Talk me through the first, say, 18 months to two years, how the plans evolved, what your initial impressions were, and critically, why you chose to stay.

Oh, yeah.

So when I came here, I wasn't sure if I was going to be staying six months or a year.

My sister and I weren't sure if one of us was going to be staying, if we were going to be selling the farm.

And it can sound a little cheesy to say, but I did, in those six months, fall in love with the land.

I come from the northeast of the United States, so the climate is very different here, and it doesn't feel like my climate kind of of origin, but there was something that spoke to me in this land.

And I'd been coming when I was a little girl.

Why, many listeners will be wondering, why organic? What was behind or the motivation behind your vision to transition to organic rather than just improve the current existing

We'll go further into detail and I'll ask follow up questions in a minute.

Okay, great.

So the first thing that I did was get organic certification, which at the time was a very big step for the farm that I was managing.

Obviously, that has evolved.

But the question of certification for the amount that of grains and rice and just the sheer volume of what I produce means that I do work with larger supply chains.

And the transition to organic certification was really one of the main reasons to do that was a market decision.

And so the first things I did were primarily to go and find the new markets, either by going through to, you know, fairs and meeting potential supply chain partners, or just through local networks and regional networks that I slowly started to build.

in a pretty brutal way.