So thrilled to have you back here. Another episode of the nonprofit show. Today, Julie and I are thrilled to have John DeLane in the hot seat. John serves as the CEO of DeLane Marketing Group and is here to share about reflecting values in fundraising. And I don't think we've really had this type of topic or theme as it relates to our guest episode today. So stay with us to hear more from John before we jump into this conversation, we want to remind you who we are. So hello to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. We can thank her for this platform and the two weeks that she thought it would be. And here we are literally marching towards 700 episodes. And I'm honored Julia to be here as your co-host day in and day out, nonprofit nerd, also CEO of the Raven Group. And we are also always very honored and grateful to have the ongoing support and investment, plus their trust, 100% trust for these unscripted episodes. Thanks to our sponsors, which include Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Be Generous, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, as well as the nonprofit nerd. Again, thank you to these sponsors. They're not just here for us, they're actually here for you and your mission. So they're here to elevate your mission and we encourage you to check them out. We also encourage you to check out any of our previous 700 episodes, including this one we're doing with John now, a little bit later. So you can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo, as well as podcasts. So we are on, you name it, all of the podcast streaming systems. You can listen to us there wherever you stream your podcast. So you can never get enough of us because we're pretty much everywhere. We're still working on that hologram, but John DeLang, again, thank you for saying yes. I had kind of been stalking you on LinkedIn, I follow you and I'm like, we must have you as a guest. I really wanna hear your voice and perspective. So thank you for joining us today. Welcome. Thank you so much, Jared. Julia, wonderful to meet you on the broadcast here today as well. I'm excited to share a bit of my story and background with the audience and jump through the sharing of our values through our fundraising efforts. There's a lot of different ways that we could take this conversation. I'll start with a little bit of my background if that's helpful for people. Yeah, please do. So my story begins on a farm. I grew up on a strawberry and raspberry farm in West Michigan. It's a very tasty place to grow up. We picked strawberries. I got hauled in by my grandma to help for a moment here and there and five hours later I'd find myself at the other end of the field after weeding. So that was a wonderful way to learn diligence and character traits from my parents and grandparents. I was somebody that wanted to make a difference and so later on I ended up working in politics for a few years. I worked in Michigan, the Michigan State Capitol and on the governor's campaign in Texas and then a mentor challenged me to consider where I wanted to be in 10 years and still working in politics is a grueling, grueling challenge. I'll tell you what, no matter what side you're on it's a tough spot to be. So that was how I ended up working in fundraising. Still wanting to make a difference. I came back to Michigan and worked with a local crisis pregnancy center helping people understand their options, have better parenting materials, abstinence training and I led our fundraising team to our first million dollar a year at the center. So it was exciting. There were a number of challenges as most small nonprofits run into we felt locked into doing what we'd always done. I took over, I was a young director of development in my early twenties and we had been doing one of our events for longer than I had been alive, unchanged. And so as you might expect we had declining participation rates, lower fundraising dollars from that specific event, things like that. And so it was a great experience. I'm thankful for it. I had a opportunity in that time too with my background on the farm always trying to build and grow things to start doing digital marketing. So that was when Delang marketing group came around. I worked with another agency to do fulfillment and worked on clients from furniture to finance to faith organizations. And then later on took on a role with summit ministries concurrently with my business. So managing major donor work and now our direct mail and digital campaigns at summit. So I'm excited to go through this process with you and reflect some of the things that maybe we've seen from our chair at a faith-based organization about how to reflect our values in our interactions with stakeholders. Absolutely. Yeah, and thank you for that. All I can think of for the berries is like, I bet you had such fantastic jellies and jams and pies and it was just like, yeah, my mouth watered as you stated that. You know, it's really interesting thing, John, to think about communicating values in a digital world and especially since the outbreak of the pandemic, how it really forced us all to be much more digitally oriented.  And we had a guest on yesterday that talked about tech stacks and it just so happens that you're on today and you actually know our guest from yesterday, Tim Locky, which is crazy and fabulous, but talk to us how the tech stacks can really help you navigate or undermine even those value propositions in those relationships. Sure. So this is a great example of it. It's the power of technology to make connections between people who wouldn't have otherwise been connected. So Tim Locky is out in Bozeman, Montana and because of activity on LinkedIn, I was able to have a wonderful coffee with him just a couple of weeks ago after a major donor event that I was working in Big Sky. I got to see his hometown. We walked around the shady streets of Bozeman and I couldn't agree more with some of the things that he shared on this show yesterday about the change management and the fact that no matter what we have with technology, it's still people that are using it at the end of the day. For me, I work day to day with a Christian nonprofit and that affects my worldview. I'm a Christian and my understanding of technology has to flow from my prior beliefs. So one of the ways that that looks practically in our philanthropy is that we're reflecting back to our creator, the things that he's already given us. As someone who believes in the Bible and the story of creation, our creator is a giver. He gave us a wonderful world. He gave us an opportunity to be free from our sin and shame and being made in his image. We have to value the people that are in front of us and the people that we interact with, whether that's through technology, in person, in a donor relationship. So that I believe two things follow from that worldview. The joy of giving and receiving is embedded in each one of us. And the other thing is a people-centered approach is absolutely the best way to go in our philanthropy. We have to reflect that in our technology stacks. Thank you for that. And I really have seen where philanthropy, giving, generosity, I'm curious, like if we go back to the early, early stages, if it began with faith-based, right? If it began with tithing, if it began with that whole give back to be of service and to serve others. So I love that you're coming at us today from that perspective, because when I think of people, when they give, I feel like if you are entrenched in your faith-based life, then typically the organization you're giving to first is that faith-based organization. And so having you speak to this when it comes to text stacks, facilitating values and relationships, I love that you're sharing that. So tell us more, and I know that we're gonna have a couple of more key talking points from you as well, but I'm all ears. 100%. Yeah, absolutely. So Dr. Mark Dillon, the former vice president of Wheaton College says that he quotes a study in his book, Giving and Getting in the Kingdom, that the single biggest predictor of philanthropic activity is regular attendance at a church or synagogue. And so that's surprising to some people and not surprising to others. But I think that what our attitude should be, when we go through the process of doing fundraising activities in a faith-based setting, we have to get rid of, I don't know if you've had Jason Lewis on the show before, but he says we have to be done with what he calls arms-length fundraising, where we do the cheapest, quickest, low-risk, shallow efforts to get the most nominal gift from someone that's just a little bit more than the cost of acquisition. And while that may work on paper, it doesn't actually honor the individual who's on the other side of those relationships. I had a visit as a major donor officer for some ministries a couple of years ago, and I went to see a donor who had made a gift and got to drive around their hometown. We ate dinner out. They showed us all the restaurants. We had homemade French toast at their house the next morning, and they handed me a check for a hundred dollars at the end of the evening and said, I wish I could give more. And the rest of the story there, sounds like I wasn't a very good steward of my time. If the story stopped there, the rest of the story was their son-in-law had passed away and they sold their home in Florida and moved back to the Midwest to be with to cover the medical expenses and to care for their grandchildren. And as a person representing the organization, I could honor them in their decades-long relationship with the organization, not only with giving and getting financial transaction, but also in being there relationally for them. It's a, there's a lot of ways that we can do it at scale as well. You know, we talk in our sector about the three T's, time, talent and treasure, you know? And when you said, you know, they made a gift, a hundred dollars, but they put so much love into their time, right? And that French toast, I guarantee it was probably the best you've ever had. But coming from their own values and their own place of financial, you know, capacity in that moment, I find great respects, like finding the balance of the value that sure, as professional fundraisers, are we looking for many zeros of course, but are we also looking to build that return on relationship, Julia, that we talk about? You know, and who knows where that relationship will go in the future, as well as how many other individuals they share your visit with to help increase awareness? Yeah, absolutely. And there's, there's so much of this too that happens at scale, right? We, you know, in the major donor world and in my role as director of development, I had a number of relationships where, you know, I could be there in person, but most often I talk to executive directors or fundraising staff and they operate out of the distance.  One of the most practical things that I've found is looking at a giving environment and looking for the ways to remove friction for your donors as they go through a process of resonating with your values and wanting to participate in the mission. Next after and fundraise up have eight different ways that we can get rid of friction on our donation pages, things like, you know, making it mobile friendly, removing additional fields that don't add as much value as necessary for the person to finish up. And, you know, those clear calls to action as well can just show, they can shepherd someone through the process of giving. So one way I've phrased it, and this is something that I'd love to ask your listeners is how long does it take to make a $5 donation to your organization versus how long does it take to make a $5 Amazon purchase? If the answer is a lot longer and 100 more steps, you're less likely to beat Amazon in the attention economy that we find ourselves in. Oh my gosh, I think that you must be a sole brother of our executive producer because he brings Kevin Pace, he brings that up all the time. You know, we have already a trained constituency via courtesy of Amazon. And so if you can understand what that actual transaction process is then that will help you to understand how you can connect easier with anybody. And I'm fascinated by this because you're talking about your values and you're talking about culture. And at the same time, we're walking a tightrope in our country, really across the world. You know, we're incredibly divided, we have civil unrest, we have poor behavior on both sides, all sides, any sides. How do you mitigate all of these things that are going on right now in our climate? Or do you just say we're gonna bless and release and let go of a particular group and just funnel down tight into the group that we know? Follow us, or what is it that you, how do you navigate that, I guess? Yeah, absolutely. So if you follow a number of internet marketers, you'll find that the easy way to gain attention is to structure everything as life is a battle between good people and evil people. And as a Christian, I believe that each of us has a choice to respond well or poorly to the situation that we've been given. It's not so much that it's this tribe versus that tribe or it's us versus them or the red versus blue or all of these different dichotomies that are thrown at us in today's culture. We get to authentically interact with the person that's ahead of us. And that's what's most important at the end of the day because again, from my worldview, we're both made in the image of God and our value is similar due to that external standard. So you're not, you're in essence preaching to the choir or you are opening it up to everybody? Because I think this is a really interesting discussion because it's like, if you're an animal welfare charity, do you just only speak to people who you know like animals and you just let loose the rest and say forget about it? Or do you keep trying to steward new engagement? It's a really interesting question. Sure, we can say lots of things and I'll get to our second point here too in my response to the question. As I was prepping for this, I came across this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt where she says, one's philosophy is not best expressed in words, it's expressed in the choices one makes. And in the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. So I see that with many small Christian nonprofits where the founders just authentically live out their values, right? They're a social service organization or an animal welfare organization.  And so that's something that we can intentionally foster within the rest of the staff, especially in fundraising. One client that I worked with in, they're based out of Texas. It's a parenting character development organization and their founder has habits of speech that she trains parents on how to instill character traits in their children.  You want to say, I saw you being generous today. And I know that because you did X, Y and Z. And so when I was working with their executive director and they were hiring a new fundraising staff, we identified that pattern of speech and said, look, every time your fundraiser interacts with a donor, make sure that you look for opportunities to use those same patterns of speech that encounter values for your donors. Without that, we can end up being founder-led instead of mission-led. I've worked in an organization in the past where I've talked to some donors and they said, man, we loved it when the founder called us, but what do you guys do? And I think that was a miss because they were so enamored with the founder, they didn't understand the transfer to the values of the organization. Right, it's a big issue. Founder syndrome and the charismatic nature of fundraising. And Jarrett and I have talked about that a lot is when that charismatic leader, whether it be the CEO, board chair or fund development, later when they leave, your organization can really be in a shambles because you've lost that link. And so I'm fascinated by this discussion. I want to move on and ask you another question about taking this same concept and sharing those values, but putting it into fundraising collateral. I mean, a lot of organizations that used to spend a lot of money on print collateral are now moving it to digital collateral. And I'm wondering how you see that working or what new things that we should be doing. Sure, so again, like we were talking about with the founder who had a big personality who people love to hear from them, but the donors actually didn't understand what the long-term strategic outcomes of the organization were. That was a breakdown of the values translated into the collateral that they could access at any time. And so when we go about creating a value proposition, we can ask some key questions, things like who is our ideal donor? Again, that gets at our values. What are the stakes of our mission? And which gets at why now a little bit further? Question three is why are we unique as opposed to similar organizations, whether we serve a different geographic area or one that is taking a little different tax to the issue. And then finally, the question why now gets at the urgency of your value proposition. So I always tell people, my friend Bill McKendry from this area of Michigan wrote Do More Good. And he reminds people, and so we're saying it from the same hymn book I guess, that your audience will not get tired of your messaging like you will.  And so 100% of our new followers haven't heard your message before, even though this might be the 95th time that you brought it to the front. That's a great point. And I get so tired of seeing the same thing that I'm seeing, right? Because I'm seeing it full-time eyes. And I love that you just shifted and reframed this for me because after 20 years in this business, I feel like, come on, there's gotta be another way to say this, right? Like, there's gotta be another way to entrench our values when it comes to storytelling to make an impact for the mission. But thank you, because you have given me the biggest gift to say, you know what? Yes, you see it full-time and probably full-time plus, plus, plus, right? Because we're writing it, we're editing it, we're, you know, all of that good stuff. But when it comes to so much noise in our community right now, and it's coming at so many different angles, eight seconds would be a gift. But you're right, it's probably more like two. It's a, I think we get fatigued, you know, with our own things. And then we forget that our constituency is not fatigued by it because they are, to your point, bombarded with things. And there is a very short attention span. And if we are continuously recreating that messaging, we're starting all over versus reinforcing it. So yeah, you know, creating something and crafting something that's strong, but staying the course, is I think always the best investment. But I think to your point, John, it's been an interesting time because we're adding in this tech layer. And so we're having to say, okay, well, how do we, you know, is it just, we use the same colors or we use the same type? I mean, no, it's not that simple. We have video, we have audio. I mean, we have AI. It's a very interesting time to be looking at some of these differences. We don't have a lot of time left, speaking of time, but I'm really curious.  Where do you see, I mean, look around, look around. Where do you see the opportunities moving forward? Let's say in the next year, three years, five years. Sure. So one of the things that I work with, with faith-based organizations in right now is they have an aging donor base. And my friend Michelle pointed this statistic out to me is, one, there's gonna be a generational turnover, but two, and this is very, very significant because there's gonna be a, right before the generational turnover of wealth and asset-based giving and a lot of these planned giving and legacy giving opportunities, there's gonna be a pause where since the average age of women exceeds that of men by seven to 10 years, there's gonna be a pause where a vast majority of high-net-worth individuals who are giving to your organizations are gonna be solely women. And so that's something that nonprofits can't ignore. And again, the ways in which we communicate are large-scale opportunities, complex gifts, charitable planning, those things, they need to be human-centered to the person that's across the table. And I think there's a major opportunity for people that understand how to get and hold attention in the digital economy, but then also shepherd people through a complex process of asset-based giving because if we just continue to rely on this 1.25 ROI of our direct mail program, it's gonna break down eventually. And so we have to be proactive in sharing our values with those people that are stakeholders. If I may, John, I would love to elaborate on that for our viewers and our listeners when it comes to the power philanthropy for females. And I've done several topic conversations on this. So for that female category, right? Typically, and you're right, females are holding a lot of wealth right now. There is a lot of wealth in the female hands. So typically women inherit from their parents as well as inherit from their partner. And then now many women are also making their own wealth. And so there is this huge amount of wealth in women and as well as women making a lot of the decisions. And I'm curious, and I know we don't have a lot of time, I'm curious how we might- We'll do the next show on this. I know how we might start to change our language, our vernacular to speak to the female person, right? Like, do you dive into that? Absolutely, sure. So yeah, having only 90 seconds, I'll- I know. Get to it very quickly here. So one of the frameworks that I work with nonprofits on is called the Blue Chip Ministry Framework from a wealth advisor called Tony Emeradio. He runs select portfolio management out in California. And he talks about this. He says men are much more motivated by the tax savings by the different strategies that you can do. And when, like we've been talking about when you can find ways to help females encounter your values, your mission, the stories of impact, oftentimes that's as motivating as telling a man that you're going to save X dollars on your tax strategy. So one of the key questions that I ask from his framework is how does our organization intentionally foster organic interaction with our culture during the development effort? That's a huge question. And can we ask that of our entire staff? Because let's face it, everybody's online, everybody's a fundraiser these days. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we'll get you on to talk about that because there's so much conversation that we can have there. And we knew that our time was gonna fly by. For those of you that may not with us in the early stage of the conversation, John DeLang, CEO, DeLang Marketing Group, very active on LinkedIn. I encourage you to check him out there. I started stalking him on LinkedIn and just every now and then we gotta get you on, we gotta get you on, we gotta get you on. And we did, we got him on. So thank you so much, John DeLang. I'm just so grateful to have you in our community and in our sector. And again, very appreciative for your time. Thank you so much for having me on. Hey, again, I'm Julia Patrick. I wanna thank my co-host, Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself. And again, I also wanna make sure that we give our tremendous gratitude to all of our presenting sponsors, Blumerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, Be Generous, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader and Nonprofit Nerd. These are the folks that join us day in and day out so we could hear from somebody like John DeLang and get some really interesting insights on how we can be better stewards of not only our donors money and investment, but of our organizational leadership. And as we remind ourselves, our viewers, our listeners, our guests, stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.


Hi everybody, welcome back! I learned about something that our worlds have in common. It's similar but a little different. I'll explain. Here you have what is called a moon. See exhibit M for moon. We have a moon too. And exhibit M too! Second moon phase. Wow. As you may note, there's a lot of similarities to our moons. They're very white, a little cratery, but nothing a good polishing can't fix. You may note that our moon is somewhat fractured, while yours is mostly whole. Granted, your moon goes through different, uh, what do you call them, phases? Or is it not a phase? Maybe I should ask its mom. So our moon had a bit of an accident. Someone in our world dropped a ball, and by the ball I mean our moon. It was just minding its own business, doing its thing in the sky, when all of a sudden, half of the moon is gone. Dust everywhere! Wait, is that where dust comes from? There's moon dust here, and there's dust in our world. Hmm, okay, uh, wait am I onto something? Oh my gosh, I never thought about that before. It makes a lot of sense though. I have to tell dad. And at least one scientist. So, why am I saying all this? As acting an only ambassador for remnant, I would like to make an official proposal. Ahem. What if we borrowed your moon? I mean, think about it, who here would really miss it? It's only there when you're sleeping. I've got the whole system figured out. Look, I've even made a calendar. Our world will borrow your world's moon while you're sleeping, and we'll bring it back sometime in the near future. But again, our moon is totally broken, so we would appreciate it if you just let us have it for like, yeah, as long as possible. Who really needs to think about your moon anyways? Come on. What? No, no, no, Weiss, I'm not taking our moon. I'm asking very politely and properly to borrow it for a very fancy special occasion that happens every single day in our world. I'm doing the best I can. Okay, I didn't go to manner school or anything. They were just about to let me have it. Come on. Okay, um, you can keep your moon for now. That's fine. We didn't even want it. Thanks for watching everyone. If you want to see more, click here.


Welcome to Farming Matters, which is a program of the North Central Sare program that essentially we help elevate the stories and share projects from our farmer rancher grantees. I am one of the hosts, Aaron Schneider. I farm and I work for Sare. And I am excited to be with you all and as well as Marie Flanagan, our communication specialist. Hello. Hey, and we have a special guest with us today, Peter Schold with Waxwing Farm. And he is here to share a story of his farmer rancher project, which is Forcing Belgian Endive and Treviso Radigio in the Upper Midwest. Well, yeah, I can just give a quick introduction of myself. So I'm Peter Schold from I own Waxwing Farm together with my wife, Anna Racer. This coming season will be our 13th growing season, growing mixed vegetables, both for CSA and we sell probably half of our businesses selling to restaurants as well. We sell a little bit to the prior Lake School District and outside of the Twin Cities, but that's kind of the big breakdown. And yeah, we got through our restaurant work, we got interested in growing Radigio and kind of the logical extension of that has brought us to this project. So it was a desire to expand our options and diversify our winter offerings to our restaurants. And we thought it might fit the bill, but we needed a little help to get over the hump of the initial investment and trial period. So that's why we applied for the CERG Grant. And once we got it, we put the project into practice and had a few hiccups because of the COVID pandemic, but actually it was kind of nice. We delayed the project or extended the project by a year because of that. And we were able to put a lot of stuff that we had learned into practice. And I think the project was actually better for it. Okay, so yeah, this is just a little presentation I put together just to kind of hit the high points of what we learned. So as you can see, the whole thing was about diversifying our season extension. Season extension in the upper Midwest is really critical for vegetable farms. And so we just wanted to explore an option to give us something a little bit more higher value than some of the root crops, especially for us selling to restaurants. Root crops at smaller restaurant volumes are not super profitable. So having something that is a higher demand, higher value product was something that we've been pursuing for our winter restaurant sales. And we thought that these forcing chickeries would fit that bill pretty well. So what is a forcing chickery? It's chickeries are a crop that grows a lot like lettuce. So it's got a leafy top above ground and a single taproot down below. It's been used for thousands and thousands of years. It's originally from the Mediterranean area. And it includes, you know, forage crops and also crops for human consumption, humans and animals alike, both the leaves and the roots. The roots historically have been used as a coffee substitute. So it's a crop that is well known in certain parts of the world. And then radicchio and endive are the things that are the crops in the family that most people are familiar with.  But then you dig them up and you bring them inside and you force them to grow inside a dark room or chamber which forces them to grow without chlorophyll. And so you get a totally different product than what grows in the field. So not only is it a unique kind of value added product for that reason, but it also tastes great too. It tastes a lot different than what you grow in the field. So yeah, this just kind of gets at why we wanted to grow these things. Again, like I mentioned, it's about extending our season or growing season and finding a way to increase the value of some of our winter sales to restaurants in particular. It worked really well with our farm infrastructure because we're able to use a walk-in cooler as our forcing chamber that is not used in the winter. And then it also just kind of gives us a little bit more work to do in the winter which in theory could take away some of the workload from the summer and it's all about diversifying those winter sales. So growing this stuff is, it's a lot like growing lettuce. It doesn't really, if you're set up to grow lettuce it doesn't require any additional equipment. You can either direct seed it in the field or transplant it. The biggest difference there is the impact on root shape. So this crop, even though a lot of people think of chickeries as a leafy crop, when you're growing them for forcing you really gotta think about it as you're growing a root crop. And so I'll get to it later in the presentation about why root shape can in certain situations make a difference. But once you seed them and get them in the field it's just, like I said, it's just like growing lettuce. So you gotta keep them weeded, keep them well watered. It's a long crop so they have to be seeded right around mid-summer or early July in order to get them in the ground and have them grow enough to produce a sizable root that can be forced. So for harvest, once you've grown them all up we used an undercutter bar to lift the bed and then pull the roots out just like we would if we were growing carrots. You trim the greens and you have to make sure that you leave the growing tip intact. You can see on the picture on the left a lot of those roots have about one to two inches of greens still left on top. That's critical for getting, especially for endive for getting the right shape of the final product. On the right you can see we threw them into feed sacks that we stored in our walk-in cooler to help keep them at the right humidity and they store just like any other root crop best at about 32, 35 with really high relative humidity. Here's a picture of the forcing chamber. So like I said, the forcing chamber is a we utilize a walk-in cooler that we use in the summer for storing cold sensitive things like tomatoes and eggplant and zucchini and cucumbers. But in the winter that infrastructure was idle. So this project was a really good way to utilize that idle space that was otherwise just sitting there. We had these galvanized steel tanks custom made for this project. And you can see kind of just there's red hoses connecting each of the tanks so that we can circulate water through the entire system. I think that's helpful to keep the water aerated and keep things healthy, but I don't think it's critical. I think you could get by with a much simpler system of just some Tupperwares with roots in them and a couple inches of water that maybe you changed every couple, maybe once a week or something like that. So it certainly doesn't have to be this sophisticated. I think that we just wanted to really have a system that fit the best like larger scale commercial systems that we could identify. And so a lot of the larger commercial systems had the same kind of water bath circulating water but I don't think it's critical. So this is the actual process for forcing them for Tardigo Raditio. You dig them up from the field and they pull them out of storage. And on the left, you can see that these plants were transplanted so you can see that the roots are a lot more kind of splayed out and gnarly. We trim off most of the greens. So on the left, you see the root with a lot of the greens attached still. And then on the right is what it looks like before we put it into the bulb crate for forcing. And then on the right hand side, you can see a bulb crate that's ready to go into the forcing chamber.  And so the less of that that you bring into the forcing chamber, the less cleanup you have to do on the backside. And then once you put them into the forcing chamber it takes about three weeks for them to grow. You can see these ones in this picture we trimmed all the greens off. So there's no decaying matter and that actually worked pretty well too. So, but once they're in there you just have to make sure that the water level is sufficient so that the roots have something to drink and that you don't accidentally leave the light on. That's the biggest thing is any light will cause the plants to start photosynthesizing, which degrades them. For harvest, you take the bulb crates out, trim off the root and you can see in the picture you leave kind of a little stub of the root. That's at least the traditional Italian way to do it. And you clean off all the bad leaves and then soak it in cold water to kind of let it rehydrate just a little bit. It does tend to get a little dried out in the forcing chamber. And then once you rinse it clean you can shake it dry and package it for sale and just keep it dark so it doesn't start photosynthesizing. So end dive is a little bit different. You can just trim them in the field and you wanna make sure, like I said before you leave the right amount of greens intact. On the left picture on the left, you can see the root on the bottom was trimmed too close and you can see that there's five or six small little sprouts that are coming off of the sides.  Whereas the root on the top was trimmed properly and you can still see the growth tip of the greens intact. So that's gonna form a nice tight head growing from the middle of that root. So that's the critical thing that we learned and that was one of those things that we didn't learn that lesson the first year that we did it. And so extending the project by a second year allowed us to kind of learn from that mistake and have a lot more success the second year. End dive is grown more on a commercial scale. So it's more of a familiar crop than the forcing radicose. And so it's been bred to develop that really nice straight tap root. So if you direct seed to Belgian end dive it'll grow a nice straight tap root that then can be packed really tightly into the bulb crates. You can see on the picture on the right that we fit more than double the number of end dive roots into one bulb crate. So that's a much more efficient use of space. So then harvesting end dive grows a little bit slower it takes more closer to six weeks. You can see here this picture we've got on the top there's some chicons that are just about ready to be harvested. And underneath we have some roots that were started a couple of weeks after that so they're just starting to grow. So it's, but it's basically you can just cut them off of the root either with a knife or just by snapping them off trim off any leaves that are ill shaped or have any kind of tinge of green to them. And then you can pack them right from the forcing crate for sale. And again, keep them dark so they don't start photosynthesizing. We did notice that the end dive was more likely to start photosynthesizing than the radicose if you weren't careful. Marketing, the restaurants were our primary customers for this product. They're both definitely specialty products. The Tardivo is not commercially available anywhere in the US that we were available. So that helped it command a higher price but also because it's less familiar the market options are more limited. For sure specialty restaurants that either have an open mind or have previously worked with it are the easiest targets. Belgian Endive on the other hand is historically more of a large scale production. It's more of an industrial crop. So it's available from regular wholesalers, vegetable wholesalers. It shows up on a lot of winter restaurant market or restaurant menus. So because of that reason the market price is a lot lower. So you need to sell in a higher volume in order to make it work cost wise. I think the opportunity is definitely there for that but I think you would have to do it on a pretty significant volume. Other options are winter's farmers markets in the same way that for restaurants it's a really unique different crop to differentiate ourselves from the competition in the winter. If there's a winter farmers market just having these things on your stall is gonna just everyone's gonna come and at least take a look. So then you can tell the story and you have to do a lot of customer education I think but the opportunity certainly is there to get people to at least try this unique product. And then if there's specialty grocery stores I don't think that necessarily either of these products are gonna show up in regular everyday grocery stores but there's certainly a possibility for customers regular individual customers who either already know about these products or are interested in getting their hands on something unique and different. So there's other radicchio varieties that are either meant to be forcing varieties like this Isontina in the middle is grows really, really small and it's got a really vibrant cool color but is the market for that is probably pretty limited. We've been growing the chicory rosa on the left that is not specifically a forcing variety but in the upper Midwest it works that way. So we've had some success growing that crop as a forcing radicchio. And then like I mentioned the Belgian end dive I think for our scale we found that the forcing radicchos are more cost effective for us just because of the higher price that they command. But again, if you wanted to really scale up and do an acre or two of Belgian end dive and talk to a wholesaler and try to kind of corner the market I think that there's possibility there and I think that it could be cost effective. So I think there's definitely opportunities that have been illuminated by this project. Yeah, and so I mean couldn't have done it without North Central Sare. So just thank you for everything that the organization has done to support and fund this project. It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot and we certainly developed the practice that we're gonna keep using. So overall it's been a huge success. What does like so for someone experiencing radicchio or end dive for the first time how would you describe that taste or like? Yeah, it's definitely bitter. So I think that's the first thing that turns people off is that it's got a bitterness to it. Because we work with the restaurants we've been, they've been slowly nudging us to growing a lot of radicchos. A lot of restaurants are really excited about that. So there's kind of a spectrum of like the regular main season radicchos like with kind of Frise and, oh gosh, escarole, which are end dive crops that are on the milder side. And then there's kind of the, there's the kioja which are like the round softball red radicchos that you see in the grocery store or in the salad mixes. Those are kind of like less bitter in the middle. And then you can go all the way down and there's some really wacky ones that are like pungerelle is a, it's like basically you're harvesting the flour stock. So it's real bitter, real tough but then you soak it in cold water and it mellows it out. So bitterness is kind of the key, there is the main feature but it's kind of hard to describe the flavor unless you have it. And then the, the forcing varieties because they're just using, they're not using photosynthesis for their, they're just using cellular respiration. So there's a whole different metabolic pathway that's happening within the plant. And so it's just, they're different chemical compounds that are being formed within the leaves. So it's, the sweetness is like, it's less bitter, more sweet but it's not like sugary sweet. It's kind of, it's a, yeah, it's hard to describe. Did the crop find you or you found the crop? I guess what I mean by that is like, did you imagine yourself when you embarked on farming like, yeah, endives, it could be all about endives or like- No, no, it was, this is not at all on my radar at all.  But so it was definitely working with the restaurants that has kind of pushed us to broaden our scope of the crops that we grow, you know, every once in a while we sneak radicchio into our CSA but it doesn't usually go over super well. It's not a universally loved thing like potatoes or tomatoes or anything like that. You trim the leaves and then you have these leftover roots. What do you do with those? Yeah, so right now they're just going to compost but I think that, you know, again, being that they are historically have been a forage crop. There's some value for, I was just reading before this meeting that historically they were used as a substitute for oats for horses because there's a similar kind of nutrient breakdown. So for sure, you know, if you had livestock on the farm through the winter, when these spent roots could, you know, just go into the pig pasture or into the, you know, cow parlor or horse barn, whatever, I think that's actually how these first got discovered. They would dig them up and then stick them in the corner of a barn. And then in the spring, when things started warming up, they'd start to sprout or if like water was dripping on them, they'd start to sprout and grow but in the darkness of the back corner of the barn. And so then, you know, people as they're feeding the horses or whatever, like snap one off and take a bite and it's like, whoa, this is unique and different. Roasted chicory is a coffee substitute. So I think you could talk to coffee shops and see if that was something that they wanted to try getting locally. It's showed up in stouts and porters and from breweries. So I think you could talk to brewers about. So I do think that there's an opportunity for turning that into an additional revenue stream as well. And if nothing else, feeding it to livestock so that you, you know, recapture that value. Can you use the root more than once? There's some speculation that yes, you could. I read some in our initial research, I read some sources that said, yes, you can.  So I think, you know, maybe snapping it off you could, but it's not something that we explored. It's interesting. It's beautiful. It's like lots of sequencing and just like, I thank you for taking us through that whole process and for other farmers as well. Just like, and I can just feel your joy in this discovery of... Yeah, I mean, right, exactly. And it's, again, I think that for small scale agriculture, especially working with restaurants, a lot of the farmers that we know that are growing mixed vegetables in the winter, they switch to like large volumes of a couple root crops, selling to school districts or wholesalers or grocery stores, that kind of thing, which is certainly viable. But, you know, we as the farm that we are, we're sized a little different. And we found that every time we try to dip our toe into that really larger scale, like moving pallets of things at a time, it always, you know, we're just not geared for that. So we were really hoping that this would be something that would allow us to kind of keep that smaller scale, but just, you know, increase the value of those smaller deliveries to restaurants in the winter. And it really did pay off.