Transcript
Speaker: The purpose of our farm is, is we want to educate. We want to teach other people how to do this so they don't have to rely on the food system. And as you know, you grew up on a farm. There is a lot of personal gratification growing your own vegetables. On ah one acre of land, we can teach people how to grow 250 ,000 plants. And that's tremendous. I mean, that Imagine what that could do in the world if everybody owned an acre of land. Hello and welcome to the Regenerative Design Podcast. I'm your host, Mathieu Maheus, and each episode I interview leading authorities in regenerative practices, people who excel at doing well and doing good.
Speaker: So are you passionate about protecting our planet for future generations while driving in business? Well, you're in the right place because this podcast is dedicated to making our world better and your business more successful.
Speaker: Hello, welcome. This is another episode of the Regenerative Design Podcast, where we interview leading experts who are making our world a better place and who are creating business. So today we have another very special guest. Her name her name is Nancy Ortynow. And Nancy has founded her own business called Inspirations by Nancy, where she helps people to grow their own food in an indoors and outdoor system. So I'm very excited to have you here, Nancy. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Oh, that's great. I love that. So yeah, my first question to you is really to ask you to go a bit back in time as far as you want to tell me where where all this started. Where did you get the idea of of becoming an expert in the growing business?
Speaker: You know, it was something I always wanted to do. I had too many kids to take time to do it. But about three and a half years ago, um I joined a company and purchased what was called an aeroponic tower farm. And I really, really got enthused about this. And actually, I joined the company just to get a discount. And now I sell them all the time. I teach other people how to do it. And it's been... You know, it's been a great journey. That's how I met you. And you have taught me even more about gardening. So that's really exciting for us. Actually, you've taught my husband and I both. Yeah, I love that. We can talk about that more later. But so were there like ways maybe even back in your youth as a child that that kind of linked things up to where you are today? So I love flowers.
Speaker: I always wanted to have flowers in my garden that I could cut and bring in house in the house. um I always trialed and aired. um I always have pots of flowers all over my yard and when I can get them to grow in the ground. Indoors, i my house is full of plants. I've always grown plants. People walk in and say, man, you have a lot of plants in here. But it's who I am and I love giving them as gifts. I love giving people flowers as gifts. And now that I grow so many flowers, I like making my own special arrangements and little mason jars and giving them as hostess gifts because they're straight from my garden. And to me, that means it's straight from my heart. And so it's just the excitement of watching it start. I like starting my plants from seeds, most of them. And when you get to
Speaker: Watch them every day poke out of the ground. It's pretty exciting because you see the progress that's going on. And you get sad when one dies. I can never throw a plant away. Do you know their feeling, Matthew? Yes, i really I can totally relate from it. it was my personal earliest memory as as a child to see like how crazy it is that if you put a seed into the soil, or in this case, even in an aquaponics system, that it grows into a magnificent plant. like where does How is that even possible? So I can totally relate to that.
Speaker: When I was a little girl, I remember in the springtime going in the backyard and cutting a flower off the rose bush to take to my teacher. And we would wrap it in a little wet paper towel and then in ah a little plastic so we could carry it to school and give it to the teacher. Oh, wow. That's a lot so lovely. I like that. So yeah even at an early age, you were already a gardener collecting flowers and giving it to people. You know, I always wanted this great big garden and I had kids very young and so my time was very consumed with my children. But I had a brother that when he had a huge garden and he he would just share everything about it. And so I always looked forward to the time that I could have my garden. And he was supposed to help me with my garden and teach me, but unfortunately he passed at an early age. So
Speaker: all of a sudden I'm ready to garden and I don't know how to do it. So I start trial and error. And then I had it going really well and then the wild animals came and ate it. And those wild animals love fresh veggies. Yeah, that's an that's an incredible story actually that you and you had your brother there and then you kind of had to learn it on your own or relearn it. So how then eventually did you end up learning more about doing the garden? So we we kept preparing the ground and we kept trial and airing and I felt like we just weren't going anywhere with it. And so um my husband and I decided to invest in this aeroponic tower farm. And we just started with one tower and we grew like 24 plants.
Speaker: And they grew so easy and the system ran so like a well oiled machine. And we got really, really excited about it. So then we added another tower and then we started growing other vegetables. And then the following year we added another tower and now we have six towers. And what was so exciting is We got to learn how to grow different vegetables on it. And now we're teaching other people how to do this. And that's what I like. Because we'll try things, even though you know you always get a guide to what you can grow on it. But that vegetable wouldn't be listed. So we say, OK, we'll try it. And we just do trial and error and see what works the best on it.
Speaker: And last year we had so many fresh vegetables and we would just invite people over to see it and and we'd harvest and enjoy it. I love sending people home with fresh vegetables off my tower because they taste so good.
Speaker: No, I love that. It's just really exciting. cool and We can actually go a bit deeper into that. do you So your system both works inside and outside and you do it throughout the year. Can you explain a bit more about that? Yes, we have the system will grow indoors. That's where we started. And they have a bigger system for outdoors and indoors. And um we actually grow vegetables in our basement year round. We have three towers. Yeah, ah it's crazy because we have so many vegetables. And when you harvest,
Speaker: It keeps growing because you harvest from behind the plant. So we have so much lettuce that we'll send an email around. I know we we send an email to our neighbors and say, does anybody need some spicy greens or lettuce? ah And they all get back to us. And then we harvest extra vegetables and deliver them to the neighbors. So the system just runs on light water and ah mineral blend air. It's circular. It's called aeroponics. And it just works, everything works on the timer. It's easy, it's fun, and it grows like a 30 % higher yield than in a regular garden and three times faster. So our grandson loves planting the seeds with us. So there's a whole nother level of education there for youngsters. And um we love involving the kids. And you'll love this because the one grandson loves helping plant the seeds
Speaker: And the other grandson looks at me and says, you know, Mima, I'm not good at that, but I can make labels for that tower. Amazing. So he does he labels all of our vegetables for us so we know what's growing. And then the other guy, he helps us grow. And I just love when I'm at my kitchen window, looking outside, we have a pool in our backyard. And that's where we have these towers. And the little guy and our son are digging around on these plants looking for vegetables. And they get so excited. Mima, did you know you had this growing out there and that growing? And we're not allowed to harvest unless Nathan's here. And one day we had to wait for him before we could harvest our zucchini. And it literally grew an inch every day. That's how fast these vegetables grow in the tower.
Speaker: That's crazy. it's just z It is. It's so much fun sharing this with kids. That's amazing. And what I really love about this story is that you are actually also improving the food security of your local community because I was just off and not well i had a couple of people in the farming industry that we talked on in the podcast, one of which you are. and One of the things that happened at COVID right was like the whole food system kind of collapsed. Many places in the world, even wealthy Western countries, all of a sudden didn't have any fresh produce anymore. So it really showed how vulnerable the global food system is, even though it's the we don't have to say that it's a bad system, but it's vulnerable. So if we can have systems like yours to support the food production on a global scale,
Speaker: then that makes a huge difference. So I would love to hear what your take is on that. I think that that's a great idea. um I feel that everybody could be doing this in their home. And actually our system that we have, you in one acre, you can grow 250 ,000 plants. And I think that far, yeah, and one acre. So that means you can buy an acre of land and you can be growing vegetables and contributing to our food system. We are getting ready to open an aeroponic tower farm. It's going to have
Speaker: Yes, and it we're starting small but the what the purpose of our farm is is we want to educate We want to teach other people how to do this so they don't have to rely on the food system And as you know, you grew up on a farm. There is a lot of um, I don't know personal gratification growing your own vegetables and a lot of just It's good to work out in the yard. It's good to be you know getting your hands back into earth and be getting grounded. But on two on ah one acre of land, we can teach people how to grow 250 ,000 plants. And that's tremendous. I mean, that imagine what that could do in the world if everybody owned an acre of land.
Speaker: what they could keep you know If one neighbor grew the lettuces and one neighbor grew the herbs and one neighbor grew the tomatoes, and what you know this is like ah could be a really big thing. yeah And sharing. people you know We can share with each other. There's so much food that come off these towers. So our, our goal with our farm is to bring schools in and teach kids one. and It's a great new way to egg for agriculture. It's so teaching the kids at a younger level how to eat healthier. Cause that's a whole nother side of this is teaching kids how to eat healthy. And there's all kinds of fun things that you can do. We also have a cooking show where we help people learn how to cook these vegetables.
Speaker: which is some people don't know how to cook. And so we do simple, easy recipes to help them learn that. So that's a purpose of where we're going in our business is teaching people how to sustain their own food. Yeah, that's incredible because now you're taking your well something that started out as a I'd say as a hobby or just an idea for you to do then became like a production where you started sharing food with your neighbors. And now you're bringing it to the next level to both replicate it for other people that are interested in starting their either their own small farm or even bigger. And then on top of that, you're educating kids on something that's quite cool because it's a
Speaker: It's quite imaginary that we can grow food now in towers with a relatively low technology system. And right you learning, like if a kid will see these things, he will start to appreciate that salad that he never likes to eat and then he will eat more of it. So yeah, congratulations on that. I really, I really admire your achievements there.
Speaker: So another whole avenue of this is there's a lot of people in the world with special needs and they're really, um there's no place for them to work, you know? And they and they can still sustain, for fulfill they can hold meaningful jobs. And so if you had say a disabled 18 year old coming out of high school, And they're like, okay, what do I do now for the rest of my life? What if somebody set that, I'm gonna call him a young adult, um up with say four towers. He can learn how to grow the vegetables, how to take care of the vegetables. He can harvest those vegetables. He could take them to a farmer's market and sell them.
Speaker: he now has a meaningful job and something that he can do and he can eventually get to a point where he can be taking care of himself or herself. So I think that this tower has so many different levels of um entities that can help the world in very good places. Yeah, that's really cool because what you referred to somebody that's 18 year old, but I even think that for younger, kids that could be something interesting to learn about entrepreneurship and to like take care of something, be consistent at something. Because when I was a kid, I was actually running a farm act business. I had 12 chicken or 20 chicken. I would go out after school, take care of them, feed them, give water. And I would sell my eggs. I contacted people. I had the local, uh, a local,
Speaker: Bakery that then bought my eggs and it was like a whole business I was counting counting my money and I loved it and I think That was a huge part of my education so I really see a lot of potential in that like Let's say you you organize kind of a summer camp for kids to learn how to grow their own tower they get to take one home and then they you teach them like how to market it how to Contact their neighbors how to ask the right price and all of that. So I think that's really cool. I think I'll have to add that to my list of classes I'm going to offer when we open our farm and our farm is going to be indoors. So we will be able to teach year round. That's incredible because you are in the, can you tell to our listeners what climate you are in? I'm in the United States and I'm in the Midwest. So we see four seasons here.
Speaker: And we can get very hot and we can get very cold. We just had a cold spell down around zero and under. um That's not all the time, but it will get that cold at times. We can go as high as 100, 105 here. So I am very thrilled that we can do this indoors and we can we can maintain vegetables growing year -round at our farm and we can um teach people year -round. And then they can also do it inside their house or if they choose to do it outdoors and it'll be more of a seasonal
Speaker: um Because ah we so we can probably safely, the end of April through October, grow. But beyond that, the weather doesn't cooperate with us. And then bringing the the towers inside for the winter, is that something possible? Yes. We we take them down when we see our harvest is pretty much depleted. And sometimes they're still going like crazy, but it's time to get them because we know the cold is coming. yeah And when with that's when we clean our towers before we bring them in the house. And then we start with fresh plants when we bring them in the house. And we grow right in our basement. We have a little corner. They're on wheels. So you can just kind of keep it close to the corner. When you want to harvest, you pull it out. You harvest around it and you can just slide it back in. Yeah, you need about a three to four foot area.
Speaker: And you are good to go with one tower. Three to four foot. That's really small, right? And we need to get that in in meters. I just want to see four. Oh, that's true. Four foot.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's it's incredible because one point two square meters. It's nothing. Yes. Yes. And you know, what let's say on that surface, how many vegetables can you grow year in one year? So with the larger one, you can grow 24, but then they have extensions. So depending on how tall your ceiling is, you can add a couple of extensions there. So we always add extensions because you get more bang for your buck then. Yeah. So, but you're saying 24 plants or how how exactly? In one whole year.
Speaker: Right. And so I, so the seed, let's go back to October. We brought our towers in. We started our, our plants with seeds and you only use about four or five seeds. So when you have a packet of heirloom seeds and you got four or five seeds, you've got plenty of seeds left for the next round, right? We're eating off of the same seeds we planted in October and it is now February. So it's very economical, right? You see this? So we just keep you harvest from the back and it just keeps growing and growing. Some of our plants are this big. wow And they're I mean, we have so much lettuce in our basement and basil right now that it is time to contact the neighbors again. oh my god And we just did this on New Year's Day. Yeah. Oh, we love pesto. we love
Speaker: So, and that's another thing is we make a lot of pesto. We share it when we go to parties. We bring it along. um We find different ways to serve it and people love the freshness of it. And it's a wonderful gift to give to people also. Oh my God, I love this. It's such a beautiful gift to somebody rather than giving another object that they don't even need or that they have to store in their basement. Now you're giving something that you made and It's valuable. I just love giving homemade gifts. Like I said, oh, now, remember when I talked about the flowers earlier? You can grow flowers on the tower also. Oh, wow. Like also edible flowers.
Speaker: the edible, regular flowers. So I was told the sweetest story. Now here we've we've talked about kids. Now we can go to seniors. And so there this young man told me a story that he bought a tower for his mom and he put it outside her window where she sat because she was disabled and she could not get outside anymore to garden. And he came over once a week and took care of it and she got to watch all the flowers all summer long. Oh my God, that's amazing because because there's something important that you bring up that when people get older, they kind of, well, let's say that they finish their career, they start growing their own garden because they're physically still very fit.
Speaker: but then at some point you you're not so physically fit anymore and that's another opportunity to keep growing when you're less mobile so that that's I love that approach as well. So we placed three towers in a senior center here in the area and it was very funny because the men were very like Okay, I want to see how this is going to work. Yeah, right. You're not going to grow vegetables on this. And the women, yeah, it was it even though I had pictures, they didn't believe me. So we set the towers up and the best part was our grandson at six years old at the time helped us assemble them. And I think that the the seniors were more amazed that he was helping than what was really happening. But what we did is
Speaker: We, um a few of the women saw me planting the seeds right in front of them. And they told me all kinds of stories about their gardens that they used to have that could no longer have. And so, and we came back in three weeks to plant the plants into the towers and people came out of the woodworks to help us. Can we help you plant those? And I heard more beautiful stories about tulip gardens and vegetable gardens. So the men then came around and it was really funny because um the the lady that takes care of the tower said on harvest day, they all show up with their scissors to help harvest.
Speaker: So, you know, it's just full circle. The the seniors can't bend and and stoop and all that as they get older. And imagine a farmer like yourself, you know, all of a sudden you're 89 years old and you miss gardening and you can still garden because this is vertical. This podcast is brought to you by the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass. Are you struggling with finding the right tools and tricks for your garden? Are you lacking the confidence to cultivate the garden you have always wanted? Do you have a backyard with lots of potential, but you get overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge and time to do gardening? Then the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass is for you.
Speaker: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that. so it's such a like the The opportunities are endless, I have the feeling. just Just the two of us, or you, you came up with a lot of good ideas. So I'm very happy that you're going to or that you're actually putting that out into the market and and creating that value for for your local, maybe even global community. so Well, and these will ship anywhere in the world. That's incredible. Yeah, we have to talk about that to get them here to Belgium. So I have another question. I heard somehow and I want to hear your experience that in aquaponics systems, it's not possible to harvest seeds. Is that true or is it is it a misconception? Well, we harvest our seeds, but I will tell you that
Speaker: harvesting seeds has to do with the heirloom seeds. So the big trick to this is if you have a good heirloom seed, you'll be able to recoup seeds out of it. If you buy inexpensive, cheap, you know, just to save money, you're not really saving money. because when you use a better seed, one, you can read you can collect the seeds and two, you're gonna get a higher volume and you're gonna get a better percentage that are actually gonna sprout for you. So you're it's more economical to buy an heirloom seed. If that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Can you explain to the audience what heirloom means? Well, the heirloom seeds are one,
Speaker: Yeah, they they are generation by generation. I mean, like, um the nursery will go grow a flower and they will actually pick the seeds from that flower every year. So it keeps rejuvenating itself. They're not um modified in any way. And that way you're it'll always reproduce for you. Yeah, like the DNA stays, let's say that the DNA stays in in a good good quality. so then but did you Did you experiment with using your own seeds to start new crops? You know, I haven't because I have gotten on such a fast pace here of growing. And so something I do, when we sell someone a tower, we go to their house and
Speaker: They always want us to come show them how to put together put it together. But it comes with a booklet that you don't need help. But we do it as a courtesy, right? And when we go, we bring binders of seeds with us and we share our seeds. So we go through seeds pretty fast. So when I'm at the ah nursery, I buy a bundle of seeds. It's just a time factor right now for us. because we're helping so many people. um We had someone buy a tower from us he and he was at our house. He says, I haven't started growing yet. My wife wants to grow this, this and this. And I went to my binder and I was able to pull seeds out to give it to him. So he can now experiment with those seeds before he buys his seeds. Yeah, that's great. That's amazing. So linked to that, I think
Speaker: What makes me very enthusiastic as well is that if we can grow food in this system, it kind of opens up opportunities for your own private garden, what what you're also doing. So what is your perspective on the fact that if you grow on your system, you can actually do other things with your garden. So what vision do you have for that? So the OK, and let's back up because I didn't cover this. You cannot grow root vegetables on this tower. So we grow all of our greens. like Now the lettuces we grow in our basement because of the temperature, the cool vegetables we keep in our basement because of the heat in our area. But you can grow all of your greens vertical and then that leaves you more room for more root vegetables.
Speaker: So then you can start building your garden knowing that all these greens are over here on the patio growing like crazy. And then your root vegetables, you can pay more attention to um preparing your ground specifically for the root vegetables and, you know, making your area for that. And I think that you will do better. um The root vegetables can do better because you're paying more attention to them because the tower is self efficient. Mm hmm. If that makes sense. So we are growing now. I I tried pumpkins on my tower last year and they were like crazy. And my dream, as you know, is to have a pumpkin patch. So now my I know I don't ask me why I love pumpkins because they come in so many shapes and sizes. I think it's fascinating. So we're planning our bed for pumpkins this year.
Speaker: our flower bed, our vegetable bed. Yes. And so you have helped us with that and we are, we're going to grow pumpkins. Like there's no tomorrow and hopefully the rabbits and squirrels and deers and all the animals will leave them alone. Yeah. would If you grow more, at least they're going to be less impacted or you have a couple that are are eaten by the deer, but if it's so ah abundant, the the deer will get sick of the amount of pumpkin. So you have more than enough for yourself. I just think it's amazing that a pumpkin, and I'm talking like a sugar pie size, a smaller pumpkin, will grow on these aeroponic towers because they're vertical, you know, and we just let them drape on the ground and the pumpkins grow. Yeah. And I just wonder if you would actually, if you would
Speaker: actually add like a growing structure to it that they would actually climb in the whole structure above it and you'd have like hanging pumpkins coming down from your from your but structure. Ours are in front of a wall. We actually leaned a a trellis there and they grew up the trellis in the wall. But say you don't have that. You can grow it on the corner of your patio and do exactly that. You could angle trellises on the corner, one on each side and let them grow up or do a little arch over because there's nothing cooler than that happening. But if you're growing big one, you got to support the weight. Tie that weight up. Our our very first spaghetti squash we grew, we had to hold it with the weight because it grew up a trellis.
Speaker: Yeah, that's amazing. So now i would I would like to talk a bit more about what you mentioned that we obviously we started working together and I would love to for you to talk a bit more about that experience. Okay, so your class, Garden of Your Dreams, rick and our my husband Rick and I took it and we always knew we wanted to do something fantastic to our yard. And we literally met on a podcast and you offered this class to us and we took it. We never knew what we were going to do with our half acre. We knew we wanted to do something fantastic, but you were able to put that vision
Speaker: on paper that we're still working on because there's a lot of work into designing. Well, we have a big yard. So if it were smaller, it would be different. But we have such a big yard and we have beautiful dreams for it now. And they're simple, easy dreams that you have created and you have developed um that dream back into our, you know, like we thought, oh, we're never going to do this. But now you've put that dream back into our lives. Do you realize that? Yeah, thank you. That's really amazing. I love that. And you said, like, well, I created that vision, but you did it. It's your personal work. You completely learned how to do it. I just helped you to get it. So I'm very happy that you enjoyed it.
Speaker: You put the dream of my pumpkin patch back in because of the way you, you taught us how to do all this. I was like, Oh wow, right there. It was right in front of my face where the pumpkin patch could go and and how we needed to do it. And it your class has been wonderful. I highly suggest it to everyone. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. And maybe just to what, what, what, what part of the class stood out for you?
Speaker: Oh boy, um I think the way you um took the time to make the grid of our yard and then you showed us how the sun actually moves through the yard. That was a very vital piece to us because you don't understand that unless I didn't until I saw it on paper. And then you you started pointing out now, you have you know a sunny area here, but over here would be a great place to have your morning coffee. And I was like, oh, wow, yeah, I never thought of that area. And so just by the way you mapped out our yard in that grid, and then you spent a class showing us how the sun was going to move through it, it really put that vision back into us and what we wanted to do.
Speaker: So I think that was one of the most vital pieces we learned. Yeah, I love that. That's really cool that that made you click because it's such an essential part in creating, designing, maintaining your garden. It's really about where do you have sun, where is shadow, where where under your trees, what types of plant can you grow where? And you need some planning for it because you can do like a trial and error and and It's also fine, but you're going to lose a lot of time and a lot of money because half of the plants won't grow.
Speaker: yeah yes um i found that using the the internet to figure out what kind of soil or the type of soil you taught us how to figure out our soil. And then i we were able to plug it into the internet and it gave us back what we needed to do to grow like pumpkins don't grow in the soil we have here. So I was able to find out what I needed to do to the soil because we have clay soil. And so it it told me all about how to altar and what to add to it. And in the past, I've tried pumpkins in our yard that never grew. Now I know why. and Right. And so now I know what to do with the soil to have my pumpkins grow. Yeah, that's amazing. It kind of all ties back to what you already started. And now you're
Speaker: You already saved so much time by using your towers to become a smart farmer, smart grower, which then frees up time for you to think efficiently about your garden. And now you're going to build that garden of your dreams, which will be so low in maintenance as as well because you learn all these tricks. So yeah, I'm very excited for you what's to come. Thank you. I cannot wait. I'm just so excited to get the warm weather to come and get started. yeah I'm ready to plant my seeds for the yard. I'm ready to plant my flower seeds. I'm very excited about all of it. That's amazing. So I have two more questions for you. So one is it is related to to our listeners. like
Speaker: If they have a burning desire to do something that is good for um our planet and do something that is good in business, what would you recommend to them? What advice can you give them? For growing vegetables and starting their own farm. Well, it could be general if if they have that that urge to do something because there's many people out there that want to do something good for the planet, but they think that it's not going to pay the bills. So I'd love to hear your perspective on that. Well, I think that anything that you put, I didn't plan on doing this. I bought a tower. be I joined this company because I wanted a discount. And look what happened to me. So I think the main thing is is if you put your passion into it, you can turn it into anything you want. If that makes sense, you know, because I'm so passionate about this.
Speaker: this aeroponic tower farm. And I never in a million years thought that I would be opening a so a place now to teach others. yeah And this is only a little over three years now, three and a half years. So that's how fast this happened for us. So I think that you can do anything you want if you have a passion for it. I also think that um you need to look for something that's gonna be very sustainable to our planet, because I think that's so vitally important. And whether you wanna do, you can replicate what we're doing, that's why we're doing this,
Speaker: We are wanting people to replicate this and to help others and move it forward. So you can do the same thing we're doing and we we are here to help people through that process. So that's another great way. i think that I think if they take one of your classes and fall in love with gardening, look at what they could do just for sustaining their own property and then they can pass on that knowledge. It's all about that that passion. Yes, exactly. I love that. it's It's the thing that gets you out of bed, right? If you're doing a job that you're not passionate about, you're not going to... Well, if the days are good, you're going to get out of bed. But if, let's say, shit hits the fan, which always happens when you're an entrepreneur, there's tough days. Pardon my French. But this happens. No matter what you're going to do, you'll have days that are going to be triggering and then
Speaker: If you don't have the passion, you'll quit. Whereas if you have the passion, you'll continuously keep going. I have to confess that we should be retired. My husband and I, we're starting a whole new adventure in our lives to help other people. So there's no such thing as retirement when you have passion. And I plan on living to 90 years old until I add up because I'm putting all those good nutrients in my body. Yeah, I love that. I love that that there's no, own people the only people that retire are or read are tired of their job. That's why they retire. Right. And many people that do retire, they end up doing another job and maybe eventually doing what they actually love. So I think that's that's a great vision that you have to stay on that, stay active, and then you'll live way longer.
Speaker: And I think I read or and or I saw an article like, and it I don't know the exact numbers, but it was mind blowing that most people like, or a huge amount of people that get into retirement. They, they go down very quickly. They become ill. They, they, because they're not doing anything active, nothing productive. They're not working on their passion, like you said. So they they kind of fall back very quickly. So yeah, I love that you added that there as well. And to put all this in perspective, um I started this in September of 2020, right in the middle of COVID, right? That's a year later, I had an unexpected back surgery.
Speaker: And 11 months after that, a second back surgery. But what kept me going was this passion. So as you retire to find passion like this, it's just a blessing to me because it did get me out of bed every morning. And imagine where I'd be if I hadn't had this. you know I had two very hefty back surgeries, but man, I couldn't wait to get back out to my networking group and talk about my towers. And I still go two and three times a week. And yeah, it's
Speaker: When you find something like this, go for it. Don't hold back. Amazing. I really love that. Thank you, Nancy, for that for that words that are really inspirational for many people. I love your your own podcast name, by the way. It's linked to that. Inspirations by Nancy. Go and check it out. Inspiring you from the inside out. Oh, I love that. That's right. Yes, yes. So um we're going to wrap it up here. Thank you very much for coming. I just want to ask you if you have any final message to my audience and a way that people can reach out to you or where can people find more about you? I have a website called Nancy at nancyokares .com.
Speaker: Or actually, that would be my email, wouldn't it?
Speaker: nancyocares .com is my website. Or you can email me at nancy at nancyocares .com. Either way, um I am happy to talk to anyone about doing what we're doing. I think it's a wonderful project to start. And you can start on a very small scale and big up as large as you want to go. And that's what's so cool about this. and um whatever passion people find, just work towards it. Amazing. Thank you very much. I really love that. I think there's no excuses. Everybody can now grow his own food. Thank you very much, Nancy, for putting that out there and ah being here on my show. Thank you for inviting me. I can't wait till we talk again. Yes, we will definitely. Take care.
