MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

My name is Mariel Borgman. I'm an Extension Educator on our community food systems team. We're kind of across southwest Michigan and also statewide. And this session is all about MSU Extension. So we're excited to share with you a little bit about what we do. So hi everyone. My name is Cheyenne Sloan and I'm the blueberry and Small fruit educator for Southwest Michigan. I'm based in Van Buren County. And thanks for coming and listening. Coming to Michigan Ag Ideas to Grow With. So I'm going to be talking a bit about what Michigan State University Extension can do for you. I'll be a bit of a disclaimer. I am not the official spokesperson for Michigan State Extension. I don't know everything about Michigan State Extension. I did a lot of research, trying to figure out, trying to highlight things, But it's just a really big organization and we do a lot of really cool stuff. This is by no means exhaustive, but we will be highlighting some of the cool stuff that extension does with that. First, I want to talk a bit about the land grant. My computer is a land like, what is a land grant? Because the land grant system and land grant universities are why we have extension. A land grant college or university is an institution that has been designated by its state legislature or congress to receive the benefits of the moral acts of 1,862.18 90, or the Equity and Educational Land Grant Status Act of 1994. The original mission of these institutions as set forth in the first moral act, was to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts, as well as classical studies. So members of the working classes could obtain a liberal and practical education. Over the year, land grant status has implied several types of federal support. The first moral act provided grants in the form of federal lands to each state. The states use these proceeds from selling those federal lands to establish a public institution to fulfill the Act provisions. A key component of the land grant system is the Agricultural Experiment Station Program, which was created by the Hatch Act of 18 87. The Hatch Act authorized direct payment of federal grant funds to each state to establish an agricultural experiment station in connection with the land grant institution. There the amount of this appropriation varies from year to year, and there's a bunch of like fancy government math that they do to figure out, But a lot of it takes into account the number of farmers that there are in the state. And a lot of the federal funds had to be matched by the state funds as well. Because of the moral act in them. Establishing the research stations and establishing these universities, They wanted a way to share all this awesome information that we're learning to disseminate the information gleaned from the Experiment Station research. The Smith Act of 1914 created the cooperative extension service, which is associated with each land grant institution. Extension was created Smith Lever Act of 1914. This act authorized ongoing federal support for extension services using a formula similar to Hatch Act to determine the same government money formula. So we get money from the state and we get money from the federal government. The passage of the first moral act reflected a growing demand for agricultural and technical education in the United States. And while a number of institutions had began to expand upon the traditional classical studies, agricultural and technical education wasn't part of most of their curriculum. In addition, higher education was widely inaccessible to anyone, except for the wealthian elite. So the moral act was intended to provide a broad segment of the population with a practical education that had direct relevance to their daily lives. Like agriculture, so land grant university is really awesome trying to make education more available to everyone. And then furthering that mission by establishing the cooperative extension program. Which is then making sure that all this awesome information that we are getting at the land grant universities is getting disseminated out to the people who can use it. So if you've gone to Michigan State University, you might have noticed on the sign that it says the, sorry, Ohio State the Pioneer Land Lion. The Pioneer land grant college. That's because Michigan State was the first land grant college in the United States. Founded in 18 55 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan. Michigan State University was the nation's first agricultural college, and the vanguard for a national movement to make useful advanced education available to the broad public. The moral act of 1862 codified the idea of combining liberal and practical education for the industrial classes. So like for the working class, and over time, provided a means of support for at least one college in every state to teach agriculture, mechanical arts, and military tactics. Funding came from grants of land and stuff like that, and so that's why we have Michigan State University. So here's some of the old, oh, you guys don't, can't see my laser pointer. So here says the Pioneer Lang Grant College. Over here's some of our old logos. We used to be Michigan Agricultural College, if you've ever been on campus, MAC. Michigan Agricultural College, That's why it's called MAC. I like this old logo. And then, who doesn't love Grumpy Sparty? I really like Grumpy Sparty. He's probably my favorite. So anyways, what is extension? I know that I had no idea that extension existed until I was in college where I grew up. We didn't have a really, extension, didn't have a very big presence, like there wasn't 4-H or anything like that. And I didn't grow up on a farm, so I'd never heard about extension until I was in college. So all universities engage in research and teaching. But the nation's more than 100 land grant universities and colleges have the third critical mission, extension through extension. Land grant colleges and universities bring vital practical information to agriculture producers, small business owners, consumers, families, and young people. The cooperative extension system empowers farmers, ranchers, and communities of all sizes to meet the challenges that they face. Adapt to changing technology, improve nutrition and food safety, prepare for and respond to emergencies, and protect our environment. So this is just like a fun little cog diagram that I found on the Internet. The federal government gives money to the state who funds the land grant universities, who then fund people like me and Mariel and all your other extension educators to do all the awesome work that we get to do in the local and regional offices. So really, extension is extending the information that we have at universities, which I just think is so cool whenever I get to talk. I love extension'm huge. Extension fan girl. I genuinely think it's one of the coolest things about the United States. Other countries don't have extension like we do. Like I remember when I was in grad school, I was going to grad school with a bunch of people from other countries who were talking about how jealous they were about the fact that we have extension and that extensions, such a cool career path and stuff like that cause it's just not something that you have in other countries. So yeah, America. So one thing I like to say when I'm talking about extension, because it's also been known as the best kept secret, because we do a really bad job about promoting ourselves truly is if you have a question, there's an extension educator for that. Are you not sure? Do you have questions about goat birth? There's someone to talk about goat birth. Do you have questions about starting your own u-pick operation? We have people that can help for that. Do you have questions about soil testing? We have people for that. Do you have questions about parenting? We have parenting classes. We have food safety classes. Literally, if you have a question, there is someone in extension that should be able to help you answer your question. And I just think that's really, really, really cool. I'm going to and by saying that there's a lot of different stuff that extension does, I mentioned earlier, this is by no ways exhaustive, but it's a good basis so that you can maybe start to think about other things that extension does. Because I know that when I first heard about extension, I'd only heard about agriculture parts of extension. So when I started learning about some of the other cool things that my coworkers do, I was just absolutely in awe at all of the awesome stuff that happens within this organization. Yeah, so anyways, I'm going to talk about it and I'm going to organize it kind of how we have it organized internally. This internal structure doesn't really matter to anyone outside, outside of extension. But this is going to be one of the easiest ways for me to get as much information to you as possible. So we're grouped by institutes. Like I said, doesn't make a lot of sense if you're outside of the organization. But one of the first institutes institute that I'm a member of is the Agriculture and Agribusiness Institute. We have people that work in all of these different things. So we have like bio energy ag, in the environment, animal agriculture, farm management, field crops, fruit and nuts. That's where I work gardening in Michigan. IPM, Integrated Pest Management, Turf. Organic. Like all the agriculture stuff we have here, Michigan is one of the most agriculturally diverse states in the country. So it makes sense that we have pretty robust extension programming. We have experts in all of these crops. Apples, apricots, cherries, blueberries, plums, sugar beets, small grains, barley, greenhouse crops. We have people that exist to come help you if you have questions. Some of the stuff that we do specifically within plant agriculture, we offer soil testing. That's probably one of our most well known programs, I would say. We have consumer, we have consumer soil testing for your backyard, and then we also have the soil testing for larger farms as well. We also offer a lot of RUP, continuing education credits if you're a certified pesticide applicator in the state of Michigan, and you need to get the continuing education credits. A lot of time when we put on different workshops and things like that, we offer RUP credits and then we also help MDARD, put on the testing to get your license. Every year we do have a bunch of workshops. Everyone is doing workshops all of the time. Like next week we're putting on fruit school. The week after that, I'm putting on a pruning workshop for blueberries. And there's workshops for all kinds of things all across the state. If you go on the Michigan State website and extension website and whatever you're interested and give it a look, see in the top in the looking the search bar. You should be able to find some cool stuff. We also helped work on Great Lakes Expo. We helped do the educational part of Great Lakes Expo, which is a really big, we don't do, we don't like plan or put it on or whatever. But all of the educational programming is planned and put together by Michigan State Extension educators. We also do a lot of plant and bug ID. I know that in my office, if I don't know a lot of plants. But thankfully, so far, whatever people have brought in plants that they don't know what they are, I've known what they are. So if you have questions about like what a plant is, you can bring it in. Or a bug, you can bring it into your local extension office. And if there isn't anyone on staff there, our office manager or someone else there, can help you figure out who to contact to get questions answer. And then also just regular questions. I've got all kinds of random questions. Like one time a lady called me and asked if a berry that her child ate was poisonous. Don't call me if you're worried about something being poisonous, I am not poison control. However, I can tell you if it looks like a raspberry, there is nothing poisonous out there. That But yeah, the disclaimer still don't. I'm not I don't hold me liable for that either. But yeah, we get all kinds of weird questions, all kinds of fun. Like I said, if you have a question, there's someone in extension that should be able to answer it. Or at least get you in the right like area. Whoop, sorry. My computer s to what I know most about is what I do because I'm a fruit educator. So what does a fruit educator do? I help teach people about best practices for IPM, soil sampling and different horticultural practices. I work specifically in blueberries. I mostly just work with blueberry growers, So people will have me come out and be like, why are my blueberries dying? Or what's this bug? Or how do I cut my blueberries? Or how do I remove my bushes or the best way to do soil amendments and things like that. I don't just work with large growers, I mostly work with just large growers. I do, but I also have done a lot of stuff with home growers too. I've done a couple pruning demo demos, a lot of questions of like, what's eating my fruit, where people just like send blurry pictures with bugs on them. A pretty significant portion of my time, especially when I first started, is I just bought a blueberry farm. And so people will call and I have a whole list of resources to send them. And sometimes I'll even come out to their farms and help people figure out. It depends on timing and what they're exactly looking for. But like we have people, we can go out to your farm and help you figure out best practices and kind of help develop a plan for going forward what you should do. We do a lot of educational event planning. These are all of my co workers, we're a big extension event for fruit workers in the Great Lakes area. It was really fun, really cool, lots of awesome people. And then, like I said, we plan a lot of educational events. So like next week we have fruit school. I have Blueberry Field Day. Every year we have like Southwest Hort Days. A lot of these are focused more at like commercial growers, but we do have people like backyard growers come to and we'll talk a little bit more about like what backyard growers might, might be more interested in. We also have a really awesome animal agriculture team, and some of the things that they're involved with includes rail or emergency response for accidents involving livestock. This was not something I had ever thought about before, but we move pigs and cows and other livestock from one state to another for processing and for other things. And cars get in accidents. People are, people drive like idiots all the time. And I had never thought about like, oh yeah, I guess what would happen if like a semi trailer full of pigs, like rolled over and the pigs were running around. So that's an example of something of training that they have at during rail. So they work with first responders to kind of show them like this is how you corral a cow or this is how you should do handle this. And it's a really, really cool program that's been really successful and really well received. You can also do work with like manure management. They have a bunch of manure management workshops. They have regular workshops, a couple sessions being put on by people on the Animal Ag team in Michigan. Ag ideas to grow with. You're going to give birth to, you're not going to give birth to a cow or like my cows about to give birth or whatever. There's people that are able to help you with. With your questions. They can answer all kinds of questions. We have beef people, we have dairy people, we have poultry people, we have pork people, we have sheep and goat people, we have horse people, Any kinds of questions. We have educators for that. So another really, really important and cool thing that I also had never thought about until I worked an extension was farm finance. And we have educators. That's their whole job is to help you with farm finances. I hate money. I think. I don't ever want to think about money. So I'm really glad that I have colleagues who, that's their job is they're able to help people with planning. So one example is they can do succession planning. So farms are really big and have lots of like finance stuff with them. So we have educators that are able to work with you on succession planning and any other type of just like financial questions that you have. So there's Tell Farm is one of the programs and there's the demand series, which is really cool. Demand is for new farmers and farm decision making. So people who are new to farms to help them make better decisions. They also put on tons of workshops. And if you ever have any questions about financial things regarding your farm, you were able to reach out to them. I harass the people on the farm finance team all the time because I don't do money. They're really helpful and it's really cool Resource, if you ever have any questions about farm finances and things like that, we also do a lot of work with farm stress, which I think is really important. Farmers farming is one of the most hits. Working in farming has like one of the highest rates of suicide out of any profession, which I don't think a lot of people really realize or appreciate. We offer a lot of farm stress opportunities, including free. Michigan State doesn't do it. I don't know exactly the process, but through Michigan State and through the Farm Stress Program, we're able to offer free and reduce cost counseling to farmers and people who might be experiencing stress that work in agriculture that would otherwise be, that otherwise would do it. I've I've heard really amazing things about this program. Whatever the guy who's in charge of it comes and talks at our events about it. I always wind up crying. I'm a big baby because there's always growers and people who are like, wow, yeah, I didn't want to talk about this or I didn't think that, I thought I was the only one. And so it's a really, really cool program. The farm stress is awesome. If you know anybody who works in agriculture and you think that they might need some help, definitely send them this way. It's a really great resource. We also have Master gardener, which is a pretty well known offering of Michigan State Extension. Master Gardener, you sign up, you can take classes. I believe it's, I think you're able to do it online and in person now. But you go through the classes, you get to learn all the basics of gardening and then you become a master gardener at the end. It's an adult horticulture education and volunteer leader training program committed to improving science based horticulture information in communities throughout the state. Once you're a master gardener, you get the title and then you're supposed to do, I don't remember, you're supposed to do a certain number of hours every year of volunteering in your community to help maintain your master gardener status. So Master Gardener is really cool. They help us put on, they're really, really awesome volunteers. It's an awesome program to get involved with if you've ever been interested. My mom did it a couple of years ago and she had so much fun. She has she got this giant binder afterwards and she likes to go through it, and she really liked it and found a lot of benefits in it. And she stopped asking me as many questions about how to grow her plants, which was kind of cool. Not that I'm always happy, obviously, to answer questions for my mom. I love her so much, but she had the agency to like she has all the information at her fingertips now for some of the questions, which is really cool. So they also help us with questions sometimes. So if you ever do the gardener hot line, sometimes that's answered by master gardeners and it's a really, really cool community and network to be a part of. Here's some other stuff that we've put out. We obviously also put out lots of publications and things for people to read every year. They do the state wheat performance trials that get put out. That's just how good different what does there's the demand series, how to read a farm financial statement. You guys might have heard about spotted lanternfly We have an article handout about lantern fly or like commercially available biological control agents for greenhouse insects and mites. We have a little bit of everything for everyone, whether you want to come in person or you want online. Oh, that's super cool. I'm, I'm glad that they don't have the volunteer thing anymore. It's a really awesome program. And making it more accessible, I think is really good. It's definitely gotten more accessible than before. I remember my mom was like, I have to drive like an hour and a half to get to the class because they didn't offer it online when she took it. The next institute or the next group of people that I'm going to talk about is the Community Food and Environment Institute, or mails. And, and she rocks. So obviously F rocks. So if you have questions about government, you have questions about civic engagement, community food systems, conflict resolution, economic economic development, facilitation, farmers markets, fiscal management, tourism, tribal extension, money management, planning, product center, public policy, livable communities, homeownership government. We have a class for that, we have an educator for that. It's super cool. One example is the farm to institution network. Mariel's part of this. If she wants to talk more about it when I'm done, she's more than welcome to. But the Farm to institution network helps people across the farm to institution supply chain, learn, connect, and collaborate. Since 2014, they provided a space for learning, sharing, and working together to help farm to institution programs grow. In Michigan, they support institutions like schools that are responsible food buyers and community members, and then local and regional food supply chains. They work in space that connects the values of diversity, equity, integrity, local food, environmental sustainability, and business viability. So yeah. Mariel. Do you have any other things to add about the farm to institution network? No. I think you did a great job. But yeah, if you're interested, feel free to e mail me and we can talk more. If you want to be selling to schools or other institutions, I'd love to chat with you. Yeah. The first time I met Mariel was when she was talking about the $0.10 a meal program, which is really cool and she gives a great presentation, so that was awesome. Another thing offered through CP is Citizen Planner. So the Michigan State University Extension Citizen Planner Program offers land use education for locally appointed and elected planning officials and interested residents throughout Michigan. This non credit course leads to certificate of completion awarded by MSU Extension. Advanced training through the Master Citizen Credential is also available. The Citizen Planner program is offered in a classroom or via video conference setting and through a convenient self based opportunity called the Citizen Planner online. So if you are a local, if you're a newly appointed planner or zoning person, a lot of communities will send their people to citizen planner. One of the people in my office helps put it on, and it's a really cool program. I've listened to him give some of the presentations and I learned a lot. I've learned a lot about zoning. I didn't think I'd know anything about zoning or planning. And just like being in the same office and hanging out with him, I've learned a lot about zoning and planning, and it affects a lot more of my life than I realized. And I have been to zoning, zoning commission meetings and stuff because of it. So really cool program. Then we also have the Michigan State Product Center. The Michigan State Product Center helps Michigan entrepreneurs and businesses to develop and launch new product and service ideas into the food, Ag, and bio energy markets. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or operate a well established company, the product center is your key to the front door of Michigan State University's vast and very technical expertise, research and outreach services. So they help you with your business. It's like food or Ag related. They're really cool. They've done some work with Great Lake Potato Chip Company and Brazilian Oven. I know I've seen great lakes potato chips in a lot of places. You get them whenever you eat at Traverse City Pie Company. It's a real, real cool, I keep saying everything's cool. Like I said, extension fan girl. But it's a really cool, especially if you're like new to a business or just starting a business, it's a really awesome resource that the State of Michigan offer, that Michigan State offers. Then we also have the Michigan Naturalist Program. The Michigan Naturalist Training hosts blended online and in person training class learning materials. You have to be it take stuff on the internet. You take some classes online and then you get to do some outdoor experiences as well. You take it. It's like the master gardener focusing more on native plants and wildlife. So that's another program. They do a budding naturalist program here in southwest Michigan too, through the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum. And that is in partnership with Michigan State Extension as well. So the Michigan Naturalist Program is pretty cool. Then they also put together other print material as well. This is grants for farmers that Mariel helped put together. That is one of my favorite pieces of print media that we have where it's just a bunch of different grants. Because finding grants is a pain and farmers are busy, or people who are looking to get into farming are busy. And that's why we have educators to help put together easy resources like this, so you're able to find it, then we promote the vote. So if you're ever looking for unbiased, that's another thing that's really cool about extension. We don't get paid. We're federally funded, so we don't care if you buy or don't buy or vote, or don't vote or whatever. We have just a proposal explanations when you're going to vote and you're not sure about proposals, and you keep hearing like one side versus the other side. Both of them seem a little too much or are obviously putting in their own spin on things. Here's a really great way to understand the language without an unbiased way to understand the language so that you're able to be a more informed voter when you go. Another thing that they do is they'll do tourism assessments. I believe that this is for a fee. I don't think that this is free, but what we do is we'll have educators and other people come work with you to work with your city to evaluate whether or not how good the tourism was. I grew up near Lapierre, and so when I saw this, I was like, oh cool, yeah, I've been to Lapierre and I thought it was interesting that they had a tourism assessment because I've never thought about going to lap ever. But maybe they're trying to change that. Then we also have the Health and Nutrition Institute, the work with health and nutrition. And then they do education with social and emotional and mental health, chronic disease and diabetes management, food safety and food preservation, aging and caregiving, education, nutrition and physical activity and more. They do all really awesome programs. I think the best examples of their programming is the food safety hot line. If you're ever not sure about food, if you're not sure about food or you have questions about canning or whatever, you're able to call the food safety hot line. And they can answer your questions because preserving food by canning or freezing may be a practice that goes back for generations. But anyone preserving food needs to have the most reliable and current information available. Michigan State Extension does a lot of education about canning. I think that there's even a couple of Michigan ag, idea to grow with events about canning. So this is cool. I know that I've called them before when I was feeling weird about a slow cooker. And even have like an entire educational packet about how to be good about slow cookers. But I'm also crazy, So maybe other people aren't as worried about. So cookers. But yeah. All kinds of information if you have questions about canning or just food safety in general. Another thing, I can't remember if I talk about it or not, we also have a really cool program called Healthy Food Healthy Babies, to help teach people how to proper food safety for children. Because children are really vulnerable to food born illnesses. Because they're baby, they're little and they don't have the same immune systems that we do. They also do education about the Cottage Food Law. So the Cottage Food Law is a great opportunity for individuals to generate revenue by making and selling food for which they have a passion. It's also a good opportunity for entrepreneurs to try a new venture and see if operating a food business might be right for them. Mar oversees the law, but Michigan state will offer face to face and online classes to learn more about the law. So if you're like, oh, I want to start selling jam or maybe baking pies or cookies or whatever, and you want to make sure that you're doing everything above the board. You're able to take a bunch of classes about the cottage food law, because laws are weird and hard to understand. So it's nice when you have someone who can explain it to you. They also do stuff with Snap Ed. They partner with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to provide Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program education, or Snap Ed, which is a free nutrition program to reduce hunger and food insecurity and promote healthy eating habits. The Snap Ed nutrition instructors teach youth, teens, and adults, and seniors how to make health a priority through an instructional series. The goal of the Sap Ed program is to increase the likelihood that those eligible for Snap benefits will establish healthy eating habits. And increase their time spent involved in physical activity while staying within their limited food budget. It sounds like a really fun, they sound really fun. One of the ladies I work with, she's one of the people in my office as a snapped educator and she always has like she's like, oh, I have extra smoothie and I have extra this. So we get all kinds of extra fun, tasty snacks from her, which is really nice. And then she goes into schools and teaches kids how to. My joke is that she goes to schools and teaches kids how to use knives, which is not what she does, but they go to schools and they teach people how to eat nutritionally and within a budget and stuff like that, which is really, really important, because not everyone is taught how to eat healthy or cook with a budget. Another cool program that I had never, ever heard of but the Sleep Education for Everyone. It was developed by sleep researchers and a sleep medicine specialist and educators at extension to, it's aimed at older adults in the community. Like older people who are having problem with their sleep, you can request a sleep class or someone can come teach you how to sleep better from extension, which is, I think, really cool, just showing all the variety of stuff that we do. Then we also have the Children and Youth Institute. This is another like, before I knew extension existed, I had heard of four H, and I didn't realize that 4-H was part of extension. 4-H is for kids in youth. I'll be talking a little bit more about that later. But not only do they do 4-H, but they also do education with family. We offer a lot of parenting classes, so building early emotional skills in young children. Building strong adolescence. Creating a safe environment for youth, child and family development workshop in series. I know that you're not given, I know that you, at least I've been told, you're not given a handbook on how to have a child, You give birth to it and they just let you leave, is what my mom told me. This could be nice if you are a new parent or maybe you just are thinking about being a parent, or maybe you just want to take a class about being a better parent. And so, there's a bunch of different classes that Michigan State offers through Michigan State Extension. And then I mentioned 4-H a little bit earlier. 4-H does a lot of stuff. It's not just cows, it's not just like the youth fair. They do other stuff too. 4-H stands for our head, heart, hands and health. And it's growing current and future leaders. Growing kids who are confident and strong, curious enough to question, and capable enough to find the answers. Growing youth who stick to a job until the job gets done, it knows how to work with others as well as lead 4-H grows from the farms to the towns and from the suburbs to the cities. Anywhere curiosity roams and confidence thrives anywhere technology can be advanced in achievement is value anywhere positive change is possible, and giving back moves communities forward. After all, true leaders aren't born, they're grown. Which I think is a really cute little saying. So, 4-H is obviously involved with the youth fair. So if you've been to your county fair, thats, I'm pretty sure every county fair in Michigan is through extension. I see 9% sure that they're all associated with four besides at the fair they'll do pig showing or animal showing and stuff like that. But then I don't know how many of you guys have been to a fair. Before I went to my first fair last year, I was not a fair kid growing up. But they also have like, craft displays. There's a bunch of different clubs that you can be a part of. I know that there's a core club in Kalamazoo for first robotics. Strike Force is actually a 4-H club. If you're a robotics person, you'll know what I'm talking about. But so they have all kinds of club, there's like a Dungeons and Dragons club. There's like, there's crafting clubs. Any kind of activity that you can think of, you're able to do as a Four H club. And it's a really, really cool program. A lot of my friends and coworkers have been in it and really like it. And I get to do in my job, I get to help out at the Van Buren Youth Fair and it's really rewarding and fun to work with kids. So the final thing that I'm going to highlight is ask an expert. So if you don't want to go into your extension office or are you aren't sure exactly who to ask? Like, you don't have a blueberry question, so you're like, I can't contact Cheyenne. I don't know who you'll contact. Then you can go to ask an expert which is at ask2.extension.org And so what you're able to do is you're able to just ask a question. You give us your e mail, you tell us where you are, and then this website will connect you to the proper expert. And you can go here for a gardening question, you can go here for a zoning question. Any question that you have, you can check out, ask extension. And it isn't limited to just Michigan, maybe you're from Ohio or Washington, or Arizona or something. This also connects with those states as well because this is a this is a national website. I guess so. Yeah. So as experts, really awesome. Yeah. That's all I got. Are there any questions we're at earlier than I thought, but yeah. Any questions? Yeah. One of the educators came to one of my office meetings and she's like, oh, I'm a sleep hygiene educator And I was like, I did not know that was an option Or even like the product center is a pretty new learn for me and I still don't fully understand what they do. I can talk a little bit about that because I think it might be of interest to this group. Yeah, yeah, we don't have any questions or well folks are thinking of questions. The people that work at the product center are called innovation counselors and some of them are on our community food systems work team. So I do get to interact with them pretty regularly. We kind of have a liaisoni type relationship because I'm often recommending people to the product. So they essentially are small business counselors and they work with anyone that has a food or Ag related business. Even though it's called the product center, I think a lot of people think about that like as a value added product, like a jam or jelly or salsa or something like that. But they work with all kinds of farms and other kinds of food businesses. Basically what you'll do is on that website for the product center, which is on the MSU extension website, you sign up to become a client and there's a one time fee, it's $100 And then that gets you access to unlimited business counseling services from one of those innovation counselors. And they can help you with things like writing a business plan. They also have a lot of connections on campus to different departments, like if you are trying to figure out packaging for your product, for example. They have connections at the School of Packaging that can help you figure out the best kind of packaging for your product, for shelf life for example. It's really cool. They are awesome. Yeah, I think definitely check them out. I try to encourage everybody to check them out, especially if you have a new business or if you're looking to expand your business or get into a different market area, they're an awesome resource. Danielle, if you have questions about strawberries, I also teach people about strawberries and I'd be happy to help with that as well, especially if it's like field planning or things like that. I'm a soil lady. I always feel free to send me, shoot me an e mail. Do they teach marketing for small farms? Mary? What they don't really do, like classes, sometimes they do. But for the most part it's one on one business counseling. So like if they could help you develop a marketing plan or like a market assessment, if you're looking for more like marketing classes, I think it's more community food systems educators that would teach those type of classes. Because didn't you do there was you had a marketing session at the Southwest parts? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was cool. Oh, a cherry farmer develop a plan to produce liquor legally. Yeah. Bill, I would definitely recommend reaching out to the product center. For that. They work with a lot of wineries, breweries, places like that. Definitely reach out to the product center. They will help you figure out all the regulations and what kind of licensing you need and things like that. Another cool resource, if you're thinking about doing like liquor or other kind of alcohol from fruit, is the Michigan Craft Beverage Council. They also do some cool education that wouldn't start with them, but they could also be another resource for you as well. Um, yeah, I also think extension is like librarians. You go to a librarian and we help put you like if I don't know something, I'm like, oh, you should talk to Mariel. Or if Mariel and we all are able to help you point you in the right direction. Because there's truly, I think, nothing that gets an extension educator more excited than getting an answer. Especially when it's like, oh, I don't know that. Let's figure that out. Yeah, I always tell people, like most of my job as a connector, I'm just connecting people to all the resources. Yeah. Oh, that's like that. Awesome grants for farmers handout that you put together. That's really cool. I've had a couple people e mail me about it, asking. So one ask that could be a primary coordinator or case manager. Um, usually I'll have I I don't know because if I always think of like my office manager, she'll get a call and she knows everyone she knows because she's been working for extension forever. So she always knows who to which way to go. I guess what do you mean by primary coordinator, case manager? Well, we can wrap it up because I don't see any more questions coming in. So thank you all. So really appreciate your time taking advantage of the learning opportunity and hopefully we'll see you again.