about birds. You'd sing it about the birds, and you just brought it back to it's a full circle of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:32

It's a full circle.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:34

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? I named him J-A-Y-S-O-N. His name is not on the headstone the right way, but that's my story about my son Jason. There's actually a song I will show it to you after. Well that was generated for Jason. And yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:48

That is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:49

Birds. I wish Birds of a feather flack together.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:53

Yes. I wish I took a picture or a video of those blue jays as I was diving over.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:57

I'll show you stuff that'll blow your mind with the birds because I'm all about that. And hearts. I find hearts everywhere. Wow. So talk about being connected with things. Yes. And realist, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:07

And I think that that is just a message too. It's about don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

Everything isn't going to be around.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:11

And it's the birds that are singing. It's the birds creating energy. And the trees. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:16

But we can't say the birds and the bees because we'll be in trouble. But they do have a connection, right? She reminds me of a lot of Jewel, but I see a lot of Simon Garfunkel folk-ish kind of going on. Wow. I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:30

Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. Jewel is actually, um, I I love I love her.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:36

Um she's her twin. Jul, if you're listening in.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:38

Yeah, yeah. Um got a connection. You know, I grew up yodeling too. I know that she yodels, and um, you know, we might have a yodeling competition up on Great Hill once because um, yeah, there still might be some beef up.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:51

How about an auctioneer? I'd like to see that just for the heck of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:54

Like an auctioneer. Yeah, yeah. Really, really fast. Do you know how to do it?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:57

No, sir. No, ma'am.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:00

I would like to see it. I would look at it. We need to get somebody to uh to do it. I just went to a cattle auction up in Middletown because I was thinking of getting cattle.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:09

Yeah, because I grew up and we were a dairy farmers. And um, the guy was going like so fast. I was like, how I mean, how does he do that? You know?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:17

But that I could talk fast, I could talk a lot, but not fast.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:20

Yeah, so that is amazing. So I really do think that um that good things are gonna come out of this. I think that people are gonna resonate with, you know, 111 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

You need to keep this farm. She needs to keep this farm, guys. Really true story.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:36

So thank you so much. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:37

We're gonna drop a little song here that I've got lined up. I got a couple surprises for you tonight. Uh uh, Son of a Preacher Man, Farmer's Daughter. Do you remember that song at all? If you don't, you'll hear it now. Here we go, guys. We're gonna go back to a little music. Gotta get in a couple of uh folks, local artisans right here in Connecticut, one of which does ceramics and she sells her pieces. Another one actually makes bracelets, which I could show you after the show. Um, she actually has been in a couple homework shows, and the people from uh the Buffalo Bills buy her bracelets and the TV show The Bones. So this lady Sandy actually makes bracelets right here in Shelton, Connecticut, and she makes them out of Recycled Records. That's so good and I've made commercials. Yeah, I love it. There you go, recycle. We talk about that all the time. So we're gonna drop this song and then we got a couple more things going on. And uh in the meantime, if you're listening in on Facebook or on Castrack Radio, I think my dad said something about he wanted to call in. Uh, give us about three minutes and ring us up. If not, we'll see if we can get you on here if you have a question. And if you too want to call in on the station, I'll give you the backup number. The other phones plugged in so we could do our live Facebook. Uh 475-439-2790. I'll say it one more time. 475-439-2790. You can call in to Catch Track Radio if you get undermine the state.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:10

So going to the state probably will not help you unless you get um a higher up that would call the town and put pressure on them. You know, one hand washes the other type thing. But you're a hundred percent right. A farm today, anybody that's in business for themselves cannot have one thing. Like, I know people that had 500 beehives and he did pollination and he did honey and he did wax and he did everything that went with the bees. You just couldn't have bees for honey, or you just couldn't do pollination. You have to have everything. And when you have a farm, you have to have multiple things. You can't just sell carrots or cucumbers, you have to have it's a little bit here and a little bit there. You can't it's impossible to to have a business today with one particular item like cows or goats or sheep. You know, the everybody in Maine, there's so many people that do this in Maine what you're doing, but they're selling vegetables, they're selling flowers, they're selling, you know, a lot of different things to try to make ends meet.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:23

Yeah. You really do have to diversify, and um, you know, when my grandparents, my great-grandparents were there, um, like a lot of families, there, you know, people had a lot of kids back then, you know? So there was like, you know, fields were filled, right? Yeah. So I think that like, you know, like my my grandmother, she had like, you know, there were five boys and two girls, so there was like seven, you know, like five strong men there, you know. A lot of families are are smaller, and so it it's harder to to really like get in and like work the fields like just like they did back in the day, you know. So you you try to you try to adapt um as well. In New England, where we live, um, I remember a few years ago, I was like, okay, I am gonna grow so much. I am gonna just like really, really, really get out there. And it was just it was really expensive to uh buy all the seeds and the drip line irrigations and the the weed matting and all that kind of stuff. And it was the year that the whole town of Seymour flooded and like Claredis Village, like you know, exploded.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:24

Yeah, yeah. That was like three, four years ago, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:28

And it just completely decimated our fields, and I was just like, What how how are farmers supposed to really make money? And uh, it's like you know, you're you're just like waiting all year like on your crops. And one of the things also that I think needs to be looked at is that if you are in the south, let's just say where you're growing on thousands of acres and you're growing more commodities like uh soybean or cotton or corn, farming farmers can get insurance that really makes sense if there is a natural disaster. But in New England, how it's pretty much set up is that you have to insure each crop. So you have to insure your tomatoes, then you have to ensure your cucumbers, and then you have to ensure your your squash. And the insurance, a lot of the times, could be more than what you're even gonna be making off of. So most farmers just go into their fields completely vulnerable for the season and just kind of hope for the best. And so, you know, that's another reason why farmers are trying to do different things to diversify their income, you know, such as education or um hay rides or corners.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:31

I think you got uh I think you got the right thing with the education because I've been working with kids now for about four years, and this year we put uh eight hundred and fifty-six children through the eight area in in four five weeks.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:45

Wow. That's a lot of kids. That's a lot of kids.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:48

Exactly. And every time the kids come through the 8 Bay, they're ecstatic. They want to come to school. So when you see the kids, like you're saying, on the farm planting vegetables and watching it grow, they want to do it. They see it and they want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:03

This is And they're learning young, and that's the good thing. When you get them young enough where they're not exposed to all of this, you know, no, no pun intended, because we have to use electronics and things like that, but you're getting them exposed to something that's new, fresh, you know, in in their minds.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:20

These children are actually they they they're at the 8-bury when it's learning about the bees, but the honey that comes from the 8-bury, they get to weigh it, they get to bottle it, they get to spin it, they get to make lip balm, they get to make hand cream, they get to make candles, and they get to market it. So when these kids get up in age, they might not take beekeeping as a business, but they'll know how a business runs. And I would like to see more stuff for the children, like in younger grades, like second grade or first grade. I wanted to school to and I'm and I'm not a teacher up there, I just support all the things that happened in the eight berry with the bees, but my idea of this when I first started it was a business. So this this year the Apeary funded apple trees for the children. So it's not only putting the apple trees in, now it's gonna be pruning the apple trees, and then I'm gonna teach them how to graft apple trees.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:25

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:26

Yeah, why can't we do that here in Connecticut?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:28

Yeah, why can't we you know it's so amazing that I'm actually sitting here next to your daughter because um I know that we met um a few years ago at the pumpkin festival and you gave me your card there. Um and I remember telling so many people about you. I was like, I met this man and he's doing this education with honey and kids, and um you were just you were such an inspiration to me. And um and now here I am, like we're talking about coming to the circle, and here I am with your daughter.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:59

The other thing I want to do with the children, and I just can't get it by the the school board, is because the children are making money in the Ape Bay, I want to one of the classrooms, like say first grade or second grade, or I don't even care if it's kindergarten. Give them $500, put it in a check in a put it in a savings account, let them see how it grows, and then when they become seniors, they could use it for their prom. So they would they would understand banking, they would understand how it works. And these children today, they're getting out of high school and they can't even write a check. Some of these children can't even write their last name.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:40

Incursive.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:41

Right. I mean it's really amazing that what they don't know, it's basics. They have to the school system is is uh I think they're doing the best that they think they know how to do, but if they don't get back to basics, yep, like the land, just like Kim was talking about, bringing it back.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:58

Dad, what did we talk about the other day? What did we talk about? The stream beans, right? What did you say?

unknown 1:25:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:04

I said I was outside all the time and the getting the basket, I come in with less than I picked because I was eating them.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:12

My my uh uncle my uncle told me a long, long time ago when I was young, he said, look at if you own land you'll never starve. These people that don't know how to grow anything, I tell you, if the s if the if the grocery stores stop producing food or the federal government stops helping farmers to plant food, these people are gonna be hurting. They don't have no clue on where their food comes from. We talked about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:39

That's what I said, the local supermarkets. Like I know a lot of times, you know, I didn't know Kim had honey, otherwise I would have been buying it from her. I get the honey from my dad, but they say because I have asthma, so I I literally yeah, local honey is the best-ish kind of and and I'll do it because I do talk, as you heard, I do talk a lot. Yeah. So soothing myself before I go on here with the honey kind of helps out a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:04

Well, I love what you do with the children, and I know that the when I met you the first time, you you had said that you were able to get some type of um educational funding or something like that to Yeah, it was a hundred thousand dollar grant the teacher got to build this apiary.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:18

Right. And then when they came back, the people who gave us the grant two years ago, not this year but last year, when they came back and saw how good the children this was working for the children, they gave us another five thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:31

Wow. You know, I would love when you were if you the next time that you come down here, I would love to invite you to come out to my farm because we do have apiaries there. And um, you know, I would love to do something similar here for the children within the school system in Seymour and also the valley and surrounding towns. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:50

And well you what you have to do is you have to have people go on my Happy High farm and see how it all plays in. And I would love to come to I I do classes in schools like for um beekeepers that new beekeepers that want to start or even old beekeepers.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:10

Well, when you come down again, that's what she's saying, you should go over to her farm.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:13

Yeah, but you you um you shut your farms what in December?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:19

Um, we close it, yeah, for the public in December because we're on a dead end road and it's just like not really feasible to, you know, have people come up.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:28

If I was to come down and do a class at your farm, say for new beekeepers, right? It would have to be because people need to get their bees.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:36

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:37

Usually I do them in February or March, the latest.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:42

This should be fine. I mean, I'm there at the farm, you know, and I have capacity of opening, so that you know, that that would work.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:49

Um so just just look at what I'm doing on on Happy High Farm. Okay. And and and then you could and and I've and I've been all Over with this message, and I was even up to Rangeley, um Maine, Mexico.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:08

You said too Mexico, Maine, too, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:10

Mexico is where we're doing it, but um there's so many teachers from around the country that know what I'm doing that they want it for their school. But it's amazing that in my hometown here in Hartford, Sumner is RSU 10, Mexico is RSU 10, Buckfield's RSU 10, I can't get past the front door to talk to the kids. Even though it says let Al in to talk to the students. I can't get past the front door.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:45

It's really crazy. It's really, it's really amazing how these things happen, like not in your own town. You know, it's like it's it's crazy. It's so crazy because I look at what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:57

I don't I don't know if it's I don't know if it's because they're jealous of what you're doing, or they don't have no clue.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:05

They don't have no clue on on what really works for children.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:11

I mean, I I I was not a genius in school. You put me in a classroom and and handed me a book or or wrote stuff on the board, I'd be looking out the window. You know, these kids are going to school and they're doing what they they like to do. They like to work with the bees.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:28

They love it. You know, we have we have a a few kids that come up every week with their parents for like an hour and a half and they do this little like farm kids thing, and they're so smart, they're like sponges. They they remember all of the names of the animals, and I mean it's just it's it's like everything that we did the week before. Mind blowing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:47

Yeah, they know they they remember because they're like sponges until the age of I think ten.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:51

Oh the frontal lobe that works with and uh that's what that's why that's why I'm saying that's why I'm saying you gotta start teaching these children about finances and saving money. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:02

So you're telling me my granddaughter's two months old, I gotta teach her what a penny is. Oh, wait, they don't have pennies anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:07

Oh, it doesn't matter. I mean, I talked to a lady that was in base college, trying to teach children in base college about a checkbook. This kid, these kids are in college and they don't even they're clueless. They I'm sorry, but it's it's sad.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:22

It is sad. It is sad. Well, she's gonna do a good job getting out there and talking to all these farmers all around Connecticut. I think it's amazing. I know a lot of farmers elsewhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:32

Whatever whatever's going on in your neighbor's head is kind of sad because up here in Maine, we lose a lot of land to people that don't want to farm it no more or even hay it. And now they're putting in all these solar panels that are gonna go defunk. I mean, they're gonna turn into junk after a while. And that's that's some of our governor. I talked to the governor numerous times, and I talked to Jared Colvin, and I said, Why are we not putting uh dams and why are we not putting in hydro? We got all these rivers in the state of Maine that you could put a lot of hydro in and uh mills called that nobody asked me yet. In other words, nobody asked me if we could rent the river from you or some stupid thing. We wouldn't need all these solar farms, and we wouldn't need all these windmills because we're buying electricity from Hydro Quebec. They could be making all the electricity in the world. So people do not they people do not do things for the right reason. That's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:38

It's called stop and think before you proceed.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:40

Well, everybody has a mission and it's to benefit their self. When you find a few handfuls of people that want to do things for the goodness of people, we always say that. We always say that that's a very, very small amount of people.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:54

Yeah, you've got to start it somewhere. If you can find it and do it, then you just keep branching it. It's like a tree, it'll grow.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:00

You know, I was trying to Yeah, I don't know. I've been I've been doing this all my life, and it's like I'm I'm pushing a rope up up in the air, and it just keeps coming back down.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:08

I was just having this conversation with somebody the other day about like how people work so hard. Like I'm like talking about like this farm and and my answers with with the farming, like they work so hard to get to where they are today. They they did have to sell off a lot of like the pasture land when like you know, certain laws change with dairy and things like that. But now it seems like you have to work just as hard to actually keep what you have because we do run into things like people that want to put solar um farms on our farm and developers that want to develop the property, and um you know, so you have to work just as hard to try to keep what you have, you know, and make sure that you stay on top of everything and you know you want to preserve things like you know, not everybody wants to sell their land off to developers and put in neighborhoods because once the farms are gone, they're gone.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:59

I live on a dirt road. I mean, I lived in Seymour, Connecticut on Peach Drive, but we we were actually from grown farmland.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:06

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:07

On Peach Drive, we were calling farmland. Uh the house we owned on Peach Drive, I had an acre where most of the people on that road, like across the street from me, our property was 220 feet long, and some of the properties across the road, I think there was two or three houses that only had like fifty feet.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:28

He made forts in the woods when we were kids with grapevines.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:33

Right. I had Don I had Don Scabby, he lived behind me with the pond. Mr. Scabby, yeah. I used to I used to have a lot of people. We had some we had a little bit of privacy there. So this piece of property that I bought here is only five acres, but I have eight hundred and sixty-foot road front.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:49

Wow. It's peaceful.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:52

Yeah, it's very peaceful. It's a dirt road.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:54

We were just talking about, did you hear us talking about the stars? The star gazing?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:59

Yeah, I I go outside, I have a I have a candile deck off my bedroom, and at night sometimes I'll just go out there and actually we used to be on the phone together.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:09

We would call each other.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:10

Yeah, and the other thing I did is I put a skylight right over my bed.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:13

Right there. How many times have we talked to each other on the telephone? Even when our my son Christopher was little, we would say, Okay, tonight stargazing. You look in Maine, I'm gonna look in Connecticut.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:23

Wow. Sometimes we saw some meteor showers that were pretty neat.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:27

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I used to go up to the high school all the time when we were kids too. A neighbor of mine when they had the eclipse, so I would sit there or I would sit over at uh Good Shepherd Church, which is across the street.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:38

It's pretty nice when you don't have a lot of lights, so where you are, you probably don't have a lot of lights.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:42

Yeah, we um we've actually gotten together with friends uh quite a few times when the auroras were coming through. And the skies were just beautiful, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:51

And you know you can only take a picture of it, or you could use your phone. Yes, just the only way you could see I had my aunt had messaged me, she says, How come I can't see the colors? I said, Are you using your phone? She goes, No, I was using binoculars. That doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:05

I've actually seen it without I've actually seen it without the colour.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:09

You've got uh what do you call it eyes? You got Superman eyes.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:12

No, no, no. When I was up in Quebec.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:16

When I went up to Canada, yeah, yeah. I mean Can Canada. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure that's pretty cool stuff. Well, Ted, thank you for clarifying stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:26

Uh Kim that it works out for me, and when I come, what we'll have to do is if I'm gonna come down to do a talk, because I have to get I have to bring a lot of stuff with me and prepare, so I would give you an agenda and then you can put it out there and see how many people want to come.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:40

Absolutely. I have done um certain like beekeeping workshops in the past and they're always like very well um yeah, people people love coming. So I'm sure like with um with having you come, especially how you have brought so much to schools, um, I think it would be a packed house.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:59

Um I think it really usually what I usually what I do is if I'm teaching new beekeepers, I have a whole format. It's a couple hours long, but it it goes from the woodware to the tools you need and how you manipulate the frames and it does everything, but uh I have to stay on schedule you know, to get through the whole program, but it it it it'll take you as a boot new beekeeper. It tells you the different kind of boxes. You got super, you got deeks, you got you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:36:31

Okay, I'm sold on it. I'm s I'm sold. Whenever you want to come down, you're more than welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:37

I've done it yeah, I've done it at RSU uh 52, I've done it in in different schools before, and uh but alright, I'll definitely try to get a hold of you. I I love I love doing it because I I love to see people successful.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:53

Same.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:54

And only there's only like twenty twenty percent, twenty-eight percent of people are successful when they get their bees to actually keep them alive.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:01

That's a low percentage. You gotta get that number up. Yeah. All right, Dad.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:05

We'll ready it was nice to talk to you. All right, good luck. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:10

We'll keep you in contact with each other. We'll have you guys hook up on Facebook and he's just learning the ropes on Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:17

Yeah, just see what the yeah, just look look back on my Facebook page and see what we've done in the last few months.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:23

There you go, Dad. All right, well have a great night, Dad. Thank you so much for calling in.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:28

Love you guys, stay out of trouble.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:30

Hey, goodbye. Love you. Did he say stay out of trouble? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:35

That is not happening, right? So, um, you know, one of the things that vacation. Yeah, yeah. No, I I love talking to your dad. Um, one of the things that I just wanted to, he reminded me of is that we were talking about like planting foods and needing foods and like what happens if, you know, like people really need to know. One of the things that I just uh taught to a bunch of women is that one of the easiest best things to do to grow a superfood in your yard is um have you ever heard of Jerusalem artichokes?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:05

No, I've heard I love artichokes themselves.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:07

Yeah, they're very they they're not like an artichouchoke at all. They're actually like a tuber. So it means like it's like a like a root, like a tuber. Oh, okay. And um you can buy them like I tell people to buy them at Whole Foods because you're getting like, say, like an organic.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:22

Oh bang for your bum kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:24

Okay. And they look like almost like ginger root, but they're bigger, they're white, and they if you slice them, they taste just like water chestnuts. So you can slice them. But they are a super food and they spread like crazy. Really? So one of the best things that you can do if you want to always just know that you have like I love having like little like hidden like food sources, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:46

Yeah, these are to be continued on this around.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:48

Yeah, and so you can just bury tubers, like you know, in a few places around your yard. And they're beautiful, they're beautiful. Um, so you don't even have to dig them up.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:56

They'll be like, I'm just gonna say, like a cover, like a ground cover.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:02

They have beautiful yellow flowers, so they'll flower, and um, they'll just keep on spreading. And then when you want to eat them, they're so packed with vitamins and minerals, you could just dig it up and then you could just eat it. And so you always have a super food.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:15

You'll never be starving again. Yeah. She just gave you a little tidbit, guys, if you're listening in. How cool is that, right? It's very cool. If you get a flower and you could be happy and you can have a full belly, who's better than us? Yeah. And lots of antioxidants, I'm sure, right? Yes, artichokes. We used to eat artichokes as a kid. My Italian grandmother used to boil them just a little bit, no salt, no pepper, no nothing on them. Pull them with your teeth, and just eat them plain.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:42

And that was a delicacy kind of ish, if you will, at Christmas time.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:46

So that the uh artichokes would come out. You know, I like them a little bit of uh rice vinegar, if you will. A little uh kick to it. Yeah. So yeah, I I've grown some interesting vegetables over there. What is your favorite vegetable to grow of all kinds?

SPEAKER_04 1:40:01

Let's see. Um, I mean, I love all of the heirloom tomatoes, you know, like all of the different ones. One of my favorite ones is called the mortgage lifter. It was um developed in the Depression era. Okay, and um a guy was losing his house and uh couldn't afford his mortgage, and so he developed this like um variety of tomatoes that was so delicious that it lifted the mortgage off of his house. Yeah, that's why it's called a mortgage lifter. That's one of my favorite ones. I love growing um the yellow, the orange tomatoes. I especially love using them and um like doing salads and even soups with like a yellow tomato soup. Like you just you kind of just like make everybody guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:42

Right? Yes, and your sourdough bread. I have Kelly Grey Watts. If you're listening in, Kelly, she wants to buy some of your sourdough bread. We saw that. I have my grandmother's bread machine upstairs.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:53

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:53

We're gonna have to do a cooking segment here.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:55

Absolutely. No, not tonight, guys, but yes, we do have sourdough bread that comes in from the weekend. We're working with a a new local baker. Um this year, she's um, I think Skoker at sourdough. Uh right over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so and and we just work, you know, this year, like I said, it's so like I'm not really bringing in a lot right now because I'm just like, I don't know what's going on. But yeah, we usually are highlighting so many like local artisans, uh local um uh bakers, local um producers. Love it. So um another favorite thing that uh we grow a lot of is 25 varieties of watermelon. So we have yellow watermelon, yellow, purple, black. It's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:36

Um again, I didn't know. I thought it was only one color.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:39

Yeah, we do a lot of uh watermelon with the seeds. People love the old-fashioned watermelons with the seeds.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:44

Um there's a game with that too, you could spit them out.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:47

Yeah, baseball players use it. It's very, very cool. A lot of the seeds that I get are um from a company called Rare Seeds, and um some of the seeds actually like um this one melon or squash, it was like they found these seeds that were like 2,000 years old in a cave or something like that. Really? Yeah, we brought them back up. Yeah, so it's like I grow a lot of like really unusual things like that. Um right now we have a ton of lettuce coming in on the farm.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:15

Our lettuce is the one go down in the backyard. I'm very proud of myself with that.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:18

And I love um, you know, we could do like a whole gardening section too, uh segment too, but one of the things that um I love doing is like with the mesclin mix this time of year is that um when you do a heavy scatter of lettuce, you just it it uh what it does is it grows and you don't have to worry about the weeds because it crowds out the weeds and you can give it like about three haircuts. So it's not like you're planting a lot of it. So you could take it out, have more than it's like cut it, you just keep on cutting it, and it's gonna keep on growing and growing and growing. And so it's not like you have to rip out that head of lettuce.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:51

That whole thing and the root comes out of the room.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:53

So it'll have like and you do it in stages, and so you have fresh lettuce. We have a lot of fresh lettuce right now at the farm. And the other thing, what are we? I mean, we just got so much in the ground right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:03

Bikini, squash, eggplant, eggplant. I got Japanese eggplant this year.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:07

Japanese eggplant. I love the Japanese eggplant.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:08

Yeah, I'm gonna make uh garlic. Oil uh, what is that? Olive oil, garlic, uh uh, what do you call it? Um uh uh the eggplant, sweet and sour, not sweet and sour, eggplant. Uh I'm gonna jar it, I'm gonna can it. What is it? Like a kimchi? No, I was thinking about kimchi. That was my next thing. But it's um my grandmother used to take that probably would be really good on your sourdough bread. Um, it is garlic bread with uh gosh, what the eggplant, pickled eggplant.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:35

Wow, I bet you that is so good. I've never had that before.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:39

It's delicious. Yeah, so and I have cookbooks. Yeah I don't know about you, but I have like 25 cookbooks upstairs. Yeah. I keep them on a shelf so we can refer back. I know Google, Google, fast, fast, fast, slow down. Yeah, sit with the kids, talk with them. Like this weekend, we're making we have four girls outside. We make homemade pizzas.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:58

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:59

I make the doughs too as well. This time around, we kind of cheated a little bit, but you know, we make the we smoke our pizza. We smoked corn on the cob this past weekend. Ooh, yes, coming here. It's a potty.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:12

You know, um, one of the um the educational classes that I do on the farm, and it's like it's so amazing, is that when I first started um farming, I was like planting one lettuce seed at a time, one lettuce seed at a time.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:25

I mean but the ratio is two to four, isn't it? Or two to three.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:29

I I just scatter mix now. Dash is the easiest thing. But one of the things is that I actually um got to work with a um he was brilliant. He was a professor up at UConn. And he would come out to my farm like once a week and we would um talk about organic practices, how to grow, how to keep pests away. We did a lot of studies that were on our farm too, um, where we did like a lot of like research and data collecting um just like for the state. Um, but one of the things that he said to me is that he's like, What's your method? And I was like, What do you mean, what's my method? Like the hot mess method. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a mad I don't know. There's a myth in the madness, yeah. And so one of the things that I tell people when they're farming, and it doesn't matter if they're farming just a little bit of their backyard or they're farming a field, one acre, two acres, five acres, once you have a method, it doesn't matter. The work is the same. And um, yeah, I am not practicing my own principle this year because I've been so busy just dealing with like talking to lawyers and just like court and all that kind of stuff, and like really my own. But um, but but one of the things that I do is I teach people how to do that, where um once your ground and your methods are set, farming becomes as easy as just flipping on a water switch, like a switch, and everything your weeds are controlled, your water is being pumped in from underground, your um you know, it's just yeah, your irrigation, everything. And so it's just about creating a method. And so that is one thing that I really love to teach people how to do because it seems so overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:03

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:04

And when you don't when you don't have a method, it is overwhelming. Like right now, I'm just like mapping things out. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:09

Mapped it all out. I love it. So, um, but yeah, so good stuff, great information, and there's so much more, guys. Like I said, we have brochures, she's got a pile of paperwork of all kinds of great stuff that we could talk about, we could talk about and talk about. Yeah, you know, you would never want to go without having a meal on the table. You don't want to take away from the farms. I'm I'm saying this because I know people that I've talked to over the years, uh, folks that are listening in, they'll say to me, Cat, you know, I got this uh medicine and it's not working for me, so I'm taking a turmeric. Well, where did you get that from? It's natural. You got it from your vegetables, your fruits, things like that. Um, case in point, I was um I can I had uh cardiomyopathy twice over. You know, after my son passed away, I lost a lot of blood. I um ended up with really bad ticker. So I have recovered a lot. Sometimes have residue of it. Unfortunately, but positive note, I ended up going to a homeopathic doctor. This doctor had a uh what do you call it, a laboratory in Seymour, and she was making CQ10. Okay, so she was making it right out of her lab, and she was using, you know, stuff that we had from the earth to make this. And I don't know exactly inclusive, maybe we could do some research at one time exactly what it is. Like, you know, lavender is a calming agent. CQ ten is also pill form. Some people can take organic, some people can't. Me, myself, and I, all three of us, if you will, no pun it dead did. I was able to beat it out by taking something organic within the earth, if you will. I'm not just saying everybody, it's made for everybody. I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on TV. But I did extensive research when my son Jason passed away because I was still alive and I had to live and I had to learn how to and changing things up. And I'm learning that again, vicariously. Like you said, it's a full circle. Yeah, you go through these humps, you go through these hoops, you learn how to. Um, but food and and good people, music, you know, it all comes together.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:16

It really does. And you know, one of the things with the wellness retreats, like you said, it's like it's so important. You know, we we can grow all these natural things. We can grow herbs, we can grow turmeric, we can grow. This year I wanted to um I wanted to try to grow saffron. You could buy saffron bowls. Saffron is so good for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:36

I've heard of it. What is it? Remind me what it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:39

Saffron is it's um it's very, very expensive. It's like this orange little like you get from like the pollen from the saffron. Oh, really? You pull out these little like pieces and they're you could use them in cooking. Like a lot of people will use them in Spanish magazine, like paella, you add saffron. But a lot of people are looking into the medicinal benefits of saffron and they're drinking saffron tea. Um, it's it's very, very good. But that is what is so why it's so important to keep farms affiliated with health and wellness, because you then have the opportunity to educate people through natural practitioners that can come out to the farm through holistic doctors.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:19

We need the insurance companies to change their minds on this things too, because there's so much of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:24

And it's it's um, you know, it's it's scientific. And so um we can do these these different we can teach people how to do different herbal blends or herbal tinctures or pain creams or um things that are gonna come and urban.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:37

Well we just talked about this, you and I with the the hemp thing. Yeah, they took it away in the state of Connecticut because they legalized marijuana. Uh and I could say this, guys, I she had it, it worked for me for my fibromyalgia. And then they take it away from you, which again they changed a lot of the regulations within the state that unless you've gone through this.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:58

Yeah, and I think as Like we were hemp farmers and we did have a manufacturing license. Um, but they I'm not I haven't even keeped kept up with it for a couple years. But they I don't know if it's 100% gone, but they changed it so much that it just made it almost so hard for the hemp farmers to just and I'm sure there's so many people like we talk about the cancer patients, the fibromyalgia, congestive perfide, whatever. And um, you know, there's so many natural modalities too, um, you know, that can be incorporated on a farm.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:29

I mean, you're gonna get one of your doctors, homeopathic doctors, on. I would love to have a segment on that.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:35

Absolutely. I know so many good people that just really want to help.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:39

This is gonna branch out. It really was, because it there is people out there was is uh there's people out there, you even if you touch one person.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:48

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:49

Even if you touch one person with something that you do with your body, your mind, your spirit, your you're growing, you're earthly, you know. I talk to people on a daily basis, and then somebody will throw something out there. They'll be like, oh cat, I have um, you know, like I have a a cut on my hand, you know. What do you think about, you know, step go back to old school. Vaseline. Put it on. You got an ingrown toenail. Put Vaseline on it, it'll go away. Absolutely. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:51:15

I want to see. I I think I have a copy of the letter. I'm gonna see while I'm here. Hold on. If I do, I want to read it.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:22

All right, and I'll entertain you for a second. She's gonna read a letter that she has in reference to.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:28

I hope I have it.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:29

She's digging it up over there, guys. If not, I'm sure she'll get back the sauna and we can put it up there. I hope you're enjoying the show. Don't forget uh DJ Jazzycat myself. Um, I'm on in different times right now because I am a mobile DJ. Uh, I've been doing mobile DJ for about 14 years, but uh started a broadcast uh about eight years ago. A little back channel for you guys, and I love what I do. I've had many different artists uh from around the world. I've interviewed Jerry Greenberg from Atlantic Records, which owns Michael Jackson's label, Greg Lukins from Rush, Rob the Drummer from Sesame Street, and a lot of folks down in Nashville are out and about. If you're listening in on Facebook, um you will know that some of the people that I've had on, so they're all down in Nashville right now. The CMA fest is going on. That was big. I want to give a big shout out to Nicole Zeller, which is in charge of a lot of these indie artists that are up and coming and starving. Again, I've got lots of folks on deck that will be coming up. You can go over to the Spotify and you can listen to Catchtrack Radio with all the podcasting. You can go over to catchtrack.net radio and you can listen into the station. It's live 24-7. And we're gonna get Kim up on there too. So if you hear her singing, it's not by mistake you'll be able to hear her in rotation. I promise you.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:58

I love that. You know, I don't have the letter with me, but it was a letter that a parent wrote me about her daughter, and what you were saying is even how we can just touch one person. And it was just this random letter that came into me, and I printed it out so others could read it, yeah, with her permission. But it was about her daughter that um has having a really, really hard time. She was like in middle school, she was being bullied, she has like a different style, she's a brilliant girl, like at straight A's, but she just was having a really hard time socially in school. And she said that her daughter came to the farm and she was sitting um next to the goats, and uh she just was like, Mom, like, why would anybody want to shut this place down? Like, why would anybody ever want to stop it? It did, and she said that she was looking at her daughter, and her daughter got her spark back at the farm. And she said, I just want to thank you so much. She's just like, just for having this space, she's like, My daughter got her spark back. I saw my daughter, and it just touched me so much because it was like, you know, we don't really like I didn't do anything, you know. I was just there, I just had the farm. She just came, but it just meant so much to her. And so I think that as we move in our lives and um, you know, we can give people hope, we can give them their spark back, they can resonate with something, we can inspire them, you know, to listen.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:25

Go anything, even with disease, like dementia. There's a case in point right there, you know what I mean? Like if somebody has it, you can go out and you can, like you said, bring back that spark.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:34

Yeah, there's something. And so I just think that um, yeah, so it's just like just another one of those things that they need to come to town hall if you're listening.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:42

Yeah, yeah. She needs to speak up for that. I think that would be great for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:46

Yeah, I mean it's just great.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:48

It is out there with our signs, guys.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:51

And I just, you know, I just I do what you love to do and it pays. Yeah, yeah, you can tell a hundred percent. Did I ask you if you were a Libra? I'm Aquarius. Oh okay. Well, you know what? We can be friends. Okay. I got her hooked in, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:55:07

Yeah, no, but this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely. And um, I definitely um we're we're gonna be talking. I mean, we're gonna be like hitting the road, and like, you know, anybody else out there, I'm just like, how are we gonna get around? And I was like, well, at least now I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:22

I could jump in the back, I'll drive.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:23

Oh, that's so fun. I love it. I was like, I could take the top. I could take the top off my jeep. I figured that would be like you know, like I could bring the surfboard that's on the other side. And then I was thinking, like, maybe somebody has like a classic truck, maybe somebody has an old tractor, you know. Like, how do we get around to like all these farms? And so I think it's just gonna just be a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:42

You gotta get a tractor and dump it out of my truck, and then you can go around and talk to people.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:46

I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:47

We got props, don't worry.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:49

But um, but it's but it's all good things, and everything happens for a reason. And um, even, you know, it's just you know, we're gonna hope for the best if you guys are watching, um, you know, and would like to come out to just show support, and um, you know, just um June 11th at 5 30 at the community bingo room um in Seymour.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:09

And um, yeah, I'm gonna I would say I'd go, but I actually have something to do at Bungay School that night, a fashion show. Oh, how nice. I'm DJing it. Otherwise I will be there in spare. I promise you.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:20

Yes, yes. Um, so anyways, but thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:23

You'll text me and let me know afterwards because we've got to do a follow-up as yes, yes. We need to do a follow-up on everything, and we'll get her going on the iHeart. Yes. Definitely. Well, thank you so much for it. It's been fun hanging out with you.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:35

It's been so fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:36

I got a little funny for you. Don't go anywhere just yet because we uh we're gonna bring back an old traditional song if you're listening in on the other end.