98. Cottonwood Ciderhouse

Our guests on today's episode are Stacy and Dan of Cottonwood Cider House here in North Dakota.

I—

these people came on my radar in a really cool, special way. I was at a restaurant and bar in Wahpeton, North Dakota. It's about 70 miles from where I live here in Oaks, and, um, I was by myself and I was like, oh, I kind of want a drink. So I was glancing through the menu and I noticed that they had a couple of ciders on tap. And I have kind of a mixed history, or I feel like ciders are kind of a mixed bag. We talk about this, uh, in the episode. But I was like, well, it's kind of cool, they're from Eyre, this small town. And I thought, well, I'll give it a shot. I like— it was almost like it hit my mouth and I went, it's so good once it touches your lips. Like, it was so— it was so good. And I thought, oh my gosh. So I immediately, I slow— I didn't like slam my cider. I slow sipped and really savored my cider, but I at the same time started Googling about them and I thought, gosh, I really wanna have these people on the podcast. And what I came to find out was that, um, it was a family farm. They really reshaped, um, that's the word that they used to talk about what they did with the farm. And I felt like it was such a cool story of innovation and reimagination for rural people and farmland in particular. They're doing something that not a lot of people would ever have the audacity to do., and, uh, I definitely want you to go see them. I want you to buy their product. Um, we'll link, put all the links to, you know, their products and their webpage and their— actually you can physically go to the cider house too in the show notes. But there's so much that we can learn from people that have this kind of audacity. So it was a super fun conversation. And so without further ado, enjoy this chat with Stacy and Dan of Cottonwood Cider House. Well, hey guys, welcome to the Growing Small Towns show. I'm so happy that you both are here.

Thank you for having us.

Yeah.

So why don't you fill our listeners in a bit on like, how did you guys end up running the cider house? Your cider is delicious. I love it. I cannot wait when it— you're open again and I get to physically come to you. So just tell our listeners a little bit about your, your story, your history. Okay.

Well, in 2012, we got the idea to plant an apple orchard. We didn't really have any plans as far as what we were going to do with the apples. So after some research and feasibility study, we determined that building a cider house would be a good use of our apples. After the decision was made to go forward with the cider house, we put in more trees every year. So at this point, we've got about 2,000 apple trees.

Wow. So, so can you tell us a bit How did— it's almost like, okay, you had— was it— it's one of your family's farm, right? Farmland that you originally— was part of your family, is that correct?

Yep, that's right. It's my dad's family. So I'm the fourth generation to be farming the land out here.

Cool. Were they farming? I'm assuming it was not apples since you planted the orchard, right? So what were they farming?

Mostly soybeans, small grains, that type of thing. My dad was He was the first certified organic farmer in Cass County, back in the mid-'80s is when he got his certification. So after he retired, he, you know, closed up the farm, rented the land, sold the machinery. So when I decided I wanted to do something with the family farm, farming the conventional way that we would do here in North Dakota wasn't a possibility. So we came up with the idea to do the apples.

So as a 5th generation farm family, I really want everybody to think about that and really think, you know, because this— I don't know that there's that many stories of people coming back to the family farm and then completely reimagining what, especially what production agriculture could be. I don't know that many stories like yours. And I think that's really cool. I think it's a really cool way to keep the legacy of your family going. But really putting your own twist on it. So honestly, bravo for having the bravery to do something so different. So just because I'm curious, how apples grow well in North Dakota, like what you need to actually make? Because I mean, we have a— obviously not everybody knows, we have listeners from all over the country, which is super fun. Everybody just assumes North Dakota is cold. Our winters are pretty brutal. Um, but I'm assuming that was part of your feasibility study. Can you share a little bit about like what did that look like? I mean, what, what, what pieces of the business model were you researching?

Well, you know, from a feasibility standpoint, I mean, basically if it was even a feasible business idea, uh, and they, they pointed out certain areas that were potential problems.

Okay, can you tell me who, who's the they?

Well, we had some students from the University of Mary in Fargo do it.

Very cool.

Yeah, their class project. So it didn't cost us any money, which was always great, and they did a really wonderful job. It kind of helped us determine that this was what we should be doing.

There again, Stacy and Dan, both of you, what a cool use of resources. Right? Like, you know, because I think the reason— as soon as you said feasibility study, my ears perked up a bit because I don't know that that's not often something that those of us in especially smaller rural places— because again, for our listeners, can you give some proximity? Like, how far is Ayre from the biggest city? What's the biggest city closest to it? You know, just kind of give some of those stats and population.

Yeah. Uh, well, the, the biggest city closest to us is about 40 miles away. It's Fargo. We're on the east part of the state. Yep. The town of Eyre, I read somewhere not too long ago that there were 21 people. It fluctuates between 21 and 17. Our business is about 3 miles just east from the town, and the town now is just basically a big elevator. And so yeah, there's not much going on except for the elevator business in the town of Eyre.

And the cider house.

The cider house, which, you know, I can see air from my bedroom window.

So yeah, well, and I— so feasibility studies are not something that a lot of, um, a small town business proprietors— not only maybe we maybe think to do it, but, you know, accessing the resources to get something like that done is not always easy. So what a great tip for anybody. Um, also, again, you're speaking again to me and to my listeners, you're speaking into the possibility of like, I mean, really, again, you're 40 miles from Fargo. That's decent proximity, but you're still, you are in the country. Like, you know, you're a decent little drive. And so it takes courage and it takes vision and it takes data and you guys got the data. So let's pick up there. So you decided, you got kind of the hard data or analysis to support that this would be a good thing to do. I'm assuming, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that neither of you had ever grown apples nor made cider. Is that true? Or had you? Like, what part of that, you know, and there's both of you in it. I'm just so fascinated by couples that do businesses like this together. So, you know, why making cider and which one of you was kind of drawn to that side of it?

Well, making cider was kind of a fluke. When we were deciding what we should do and if we should do this or not, and you know, we did the feasibility study which said it'd be a good idea but there would be problems. Our experience with cider was, you know, I homebrew. I'd done some homebrews. I've been doing that for a few years.

Just beer? Huh? Beer?

Beer, yeah.

Okay, yep.

Maybe a couple batches of cider. So not a lot of experience with it. And to be honest, they didn't even turn out that great. And my only other experience with cider really was the really sweet kind of ciders like Angry Orchard or Woodchuck, ones like that. And I wasn't that big of a fan of them. So we're trying to figure this out and trying to see if it's something we wanted to do. We just kind of had to research it more and we had to look into it and see what kind of ciders we can make. And when we found out all the different things you can do with cider and all the different kinds of ciders you can make, much different than what is out there commercially, we thought this might be a really good idea to bring to this area because it's just not around here. Right. You go to the East Coast and the West Coast, you find cider houses everywhere. There's a ton of these small kind of community cider houses that maybe just serve the area. They don't do real big batches. They're not distributing across the country. They just maybe have an orchard or have access to some apples and they make some cider and they sell it and they make a lot of really good stuff. And that's what we saw and really wanted to emulate and try in this area ourselves. And so that's part of that, you're talking about that step or that jump. This might be something really cool to bring to this area. One of the problem areas that the feasibility study brought to us was us being 40 miles from Fargo and how people from Fargo might struggle coming out here. As far as a taproom, you could struggle in that regard, but it turned out everyone in the community loves coming out here that we don't really have an issue with people wanting to come to this area because it's It's maybe not Fargo, we get people from Fargo, we get people from all over actually, but—

I believe that, yeah.

The surrounding community supports us so much that we get plenty of people coming out here just from the neighboring small towns and the people that also live out in the country here.

Yeah, so I think again, I knew I wanted to have you guys on the second I tasted your cider. Hoping that you were also cool people, you know, like, and I only mean that from the sense of, you know, like you were really truly passionate about what you were doing because that doesn't always happen. I mean, I understand that. But again, I think, okay, so what are the lessons for the, for our listeners? And that's that right there again is one of the lessons that being rural, it's proximity to a large, a larger city isn't even the only thing that makes or breaks you. Because small, small communities and then regions really support one another, I think. And you have said it is such a niche business, right? Like, like you said, there's no— very few. I mean, are— what is there? Only maybe two sites? Because there's a— there's a cider house in Fargo, correct?

Is there—

is there only two in the whole state, or is there something out west?

I want a couple of wineries that are— that are maybe making some real small batch cider.

Sure.

But there's no other cider houses besides us and the Wild Terra, right?

That's what it's called.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I just, I think it's, it's just spectacularly cool. So tell me a little bit, or tell all of us a little bit about, um, kind of what scaling has looked like. When did you actually go all in on a taproom where you open that up to the public, or was that right away? Or just tell us a little bit because you said it was 2012. That you planted your first orchard.

Correct.

Were you able to actually get a batch of cider out of that first year? How long did you have to wait before the orchard was ready?

Well, we're, yeah, since we've been planting trees for so many years now, we have some that haven't even begun to produce yet. Our first trees, I would say, are probably to full maturity at this point, but a lot of North Dakota varieties are every other year. So that itself provides, you know, it's a whole other set of challenges. But we're going throughout, you know, a lot of the state of North Dakota picking apples. We do go and pick over in Minnesota a little bit, but we do try to get as much of the fresh apple as we possibly can. That's, for us, that gives us the flavor that we want for our cider. But in In 2018, we opened up the taproom. So we started building the— or it wasn't even the taproom, I shouldn't call it that, it was the cider house. And so we started with an existing 60 by 60 steel building that used to house the farming machinery. And it was basically empty at that point. And so we built the cider house inside the building. And so we took, what was it, 60 by 40?

Two-thirds of it. Two-thirds of it was the cider house. So we just kind of built a structure within it. Yep. And that was the cider house.

But we left the front part just completely, you know, as it was before and used it for storage and that type of thing. We never thought that anyone would ever want to come out here. And so at that point, when we first started our business, we were focusing on kegs. So that's where we thought we were gonna support ourselves was through our keg business.

And we did. We had a couple of taps and a few tables in case people wanted to come out and see the place and have a couple glasses of cider or something. And we didn't get a lot of business right off the bat. We had maybe just a couple customers here and there and some weekends where maybe almost no one came out.

Exactly.

And then we jumped on the idea of doing pizza, and we get all our pizzas from a pizza place in Fargo, Blackbird Pizza.

Oh yeah, I love that pizza.

Yeah, really good.

And so once we started doing that, then all of a sudden, you know, the customer base just grew and grew and grew.

Let's say in 2020, we were surprisingly busy to the point where we decided to put in a little kitchen wall, I call it. So I did small meals and that really grew the business. And so last, in 2021, we remodeled the front part of this steel building. And so now we have an official taproom. So we've got a nice restroom in there. There's actually 2 restrooms in this building, which just blows my mind. And we can seat—

30, 40 people?

At least.

Yeah, for the first 2 years, we were just seating people within the cider house and I would have to work around different tables making batches.

Yeah, right.

And we'd have— different crockpots or pizza ovens scattered throughout the cider house to where we could make food and stuff for the people sitting there. And it was lots of, very challenging, very challenging to get through that to where we are now to actually have a taproom, a dedicated kitchen area. And yeah, once Stacy started doing food on top of the pizzas that we had, and the pizzas we actually lost for a period of a few months. And that was kind of how Stacy started doing food. Is that because of COVID or there was reasons, we had some reasons that we lost pizzas for a while. So Stacy was like, I need to start making food out here. And so she just pick one meal, make it, and then all of a sudden that's what everybody wanted. And so our business just grew and grew just from that. And then we got the pizzas back. And so now we got a couple options for people to have for food out here.

Yeah, that, it's, it's such a neat story. And, um, so again, for our listeners, um, this is not a full-time business for the both of you, is it? Or are you full-time in the business now?

It's my full-time job. Okay.

Yep.

Yeah. My main title is orchardist, which, you know, sad to—

No, I think it's great.

Well, that's not what most of my time is spent doing though, which I would like to change that, but it is what it is right now. But, you know, I manage the taproom. I do practically everything. And Dan is the one who's making the cider, but he still has his full-time job.

So I just kind of call this my second full-time job.

Yeah, right. Right. Okay, so what is the season at the Cider House at your taproom? What does that look like? I know people, at least in our area, are going to want to come. 'Cause I don't know that a lot of people, and so we are, you know, I'm a ways from you, but not a ridiculous drive. And I'm in Fargo and people around here, we're in Fargo all the time. I just think it's special enough that, you know, listening to this, there's gonna be people that come to visit. So when can they come to visit? What's your season look like?

We're hoping to be open here by early May.

Okay.

And then it's weekends, like a Friday night, Saturday all day, and then Sunday in the afternoon will be open. That's kind of generally our schedule for pretty much every weekend in the summer.

Okay. Yeah. Are there— is there a product that people can buy besides just, you know, actually consuming it on the property? Is there a product that they can take home with them?

Oh yeah. Um, actually the Cider House is kind of one of the few places you can get our bottles. We don't sell in stores. We usually sell at farmers markets and different events that we go to and whatever, Pride of Dakotas. But otherwise, the Cider House is pretty much where you can get our box. So yeah.

And it's a good, a nice time up here because not only is there us to visit, but there's also other wineries that are fairly close. We're a member of this program called the Red River Trek. And so you get a card and you get a stamp every, you know, from every winery that you visit, and when you're done you get a t-shirt. So people have loved doing that, and they'll either go to a couple on a weekend, or I've even seen some people who will do all 8 in one day. So yeah, it's a good time. And then also we're a member of Harvest Hosts, which I don't know if you've heard of that.

I haven't. What is that?

It's a group of RV people. And so you pay a yearly fee and you can stay at all of these designated Harvest Host sites throughout the country, even up into Canada and South America. And you don't have to pay anything once you pay that yearly fee. And that, that's been a lot of fun. We've had people from all over the country stay here.

Oh, that's super, that is super cool. So let me ask you this, um, how did you guys figure out the distribution piece of your products? Like, you know, whether to go direct to consumer or wholesale it or sell it in, you know, you said you started with kegs, um, and, and how, you know, how did you get the word out about what you guys were doing?

A lot of trial and error and a lot of just, let's see if this works and if it does, we'll keep doing it kind of thing.

Ah, the true entrepreneurial spirit. I love it.

Yeah, yeah. Very, very detailed, very analytical process that we went through here as we called distributor up because we were going to be in a bar, I think that day, and we needed to get kegs to that bar that day. And we had to figure out how to do it and we had to go through this distributor. So we called one up and we talked to them and they got us set up and that's how we kind of got started in kegs. And we were doing that for a while until the taproom just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more people were coming out and it's like, okay, now we need to make more retail. And so then we started bottling more and putting more in the kegs that we were using for our glasses. For our glass sales here at the taproom or at our— And I guess kind of over time we've really made a shift going from maybe 80%, 70% going out wholesale and 20% retail to now it's probably closer to even 50/50 or maybe even 60% retail here and 40% out to the distributor.

Yeah, and it's kind of become a juggling act because obviously we do make more money for selling it ourselves by retail ways, but also it took some work and it took some time and it took a lot of growth of our brand to get us into bars throughout the entire state of North Dakota. And we want to keep that And I can't tell you enough how supportive these small towns and even larger towns have been for Cottonwood Cider House. So we're trying to figure out how to just get that perfect mark where there's enough going to wholesale, but yet still there's enough that we keep for retail. And I don't think we've quite figured out how to find that sweet spot yet.

No, still working on that. But we definitely need the wholesale. I mean, we get people from all over that come here just because they've had it somewhere and then they really want to come to the cider house after having it. So, yeah, whatever.

That'd be me.

It is.

That's exactly what happened with me. I mean, it was fun because— and I love the fact that you talked about kind of the commercial ciders because they're not my favorite either. They're just too sweet for me. They just actually literally make my stomach hurt. I'm like, oh, I like the tang and I like the idea of a cider, but they're always so sweet. And so the one that I had of yours was an apple ginger. I don't know if there's a name for it outside of that. You could totally plug it. What is it?

It's the Eremule.

Yeah.

Kind of based on the Moscow Mule. It's got the ginger and the lime in it. But we call it the Air Mule because we're out in air.

So I love it. It was so good that I actually told Stacy, because we had talked earlier, that right away I was sitting— so I was in Wahpeton, North Dakota, and that's right outside of our region. I was there for business and I went to City Brew, their restaurant. And I was there by myself having a lunch. I mean, it was like lunch and I had a glass of your cider at lunch, so people can think what they want about that, whatever. I was all by myself and I was sitting there and I immediately, I mean, I took a sip and I did the like, oh, that's so good. Like out loud to my, you know, I was by myself and I immediately went out and thought like, who are these people? And then, 'cause I saw Air North Dakota and I was like, that is so, it's just so, it's so cool. I mean, it's so cool what you guys are doing is, and also I think what's cool is that shift. I love that you're just trying things. And figure it— because that is the only way to figure out what's going to work, is to have the courage to try it and then really adapt to the feedback that you're getting from people. That's so— how you guys have built this business is exactly what I wish everybody would try to do, because you can spend a whole lot of time doing all the perfect research. If you had listened to the concerns of the feasibility study, you maybe never would have done it. You know what I mean? There were things in the feasibility study like, oh, this could be a problem. And you were like, yeah, I think we can work through that. And that's how you get there. That's what you have to do. You've got to try it and iterate and then tweak and then evaluate. And it's quite the process, right?

Yeah, definitely a lot of that going on.

So what's the thing? Compliments. Nice to hear.

Oh my goodness. Absolutely. I was fairly enamored with it. I can't wait to come and visit. So what's next for you guys? What do you see kind of your next evolution? Or is there something that you're working on that you guys are excited about?

We're kind of just hoping we don't drown right now.

Oh, that's so fair. That's so fair, Dan.

Oh my goodness. We did our first brunch, our brunch kind of during the winter season. We did our first one. A few weeks ago, maybe it was a month ago, 3, 4 weeks ago, and there were so many people that came out here, like probably 30 times more than we ever thought would, that we had to turn people away and people didn't get to eat. We ran out of food and we're doing another one again this weekend and we're doing reservations only and we're kind of planning it better. But right now it's, you know, We know we have the customers. We're just trying to keep everybody happy now. We're trying to keep the cider flowing. We want to keep the food going. We want to make everything smooth. We want people to have a good time when they come out here. The idea of expansion or getting bigger or changing our model is maybe not quite in our minds yet. We're still just trying to catch up with what we have.

Oh, that— yeah, I can totally appreciate that. And I think I just seriously bravo to you both. It's— you're also tapping into the experiential nature of rural places, and people really want that. I mean, and you get to do that, right? It's not just— they're not just driving out for your cider. Your cider is amazing, but that's it's not just that, right? It's all the other pieces that you, you carefully curate to create an experience that people walk away just excited. And like, for me, um, I just love supporting small town makers and people that are doing things like you guys are. So you probably have some traction just due to that. But, um, oh yeah, but I mean, seriously, just bravo to you both. It is— it's been so fun learning about this story and So where can people find you? I'll link to everything that you share, but as people are listening, if they're in their car or whatever, we want to be able to give them some places to go.

Well, you can go to our website, which is cottonwoodciderhouse.com, and you can actually order cider from the website and it'll be shipped to your door by UPS. You can find us at pretty much most of the Pride of Dakotas. We are a Pride of Dakota member. We're also at the Red River Market in Fargo every Saturday once that starts up. Oh, cool. And then we're, you know, since we're not selling our bottles in liquor stores, we really do try to take advantage of as many, like last weekend we were at the home show in Bismarck. So just events like that. And there's, you know, if you like us on Facebook, you can see what we're doing, where you're at, like where you're going to be at upcoming and stuff.

Okay.

Yep.

Very, very, very cool. So I would love for you to share the biggest things that the two of you feel like you've learned. And obviously there's probably a million lessons, but are there any that really stand out to you? What you've learned, especially just the entrepreneurial piece of this, what have been the lessons that you guys have learned?

For me, and this, I don't know if this is an entrepreneurial lesson or not, but it was hard lessons for me to learn was, you know, my experience in making homebrews or making a cider at home translated to making big batch commercial 350, 450 gallons. And everything involved in doing that, that upscaling was a very huge lesson for me. And that, I mean, it was just what is involved in doing that was, you know, and it wasn't something that you could just learn. It was something that you had to, you know, of course, ask people about and research. But then once you actually do it, it's a way different story and you have to make mistakes in order to figure it out. And so it's painful and it was hard. That was probably one of my biggest lessons is scaling, making bigger and bigger batches, going from small scale to large scale.

Are you a part of some groups or do you have a network of other people that do this kind of brewing? So you have a support group of people that you turn to, or what is your support system for this very niche business? What does that look like?

Yes and no. I mean, we met a lot of people going through like CiderCon, and we did a little bit of traveling around the Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan area, just talking to some different cider houses on how they were doing things. So in that sense, we did get some support, and you meet a lot of different people, and who do a lot of different kinds of things. Through CiderCon, you get cider makers from all over the country and then even Canada too. So in that sense, there's that support group, but there's nobody here. You go to New York and it's the guy down the street's making cider and the guy across the way is making cider. And if you need a new tank, you can drive and you can pick it up and you can bring it back to your place. And here, everything needs to be shipped, everything needs to be ordered out. Everyone's a few time zones away as far as trying to call and talk to 'em. So it's a bit of a struggle in this area accessing the support group.

Yeah, that would be where the being super rural is kind of a drawback, right? Yeah. From some suppliers and support and all of that. Okay, awesome. I can so appreciate that. And I just, again, I think the willingness to kind of sit with the difficulty of the screwing up, you know, like just continuing to screw up, knowing that that's the only way that you're gonna, it's like failing forward, right? Like it's the only way you're gonna figure it out is to do it and you know you're gonna mess up. But that can be really hard to just sit with while it's happening.

Yeah, it is sometimes. It's hardheadedness too, is kind of what it is. 'Cause there are times where I probably could have made phone calls But no, I'm going to try it this way and fail and then try it the right way afterwards.

Yeah, well, it's your lesson then, right? Like, you'll learn it. You'll learn— we learn things differently when we make the mistake, I think, than if somebody tells us, do it this way so you don't make that mistake. There's some— it, like, lives in us differently when we physically went through the pain of the error. So, yeah, I can appreciate that, Deb.

What about you?

Yeah, Stacy, what about you?

Well, I guess through this whole project starting way back in 2012 when we first started planting our very first trees, I adapted a mindset of I don't proceed with my life in, I don't consider things as like these are my limitations. Trying to figure out how to put this. It's more of, okay, these aren't my limitations, but I can do this no matter what, that type of thing. It's just not, I'm a female, so I can't drive that tractor. I don't do my life that way. So it's more of like, I'm a female, I want to drive this tractor, so how can I drive this tractor? Or how can I How do I fix this piece of equipment in a way that I can do it? Because I might not be that tall or I might not be as strong or that type of thing. So it's more of knowing what I want to get done and figuring out how to do it.

Yeah, I think that is, again, I can tell just by listening to the two of you that you both have that grit. I call that grit, at least that's somewhat of what that is, is like saying, And it's resourcefulness. You know, it's saying, okay, you know, what do I have at my disposal, A, and if I can't, you know, if I don't have everything I need, who can I ask or who can show me or, you know, and it's amazing now because if resourcefulness, think of how hard resourcefulness was to embody 20 years ago versus now, right? Like, my goodness, like there's, just never-ending supply of resources for anything we want to figure out how to do, right? It's pretty incredible. So, but you still, you know, it's one thing to have the resources, it's another thing to say I'm going to find them. And so that's a grit and a determination. It sounds like both of you have a dogged determination to figure stuff out.

Yeah, yeah, you know, but I think we also, you know, the saying is you can't get blood from a turnip and there are just times where I know I have to shut it off and say, I just can't get any more done today. Or I'm not going to respond back to that Facebook message tonight. I'm going to do it tomorrow, that type of thing. So, yeah. Yep.

Well, it does become kind of an all-consuming thing. And you also have to have just lives. Too, right, that, that aren't connected to work in any way. And when you're, when you're driven the way that the two of you clearly are, that certainly can be challenging. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. Balance is hard to achieve.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the truth. Well, I, um, I have thoroughly enjoyed visiting with the both of you, and I hope that our listeners just come and visit you. I really do. Um, I am excited myself to come and visit. I'm doing it this summer. I'm just gonna make— I'm going to just plan it and I'm going to come and I'm going to bring people with me. I'm also going to check out this Red River Trek because that sounds like it's right up my alley. Yeah, I'm thinking, could I do 8 different wineries in a day? I, I feel like that feels like a challenge that I want to take on, but, um, it's really, really light.

Yeah, too many, too many wineries and too much to drive between. You won't really be able to enjoy any of them to do that. The ones that we see trying to get all 8 in a day, it's more of a goal of getting them done and not necessarily having fun. But the ones that will want to do 2, 3 a weekend, they come up, enjoy themselves, they have a good time, and they move to the next one and they just do a couple a day. And I think it's a much better time when it's done that way.

Yeah, well, thank you for the tip. I don't know that I would ever try to do 8 in a day because that's the other thing. I would get sucked into wanting to talk to the proprietors if I could. There's no way. I just find it so fascinating. And wine is its whole separate thing. And I just think the fact that you guys are doing cider, the fact that it's on your family's land, Stacy, just such a cool story. And I hope that you're sharing your story kind of wide and far and wide. I mean, I hope that you're getting the press that I think your business really deserves. Because, man, again, it's legacy. There's preservation of the land, there's stewardship of the land. That's a part of that. And of course, that speaks to me just because of where we've chosen to build our family and build our life. It was around that legacy of our family's land. So, gosh, it's really special.

Yep, it sure is. Yep.

Well, um, thank you guys both again so much for coming on the show, and, uh, I hope to have you back sometime soon. And I will definitely report back to our listeners about how fabulous my experience was when I come to see you this summer.

Sounds good, Rebecca. Thank you guys. Yep. All right, take care.

You too.

Bye-bye.