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Get Bentz Farm

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コンテンツは Mary E Lewis によって提供されます。エピソード、グラフィック、ポッドキャストの説明を含むすべてのポッドキャスト コンテンツは、Mary E Lewis またはそのポッドキャスト プラットフォーム パートナーによって直接アップロードされ、提供されます。誰かがあなたの著作物をあなたの許可なく使用していると思われる場合は、ここで概説されているプロセスに従うことができますhttps://ja.player.fm/legal

Today I'm talking with Theresa at Get Bentz Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Theresa Bentz at Get Bentz Farm. Good morning, Theresa. Good morning. I have to tell you, I love the name of your farm. One of the most entertaining things about this podcast over the last year.

00:27
is all the names that people come up with for their places. So I'm assuming it's just a riff on your name. Yeah, it's a little bit of a riff on our name and also like we're in the Northfield area and there are so many beautiful little like vegetable farms or berry farms around here. And everybody has sweet names like singing hills and whispering meadows and stuff like that. And

00:54
When we first started, we were one of the only ones who had sheep, really. And so we were like, well, we got these funky Icelandic sheep that have an edge to them. You know, they're not the kind of sheep that'll come up and let you pet them. Um, and so we were like, we don't want a soft name. We need a tough name. And then we're like, well, our last name is Bentz. So why don't people just get Bentz?

01:22
Yes, I had never heard the phrase get bent until I met my current husband. And he said it one time and I was like, where, what is that? He said, you've never heard it before. I said, no, no, never heard it. And I can't explain on the podcast what it actually means. It's very insulting. So, but it's brilliant for your farm. So tell me, tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah. So, um, we, well.

01:51
kind of a little bit about us. We were originally city folk and people who, like we lived, I lived and grew up in the cities and my husband grew up in the suburbs and for a while we lived in Savage together and we just, you know, we just kind of wanted to have more control over our food sources and how we get food and where the food comes from and just knowing that because that's

02:20
Part of the biggest issue as a consumer is figuring out where your food is actually coming from. And so then in 2013, we, what we had decided many years before that, but in 2013, we finally found a farm that fit what we wanted, which took a long time. For any of those people out there looking for farms, it takes a really long time. So just be patient. And then, you know, we found the farm in 2013.

02:49
We moved in in March and we just went full steam ahead and started, you know, raising some animals. We got our first sheep that summer. And then it's just kind of taken off from there. We've over the last, like I would say seven to eight years, we've really figured out our niche in the area, like what we do well, which is really the sheep and the wool.

03:18
Um, so as we, as we learned about sheep and as we got better with raising sheep and producing wool, I got really into the processing of the wool and turning it into, um, yarns and rovings and stuff like that and building a community around local fiber. Um, and then I purchased a wool mill and that's kind of what I do primarily now is, uh, care for the sheep and make yarn. Okay.

03:48
Isn't there a wool mill like a big factory in Northfield? No, that's Fairbow Woolen Mill. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, it's so proud. A lot of people ask me that. And they're down in Fairbow, obviously. And they really just, they make like blankets. They're more of a weaving mill than a big, I mean, they don't take in customer wool. They don't take in wool from the local area.

04:18
I don't think they do any scouring or washing of wool anymore. I think that facility or that part of their facility was damaged during some flooding. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. I had Faribault and Northfield mixed up. And in my defense, I grew up on the East Coast. I moved to Minnesota in, oh my God, let me think. My daughter was born in 89, so 91, 92.

04:47
I haven't really traveled the state a whole lot. Like I've been to Northfield, but I went there for a specific reason and went home. And I've been to Faribault and went there for a specific reason and went home. So all these billions, it seems like of little towns in Minnesota confuse me. And Faribault is really not that far from Northfield and the grand scheme of things, but it is a totally different place. So. All right. So can you, number one.

05:18
You have Icelandic sheep, but I think that you have another breed too, right? Yeah, we were primarily Icelandic and only Icelandic up until about four or five years ago. And then we started to cross in other sheep too. My philosophy on shepherding has changed over the years. And so initially I was very breed specific. And

05:45
you know, really focusing on the breed and all of that. And then I, you know, had a couple of good mentors and looked back at how people have shepherded throughout history. And, you know, we really have developed different sheep breeds that matched our properties and landscapes. And so we started bringing in other sheep breeds to find something that would match what we're doing here on our farm.

06:13
really well and be really successful. So we have a couple of, we brought in some Jacob sheep, which is a desert sheep, and we found that crossing them really helped fix some of the, you know, the cons of the Icelandics, and then the Icelandic fixed some of the cons of the Jacob. So we got this great crossbred sheep. And then we tried some cheviots, because they're supposed to be really good on hillsides, and

06:42
move on from the cheviyets and we're going to try a different British breed this summer or this fall. It's not summer anymore. It's fall. So we're going to bring in a blue-faced luster ram and try crossing those and see what happens. So when you start to think about crossing breeds, do you look to see if other people have done it and kind of...

07:11
decide off of that or are you just completely surprised when you're like, we're going to try this one and see what happens? Yeah, I've actually, I mean, I'm in a great place because my whole world right now is in wool. And since wool is worth really nothing in the market, I get my hands on some really fancy stuff that people would otherwise burn. So that's where I kind of figured out the cheviette piece.

07:40
are really big, long-legged sheep. And part of the reason we're getting rid of them isn't because they're bad sheep, it's just because they outweigh me and I don't really like that. Mm-hmm. But the wool, the cross between the chevier and Iceland, it gives you this really lofty, strong, bouncy, soft wool. So kind of ideal for outerwear, like sweaters and stuff like that. Icelandic can be very,

08:09
abrasive, it has a lot of bite to it, just because it has the dual coats. It doesn't have a lot of crimps, so it can, it can be really heavy and dense. But if you add a little bit of another breed into that genetic, what I find is that the lofty, fine undercoat of the Icelandic really comes out and you lose a lot of the hair, but you get the length that you want.

08:38
So it's kind of, for me, it's been a journey of seeing what other local shepherds have done, because Icelandics are pretty popular in this state. So I get to see what other shepherds have done with, and then how the genetics play out in their fleeces, and then also, you know, how long those crosses last, or, you know, are you getting a higher yield on your carcass when you take those lambs to the butcher?

09:06
you know, are they more parasite resistant? So that's like I'm just lucky because I live in wool. So I get to learn all the stuff before I make the mistakes. That's amazing. So do you like do it all? Are you like, OK, I've got a ram, I've got to you. We're going to mate them. They're going to have a baby. And then from baby upwards to shearing or butcher, do you do all the things? Yeah, yeah, we do all the things. So we.

09:36
We are, Icelandics are seasonal breeders, and that's true for many sheep breeds, except for kind of your more domesticated sheep breeds or breeds that were bred to have multiple lambs each year, like the polypay. So they will start going into their seasonal breeding season, you know, at the end of October. I think with this heat, it might keep it off for a little bit longer.

10:04
But like October, November, they'll start breeding. We'll bring in this new ram. He's a nice looking fella. And then we'll let the sheep do their thing. But also during this time is when we harvest last year's lambs. So the lambs are usually born in March and then they get to graze alongside mom and mom will naturally wean them in July. So I don't have to do any of that stuff. And then, you know, like.

10:30
We just sheared this last weekend. So we run them up to shear and we kind of pick out, you know, which lambs are looking really good for the first butcher dates and which lambs, you know, will hold on to. So yeah, and then what we do after we shear is I take all the wool and I hoard it in my mill and turn it into lovely yarns. And for the ones that go off to butcher,

11:00
We sell a lot direct to customer, but we also keep meat in the freezer so when people come out to visit the farm, if they're looking for some ground lamb or something, we have that available for them. And then we take their sheep skins. So if we didn't shear all the wool off or if they've had plenty of time to grow more wool, we'll take those skins and salt them and then tan them. And then sell those products as well. And if they have nice looking horns, we'll keep their skulls and

11:29
sell those as well. Wow. How do you have, how do you prioritize all of this? Like, is there an order of operations to it? Yeah, yeah, there totally is. You have to find this like, this balance, you know, cause otherwise you could just drive yourself crazy spinning your wheels. So we, we have balance. We, you know, we always share around the same time each year.

11:58
And then when the lambs go off to the butcher, we know like, okay, we're going to pick up our sheep skins and we're going to salt them. And then we're going to check on them. You know, it's kind of like, like you would at work. You have many different projects that you have to do and you just kind of prioritize which ones. In the mill, I have, I have a lot of stuff going on all the time in the mill. And so I have to keep myself on a pretty strict deadline to make sure that I'm fulfilling

12:28
the orders that I need to get done. I do a lot of fiber CSAs, so kind of the same model as what you see at a vegetable farm in the summer and winter where you get like a weekly ration of fruits and vegetables, whatever is in season. I do that monthly with yarn and roving so people can see what's in season here in Minnesota and get a skein of yarn and a story about the yarn and the sheep.

12:57
and where it came from each month. So I just have to make sure I get those things out. And, you know, it's like any job. You just kind of, you balance it and you shut yourself off at a certain time so that you can have some family and lifetime. Yeah, you mentioned the word roving. What is roving? Yeah, so roving is like, it's like cleaned, carded, or cleaned and brushed, I would say brushed wool.

13:27
Sometimes I add in like alpaca. So it's just clean brushed wool alpaca fiber, whatever I put in that comes out of the machine through a certain deck that makes it into a long tube of you know brushed fiber I guess. So someone else can spin it? Yep. Okay. Yeah. And I also make bats

13:57
Some spinners like to spin on bats. So it just depends on what you want, you know? So bats like a bat of insulation, that kind of usage of the word bat? Yeah, it's very similar to a bat of insulation. Okay, I just, I wanna make sure that I understand because if you're mentioning things that I don't understand, my listeners aren't gonna understand it either because we've never heard it before. So that's why I asked about roving and bats. And I, it's...

14:26
When I talk to people like you who are so immersed in the thing they're doing, you talk and I have so many questions pop into my head and I'm like, how do I make this cohesive when I ask the next question? So the next question is I've talked to a few people about sheep and about wool and about meat and I keep hearing there's no real good market for wool. But apparently...

14:53
there's actually a market that's a micro market in the area that you're in that will want to use the wool. Yeah. Yeah, so back, I would say before 2018, before the pandemic, and before the 80s, so there are two big shifts in the wool industry. So before the 80s, we used to have

15:22
taxation on imported woolen grids from other countries. And that taxation would turn into a commodity payment to shepherds in the states. And so the shepherds would shear their sheep and send their wool off to the wool broker, or we called it the wool pool back then. And then the pool would class it, grade it. Classing is like giving it a classification of how fine it is, like what the quality of it is.

15:51
and then grade it and then sell it on the larger market to be turned into garments or rugs. Rugs used to be, wool rugs used to be the thing back in the day. And then in the 80s, there was that huge farm bill or that huge farm, not a bill, but a, what is that? When the farm, yeah, like everything fell apart for farmers in the 80s. Yes.

16:21
Yes. And so when that fell apart, the wool industry also fell apart because we lost our tariffs. So we, you know, the president at the time had changed a bunch of things and how we do business with other countries and took away those tariffs. And when those tariffs were gone, there wasn't a lot of incentive to grow wool because wool prices started to like drastically drop. Tank. You know. They started a tank. Yep.

16:51
Yeah, super tank. And then with that, lamb prices started to tank because we had a big push for beef, you know, beef grazing. And we changed a lot of the ways that we raised animals. We went from, you know, grazing in paddocks and woodlands to feedlot grazing or feedlot management, you know. So we changed a lot of stuff. And then with this last change.

17:21
before the pandemic and during the pandemic and the different political powers at that time. They really changed how we do business with China. And China used to be one of the biggest buyers of American wool. But when we started to add additional taxation and change those those trading

17:48
rules with China, we lost our industry. In Australia, New Zealand, we're happy to come and snap that industry up. So we went from, you know, back in 2019, from having wool being priced at maybe $1.50 to $2 a pound to right now for fine grade wool. This is like next to skin, good textile wool. My

18:14
My sheer friend who also works with the wool pool and the brokers, he said it's worth four cents a pound.

18:22
Yeah. Yeah. So it's at this point wool is worth, wool is so devalued in the States that it's not worth the $15 burlap sack that the wool goes into. And the burlap sack usually holds about 200 to 250 pounds of wool. Wow. Okay. So you just made it very clear to me what I've been hearing because I've heard that that wool is hard to move. It's not worth anything, but it is literally not worth.

18:51
anything. Yeah, it's not worth the sack. Yeah. Okay. So living in a Northern Tier State and I grew up in a Northern Tier State, I have had wool coats, full jackets, full sweaters and people, wool is worth something if you live in a Northern Tier State because it is so warm. I have, I have the most beautiful hip length jacket that I wear in like November and December here.

19:21
and it's made from wool and cashmere and cotton. And I watched this thing at Kohl's for months over the winter when I got it and it started out at like $150. I did not have $150 at that point in time. I had like 40 tops for a new jacket and I really wanted this one because it was really beautiful. It was black, it was fitted and it was wool, cashmere and cotton.

19:50
And I just basically said, universe, if I'm meant to have it, I will have it, but I have to wait. I ended up paying like $35 for this coat. I wear this thing all the time in November and December because it's just light enough to wear in the car, but it's really warm because it blocks the wind. Wool is fantastic as a sweater or a jacket. I can't handle wool blankets because they get too hot.

20:17
And wool is great for mittens. I love wool mittens. Yeah, yeah, wool is fantastic. I think it's such a disservice to the industry that, you know, like, so when, in the 80s too, we had the uptick of polar fleece and the petroleum-based clothing industry really took off with its synthetics, like polyester and micro,

20:47
fibers and stuff like that. And a lot of their marketing, you know, and if you were a kid of the 80s, like I am, a lot of the marketing around wool was that wool was scratchy. Wool was hard to take care of. Wool was really hard to clean. And so we were kind of spoon-fed this information about wool in order for us to want to go buy, you know, those polar fleece

21:17
wool and they, you know, take, you can wash them in the washing machine, you can do this and that, but at the huge price of the microplastics that are now inside of our tissues, you know, because we've washed these things and they've ended up in our water systems. And a lot of that information about wool being scratchy and wool being difficult to care for are absolute lies. Like anybody who knows and loves wool.

21:44
We'll tell you outright, it's incredibly easy to care for. You know, like a wool sweater. So some of the cool pro, I'll get nerdy on wool real quick. Please do, yes. Okay. If I get too nerdy, just be like, Trace, that's enough. Geek out all you want. So the cool thing about wool is that it is, so I'm gonna say some pretty amazing things that might make people's heads just explode. Wool is antimicrobial by nature. And that's not just like,

22:14
The merino breed, it is every breed of wool. In like all wool types, all wool breeds, whatever it is, wool is anti-microbial. So that means when you sweat in wool, so if you're out there working in the garden in the fall, in the spring, when you're wearing a wool sweater and you start to sweat, and you take that wool sweater off, those, the bacteria from your sweat and your skin

22:44
isn't able to live on the wool. So it's not going to retain the smell. It might retain like perfumes, but it's not going to retain the smell of your sweat. So you can just leave it out and it'll air out and be fresh like it was just washed. So you really don't have to wash wool very often. I usually will only wash my wool sweaters once a year, kind of at the end of the season just to get it ready for storage.

23:13
But other than that, I don't wash it. I wear wool socks and I rotate. I've got three pairs of wool socks and I rotate them. I wear them about a week and a half each and then wash it and then wear the next pair for a week and a half. And I've had the same wool socks for probably three years now. Wool is also a fire retardant naturally. So...

23:38
Think about that, those wool carpets. Everybody thinks, oh, wool carpets are gonna be really tough to take care of and they're super expensive. They're actually pretty reasonably priced these days and they're fire retardant. So if your house catches on fire, we have so many manmade items in our house that are super flammable. Anything polyester, that's plastic, that's oil, that's gonna go up in a heartbeat.

24:05
But if you have wool, like wool carpets, that's gonna help stop the fire. It's gonna put it out. Wool garments, same. If you're out at a fire, you know, enjoying a campfire in the fall and you just happen to get a spark on your sweater, that spark is gonna, you know, go out. It's not gonna be able to ignite the sweater. The sweater isn't gonna melt to your skin like a polar fleece would melt to your skin.

24:33
Same with pajamas, like if you had wool pajamas on the kiddos, you don't have to worry about those pajamas melting to their skin if you have a house fire. And if you're able to afford it, because wool's expensive in the end product, but we're gonna try to make that cheaper, I think, in our country in the next couple decades. But if you're able to purchase wool insulation, what a great...

25:00
you know, upward expense, but in the end it pays off because if your house catches on fire, that insulation is going to help keep it from continuing from that fire being a complete loss of the house. So it's like a firewall, literally. Yeah, yeah, it really is. It really is. I know. And then a really cool property of wool is that it is hydrophilic. So it pulls the moisture from

25:29
fiber. And when you have moisture, I don't know if you've ever done this in the winter, but if you have warm moisture at the core of a garment or at the core of something, like think about wetsuits. When you put on a wetsuit, you put water into it and you let your body temperature warm up that water. And that water next to the skin creates a barrier from the colder water on the outside. So our bodies like to have that barrier of

25:58
like a wet warm. Wool is the same. It likes to hold on to that moisture. So if you're wearing a wool sweater and it's nice and warm in the house and then you go outside it's kind of like a typical spring or fall day here in Minnesota where it's wet, it's very moist outside, you're not going to get as cold because even though the wool will kind of pull in some of that moisture.

26:25
it's going to hold it right next to your skin and your body temperature, and it's going to keep your body temperature at the right degree. Cause like wool is really good at just regulating your body temperature by holding that in. So it also is really great for landscaping and for gardens because it likes to hold on to moisture. So if you have a garden that needs a little amendment in your soil, or if you have house plans that you don't want to water,

26:55
Too often you can put a little bit of like waste wool or like wolf. If you know anybody who has sheep, you can ask them for a little bit of their garbage fleece and they'll just give it to you and you could put it right on the top of those potted plants. And that'll help hold that moisture. It does regulate your body temperature. So sometimes those wool blankets can be too, too hot. And that usually is because of how they're manufactured. They're very dense.

27:25
If you had like a wool comforter where it's more batting, there's more air in between those fibers, that air will stay warm, but you won't be hot. It like just kind of regulates you perfectly. There are a lot of really great studies in Europe that touch on how wool reduces our respiratory rates while we're sleeping and while we wear it. So it kind of keeps us calmer.

27:56
like it, you know, like calms your body down as you're wearing it versus other things which, you know, can, like some clothing has dyes in it that can be hormone disruptors and sometimes polyester and stuff like that can cause the respiratory, our respiratory rate to go up or our immune system to be heightened. Since wool is a natural fiber, it really calms those systems back down.

28:25
And yeah, like wool comforters are great. Like wool blankets are great all year around. If you find one that doesn't make you hot, because in our humid Minnesota summers, the wool, since it likes to pull moisture to its core, will wick away that humidity away from your body and let you sleep better.

28:46
I feel like wool is magical, who knew? I know, right? Right? It's such a cool fiber and it lasts forever. So you know, you look at these Norwegian sweaters that people knitted, you know, decades ago and they're still crisp and good and could get another couple decades out of them, if not more. And all you have to do is, is wash it once a year and wear it. That's it.

29:15
Yeah, I have a wool trench coat that is, it comes to my mid calf on me. I'm five foot nine. That is probably 70 years old. I got it at a yard sale or a garage sale like 15 years ago and it still looks brand new. It's like my favorite dress up coat. If I'm going to, oh my God, wear a skirt, which I never do. But, but if it's cold, cold, like it was minus 20 in Minnesota and I have to go somewhere. I want that in the car because I'm going to be.

29:45
warm no matter where I go. Like shoe insoles. Those wool shoe insoles are fantastic for that kind of stuff. But that trench coat looks, I mean it's in my closet right now. I just looked at it yesterday because I was like hmm, might be time to start thinking about what I've got for winter outerwear because you know it's going to be October. And saw that trench coat hanging there. I was like oh my god I forgot I have this. How did I forget I have it?

30:14
pulled it out just to look at it again. I was like, my God, it's such a beautifully made garment and it looks brand new. And I know it's over 70 years old. Yeah. Yeah. I wish, I wish in the next, like one of my most sincere wishes is that in the next decade, consumers start to see how, how

30:41
bad the fashion industry, how bad our textile industry is on our environment, how much they've contributed to a lot of the issues that we have with our environment currently, pollutants in our water system, you know, the amount of textile waste that we dump into other countries is mind-blowing. I wish people would see that, would open their eyes to that.

31:11
And next time they wanted to purchase, you know, a new garment or something, they took a moment to look at the label and they, and before they purchased the item, they asked themselves, will this go back into the soil and feed it? Or will this become, you know, a forever thing that won't go away. So if it's polyester, it's there forever. It just breaks down into smaller particles.

31:39
If it's wool, cotton, silk, cashmere, any of the wood fibers like bamboo and tinsel and stuff like that. If it's that stuff, it will break down and feed the soil. So that's my biggest wish. My biggest wish is that people looked at garments and thought, you know, can I wear this garment for many seasons? Is it classic? You know, is it a classic garment?

32:09
Will it last me through my 30s and into my 40s and 50s? And it'll still drape well on my body and look good versus just a, yeah, I'm at Target and I'm consuming and I'm just gonna grab that polyester t-shirt or that new summer polyester dress that I might wear three times and then I'll donate it thinking that that's part of the...

32:35
solution, you know, I donated it so it didn't go into the landfill, but not really following that a lot of our donated textiles end up in landfills in other countries. Yeah, yep, I am right there with you. Most of my clothing is either, I mean, my shoes are almost always leather because I happen to love calvaboot, so that's what I wear, and cotton jeans and cotton

33:04
I hate blended material for t-shirts. It just grosses me out and I don't like how it feels. So it's not a cotton t-shirt. I'm probably not wearing it. Wool is great. I hate fleece. I hate micro fleece and polar fleece. It feels weird on my skin and I don't, I'm not autistic. I don't have any of the things that make me, you know, my socks rub wrong, that kind of thing. But fleece just makes me.

33:34
feel gross. It's too hot. It feels weird on my skin. I don't love fleas. I love wool fleas but I don't love polar fleas. Yeah, it's plastic. Why would you want to put plastic on your biggest organ? Yeah and you're right. Cotton and wool and leather and all the things you mentioned. Number one, they are better for the environment but number two, they feel better.

34:03
when you wear them. And I was going somewhere with this. And three, it's how it should be. Let's just go with that. That's how it should be. That's how it should be. It really should be. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the big things we do, because we kind of touched on this earlier, like micro niche markets for the wool industry. And that's really what we're a big part of is this niche market. It's hard.

34:32
It's hard because it's very dependent on the shepherd and the farmer to be all the things. We're already all the things on our farm and now it's requested that we are all the things marketing wise. So you have to have your own website and be your own social media specialist and marketer and like inventory. Public relations and yes.

35:01
Yeah, you have to do all of those things just to sell your yarn, just to be competitive in this very big industry that's very ignored. Like the yarn industry, since it's kind of seen as craft and women's work kind of stuff, it's very ignored by the larger industries. And it's, I could tell you, being in the middle of the...

35:29
yarn and fiber industry, it is a, it's got to be a multi-billion dollar industry. I mean, people just, it's a, it's a thing. It's a huge thing. But it's ignored because it's women's work. So, so as a small shepherd, you have to, you have to make yourself known. You have to fight in this larger industry just to get people to pay attention to you. You have to tell people why it's important to buy local.

35:59
You know, the food industry did a great job with promoting locals and the fiber industry is just slowly making up, um, or catching up to that local food movement with the local fiber movement. Um, so it's, it's really not, it's not easy to exist in these small markets and niche markets, but we're there and I think, I think we're making, we're carving out a little bit. Um,

36:27
Hopefully more in the next decade or so. Well, I think you're definitely making a mark in your area and you're so passionate about it. Like I'm so thrilled I got to talk with you today because I feel like I just listened to a TED Talk by Theresa about Get Bentz Farm. And honestly, it's funny, a lot of the people that I talk to on the episodes on the podcast, I get done with them and I'm like, wow, I just got to be

36:56
a one person audience right in the moment for a TED Talk that TED Talk doesn't even know they did. Right, yeah. And we have to be experts in it. It's super cool. Yeah, I think it's great. I think you should contact TED Talks and be like, hi, I'm Theresa and I do this. And I would really love to talk about it at a TED Talk in wherever you're doing the next one.

37:18
You'd be great. So anyway, I'm mostly being silly because I'm trying to wrap this up. We're at 37 minutes and I try to keep it to half an hour and I could have talked to you for three hours, but my platform, wow, platform won't allow for three hours. So I appreciate your time so much, Theresa. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. Absolutely, I'd like to have you back next spring so I can talk to you about the baby. Oh yeah, totally. All right, let's do that then.

37:48
Alright, you have a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy this cold, crisp, sunny Minnesota day. Yes, you too. Alright, bye.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Theresa Bentz at Get Bentz Farm. Good morning, Theresa. Good morning. I have to tell you, I love the name of your farm. One of the most entertaining things about this podcast over the last year.

00:27
is all the names that people come up with for their places. So I'm assuming it's just a riff on your name. Yeah, it's a little bit of a riff on our name and also like we're in the Northfield area and there are so many beautiful little like vegetable farms or berry farms around here. And everybody has sweet names like singing hills and whispering meadows and stuff like that. And

00:54
When we first started, we were one of the only ones who had sheep, really. And so we were like, well, we got these funky Icelandic sheep that have an edge to them. You know, they're not the kind of sheep that'll come up and let you pet them. Um, and so we were like, we don't want a soft name. We need a tough name. And then we're like, well, our last name is Bentz. So why don't people just get Bentz?

01:22
Yes, I had never heard the phrase get bent until I met my current husband. And he said it one time and I was like, where, what is that? He said, you've never heard it before. I said, no, no, never heard it. And I can't explain on the podcast what it actually means. It's very insulting. So, but it's brilliant for your farm. So tell me, tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah. So, um, we, well.

01:51
kind of a little bit about us. We were originally city folk and people who, like we lived, I lived and grew up in the cities and my husband grew up in the suburbs and for a while we lived in Savage together and we just, you know, we just kind of wanted to have more control over our food sources and how we get food and where the food comes from and just knowing that because that's

02:20
Part of the biggest issue as a consumer is figuring out where your food is actually coming from. And so then in 2013, we, what we had decided many years before that, but in 2013, we finally found a farm that fit what we wanted, which took a long time. For any of those people out there looking for farms, it takes a really long time. So just be patient. And then, you know, we found the farm in 2013.

02:49
We moved in in March and we just went full steam ahead and started, you know, raising some animals. We got our first sheep that summer. And then it's just kind of taken off from there. We've over the last, like I would say seven to eight years, we've really figured out our niche in the area, like what we do well, which is really the sheep and the wool.

03:18
Um, so as we, as we learned about sheep and as we got better with raising sheep and producing wool, I got really into the processing of the wool and turning it into, um, yarns and rovings and stuff like that and building a community around local fiber. Um, and then I purchased a wool mill and that's kind of what I do primarily now is, uh, care for the sheep and make yarn. Okay.

03:48
Isn't there a wool mill like a big factory in Northfield? No, that's Fairbow Woolen Mill. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, it's so proud. A lot of people ask me that. And they're down in Fairbow, obviously. And they really just, they make like blankets. They're more of a weaving mill than a big, I mean, they don't take in customer wool. They don't take in wool from the local area.

04:18
I don't think they do any scouring or washing of wool anymore. I think that facility or that part of their facility was damaged during some flooding. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. I had Faribault and Northfield mixed up. And in my defense, I grew up on the East Coast. I moved to Minnesota in, oh my God, let me think. My daughter was born in 89, so 91, 92.

04:47
I haven't really traveled the state a whole lot. Like I've been to Northfield, but I went there for a specific reason and went home. And I've been to Faribault and went there for a specific reason and went home. So all these billions, it seems like of little towns in Minnesota confuse me. And Faribault is really not that far from Northfield and the grand scheme of things, but it is a totally different place. So. All right. So can you, number one.

05:18
You have Icelandic sheep, but I think that you have another breed too, right? Yeah, we were primarily Icelandic and only Icelandic up until about four or five years ago. And then we started to cross in other sheep too. My philosophy on shepherding has changed over the years. And so initially I was very breed specific. And

05:45
you know, really focusing on the breed and all of that. And then I, you know, had a couple of good mentors and looked back at how people have shepherded throughout history. And, you know, we really have developed different sheep breeds that matched our properties and landscapes. And so we started bringing in other sheep breeds to find something that would match what we're doing here on our farm.

06:13
really well and be really successful. So we have a couple of, we brought in some Jacob sheep, which is a desert sheep, and we found that crossing them really helped fix some of the, you know, the cons of the Icelandics, and then the Icelandic fixed some of the cons of the Jacob. So we got this great crossbred sheep. And then we tried some cheviots, because they're supposed to be really good on hillsides, and

06:42
move on from the cheviyets and we're going to try a different British breed this summer or this fall. It's not summer anymore. It's fall. So we're going to bring in a blue-faced luster ram and try crossing those and see what happens. So when you start to think about crossing breeds, do you look to see if other people have done it and kind of...

07:11
decide off of that or are you just completely surprised when you're like, we're going to try this one and see what happens? Yeah, I've actually, I mean, I'm in a great place because my whole world right now is in wool. And since wool is worth really nothing in the market, I get my hands on some really fancy stuff that people would otherwise burn. So that's where I kind of figured out the cheviette piece.

07:40
are really big, long-legged sheep. And part of the reason we're getting rid of them isn't because they're bad sheep, it's just because they outweigh me and I don't really like that. Mm-hmm. But the wool, the cross between the chevier and Iceland, it gives you this really lofty, strong, bouncy, soft wool. So kind of ideal for outerwear, like sweaters and stuff like that. Icelandic can be very,

08:09
abrasive, it has a lot of bite to it, just because it has the dual coats. It doesn't have a lot of crimps, so it can, it can be really heavy and dense. But if you add a little bit of another breed into that genetic, what I find is that the lofty, fine undercoat of the Icelandic really comes out and you lose a lot of the hair, but you get the length that you want.

08:38
So it's kind of, for me, it's been a journey of seeing what other local shepherds have done, because Icelandics are pretty popular in this state. So I get to see what other shepherds have done with, and then how the genetics play out in their fleeces, and then also, you know, how long those crosses last, or, you know, are you getting a higher yield on your carcass when you take those lambs to the butcher?

09:06
you know, are they more parasite resistant? So that's like I'm just lucky because I live in wool. So I get to learn all the stuff before I make the mistakes. That's amazing. So do you like do it all? Are you like, OK, I've got a ram, I've got to you. We're going to mate them. They're going to have a baby. And then from baby upwards to shearing or butcher, do you do all the things? Yeah, yeah, we do all the things. So we.

09:36
We are, Icelandics are seasonal breeders, and that's true for many sheep breeds, except for kind of your more domesticated sheep breeds or breeds that were bred to have multiple lambs each year, like the polypay. So they will start going into their seasonal breeding season, you know, at the end of October. I think with this heat, it might keep it off for a little bit longer.

10:04
But like October, November, they'll start breeding. We'll bring in this new ram. He's a nice looking fella. And then we'll let the sheep do their thing. But also during this time is when we harvest last year's lambs. So the lambs are usually born in March and then they get to graze alongside mom and mom will naturally wean them in July. So I don't have to do any of that stuff. And then, you know, like.

10:30
We just sheared this last weekend. So we run them up to shear and we kind of pick out, you know, which lambs are looking really good for the first butcher dates and which lambs, you know, will hold on to. So yeah, and then what we do after we shear is I take all the wool and I hoard it in my mill and turn it into lovely yarns. And for the ones that go off to butcher,

11:00
We sell a lot direct to customer, but we also keep meat in the freezer so when people come out to visit the farm, if they're looking for some ground lamb or something, we have that available for them. And then we take their sheep skins. So if we didn't shear all the wool off or if they've had plenty of time to grow more wool, we'll take those skins and salt them and then tan them. And then sell those products as well. And if they have nice looking horns, we'll keep their skulls and

11:29
sell those as well. Wow. How do you have, how do you prioritize all of this? Like, is there an order of operations to it? Yeah, yeah, there totally is. You have to find this like, this balance, you know, cause otherwise you could just drive yourself crazy spinning your wheels. So we, we have balance. We, you know, we always share around the same time each year.

11:58
And then when the lambs go off to the butcher, we know like, okay, we're going to pick up our sheep skins and we're going to salt them. And then we're going to check on them. You know, it's kind of like, like you would at work. You have many different projects that you have to do and you just kind of prioritize which ones. In the mill, I have, I have a lot of stuff going on all the time in the mill. And so I have to keep myself on a pretty strict deadline to make sure that I'm fulfilling

12:28
the orders that I need to get done. I do a lot of fiber CSAs, so kind of the same model as what you see at a vegetable farm in the summer and winter where you get like a weekly ration of fruits and vegetables, whatever is in season. I do that monthly with yarn and roving so people can see what's in season here in Minnesota and get a skein of yarn and a story about the yarn and the sheep.

12:57
and where it came from each month. So I just have to make sure I get those things out. And, you know, it's like any job. You just kind of, you balance it and you shut yourself off at a certain time so that you can have some family and lifetime. Yeah, you mentioned the word roving. What is roving? Yeah, so roving is like, it's like cleaned, carded, or cleaned and brushed, I would say brushed wool.

13:27
Sometimes I add in like alpaca. So it's just clean brushed wool alpaca fiber, whatever I put in that comes out of the machine through a certain deck that makes it into a long tube of you know brushed fiber I guess. So someone else can spin it? Yep. Okay. Yeah. And I also make bats

13:57
Some spinners like to spin on bats. So it just depends on what you want, you know? So bats like a bat of insulation, that kind of usage of the word bat? Yeah, it's very similar to a bat of insulation. Okay, I just, I wanna make sure that I understand because if you're mentioning things that I don't understand, my listeners aren't gonna understand it either because we've never heard it before. So that's why I asked about roving and bats. And I, it's...

14:26
When I talk to people like you who are so immersed in the thing they're doing, you talk and I have so many questions pop into my head and I'm like, how do I make this cohesive when I ask the next question? So the next question is I've talked to a few people about sheep and about wool and about meat and I keep hearing there's no real good market for wool. But apparently...

14:53
there's actually a market that's a micro market in the area that you're in that will want to use the wool. Yeah. Yeah, so back, I would say before 2018, before the pandemic, and before the 80s, so there are two big shifts in the wool industry. So before the 80s, we used to have

15:22
taxation on imported woolen grids from other countries. And that taxation would turn into a commodity payment to shepherds in the states. And so the shepherds would shear their sheep and send their wool off to the wool broker, or we called it the wool pool back then. And then the pool would class it, grade it. Classing is like giving it a classification of how fine it is, like what the quality of it is.

15:51
and then grade it and then sell it on the larger market to be turned into garments or rugs. Rugs used to be, wool rugs used to be the thing back in the day. And then in the 80s, there was that huge farm bill or that huge farm, not a bill, but a, what is that? When the farm, yeah, like everything fell apart for farmers in the 80s. Yes.

16:21
Yes. And so when that fell apart, the wool industry also fell apart because we lost our tariffs. So we, you know, the president at the time had changed a bunch of things and how we do business with other countries and took away those tariffs. And when those tariffs were gone, there wasn't a lot of incentive to grow wool because wool prices started to like drastically drop. Tank. You know. They started a tank. Yep.

16:51
Yeah, super tank. And then with that, lamb prices started to tank because we had a big push for beef, you know, beef grazing. And we changed a lot of the ways that we raised animals. We went from, you know, grazing in paddocks and woodlands to feedlot grazing or feedlot management, you know. So we changed a lot of stuff. And then with this last change.

17:21
before the pandemic and during the pandemic and the different political powers at that time. They really changed how we do business with China. And China used to be one of the biggest buyers of American wool. But when we started to add additional taxation and change those those trading

17:48
rules with China, we lost our industry. In Australia, New Zealand, we're happy to come and snap that industry up. So we went from, you know, back in 2019, from having wool being priced at maybe $1.50 to $2 a pound to right now for fine grade wool. This is like next to skin, good textile wool. My

18:14
My sheer friend who also works with the wool pool and the brokers, he said it's worth four cents a pound.

18:22
Yeah. Yeah. So it's at this point wool is worth, wool is so devalued in the States that it's not worth the $15 burlap sack that the wool goes into. And the burlap sack usually holds about 200 to 250 pounds of wool. Wow. Okay. So you just made it very clear to me what I've been hearing because I've heard that that wool is hard to move. It's not worth anything, but it is literally not worth.

18:51
anything. Yeah, it's not worth the sack. Yeah. Okay. So living in a Northern Tier State and I grew up in a Northern Tier State, I have had wool coats, full jackets, full sweaters and people, wool is worth something if you live in a Northern Tier State because it is so warm. I have, I have the most beautiful hip length jacket that I wear in like November and December here.

19:21
and it's made from wool and cashmere and cotton. And I watched this thing at Kohl's for months over the winter when I got it and it started out at like $150. I did not have $150 at that point in time. I had like 40 tops for a new jacket and I really wanted this one because it was really beautiful. It was black, it was fitted and it was wool, cashmere and cotton.

19:50
And I just basically said, universe, if I'm meant to have it, I will have it, but I have to wait. I ended up paying like $35 for this coat. I wear this thing all the time in November and December because it's just light enough to wear in the car, but it's really warm because it blocks the wind. Wool is fantastic as a sweater or a jacket. I can't handle wool blankets because they get too hot.

20:17
And wool is great for mittens. I love wool mittens. Yeah, yeah, wool is fantastic. I think it's such a disservice to the industry that, you know, like, so when, in the 80s too, we had the uptick of polar fleece and the petroleum-based clothing industry really took off with its synthetics, like polyester and micro,

20:47
fibers and stuff like that. And a lot of their marketing, you know, and if you were a kid of the 80s, like I am, a lot of the marketing around wool was that wool was scratchy. Wool was hard to take care of. Wool was really hard to clean. And so we were kind of spoon-fed this information about wool in order for us to want to go buy, you know, those polar fleece

21:17
wool and they, you know, take, you can wash them in the washing machine, you can do this and that, but at the huge price of the microplastics that are now inside of our tissues, you know, because we've washed these things and they've ended up in our water systems. And a lot of that information about wool being scratchy and wool being difficult to care for are absolute lies. Like anybody who knows and loves wool.

21:44
We'll tell you outright, it's incredibly easy to care for. You know, like a wool sweater. So some of the cool pro, I'll get nerdy on wool real quick. Please do, yes. Okay. If I get too nerdy, just be like, Trace, that's enough. Geek out all you want. So the cool thing about wool is that it is, so I'm gonna say some pretty amazing things that might make people's heads just explode. Wool is antimicrobial by nature. And that's not just like,

22:14
The merino breed, it is every breed of wool. In like all wool types, all wool breeds, whatever it is, wool is anti-microbial. So that means when you sweat in wool, so if you're out there working in the garden in the fall, in the spring, when you're wearing a wool sweater and you start to sweat, and you take that wool sweater off, those, the bacteria from your sweat and your skin

22:44
isn't able to live on the wool. So it's not going to retain the smell. It might retain like perfumes, but it's not going to retain the smell of your sweat. So you can just leave it out and it'll air out and be fresh like it was just washed. So you really don't have to wash wool very often. I usually will only wash my wool sweaters once a year, kind of at the end of the season just to get it ready for storage.

23:13
But other than that, I don't wash it. I wear wool socks and I rotate. I've got three pairs of wool socks and I rotate them. I wear them about a week and a half each and then wash it and then wear the next pair for a week and a half. And I've had the same wool socks for probably three years now. Wool is also a fire retardant naturally. So...

23:38
Think about that, those wool carpets. Everybody thinks, oh, wool carpets are gonna be really tough to take care of and they're super expensive. They're actually pretty reasonably priced these days and they're fire retardant. So if your house catches on fire, we have so many manmade items in our house that are super flammable. Anything polyester, that's plastic, that's oil, that's gonna go up in a heartbeat.

24:05
But if you have wool, like wool carpets, that's gonna help stop the fire. It's gonna put it out. Wool garments, same. If you're out at a fire, you know, enjoying a campfire in the fall and you just happen to get a spark on your sweater, that spark is gonna, you know, go out. It's not gonna be able to ignite the sweater. The sweater isn't gonna melt to your skin like a polar fleece would melt to your skin.

24:33
Same with pajamas, like if you had wool pajamas on the kiddos, you don't have to worry about those pajamas melting to their skin if you have a house fire. And if you're able to afford it, because wool's expensive in the end product, but we're gonna try to make that cheaper, I think, in our country in the next couple decades. But if you're able to purchase wool insulation, what a great...

25:00
you know, upward expense, but in the end it pays off because if your house catches on fire, that insulation is going to help keep it from continuing from that fire being a complete loss of the house. So it's like a firewall, literally. Yeah, yeah, it really is. It really is. I know. And then a really cool property of wool is that it is hydrophilic. So it pulls the moisture from

25:29
fiber. And when you have moisture, I don't know if you've ever done this in the winter, but if you have warm moisture at the core of a garment or at the core of something, like think about wetsuits. When you put on a wetsuit, you put water into it and you let your body temperature warm up that water. And that water next to the skin creates a barrier from the colder water on the outside. So our bodies like to have that barrier of

25:58
like a wet warm. Wool is the same. It likes to hold on to that moisture. So if you're wearing a wool sweater and it's nice and warm in the house and then you go outside it's kind of like a typical spring or fall day here in Minnesota where it's wet, it's very moist outside, you're not going to get as cold because even though the wool will kind of pull in some of that moisture.

26:25
it's going to hold it right next to your skin and your body temperature, and it's going to keep your body temperature at the right degree. Cause like wool is really good at just regulating your body temperature by holding that in. So it also is really great for landscaping and for gardens because it likes to hold on to moisture. So if you have a garden that needs a little amendment in your soil, or if you have house plans that you don't want to water,

26:55
Too often you can put a little bit of like waste wool or like wolf. If you know anybody who has sheep, you can ask them for a little bit of their garbage fleece and they'll just give it to you and you could put it right on the top of those potted plants. And that'll help hold that moisture. It does regulate your body temperature. So sometimes those wool blankets can be too, too hot. And that usually is because of how they're manufactured. They're very dense.

27:25
If you had like a wool comforter where it's more batting, there's more air in between those fibers, that air will stay warm, but you won't be hot. It like just kind of regulates you perfectly. There are a lot of really great studies in Europe that touch on how wool reduces our respiratory rates while we're sleeping and while we wear it. So it kind of keeps us calmer.

27:56
like it, you know, like calms your body down as you're wearing it versus other things which, you know, can, like some clothing has dyes in it that can be hormone disruptors and sometimes polyester and stuff like that can cause the respiratory, our respiratory rate to go up or our immune system to be heightened. Since wool is a natural fiber, it really calms those systems back down.

28:25
And yeah, like wool comforters are great. Like wool blankets are great all year around. If you find one that doesn't make you hot, because in our humid Minnesota summers, the wool, since it likes to pull moisture to its core, will wick away that humidity away from your body and let you sleep better.

28:46
I feel like wool is magical, who knew? I know, right? Right? It's such a cool fiber and it lasts forever. So you know, you look at these Norwegian sweaters that people knitted, you know, decades ago and they're still crisp and good and could get another couple decades out of them, if not more. And all you have to do is, is wash it once a year and wear it. That's it.

29:15
Yeah, I have a wool trench coat that is, it comes to my mid calf on me. I'm five foot nine. That is probably 70 years old. I got it at a yard sale or a garage sale like 15 years ago and it still looks brand new. It's like my favorite dress up coat. If I'm going to, oh my God, wear a skirt, which I never do. But, but if it's cold, cold, like it was minus 20 in Minnesota and I have to go somewhere. I want that in the car because I'm going to be.

29:45
warm no matter where I go. Like shoe insoles. Those wool shoe insoles are fantastic for that kind of stuff. But that trench coat looks, I mean it's in my closet right now. I just looked at it yesterday because I was like hmm, might be time to start thinking about what I've got for winter outerwear because you know it's going to be October. And saw that trench coat hanging there. I was like oh my god I forgot I have this. How did I forget I have it?

30:14
pulled it out just to look at it again. I was like, my God, it's such a beautifully made garment and it looks brand new. And I know it's over 70 years old. Yeah. Yeah. I wish, I wish in the next, like one of my most sincere wishes is that in the next decade, consumers start to see how, how

30:41
bad the fashion industry, how bad our textile industry is on our environment, how much they've contributed to a lot of the issues that we have with our environment currently, pollutants in our water system, you know, the amount of textile waste that we dump into other countries is mind-blowing. I wish people would see that, would open their eyes to that.

31:11
And next time they wanted to purchase, you know, a new garment or something, they took a moment to look at the label and they, and before they purchased the item, they asked themselves, will this go back into the soil and feed it? Or will this become, you know, a forever thing that won't go away. So if it's polyester, it's there forever. It just breaks down into smaller particles.

31:39
If it's wool, cotton, silk, cashmere, any of the wood fibers like bamboo and tinsel and stuff like that. If it's that stuff, it will break down and feed the soil. So that's my biggest wish. My biggest wish is that people looked at garments and thought, you know, can I wear this garment for many seasons? Is it classic? You know, is it a classic garment?

32:09
Will it last me through my 30s and into my 40s and 50s? And it'll still drape well on my body and look good versus just a, yeah, I'm at Target and I'm consuming and I'm just gonna grab that polyester t-shirt or that new summer polyester dress that I might wear three times and then I'll donate it thinking that that's part of the...

32:35
solution, you know, I donated it so it didn't go into the landfill, but not really following that a lot of our donated textiles end up in landfills in other countries. Yeah, yep, I am right there with you. Most of my clothing is either, I mean, my shoes are almost always leather because I happen to love calvaboot, so that's what I wear, and cotton jeans and cotton

33:04
I hate blended material for t-shirts. It just grosses me out and I don't like how it feels. So it's not a cotton t-shirt. I'm probably not wearing it. Wool is great. I hate fleece. I hate micro fleece and polar fleece. It feels weird on my skin and I don't, I'm not autistic. I don't have any of the things that make me, you know, my socks rub wrong, that kind of thing. But fleece just makes me.

33:34
feel gross. It's too hot. It feels weird on my skin. I don't love fleas. I love wool fleas but I don't love polar fleas. Yeah, it's plastic. Why would you want to put plastic on your biggest organ? Yeah and you're right. Cotton and wool and leather and all the things you mentioned. Number one, they are better for the environment but number two, they feel better.

34:03
when you wear them. And I was going somewhere with this. And three, it's how it should be. Let's just go with that. That's how it should be. That's how it should be. It really should be. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the big things we do, because we kind of touched on this earlier, like micro niche markets for the wool industry. And that's really what we're a big part of is this niche market. It's hard.

34:32
It's hard because it's very dependent on the shepherd and the farmer to be all the things. We're already all the things on our farm and now it's requested that we are all the things marketing wise. So you have to have your own website and be your own social media specialist and marketer and like inventory. Public relations and yes.

35:01
Yeah, you have to do all of those things just to sell your yarn, just to be competitive in this very big industry that's very ignored. Like the yarn industry, since it's kind of seen as craft and women's work kind of stuff, it's very ignored by the larger industries. And it's, I could tell you, being in the middle of the...

35:29
yarn and fiber industry, it is a, it's got to be a multi-billion dollar industry. I mean, people just, it's a, it's a thing. It's a huge thing. But it's ignored because it's women's work. So, so as a small shepherd, you have to, you have to make yourself known. You have to fight in this larger industry just to get people to pay attention to you. You have to tell people why it's important to buy local.

35:59
You know, the food industry did a great job with promoting locals and the fiber industry is just slowly making up, um, or catching up to that local food movement with the local fiber movement. Um, so it's, it's really not, it's not easy to exist in these small markets and niche markets, but we're there and I think, I think we're making, we're carving out a little bit. Um,

36:27
Hopefully more in the next decade or so. Well, I think you're definitely making a mark in your area and you're so passionate about it. Like I'm so thrilled I got to talk with you today because I feel like I just listened to a TED Talk by Theresa about Get Bentz Farm. And honestly, it's funny, a lot of the people that I talk to on the episodes on the podcast, I get done with them and I'm like, wow, I just got to be

36:56
a one person audience right in the moment for a TED Talk that TED Talk doesn't even know they did. Right, yeah. And we have to be experts in it. It's super cool. Yeah, I think it's great. I think you should contact TED Talks and be like, hi, I'm Theresa and I do this. And I would really love to talk about it at a TED Talk in wherever you're doing the next one.

37:18
You'd be great. So anyway, I'm mostly being silly because I'm trying to wrap this up. We're at 37 minutes and I try to keep it to half an hour and I could have talked to you for three hours, but my platform, wow, platform won't allow for three hours. So I appreciate your time so much, Theresa. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. Absolutely, I'd like to have you back next spring so I can talk to you about the baby. Oh yeah, totally. All right, let's do that then.

37:48
Alright, you have a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy this cold, crisp, sunny Minnesota day. Yes, you too. Alright, bye.

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