Hi, everyone. Welcome to the session at Connect on Azure Functions. My name is Ishaavri and today I'll be speaking to you about what Azure Functions is, how you can build your very first serverless function, and all the capabilities we provide to help you develop, publish, and monitor using Visual Studio Code. So let's get right to it. I do want to talk about what Azure Functions is. At its core, Azure Functions is serverless compute, that is, the ability to run custom code on demand and at scale in the Cloud. Whether it's written in C-sharp, Node, Java, or even Python, you give your code to Azure and we'll manage and run it for you, all dynamically based on events. To help you accomplish this, we provide various options for integrated development using tools such as Visual Studio, VS Code, Maven, Eclipse, or even just the cross-platform CLI. Today, we'll be looking at one such example for functions using VS Code. So let's go ahead and get started. Let's take a look at how anyone can get a function up and running in just a few minutes. For this, I'll use VS Code and the Azure Functions extension. So here I am in VS Code on my Mac, and I've already got the Azure Functions extension installed. Since I'm logged into Azure, I can see a list of subscriptions that I have access to. The Functions extension enables us to create new function projects, add new functions to that project, and even publish to Azure directly from within VS Code just at the click of a button. So let's go ahead and create our very first function. Once I pick a directory, we'll be presented with a menu of languages to use to initiate the project. For the purpose of this demo, let's go ahead and pick JavaScript. So what this did for us is initialize the functions project with a couple of files namely the local and the hosting configuration. Now we can go back to the Azure Functions extension and add a new function to this project. Again, we'll be presented with a menu of templates that we'd like to use to create the function. Interestingly, these templates directly correspond to the triggers available to us to execute the function. Let's go ahead and pick HTTP trigger provided with a friendly name and secure the HTTP endpoint with a function or an API key. So what does this do for us? Going back to our directory, it created a new sub-directory with the name we gave for the function with a node script and a function JSON configuration file. Looking at the node function, it consumes an HTTP request input and parses the contents of that input to find the name property in the body or the query string. It then uses the name property to construct an HTTP response which is returned back from the function. You can see the function JSON configuration describes the HTTP request input and the HTTP response output binding right here within function JSON. Now that we have our function, we can go two ways. Either we can go ahead and publish to Azure and trust our fate for it to work out of the box as it is, or we can use the open-source functions runtime to debug and test locally. The great thing is that we as code enables you to do all of this simply on the click of an F5. In fact, if you've got the node extension installed, you can even go ahead and set breakpoints in your code to debug and look at the call stack. Now, let's take a look at a slightly different function here. I've got a node function that triggers off a message or an event received on an IoT Hub. It then grabs the contents of this message and outputs it to the console. Now that I have my function, I can go ahead and F5 into it to test locally, and I can also go ahead and deploy this function to Azure. So let's take a look at how to publish the app. I can go ahead and pick a subscription and create a new app with a unique name. Let's call it Connect Demo. Then we can pick a resource group for this function app as well as a storage account to contain the contents of the app and the files. Now that we have our function app provisioned, we have one more step to configure any settings or secrets for the function app. Picking the subscription again and here's our app. Now, these settings while running locally are saved as either environment variables or properties in the local settings file. For a function to connect to IoT Hub, we'd configured the IoT Hub connection string that we can now go ahead and provision as an app setting on the function app. Once we have that, we're pretty much ready to go ahead and test our application running in Azure. For this, we'll connect to the streaming logs for our function app. Again, picking the function app and we can go ahead and start seeing the application insights logging. To simulate these events on the IoT Hub, I've got an app that will register multiple devices and start sending notifications to the IoT Hub. We should notice shortly that our function started to pick these up and output those events or messages back to the console. That's it. We developed an end-to-end serverless application, tested it locally, published it to Azure, and even looked at the monitoring logs right here from within a local instance of VS Code. With Azure Functions, we strive to keep improving developer experiences and provide support for the languages and tools that you're most familiar with, so you and your team can be more productive. To find more information and get started, please find the link on the screen. We look forward to helping you with your serverless mission. Thank you.


Good evening, everyone. My name is Isaac Barranco and you're joining us for our third webinar in the series this spring over local meats marketing. And our topic tonight is finding a niche market and navigating farmers markets. We have a good group of panelists tonight with Simone Y from the Red River Farmers Market, Ashley Brunner from Dakota Angus, Kelsey Crap from the Bison Ranch and or Crop from the Bison Ranch. And then also Ron and Beth Wolfe will be joining us again from last week from Wolfe Suffix. I mean, it's always a good time to differentiate yourself from other producers and we'll start off tonight with a some remarks from Simone Y as she talks about her experience with the Red River Market and working with producers. Go ahead and turn it over to you Simone. Hi, everyone. My name is Simone Y, like Isaac said, and I am part of the Red River Market in Fargo, North Dakota. We founded the market in 2015. So this summer, this summer and fall, we'll start our eighth season at the market. And I run our team of eight staff and interns during the summer and fall, and I'm the director of marketing and programming. So I'm the one that helps get over 100,000 visitors to the market every summer with all the press that we do, all the advertising that we do. We have an awesome following on social media that we take advantage of and it's really, really grown over the years, which we are extremely proud of. So along with the about 80 vendors that usually are there every weekend, we'll span that will span over free blocks of downtown Fargo. We have four daily performances, which includes live music, cultural performances, dance, theater, all kinds of different things. We also have a cooking demo every Saturday that features fresh produce from our produce vendors and meat vendors. And then we have tons of children's programming. We do special events for kids and families at the market and really contributes to the community vibe that we have going at the market. Like I said, over 17 weekends, we'll see over 100,000 people across those events. We've actually already had 115 vendors apply for the market. So we're seeing great growth and I'm very excited to say that we are seeing growth in produce and meat vendors at the market. I know there's always a fear that people aren't starting new farms or businesses of that type, but they are coming out of the woodwork and people are actually not only are they coming to our market, but they are starting those businesses from scratch, which we're very excited about. When we started the market, we really started small with a goal of being one of the best markets in the country after 10 years. We still have three more seasons or two more seasons before we reach our 10th season. And I think we're doing really well. We've been featured. We had our picture in the New York Times. I've spoken at a conference with the National Farmers Market Association. So I don't know what necessarily has to happen before we know we're in one of the top, but I feel like we're well on our way there, which is really exciting. We like to say that we're more than just a market. We know people spend more money when they stay at the market longer. So we really focus on elements that get people hanging out for half an hour, an hour or two hours more than they'd ever stay at a grocery store. So we focus on elements like hot food, coffee, live music, drinks, and seating all in a really welcoming space and that get people to do that so that they spend more money with our amazing vendors. We actually just last season made a huge milestone. We topped $1 million in revenue for our vendors across the single season, which is pretty incredible, in my opinion. And I just want to give a few bullet points on what I've seen makes a successful vendor at the market. And I think successful vendors really have a clear and civil message to market visitors about what they provide. And it's really helpful to be known for something at the market. Vendors that have a single item that they really advertise and becomes popular helps that vendor be the handpile vendor or whatever it is. Over our winter markets, Brown's Ranch actually just made a new meat stick display where you could actually see the product see all the flavors that they had. And I feel like just in expanding that space in their booth made them the meat stick vendor. So people go back to get that one single item. Especially with meat vendors, it can be hard to display products. And so you'll have to rely on signage to have a clear and consistent message of what you sell. I think the best performing vendors at the market have samples and they are constantly finding different ways to interact with their customers and educate them. I was just talking to a couple of the vendors at our market this last weekend. We had our last spring event. And they were saying being part of a market is more than just about making one single sale with a customer. It's about building a long term relationship with that customer.  Well, that's great. Thank you for that insight. It's good to have you, especially since you do a lot of managing of the farmers market. And it's good to get that insight from someone from that oversight. All right, we'll move on to Ashley Bruner from the Dakota Angus company or ranch.  Okay, super. All right. Well, first of all, I just want to thank you, Isaac, for coordinating all of this. I think the first two weeks that I've watched have been great. A lot of really valuable information. As mentioned, I'm Ashley Bruner and I'm with Dakota Angus LLC. Dakota Angus is a partnership between Bruner Angus Ranch of Drake, North Dakota, which is North Central, North Dakota, and Wendell Livestock near LeMore, which is southeastern part of the state. I guess the idea of what is now Dakota Angus started a few years ago already. It seems like it was just yesterday, but it's been a few years now. Really, it came down to the volatility in the market and wanting to have more control over what we're getting for our Fed cattle. Bruner Angus Ranch and Wendell Livestock are both registered seed stock Black Angus producers. And so we both have annual production sales where we sell Black Angus bulls and replacement females to our customers. And so that's our primary operations on both ends. But it really came down to what can we do? We work hard every day for our production side of things, but what can we do to take more control over what we're getting paid for our hard work? And so the idea of selling beef retail transpired from that. On both sides, we had already been doing some quarters, thousand holes for family and friends, things like that. But we really just decided that let's try and do this on a bigger scale. And of course, initially, the idea was let's build a processing plant and let's do everything from start to finish. And then we realized that that's a big investment and a big deal. So let's pump the brakes a little bit and let's take a step back and see how can we really get started in the retail beef locally sourced market here in North Dakota? And we found a great partner at a federally inspected facility. Of course, that allows us to do what we're doing, selling beef retail by the by the cut. I think initially we thought that we were going to just continue to sell quarters, halves and holes like we had been. But that's not really what's happened. I think all of the partners involved have been kind of shocked that we're definitely doing more retail by the cut, because our customers are really liking the opportunity to just come to us and say, you know, I want a couple of sirloins and strips and rib-eyes and I want a couple of roasts and I want 20 pounds of hamburger and then they're out the door. And so we've learned a lot over the last couple years. We actually started retailing as Dakota Angus in April of 2022. So just over a year now, we've been Dakota Angus and our customers shopping options include online. We have a website. They can book quarter times and holes online and they can fill out a retail order form. When they fill out a retail order form, they can choose their option of either picking it up from our in-store location here near Drake. They can have it delivered to one of our delivery options. We kind of have a few different places that we go to for deliveries, but they can also have it shipped. We do ship to 48 states. And so they do have a few options there. As mentioned, we do have a location here at our place just north of Drake. We have a 12 by 16 walk-in freezer and all of our shelves are lined and labeled by cut and by quality grade because we do quality grade our carcasses. So we have the in-store option, but then farmers markets. So initially, I don't think that farmers markets were really on our radar. But towards the end of last summer, we actually landed this really, I'll call it cute, a little freezer truck and it's just a little Chevy truck with a freezer box on the back and I can drive it. And so we just thought, what the heck, there's farmers markets kicking off right now and let's go do them and see how they go. And it actually became a pretty fun little endeavor for me and my oldest daughter. She ventured out to several of them with me. She's nine and kids in technology, she was able to run the invoice device just fine. She's learned her cuts of meat faster than I have as an adult. And so I mean, she knows where the cuts are in the truck and she's running around grabbing burger patties or pounds of burger and steaks out of the truck and filling orders for customers. And so it really became something fun and kind of a little family adventure for us. But farmers markets were more than that.  I'm huge on customer education, consumer education, right? Especially with what we're doing with farm to table and locally sourced and things like that. It's like a whole new world sometime, even though we're in rural North Dakota, there really is a lot of consumer educating to do when it comes to locally sourcing any product. And so I've really enjoyed the time spent at the farmers markets that we've done, just meeting with customers, letting them know who we are, who our family is, what we're doing, where the beef comes from. And it's been comments like people would walk up to my table and to the back of the truck and say, can I really buy a steak from you right here right now? Like it's just a whole new world for some people to see that. And it's just been really fun. And I really appreciate that we have farmers markets as the option, because I think when it comes to locally sourced, like that's where it started, right? As farmers markets. And so a great option. But when you're deciding what option is best for you, if you're just getting started in locally sourcing your products or wherever you're at with it, I think that this graphic here, the four Ps, can be very helpful.  Like Simone mentioned, if you're at a farmers market, you kind of want to really hone in on what your product is. You don't want to have 500 different products, because then people get overwhelmed. There's a lot of vendors already to begin with. And so if you can be more specific in what your product is, for us, we are very specifically quality Angus beef. As Black Angus Seedstock producers, it's important that the product that we carry is an Angus beef product. And now we have multiple cuts available, but we are strictly Angus beef in our operation. And in addition to kind of define the niche that we are providing, I think I briefly touched on it, we quality grade our carcasses. And so when our carcasses are hanging at the processor, a USDA grader comes in and grades each carcass. And so we're able to tell our customers if it's select, choice, certified Angus beef or prime. And that's something that is really unique, especially here right now, because I'm not sure that there's anybody else in the state that is having their beef carcasses quality graded. And so people really are able to choose the quality from us. In addition to the grading, we are a licensed retailer with the Certified Angus Beef Organization, and that really sets us apart. Right now, we're one of only three ranch to table operations that can say that they just started a pilot program in the last year. And we were fortunate enough to be chosen as one of their pilot projects. And so we do carry Certified Angus Beef branded products. So we are definitely very specific in our product. So then the people, you know, define, think about and define who it is that you want to market to what what is your ideal customer? Who is it that you you want to want your product? Right. And so there's definitely, when it comes to beef, a range of people that you can can sell to if it's, you know, the mom of the house who's doing all the grocery shopping or what's unique for us is that we found in a lot of households, it's the man of the house is doing the beef shopping because he's the one putting it on the smoker or whatever the case may be or doing the meat cooking. And so tying in with with people, I'm going to move forward to price as well. So be conscious of price. I guess I'm conscious of price. We've got the local grocery store, we've got the bigger supermarkets, you've got the Walmart's and the Costco's and any time I'm shopping, I'm looking at the meat counter to see where their pricing is compared to our pricing because I certainly don't want to be outpricing our product to where even though a customer might want a high quality angus steak, there's still a balance of how much a customer is willing to pay for that, even though it's locally sourced and they know the quality they're going to get versus, you know, what they might still be able to pay at the grocery store. So be conscious of your price, but definitely define that. I think in the beginning, I had the piece of advice from somebody that said, don't let a customer mess with your pricing.  And then place, you know, I shared the three different options of where we are available. It can get to be a lot, you know, there was definitely towards the end of farmers market season last fall where I was getting to be burnt out a little bit because it can be a lot depending on how many you do. And I know, Ron and Beth, I think you guys said last week you only do the one market. Super smart. I was running around last fall doing like three, four, five in a week. But we were also in the mode of just getting our name and our brand out there. And it really was fun, but definitely define your place and where you want to see your product and what you want to put into the place and where you're sharing your product. So again, we're online. We're active on social Facebook and Instagram. I've taken many orders via text message. In fact, I just got an order fulfilled before we jumped on here, text message from a customer saying, Hey, I see you're coming to this town next week. Can you get me this, this and this? And that works pretty slick for me and my customers. So hopefully these are just a few pieces of information that would help when kind of defining some of those things for you. Awesome. Thank you. That's a, I mean, everybody can always appreciate quality beef. I grew up on a cattle ranch. So it's good to see that there's people out there still doing it. Now moving on, we'll go back to Ron and Beth Wolf from last week. And they talked a little bit about their farmers market experience last webinar. Yeah, thanks, Isaac, for allowing us and inviting us to be at this one. And you know, as we went through the introduction, I'm not going to go through the whole thing again, because apparently we do have, you know, repeat people. But, you know, when we got into this, and I'll just say it, you know, like Ashley, they're in the seed stock business and so are we. But they are, they don't all make that they don't, they're not all breeding stock. And so this was our option. And actually it was Beth's idea to try something like that back then. And from a marketing standpoint, when we talked about the numbers we had available and, and, you know, we are a seasonal, we are seasonal sellers, basically, just because we're winter lambers. And the way we're set up and the way my job is and stuff like that, we lamb in the winter time. And we set ourselves up basically for having fat lambs through early summer in the fall. And when we first did this, and I'm going to transition this over to Beth because it was kind of her brainchild. And she does visit a lot with Simone. And, and as we said last week, this is our first, this was our first choice when we looked into this. And I think at that time, the Red River Market was a couple of years old. We've done this, what this can be, or six or seven.  So apparently we're doing some right things with them. And, and as Simone alluded to, one of the reasons why we do go there is the amount of people that come through. And it's an event.  We try to have a life, you know, other than it's a full day.  And I know they probably rely on that more as their income or whatever. And this is an important thing for us. Don't get me wrong. But the exposure that we get there and the growth, this is, I think probably where it's at now is the most successful they've moved. This is the third move, but with the, with the Broadway Square and stuff like that and the stage and everything like this. You know, there's no doubt. And I tell people that we probably get exposed to seven to 9,000 people on a nice day. It's amazing. And the setup is great. I'm going to let Beth talk a little. And I'm sure I have an opinion, but I'll let her, you know, talk about what we do and why we do it. Okay. Well, as Ron said, you know, we are at the Red River market. And when I approached our family about doing this, it was important to me to find a really good market that was going to like have a following. And I really feel that that's what we found at the Red River market. We're pleased with how it's run and granted, I don't have much to compare it to except the ones that I go to as a customer. From a vendor point of view, it's top notch. You can't tell their interns from their everyday staff. That's, I mean, that's just how well that they run the farmer's market there. And kudos to you, Simone, because I know you've been there since the beginning and you've done a great job with it. Probably, I would say 80% of our customers are repeat customers. So that's huge as far as the relationships, you know, they come up to us and I'm not good with names, but I know faces.  And sometimes they have to tell us all about what has happened from the last Saturday in October, until the first Saturday in July. And that's part of the job is to listen to their stories, because they're willing to listen to us tell our stories about our meet. And we do, as Travis alluded to before we started, we do wear bright red. We have a red canopy and that is all on purpose. That is part of the marketing that we use so that people know that we're wolf suffocates. And that goes with consistency then, you know, where people look for that and whether, you know, it might be a daughter in there or something like that, but we do it on purpose, yes. Let me think, I just lost my train of thought. We bring our meat in coolers. And so we should be expecting a visit from our health guy. Any week now, I'm assuming he's pretty good about, I don't know, you know, it's an unannounced visit, but he'll be showing up and he will inspect our freezers. And then he'll also look at our coolers. And you know, we might throw a few packages of meat in there in a bag and an ice and a thermometer and we'll visit and visit and visit. And then at the end of our visit, he'll go back and check that to make sure that it, you know, it held the temperature that he wants it at. And so that's important to make sure that if you're selling out of a cooler, which is what we do, is that you have thermometers in your coolers and that you have a way to keep your product frozen, because some of those Saturday mornings or Saturday afternoons are going to get hot. So you're going to want to make sure that you've got ice and everything else you need to keep your product frozen. I've tried to convince Ron to get a little trailer to pull behind my car. He has not jumped on board yet, but I've also been able to convince him meat sticks and brats. So, you know, maybe sometime down the line, I'll be able to do the little trailer. What do you have anything? Well, I do. I'll jump in here a little bit and see how we are seasonal with our product. And we do sell halves and holes. But when we get to the end of the farmers market, we typically plan everything we do around the red market schedule. When they are done for us and we don't attend their winter events, and I apologize, but it just doesn't work out for us because we don't know where we're at with product. But our goal is always at the end of October, be pretty low on inventory. And I know that some of our retail, our couple restaurants aren't real pleased about that, but inventory is expensive and it's not always consistent. But one thing we notice when we go to farmers market and over the years is that seasonally we change our products a little. It's the same land product, but for us, we figure that sometimes grilling season. And so, we take our legs of lamb and our shoulder roast and a lot of those and make them into steaks because people spend most of their time cooking that out on the grill. And so, that's more marketable for us. And the roasts and that stuff like that, we start transitioning into that after Labor Day. And I call that comfort food because then people are more on a Sunday afternoon or wherever doing crock pots and stuff like that. And what we found in not only that, but it's amazing when they come up to us and we've started offering, I don't know why, but there's people that look specifically for liver and kidneys and hearts and we sell dog bones. And so, we use every part of that, but if they ask for it, there must be a want and need. And so, we begin to bring all of that. And it's amazing how some weeks for us, everybody wants a shank. And then the next week, we couldn't give a shank away, but we have that. And we try to listen to our customers and us being not there every week. One thing we find important is we have a schedule and that's what they kind of like us ahead of time to schedule the days we're there because if we're not going to be there, somebody will. Simone alluded to that. They only have so many spots. And we let our customers know so they can plan accordingly. And so, the flexibility, we try to be flexible with our customers to be more successful, I guess. So, what we try and do is we try and make sure that we schedule ahead of time and then in one of our displays, we have a printout of the dates that will be there. And then we give that to our customers so that they know, okay, they're going to be back on such and such a date. We also get a lot of promotional material from the American Lamb Board.  And I charge $2 for that little tin container. I'm not there to make a profit on the American Lamb Board, but I want to, some people are like, I don't know how to cook it. It's super easy. Here's some spices that are already premixed. You know, it's only going to cost you $2 because that's what it cost me. All of the booklets I give for free, I try and make sure that I have things for kids because if you can draw the kids in, you're going to be able to start the conversation with mom and dad. On our priceless board, we have pictures of our family. We have pictures of a showing sheep. We have pictures of our winning sheep with pictures of lambs. They're so cute. People want to see that. You know, some people have a hard time equating that cute little lamb with that lamb chop. They're just buying, but that's where our meat comes from. And I think that it's okay for the consumers to see that. We do have one little guy a couple years ago. He brought his own money and he said, I just want to try these lamb sticks. He comes back at least three times a season and he's got a $20 bill and he's going to buy four packages and he's not going to share them. Those are the kinds of moments that we look forward to. And I'm proud to say for Ron, you know, we talked about it a little bit last week, that we have been able to cut out the middleman as far as taking lambs to the livestock markets. You know, we can set the price on everything that leaves our place, whether it's a seed stock or whether it's a meat cut, we are able to set the price for everything that leaves our place. And I'm very proud of that. And Amy and I'll allude to that. We find out also, we try to make our product affordable because yes, lamb is a higher price and we don't have the volume of meat, you know, that a beef carcass does. So we need to have a price that alludes or gets to that point. But I do and not that lamb is available all the time at a lot of different stores. But I compare and, you know, we don't want to gouge people because I think people only have so much money to spend. But if they're coming to look for lamb, we want it to be affordable. And so they'll take some home rather than the price turning them off of the experience before they even get a chance to try it. And with that, I think, you know, getting back, if you find a farmer's market that's successful, I'll be honest with you, we have not looked for another one. We have no plans to. We have no plans to. I know there's ones closer. But like I said, when you get the exposure that we, of people, and they're not all shop, I mean, they aren't all buyers of our product, there's no doubt about it. But if we get a percentage, and of course, Mother Nature, when you go in that late in the season, there's been a couple of them that I'll just say that even a but warm rate going to do it for you, but there's already souls, if they know you're coming, they might not be there for the all day event, but they might specifically bring their cart to you.   They might change their attire and it's interesting to watch. If nothing else, if things aren't going well, there's a wide variety of things to see. And I'll say that. So I enjoy that. But yeah, find yourself a farmer's market and a relationship and that is well run by good people. And it makes a difference in what you do. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, no, that's great to hear. And I mean, I visited you guys at Booth personally myself last summer. We'll move on to our final panelists for the evening, Kelsey Cropp with the Bison Ranch. So diverging a little bit from to a different species even here. Yeah, thank you. Just a second while I get this slideshow set up, if I can figure out how to do it. All right. As you mentioned, my name is Kelsey Cropp. And I'm the owner along with my wife Emily of the Bison Ranch LLP, which as you might guess, is in fact a Bison Ranch and a custom exempt butcher shop. And we are located near Pingree, North Dakota, which is about 25 miles northwest of Jamestown. And I can't speak to farmers markets. We're talking, I guess I was probably invited to talk about finding your niche market, which for us wasn't necessarily finding one so much as evolving into one a little bit about our background. We're a third generation family ranch. My grandfather started farming and ranching on this piece of property way back in 1924. My father farmed and rashed with him into the, well, grandpa hung it up in the late 80s. My dad was a cattleman his whole life and small grains cattle, just like most of North Dakota. And in 1989, he purchased his first group of Bison in his words because he thought they were really cool. And no other reason why. And for about two or three years, he concurrently ran Bison and the cattle separately, not within the same enclosure or anything. But it only took him a couple of years to realize that these things are pretty much take care of themselves. They were a lot easier to manage than the cattle. Once you have your facilities in place, we're blessed with a really nice chunk of native prairie where we can let them roam and they largely take care of themselves. So in 1992, he sold all the cattle and went all in on the Bison, which was good timing because the market kind of blew up in the 90s and it was really, really good for a while. In 1997, he started a hunting outfit or business primarily focusing on waterfall, upland game, whitetail deer. At that time, we didn't really offer any Bison because we were ranching them in the more traditional sense of cow calf operation. We'd finished some bulls out and delivered them to the slaughter plant in New Rockford. So we have seen both sides of this industry. And then in the early 2000, some of you might know the Bison industry famously went away. They were worth nothing. People were giving them away. We were in a very fortunate position with the hunting outfit or business that we already had established and a nice chunk of land, a good setting to do it. We started offering Bison hunts in the early 2000s. And our typical clientele at that time were people just looking to shoot a Bison. It really wasn't about the meat in the beginning, but just like a lot of Bison producers in the ugly days, you did what you needed to do to survive. But being in the hunting industry previously and like I said, having the setting and sort of getting our feet underneath us in those early days, as the industry started to rebound, we realized why go back to the traditional style of ranching when we've got a good thing going here. And we really started to focus more on sending our clients home with good quality eating animals. It wasn't necessarily about the horns or the head on the wall and more about offering good quality meat. So we focus on 18 to 26 month old animals, usually on the younger end of that in the 20 month range. In 2009, we built our own custom exempt butcher shop within an old existing farm shop right here on the property. It's cozy, but it gets the job done. If I had a crystal ball, we'd make it about twice the size of what it is. In 2015, my wife and I moved home and purchased the entire operation. And since then, our focus has really been to sort of build on what my folks had done and focus intensively on meat quality and how can we get the best possible product in our clients freezer. And the byproduct of that has been tremendous customer retention of the, I think I did about 65 animals last fall. And I want to say 60 to 70% of those were repeat customers. One of my customers has harvested 24 buys in with us. I have a number of guys since I've taken over who have been here every single year, one of whom is about my age and he claims he's coming until one of us drops dead. So it's nice to have those reliable repeat customers. And so where are these people coming from? A little different than what we've been talking about with the previous presenters. My clients are coming from all over the country. A lot of them are not necessarily even hunters. They are very simply people from all walks of life, really, from your blue collar contractors, equipment operators to high profile attorneys, doctors, surgeons, you can name it. But they all have one thing in common. They want all natural grass fed lean protein for the health benefit. But perhaps more important to what I'm offering on a product level is the opportunity to have the pride of ownership of that animal. They're purchasing an animal from me. They're selecting that animal. They're harvesting that animal, doing it humanely, which is very important not only for the meat quality, particularly with bison, but for a lot of these folks, they want to know that everything was done right. And that's where the bison, which is an incredibly tough animal, it's a bullet right here, right behind the ear canal, and it's lights out. It's all about the abilities of the shooter and not necessarily the kick of a gun. My clients want to be involved in the process where they can, but above all else, they want to know where their meat came from. And people are willing to pay a premium for that. And I firmly believe that even if they're not here to see it, they want to at least have the opportunity to see how that animal was raised, what it was eating, how it was harvested, how it was handled after the kill, how it was cut, how it was packaged. So a question we often get that the bison industry has rebounded the last 10 years have been pretty good to pretty much everyone in the industry. So why not go back to doing what it was, what we were doing before, because this is a lot of work. From mid-September to mid-December, I'm either slaughtering or butchering pretty much every single day, six or seven days a week. So it gets to be a bit of a sprint in the fall, but we really believe in the process, the product when it's done this way is better than virtually anything you're going to find in a store, because the nature of the beast, as I have written here, bison are a very excitable animal. They don't like being corral, they don't like going on trailers, and they're lean.  I mean, there's no two ways about it, which a lot of the bison industry for those reasons wants to grain finish everything, and there's good reason for that. So it's sort of, in my opinion, nullifies the benefit of bison by adding a bunch of grain fat on there. At that point, why not just go to beef, right? So doing the field slaughter method, it's yielding a wave calmer animal one second. It's out there eating on the native prairie, and the next second, it's lights out. They don't even know it hit them. So there's no stress hormone, no adrenaline, no lactic acid in the meat whatsoever. They're humanely killed, but that shot placement allows us to get a really nice bleed on them. I run up and slit the throat right away.  So it does get dangerous, and a lot of times it gets to be a lot more exciting than either my clients or I bargain for, but that bleed is crucial for getting all that blood out of the carcass.  We actually timed a young bull last year from the throat slit to no pulse was 12 minutes. So that heart kept going for 12 minutes and got every ounce of blood out of that animal. And all of this allows us to, we're all natural, all grass fed, grass finished.  And when everything's done right and everyone does their job, the client puts a good shot on them. We get a good bleed. It's every bit as moist as the best burger you're going to find pretty much anywhere. Bison is a lean meat. So on the primals, if everything's done perfectly and you throw it on a grill hot and fast, it's going to get tough, but we can't take it home and cook it for them. So we try to educate all of our customers on the proper ways to to prepare each cut, which is within our processing, they can stand in the butcher shop and watch us go to work. We hang pretty much overnight. We're really looking for that carcass just to get in the green zone there in the 33 to 40 degree internal temp. It comes out of rigor mortis in that amount of time. In the beef packing industry burger, that's kind of what they're targeting as well with the primals. They want to age. I've experimented with aging these and ideally I'd like to go three, four or five days, but taking them two, three weeks on a on a animal that doesn't have a lot of intermuscular tissue.  And the burger is really what keeps people coming back even though the pellet grill has revolutionized the bison cooking because you can maintain that low and slow so easily. So we are sending a lot of primal cuts home with our clients as well now. We paper wrap all boneless cuts, ground product in poly bags, and we flash freeze at minus 20. And so that product is frozen rock solid by the next morning when we load up our our clients and send them on their way. So the whole process from the client pulling into the driveway that I'm sitting in right now, to loading up their meat and out the door is they're here for three nights. So it's less than three days. They come in an afternoon.  We butcher the day after that and we have them on their way and rinse and repeat on to the next one. We try to cut everything within reason to the customer's preference. Sometimes you get people asking you to grind up cuts that would make me cry. But you know, they're the customer. But like I said, we walk them through each cut and provide some recommendations and over the years we're starting to make better chefs out of a lot of them. But it's been going well. We're sold out for the next two years. So the feedback has been good. The customer attention has been good. And like I said, we've we've sort of evolved into this niche market so much as going out and finding it somewhat out of a necessity. But secondary, you're providing somewhat of an experience. But if the product wasn't good, they wouldn't be coming back for 24 animals like my guy in Michigan. So that's sort of the overview. If anyone has any direct questions, you can email me or give me a shout anytime. Awesome. Thank you. With that, we'll open it up to some questions. I got some questions in the chat that I'll ask out loud. Starting with Simone, specifically with Red River Market, what meat species types are sold at the location? Where may there be the open future opportunity? Tunities. Sorry, I worded that kind of weird. That's okay. I got you. Yeah, we have a couple of different beef vendors, lamb vendors, pork and chicken are all recently covered. But we are always looking for new vendors. And, you know, even if you're selling in one of those categories, feel free to submit an application and we'll let you know if we have room for you. We are filling up very quickly. So you can go to our website www.redriver.market. And there's our application and our vendor guidelines on there that'll tell you everything you need to know to be a vendor. And even if we don't have room to accept you this year, we'll have your information and we can let you know when applications come out for the next year. Awesome. Thank you. Our next question is for Ashley. We know that you and Wendell Livestock had the idea to grow your market. What question did you ask to your quarter beef purchasers and customers that help you make the jump to bigger audiences? Yeah, I'm not sure we asked specific questions by any means. It was more just through conversation with friends, family, people in the community, just people who weren't getting a quarter half a hole. Why not? And well, it was a variety of reasons. They didn't have room for it. They didn't have budget for it, different things like that. And then what happened was while we were trying to figure out what Dakota Angus was, Bruner Angus had a couple extra beef. And so we had them processed and retail cut just to test the local market. And we sold out right away. It shocked all of us how fast it happened and what the local response was. And so that was kind of just like the, yep, let's go. People want it. They like this option and the conversation. It just went. And so I don't know that we really asked many questions. It was more so just through conversation. And then we just tested it and kind of proved that, yep, this is what we need to do. Awesome. Thank you. Do we have any other questions? Feel free to join through video, audio, or you can submit it through the chat function. We're pretty flexible here. Well, one question I guess I had for Kelsey was, have you had any challenges specifically with having to process bison? And if somebody's wanting to go down that route, what advice would you give them? I think our biggest challenge has been finding reliable help. We are a seasonal business, like I said, I'm busy from mid-September to mid-December. And there aren't slaughterers and meat cutters growing on trees in Pingree, North Dakota, or even Jamestown for that matter. So finding good help is difficult. Before I moved home, my dad was pretty much enlisting whatever friends he could by offering cases of beer to come over and help when they could. I looked for somebody to sort of run the show in the butcher shop in my early days of coming over and taking over the operation. And we couldn't really find much of anything. So school hard knocks, I learned to butcher myself. A lot of YouTube videos, a lot of trial and error. And I think I'm finally up to where I should be. But labor is absolutely the biggest challenge. I think if someone were looking to develop a business model that's similar to ours, I think probably the biggest challenge right now would be paying for a custom exempt butcher shop. I know I'm we're very fortunate that we did this 15 years ago than then right now with the cost of building anything. And a lot of that was elbow grease we did it ourselves. But, but yeah, just licensing and equipment and you name it is, yeah, it's a whole another ball of wax would be the biggest challenge for us. Finding the clients hasn't been that much of a challenge because in the early days, there were a lot of people offering buys and hunts when they were simply looking to get rid of them. That's sort of gone away with the industry rebounding. So there's not a lot of competition for doing exactly what we do. But not many people have butcher shops right on site. So it's a pretty unique set up. But by all means, by all means, if anyone can get into it, you will get clients because people are looking for this product and they're looking for it in this very particular condition or setting. You got another question for you too. What is the biggest reason that people want to prefer your buys and product for their purchase? Our product versus whatever you're going to find in the store and keep in mind, my clients are coming from all over the country. I get people in North Dakota, I get people from South Dakota, Montana, you know, neighboring states that have a lot of buys in where it's readily available. But a lot of my clients are coming from Florida, Texas, California, New York, a lot of the Midwest. And some of the, you know, boutique cuts of meat on a bison are simply not available wherever they're at. And or even something as common as the bison ribeye might not be available wherever they're at. It's a harder product to get to on each of the coast. But again, I think the biggest differentiation is that the client knows exactly where it came from, that it's 100% all natural. We don't run these things through a shoot. We don't vaccinate. We don't even wean them. They take care of themselves entirely. So we've differentiated ourselves in that, in that way, which in and honestly, we can fetch a premium for our product because of it. And that's that's why the customers keep coming back. Awesome. Thank you. I had a question for Ron and Beth. So I visited your guys's booth before. And if I remember correctly, you gave out sample snack sticks, correct?  And and that's, you know, without having electricity or anything like that, or, you know, within the, I think the rules and regulations, we aren't set up to offer a cooked product. But yes, we and that's kind of, you know, as Simone alluded to before, kind of a door opener to get people in and, you know, I've never had land before and starts a conversation.   And so I have a very good working relationship with the Wendell family, by the way, Ashley, they have a feed processing plant.   And we have customers that ask if we are grass or grain, and we don't fit everybody's wants. But we try to have a consistent product. And a lot of times we'll always ask, especially if they're first timers, come back and let us know what you think. Tell us what you think of our product. And I, you know, and whether they're afraid if they don't like it, they don't come back. But I guess most of the people come back and they're pretty positive and want to try something else. And so we try to have a consistent product. And by that, we stay consistent with our feed program because I think feed is an influence or grain is to the flavor of the meat. And by offering a young product in our case, I think it's more of a mild flavor because yeah, an older, I'll just say an older sheep, they get a little stronger taste. And so we try to market a young, young animal that, you know, at market weight at 150, 60 pounds that has a mild flavor, but it's still different. And so yeah, I think that's what it is. It's consistency, I think. And I would agree with that. But I do think that Ron sells himself short because I truly believe a lot of the relationship building that we have done over the years is because of the way this man can talk. He can carry on a conversation with people and he educates them about our product and about how we do things. And I think that has a lot to do with it also. I think that if you're going to be in a farmer's market type situation, you have to be able to sell it. You have to be able to, you know, smile and talk to the crowd, ask them how their day's going, things like that.  Or if you catch somebody's eye and you say, hi, how are you doing?  People love to talk about their dogs. People love to talk about their kids. And then we just start talking about our product from there. And I think that that has a lot to do with it as well. No, that makes perfect sense. I mean, building that communication, that's one of the benefits of doing this local marketing is you put a name to the face of animal agriculture. We have a question for Ashley. You said that since you are USDA inspected, it can be sold and delivered across 48 states. What have you learned on the expanded audience in online sales? Well, I'll say I'm still learning. And what I mean by that is how to get it there, right? Our products are all frozen. And so the challenge being how do I get that beef order to Washington State or Arizona or wherever it's going? I've just learned to experiment with different packaging. And we primarily just use ice packs and packaging for right now. There's a few that I'm still working with trying to fine tune how to best do that. Luckily, we started shipping during the winter months. So the pressure wasn't on too tight. The summer will pose another challenge. I think that shipping initially was scary. It took me a while to pull the trigger on that. But I found a couple partners that have just worked great. We use speedy delivery service for the region. And I tell you what, if you're considering shipping hands down, I'd recommend them. They have been great to work with. They stop here every Monday for pickup. They only service, I think it's like eight, nine states, eight or nine states. But they've been wonderful to work with. And one day, two day, three day maximum shipping it's been. I also picked up using FedEx. And once the biggest challenge there was how to do it economically, right? Because I don't want to make our customers pay $150 to ship them for steaks. And I'm also not going to increase the cost of my or the price of my steaks to make up for the price of shipping. I feel like some of those bigger name brand beef companies that are meat companies that do that, you're paying $200 for four steaks. Well, that's because of the cost of shipping. They say it's free shipping, but that's built into the cost of their product. And so I'm not going to have two different prices for my beef products, one for those that get shipped and then offer free shipping. So there's kind of a balance. But once I became a partner with the two shipping companies, I was actually had access to better shipping rates. And so if you haven't looked into it, but you're interested, definitely do because it's worth it. And yeah, I mean, it's been really good. I can't say we've done a ton of shipping, but it's been enough and our customers have appreciated it. And it's been fun, fun learning. And so it's just an added bonus for us. We've been asked a lot, can you ship? And I know there's a lot that just say no, but we thought it was valuable enough to be able to reach our customers across the country. And so we're able to do that. So far, it's been a good experience. Awesome. Thank you. Is there any final questions from the audience? Well, seeing none, I guess we'll wrap it up for the evening. It's been a joy having all four of our panelists tonight. I'll let you guys go through and say some final comments and thoughts that you might have. We'll start with Simone. Yeah, if you ever have any questions or, you know, want to reach out about what it's like to be a vendor at the market, feel free to shoot us a message on our website. All right, we'll move on to Ron and Beth. Well, one thing, you know, I'll say in niche market or whatever, it's opened a couple of doors that we didn't expect. Just because of the traffic flowing, the proximity of where we're at, I think we mentioned either this time or the last time that we do sell product to a couple of restaurants in Fargo. It was mainly because of the contact of the owners walking through and seeing our product and wanting to try locally and has built some relationships, you know, that is very handy to us and, you know, open doors and conversations and one led to another. And we do have restaurants that, you know, because of the location of it, that come by and we've offered and sold some product to them. Our biggest challenge is which our other guests probably offer is they have product here around and we can't provide that on a large scale and really don't want to because, like Beth said, we have other things going on in our lives called full-time jobs and whatnot, but this does give us an opportunity to get our product out to a lot of people. And so, explore that. Don't be afraid to try different things. The shipping scares the H out of me. People always ask and the challenge is, yeah, economically and whatnot, how do you do it? And you might get a phone call from us one day because it sounds like you've got to figure it out. Awesome. Move on to Kelsey. Yeah, just, it's been mentioned a couple of times in here. If you're starting a new venture, be very consistent with your message and your image. Having a good logo color scheme and just a steady message. I try not doing too much. I try to stay in my lane. I try to do one thing and my hope is to do it better than anyone else. And if you kind of stick to that mantra, as I always tell my wife, I try not to half-ass a whole bunch of things. I try to whole-ass one thing and I think that's a good mantra to live by. Awesome. That sounds like great advice to me. And finally, get some final comments from Ashley. Yeah, I like everything that everybody shared so far. I guess I would just say don't be afraid to try something. I mean, we've hit a lot of bumps and hiccups and have learned a ton in the time that we've been doing what we're doing, but we're also a group of people that aren't afraid to try new things and have big ideas. Don't be afraid of pursuing the big idea. It might work, it might not, but it might, and if it does, then awesome. Set goals and shoot for them and you just never know what you're going to find along the way. Awesome. Thank you. That concludes our webinar for the evening. We will join us next week for the webinar over retail inventory management. We have a good group of guests again next week and we look forward to everybody joining us.


NEMO informs that the psychosocial support for persons who are affected by the November 6th trough continues. Services are available at the Wendler Centers in the North and at the current school Mondays to Fridays from 4pm to 7pm and on Saturdays from 9am to 2pm. We encourage persons to make use of these services.


Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another episode of the Sit Rep. And I am here with Sam, also known as TF Collector on YouTube. Sam, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing fantastic, actually really excited we're finally doing this. Excellent. Now, Sam, of course I've sent you the questions and how this works is I have five questions for you as a transformer collector and five questions for you as a YouTuber. So you ready to rock and roll? Absolutely. Excellent. Question number one, sir. What is the appeal of transformers for you? Mainly, I would say from a toy perspective, it's the engineering. I'm kind of an engineering buff. So I really love just getting a new transformer, seeing how it all comes together, making sure it feels satisfying to transform this thing. I love it when they include clever little new tricks to make things work. And then I guess from a fiction perspective, I just, the little boy inside of me just always loves that whole robots fighting each other, the sci-fi aspect of it.  Right? Do I say? All right. Question number two, aside from G1, which is always the right answer, what is your favorite transformer's fiction? I think there's only one real answer, only one thing it could be, and that would have to be transformers energy on. I'm kidding. I was going to say, all right, where's he going with this one? Yeah, I was just kidding. For me, it's a little split again. If we're talking cartoons, Beast Wars is my favorite. It's what I grew up with. I think it's one of the best made shows that they have. I figured on the comics route, probably the IDW comics, just because they're the most fleshed out transformers continuity that we have in writing so far. I've never followed any of the later IDW, but I've got a lot of their first works, and I love how they just took everything we know and flipped it around. Prime example, Galvatron is a different entity than Megatron. I thought that was pretty cool. I hated what they did with Cyclonus. I hate Cyclonus' design from IDW with that jack-o'-lantern-looking, facey-ass. Yeah. That's simply not for everybody. They definitely lost a lot of people, I think, in the second half or what they considered season two, just because it departed so radically from what people think of it as G1. But if that fact doesn't bother you, if you can get past that, I think overall it's really good. I didn't agree with every single direction that they took, especially when they very radically changed characters' personalities. The fact that toward the very end, during the Unicron arc, they just butchered Beast Wars.  And that bug me, as a huge Beast Wars fan, I was like, you have to kid me, that's all we get. I'm trying to think of the series, I think it was the second series of Last Stand of the Records, where it was Tarantulas, or somehow they incorporated Beast Wars in a weird way. And it was this weird scene out of Aliens, where Tarantulas busted out of, hell, I can't remember his name, he was the big tank guy. But I remember reading this going, what is this? Yeah, it was pretty crazy. I like that, I like that they did the three records books, they're all pretty good, kind of went real dark with the Transformers lore there, but that's fine, I'm okay with dark stories. Yeah, I love it, I love it. All right, sir, number three, do you have a favorite figure or grail, one toy that you will never get rid of? Say you have to sell your whole collection, this one's not going anywhere. So, I don't have a favorite figure, because there's so many, I couldn't really pick one, but as far as a grail, I think definitely the Beast Wars Megatron, that was from the final Botcon back in 2016. That was kind of just the final Hurrah that they had for Botcon. It was the centerpiece figure, it was one that people had actually been waiting on for some years when they released a concept for it. And years later, they actually made this thing and it's gorgeous. Actually, I wanted to have it to show on the screen, but unfortunately it's packed away, it's all in bubble wrap right now. But it's just, it's a really cool toy. I'll have to write down this time stamp that way, I will Google it, because I'm trying to remember what that looks like. Okay. And I'll put that on here too. All right. It's basically, it's RID Megatron, like 2001 RID with Beast Wars Megatron's head and it's something like this really cool red and gold color scheme. So it's a gorgeous toy. The head sculpt is fantastic. They really nailed it. But to me, you know, because it was the final Botcon, it was the rarest figure I think, like not many people got one. They didn't sell it on the store afterwards as far as I know. And yeah, it's Beast Wars, so Beast Wars is great. Love my Beast Wars. I used to have, I had every Predacon when I really got into G1. I sold off all my Beast Wars except for all my Megatrons. I've got the Gator Megatron, the Purple Dinosaur, the Transmetal and the Dragon. Love the Dragon. I think I've only transformed it once. Fine. Yeah, this looks great. Actually the other ones. I definitely got to look at one up. All right. Now, we've discussed your favorite. Which figure is your white whale? This is the one you're hunting for the most. If you could get this figure, you could be done with collecting. Can I cheat and name like a group of figures, like a box set? Yeah, like I said before, this is my show. I'll make up the rules. Okay. It's going to be actually fairly similar. The 2006 Botcon figures, which was the first time they did Beast Wars. I was actually, it was going to be the first one I ever went to. I had saved up for it. I was finally going to a Botcon. And then, you know, I found out it was Beast Wars, so I was stoked. And then car breaks down, all that money I saved up went to fixing that, never ended up going. And now those things, like they're just a grail universally. I mean to buy like the main box set, cheapest I've seen it for lately is $1,200. Wow. And then you got the main box set, plus you have like the Megatron and Waspinator and some other random figures. And they're all really expensive. They made very few of them. But I've been wanting them for years. And, you know, honestly, if I could gather those up, because they're primarily the main cast from the opening episode of Beast Wars, just in mechanical alt modes, I'd be happy. I could just put those on a shelf and walk away. I feel pretty good. Is that the one where Megatron is the re-tool of Cybertron Red Alert has that giant missile? Yes. Okay. I know the ones you're talking about. I think they did that. Yeah. Optimus is a crumple zone. He ends up looking really good like that. He's got the shoulder cannons. I've seen those. I know exactly what you're talking about with this one. Cool. All right. Number five, and this is our last transformer question. What is your favorite Transformers character? Any media? Any fiction? All right. I'm going to be really repetitive, but I think I got to give it to Beast Wars Megatron again. I just, I love his charisma. I love the commanding presence he has. I love David Kaye's portrayal of him. I geeked out really hard when I went to the Baccon and David Kaye was there and he started doing his Megatron voice during the script reading. I just, I don't know. I've never, I mean, there are all these different colorful Transformers characters out there. They have these very distinct personalities, but I feel like he's just commanded a presence that like no one else ever has. You know, certain men have a toss like everything that he says. And he was so cunning. I just, I love it. He was so different than the G1 Megatron. I've always been a big Megatron fan coming from a guy called Patriot Prime, but yeah, Beast Wars Megatron, that was my favorite character too.  I mean, I just love it. Yeah.  Basically G1 Megatron given more depth, like a little more competent than like the cartoon guy where his plans get foiled easily.  Like this guy won a lot of his battles. He was really very cunning, also very charismatic. So I would have, it'd be between those two. Yeah. That was a good one. I didn't like that at first. I hated his Bay-ish looking design where he looked like a monster. But the more I watched that show, yeah, that was awesome, especially the ending of that when Bumblebee got him. That was so cool. I'm not, no spoilers, no spoilers. All right. Spoilers. All right. Now these are the YouTube questions I have for you. I was watching some of your reviews, really bigot. What possessed you, a grown-ass man to do toy reviews on YouTube? Primarily just not having anyone to talk to in my real life. I wasn't fortunate enough to run into like native bodies that cared about this at all. My wife having to sit down and listen to me talk about Transformers like a form of torture for her. She's just not interested. Like she knows it's my thing. She's okay with the hobby for the most part. So maybe they had a cost. But she's just, she's not interested. It's very rare that I'll tell her something and she wants to hear anything that I have to say on it. So that was the main motivator. There's like, well, if I can't find a local audience, I'll just make a captive audience on the internet. So, you know, people just tune in and listen to me talk about plastic robots for 20, 30 minutes at a time. So it's kind of a way, I don't know, kind of a way to like document your collection. Some way to kind of have a time to say. Yeah, yeah. I did, I used to take pictures. I'd made like some dinky website where I did like photo galleries, but that's defunct now it's gone. Is it just between time investment and everything and the fact that they want to charge me like 120 bucks a year for the website. Yeah, forget that. And move the way. Yeah. But that's really just to have a community and people will talk to about it. So that's it. And it's amazing how, of course, this will lead into another question later on, how tight-knit this YouTube community is. I've only been doing this for just over a year and the people I've met and the friends I've made doing this blows my mind because I'm like you. I live in the rural West Virginia. There is nobody around here that's into this. I'm talking to them. They're bored out of their minds. So I feel you on that. All right. Question number seven. What keeps inspiring you to get in front of the camera? The biggest thing I think are just the comments that people leave, the engagement.  I love when people tell me I did something wrong. I mean, I hate myself for it, but I like when they point that out because they're always, they're cool about it. Like I just, some guy was telling me my seed Starscream review. There was a panel that I had no idea it was for. The instructions make it look like it's useless. And he's like, oh no, actually that plugs into his shoulder ornaments and holds them in place.  Kind of want to delete the whole thing and start over. But yeah, people are really cool when they do make the corrections.  Which actually, it kind of scares me because I've never, I've been doing this on like a year and a half now and I've never received a negative comment. Which can't mean that I'm amazing. It just means I don't know what I'm doing wrong. You know, like nobody's ever tells me what's bad about my videos. Scares me a little bit because I'm just going to keep making mistakes till I do.  I love looking at this toy and then they want to talk about the toy. So that's a way of kind of getting that community feeling. That really keeps me going because sometimes you get demotivated. There have been a few times where I'm like, you know, is this worth my time? Because it's incredibly time consuming. Yeah, a lot of people don't understand.  It's a 10 minute video. That 10 minute video can take anywhere from three hours to two days. So it's a lot of work into it. And mine's all with the editing because I like to put those little histories of the figures. I'm looking for pictures and research and make sure, like you said, I don't want to get it wrong because they will call me out on it. Yeah. All right. Here we go. Question number eight. There are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you different than the rest? Okay. I didn't think about that one a bit. I don't know, particularly unique, but I guess the things that are, you know, kind of comprise the channel. All my reviews are done off the cuff. I don't pre-record my lines or anything. I'll read from a script on the reviews because I feel like it just kind of injects more of my personality into it. I have, you know, I've tried reading off of scripts and I just have a hard time not sounding too robotic, sounding too, I guess, detached from the review itself. So I do like to do that. It does leave a lot of jump cuts where I, like, lose my words. And if I didn't edit these videos, as much as I do, you would see a lot of points where I'm just holding the figure for, like, 10 seconds saying nothing because I kind of remember what I was going to say. I was, like, seen out here. You've done it so many times. Oh, yeah. And you're trying to be really still because I've got to pick up right where I stopped. Exactly. You want to, like, try to not make it really obvious that it's a jump cut, but sometimes it can't be helped. I've likely used the blur fade. So it'll be this, I'll screw up, so I'll have this light blur that kind of comes in like, oh, he's shifting to something else. I'll have to take that on board. I might use that. And then I guess maybe the other thing is just the fact that it's not solely a review channel. That's what it largely turns into just because reviews, believe it or not, are the least time-consuming videos to make. And when my time is limited where it's pretty much, I get home at, like, 7 p.m. Probably don't start until, like, 10 at night. I don't have a whole lot of time before I got to be back up for work. But I also do, like, discussion videos. I've done a few, you know, beast wars, combiner, stuff like that, which they seem like they're not that big a deal, but they actually take forever to make because those actually do script. So I have to come up with the script. I have to record the script, and then I have to come up with, like, a bunch of different images. And it's just, my God, I'll work on one of those for days. And it's a shame because I like making those. Those are probably my favorite types of videos to make, but because they're so time-consuming, I usually just end up defaulting to reviews. So I'm trying to keep it expanded, try new things. I have a few different things planned for this year if I can get around to them. But I think it's just the fact that it is more than just a review channel. I think maybe it's what sets apart for most others. Excellent. And that's something I try to do too, is just branch out.  Because I dabbled in movie reviews, and I don't think I'm going to do that anymore. Yeah, I'm still debating, like, if I'm ever going to, like, just jump the shark and talk about something not Transformers, and then just watch my subscriber base just cut itself in half. Yeah, I'm making like a Zelda video. They're like, oh, whatever. That's where your playlists come in, or you'll make the announcement, hey, we'll try something different, but I'm still going to be doing this.  I have a couple other nerd passions. Excellent. Yeah, I got Star Wars there behind me too. So, every now and then I'll throw that in, and big Marvel fanboys as well. Okay. We touched on this lightly, but question number nine is what's your thoughts on the Transformers social community, i.e. YouTube, Facebook, and do you have any special shout-outs? Okay. So, as far as the community, where I have the most engagement, aside from my comments section, are actually like the websites, you know, the sabertron.com, T-formers, TF World 2005, because they have their forums. They're a very passionate community, for better or for worse.  And everyone's like, oh, this is the best thing ever. Everyone else is like, oh, my God, my life is ruined.  And then they just start screaming at each other back and forth. And some people hate that.  I love it. I want to say back to some popcorn, just watch the fur fly a little bit. Sometimes I'll just say something in there, you know, like when the we insert a little comment and then just watch everyone to start going at each other just for fun. That was crazy.  Let's see this made up language and just, yeah, it was funny. Just get everyone gets real mad at each other. And it's funny because at the end of the day, we're fighting over plastic robots, which is the great part. But so, yeah, I mean, they are very passionate and they have a very diverse set of, you know, opinions and beliefs, you know, politically, sociologically. As far as shout outs, there, I don't know a whole lot of people on here haven't, you know, got to, there's one guy, his name is T.F. Fangig. He's a very, very quiet guy. Sounds very shy, but he just does, he does a lot of really just different random videos. It's not like review channel or anything. He just talks about Transformers and, you know, does all sorts of different segments. So he's a really nice guy. And then the other one you probably heard of, I didn't mean to interrupt, but T.F. Fangig has been commenting on my videos since day one. He is, he'll make it a point. You're always ready for him to comment. Yeah, he is a very nice guy. So I've watched some of his stuff.  Yeah. And how awesome and amazing your review is. Yeah, that's the guy. He's just an incredibly nice guy. And then the other one you probably heard of, Rodimus Primal. Yes. He does a lot of those like long form, like essay type things. Actually, I met him. I ran into him when they did the screening of the Transformers, the movie. Like the 86 one. We just happened to be in the same movie theater.  So of course I had to like say something after the movie like, Hey, I'm a big fan. Like I really like your stuff. And he, you know, came out and he talked to me for a bit.  I was kind of, I was kind of annoyed with those people because I want to keep talking to him and then just kind of hijacked. So just see me standing there like looking around. But he, he was really cool too. So I mean, if, you know, if your viewers don't already know who he is, they should definitely look him up because he has a lot of well researched stuff. I like his, his videos. Excellent. All right. Last question. Do you have any channel goals for yourself and where can our viewers find you? This is your time to plug yourself. I'm sending my people to check you out. Okay. Channel goal. So my channel has, it's been growing since I started it, but it's been a very slow burn. Currently sitting that like little 50. Very, very slow burn. So I want to set a goal for myself. Hit a thousand by the end of the year. And I'm not really, you know, based on trends, not tracking to it, but I figure you might as well set your goals high, right?  You know, and just, just I want to see that growth because I do want more people to see the videos. I want to be able to share with more people because in your comments section, there'll be a lot bigger is more engagement. So that's, that's definitely something I'm looking forward to is hitting that thousand mark. As far as where to find me, obviously I'm on YouTube as TF Collector. The three websites that I mentioned earlier, the sabertron.com, T-formers, TFW 2005. I'm on there as Lorekeeper is my handle. So you'll see me. I posted my reviews up there too. On Instagram as the TF Collector Net, I think, because TF Collector was apparently taken. I can demand to have my TF Collector. Yeah, I know. But Facebook is just TF Collector. Where else? Twitter, I'm on there. It's like TFMR Collector because TF Collector was also taken. I feel like I'm missing something, but those are the main ones. I'm kind of lurking everywhere a little bit. I'm like one whole Twitter follower.  I get on there and I just I don't like it. I just go on there to post the links to the videos. And it went a really long time without any single person following me. And I find I like one guy. So I'm getting there, moving up in the world. I do like Instagram. I have an Instagram account too. I keep forgetting to plug in my videos, but I like taking pictures too.  I have to laugh because I have family members that will see pictures of like my son. So they're signing up for my Instagram and then they're sending me messages like, why are you taking so many toy pictures? I was like, well, that's why it's not my name. It's Patriot Prime Reviews. It's not me. And I'm going to do a shout out for you as well. We got to give our boy Tatumus Prime props because he's the one that sent me your way. So I think he really digs your video. Oh, is that what that is? I just saw his regular name on the okay, that's Tatumus Prime. That's Tatumus Prime. Okay, very cool off to thank him for that. He sent me a message one time. He said, I want you to check this guy out. And I think it was the first video of yours that I discovered in the comments section was him saying, this is the guy you need to contact me. And I was like, I'll get him. I'll track you down. Well, that's awesome. I definitely got to thank him for that. Excellent. And there's your shout out, Tandy. It's like, we've come full circle with this thing. He's the one that helped me start this. I bounced the ideas off of him for like two months. He, my first sit rep was with him and what started out as a practice round went so good. I was like, oh, hell, I'll just post it. All right. That's great thing about experimenting.  All right, Sam. Well, I really appreciate you talking with me tonight. Sam, of course, TF Collector. I am going to put a link to his YouTube channel in the descriptions of this video and at the very end where you see Optimus Prime carrying that flag, I'll have links to his videos as well. Once again, guys, if you like what you see, hit that like button and don't forget to subscribe. I try to do sit reps at least twice a week now, uploading on Mondays and Fridays. This is Patriot Prime, signing out. Bye.


From DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com, I'm Darren Marlar and this is your Daily Dose of Weird News. This episode is brought to you by the audiobook Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey – a collection of creepy, often-downright-chilling true experiences of the strange and weird that'll keep you looking over your shoulder. Here are free sample and support Marlar House by downloading the audiobook for yourself at DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com. The R2-D2 unit sold at an auction last week for $2.76 million. The 43-inch-tall unit, which was made from parts used on-screen throughout the original trilogy, was the most expensive piece of memorabilia at the auction. There's no information on who purchased the item, but witnesses said he won the auction by telling the other bidders, �This is not the droid you're looking for.� 11,000 people are taken to the emergency room every year because of fireworks. Well, most of the 11,000 people. Some of their parts are left behind.  Nobody does. No pre-night-out selfies, no pictures of cocktails, and definitely no sappy posts referring to your travel companion as �this one.� In fact, in a new study by Aviva, 73% of people said they hate seeing other people's vacation pics online, and the most unpopular pose of all is taking a picture of your legs on the beach and asking, �Hot dogs or legs?� Nevertheless, the research also found that 77% of us will post vacation pics on Facebook anyway, and of those who do, one in five admit they do it to show off where they are, and one in ten admit they do it just to make others jealous back home. So in other words, people who post vacation photos are not your friends. At one of her concerts last week, Adele broke her own personal record by dropping a total of 44 F-bombs. It's good to have goals in life, I guess. This strange story is from Cicero, Illinois, and began when 30-year-old home repair man Wilfred Gonzalez-Cruz was doing some remodeling work at a residence. At some point, he asked to use the bathroom, after which the female homeowner noticed her diamond ring was missing. The woman told her husband, who then confronted Gonzalez-Cruz, a tussle broke out between the two, and at some point, the repairman allegedly popped the ring in his mouth and swallowed it. Well, fast-forward to the police taking the guy to be x-rayed, which clearly showed the ring sitting in his stomach. So the police put him in a rubber room and gave him laxatives to force the expulsion of the ring. Well, without going into detail, Cicero spokesman Ray Hanania said police finally recovered the ring two days later. Gonzalez-Cruz was charged with felony theft and no word on what the victim plans on doing with the ring at this point. Although I would suggest a really good steam cleaning. Six months after leaving Fox News, Greta Van Susteren has suddenly announced she's leaving MSNBC. Turns out, she likes reporting to actual viewers after all. 57-year-old Alfred Zotpelt has been working at the famous Belvedere Museum, a castle in Vienna that houses a major art collection for the last 23 years.  Well surprised, Zotpelt said his adherence to urine therapy was previously never a problem. But his notice from Belvedere says he was fired because, quote, you regularly rub urine into your skin, particularly the face and hands.  Believers in urine therapy claim all kinds of medical and cosmetic benefits, but those have not been proven. Plus, ew! Trader Joe's is selling out of canned wine that goes for $3.99. I can hear it at a restaurant now. Would you care to smell the lid? Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey are all having some serious financial troubles right now. In fact, Illinois has suspended their state lottery. How irresponsible do you have to be as a state to lose money with the lottery? People are giving you money, and you only reward a small portion of that money to the winners. How are you losing money on that? In Gainesville, Florida, a 36-year-old woman managed to lose three fingers after she tried to wake up her boyfriend with fireworks. Yep, fireworks. The woman and her boyfriend told police they had been drinking before the incident, no surprise, at their apartment. The woman said she was holding a fireworks novelty item in her hand when she lit the fuse. She had been planning to toss the device out the front door, thinking it would make enough noise to wake her boyfriend.  Ouch! The blast was so powerful, in fact, that police said they found one bone remnant embedded in the ceiling. You know, next time you might want to just try an alarm clock. A Georgia woman is suing Emory University Hospital after she underwent surgery and later discovered doctors had accidentally left a camera inside of her.  Police in Fremont, California are on the hunt for a man who broke into a cell phone repair store. The robbery must have been spur of the moment. Security video showed the man robbing the store with a shirt wrapped around his face and socks on his hands. And yeah, that sounds stupid, but catch the beginning of the story again. Police are on the hunt for a man. Meaning, they've not yet caught this guy. Someone is buying staples for $6.9 billion. Wow! How much do you think they had to pay for the stapler? In Brookfield, Wisconsin, a 26-year-old man's pizza order went awry when he mistakenly submitted an online order for carryout rather than delivery. While he realized the mistake about an hour later and called topper's pizza to have it delivered, but he flew into a rage when his food arrived cold and after airing his grievances in a phone call, he actually drove down to the store and began hurling the pizza, breadsticks, and a few obscenities at topper's employees. He later admitted to police that he threw the food and added that he made a mistake and didn't want to hurt anybody. Hey, you know, if you'd just driven to the store in the first place, you'd have had hot pizza and breadsticks, buddy. Arkansas's new Ten Commandments statue was run over by a car and destroyed less than 24 hours after it was erected. You know, I've got to think of it, it took Moses a couple of times, too. The body of a woman was found in an Oklahoma Walmart. The door had been locked for days and everyone just assumed it was out of order. Alright, I can understand the shoppers thinking that, but what about the Walmart employees? Are you telling me nobody ever checks or cleans the restrooms in a Walmart? In Germany, a man's friend called police because his buddy's drunkenness had rendered him incapable of sitting up.  By 0.4%, most people would be unconscious, and 0.5% or more often results in death. The guy was taken to the hospital and amazingly was released later that evening after a few hours of observation and a chance to sober up. Despite more than half of 1% of his blood being alcohol, the 49-year-old man was still able to function, somewhat, because his body was apparently used to the effects of alcohol. One more amazing is that he still didn't even come close to setting a new German record. That dubious honor rests with a 44-year-old man from Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania who was arrested in 2008 with a blood alcohol level of 0.77, more than 15 times the legal driving limit. A proposed bill in the Philippines would send people to jail for not singing along enthusiastically with a national anthem. So, I guess we know where Colin Kaepernick will not be spending his summer vacation? It would appear the less desirable elements of society simply have no appreciation for the finer points of culture, in particular, classical music. In Columbus, Ohio, shoppers and employees of the United Dairy Farmers Convenience Store say they have considerably fewer people hanging around, hassling and panhandling from customers since the business started blaring classical music. Shopper Ali Beck says the classical music is so loud she can hear it all the way down the street, but she says it's still an improvement over all the people who used to ask for change or bother passers-by outside the store. Instead of beggars asking for money to buy a fifth, they're now treated to Beethoven's Fifth. Disney World's Hall of Presidents, which has been closed since January in order to add a new President Trump robot, has reportedly pushed its reopening to the fall. They're having problems with the new Trump robot because it keeps pausing its speaking in order to tweet. Michelle Rodriguez has appeared in five of the eight Fast and Furious films, but says she could be done with the franchise if changes are not made. She wants bigger roles for women. Translation, she wants bigger roles for Michelle Rodriguez. It's been five years since the finale. Now it appears that a Jersey Shore reunion is in the works, followed shortly thereafter by the moon turning red and the waters turning to blood. Pandora is shutting down in Australia, but then men at work haven't come out with a new album in decades, so it's no great loss. Homeless Shelters in Chicago will start serving Starbucks coffee with meals, so now the homeless might drink better coffee than you, and they don't have to pay for it. A jewelry store thief in India picked the wrong target, his demand to hand over a display case of diamonds was met with the gun of the shop's owner. And since the shop's owner is also a police captain, the robber was immediately placed under arrest. He even patrols the streets in India. Wow, Officer Karma really gets around. The family of a pair of miniature snauzers were distraught when the dogs disappeared in thick fog while on a walk. They thought they would never see Charlie and Theo again. Their owners launched a rescue operation, and more than 120 people showed up to help find Charlie and Theo. After 96 hours of searching, as a last resort, the family decided to cook sausages at the spot where the dogs were last seen. A short time later, Charlie and Theo appeared. Okay, I'm happy for the family, but how on earth do you get 120 people to search for just two dogs? You can't get that many to search for a missing child in the forest, but you can get that for a couple of snauzers? Taco Bell is launching $600 Las Vegas weddings, which include tacos, hot sauce and Cinnabon desserts. Nothing says I love you or I want out, more than that. If you're going to try and stiff your cab driver after a long trip, best not to have him drop you off right in front of your home. In a home on Louisiana, Nicholas Pinell took a cab from the New Orleans French Quarter to his apartment, racking up a $250 fare, but he allegedly jumped from the taxi without paying when he reached his destination. He ran into his apartment and did not answer when sheriff's deputies tried to locate him, so other occupants let the deputies in and they found him. He later told deputies that he knew he would be unable to pay before engaging the cab in New Orleans. See, here it is, one more reason it's a good idea to stay on friendly terms with your neighbors. Never miss a single episode of The Daily Dose of Weird News, download the free Marlar House mobile app. In the app, you can find links to my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, watch other Marlar House YouTube videos, sign up for the Marlar Sheet newsletter to automatically be registered for giveaways, purchase Daily Dose of Weird News t-shirts or mugs, download audiobooks I've narrated, see my latest blog posts, and more. The Marlar House mobile app is free for iOS and Android users. Download it now by clicking the mobile app tab at DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com or search for Marlar House in your phone app store. Michael Phelps will be racing a great white shark on July 23 as part of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. You know, someone might want to do that mandatory drug test now, let me just make sure Michael was sober when he made this decision. A North Carolina man allegedly kidnapped an area family recently and forced them to shop at Target. Well, he would have taken them to Walmart, but he was afraid he might be taken out by falling prices. Republican Senator Ben Sassy, who is no fan of the band Nickelback, reports that someone has been signing him up for Nickelback promotional emails. Okay, I don't care, but that is funny. The Disney ride Pirates of the Caribbean will no longer include the Wench auction. Apparently, most pirates prefer eBay nowadays. President Trump is heading back overseas for the G20 summit in Germany. His trip will include his first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin to take place on Friday. At least he claims it's his first face-to-face meeting. Back in 2013, he told David Letterman that he had met Vladimir personally, but now he says he has never met Putin.  He's actually set it up, so no matter how we report this, it's fake news. This just sounds completely ludicrous. Doctors say people should use sunscreen when using cell phones and computers to avoid blue light radiation. That's right, sunscreen to use your smartphone. On the flip side, does that mean that you can watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on your phone and get a tan? Japan has announced a plan to land a man on the moon by the year 2030. They would have done it sooner, but they keep having to rebuild the space program every couple of years after being attacked by a giant lizard. Jared Carmichael is reportedly leaving NBC's The Carmichael Show after the third season. So now, network execs are scrambling to find somebody else named Carmichael so they can keep the same stationary. New research shows humans didn't develop arthritis until they started moving from Africa to other areas. Experts believe it is developed as a result of traveling around the world lugging heavy suitcases. Police in Michigan are on the lookout for a bald man who is stealing Rogaine. I don't think we have to worry about the resale value of Rogaine on the black market in this case. 12 Greyhounds tested positive for cocaine at a Florida dog track. You know, sports are stressful.  Adele cancelled her last two shows at Wembley Stadium because of vocal problems. She was hinting this may have been her last tour ever. Well, maybe your voice would have lasted longer if you hadn't spent so much energy dropping f-bombs. Following an interview by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones with activist and alleged former CIA clan-destined services case officer Robert David Steele, NASA was forced over the holiday weekend to announce that it is not running a child slave colony on Mars. And thank goodness that story is not true. Man, I was worried about poor little Martian children there for a second. Damon Wayans set off some Twitter fireworks on the 4th of July, calling the day, quote, Happy White People Proud of Their Racist Ancestors Day, unquote. Well, you know, that will help me remember which of the Wayans is not the funny one. Don't skip breakfast. Double up on it. Download a protein shake an hour after your morning meal, and that could help cut your cravings, according to a study in the journal Appetite. Active men who chugged Way protein saw their hunger subside immediately by as much as 65%, and the volume of the shake didn't matter. Those who consumed 20, 40, 60, or 80 grams, they all ate the same number of calories at lunch. So apparently JRR Tolkien had it right when it came to the hobbits. First there's breakfast, and then there's second breakfast. Kathy Griffin was recently interviewed by the Secret Service for over an hour. It would have been only a five-minute meeting, but Kathy couldn't stop telling jokes to the only captive audience she's had in weeks. The manhunt for an escaped prisoner in Germany was brief. The search began when Wardens went to check in on an inmate after he failed to show up for breakfast only to find the bars of his cell window were sawed off and he was gone. The prisoner was found hiding in the prison's attic. So now, isn't this how you ended up in prison to begin with, buddy? You didn't think things through. Harold Hager was born on May 17, 1917. During his life, Harold served in the Navy during World War II. Afterward, he spent the next 37 years working at Cumming Glass Works. After his wife passed away in 2010, he couldn't just sit around, so he volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Western New York State. In there, he does everything from sorting screws to testing light fixtures, and for the second year in a row, Harold volunteered more hours than anyone in the organization at a hundred years old. Yes, suddenly, I am not feeling all that prideful about putting my shopping cart back correctly. A naked female motorist led Michigan cops on a 25-mile chase over the weekend. The 48-year-old woman, who is from Georgia, topped speeds of 100 miles an hour as she weaved in and out of traffic on I-75. State troopers ultimately forced the woman's vehicle into a utility pole and a ditch to get her to stop. On the plus side, Guinness World Records just verified she is now the fastest streaker in the world. Police in Minnesota had got the word out Tuesday, don't stop and take selfies with dead bears on the side of the road. The safety reminder was necessary after a dead black bear was lying on the side of a state highway and the authorities received multiple calls of cars stopping along the side of the road to take pictures with the carcass.  You deserve to be hit by a passing car or attacked by a zombie bear. The British parliament has relaxed its dress code, making neckties now only optional. The theory is that if a fight breaks out, there will be fewer things that the politicians can use to choke their opponents. A 13-year-old girl told police that her 12-year-old schoolmate first asked her for a chicken McNugget while inside McDonald's in New York City's Harlem neighborhood recently. When she declined, the boy allegedly followed her to a subway station, whipped out a gun and held it to her head. Even at gunpoint, the teen refused to hand over even one chicken McNugget. The NYPD told the Daily News she knocked the gun away from the boy and told him to leave her alone. Police did not recover the gun, but numerous witnesses did report seeing it. The boy was charged as a juvenile with attempted robbery and will be prosecuted in family court.  Refusing to give up a chicken McNugget with a gun held to your head? If it was a McDonald's French fry, I could see that but a McNugget? A woman in China was extremely distraught. So distraught, she threatened to jump off a building. She was distraught because she had exceeded her monthly smartphone data limit. Fortunately, she didn't jump. She went over her data limit because she had been watching soap operas on her phone which ate up the data. If anybody on this planet is in need of an intervention, it is this woman. A recent study by Microsoft revealed that the average person's attention span in this wild world of technology and social media is down to eight seconds. A recent study by Microsoft revealed that the average person's attention span in this wild world of technology and social media is down to eight seconds. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up, and be sure to subscribe if you want to see more. And click that little bell icon next to the subscribe button to be notified when I post new videos. And if you're already an official weirdo, please share this video on your own social media – Facebook, Twitter, Reddit – and help spread the weird news. Find even more weird news that I didn't have time for on the Facebook page at DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com. I'm Darren Marlar, and I'll see you next time, weirdos.


The study aims to improve the performance of jute-epixy composite by introducing a new treating method using sodium hydroxide solution on alkali-treated jute fabric, and evaluating its mechanical and physical properties. This article was authored by Paul Femme Capitel.