Intercropping and Regenerative Soil Management with Derek Axten

Hi friends, this is John. I'm passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and produce food of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've been fortunate to meet many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems. However, much of this knowledge and information is scattered all over the place. I founded Advancing eco Agriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agriculture systems become the mainstream globally, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared. To achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments, or topics that you would like for me to discuss, please connect on social media or email me johngenerativeagriculturepodcast.com Be sure to sign up for our email list@regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com Hope you enjoy and thank you for listening.

Hi friends. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. It's John Kemp once more and I'm very pleased to be able to have a conversation with Derek Axton from Canada today. This is going to be a bit of a different conversation than you may have heard in the past, and the distinct difference, for me at least, is that Derek and I haven't known each other for a long time. I've certainly interviewed other people that I haven't known for a long time as well, but I may have read a lot of their work and been familiar with their work, and for Derek, that's not so much the case. So this is very much new territory for. For me, we're going to have a fun conversation. I know that Derek has a lot to contribute and his name has certainly come up as a grower that many would be wise to emulate. So Derek, thank you very much for joining us today and I've been looking forward to this conversation. We're going to have a good time. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey, your pathway? What has been the pathway that brought you to the work that you're doing today in your farm, and where have you come from?

Yeah. To start with, thanks, John, for having me. And this will be a good conversation to have. So to start from the beginning, I guess it's the same story. I pretty Much tell everyone that. You know, for us it was a chance trip to Dakota Lakes research farm in 2007. And the. One of the very first things that Dr. Back took me out and showed me was an irrigator, you know, obviously irrigating. And he asked the group of us that were there, you know, how much rain we thought was entering the soil, you know, in the form of irrigation. And we all guessed, you know, kind of a half an inch because there was no visible runoff. We were right beside the irrigator and, and he tells us that it's two and two to nine minutes. And for me, you know, back then that was an impossibility in our area where we farm now, if we would have got a two inch downpour, you know, obviously in nine minutes the bulk of it's going to run away. And we know we live in an arid environment. We're sort of a 12 to 14 inch annual precipitation zone. And the most limiting factor on our farm we feel is moisture. So that was very powerful to witness that. So two inches in nine minutes. Two inches in nine minutes. Yeah, that, that got my attention. And we got off the golf cart and walked in behind the irrigator. It had just passed and we could walk in our sneakers and you didn't get mud on your shoes. So. Wow. Yeah, so it was pretty much just tell me what to do because I need, I need this in my life. Because like I said, moisture is number one for now. I've learned there's so much room for improvement. So he talked to us about, you know, diversity and crop rotation, things that, you know, we grew three crops at the time. We thought we were diverse. Basically two crops is an alternation, not a, not a rotation. And we were growing 3. But you know, we didn't ever think about warm and cool season crops and how to build rotation to improve soil structure and you know, do all these things that we want to do to make the water and for the soil. Talked about earthworm channels and soil structure. And it's the first time in my life I ever saw someone put a shovel in the soil and show us aggregates. You know, that was just words that we didn't talk about. So I'm a slow learner. So it took me quite a few trips back there. And along the way, one time I wound up in a chance meeting with Gabe Brown and he invited us to his farm on the way back from Dakota Lake. And same thing, it was, you know, the shovel in the soil and talked about rotation and what we can do with live roots and the power of live roots to build structure. Gabe is similar to us. I think they're in an 18 inch rainfall zone. So I guess for me it was easier to relate. He's only about five hours from my farm. As far as weather patterns and growing conditions and those sort of things, it's fairly close to what we can see some years. And we were in one of his packs and he put his shovel in the soil and it was the most beautiful, black, crumbly, wonderful chocolate cake, whatever you like to call it, soil. And we walked across the grid road and put a shovel in his neighbor soil. And I'm sure he's got the most famous neighbor and looked at and it was Minton, like it was exactly like what we had at home. So the difference between the poor soil and the wonderful soil was management. Right. So that for us was, well, we can do this. This is. And this was done in a matter of, you know, 10 or 12 years. So like we need to do this, we need to make changes, we need to make drastic changes, you know. And when you talk with Gabe, he didn't talk about inputs or. Right. We talked about growing things. That's how the conversation goes. So we don't have livestock. So it was a bit of a challenge, you know, to come home and figure out how to input this diversity into our farm. And the simplest thing was we discovered intercropping. And that's where it started. 2011 we started, started growing our first intercrops, which are two different crops growing together at the same time. I guess two or more. We do two for the most part, and we seed them together and we harvest them together. I know there's a bunch of all, you know, different variations, but that's kind of what works in our short growing.

Season.

Started in 2011. By 2015, all of our broadleaf acres, which is approximately half of our farm, was all intercrops. So we started with some simple ones like canola pea, which is pretty common. We soon realized that I didn't want to have canola seed on my farm. So we transitioned into mustard, which is a higher value, lower yielding crop. And we use that with the peas. And we grow mostly specialty peas, winter peas, forage peas, those sort of things that go into the COVID crop market or into sprouting. And those peas generally are kind of a jerk to harvest. They want to lay down, but when you put them with a Brassica, they'll trellis. And it just works really, really well. So we did that flax and chickpeas was another big one for us. Chickpeas growing monocrop can be a bit of a disease problem. And we learned through a research farm at Red Verse, Saskatchewan, and through another friend, Colin Rosengren, that had been doing this previous to me. And like I said earlier, I guess that our farm is sort of just a big group of stolen ideas from, from other farms. And Black's chickpea definitely wasn't ours. But we soon seen the benefit and we adopted it straight away and it completely changed chickpea production for us. We went from being a 4 fungicide pass crop to none with better quality outcome.

Wow, that is impressive.

That was a pretty big change for us. We had actually quit growing chickpeas because I made the decision we don't use, we don't use insecticides, we don't use seed treatments, we don't use fungicides unless we're going to lose a crop. I mean, in the fungicide, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to die on that hill. But that is never in the plant. And chickpeas, when you grow chickpeas here, it's just, it's in the plant. But within the intercrop situation, you know, nine years out of 10 we can get away with no fungicides and then obviously better quality seeds. So that was huge. And we've tried other combinations, but those are kind of the ones we've, we've fallen on. Flax with lentils is another one. I guess we grow on a fairly large percentage of the farm. So there's the benefits, the harvest ability, the lack of disease. All these things work really well with the intercrops. But the other neat thing is I'm sure you're aware of a straight legume crop. The problem with your carbon nitrogen ratio after harvest, your residue just disappears and just melts. But we found with changing the carbon nitrogen ratio mix of the residue after harvest, we get a lot longer, more robust residue cover that helps us through the winter and then into next year's spring. So we can actually keep our soils covered with some form of armor. Because sometimes we just don't have enough time in the fall to get a fall seeded cover. That's probably our biggest challenge yet. And the intercrops have really, really changed that for us. Other neat things about intercrops for me was when we started, we just made the conscious decision to not use synthetic fertility. That was sort of our, for lack of a better term, gateway drug to not using synthetic. And we just didn't use it. And we didn't see a difference from our previous yields and then by 15, so half the farmers not using synthetics and that just give us the confidence to keep backing away. Wow.

So you just continued using fertilizers and you did not see any yield loss from that once you started doing the intercropping.

Yeah. So it's interesting. And when we talk about intercross, we talk about this land equivalency ratio. So it's like imagine you have two 50 acre fields and you plant one to canola and one to peas and you harvest them separately and that would be a one as far as your net profit. And if we planted both 50 acre fields and harvested them, generally it's quite a bit higher. Like our farm is about a 1.25. I know farms that are 1.35 and I know there's a research farm that's seen upwards of 1.85.

Wow, that is amazing.

Yeah. I mean, and with that comes other benefits like the residue, the harvest ability. There's a lot of things that come with that that you don't see maybe in your balance sheet. So, yeah, intercrops have been a big part of it. We were doing these things and Tanis, my wife, had taken Elaine Ham's Life in the Photos classes and we got very interested in biology, soil biology. Because, you know, you go to different presentations and hear people talk, say the word biology or soil biology or soil health. And you know, we talk about it like it's air, really, you can. And the fact that we were able to learn how to identify basically good and bad and things that we want to see and things that maybe we don't want to see, and how it's possible to manage those things was a pretty powerful tool. And I remember the very first time Tanis made a slide and looked at it under the microscope and we were, we were fairly confident we were doing a pretty good job. You know, we had been intercropping and cover cropping and we'd been no till and we weren't using much synthetics and, you know, we kind of had it figured out. And when we first looked at that slide and it was mostly bacteria, I tell you, that was pretty disappointing. We were expecting to see everything. She had been learning about seeing fungi and protozoa and, you know, there was the odd one, but boy, you had to look a long time. So the next step was to make the compost windrows here. We make about 2000 tons a year now and then we select from that 2000 tons. Generally it's more than one different windrow. And we use that to make a compost extract. And we put that down at seeding, sort of in a mixture, a liquid mixture with our micronutrients. That's what goes in furrow, which again was a really good crutch for us. We learned early on that that was a nice way to transition from, you know, the liquid starter that we had been using to this was a fairly easy transition. Low cost. Drastic is not the right word, but we've seen very good improvement in soil microbiology since we started using that. And I think we'll continue that for quite some time. It's easy to do, it's low cost.

What is the total of your nutrition management and biology management today? Are you applying the compost tea in furrow? Are there any nutrients that any other types of biostimulants or inoculants? What's the scope of the nutrition management that you're doing?

So, yeah, so like this past year we had a tiny bit of molasses and we, you know, a few biological foods. I kind of think of it like, obviously we're putting the biology out and obviously they function off plant root exudates. But you know, when we put it with a seed, there are no exudates. So we do put a little bit of molasses and in our micronutrients that we use. That we basically kind of figured out from looking at SAP tests. And we did a full extraction of our soils back years ago when we first started with this. And that was sort of how we based it. And we've used SAP analysis since to fine tune. So that's how we come up with our micros and we add that then to our compost extract just before it goes to the field molasses and a few other odds and ends. Nothing spectacular, shattering, just cheap biological foods. And it's been seemed to work fairly well.

Based on this, on what you're describing, it does seem to be working fairly well. It seems to be a bit of an understatement. One of the questions that immediately comes to mind. You described the increased yields that you're seeing just as a factor of the intercropping. Have you noticed any improvements in quality from all the various things that you're doing?

Yes, I guess is a short answer. We provide seed obviously for cover crop seed, but we also do sprouting. So then again, it has to grow. And we've had very consistently high germination in things since we started doing this. And I can't explain why, but I know, like in sprouting, we have to be upper 90s for them to want to accept those, you know, even the COVID crop seed. Most people want to see, you know, germination in the high 90s, you know, the higher the better, obviously. But germination has been. We've seen an improvement for sure in our. In our greens after. And I guess that's one metric to measure by. And another thing we've started doing is nutrient density testing with Dr. Jill Clapperton. She's developed a fairly good method to test nutrients of our grains. And according to what she's seen of ours and the comparisons she's done, I guess I shouldn't speak for her, but there are some things they look at. I know zinc is one of the things that she looks at specifically. And industry kind of thinks 20 is good, 25 is really good in a cereal grain. And we've been seeing sort of upper 30s, lower 40s in our zincs, like, as an example. So that's been another metric we're measuring. And I think that's something hopefully we can use to help us market our grains more towards the human consumption side instead of the seed.

One of the topics I'd love to get your perspective on. You described the beginning of our conversation how impressive the soil was at the Dakota Lakes Research Farm with that tremendous water infiltration. And I'm sure you've mentioned that you've seen some of those changes happening on your farm as well. What do you think are the biggest and the most significant contributing factors? Has it been diversity of crops? Has it been the compost applications? Combination of both. And within all of this, what is the impact of tillage?

Okay, so I don't. Hmm. That's a tough one to answer. This is probably opinion, but I think it's a combination of things. I guess one other practice that we've been doing now for five seasons is controlled traffic farming. Still not 100% convinced it's the end all, but we've been doing it. I think a combination of everything contributes. But we have been doing consistent amounts of infiltration tests on our farm. And when we compare soils that we've been farming this way for since 2011 to some soil that we just took on last year, a farm we bought beside us, we try to go after a significant rainfall. So when we have profile and then do our tests, and we'll get the first inch in say, 25 to 35 seconds, and the second inch will be nine to 10 minutes on our better soils and we'll go across the road to this, you know, same kind of parent material and we'll see under, you know, while basically first inch, after 10 minutes we just kind of quit measuring. So there's, there's definite differences and I really wish I could put my finger on what certain thing we do makes a difference. But I, I think if I had to pick one thing at no, at the end of the day, I think it's live roots. I think that's the thing we need to focus on. And I don't know if it matters specifically which live roots, but just more of them. You know, as far as, I mean growing days, we can have more live roots putting more carbon back in the soil via the root exudates. And that's how I feel personally. Anyway.

When you're doing your intercropping, are you ever doing more than two species together? And would there be additional soil benefits to doing additional species together?

So we have tried three way intercrops for sure and we did see improvement in yield again. And I probably wouldn't be able to comment accurately on probably tend to think that it would be. But at the time, the way we're set up this separator intercrops is three is a very difficult procedure where two is very simple and fast. So we just sort of abandoned that until we're actually building a new seed facility right now. And that was in our mind when we were doing this, because I think I can see us going back to trying three because there's some definite benefits to that. You know, one other thing we have done is incorporate like clovers into say a pea canola or a pea mustard. So that gives us say another live root that will grow past harvest and give us the diversity, but we don't necessarily have to harvest it. And I kind of like to think of those companions, you know, as a bridge for lots of things. You know, obviously they'll help with micro iza, you know, because when you're growing a Brassica, you know. But then the big problem with us is we have such a short fall, we can't get a cover in good time. There's sort of crop maturity and then crop dry down, harvest seeding, the COVID crop, crop emergence. This can be a five week process of nothing growing in the soil where if we have a companion like a clover that just grows under the canopy and once we remove the canopy, the light penetrates and then the, the companion can take off and provide that live root for the soil. Until freeze up. And that's been working fairly well. Forest, that's been one that I got to actually do more of.

Yeah, I know that was a practice that we used to use on the farm that I was growing up on. Our fresh market vegetables is we would grow a legume underneath vine crops and as the fall approach, the vine crops died off because of frost. They no longer shaded the ground and we instantly had a lagoon that would take over.

Yeah, I think it's great. Part of me wants to transition that now to some sort of a, of a grass. And I don't actually know what grass to use, but I got a bit of a feeling that we have too many legumes in rotation. You know, it was same again, it was a kind of a crutch for nitrogen. But we're sort of learning that nitrogen isn't nearly as difficult as I thought it was four or five years ago. So I think we can start backing away from some of our legume based intercrops and see what the future brings. But especially these companions as well. I think we need some kind of a grass. But like things like rye grass, I'm just scared of them becoming a weed. So we haven't experimented with them yet. Maybe you have some suggestions.

I don't have any immediate or obvious suggestions because I'm not familiar enough with your, with your environment. But I would like to go back to your comment about nitrogen. We've also experienced that nitrogen, very easy. So what has your process been with nitrogen? Are you able to supply 100% of the crops requirements with crop residues and what is in the soil profile.

So what we've done is like I said, we don't provide any fertility to the, you know, the legume based intercrops which is about half the farm acreage and then the other half of the farm will be different cereal crops. You know, barley, oats, wheat, derm, we grow spelt, we grow some ancient other ancient cereals. And what we've been doing ahead of those is we actually spread. We're still using ammonium sulfate. I know I'm sure everyone knows I spread sort of low amounts, kind of 80 to 100 pounds. Gives us a little bit of an end kick and a little bit of sulfur and I think it's there again probably a bit of a crutch because it really isn't that much. And in terms of units, you know, it's like 16 pounds of N. This year for example, we can grow 150 bushel oats on 16 units of N. You know, if you did the old typical removal rate, something's wrong, right? It's coming from somewhere. And that's sort of what we've been experiencing. And when we look at our SAP results, our ammonium levels are very high, our nitrate levels are very low to almost non existent. So I'm assuming we're getting some kind of soil drive then I guess. I wish I knew more of the specifics, but yeah, that's how we feel it's going.

I'm quite curious what led you down the pathway of considering control traffic? And actually before you answer that question, I had a very interesting conversation earlier this summer with Jerry hatfield and Michael McNeil when I visited with them for a weekend. And Jerry described how when no till was first introduced and first advocated very strongly, there were five rules, foundational rules that were considered to be necessary for successful no till. And rule number one was that you remove all compaction from the soil profile. And rule number two was you do everything necessary to avoid recreating compaction layers in the soil. Those were considered really foundational to having successful no till. And it seems to me based on observations on a lot of farms that the no till movement has collectively seems to have lost sight of that. And you described in our earlier conversation how you used to be farming no till but not seeing results. Now you're doing all these additional things. So I'd be curious on your take on that. What is your reaction?

Well, it really lines up. So the big turning point for me I guess was there's a nuffield scholar in Alberta by the name of Steve Larock who did his nuffield on controlled traffic farming and same thing. We're lucky enough, it's sort of a seven hour, eight hour drive from my farm. And I went to two of his field days. And once again, so this would have been maybe 2011 or 12 when we were doing this sort of the same time we were really thinking about making major changes. Realized that you know, we need to change drastically, we need to make major changes. And Steve was pretty much conventional shank opener, basically high fertility, no high yield, relatively low diversity. But it was maybe five or six years. And his soil structure was the closest I'd ever seen to Dakota Lakes and Gabe Brown's farm as anywhere I'd ever been. To me that was just another way to get there. And I'm sure after conversation you realize impatience may be the wrong word, but I just want it fixed now. And so instead of just doing one thing and hoping for the best, let's just do everything we possibly can to improve the resource, improve the soil. And I thought control traffic was a fit. And it's funny now that we've got into it, how many doors it's open, you know, as far as things like maybe relay seating and some things that we're going to start experimenting with. Last year we experimented with relay seating into standing cereal crops, trying to get our covers established sooner. And control traffic has opened doors to that that we didn't even realize were there. You know, when I look at farms like McCoy Lakes and Gabes and they are doing a phenomenal job and I look around their yard and look at how big their equipment is, nothing's very heavy in comparison to the, you know, the 65,000 pound tractors that we use, that sort of thing and very heavy combines. And you know, we're out making passes at times of the year when we really shouldn't be from a soil perspective. So this gives us more sort of the freedom to go harvest the crop or seed the crop maybe at times that we shouldn't be, but it allows us to travel in the fields without doing damage, I guess was sort of part of my thoughts. And I've had pretty good conversations with Jodi In Minnesota, Dodi DeYoung Hughes, who's done a lot of research on this, and I'm probably paraphrasing this wrong, but she basically told me that not much compaction happens when it's really dry or saturated, like really, really wet, like almost water. It's when soils are almost that perfect, nice moisture for seeding or in the spring, then when compaction can really occur badly and to depth. So I guess from taking all those little bits from a whole bunch of different sources, it just seemed to me that if we're dead serious about this water infiltration thing, that's something we're just going to have to do. And I think it takes time to see results. So we're in our fifth year now and I think we're starting to finally see some results.

I was just prepared to ask about that. What, what observations do you have now at the 5 year mark? What are you seeing?

Well, the water infiltration for sure. Like we don't even check on trams. There's not much sense checking there. But those better fields like I talked about, you know, sort of the 32nd inch, those are in the fields that have been along the CTF under our management, that have got the compost and had cover crops. That's been the trend even walking in our fields. And I've had that comment from. We've had quite a few visitors coming in the summer. And people notice that when we walk in the fields. And I'm sure you've felt the same too, when you get in those really healthy soils, that the soils are soft, you know, to the foot, it seems like. And I'm not saying that what we do is the only way to do things. It's just been our observations and it's been a fit for us so far.

Derek, as you've been on this pathway and experiencing different things in your own farm, what has been something that was unexpected. What surprised you?

What surprised me? A few things. I still struggle with that, obviously, because I'm still spreading nitrogen and I have, according to my saps, I have lots. But we still do it, I guess, out of forced habit with the nitrogen example. We actually have a lot of experience.

With SAP analysis and looking at nitrogen. And maybe you need to do an.

Experiment like you did at the beginning.

Just don't apply it on a certain section to see what happens.

Yeah, I think so. I've left. Actually left a couple checks already, so that's good. But I need to do some random replicated, I think is what I need, because that's one of the other beautiful things that control traffic is it allows us to do so many studies because every path, not that every pass is the same, but there's definitely more consistency in what we do. And we have these paths that we can follow. We can do random replicates a little bit easier. And I think that's something that's definitely on the to do list for 2020. That is. That's probably one of my big surprises. But the fact that we can make significant change to like our soil quality, I know soil health, whatever you like to call it, but the color change, it just makes you feel good to look in the soils and see the color change. It's so hard to explain, but we had a lady, Marla Mintz was here from the furrow and did an article on us this summer. And one of the things she really wanted to show was that. And we found a field again that we took on last year and versus some of our better fields. And the color changes I had actually never put them side by side on the same shovel. And it was drastic. You know how much darker and much more porous the soils were side by side. I've been in one field and then drove to a different field and looked. But to put them side by side I thought was very powerful. And I. I didn't expect that we could make that change in that amount of time. I guess it's sort of like watching your kids grow up. You don't notice them getting taller. But, you know, if you go away for a couple years and come back, wow, that's. There's been a big change here. So that was one of my most surprising days that it's actually happening. You know, you made the miles and toured and made the changes on your farm, and to actually see the changes happening, I think are pretty gratifying.

Derek, I have a question for you that I enjoy asking people and the way people have responded. What is something that you believe to be true about modern agriculture that is different from the mainstream view?

You know, John, I knew this question was coming and I still am not that prepared. I've been thinking about it quite a lot. What is one thing that really stands out for me?

Or you can pick five, if that's easier.

Yeah, there's a lot of ways we can go with that answer. But one thing I guess that sticks out to me that maybe people will relate to, especially in times when none of us are feeling really rich with commodity prices being down and grain prices being down, is that you don't have to be high input to be profitable, highly profitable. I don't think there's any correlation there at all. It seems to me that the more we back away from synthetics, the more profitable we become. And there was a point that I thought that our system was going to crash, and I'm pretty sure my neighbors still do. But it actually, it's getting better, not worse. And the profitability is, I guess what. Obviously that's what we're all trying to do at the end of the day. But you know, to watch the resource improve at the same time as profitability, you know, that's. That's pretty exciting because it's. Then it's just going to continue both of them to get better as we move forward.

Yeah, that is a lot of fun. That's a lot of fun.

Yeah.

Derek, what is a. What is a book or resource that you would suggest to other growers who want to learn more? What has been a very useful source.

Of information for you? I've read always all of David Montgomery's books. I think they're.

They're great.

K. Brown's new book I really like. I thought it was very well written and just, you know, food for thought. I found like the intercropping I found more so in the information for that is sort of more, well, social circles isn't the right word, but I mean, it's. It's something we've discussed among peers. And I don't know if I actually had one original idea. I think I basically just took from here and there and put together what worked on our farm. And that's something that I learned, I guess that I should make a point of saying is that I came home from both Dakota Lakes and Gabe Brown's farm and soon learned that I have to adapt those practices. You know, you got to think about the context of your area, rainfall, soil types, those sort of things. And yeah, I couldn't grow 200 bushel cornimentum, surprisingly. So we. We had to change up how we were thinking, you know, and just use the. The general thoughts or the general guidelines, I guess, and not the specifics. And that seemed to be what made the difference. And that's honestly why we got into intercropping, is because I saw the power that Gabe was having with their cover crops or diverse cover crops, and I said, we need diversity. That is absolute. We need diversity. And how's the fastest way to do that is well for us, we thought was intercropping. And that was definitely one important piece along the way for us.

Derek, I really appreciate that comment and I appreciate the example that you gave as well of taking the principle of diversity and shifting that principle from COVID crops to the actual crops that you're producing. And I think this is a very important point for all of our listeners. Some of the feedback that I've received in the podcast in the past has been that people desire to have more practical how to nuts and bolts. How do you do this? Step by step. And that's occasionally useful, but more often, I believe, less useful, as you just described, Derek, because we have to adapt these ideas to each of our individual operations. And some ideas may be directly transferable and many of them may not be. I think it's very important, really. The better we understand the science, or perhaps a better word would be to say, the better that we understand the principles, the concepts of what really needs to happen, then we can figure out a way to adapt those concepts and principles specifically to our operation.

Valuable point.

I really appreciate you bringing that out.

Yeah, I think one of the things I like to do when I do go talk to crowds here and there is try to relay my mistakes, because there's been many, and try to save some people from making the same mistakes, I guess, because I was lucky enough to sit in the seats and have someone tell me those, you know, and, yeah, you know, minor changes can make big differences. And, you know, and I think, you know, like you said, I think understanding where you live and how those are going to fit in your operation is very important.

Yeah. Derek, I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure that our listeners will enjoy it very much as well.

Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks, John, for having me, and.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Thanks.

Bye.

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