Chamber Chat: A fresh perspective with Beasley’s Orchard. Part 1 of 2

Today’s Chamber Chat was full of local flavor as we sat down with Calvin and Brittney Beasley of Beasley’s Orchard! From all things apples to the growing impact of agritourism, this conversation highlighted just how much this family business brings to our community.

We even caught up with Vince, dove into the economic impact Beasley’s has right here in Hendricks County, and got an exciting sneak peek at what’s ahead…

🎉 A brand-new festival is coming in 2026 — and you’ll hear about it here first!

Don’t miss this one — it’s a core sample of what makes our local business community so special.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:25

All right. Welcome to the Chamber Chat. Uh Johnson and I are very excited about this one because I think there's so much, and I'm not sure if we're gonna be able to keep on time on this one. So we're at Beastley's Orchard. I think this is one of Hendricks County's I you're not I don't say you're the best kept secret anymore, but I I think you're one of the best spots in Hendricks County. So we're honored to have you guys in Danville. So if you guys would introduce your guys' selves and just tell us a little bit about yourselves and then and then I'll I'll start asking questions.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

I'll fire wrap it away, rap it, fire, deal. Um well my name's Calvin Beasley, and I'm third generation owner here at the farm. Um I grew up here and I took over in uh 2015 and nowadays I primarily focus on the production side of the business, which is the agricultural side. So I focus on um the growing and and selling and um packing and storage of all of our fruits and vegetables, and um that's kind of my my big passion. So I consider myself super lucky because I get to wake up and work in ag every day and find ways to grow food that people get to come out and see how it's grown and enjoy and pick it themselves, and I think that's a really cool thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

And I'm um Brittany Beasley. I married into the Beasley family um in 2019. This will be my tenth fall, ninth or tenth fall, um, working the festival season. Um, but I just came on full-time about a year and a half, a little over a year and a half ago. Um, I am primarily the inventory manager, so I do a lot of the ordering for our retail market. Um, I also do all of our Instagram marketing, social media marketing. Um I send out weekly email newsletter, so a lot of the marketing stuff that's digital, and then I help with some of the um other retail market management side of things.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

So, Calvin, when you were growing up here, because you grew up on the farm, correct? Yep. Did you think when you were, you know, 10 years old, this is what I want to do?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Uh when I was really young, um, I was obsessed with tractors and farming, and you know, I spent a lot of time with my dad on a tractor or with our field crews out in the field, so I definitely went through a phase in early childhood where it's all I could think about. Um, but when I got a little bit older, I actually um thought I wanted to go off and do my own thing. So when I went to uh to college, I I really wasn't planning on coming back here, at least not right away. And um just sort of the way things worked out. Um my dad had some health problems and somebody needed to come back and help run the business, and I did. And uh he unfortunately passed away in 2017, but that really thrust me um fully into the the farming side of the business, which is where I discovered that you know that's what what I wanted to do. So it was um kind of uh serendipitous, really, that I discovered it because as a young adult I did not think that I wanted to be a full-time farmer. Did you go to what did you go to school for? I I went to Indiana University and I studied economics. So definitely not anything uh in the ag realm. I've had to kind of self-educate with all the horticultural science, but I do think that that education has has served me well just in terms of brands.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

You also studied small business management at IU, so that also plays a big role, not directly agriculture related, but owning and operating a business for sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Oh, I I think there's a lot to learn from from economics in as a whole, yes, and small business.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Absolutely. I mean, every every farm is is still a business, and I I think there's a lot of farms that aren't necessarily run that way, and I think that's a that's a problem that we have in the industry right now. So I think it's been very useful.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

You did physical therapy? I did, yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

So total, total shift for you. Total one. And if you had asked me 15 years ago, will you ever live on a farm or know anything about farm operations? I would have laughed and said, absolutely not. Um I grew up in Fisher's, so I was a kind of city suburb girl. Um, but yeah, I studied physical therapy and I practiced full-time for seven years before I came um full time here. But yeah, I had no, I mean a complete 180 in everything I I had been doing and that I had technically studied. Um, but I'm loving it. So I'm finding a way to thrive in it. And so totally unexpected, but I'm loving it. So welcome to the Saturday channel. Yeah, I'm happy to be here, really happy to be here. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

All right. So uh you guys have some, I think most people know you for your events throughout the year. Uh you guys have extended. Um, you're now open all year round. Yep. Correct. So it let's kind of talk through the year um and what events you guys have and what seasons and kind of when those are. Um, so let's start. You guys have one coming up this month.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yes, our first event. Um, last year was our first year, this will be our second year doing it, is the Petal Push 5K. Um, so we are doing it kind of at the end of the spring. We tried to time it with um apple orchard blooming. And if you know anything about the weather and how it affects the trees and the crops, then you might look outside and say, Oh, my trees in my yard are blooming already. So our apple trees are also blooming. Um, so it might be the tail end of bloom this year, but it's um a fun 5K, mostly a walk. We had a lot of people come out and walk last year and just enjoy being outside and walking the farm and um taking pictures and you know, being in a place that is not usually open to the public. So it's kind of a fun little event to get out and um kick off, you know, the spring and summer season. Um, so we have some food, a food truck coming, a coffee truck coming, we've got music, we're gonna have yard games and kind of a kickoff to the agritourism season for the year. Um so we're excited about doing it for the second time.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

And so it's a run through the farm.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yes. Yep. So the course is through different parts of the farm and through the apple orchard and trees and stuff like that. So the the course is on grass, dirt, gravel. Um, so it's not like a highly competitive, timed you know, mini marathon type event. It's just like a fun run. Get outside, see a part of the farm that you maybe otherwise never would see, um, and just enjoy some time outside. So yeah, it's on the farm.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

I'm excited. Yeah. I'm excited. All right, so then we go into what's next? Strawberry picking?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Strawberry picking season, yep. And that'll start um a little bit early this year as well. Trimmed in that way. Typically starts towards the end of May. This year we're looking more like mid-May. Um, everything's pushing a little bit early, so including strawberries. Um, it's gonna get cold tonight, so we are covering up the strawberries today, and that's taking us a lot of the day today um to protect those plants. But um, yeah, so strawberry picking will start mid-May this year and usually runs for about a month, month and a half through the end of June. Um we've got eight acres of strawberries this year for people, ten acres of strawberries.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Eight for UPIC ten.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Eight for UPIC, two for two for market sales. Um, so it'll be a long season, and and hopefully we can get people out early to to start picking those in in mid-May, because it'll be a little bit of a shift.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

But yeah. And so if somebody comes out, um what do they expect when they're coming out for UPIC strawberries?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Just well, what what do they expect or what should they expect when they're what should what should they expect?

SPEAKER_02 7:37

I mean, do they just get a basket? Here you go, and do they pay for a pound? Do they how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah, so this year um we we we are changing it just slightly, but the field is in a part of the farm where you have to take a hayride to, um, which is really cool because you get to see the farm during a time where everything's really green, um, things are growing really nicely. It's a totally different aesthetic than what you get in October. So we always tell people to look forward to that. You get to see like really small apples on the trees and things like that, and it's it's actually I think my favorite time of year to show the farm off. Um nothing's gone wrong yet, right? There's no means of like everything's much pristine. Um so there's gonna be there'll be like a small fee, um, which is like a field fee, which gets you access to that hay ride and it gets you out into the field. And then once you're there, you get your bucket, and then you can pick as many strawberries as you want while you're there, and then when you're done, you just hop on the wagon and you come back and you pay. Um it is per pound. Yep, and it is per pound. Okay. Um the bucket, if you pick one bucket, it's about five quarts. Four and a half to five pounds. Four quarts in a bucket. So um, and that's a good, you know, like a lot of families will pick a bucket, but then we have plenty of people that come out and they'll pick, you know, three, four, five buckets.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah. They'll do it the same day. They'll like, you know, because they'll do something, they want to take them home and get them in the fridge, and they'll come back and pick more. So it's a really it's a really good time. Um, we do have our concession stand that's gonna be open on the weekends. Um, we'll try to have some other, you know, maybe like food truck options and things out here because the weekends have gotten to the point where it's almost October levels of people coming out, which is awesome. Um we want to try to make sure we're providing like a really good environment for those people while they're here.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

I love that. Yeah. So raspberry picking and flower picking sort of overlap a little bit with strawberry season. Um, so if you kind of wait, if you come towards the end, you might be able to do all three in one day, which is a fun. I mean, you spend the day at the farm, right? Come on a Saturday and you got several hours. Um, raspberry picking starts mid to late June. Um, and that's more of a walking experience. You walk to the raspberry field, which is just um to the west of the barn a little bit. Um, you get your bucket out there, same bucket of strawberries, pay per pound. Um, and we're planting um black raspberries. We're planting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

We're this week actually we'll be planting uh more raspberries and then more black raspberries. So in the past, we've only had a few black raspberry plants, and there's been a lot of interest in those, so we're planting um quite a bit of them, and then we're planting red raspberry varieties that will allow us to extend the season. So not this year, but in the future, the red raspberry season will start more during the peak of strawberry season, and then it will extend longer.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Oh, that's nice. Yeah, and then the Xinnia flower field overlaps starts in June as well. Um, and that lasted last year. We actually had to go out and cut down the Xinnia flower field to begin our fall festival season. So they lasted a lot longer than they did the previous year. Um, so that goes on for several months, and that's kind of uh it's open every day. Um, you pay a field fee to go in, take pictures, things like that, and then there are jar size options, and if you just want to pick a couple flowers, there's pricing for that as well. So we kind of have something really going on from May to the end of August.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

We'll have the sun, the sunflowers will be in there in July, which are just the way that we do those now is they're in addition to the flower field. So it's like you can come, you know, like she said, from mid to late June all the way through mid-September for zinnias and other flowers, and then the sunflowers will be, you know, sometime mid to late July, most likely, depending on when we plant them.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And is are these only open on the weekends or are they open through the week as well?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Open through the week as well. Okay, and weather permitting. So um summertime we get a lot like summer storms um if it's unsafe to go out to the field or take a hay rag wagon out um during a lightning or rainstorm. Um we'll we always post on our social media an update whether or not it's open that day. Otherwise, it's open anytime we're open during the week and the weekends.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

So locals can come through the week where that's not as crowded and enjoy. Um obviously you don't want food trucks and stuff on the week on through the week, but yes, they're still the cider bar.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yes, the cider bar and the yeah, there's you can always get those and we're gonna we have it making donuts just on the weekends, um, but that'll increase as our busy season comes on too, so we'll have those through the week as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

So did you think of excellent when she saw the donuts for the first time? When she was in the gnome costume. We bought a package and they were gone the next day. They don't last long, that's for sure. Good. Yeah. Okay. Uh so now we're into fall festival, correct?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yes, okay, and then we have one new event that we're gonna try to introduce this year, which we just decided a couple weeks ago, um, is a corn festival at the end of August or mid mid to late August. So um we're gonna have all corn-themed things, corn-themed food, corn whole tournament, you know. So we're gonna make it all about the corn. We don't have a lot of events going on in August other than the flower picking, and so um, that's something we're gonna try to get up and going for this August. So that'll be it'll be our first year doing that. So I love that. Yeah, nothing better than corn on top. Oh, Indiana sweet corn. I mean, we don't even we don't eat sweet corn the rest of the year. If it's not our sweet corn when it's in season, we don't eat it or buy it. So it's like I gotta freeze it, keep it for all year round so that I have it to eat. But yeah, it'll be a it should be a fun event and um some theme photo ops and and some corn-related games and crafts and vendors and music and things like that. So that'll be new right before the fall season kicks off. That's exciting. Yeah, but you already hear. That's right. I know this is the first time we've talked about it. Yeah, just kind of just decided. Now we have to do it. No, we have to have to do it. We have a date there now.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

We have a date picked, it's it's coming. So then fall festival, which I feel like um, in my opinion, was kind of the one you started with. Correct. All right, look, and all right, and so that one's huge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Do you want to give a history of?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah, so my parents started, it's really like the first agri tourism that we engaged in back in the 80s. They started doing Hay Rides to Pumpkin Patch. And that's sort of the genesis of the modern business, really, that we are today.

unknown 13:59

And then the first Harlan Apple Festival was in uh 88. This will be 86.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

This will be our 40th year. This will be the 40th year, yeah. Okay, yeah, and then from there, um around 99-2000 was the first corn maze. Okay, and then just they just kept adding things, and then when I got out of school and came back, um, that was really my focus the first couple of years, trying to add more agritourism and build up the fall. And now we're doing seven weekends. Okay. Um and we run everything every single day uh during the week. Um, you know, of course we're open for fall break. Um, so it's really it's really transformed into a whole amount. A whole two-month season, yeah. It's crazy. Um, because it used to just be it was like two weekends, then it was three weekends, and then we added a couple more, and then we tried to be open during the week for fall break, and now we're just open full till all the way through the season.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Seven seven weeks, seven weekends, six weeks, and then right usually right after that is FFA week.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

So it's really all the FFA kids come out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Wow. Yeah, yeah. It's been a busy couple months.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Fall Festival. What's your favorite? What's your favorite?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Like everybody's favorite. Really? It's it's become probably the busiest. Yeah. Maybe second to the the Harlan Apple Festival second weekend. They're about they're about equally as busy, but and dogs are welcome year-round um in our market. They're welcome to come for like flower events, things like that. Um, but dog days is is the weekend that um the dog rescue groups are in attendance. We donate a portion of the admission sales to the dog rescues that are here. Um, adoptable dogs are on site, people can apply to you know to adopt the dogs. Um, it's it's a big dog weekend celebration, and we're big dog and animal people anyway, so we have two of our own. And um, so it's a really fun weekend. We do a dog costume contest and talent contest, and it's included with admission, and it's dogs can go on the hayride and the corn maze and do all this stuff with their parents, and so it's a lot of fun for us. But yeah, it's it's a really busy weekend, but it's it's the most fun by far.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah. And then through the holidays, I know you guys do pies. Yes. And you do bit photos with Santa. Yes. Anything else in the after fall festival that people should know about?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

We do offer um apple shipping boxes, and we have a lot of not a lot of, but we do some like corporate gifts with those. Okay. Uh, that's a really kind of good thing, gift baskets as well. But um corporations like to have them because we ship them. So um apple boxes that have just apples, and then there's some other with jars and stuff options for that. So that's kind of how we stay busy Thursday or um November through December is things like that, more like corporate shipping boxes, um, gift baskets, and then the photos of Santa are three different Saturdays, and those are really taken off. I mean, we're they're sold out most week most of the days and most time slots. So, and that's kind of when we close is shortly after that for a two-week break at Christmas time. So, and that's really all you're closed now.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Yes, because you guys what I mean I'm growing up, I mean, or I shouldn't say growing up, I was teenage beers. You guys used to close Christmas?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Closed January or June? Reopening in June.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Well, we wouldn't not even June, we'd reopen around 4th of July. When over the loadout already, um, because there were no strawberries back then.

unknown 17:17

And then you know, sometimes they wouldn't even be open in January.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

It just depended on if there's a big apple crop, they would open back up, and then I when did we stay open all year for the first time? Is it 2021?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Maybe 2020. I think so. Yeah, five or six years ago.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

The strawberries were the first thing that forced us to be open earlier.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Um, and then you know, from there it's like okay, you have a lot of apples and you open in January, and then you have all these staff members that want to stay on board, and just got to the point where it's easier just to stay open and try to find ways to keep people coming in.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

So we've talked a little bit about the events, um, but you do more than events, obviously. You guys are a working farm. Yeah. Um I had the opportunity a couple of years ago when I did LHC, Leadership in Oaks County. We came out and I learned so much that day. Um, Calvin, you took us literally on the wagon and just took us on a tour. We got to see you guys planting, which is totally modernized, which was amazing. Um, so let's talk about ag tourism. What is a what makes it ag tourism? Um, and then kind of things that you do um kind of to take everything to the next level here.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

So well, agro tourism is a very um I think it's very loosely defined in general because there's a lot of businesses that participate in agritourism that don't participate in agriculture.

unknown 18:46

Um and that's not that's not a bad thing. It's just an observation that I've had that we've had over the years traveling around um and and going to other operations. And that's um that's not us. We're very much a farm.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Um, so we a lot of people don't realize we we farm over 225 acres, and it's all specialty crops, which is you know, 225 acres for a row crop farmer is not a lot, but um in the realm of specialty crops like apples and strawberries and pumpkins and sweet corn and vegetables, um that that is a that's a sizable operation for our area, especially. There's not a lot of that around here. So that's a very important part of what we do. That's our heart and soul. Um when we're coming up with agri-tourism ideas, uh, we're usually trying to tie it into one of the products that we're that we're producing because um we always are looking for ways, you know, how can we get more people from the community to come out and buy produce here, um, to buy apples, to buy tomatoes, to buy squash, and all of those things. Um so I would say really everything new that we do from a crop perspective, um, and there's a couple that come to mind right now that I'm not gonna talk about because they're still under wraps, but like we we think about growing it first, we think about the production system. How can we plant it? What's how risky is it gonna be? What's the capital investment going to be? And then we think about how can we tie agritourism and direct marketing into this. Okay. Um, because we don't want to we do we do wholesale, um, and we wholesale more and more all the time. But we're never gonna go plant a crop solely for wholesale because that's just not what we do. We're not set up for it, we're not big enough to do that, we don't have the economies of scale. Um but there's so many opportunities to grow things that people will want to come out and see or pick or eat or observe somehow. So that's that's I think that's at the center point of who we are as a business. Is like how can we definitely farmers? Um, I certainly consider myself a farmer, but how can I find a way to create value with the agriculture for the everyday community member and customer?

unknown 20:57

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

I I mean I guess I never really thought about it, but I mean that makes perfect sense for what you guys do. Um have you guys ever ran the numbers of how many people from outside of Hendrix County come? Do you guys do you guys know that?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

No, we've we've seen some data over the years from I know uh Visit Hendrix County. They're all about that. Yes, they've shared some data with us in the past, and it it is very seasonal. Like this time of year, it's it's minimum.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

It's all regulars and yeah, locals.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Yep, but then during those during those busier peak times, uh strawberries, flowers, fall festivals, it increases, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

And I think it's increasing every year. Yeah. I mean, the the percentage, the the ratio is increasing more and more to out of county visitors. Yeah, yep. So we don't have exact numbers off the top of our head.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

No, it's okay. Yeah. I I think, you know, and I look at it from an economic development uh standpoint, obviously. Um I think that you guys have really shown what a business can operate here in Hendricks County. in Danville, Indiana, and really grow and expand. But I think also it's to me it's a um it's something we can look at for our businesses looking to move to Danville. And they say, hey, this is to me it's someplace that their employees can come and visit and enjoy and those kind of things. So it's it's a it's a great opportunity for us here. So you have I feel like modernized a lot of the uh farming through through the years.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

What are some things that you would say you're very proud of that you guys have have since you've taken on I mean as far on the production side I would definitely say our um adoption and transition into high density apple production is probably one of our biggest achievements. So when people come out here if they're picking apples or maybe they're just like looking around the farm they're going to see a lot of small apple trees and a lot of them are on a trellis and that might look unusual to the average person especially somebody from Indiana and they might think that those trees are just young or you know something's up with them and that's not the case. So that that's that's what we're trying to do. So we're trying to grow small apple trees at a very high density and when I say high density I'm talking about the number of trees planted in an acre. Okay. So a traditional orchard a large freestanding tree um what most people probably envision when they close their eyes and think about an apple orchard is going to be like 200 to 250 trees per acre. The system that we most frequently use now we're planting over 1,200 trees per acre. So the trees are very close together and without getting overly technical the main goal of that is just to increase the per acre production to have higher quality fruit and to get into production faster. The downside is that it is very expensive. So it's it's $25 to $30,000 per acre to plant an orchard like that. So it's very it's very risky. There's a lot of financial risk you know and I always tell people like if you're like an entrepreneur and you you know you want to go start a business um to make money uh probably don't try to grow apples because it's not it's it's not not the best uh rate of return but um I'm very proud of that because I think over the past six or seven years um I'm pretty confident that we've we've planted as many acres of apples as any farm in the state of Indiana. So I'm not positive about that but I I have a pretty good you know we're all friends and I know what other farms are doing. So we've been very aggressive. And it's completely changed our business because we're we're getting to a point now where we have this this surplus of apples and it's allowed us to be more independent in terms of selling the apples and producing cider. We've gotten to work with so many of the local school systems to supply them with apples um and we're gonna have to continue to find new ways to market the fruit as these orchards continue to come into maturity. So that's that's um that would be the one thing that I would pick if I had to pick only one.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

A large improvement I would say on in terms of agritourism side of things which is directly related to crop production is um the introduction of UPIC activities at all. So his parents um operated and the only UPIC that they offered was pumpkins. So he since taking over and then I have joined in with helping but have introduced UPIC apples which was not an activity here prior to 2017. 2017 was the first year UP strawberries we didn't even grow strawberries UPIC flowers weren't here raspberries so a lot of that kind of like um connecting the consumer or the customer to their food and to how it's grown and seeing that and you know picking that berry off of the off of the plant wasn't even something that we offered and I think it's a really big opportunity for education. I think people really appreciate being able to learn how their food grows where it grows go out there to pick it and say oh if I buy these in the market here's where they came from so I think on in terms of agritourism we've continued to grow the fall festivals but those were always there and I think the introduction of UPIC has been a really big both a challenge but also really rewarding and um and really positive change for us.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

So because we did when we started doing strawberries we we weren't sure we're like will people even want to come out here outside of the fall because before we were so I mean you know if you looked at our like our month by month revenue breakdown it was so heavily skewed towards the fall um and it's it's just the response has been awesome. And now it's like I think I get overly excited about trying to do more UPIC and more crops and stuff because I'm like oh man like people want to do this. Look at this thing that we could do you know everybody looks to me like are you serious right now like we're really busy enough and and but it's cool because we just we we feel like we feel like we know how to provide a good experience. I feel like you know myself and the farm crew we know how to grow things even if we you know have to learn a little bit and we can we can make things nice to look at aesthetically pleasing and then have high quality fruit to go along with it. So it makes it really fun because we kind of feel like everything's possible now because we know we have um we have a customer base that once will come out and and and check us out for all kinds of the new stuff that we want to do.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

I think it's great for young children. I mean I think so many young kids today don't realize that strawberries don't come from a grocery store.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Right right they all were grown on a farm somewhere yeah they don't come from the grocery store what do you mean yeah that's where we end up what do you mean the apples come they don't come from the grocery store and even like coming out during flower season I think it's beneficial a lot of times we get customers who will say hey we saw bees all through the sunflowers you know like yeah the flowers get pollinated with bees and so that's an opportunity too for kids to learn what role pollinators play and why we rely on them and so there's always a there's always an opportunity for education when it comes to the public visiting a crop producing area.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

So I think we we bring bees in we bring yeah so we we actually there's a beekeeper that should be out here this afternoon because with the apples blooming we have to bring in about 40 hives but yeah so we work with the local beekeeper um and they spend I mean throughout the whole summer usually there are some hives here on the farm because of all the different crops because we need them for apples strawberries um cantaloupe watermelon pumpkins there's a whole bunch of stuff that we grow through cucumbers all those get quality their flowers have to get quality and should produce a fruit or vegetables I didn't even think about that. Yeah I was like oh yeah I don't remember you guys having no we don't have our own okay but not yet that would be a fun venture someday but that's a whole other tourism gonna keep their distance yeah yeah yeah okay um so you have done things I feel like nationally for Ag Tourism you want to talk a little bit about that yeah well we both attended some some different uh conferences so we're members of the Maze which is a group um based out of Utah so they have they hold annual