... bug and which, what they're predators of, and every variety of plant and, you know, they're learning without realizing they're learning.

Mm-hmm.

For sure.

So going back to the preservation part, again, your book is about preserving food.

We've given listeners quite a bit to think about, but again, for the beginner, like where is the starting point? You said pick one or two things and start there, maybe pick your favorite thing.

Do you have any other word of advice in starting out? For preserving, like you can, you can do that two ways.

Like you can start by, you know, growing your first tomato plant or growing, you know, some green beans, but you could also start by picking A thing to learn to preserve.

So if it's-

uh-huh oh okay well that's definitely a farm we have

cows and goats and sheep and chickens and all the animals too and we our garden is about 4 000 square feet uh-huh we also grow about a half an acre of flowers.

So it's like that part's a farm, but then the garden is kind of just a garden and we don't have acres of crops or anything.

Yes, I'm sure.

Rest is important, they keep saying.

So we just, we let everything, we focus heavily on summer growth and preservation so that we can, when everything dies in October, we're done growing things from October till June.

early February, and then we have to start seeds and everything all over again.

But that way we don't have things that we can eat growing in the winter besides things that just naturally survive winters here, like herbs.

Do

you want to start or I'll start? Go ahead.

We just have to decide who's going to talk.

So we are in southern Missouri, and that's Zone 6-ish.

We're flexible there because it actually gets a lot colder on our homestead.

We have about 12 acres, and our microclimate is easily a zone colder than the area around us.

It gets...

like it's serious yeah like right now

But

there are safety mechanisms, just like with the canner.

They're built into the recipes.

Like when you're canning tomato sauce, if you're using a recipe, you're adding lemon juice or bottled lemon juice, not fresh, because the pH is controlled that way, or citric acid.

a certain amount to the tomato.

That way, if your tomatoes just happen to not have enough acid, which they almost always do, you're still covering your bases.

And botulism can't grow.

Yeah, and just real quick on that, though, give us another minute on that, and why, which ones, why do you do that, how long do you do it?

Aw.

That was, like, my mindset, um, where it...

Starting about the time we had our third baby, and we were still, like, in town.

It was, like, 2010-ish.

Um, and we had a garden, like, all the time before that, but I wasn't, like, really doing much with it.

But, I mean, I started all the things.

I was gonna bake bread from scratch and all of that.

What?