Welcome to another edition of RCE. Again, this is Brock Palin. You can find us online at rce-cast.com You can also find links to all of our Twitter's and the blogs and stuff like that You can also find the complete back catalog there and a link to an RSS feed I also have with me again Jeff Squires from Cisco Systems and one of the authors of OpenMPI Jeff, thanks a lot for your time Sure, Brock. How's it going? All right, it's been a while since we've done one of these Yeah, so I think by the time we get this one out people will either have just Submitted their exceed papers or they're there or they're still frantically working on it depending on plus or minus a day or two When we get this out Yeah, the exceed 15 technical paper deadline is March 30th, and we're recording this on March 23rd So we'll we'll see if this even gets on the air in time for people to even realize some time right around then All right. Well, what do we got today, Brock? So today we have something that we've been talking about around our shop And so we finally just decide we should find out more about it. So today. We're going to be talking to Mike Place who's one of the creators of Saltstack. So Mike, why don't you take a moment to introduce yourself? Yeah, hey, Brock and Jeff. It's it's really good to be with you. I appreciate you having me on Yeah, I'm on the engineering team here at Saltstack. I have been here about 18 months I was the fourth or fifth engineer hired here and We're growing very rapidly. So we no longer have a very tiny engineering team We only we now have just a relatively small engineering team, but yeah, like I said, I've been here about 18 months. I've got Going on what almost looks like 20 years of experience terrifyingly enough going back to the mid 90s when I when I worked at a little indie ISPs around here and and then spent some time over at Novel and And now I'm here having a good time one of those lucky people that gets paid to write open source software and it doesn't really doesn't get much better than that Okay, so we're specifically going to be talking about Saltstack. So Give us the one paragraph. What is Saltstack? Sure Saltstack is a remote execution and configuration management platform and so Most people know us for the configuration management piece, but we're actually a much larger systems management A piece of software that then simply config management So to to start with configuration management, most people know the major players in that space That's folks like chef and puppet Cf engine And us and so configuration management for those who don't know is is simply the idea that You can manage the configuration on your systems in a stateful manner so that you can either declaratively or imperatively declare the intended State of your systems and then either with a single command or with a small set of commands Enforced that state across of course either a single system or many tens or hundreds of thousands of machines all at once Beyond that Saltstack is as a remote execution platform so because we have Mests masters and then we have agents running on large numbers of machines people who want to do things like for example Patch a security hole I can do so with with simply a single command and make sure that That that's done across many many servers now just out of curiosity further distinguish for this for me because The other configuration management systems also have at least some flavor of remote execution Built into them if nothing else, you know, just pure SSH execution these kinds of things What makes Saltstack different? one of the things that makes Saltstack the most different is that is that we focus very very heavily on remote execution performance We're well known for using a high-speed messaging bus. We started out with zero MQ under the hood that allows us to scale very very rapidly and so while many other configuration Managements may have a remote execution component to them We're very very focused on the performance piece of that component to to allow Remote execution to truly scale and that opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities That you just don't have if you have a slower transport under the hood So when you said a parallel execution, you're talking about not like serially running a thing on a Note at a time. You're not talking parallel processing, which is what a lot of our listeners are familiar with That's right. Yeah, we're not talking parallel processing. We're talking parallel execution the idea that from a single manager node one can issue a command that is run Simultaneously or near simultaneously across a large number of agent machines Okay, so how does this compare to something like kickstart? Like can you actually take a machine from bare metal or do you rely on something else for that? right when we Normally existed in the virtualization and containerization space We have done some bare metal work in the past The we aren't particularly focused on that most of the time We pick things up after an operating system has been provisioned that said we do have a piece of software called salt cloud and salt cloud is designed to bring systems up either in public clouds or private clouds or You know near to bare metal simply with with hypervisors on the ground Okay, so you said something very interesting there. You said a slower transport now. What do you what do you mean by that? Cuz I'm a networking guy I work for Cisco Transport has a very specific meaning to me, but I think you're you're talking about something a little more General than that. Sure. Sure so We've done a lot of work actually on the transport layer because we find that it impacts performance So heavily what I'm talking about transport and when most People who are in this space are talking about transport. They're talking about the difference between Say SSH as a transport versus HTTP as a transport Versus for us like I said zero MQ just running over TCP And we may get into this a little bit later But one of our efforts over the past year has actually been to introduce a new transport that we call rate the reliable asynchronous event transport Which is a reliable transport that we have built on top of UDP and That's how it's yeah, it's designed it's designed both to be used with salt or potentially on its own and And like I said, we've we've done a lot of development work in that area and so we're very excited about it All right, and that sounds actually pretty sexy to me. So you have your own little daemons running Either on top of a VM or in VMs and things like that for sending these kinds of control messages around That's how rate is used Right. Well salt is used You know most commonly like I said in a master agent mode We call our agents minions, you know from despicable me the movie for those who've seen it and so we have agents running on on all of these minions those agents can or they connect back to the master and They simply listen for commands which are published and then they act upon them and those commands can be Like we said something as simple as remote execution or something as complex as enforcing an intended state that from the configuration management layer Laying down, you know new packages or new configuration files or ensuring that those configuration files We're in a given state on a system so on and so forth And so that's the basic idea of what's happening. Of course, we build quite a bit on top of that But that's fundamentally what's on the ground Now you mentioned you you have spent a lot of time in terms of scalability and whatnot and can you Explain how that's affected as well I mean you have a Hierarchical kind of connectivity or a mesh like connectivity or or something other than linear or just linear just When done well scale out really well. How do you do that? Right. So, you know, we believe that you know performance really comes from making good architectural decisions For us especially in the beginning using zero and Q Has been a really good architectural decision for us. And so what we're able to do is using zero MQ we have a push-pull pattern between the masters and the minions and so the zero MQ is Effectively threaded under hood and so what it can do is it can publish commands Nearly simultaneously to all connected listeners in our model Minions then self-select whether or not they should run the command in question They immediately fork a new process so that they don't block do the work that needs to be done and then reply Back over another TCP connection when the work is completed. Now, of course We can also scale this model out so that it is hierarchical We find that that while that gets done We scale quite well in our default configuration often up to many thousands of connected nodes on to a single master And and as a result many of the people who end up scaling into a hierarchical model End up doing so for reasons other than simple simple scaling which which we're very very proud of So what are some of those reasons why if it's not for scaling what I would someone want to do that? Often we find that that they do that so that they can segment they can make logical segmentations for access control or for security Versus simple raw scaling because the message bus underneath is so fast that they find that they don't need to the secondary reason is that Most of the scaling problem we returns when they come back and so at times We can see occasionally a thundering herd problem handling those returns But again, we usually don't run into that on the master side Until many thousands of returns being handled at once we use on the master a Router dealer pattern in zero and Q so that we can spin up many back-end processes and simply forward the work off to them and Continue to have a high-speed listener to come in and listen to the received events And then like I said forward them to a queue on the back end to be processing to be processed rather salt is designed to be highly asynchronous at every step of the way and So we we work very very hard to avoid blocking operations anywhere in the architecture so this is kind of interesting because I'm thinking about the way I've ran HPC systems for you know a decade plus and Normally, I'm not that worried about the performance of my provisioning and configuration management system Except one loading the cluster which is only every so often so you run into cloud world I'm guessing the entire model in which People normally operate their environment around salt stack is different than what I'm used to can you describe the way? People normally use this and why they would need this performance Yeah, that's a great question and it's one of the points that we try and drive home, which is that We feel like salt stack instead of being a pure configuration management system Is a a high-speed event bus upon which configuration management is only one service We find that in many infrastructures people end up Building their own messaging buses. Of course, this is really common in the HPC world for example and they build those messaging buses to Connect applications together to connect applications the systems to what have you We see this vision as something that we call event-driven infrastructure And event-driven infrastructure is this idea that if you have a high-speed event bus Connecting all of your systems and applications together That you could make the data that's ingested and broadcast onto that bus Fairly you could make all of that data a first-class citizen whether that data comes from Kernel messages or that are being emitted or whether that data comes from Monitoring high up in your application stack Because you have this this high-speed event bus you can use that data and you can program against that data I you can watch events coming in from your application stack And use the configuration management engine as a service to let's say tune your kernel for example And so Putting all of that data on a single plane With a configuration management service that can be reactive to that data We think is what allows people to to build really interesting next-generation Highly scalable highly flexible high reactive and reflexive systems Okay, so this is why you see this is built with like the cloud because you're kind of dynamically provisioning and spinning stuff up as needed Sure auto scaling is is certainly one component of that and we get people Doing things like that quite frequently But it even comes into play in smaller cases say for example continuous integration where people Have points in their process That are blocking right so let's say for example You know a very typical continuous integration workflow might be Check-in code then wait until the tests are run and then if the test pass go out and provision things into a staging environment, right? Most people sort of tend that tend to glue those pieces together They have to glue their you know test framework into their you know code deployment framework and so on and so forth We think that by making all of that event-based, right that It makes all of those pieces easier to work with all of a sudden you can simply watch for your test system to say to emit events onto the event bus Saying that the tests have passed and then your configuration management piece can take over And start to deploy that code as needed so on and so forth So on your website it says that I'm gonna quote here to Assault Back is orchestration and automation software for cloud ops IT ops and dev ops and and I think I can grok Or you know what you've been saying here over the last several minutes into that But could you define what you mean by that and possibly even define what you mean by those three terms there? Sure when we talk about it ops, we're talking about traditional IT operations and You know, I think one of the things that that we say to ourselves sort of day to day You know we obviously we're very much in the dev ops space and I say dev ops kind of with quotes around it because you know dev ops is Is a term that is is increase is growing every day and it seems to encompass more and more More and more things every time you turn around You know and salt stack is very much in defense of the sysadmin. We're very much supportive of this idea that That you know while dev ops has its place and that place is very important trying to connect devs teams to ops teams There are still a lot of guys out there just doing traditional system administration and they still need you know Really good tools to do that and so we don't want to shirk away From the sorts of problems that those guys face day to day So anyway, that's what we would call IT ops. Of course cloud ops You know, we guys who are provisioning stuff either in public or private clouds Who need to deal, you know with auto scaling problems who need to be able to understand, you know What their cost metrics might look like and who need to build systems that? can dynamically provision themselves and can can have configuration of course laid on top of them after You know just the the regular cloud instances are provisioned and you know DevOps of course is the last piece, you know, we see We see DevOps, you know, very much in terms of of the original vision That was laid out, you know by by John Allspa and those folks in in 2009 when they spoke of velocity And talked about this idea that of course there is this common language that can be shared between devs dev teams and ops teams our stance has always been that We need to be able to connect dev and ops, but we don't want to dumb down either side And so when we come at dev ops, we try to come at it not by Creating this common language that's so abstract and so simple That it doesn't provide enough power for either side But by doing everything we can to speak to to both sides and voices that they can understand So I went to a meet-up just last week where they were demonstrating salt and they were running on a bunch of machines They were running on the AWS cloud But when they were doing things they were running on already running minions and it really just looked like another Configuration push out a patch install some package on these class of machines And they use pillar to put in dynamic data and things like that but I want to know more about is is when you say cloud integration and cloud ops and What exactly does that get down into meaning sure so normally when we talk about that We talk about our salt cloud product and salt cloud is a cloud provisioner So it allows you to make maps Let's say with your AWS credentials and your linode credentials and what have you and then Spin up machines You know of a given size or with given resource parameters Across a single or multiple cloud providers bootstrap them with salt if desired and Then bring them up into into their intended role So that they can be ready to be inserted into into a production environment So really it's that it's the step all the way from Deciding, you know, which which clouds be a public or private or what have you All the way through the instance provisioning step and then through the configuration management provisioning step And then of course configuration management or in general systems management can take over To turn that node and into something into whatever it is that you needed to pay Okay, so I think Brock and I are probably having a little hard time Wrapping our heads around this because like as he said, this is very different than what we do So it's it's against our bias, but it seems like these are kind of you're aiming at different types of applications Then then we traditionally do so something that that is More in terms of I hate to use this word because we already use it several times already But dynamic right that I want to start a service do some things take it down And then do some other things and potentially be reusing Resources with the next service that I start up and whatnot. And so it's much more involved with creating and destroying Individual elements that can be used to service Different actions that might be occurring in either a pipeline or some kind of parallel pipeline or many simultaneous Pipelines and and things like that Is that a little more accurate than what what Brock and I might be thinking that you know I really love the idea of how you explain that the provisioning side is is Programmatic or at least that's how I I groked what you said that I can write code that says okay now spin up this and I'll get back You know did that work did that not fail or what other fine-grained kind of results? I might get from that. Sorry. That was a big blob of a question there. I hope that made some I'll try and and respond to it as best I can I think that There are a couple things to say about it One is that One of the things that that I see personally is that the configuration management space Is starting to split down the middle a little bit? There are some tools which are very very focused on the provisioning side, right? Like what does it take to get this machine either from bare metal or from a stock OS? provisioned with The intended packages and configuration files and what have you installed? installed And of course, you know that becomes more and more popular As containerization takes hold right, you know and people talk Of course about immutable infrastructure, right this idea that you provision it, right? And then once it's provisioned it doesn't change all right or at least that's the theory But of course Anybody who's managed systems knows that that systems have a real life cycle And that life cycle goes beyond Simply standing up the machine and provisioning it and putting it into production That you have to deal with things like you know security patches for example day to day with you know configuration drift bit rot all the things that that caused systems to Well to misbehave over time, you know discs filling up what have you and so, you know We try to stand on both sides of that divide. Of course, you know salt clouds and You know does a very very good job in the in the provisioning side But salt the configuration management engine You know along with the agents that are running on these machines can allow you to manage the full life cycle of the machine beyond simply provisioning And be able to to use it and manage it on day to day So do you work with like native package managers and stuff like that when you get down to the configuration management part or? And then okay, if you do work with native package managers Do I have to know anything about those package managers if I say run some red hat and some Ubuntu machines and to use two different package systems? right We do abstract away Most of the differences between the various package managers, so for example with salt If you want to install VIM, right? It's package dot install VIM and whether it's RPM or d package or whatever it is under the hood We'll figure that out for you and we'll end up, you know shelling out to the correct commands That does not however account for the differences in package naming And so a very common example is that some distributions name Apache Apache 2 where other distributions Might name their packages HTTP D We do not abstract away those differences simply because The risks of doing so are a little bit high, right? You only want to abstract package management so far and so we allow for those differences by Allowing people in their Configuration files with salt that declare the intended state of a system Those are normally written in YAML right there. They're simply data structures But we also allow people to interpolate ginger so they can say for example If this is a red hat system install the package Apache 2 if this is a Ubuntu system install the package HTTP D what have you I may have reversed those I don't remember which is which off the top of my head, but I think you get the idea All right now you said something interesting in there, too You said I think you said salt dot install in a package name Were you referring to a particular language binding? Is there a preferred language that's Your your users use? Right, so when they're using the the salts configuration management engine They declare The states of their systems and the language in which they make those declarations by default is YAML With with some ginger interpolation if they wish to do so however salt Fundamentally is agnostic about the way that Those data structures are declared because we ingest them as native Python data structures Which is to say whether you want to use YAML and ginger Or any other templating language, I mean, you know XML if you're that's really what you want to do So long as it can get rendered down to a Python data structure We're good with it that could come from an external source as as far as we're concerned and so We're effectively language agnostic so long as They get rendered down to Python data structures that we can understand Which is great because it allows people to use the syntax that they would really like to use some people like YAML Some people don't and that's completely fine with us so One of the issues I run into a lot of times with these configuration systems is okay It's easy for me to install an RPM But our PMs don't come with the correct config files for that specific host as providing that specific need How do you handle like okay once you've installed a you know, httpd How do I get the right you know virtualhost.conf on to that node that's supposed to serve that one? Right So the the standard way to do that is to declare one state Which is to install the package and then a second state to lay down a configuration file Excuse me to lay down a configuration file needed For the package that you've just installed right. Yeah, I your customized configuration file Salt in its state system has a set of requisites which can do things like say First install the package and then lay down the configuration file because obviously doing those things in the correct order very much matters Can it even go a step beyond that like if you're looking at an application level? Say I'm adding more Http servers to serve a very busy site Can it also then tell the elastic load balancer to Add this extra machine to the round robin? absolutely uh, and so what it can do is um It can uh, it can it can create um those Apache configs, right? And then we have requisites that say for example Watch to see if on this given state run we have added An additional v-host and if we have Bump the load balancers Or configure more machines or what have you? So that requisite system allows people to create Stateful relationships that are actually associated With their deployment workflows So you just mentioned it's very interesting hooks there. Do you also have hooks down at Stay the hardware level too. I know you say you concentrate a lot more on on on virtual machines and hypervisors and containers and things But do you have things hooks into say ipmi and or other BMC or or bare metal kinds of things as well? You know, we just put an ipmi Module into our develop branch. I don't recall off the top of my head whether that is going Into our release which is going out the door in a few days But if not because salt is is very very modular. There's It's quite simple to just pluck a module off the develop branch and use it on your local system BMC I do not recall support for But I know that ipmi is definitely in So, uh, what if I wanted to add support to this? What's the Salt written in you've mentioned python a couple of times. I'm assuming that's what it is That is correct. It is written in python Creating modules is actually quite easy. It's So what we have is we have this idea of execution modules, right? So an execution module Is a is a collection of similar routines, right? So for example, Let's say package dot install package dot remove package dot upgrade for example And so let's say you wanted to Build out additional support for kernel tuning, right, which is there right now But let's say you wanted to add some additional functionality you could Do you know sysctl? You could simply drop in a new function called ip forward, right? And what that would do Would be to say turn on ip forwarding for the kernel Doing that is is really just a matter of writing python code To do what you want on the system The really nice thing about that is that when you're writing that python code You already have access to all of the other salt execution modules in that namespace So you don't have to reimplement All the details of shelling out for example to run a particular command and avoiding shell injection and all of that So you can actually use all of the other execution modules in your development And because you can do that Writing new execution modules becomes really really easy because you have access To all of the execution modules that have already been written So just out of curiosity since i'm a developer myself Something I like to ask other developer crews sure what version control system do you use and why? We are an open source project And we are hosted on github So we've been very very happy with github They are they are very kind to allow us to to use and abuse their machines We do we do quite a lot of traffic on github and And we've been very very happy with what they've done for us and every time we see those guys we We try to gush and go out of our way to really thank them because they do really really wonderful work so I'm going to ask our usual. What's the largest question and and for our high performance computing people It normally means what's the largest cluster? What's the largest number of machines? But I'm thinking there's a couple of different ways you could slice this for salt So first sure what's the largest number of machines? That's been managed, but then also what's the largest number of say unique configurations. It's ever dealt with yeah The largest number of machines that we know of isn't the many tens of thousands We have large companies like linkedin for an example. They manage many tens of thousands of machines And and the great thing is that they do it on You know reasonably sized hardware, you know, they don't have an entire rack of salt masters for example to do this To the best of my knowledge They have one Big salt master. That's something like 16 cores And and they have many tens of thousands of machines And there are a number of installations. They're not the only ones that are that are running at that scale So it's it's really not uncommon For us to to scale up there and that said we have a lot of installations that are You know a few machines a couple of machines a dozen machines. What have you so it's really all over the map So let me ask you a slightly different spin on that. What is the most unique Usage of salt stack that you've heard perhaps something that you really you you look at and you go wow I I never even would have thought to use salt stack that way yeah, um, we we had we just had our our user conference and We had a guy submit a proposal for us about How he's using salt in sub-saharan africa And it was it was a wonderful talk. I believe it will be on our youtube channel soon I know that there have been some uses in africa They've they've used it to to rapidly provision machines to respond to the Ebola crisis there I have also Talked to some folks also from africa Who have used salt to to manage remote machines that are off in In very remote locations be it in small african villages or what have you Where they need basically machines that they can leave alone and not touch for six months And ensure that they are going to continue to run and that everything will be happy And that when they are contacted that they can use a very lightweight quick to respond Remote execution platform So yeah, so I I think the the machines in remote african villages is probably our most surprising use case So you mentioned it's an open source project specifically what licenses salt distributed under It's distributed under the apache license Okay, and then so finally where can people get involved and find more information about salt stack? Sure the best place to to come is to Our github page on our github page, which is github.com slash salt stack slash salt They'll see links of course to very typical open source project Things like our mailing list and our our irc channel We have many hundreds of people in the irc channel and it's very very easy to get involved there We we have a very very active developer community and it's it's quite simple To submit patches or feature requests or what have you We do tend to pride ourselves on the quickness of response for the the bug reports and the The patches that we get so it's it's very very common for people to submit patches to us and see them merged into salt Either in a couple of minutes and usually at the most frankly an hour or two Is a very typical turnaround for us to to get code that's been submitted to us into the code base Okay, so open source is great But a traditional thing that you hear and and not everybody understands is that it is still possible to have a successful business model Even with open source software even though you're giving away the good so to speak this is something that I hear a lot So what is what is your business model? How do you guys, you know put food on the table? right We do that in a couple of different ways and the first thing to say about this is that Tom hatch our cto gave a wonderful keynote address that I think Extends far outside of salt stack About how open source businesses can make money I expect that by the time this recording is posted that should be up on the salt stack youtube channel And I really encourage anybody who's interested in how open source companies can make money To go and watch that the second thing to say is that salt is not open core And that we have absolutely no plans to be open core We do have proprietary software the proprietary software that we sell Is in the form of a management GUI which just got released last month And uh, it's it's a management GUI that allows you to bring a lot of the uh, you know, admittedly abstract concepts into A very nice clean web interface and and manage your systems In a way that uh, you know the entire breadth of an IT staff can understand And so there's been tremendous interest in that as a product. Of course, uh, we also Go out and we we offer trainings We do a lot of integration work and of course, we sell many many many support contracts for Larger installations that are interested in In having developer support So what's coming to future versions of salt stack? You've mentioned a couple of things. What what do you think are the important bits coming? right The stuff that we've been working on Recently, we've been very very excited about we've just released Two new features that we call engines and beacons I have mentioned a couple of times this this high speed event bus that we have that allows you to To have this singular message transport For events whether they originate, you know from the operating system or from the application and so beacons are a technology that allows you On the salt minion to effectively monitor certain Events on that On that minion For example, I notify is one of the beacons that we just wrote so you can watch it a particular file or directory And if there are changes to that directory an event will be emitted onto the event bus Which can then be programmatically responded to Or simply logged for all Dean or what have you The other side of that coin is engines Engines are processes which run on the salt master again, that's the the command side of our command and control model and Engines allow you to To watch that event bus And do whatever you like with events that you see and so it gives you tremendous Flexibility because all you have to do is watch for events on the wire And then write whatever python you like to go out and respond to that be it you know using configuration management to go back and Make changes on your system in response to events, whether it's alerting whether it's Simply notification or whether it's just logging for an audit trail Engines really allow you to take this idea of an event driven infrastructure And allow you to actually sit down and write code To to respond to those events. So we're very very excited about that technology Of course, we're going to continue to develop Rate, which is like I said the reliable asynchronous event transport That we believe is going to give us even more flexibility in the future Because While zero and q has been really really wonderful for us We've reached a point where we want to be able to do some things that zero and q Really Doesn't make it as easy as as we would like and so we're very excited We're going to continue to do a lot of development In that area and of course the last thing to say is that we're working very very hard on our our enterprise GUI and And trying to make sure that that's as good as it can be. So those are all things that we're going to be very focused on in the coming months Mike, thanks a lot for your time. Uh, again, what's a place where people can find more information about salt stack? Uh, either salt stack dot com or our github page github.com slash salt stack slash salt Thank you. Great. Thanks so much, Mike. Great. That was good fun


know that you're here and we're glad to have you. One of the things we like to do is kind of kick off with a little bit of an icebreaker conversation piece. And today I wanted to ask you all to maybe chat in if you wanna just speak in for a minute what you have been doing to build immunity lately or what are ways that you are creating resilience for yourself in this time. So if you got recipes for immunity what do you do right now? We'd all love to hear it. So let's take a minute and share and read what people have to say and we'll jump into today's conversation. Eating healthy food. Someone better have said that. Thank you. Awesome. So for today's conversation I'm really excited because we have about seven great farmers of different skills, different products, different experiences, different markets that we've brought together and just figured it was a really good time in where we're at to hear back on how our farmers have dealt with this last season, what lessons have been learned, what they were able to do to fortify themselves and some thoughts on what we can be thinking about collectively for the coming year as we know that we're all preparing now and it's such an uncertain time.  Let me introduce myself. My name's Fatima Amad. I sit on the steering committee for the response team and I'm the president of Mile High Farmers and ED of Frontline Farming, a POC-led farmer advocacy and food justice organization. And with that, I'm really just gonna let our farmers speak for themselves and we'll just keep that conversation going. Since we have a lot of farmers, if you guys can all put your questions in the chat box and at the very end we'll take some time to really go through them and I'll monitor and make sure that we get to those questions. We'd appreciate questions. And we are gonna start today with Sarah from Highwater Farms and SILT. So Sarah, if you're ready, I'm gonna pass it to you to introduce yourselves and talk to us and I'll keep time. Hi, thank you Fatima. I'm excited to be joining you guys today. Can you hear me okay? Okay, great. Awesome, so I'm gonna just dive right in. We are out in SILT, Colorado and just for ground in April of this year. So I am, well, so first I was asked to start with pronunciation of my last name. So my last name is Tim Chisholm. It can sound like a sneeze if you don't pronounce it right, but it is, it's Tim Chisholm, it's Polish. But you can just call me Sarah. So to dive right in, my background is in youth education and urban agriculture. And now I live out in England in spring. So I'm in more of a rural setting and I'm excited to be applying my skills and background to this setting. So I ran a job training program for teenagers on a farm in Salt Lake City. I did a farming apprenticeship in Massachusetts to learn how to manage great acres of vegetable production, and then have been working on farms and with folks out in the Roycourt Valley. So we broke ground in April of this year. We did some fundraising last winter to start Highwater Farm. And Highwater Farm is a community driven farm project. And so what that means is that we started with building out farm infrastructure with funding that we've gotten to really establish the farm and establish our farm operation. And then next year we anticipate starting a youth program. We brought 25, at least 25% of our produce to local hunger relief organizations. And the farm to food pantry program and lift up has made that extremely possible. So has the farm collaborative and the Two Forks Club by offering grants that then we've been able to route produce to Rocky Mountain Soonbanks and then the Wake program has been really supportive. So through those two programs, we felt like we've been able to make an impact. And I actually like to say that we feel really fortunate to have gotten our start this year because we've been able to adapt with the circumstances as opposed to having started last year and implemented sales and things that might have fallen through. That being said, COVID has made things particularly challenging. So in the spring, we had a hard time getting a hold of the tool of the materials we needed on time in order to really get moving. And then we had anticipated building up some relationships with local restaurants for wholesale and that fell through as well. We were able to establish this year, first year, a half acre of production that's enclosed in three acres of wild life-sensing. And then we have a five acre land. So we have room to expand. And that is on publicly conserved land at the Silver River Preserve, which is owned by the town of Filp. So that's the context. And on that half acre, we had an AmeriCorps VISTA that worked with me and then two part time farmer apprentices we hired halfway through the season. And we grew 8,000 pounds of produce, which was awesome. And so we're really excited looking forward to the year ahead. We haven't gotten any COVID response or really funding yet, but we did apply to the last round. And we are really grateful for this community of supporters. I would say that we, as we look to next year, we will be having a CSA in our region that will have about 35 members. And so that's something that we're seeing a lot of farms pivot into to know that they have sustained income for this changing market. And then we're also doing a crowdfunding campaign the first of December to raise funds for our youth program. So if you follow us, Highwater Farm on social media or check out our website, we would love to have folks kind of follow along with the journey and support us where we can. And then we're happy to be a part of this conversation. Thank you, Sarah. And like welcome and congratulations on that first year and cool, we'll come back to some questions. Awesome, I'm gonna move on to Don from Green Junction, from Green Junction Farmstead in Clifton. Don, are you here? Yeah, can everybody hear me? Okay. We can. Awesome. Well, thank you Fatima for hosting and Wendy of course, for all your hard work through all of this respond and rebuild grants that we've, you know a lot of people have benefited from this through all this crazy COVID. I am with Green Junction Farmstead here in Mesa County. Me and my husband, Brian, we run a, we produce on an acre and a half and this season we're at 100 members for our CSA. That also included the WIC program and we were able to help the mutual aid and the solidarity, not charity, food distribution. So when COVID hit, we decided to make a huge pivot in our business model and that was to an online farmers market. So that entailed us getting a platform for that, a online store platform, getting some online marketing, trying to attract our customer base that we had already established over the last five years at the farmers markets to try and follow us through that and also go through a repackaging system through our CSA. Normally we would set up market style for our CSA to kind of pick their produce through and with the COVID we were unable to do that. So that included a lot more packaging, expenses and things. So we did get granted in round two of the response and rebuild and that's what we used it for, was the packaging mostly and some labor. In the beginning of COVID, we weren't able to have our normal volunteer base here and so we had to shift once things, we were able to kind of unlock and get out of our homes and people were not as worried about getting around other people. We were able to hire some help this season. So that helped with that a lot. Just the business model pivot was not as successful as we wanted it to be. It was, people got let out sooner than we anticipated to be able to go and shop in the grocery stores and things again. So I feel like we lost a lot of our revenue through that. And so we made another business decision to start a farm stand here and try and attract our normal farmers market customer base to our farm. And so that's always a hard thing to do when people are in lockdown and scared to kind of go out. So that's been one of our biggest challenges this season through COVID. And life now as a producer is, I feel like we're not as scared as we were when this all hit because now our business model has changed. We are already gonna make this a long-term pivot for us. And so we can plan ahead as opposed to trying to do it in March when we're trying to do our farm production plan. So I feel like that that's an our benefit this season. And just to, the things that I saw that went well as a communication between producers, these respond to rebuild funds have brought a lot of people to the table to be able to communicate about small and mid-sized farms and food scarcity and how to get funds and grants and help out to those producers and processors and people that really need it to keep this food security and this food movement continuing forward. And so that's what I feel like in 2020, excuse me, 2021. That's where our business is headed towards just sticking with the new model that we have and also being able to reach out to producers and people even on the statewide level. So that's I think the bright side, the light at the end of this tunnel is that we will all still be in communication with each other and continuing forward with this food movement. Thanks, Don. And I like that solidarity, not charity and for bringing that spirit with you today. Well, thank you guys so much for all you do. Cool. I'm gonna come back around to some of these questions. There is one in there for you at the end and I'm gonna move us on to or we can just take a minute maybe. I do see this question from Casey here that says, Don, would you do the farm stand again next year if we were still in COVID and then just a quick question of what plant farm did you use? That's for your online market. Yeah, so we use the barn to door platform and that was a huge challenge. Also trying to learn this whole online process where farmers and we're not good at technology and so that was a huge monster that we had to, it's a great platform. It wasn't as successful as we want. I feel like our community is kind of small for that and I feel like we were able to go, the community was able to go shop freely too soon but and then I will do the farm stand again. That is a permanent and I do it in a way that I handle the food and I package the food and bags for them and I'm only allowed a person or two. So, it's a small farm stand, it's just the beginning of it. So, yeah, I'm just trying to go by the rules and keep things safe and stuff. So, yes, I would do that again. Thanks, Don. All right, I'm gonna keep us moving on to Roberto Mesa here and go ahead, Roberto. Thank you, Fatimum. Hi, everybody. Hope everyone's having a good morning. My name is Roberto Mesa. I am co-founder and one of the farmers of Emerald Gardens we're a microgreen farm operating in a sustainable commercial greenhouse year round on 35 acres in Bennett, Colorado. Our primary market streams since 2017 have been restaurants and independent grocery stores throughout the Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins area. And now recently have been, well, I would say the work has been incubating for a long time, but one of the challenges that we faced as a small producer on the Eastern Plains was solving our distribution challenges because at the time when we were growing we were still too small to be taken up by a major distributor and also too large to handle our own distribution. So, we were in that in between kind of no man's place where we're just having a lot of difficulty trying to expand, trying to leverage the resources we have to be able to make our business financially viable because we are looking at large-scale production. And so we leaned into our collaborative and cooperative partnerships with an organization called High Plains Food Co-op that allowed us to pull in our resources and then start essentially democratizing the work of distribution. We realized that we were going to the same places, that we could help them increase their market outreach and their access to different revenue streams. And so we started using our farm. This was about a year before COVID as a way to pilot alternative distribution methods based on collaborative values. And that's how we were able to really learn a lot about the flow of food and the mechanics of food distribution and aggregation through our communities. And when COVID hit, we realized that we already had this wealth of knowledge to be able to make this happen in a time when supply chains were being interrupted and communities were having trouble accessing food. So through the partnerships that we built in that previous year with Fondadosa and High Plains Food Co-op, we already had a model that could come in to help us mitigate the economic fallout from COVID. And one of the things that we started to do was piloting the direct to consumer model, which not only helped Emerald Gardens, but also the producers in our immediate regions and in High Plains Food Co-op. And one of the beautiful things that came out of that was just the resiliency and the stubbornness to make it work and to remain here as viable components of our communities. And that was a big kind of wake-up call for us that we actually had a model that could satisfy both the immediate needs that were being created by COVID and that they were affecting local producers as well as communities. And we realized that Emerald Gardens as a farm producer was more equipped to focus on production, whereas the aggregation, distribution, and the kind of knowledge that we were generating doing the work of a food hub was basically an entity into and of itself. And so we created and launched the East Denver Food Hub to solidify that work. And that allowed us really to partner with organizations, mostly groups that were doing food access work, especially live well, now nourish, and food pantries. And since I'm also part of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council, as well as a regional food coordinator with Hungry Free Colorado, we kind of already had a good assessment of the landscape of food access and how to engage and activate those partnerships that I had been cultivating prior to COVID. And all of this kind of came to fruition in a way that actualized the network and the mechanics and the knowledge that we had been generating by doing the work on the ground that was now informing our perspectives on a high level of what our food system actually needs to build in resiliency, equity, and justice. And so now we have this wonderful synergy between Emerald Gardens, which is the for-profit kind of year-round operation on our farm, and the East Denver Food Hub, which is also a social enterprise for-profit to create some economic sustainability in the work that we're doing to feed communities. And so we essentially try to rapid prototype new models for our food system that were built on partnerships with LiveWell through the WIC programs and local procurement strategies for food pantries. All of that food access work has now enabled us to scale into an analysis of what it would take to actually have a brick-and-mortar location in Denver that can encapsulate a lot of the things that we've been working on, scale our food hub model focused on food access, while at the same time addressing economic justice and leveraging the resources that we have on Emerald Gardens, at Emerald Gardens to remove as many barriers of entry for young beginning farmers, BIPOC farmers, community members who want to actually address their own kind of farming operation. And now they have the option of either going through the Emerald Gardens brand, which we now have a partnership with a major distributor or through East Denver Food Hub, which is still addressing and trying to lift up communities through local procurement strategies and policy initiatives. So we're really looking at actually solidifying a location where we can incorporate the kind of economic assessment of food access currencies and programs, as well as leveraging our resources, incorporating and integrating the local food system and generating research analysis markers and metrics for this ultimate project of food sovereignty that we're trying to institute and execute. So I think all of that just relies on building partnerships, coalitions and increasing our network and outreach. So we're here to explore more as we continue into the next year. Some thanks Roberto, it's a lot going on and just a lot of amazing work. Thank you for sharing. I'm sure we'll have questions at the end. I'm gonna move us on to another region as well. Mr. Bai from Southwest Farm Fresh in Cortez, do you hear with us? I'm actually not seeing only. I'm not either. All right, I'm gonna keep us moving. That's all right. We're gonna go on to Greeley, Derek Hoffman with Hoffman Farms, are you here? Yeah, yes I am. Awesome. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, we can hear you, welcome. Thanks for being here. Yes, so I'm Derek Hoffman and myself and my wife, Hanmeh Hoffman. We operate 100 acre, or about 100 acres north of Greeley in 2020, 52 acres of it was in vegetable production. This is, we just completed our sixth season. So we're still kind of a, you know, a young operation still finding our way. Coming into this year, 2018, you know, we had some challenges where we lost 60% of our crops to weather events in 2018, 2019 was a good year for production, but we were only able to sell about 60% of what we grew due to lack of market, maybe lack of demand.  So we actually cut back acreage, we cut back about 26 acres of vegetable production coming into 2020. And we had this idea of doing a farm stand to try to generate new customers in our area. There's really no farm stand north of the Brighton area along the 85 US 34 corridor. And then COVID hit about March and then started the kids going to work with you every day for five months. And our questions really were, okay, the dye had been set. We had already purchased everything. We had our plan in place for what we're gonna do. We, our markets, about 75% is institutional selling. Then we still were doing two farmers markets and a little bit with distribution, not too much. And then we worked with a lot of aggregate CSAs in the Denver Metro area. So the question was, is do we have a place for our product? And so we went ahead with what we had planned in 2019, what our 2020 year was gonna look like. And we didn't pivot. When it came to the farmers markets, they were delayed opening a little bit. And we opted, since we're doing two, we opted just to do one. The thought was, is do we know if customers are even gonna show up to the farmers markets with the new requirements and will they come out? So instead of losing money in two locations, we decided, well, let's just chance that I'm on. And we did the Fort Collins Lama County Farmers Market. And I think our assumptions were a little wrong. The Fort Collins Market, we saw not necessarily double, but about a 40 to 50% increase in traffic and revenue. And the restrictions, they changed through the summer and became less. And so it was easy to work through that. The institutional buying, we talked at the school districts we had worked with in the past. And they said, when we open, due to COVID falling health guidelines, we won't have our salad bars open if we're in in-person learning. So we won't be buying as much as what they told us. And so it's like, okay, well, you know, what do we do? Well, what ended up happening is is whether they were in in-person or online learning, there was a sudden surge that these school districts started, for lack of better word, packaging food, packaging meals and sending them home with the kids. So right when we were worried about our business to kind of the September, October timeframe when we make about, I'd say about 75% of our overall gross revenue, we had numerous school districts step up and the purchasing was much larger. And we actually heard from four different school districts that we hadn't worked with before. So we saw an increase in institutional buying. Then on the other side of it, through the summer, working with aggregate CSAs, one of them actually started an emergency food box program. So we saw a high demand on that side as well. So working through the summer, we didn't know what to expect. We really were worried about what do we do with our product and overall, I can say as our season is done, we've sold, I would say about 95% of everything we harvested. And in some cases, we couldn't meet the demand for these emergency food boxes, the USDA one food box, the aggregate CSA saw a large increase in membership in the March, April timeframe. And these schools operating, trying to do some sort of fresh fruits and vegetables for students, whether they're online or in-person learning. So I'd say overall, when season's done, I think our sales are up and I think our overall gross revenue is probably up by one or 2%. The real concern going into 2021 is that we know 2020, there was a lot of federal funding behind of what was happening, grants, private funding, things like that. So we're kind of, what's gonna happen in 2021? We know our personal belief is that this is gonna be identical to 2020. We don't see much changing. We do hope that maybe by fall of 2021, schools are online again, or not online, in-person again. Sorry, we just switched online here this week up here in Greeley. So we hope more normalcy next year. And then when that normalcy returns, the question is, is will we have the customers? Will we go back to 2019 where there isn't that local demand? So the concern in 2021 is customer base. And for the grants, we did take part in the PPP only because our bank that we bank at said, hey, we noticed you didn't take part in any of this. You need to apply it. So it was like the third round of PPP. We did apply for the employee protection, just a little bit of money. And then for the car to rebuild fund, we did apply in round one, and that money was applied towards cold storage, which actually did help with us working with these institutions and school districts. So that's just kind of the overall, definitely challenging year. One thing I'm grateful for is the weather wasn't challenging, which was the first to many. But yeah, looking to 2021, yeah, what will the customer base look like in 2021? Thank you. That was a lot of information. Some things I didn't expect, like about institutional buying and certainly appreciate you sharing about like the concerns you have. And that resonates a lot for me as well. I just wanna go ahead and address one of the questions to you where somebody asked, what about the labor situation on your farm this summer? Oh, good point. So in the springtime, we had, I mean, just we're creatures of habit. So when that disruption happened in March, I mean, it interrupted everybody's daily habits. So there was a lot of panic and I was concerned, but we were, you just don't want panic and fear to take over. So we were steadfast in what we're doing this year, what the labor part of it is is we actually held off hiring any employees. And so it was just my wife and I up until about mid June, mid June was about when you saw things kind of settle down that fear and a retraction of the panic. So we actually brought a full-time employee in on that. And then once we were in the field kind of July through September, we couldn't go a day without somebody pulling in looking for work. And I don't think it was related to the pandemic so much as the collapse in the hemp industry. The hemp market fell off in 2019 and there was a lot of people that had worked vegetables, had switched over to hemp due to higher wages that were being paid and then they were coming back to vegetables. So we were actually put together a good team about five employees to do the field work and it worked out well. I think if there was something that we could do going into 2021, if there was funding or grants, I think ideally if it could focus on labor because I think that is actually an issue, small, medium and large for all farms is labor. I didn't have the impact in labor we thought. So going back into 2021, I suspect at least two or three of those employees are gonna return next year. And yeah, I mean, I guess there is still another uncertainty going into 2020 because yeah, general labor is not somebody, people are just clamoring to do, but so yeah, I guess it would be still a concern going into 2021. Awesome, thank you. A quick last question, how many acres do you all operate? It's 103 and it's 52 in vegetables. I think we're gonna stick around about 50 acres next year but we are bringing two more farms online. We do have just standard commodity operation on the side, which does help with rotation. So I suspect we're gonna be about 137 next year, but again, about 50 in the vegetables, it could change. I mean, there could be all sudden, there could be over the winter contracts coming in through distribution or something that may change our minds, but right now ideally about 50 is about where we need to operate for our customer base. Awesome, thank you so much. I'm sure we'll have some questions at the end. That was wonderful. I'm gonna shift us to Nancy Roberts of Low Point Cattle Co. I know you're here Nancy, so I'm gonna pass it on to you. Hi, good morning. I hope everybody's having a great day. So what do we do? We're a little different from everybody else that has spoken. We raise grass-fed, grass-finished highland beef. We have about 75 mama cows and because highlands mature so much later than your commercial cow, we have that many yearlings and that may calves as well. We raise highlands for many reasons. First, they're great moms. They're easy cavers. They are very resilient, very disease tolerant. And they love our winters here. I really don't have to worry about predators. They've treed bears. They've chased off coyotes. I mean, they're very resilient. It's really great. Also, my dad had them before I was born. So we have cows from that same lineage all the way through until now. So that was a long time ago. Although I still feel like I learned something new all the time. We were really lucky and thrilled to get a respond and rebuild grant in round one. Our primary customer is a local restaurant and of course due to COVID, they had to shut down in the spring. So we had to make a pretty swift shift to direct sales and revamping our website, doing some marketing. We went to a farmer's market and that the grant really helped us pay for the website and a bunch of marketing stuff, which we really hadn't done very much of, to be honest, and we should have been doing it for years, but we hadn't. Life now on COVID, on a day to day basis for us, it really doesn't impact our day to day because we spend almost every day outside. So it's not such an impact, but it impacts all of our customer base. The biggest issue that I see is that we're all getting pandemic fatigue for lack of a better thing to call it. It's harder to get things done. It's harder to get supplies that you need because of the systemic fatigue, I think that we see throughout our whole world. A particular nightmare for us this year was processing. Our processor that we used for the last 10 years went out of business and is now reopened, but he's no longer doing USDA. So all of ours, because they go to a restaurant or direct market, have to be USDA inspected. And because of COVID, all the processors were completely filled.  We drove a long ways, went to processors that not necessarily would want to in the future, but any port in the storm. So we feel better for next year as far as that goes, but we feel really lucky. The owner of the restaurant that we supply really thinks outside of the box. And when he saw that the restaurant was gonna close, he shifted his business to do a bunch of carry out meals and meal that were already prepped so that people could come by and pick them up and take them. So that really helped us, that took a little while, but and really the people that we have, and we have one full-time guy and one part-time guy. So they have really pitched in and been really positive through all of this, which is, it's the positivity and the optimism that things will be okay and that we all feel that way has made a huge difference for us. The restaurant had a really good summer, all things considered, what they sell changed. And so we've had to change our products to match that a little bit, which is really hard, but they do take the entire animal, they just had a little different use of different parts of it. I worry with resurgence of COVID that the restaurants will have to close again. That's probably my biggest fear. We have made a shift to the direct market and have increased that and seen an increase, but we're a long, long ways away from where we should be and from where we can sustain ourselves if the restaurant's actually closed. That's our biggest challenge really is the market. That's not what we're really good at. We'd all rather be outside, doing stuff with the cows than we would be inside working on marketing, but it's part of it. I am really excited to see 2020 in my rear-view mirror and looking forward to 2021 hopefully being better. And I have to say, I'm super impressed with Virgo from Emerald Gardens. How do you manage to have the time to do all of that volunteer, all of that other work along with farming? Because it's a challenge for me to do volunteer work and to do the ranch. So thank you all very much. Let me know if you have any questions. Awesome, thank you. There was a lot of gems in there. You do have a question here from Casey that if you do know, can you speak more about the processor that closed and reopened? Like, have they closed before the pandemic and then the need reopen them? And then I don't know if you know about the USDA like reason why they didn't, was it just the significant barriers that that poses? So yeah. So he was a USDA facility before and they closed for health reasons, but he reopened without USDA because he said that the USDA paperwork and coordination, and I know I was on a call last week of USDA and it's harder and harder to get the inspectors timely and, but mostly from what he said, it was mostly the paperwork. Wonderful. Yeah, and I really take your point on, you know, how when the pandemic hit, we really kept trying to be humble and count our blessings of like just the ability for our days not to change, you know, and getting to be outside. And so we knew also for us being like vegetable producers that this time would come where we'd be coming back inside too. So it's a shift in realities that a lot of people have been in already. So thanks for bringing that like reality to it. You have another question here that's how do folks find your direct market website and is that local to your area or are you shipping? We've shipped a little bit, but most of it is local or to, we've delivered to Colorado Springs and to Denver because we have people going there anyway. But we've done a lot of Facebook ads that seems to be the predominant. We also did a CPR, radio ad for a while and we've done some flyers, some direct mailings. So we've tried a little bit, everything. Thank you. I wanted to open up this time and just really quickly let me also check in case our person is here from Fire Runners Hotchkiss. Is anyone here from there? I don't think so. All right, that's all good. So this was truly wonderful, just like such an array of different things going on and sounds like just so much resilience and in some ways still finding ways to succeed, which I feel like farmers would tell that story all the time regardless, you're out there doing the works of bless you. That said, I just wanted to open it up and see if anybody had any questions for our speakers today. And even from the speakers, if you guys have questions for each other, I wanted to give a minute for that. And I also have some. Yeah, this is Oli with West Farm Fresh, can you hear me? Oh yeah, Oli, you made it. Please go ahead, go on. Yeah, I'm here, I've been here. Go ahead. Thank you. Well, I know, do you want me, do you need me to give a rundown of what we're doing? Yeah, we would love you to. We would love you to, please go ahead. Okay, great. Well, my name is Oli and I'm the general manager at Southwest Farm Fresh Cooperative down here in Cortez in the bottom left hand corner of the state. And we are a producer-owned co-op and we do marketing and distribution of products from our member farms and other local and regional products as well. And our main market now is an online farmers market that we opened up in May. And historically, we've been focused mostly on doing restaurant wholesaling and we decided to get away from that this winter. And that was a good choice. And 2020 was very good for our business. At least historically, we're still not, I wouldn't say we're not struggling, but finally feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel and the online market model has been promising for us. And it's a pretty good fit for our producers as well. We've seen a lot more, a little better variety and when there's fluctuation in supply, it's a lot less risky for our marketplace now. And we have a lot of, we've developed a really good customer base over the summer and feel like we have a lot of loyal customers who might not otherwise have joined our CSA in past years. And it's been really huge unburdening to get away from the CSA model and particularly to get away from restaurant-based wholesaling. And the pandemic's been really challenging in terms of being able to plan for the future. But it's not as difficult to deal with as the unpredictable nature of the restaurant market and the turnover in chefs. And we have dealt a lot with resort restaurants and it's just impossible to keep up with who's supposed to be putting in orders and really being on top of people on order day to get away from that. It's been a huge blessing and we've really embraced the online market. And we were scared of all the logistics and all the sorting when we went into it and I was really skeptical. And in fact, it wasn't even my idea and I kind of pushed back on it. And I was unsuccessful and that's probably a good thing in hindsight. I think we've really seen that it has a lot of potential to reach new customers in our area. And we're really optimistic, I think about the model going forwards even not knowing what's gonna happen with COVID. So and we did get a little one of those grants I think in the first round and I think it was applied to some of the marketing and outreach that we've done that's been different and some PPE stuff too. We just, you know, and all that's been very difficult to find as I'm sure everybody knows finding packaging, binding gloves and masks online is not easy. And we're just making the switch over to using N95 masks for everybody, all our volunteers and staff and drivers. And I would recommend that for everybody else too. And I think that's about all I can think of to summarize kind of where we're at and what we've been doing. And I'm in the vehicle driving. So if there's questions, maybe the moderator can relay them to me. Yeah, thank you, Arnie, that was great. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, so some of the questions, we have a question here that's kind of to everyone as well but Mel says, you know, that they've struggled with dissonance with COVID when it's at bay. So fluctuations with people buying online and then going gangbusters for online shopping when COVID meter is in the orange and red, safer at home. Any thoughts on things that have worked for brand loyalty for anyone? So kind of, you know, how COVID is, when COVID's high, people, you know, really actually start caring and thinking about food again, I'm in that way. So have you guys seen fluctuations like that?  Yeah, we started using local food marketplace again this year and we've used them in the past for wholesaling. And it's, you know, it's an affordable software that's created with small scale food systems in mind. And it probably is the best out there. I mean, we spent so many hours researching software over the years and have used a number of the different, what I would call entry level options, local orbit. We used that for about a week and a couple of other things that we researched pretty heavily. And at one point we went two years just using spreadsheet. And so it's really frustrating and difficult to find a software that can work for whatever it is you're doing because they're, you know, designed to try to work with everyone and everyone has different needs. And there's almost like too many bells and whistles and not enough core functions on a lot of these softwares. And we're making local food marketplace work for us. We still have to like print out long list of items and cut them up with scissors and staple them together and put them in different bins. And, you know, various low tech sort of hacks like that. So I don't think there's a magic bullet unless you're willing to spend, you know, $100,000 on customizable food hub software. But, you know, I think local food marketplace is all right. And it can work for a lot of different distribution models and to return to the core of the question, what do we do when people aren't as afraid of COVID and aren't as excited about shopping online? I don't know if I'm really worried about it. I feel like it has introduced us to a lot of potential customers that might not otherwise have come our way. And, you know, I certainly want open air farmers markets to kind of come back into their stride once it's safe to mingle again. But, you know, I don't know. I think that the buy just gets bigger and, you know, we've reached, like I said, people we wouldn't have. And, you know, I am concerned about fluctuations and people sort of losing interest. But, you know, I guess, too, we just have to move forwards and realize that the future is almost totally unpredictable. So I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to retain our customer base in future years through this model that we're using. So thanks. Thank you. That's, like, reassuring optimism is helpful right now, you know? So thank you for that. It is so hard to answer questions and everything is in flux and we're just responding to it. So thanks for attempting. And should I take this last one? Yeah, I'm just going to quickly, if anyone has any insight. In some ways it's a little philosophical, but have you all, any of our speakers today, what, you know, have you asked your customers or even in your own thinking, what do you all think is going to help, you know, keeping buyers buying from local producers right now and not returning to, like, conventional grocery shopping for the future? Does anyone have thoughts on that? I would chime in on that if I may. I, it was kind of hard to reach our clientele that we had built up at Farmers Markets to redirect them, excuse me, to my online store and then also to our new farm stand because maybe it was lack of us trying to keep track of those customers, but, you know, that's a sense of community when you're at the Farmers Market. And so I think that what one is they know that when they come to my farm and they buy my produce, it's fresh and it's going to last them a long time. And that's really one of the things that my customers say most, but they also really appreciated the safety measures that we took when we did to have contact and the business model pivot that we had for our CSA, it was a pre-packaged box that was delivered or a drop site that they had no contact. And then, you know, our practice is with a drive-through pickup for our CSA or even our online Farmers Market customers. So I think the safety issue was really tantalizing to keep our customers coming back to the farm stand. And so that works for us in the future because that I feel like COVID really put us fast forward into a direction that we kind of wanted to go anyway, but it really kind of lit that fire. And so we, our intention really was to have our customer base come and be here at the farm to see where their food is grown anyhow. So that was the benefit of that. And also, you know, our safety measures to just protect everybody and keep everybody safe was the reason, one of the reasons they've come back. Thank you. That was thoughtful. And like, yeah, we don't often think about how the difference between the safety measures we're taking and just going to the grocery store. So I appreciate that insight. So I feel like I could keep this conversation going all day, but out of respect for everyone's time, I'm going to pass it to Wendy to close us out for today and get us out by 12. And just want to take a minute and give our speakers a round of applause, some thumbs up and just give you our gratitude. Like, you know, we know that you're all farming, we see you all out there, keep up the good work. And thanks for sharing your knowledge and wisdom that's priceless with us today. So with that, I'll pass it on to Wendy. Awesome. Thank you, Fatima. And thank you all of our presenters for taking this time to be with us today. So I just want to close this out with a few, sort of quick reminders and updates about what's coming next. One is I just posted a reminder in the chat there to join our Slack channel. If you have not already, it is a good place to post a lot of these kinds of questions that you're asking of each other right now for ideas and resources. You can always share on Slack any day of the month. A couple of quick updates as well. The third round of the respond and rebuild fund, as you know, have been closed. And just a quick update on what we have received there. So we received a total of 320 applications that representing 226 producers, 33 processors and 61 intermediaries for a total of $5.8 million worth of requests. So that actually brought up that alone brought up a lot for me that I'm glad that obviously this is resonating, this is the resource that is needed and we're addressing a need. That is also a pretty significant response that to me also demonstrates a pretty big gap in resources and support for a lot of you. So those applications are being reviewed right now. Reviews should be done by December 3rd and the funds and hopes to make announcements on that early the week of December 7th. Plus the update there. Also I will chat in, there's a lot of this posted on Slack which is a reminder that CFAP 2.0 applications are being considered September 21st until December 11th. So I will chat in some resources as well around that CFAP 2.0 resources and the guide that explains a lot of how it's operating now and it's different than the first round. So I will chat that in as well. And again, these are always on Slack. And then I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what we're going to be doing next together. So save the date and I will put this in the chat box as well. Save the date for our next call. Similar to November, obviously there's, you guys are always busy but also with holidays and other things going on we're only having this one call in November and then only one call in December and may get back onto a every other week call schedule in January. But we'll have one call in December and it will be sort of a special session, a special call. It'll be Thursday, December 17th. I'm chatting this in now. It is going to be an hour and a half long call. It'll start at the same time. So still Thursday starting at 11 we're going to go until 12.30. And as I've chatted in here mobilizing rapid response with Colorado farmers and ranchers COVID 2020. So we're just going to take some time that day with several members of the team to do an hour long panel presentation really sort of reflecting on the intent and the actual maybe impact of this response team. So take some time to reflect on our process which from the very beginning has aimed to be very data driven and very people driven. So from the beginning we have aims to both listen and learn and adapt and respond but also do data collection from the funds from other efforts that are going on across the state to then drive the work of this response team. So it truly can be responsive to you all and your partners. So we want to take some time to reflect on what that process has sort of led to in 2020 and sort of maybe what that is going to inform us to do our path forward in 2021. So to have a good, pretty rich panel and then have a good half an hour for some Q&A. So we can do this in partnership with you and just stay on track together and know that we're listening, we're adapting and we are being responsive as we move forward. So I just chatted that in and yes, thank you, good question, Anne. So we are asking for RSVP. Do not worry, you get plenty of emails from us. We're not requiring registration but we are asking for an RSVP for this one. We just want to kind of have a sense going into it. How many people to expect who's going to be there and we will be sending out an actual more formal invitation in the coming days here that we ask you to share far and wide as well. So please RSVP, even from this list but don't worry, you won't get lost. Just we have a sense here to be there. And with that, I will let you all go. Thank you so much to our speakers and all of you for all of your time and great questions. Good Thursday afternoon to you all, bye-bye. And Amber, are you still on the line? Yes, I'm here. Hey. Hey. Great. As some of you know, some of us kind of just hang out for a few minutes here to make sure we've captured everything. So feel free to jump in with questions as we just make sure we got the recording and we can capture all the chats before we hang up. And unfortunately I had to record today which means I'm going to have to help me figure out what to do. So, yes. Casey, I saw your question. Yeah, Amber, let's send this recording directly to Casey for sure. Yeah. And Wendy, you can just start recording now. Okay, I'm going to hit stop. Okay.


We have some questions about this current election, particularly why is it more divisive than any other election in recent memory? Hey there, NJBrew22.com here with a quick election day video about the divisiveness that's happening and that's led up to this whole thing, combined with the whole crisis and everything else. And I'm just wondering, I have a few interesting questions. This doesn't seem like a natural, like where discussions and heated topics reach a boiling point. It seems almost that something is happening here behind the scenes that they won't talk about. Why were almost all the elections in recent memory, not including 2016, sort of just accepted? People just accepted the election and moved on and everything else. And also that hanging chads election was another one that we'll just put an asterisk on that and not talk about it right now. And we're wondering if each subsequent election gets more divisive, maybe for an external reason, like social media, or what is it? Is it something completely different? Is it mainstream media perhaps? Now you know already that the 2016 election was a shell shocker for most who believed what the MSM paddled, including the MSM themselves. They felt like they were just predicting the future there with the 98% 1 versus 0, almost nothing for the other. And why is it that this election is almost guaranteed, or so they're saying, to become a giant fiasco? Who knows? Maybe it won't. We're not going to get into the conspiracy chatter here, but you can at least answer one part of this debacle with a simple statement. Those who scream the loudest have the most to lose. Maybe it's because some sort of long standing racket is about to become disrupted. Who knows? See what happens, and may the best person win.


Hello everyone, I am Dr. Prince Gupta, Consultant Orthopedics and Neespecialist, Manipal Hospital, Palam VR. In the series of educational videos, today we are going to discuss a newer technique related to ACL reconstruction. So, topic for today's video is ACL reconstruction with internal bracing. Today we are going to discuss what benefits does internal bracing gives in addition to normal ACL reconstruction or conventional technique. So, for that we need to understand the anatomy of ACL. ACL is the commonest ligament which gets injured during sports, any sports, high energy sports like soccer, cricket. In fact, it is so commonly injured ligament that most of the soccer players have had this surgery during their career. So, the ACL is the ligament which gives anterior stability to the knee joint. It goes from femur posteriorly and tibia anteriorly. So, whenever this ligament gets injured, we need to reconstruct the ligament or repair the ligament. In most of the cases, whenever the ligament is injured from a mid-substance that is in between the ligament, then the only option we are left with is ACL reconstruction. So, in conventional technique, ACL reconstruction is done using hamstring tendon of the patient and it is harvested and ligament is prepared and fixed above to the femur and fixed downwards to the tibia. So, what we do with internal bracing is we use a fibre tape along with the harvested hamstring tendon, fix it with the femur and tibia. The benefits of this additional technique or additional procedure is patient gets early recovery, patient can resume his work or resume his sports as soon as possible. Less hospital stays there. So, it is definitely better as compared to the conventional technique. So, for any other query related to this technique or any knee surgery, you may contact Manipal Hospital Palam Vihar. I am working there as a full-time consultant. Thank you.