Transcript
Jessica : Good.
Alexis: Hi, friends. How's everybody doing today?
Brett: m
Jessica : good
Plant People: Good. I'm looking at the forecast as
Alexis: Brett's face. He was like,
Plant People: We're like, and I don't know. As of the recording today, not when this posts, whenever it posts, but as of recording, I looked at the forecast for next week and it's supposed to be 50s in the morning and 70s during the day.
Alexis: o
Alexis: oh, my gosh.
Jessica : ah Oh, perfect.
Plant People: So I'm pretty excited about that. Pretty excited.
Alexis: Listen, next week is kind of an important week. So the fact the high is 80 on it what should be a national holiday ah is pretty impressive. And for those of you going, what is this day she's talking about?
Alexis: It's my birthday. So just saying.
Brett: What's the day?
Plant People: The Alexis national holiday.
Brett: What's the date?
Alexis: August 26th, high of I believe.
Brett: what What do you do you all have as people who have known Alexis for a while?
Alexis: So.
Brett: Do you all have a term for that day?
Brett: i
Plant People: Alexis day. I mean,
Brett: yeah, I call it the annual celebration of the day we got what we deserve.
Plant People: yeah Oh, AKA karma day.
Jessica : a
Alexis: Have the day you deserve. I have that on a t-shirt. um And if people are offended by it, well, then maybe you should be.
Plant People: um' got a similar shirt.
Alexis: So you know what you did.
Brett: ah
Plant People: Mine says treat yourself.
Alexis: What?
Plant People: Okay. Treat yourself, Lexus. Just treat yourself.
Alexis: Awesome. Well, um on that note of, you know, cooler weather coming, ah what plant, this is a plant podcast, I know I usually have a food question, but what plant are you most excited to see this fall?
Plant People: alone
Alexis: Just plants in general. could be trees, could be flowers, whatever you're into.
Plant People: oh This fall.
Alexis: What plant are you most excited about seeing for fall?
Brett: Well, and I'm i'm just going to say, you know, so we have we have a guest joining us and we're going to hear from him in a second, but I really want to hear Chad's answer first, unless this is putting him on the spot in a way that he feels uncomfortable with.
Alexis: The cool weather.
Plant People: Ugh.
Plant People: Yes.
Jessica : was like, put him on the spot.
Plant People: Are you going to make him pick his favorite fall tree?
Alexis: I was trying to give him like an easy thing to get into. And Brett's like, on the spot.
Brett: Well, and that's different.
Alexis: Yeah.
Brett: I view podcasting as a combat sport, so.
Chad Niman: ah This is a very challenging question. There's so many great things about fall. um I will say ah different fungal growth. There's so many different fungi. And so it's really cool to get out and see all of those different mushrooms that come up so many different varieties.
Alexis: Yeah, hopefully we get some rain so they actually want to come out.
Plant People: It
Alexis: like I don't know about you all over there, but um over in my parts, it's a little crispy.
Chad Niman: Right.
Plant People: you know it was dry at Red River Gorge a few days ago, and there was mushrooms everywhere in the gorge.
Chad Niman: Yeah.
Jessica : It's little crunchy.
Plant People: They've had a recent, must have had small shower, but it's as many mushrooms, and it was dry there, and it was as many mushrooms that i as I'd ever seen in the gorge ah just three or four days ago.
Alexis: Wow.
Plant People: I couldn't believe it. They were, I just must have hit it at the perfect time. It was all kinds of stuff, but a lot of good stuff.
Brett: so that So that's kind of to tie it back to one of our previous episodes. the it you know starts to cool off a little bit and some of that cool potential moist conditions favors that fungal growth that we don't want on the leaves of our plants.
Brett: But the fungus that we get in the forest and other places is quite the vibe. ah That's a great answer, Chad. Man, you really set you really set the set the bar high for the rest of us.
Plant People: Alexis, center mushroom teacher. Oh.
Brett: What do you all you'll have answered?
Alexis: Mm-hmm.
Plant People: I'm not going to pick the cliche, ah you know, maple sunset series or whatever.
Brett: Mmm. Mmm.
Plant People: I'm going to go with sour wood. I'm going to go with, you know, a good ah understory tree, you know, a good native. So I like those. I mean, there's so many, like you said, Chad, and the in the fall, it's hard to pick. I mean, ah because for me, fall means all the plants, all the fun plant stuff. But yeah, as far as a tree goes, I like the sour woods when they start to change.
Alexis: Well, I'm excited because i planted a black gum like two years ago and Nyssa, she should really start to show off this year. So I'm very excited for her um because she still has all of her leaves somehow, even though it's been real dry.
Alexis: So I'm like, yay.
Plant People: She's thriving.
Jessica : We have on the back of our farm, I took a picture of it just two days ago while my husband was fixing fence, a gigantic sassafras tree. Like I didn't realize how big it is.
Plant People: Hmm.
Jessica : And I took a picture and he looks so tiny next to it.
Alexis: i
Jessica : um So I'm really excited to see how bright that's going to be. And I've been finding so many little baby sassafras trees popping up.
Plant People: Hmm.
Jessica : in my flower beds. And I'm like, they can't stay here anyways, because they can't grow next to the house.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : So, and we now all know they don't transplant well, but I've still been popping them up and potting them up. And I'm, you know, I'm trying.
Alexis: I want one so bad.
Jessica : Well, I, well, there's one in the front of my house. I'll dig it up and we'll see if it'll survive.
Alexis: i You can do it.
Chad Niman: Thank you.
Alexis: I have faith in you.
Brett: You should you should think about turn that into a little bonsai there.
Alexis: A bonsai.
Jessica : know
Alexis: Who would have thought that's what Brett would have said?
Plant People: Now, I don't know that you could use that for seasonal, Brett.
Brett: One track mind, what can I say?
Plant People: Yeah, what's yours? It can't be anything evergreen because do they change much? I mean, they do, but...
Brett: Yeah, um I would say i would say for me.
Plant People: Oh, yeah.
Brett: Cutleaf sumac is this has like this insane, the one, the one that I have at least turns like bright, vivid orange, like dreamsick orange.
Alexis: Okay.
Jessica : um
Plant People: That's a dark, dark red, isn't it? I mean, is that... yeah Orange.
Alexis: Oh yeah.
Brett: Um, I'm not really sure. i got the, I got it as seed, started it from seed and I don't know if it's some kind of weird cultivar or what, but yeah, it's the one that I have.
Plant People: well
Plant People: Just glows when the sun hits it just right.
Brett: It's so crazy. Yeah. It's like even more so than a, you know, sugar maple or,
Plant People: I need to look that up. Cut leaf.
Brett: Yeah, i have I have a couple of them left over, and I know you mentioned you were interested in those, so maybe I i have to give one to Sean, and then I'll see if I can hook you up.
Plant People: Oh
Plant People: oh yeah.
Alexis: Plan swap.
Jessica : I know. It's like, look at us talking about sharing plants with each other.
Alexis: Podcast plan swap.
Alexis: Sharing trees, sharing wood products, potential wood products seems like really on brand for today.
Jessica : Yeah.
Jessica : Very fitting.
Brett: Yeah, well, we're joined by this ah esteemed guest. And I wonder, Chad, if you could just tell us, you know, some of the more boring stuff, like what your title is and those types of things, but also the really interesting stuff, which is pretty much every project that you touch seems to be really, really cool.
Chad Niman: Absolutely.
Brett: So we'd love to hear a little bit about who you are, where you're coming from, but also more importantly, what you do and what you're what you're into.
Chad Niman: Thank you, Brett. I appreciate this opportunity to be with you all. and So my name is Chad Nyman, and I'm called a forest product specialist.
Jessica : Thank
Chad Niman: And what all of that means is that I work a lot with our wood industries across the state and help them to try to develop markets, help them to try to train their employees. We used to have a two-year program in the state, and we don't have that anymore, so we try to fill the gap.
Alexis: Hmm.
Chad Niman: And ah up at the Wood Utilization Center is where we do a lot of that work. I'm here at the Robinson Center today over in Jackson, Kentucky. And so I serve as the director of our wood utilization center there.
Chad Niman: We have a lot of educational activities and industry employee trainings that take place there each year. About 1,500 folks will come visit. And we get to teach them wood drying, wood manufacturing, how to grade lumber, grading of logs, all kinds of systems like that that help them to standardize and assess the value that they have.
Alexis: Hmm.
Brett: Yeah, well, I think it's one of the interesting things that when I hear you talk about some of the projects you're involved with, it's there's this blend or this kind of integration of the practical kind of harvest and evaluation side, basically the plant side, looking at the plants, seeing what they need, and then getting the plants out.
Alexis: Hmm.
Brett: Then there's also this kind of market development side, marketing. We talk about the development of markets and then they also the marketing of the products. and like is that kind of like is that ah Is that integrated by necessity or is that something you all you know have chosen to do or or is that what's what's the approach there?
Chad Niman: That's a really good question, Brett. And honestly, it's come largely out of necessity. So we've got a lot of industry in this state and it spans across almost every county, both urban and rural areas.
Chad Niman: We have a $19 billion dollars hardwood industry. and about a nine billion dollar bourbon industry that's all built off of that white oak so huge economic contribution and about 57 000 jobs in the state i tell folks direct jobs one in every 160 kentuckians is directly employed in that forest sector
Alexis: Hmm.
Chad Niman: And so we have this huge thing that we want to keep strong so that we have those markets for our landowners and farmers and woodland owners. And so them being able to have places they can sell that timber when it becomes mature so that they can manage those woods.
Chad Niman: And so the cool thing about our forests is that they are really big into succession and they require disturbance. And what that means is trees are constantly dying and falling down.
Chad Niman: And so being able to harvest, we can simulate that succession and disturbance regime. So that way we can have a nice clean slate to where those trees can grow back under a lot of competition.
Chad Niman: And that's how you grow really high quality timber. And so being able to have markets for that to go into, because we can grow all the timber in the world, but if we don't have a great place for those, then the landowners and farmers won't have that revenue stream.
Jessica : Thank you.
Chad Niman: We won't be able to make things out of renewable natural wood. We'd be making everything out a non-renewable plastic or something like that, right? And so having these markets allows us to reduce impact and be able to keep a lot of value here local through all that manufacturing.
Chad Niman: And so we're we're really excited about anything that opens up new markets for our industry and woodland owners and farmers, right? And so that's where being able to take things like mass timber, which is essentially really large wooden buildings and structural components, we can be able to have a new market where our state tree, yellow poplar, can be able to be used.
Chad Niman: And we can build schools and office buildings out of that material. Another really cool market that we've opened up here lately is through maple flooring. So we love maple syrup. It tastes very sweet. It's great.
Chad Niman: But then with the wood, we've got very limited markets. And so we need to have new vigorous maple trees. And so we have to be able to harvest those old ones and we can turn those into flooring. We actually have an industry in Kentucky that just became a maple flooring manufacturing association member.
Chad Niman: And what that means is now they're eligible to put in a bid on middle school and high school basketball courts, any kind of public project that they previously were excluded from because they weren't a member of that association and meeting those requirements.
Brett: that's That's really cool. Yeah, I'll say I've been i been doing some taste tests and I can't tell the difference between oak and maple flooring.
Alexis: Mm-hmm.
Brett: um
Chad Niman: Yes.
Brett: It may be because they've already put the polyurethane on.
Chad Niman: Yes.
Brett: I don't know. but It's good to hear that there's some some potential there.
Alexis: It's really...
Brett: um But just to back up real quick to the to the plant side, um I heard you say this word hardwood.
Chad Niman: Yes. Yes.
Brett: And we know we have, I assume that the the existence of hardwood implies the existence of softwood. um
Chad Niman: Correct.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Brett: So is Kentucky like a hardwood state? Like, are is that kind of our vibe? Or are we a blend?
Chad Niman: We are.
Brett: and And like, if not, where are some of those softwood states?
Chad Niman: We're a very hardwood vibe state. And so we've got all of these oaks and hickories and maples. and about 118 different species.
Chad Niman: So diversity is great, but we really have so much to the hardwoods. And when you look at the softwood species, we're talking all of our needles. So our cedars, Eastern red cedar, and then we've got different loblolly pine and short leaf pine and Eastern white pine, stuff like that.
Alexis: Hmm.
Chad Niman: It's it's less than 5% of our forest composition across the entire state. And so it's really limited. And with that, We use that material, but it's just so minuscule in the other volumes of yellow poplar and red oak and species like that that we've got.
Brett: Yeah, that's it mean it sounds it sounds like you're trying to to think about this product that has a lot of value, but maybe people out in the world don't piece that together or see that or think of it in in our modern context. And it's probably because the the softwood and the plastic are taking up these big market segments that previously hardwood probably would have taken up um That's really, really interesting.
Brett: And I think, so so you mentioned, you mentioned poplar, ah maple, are there any other kind of key species that at the moment, at least are at the, at the core of this, this thought, and I'm not, I'm not trying to, I am very into wood, woodworking, both the aesthetic and ah practical purposes, but anybody else, feel free to jump in.
Chad Niman: absolutely
Brett: um um I will dominate this conversation.
Alexis: I'm going to take this into like a plant media thing.
Plant People: Really weird directionals.
Alexis: If I, yeah.
Brett: Cool.
Jessica : yeah I
Alexis: So like, I'm interested in this too. So like, don't give me too much room.
Jessica : yeah too
Alexis: Okay.
Chad Niman: That's there's so many opportunities. And so we've got the yellow poplar is the one that was the no brainer, right? It's it's our most abundant tree species throughout our region. We've got a lot of volume. It grows incredibly fast.
Chad Niman: It's lighter than pine and stronger than pine. And so all of those things, it's like, OK, that one makes a lot of sense. So then it gets a little more challenging on what other species make sense. And red maple is one of those that it's on the verge of economically being usable, right?
Chad Niman: And so at times it might be because of the cost of maple is affordable enough to put in, but that one's kind of a stretch.
Jessica : Thank you.
Chad Niman: And so we didn't spend a whole lot of time on maple, but we did some testing with it. We really tried to focus in on species like sycamore, which we think of typically as a riparian species, but as it's growing up into the ridge line and going up the slope, there's so few markets for that species, and it's so pretty, and so there's opportunity to use some of that volume.
Chad Niman: And then there's things like sweet gum. And the big thing with sweet gum is we see the pine belt of down in Alabama and Georgia, Louisiana, down in the south where they've got all of that pine they're They've got very little in hardwood down there. They have some, and that's where they're kind of the inverse of what we've got going on.
Chad Niman: So down there, they're producing southern yellow pine cross-laminated timber panels. We've got some of those companies looking at Kentucky right now because they've seen that we've got yellow poplar approved in the building codes. And so now they see this as another species that they can be able to possibly produce these panels out of.
Chad Niman: They see the additional strength, the fact that hardwoods don't exude resin or pitch out of them like the softwoods do. And so there's so different aspects like that. And with sweet gum kind of bridging that gap between the pine belt and where we are located here in Kentucky, that's a very low value, low cost species that we see a lot of opportunity with.
Chad Niman: And then there's a few others like hickory potentially. And so we're really looking at underutilized species and that we're not utilizing enough of right now. And so this allows us to be able to use those and that allows us to grow oak on the landscape and ties into white oak initiative type of goals.
Plant People: Yeah. Oh, ahead.
Chad Niman: And so when we have our bourbon industry supported while being able to do all of these, it's one of those few win, win, wins. And it it kind of is tough for me because we've got a new high school in Harrison County right down the road that they're building.
Chad Niman: And I feel like a failure because so we didn't build it out a yellow poplar CLT. and It's like, you know, we have this opportunity so at the next school we can build it out of Kentucky wood.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : That's very cool.
Alexis: Yeah.
Jessica : I was going to ask a question with all this and I could be wrong, but using, you know, we talked, you mentioned about the people using plastic versus using this wood and you want to like encourage people because it's actually safer, right?
Plant People: ah good
Jessica : um my My husband's a Lexington firefighter and they talk about that a lot of times of how houses are now being built with all plastics.
Chad Niman: Yes. Salute.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : Right.
Chad Niman: yeah
Jessica : Plastics continuously burn. They release chemicals when they're burning.
Alexis: Bye.
Jessica : um So it's making structures more dangerous by using those plastic materials versus if we could go back to using actual wood materials. So that's... um
Chad Niman: blue
Plant People: Is that a perception thing? i mean, ah yeah i know that marketing goes into a lot of this, you know, one industry markets a certain way versus another. ah But at ah one point in history, maybe I was off base. I was like, oh, you know what?
Plant People: A real wood floor, oh my gosh, the cost analysis. But how how do those numbers work out now? I mean, if you're comparing like a solid wood floor, which I've always loved in any form, wide, narrow, whatever. But I mean, how does that work out now as far as competitiveness compared to other flooring options?
Chad Niman: Absolutely. I just want to take a moment. What Jessica was hitting on is so exactly right.
Plant People: Yeah.
Chad Niman: And I've heard that from other fire professionals around the country about how we've shifted so much to these different fossil fuel based materials in our home and what that does when that ignites.
Chad Niman: It is very, very dangerous, as you all know. and ah And that's something that you hear firefighters and the fire community talking about a lot. And so that's one of the things with wood that we really see as a benefit is that it is natural and you don't have all of these toxins that are coming out as it's burning.
Chad Niman: And so there's a lot of value, you know, think about off gassing too, right? If you've got all of those chemicals leaching out into the air constantly while you're in there breathing and doing whatever you do in your home, right? And so going throughout each day. And so if we look at then the cost analysis, Ray, we've got flooring is expensive. If we go in, we price out the plastic flooring and we put that up against the real oak flooring.
Chad Niman: It's like four times the cost to put down real hardwood floor. And, but the difference of it is though, in 10 years, that plastic flooring is wore out and it's going to the landfill and you've got to buy it again.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chad Niman: And then it's got the environmental side too. And that's something that the front page of local newspapers have talked a lot about polyfluorical substances, what we call PFAS.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Chad Niman: So PFAS and microplastics, we don't know enough about them yet, but what we do know causes a ah lot of alarm Because these forever chemicals, they stay in our cells and they're in our bodies.
Chad Niman: And so it's in the fish in the river and it's in our water and we know it. And we don't have to worry about that when we use a natural wood material, plant-based material.
Chad Niman: Then we avoid those polyfluorical substances. And so what those are, it's like your waterproofing chemicals and nonstick cookware. those types of forever chemicals, but then even just the microplastics, they're accumulating as we know. And so with wood, we avoid that entirely and we're able to have natural biodegradable materials that we don't have to worry about those off gassing chemicals or any of that environmental harm from the landfill. It's just so many wins. It's hard to even keep track of how many, right?
Chad Niman: As we count them up that we get from using our natural material.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: Now, Chad, i I will say I've had a splinter from wood before, so you're underselling.
Chad Niman: if This is true.
Jessica : you
Chad Niman: Some of them can be pretty tough, right?
Plant People: My dad worked at a sawmill, Chad. It's funny that, you know, you when you phrase it out like that, and I love, you know, being around the sawmill. It was an old circle saw. It was pre-band saw, okay?
Chad Niman: Yes, sir.
Plant People: It goes way back. But um he always said that whole wood cuts, because that's back when, you know, particle board and, you know, wood technology started really taking off and doing some neat things. But to him, he said, you know, ah ah full wood cuts were like the whole foods of the the timber world. He loved, you know, those those solid cuts, those solid products. And to that's always kind of stuck with me, that that whole foods approach. He said ah that that's what, you know, the the cuts like that are of solid wood.
Chad Niman: Absolutely.
Plant People: It's good stuff.
Chad Niman: And we really don't talk about the value of those products enough. Like what, like it's expensive, but what you're really getting, there's so much value there beyond the dollars.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Yeah, it's amazing.
Chad Niman: It'll last 200 years.
Plant People: ah Yeah, it's something else. ah And, you know, so many people that renovate a house or whatever. And we go through trends, I guess, as a society. And at one point, you know, I guess these these beautiful floors and made out of, ah you know, all sorts of wood species, you know, was carpeted over by this beautiful yellow tree.
Plant People: You know, I don't want to describe the color too much because it's not very flattering, but all the, you know, carpet.
Jessica : Thank you.
Plant People: And we went through a phase where all that was being pulled back up and people were rediscovering that beautiful hardwood under there. So it's really interesting ah preferences over time. and And hardwood floors has always struck me as a real good kind of, you know, benchmark of that, that we go through these phases. um You know, things go in and out of fashion.
Plant People: It's ah really fascinating how it changes over time.
Alexis: I feel like it's fate that we have you on right now because i am we are redoing our upstairs. I live in an old eighteen hundreds farmhouse and it has all wood floors and they're they're beautiful.
Plant People: Oh.
Alexis: And where you know we're going to get to the point here in another couple of weeks where we get like prices on redoing the upstairs that is currently just basically an attic.
Plant People: Hmm.
Plant People: um
Alexis: And I'm going to be like, now, listen, my good buddy Chad told me that we're going have to replace that laminate flooring in 10 years. So you give me wood or you give me nothing.
Chad Niman: That's right. Yeah.
Alexis: And then when I get the bill, out they're going to be like, are you sending it to Chad? And I'll be like, I, you know.
Chad Niman: that
Brett: Well.
Plant People: Worth it, Alexis. Totally, totally worth it.
Brett: Well, yeah, so I'm,
Plant People: Okay.
Jessica : Thank you.
Alexis: I'm just going to be like, it won't match the downstairs.
Plant People: It's got to match. That's exactly right.
Brett: Yeah, that that would be like the thing, of like okay, that's reasonable, not the ah not the the chemical or the any of the other implications.
Plant People: Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah.
Chad Niman: Yeah.
Brett: um So you know one thing on the hardwood floor, I know you said there's some other technologies that I want to definitely talk about, but on the flooring itself, did I catch earlier that you were talking about different ages of maples and their applicability for...
Brett: or fast growing versus slower growing maples with their applicability for flooring. And it reminds me a little bit of like an old, I've always known pine as a, as a soft, you know, it it is a soft wood in the botanical sense, but a soft wood where if you went up with a quarter, you could put a ding into your fingernail, could put a ding into it.
Brett: But I know that there's some old houses that have pine flooring that's really hard.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Brett: um So I'm just curious, like, is that is that a botanical thing? Is that a species thing, an age thing? What's the what's the deal with that?
Chad Niman: So there's a few things going on there. And so with young maple trees, I know just enough about maple syrup production to be dangerous. I've got a few friends who do it and I like to enjoy it more than I like to make it.
Plant People: right
Chad Niman: But young, vigorous maple trees pump out a lot more sap than even a large tree with multiple holes. And so young, vigorous trees, they're great for maple production as that tree grows up and it gets older and it starts to decline in health. And that's a great time to be able to harvest that tree and then turn it into hardwood flooring.
Chad Niman: And then many young maple trees can come back in its place. We live in this great deciduous, temperate rainforest, you know, and so these trees that are just growing back on their own, we don't even have to do anything. we just cut them down and they grow back, which we're very fortunate to have that.
Chad Niman: And so we can be able to produce our maple syrup with the young trees and older trees with the flooring. and There was a second part of that question that I think I've already forgotten though.
Brett: It was just, ah you know, like there's old pines, old pine doors that are really hard.
Chad Niman: Yes, thank you.
Brett: And is that just an old growth thing?
Plant People: I've wondered about that, Brad. I've heard like myths from like retailers are like the pine of today is not like the pine of a hundred years ago. And I'm like, Hmm, is it?
Chad Niman: And this is very true. And so what it is, is about the rotation age.
Plant People: Oh, okay. Okay.
Chad Niman: And so when you've got trees that are about 20 years old in pine, all of those trees have what's called juvenile wood in them. And at the cellular level, the angle of the cell wall is much steeper.
Chad Niman: And so because of that, you get a lot more shrinkage than you do in length. And you don't have that at all when you get into normal mature wood. So about 20 years on, it starts changing this, the steepness of that angle of the cell wall.
Chad Niman: And so it's kind of crazy, but you don't want to have juvenile wood and things. So that's where you want to have something that's grown at least 25 to 30 years before you're harvesting it.
Plant People: Interesting.
Chad Niman: And so a lot of times these thinnings that they're doing in these pine stands, they're going through 15 years and they're getting all that material while it's full of juvenile wood. So you get a fencing board and it, you know, crooks to the left or right and twists on you.
Chad Niman: You wonder why did it do that? Oftentimes it's because of juvenile wood. And so when we're talking about these old pine floors that were really popular. a lot of that was sugar pine coming out of the northwest or it was longleaf pine, which both of those are known for having a lot of rosin in them.
Chad Niman: And so they're considered hard pines. and And so that is what's going on there. So you got the old growth nature of it, but then you also have the fact that they're harder pines, more rosinous species.
Jessica : Does that apply as well to like those maples and stuff as will they do the same? Like having the older ones harvesting an older one versus a younger? Because I'm thinking about I also live in a eighteen late 1800s farmhouse and ah we installed in one room new flooring and kind of matched with the old flooring.
Jessica : And I feel like my new flooring gets... dented lot you know faster than the old one does and it's same same toy tractors are hitting each each room equally right um so as you were talking about that i was like oh is that you know besides just the pines like the soft woods is that what you see in the other tree types as well
Chad Niman: is
Plant People: scientific measurements.
Chad Niman: there is there is some variation even within species and so like if they used soft maple which is more of your red maples that would dent a lot harder than a sugar maple but even within sugar maple there's a range in hardness And so some of those have grown in more competitive conditions and some of those trees will be as hard as rock.
Chad Niman: And then you go into some, just a little ways away from that and they can be much softer in density. And so I can't explain, you know, all of it, but there's something to that competition and tight growth that, and long longer rotations that does have more density.
Brett: So the that would be rated on the Janka hardness scale?
Jessica : Cool.
Brett: Is that right?
Chad Niman: That's correct.
Brett: Okay, i just wanted to flex that because I saw it one time and just wanted to...
Chad Niman: Yes. that's Very good.
Plant People: Sorry.
Brett: I don't have any idea what um the numbers mean, but yeah. No, the thing you're talking about with just for plant nerd people, um and i correct me if I'm wrong, because I have a lot of ah half-cocked understandings of things that I love to cross-check with people who know what they're talking about, like you.
Brett: But that, like, so in a, what we would call an old growth setting, or even just a more competitive, fuller forest that hasn't been, you know, clear cut, There's this competition which limits the amount of light that's available and other resources that are available to those trees. And so as a result, they grow more slowly.
Brett: And in other words, each annual ring is a little bit smaller. It's not not as thick, closer together, which then over time translates into a higher level of hardness. Is that is that a pretty decent summary?
Chad Niman: That is. That's exactly what is going on. And so those tighter growth rings, more dense, there's a little bit of variation on some species. So like our oaks, that's one where the latewood, if you've got ah a stronger band of that, a wider band of that latewood,
Chad Niman: then you will end up having less dense because you've got the early wood and late wood borers have different sizes. But so generally, and tighter growth rings, everything is going to be more dense.
Chad Niman: Our oaks kind of break that rule a little bit because they've got those big ring porous vessels in them.
Brett: Interesting.
Brett: Huh. That's, that's really cool. Yeah. I, I, I think I often think about, uh, like just how almost unimaginable seeing the old growth forests would be to me or to us, you know, now it's like a thing that we just can't understand.
Chad Niman: Yes.
Brett: Um, like, uh, like 89 cent gasoline to a zoomer, you know, there was a time,
Jessica : not.
Chad Niman: Right. It is very challenging to get to a place that has some real virgin forest left.
Plant People: It did exist.
Chad Niman: And I've got an opportunity years ago to go to Lily Cornette Woods and there's a patch of old growth there that it feels like you're in Jurassic Park or something.
Brett: wow
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : oh
Chad Niman: The species of shrubbery around there are bigger than you've seen of any type before. And so just everything is on a larger scale and you're down in the low bottoms along the trails there and everything blasting out of the little openings is just ice cold air coming out of there. it's just amazing.
Chad Niman: And you're under the hemlock woods. And so you can see there's very limited places to go, but and we do have the lily cornet woods is one great place to get to see a little bit of a glimpse of the past if you will because everything else we're just seeing you know a few scattered old growth trees here and there and so it is very worthwhile also
Brett: that's on my It's on my list of places to get to here here in Kentucky. And yeah, I just need to set it up.
Chad Niman: I like to tell folks Robinson forest, it is mostly a second growth forest. And so that kind of blows people's minds. They get there and they're like these are huge trees and they just automatically assume it's a virgin forest.
Chad Niman: And I tell folks, well, this is evidence right here. It shows you that we can do clear cutting and harvesting and do it well and end up with forests that grow back really strong and healthy, you know, and using best management practices, we can do all of that in a good way.
Chad Niman: But that that's one of the great things, though, is you see that the opportunity for our forests to just grow back on their own. The fact that we can then use management to be able to help grow those forests and they can continue to provide for us. And that's why it's so important that we take care of them and focus on forest health.
Brett: Yeah, that's that's awesome. Yeah, well, so so we've talked about as far as like the on the product side, that the imagine this, the marketing person's like, let's get back to the products. But ah the so you mentioned that kind of hard, the hardwood flooring thing, which I think is familiar.
Brett: And everyone else was flexing about their 1800s farmhouse.
Jessica : Thank
Brett: I'm in a 1950s baby boomer ranch, but I do have red ah red oak original floors.
Chad Niman: Red Oak, yes.
Brett: Yeah.
Chad Niman: And it's amazing to me, there was a time when red oak was more valuable than white oak in the 80s. And now we see a time when we don't appreciate our red oak enough. There's things we could be doing like quarter sawing it and showing that ray flecking.
Chad Niman: There's so many opportunities to market red oak better that we're not taking advantage of. We could have a full-time hardwood marketing person, I think, in this state. Other states do. And it would be great if we could, right?
Brett: Yeah, that sounds intriguing, Chad.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : Thank you.
Brett: ah The sycamore is another of the, you can quarter saw it and get some really crazy grain. I have a couple of picture frames that I've made from quarter saw and sycamore that I got from a local sawmill, and it has a cool vibe.
Chad Niman: Absolutely.
Brett: There's a couple of furniture makers that work, not exclusively, but heavily in quarter saw and sycamore because it's just so unique looking.
Chad Niman: It's the prettiest. Absolutely. Quarter sawn oak is beautiful, but I agree with you. It is as pretty as it gets and it's way under appreciated and underused.
Brett: Yeah.
Brett: Yeah, yeah. and And so as far as you got some other uses and some other products that youre you all are thinking about or that you're working with ah folks, so you mentioned that the hardwood flooring and there's the other species to explore and other things there.
Brett: um
Jessica : Thank you.
Brett: Am I correct in saying that there's the ah initiative and you know interest pursuit of using some of our hardwoods as framing lumber? So in other words, in in lieu of or you know in in addition to maybe some of those softwood, yellow pine or whatever ah studs that we see from Home Depot?
Chad Niman: Absolutely. And so one of the great things that we've been looking into is cross laminated timber panels. And so with the ANSI APA PRG 320, that 2025 standard included our state tree.
Chad Niman: And so now we can use yellow poplar to make 40 foot long wall panels for schools and roof panels. And so we can be able to build schools at a much faster rate, which is really important for construction timelines nowadays.
Chad Niman: And so being able to have all of the panel production pressed up off site somewhere at a factory, they can use what's called computer numeric ah routers, CNC's, and they can be able to put all of the doorways and windows, utilities in.
Chad Niman: And so all of that's done offsite. So when they get onto the construction job, they're able to put all those panels in place. And so what would take three or four months to erect, they could have done in a few days.
Brett: And is that, help me help me imagine what this, like, is that something that is in lieu of drywall and like a, you know, framing and then drywall on top of that?
Chad Niman: And so it could be.
Brett: Or is that addition? Like, what's, what is that? Do I see the panel? Yeah.
Chad Niman: Right. And so it it depends on consumer preference. on My take on it is you'd want to leave that as the exposed and that's your finish, right? It looks much better.
Chad Niman: Biophilia is a term that architects use a lot more and it explains the connection we have to natural materials and and the fact that your cortisol and stress levels are reduced when you're around wood and natural materials and out in scenery of nature.
Chad Niman: And so biophilia is something they talk about all the time. And I find that in agriculture, we never talk about it. And so there's so much opportunity to leave the wood as the finish.
Chad Niman: There's a cost savings from that too. If you don't have to put the sheet rock on there at the end and then with, you know, normal fire suppression systems you would have in place, then you'd have the same fire rating or higher than a typical structure.
Chad Niman: And so ah great opportunity to be able to use local material, be able to reduce any kind of, ah we have this huge market opportunity with this.
Brett: And so what what species would go into into those types of panels?
Chad Niman: So yellow poplar is our state tree. And so that is the one that is specified right now, but we see other species like basswood and red oak and hickory, sweet gum and sycamore, lots of those underutilized species that we have out there that we don't have a lot of markets.
Brett: Hmm.
Chad Niman: This allows a way to be able to use those. And so being able to build schools and different buildings is one of the best ways we can use that material. And and it stores that wood for the length of that building use.
Brett: Man, I would love to replace all of the drywall in my house ah with hickory and then have like ah red you know either a maple or red oak. flow that This sounds like ah like...
Brett: It's just like the the bio... I'm feeling the biophilia. putting the feel in biophilia right now.
Chad Niman: Yes. Yes.
Brett: i Man, that's so... Man, that's so cool. It just feels it feels like a ah modern take on a fairly...
Brett: older traditional approach to construction and like the way that we in our buildings interact with each other and i think it also fits interestingly with some of what you see with modular building in broad more broadly in the construction industry with things like concrete you know precast concrete or know i saw um our our former commissioner of ag ryan quarles who now leads bctcs the bluegrass community and technical college system
Plant People: um,
Chad Niman: yeah
Brett: And they're talking about some of the modular construction stuff and and thinking about, you know, he he said something like, AI still can't build houses. And I was like, okay, he still got the he still got the political streak ah ah with the slogans. And I loved it.
Brett: Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's that's just ah such a cool ah cool concept. um
Alexis: Is it is it like available for, you know, the person who wants to who's redoing their upstairs and, you know, it or is it something only for more like commercial industry right now?
Brett: Yeah.
Alexis: um You know, or would listeners be able to seek it out at this point or are the markets not quite there yet?
Chad Niman: Good question, Alexis. So in the softwood, you can get a dug fir, you can get a Sitka spruce, a Southern yellow pine, or you can even, for about 60% of the cost of what we can manufacture them here in the US, we have companies over in Europe that are shipping these overseas, and they're a lot more vertically integrated, and they've been doing this for a lot longer than we have.
Chad Niman: And so that's one of the battles we're fighting right now is we have facilities here in the US s that are making this product, but they're already at a heck of a competitive disadvantage as they're, you know, 40% more expensive than their European counterparts.
Chad Niman: And so that's one of the things that we want to try to help with here is getting industry set up using this local low valued yellow poplar and being able to have this market.
Jessica : Thank you.
Chad Niman: Now there's some folks that might view that as competition, but we're hoping that they'll see this as another mass timber product that can be made and it'll all be viewed you know well under that whole mass timber umbrella.
Chad Niman: And so we've tried to have a holistic mass timber message from the beginning because so much of this is softwood driven. And the reality is using softwoods in mass timber is a good thing. It's a great thing. And we should be glad that we're doing that.
Chad Niman: But we live in a state where we have so little softwood. That's where we had to start playing into the hardwoods and researching how we can use those more.
Plant People: I don't
Brett: So is that, this this is maybe too granular for the podcast, is that, why is it cheaper from Europe? Is it is it just like a a volume and efficiency thing or?
Chad Niman: That's part of it. and And so you think about automation and having a facility that's run by maybe eight people and very sophisticated manufacturing and they've perfected it.
Brett: Wow.
Chad Niman: And we're still trying to play catch up despite a lot of our folks going over there and seeing those facilities and touring those places. They're still playing catch up and trying to get more vertically integrated over here.
Brett: Huh. wow
Plant People: We've talked about a minute.
Alexis: Well, can I?
Plant People: Oh, go ahead, Alexis.
Alexis: No, you go ahead. I'm going to take it off subject.
Plant People: No.
Alexis: So you go ahead.
Plant People: Yeah. ah Before Alexis takes us in the other direction, I just, I mean, where's the future or is it a combination of these two things as far as, you know, i briefly mentioned whole wood cuts versus all of the composite type products. I mean, what's the future look like when we're considering both of those things as it involves wood?
Plant People: I know it's, it's, all of the above right now, isn't it? Or is there a certain trends that you kind of look into the crystal ball and see for the future or?
Chad Niman: Good question, Ray. And so I kind of look towards the past a little bit and get a little bit of indication of where we've been. and so we can see that we've had. And so there's a lot of opportunity going forward, but we've got.
Chad Niman: I just completely had my brain lock up on me. I'm so sorry, please.
Plant People: Well, sometimes when you know so much about something, yeah, the amount of squirrel.
Alexis: The amount of times that happens.
Brett: Yeah, it's so relatable, Chad.
Alexis: Yeah.
Plant People: Oh, for me, it's for me it's caffeine.
Alexis: So felt.
Jessica : All the time.
Brett: So relatable.
Alexis: 18 times today alone.
Plant People: Yeah.
Chad Niman: yeah
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Today has already been a day, so totally fine.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: You were thinking about just like where where you see trends going, right, Ray?
Plant People: I mean, I was just, yeah.
Brett: That was kind of like, and and how this can fit in maybe to some other trends that are happening.
Chad Niman: Oh, yes.
Plant People: Yeah, the the trends in all of them.
Chad Niman: Right. And so composite materials and being able to engineer wood products, that's something we're going to see more of.
Plant People: Is it?
Chad Niman: And solid wood products, I think, always have their place.
Plant People: Okay. Okay.
Chad Niman: They're just so expensive that it's getting harder and harder.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chad Niman: And so they might start getting thinner in hardwood flooring layers or trying to find ways that you can have a system that you know, somebody could be able to install it themselves possibly. And a hardwood flooring installation folks may not like, you know, that aspect of a consumer can be able to install it themselves.
Chad Niman: But there's things like that, that how do you make hardwood flooring less expensive? And it's really challenging.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Alexis: Mm-hmm.
Chad Niman: There's no way.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Chad Niman: And then, so like the install is one of those places and trying to, but that's a very sophisticated system to get something that can lock in and somebody can install themselves.
Chad Niman: And so there's no easy ways. And that's, I try to remind myself whenever I'm like, gosh, how can we use more wood? How can we get you know more market for flooring? And that's where there's gotta be some type of system that's made that people can be able to make a, have a lock-in system where that groove will fit in and somebody could be able to install it like they can a laminate system.
Plant People: yeah what I was go to say, what have I seen? it's a They tout it as a natural product, but I think it's bamboo that I'm thinking of that has a super high, higher than hickory, a super high hardness rating, but it's a natural type of product, but it's a composite.
Plant People: I believe that's bamboo, isn't it? I don't think it was hard...
Chad Niman: Bamboo is one of those. And i'm I'm not against bamboo. What I tell folks, though, is it's, you know, if you're using it where you're growing it, it's a lot more sustainable. And so that's one of the things and that, you know, if we've got all this hardwood here.
Alexis: Mm-hmm.
Chad Niman: It makes a lot more sense to make flooring or cutting boards out of that and the local jobs that come from that.
Plant People: Yeah.
Chad Niman: and none of that is added with bamboo, whereas there's you know a lot of sense in using that you know over where it's grown, and that should be celebrated as a sustainable material.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis: Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Yeah.
Chad Niman: Hempwood is one of those that gets kind of contentious with folks at times because they want to the attention in the flooring world that they're they're they're doing really good with their marketing, right?
Chad Niman: And I think it's a great thing. And so the two, they shouldn't be viewed as negative, right? It's like they're both bio-based products and marketing, you should look at them as what they both are. This is both great you know natural products.
Chad Niman: And so I always try to remind people that when they get and seeing other things that are having great market opportunity and and they're getting received well by consumers and say, well, look at what they're doing in ways that you can kind of emulate that.
Chad Niman: It's done great with their marketing.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: Well, I want to come back to that, but you know as we get as we prepare to wind down, I want to make sure Alexis has an opportunity to corner you about her own interest, because i'm also I'm also interested in it too.
Alexis: Yeah.
Plant People: I'm afraid. I'm very afraid. Hmm.
Brett: So Alexis, do you want to let What is your deal?
Alexis: Yeah, i am ah not necessarily expecting like an answer. It's more of a like, have you heard of...
Plant People: o man
Alexis: Is this crazy?
Brett: Why aren't you doing this?
Alexis: What's your what's how how do you feel about?
Brett: Yeah.
Alexis: um We had ah some chats with some. ah Well, in Ray's County, the horticulturist who works for ah and I just see I just had a moment where I blanked.
Alexis: Remind me his the used to be color point. Ray, who is it now?
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Oh, ah Chad. Yeah. Yeah.
Alexis: Chad. Yeah.
Brett: Another Chad.
Alexis: So he's another Chad. Yeah. So he was talking about, right. Pete is a big topic in the, you know, horticulture world because it is a non-renewal, like really kind of a non-renewable resource.
Chad Niman: Yes.
Alexis: Right. And like we're depleting these bogs and blah, blah, blah. And ah but it's such a big part of the horticulture industry. And for listeners, like Pete is what makes like ah your potting soil.
Alexis: It's like one of the primary thing ingredients in potting soil. And so he was saying they've been like on the way to eliminating. And I think in some in some of their mixes have eliminated Pete and put ah back in this ah a media substrate made from southern yellow pine. ah And the one specifically he mentioned was is called Hydrofiber. And actually they sent me I like emailed them was like, tell me more. And they have a product sample kit that they sent me. And it was like all these different sizes of this product.
Alexis: And I was just curious, like, are you is that like in your brain anywhere that that is happening and that it could be potential?
Chad Niman: Yes.
Alexis: Is it possible for like our hardwoods? Or I mean, I was almost like my brain started firing in a million directions. But, you know, when we talk about like, cedar or virginia pine or a lot of these things that are like coming up in old fields you know is there potential to clear them out to allow for our hardwoods and utilize them some way that maybe we aren't already i don't know i have a billion questions it's probably a whole podcast episode in itself but like mostly i'm just thinking is there any potential for something like that out of kentucky products
Jessica : Thank
Chad Niman: Absolutely. it It always amazes me how this universe works. And so there is a researcher at UK that we've been working with, Quing Lu.
Alexis: who
Chad Niman: Quing Lu.
Alexis: Ching
Chad Niman: Yes. Yes.
Alexis: Yeah! Oh my god, she's in my department, so I'm a little like, holy crap, I need to email Ching Lu.
Chad Niman: yeah
Brett: Yeah, this is awesome.
Alexis: ya Dr. Ying, yeah.
Chad Niman: And so she is looking into some opportunities for being able to replace peat moss using some of our, and so we gave her some samples of hardwood bark and hardwood sawdust.
Chad Niman: And so they're working towards trying to replace that peat moss with different greenhouse.
Alexis: I'm going to bring her my little sample kit and be like, Ching Lu, have you seen this? you want to look at it together?
Chad Niman: yeah like
Alexis: um you just you just made my day in so many ways. I appreciate you.
Brett: And so, so what are the, what are the, in that, in those, you know, initial samples, what were some of the stuff that you all were like, man, try this, try this, try it. What were some of the, know you said bark, but was it was a specific species or is it.
Chad Niman: So cherry and maple, and we have a lot of oak that we're sawing up. And so those those were three of the big ones. We did have a little bit of softwood material and some cedar that we were able to give them.
Brett: And is that, are those most, would those mostly be byproducts of other processes?
Chad Niman: It is. And that's one of the really wild things about the hardwood industry is here we are, we're struggling to make lumber and sell lumber.
Alexis: oh
Jessica : Very cool.
Chad Niman: We don't use enough of it, but there is so much demand and interest in our residues. And so economic development, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis: Our trash. People want our trash.
Plant People: We're going to have to chop it up and make it trash to make it valuable.
Chad Niman: That's exactly. certainly
Plant People: Yeah.
Chad Niman: It's approaching that point, I think, economically.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Niman: its That's the most requested that we get from economic development is information on sawdust availability, on bark availability.
Plant People: Something else. Wow.
Chad Niman: And so,
Plant People: A producer of sawdust. Hmm.
Chad Niman: yes
Alexis: my ah My master's research was in – did hydroponic cucumbers, but specifically i was looking at media and and we were using shredded like cedar and comparing it to perlite, comparing it to just like a normal – ah media that we would use like a barky media and like initial results were that it was comparable and we could use kind of this like shredded up stuff from the sawmill that really wasn't a value to them and use it to you know grow some really nice English cucumbers so yeah it is it's pretty crazy what can be done that's so exciting to hear thank you for indulging me
Chad Niman: absolutely
Chad Niman: Absolutely. And I, and I think it's kind of neat. Some of the products we're making, I've tried to leave the trade names out, but compressed fire logs and a lot of charcoal.
Alexis: Hmm.
Plant People: Robert.
Chad Niman: We've got some bagged animal bedding shavings and things like that. And so There's different residues. One of the things that I think surprises folks the most is how much wood flour is used.
Chad Niman: So you see cellulose on your Parmesan cheese and it's wood flour often in there and a different, you know, fast food places have a lot of cellulose in there as well.
Alexis: Hmm.
Alexis: Huh.
Brett: i ah I have, I recently did the ah barbecue basics course for through yeah uk extension as a participant.
Plant People: aber
Chad Niman: Right.
Chad Niman: Nice.
Brett: And, um and I have have, and my brother has, and and they used a a pellet grill, which uses these coming, you know, compressed wood.
Chad Niman: Right.
Brett: pellets and, and PSA to anyone out there who just, it didn't realize it when you go and buy whatever brand hickory flavored ah pellets, the overwhelming majority of the wood in there is not hickory.
Brett: It's actually mostly Oak around here. Depends on where you are. So just a little PSA that from someone who watched a bunch of videos ah to get, yeah, don't let, don't let big wood pellet make you think that, no, I'm just kidding.
Alexis: You're being duped is what he's saying.
Plant People: Geekery flavored.
Chad Niman: You're right.
Plant People: I don't know.
Brett: Um,
Chad Niman: yeah
Brett: But so I think, you know, to we we sometimes usually at my pressing, we'll delve a little into maybe a little touchy feely or bigger questions, bigger importance or whatever. And so obviously, we're really excited about all the stuff that you're doing.
Brett: But if you had to explain why someone should care about this, why someone should care about this opportunity to, you know, use some of our wood products in certain ways or to manage our forests in a way that has these, you know, multiple ah benefits.
Brett: and And maybe even just almost like, why is it that you get so excited to do this kind of stuff? what What would you say?
Chad Niman: That's a really good question.
Alexis: she
Chad Niman: So just to kind of recap it all, when you think about we've got these woods that keep us all healthy. They filter our air, our water.
Chad Niman: We can make stuff out of them. They even grow back on their own. They're contributing $19 billion. dollars It should be $25 billion, but we keep losing these industries because we're not making stuff out of wood.
Chad Niman: And so I think that's the big takeaway is that we really take for granted how much these forests that cover half our state's landscape are really giving us, they're giving us $20 million, I'm sorry, $20 billion dollars a year, plus a $9 billion dollars bourbon industry.
Chad Niman: It's like whatever you like, if it's basketball, if it's horses, if it's, you know, bourbon, all of those things, the Kentucky things, they're all tied to this forestry and to the,
Chad Niman: use of these wood products and taking care of these forests. And so I think that's the important thing is that we think about the forest health, but that we also value using these wood products and managing these woods so that the next future generations can inherit that.
Brett: Yeah, I think there's a lot of lessons in both the, even just the the essential facts about trees that grow slower are denser and harder and stronger.
Brett: And that sometimes the thing that's a little more expensive now has all of these other cascading benefits and things coming out of it. I think I don't know. I just find so much wisdom in our, and and so much human, uh, essential human narrative in our relationship with trees and with the forests. And I think in Kentucky, as you pointed out, we have a really special relationship with them.
Brett: Um, still to this day, which is really, really, really amazing.
Chad Niman: absolutely
Brett: So, um, Well, Chad, I can't thank you enough for for joining us to talk through all of the cool stuff that you have going on. You have made Alexis's day, which is hard to do. She is not. She is, ah ah you know, hard to impress. And you have lit her up like a Christmas tree, which is great.
Brett: um Yeah. well Is there any way where anywhere that people wanted to follow along to kind of see what you have going on or events or anything like that that you wanted to to mention for the moment?
Chad Niman: Yes. So on social media, we have a University of Kentucky Wood E-News page, a University of Kentucky Robinson Wood Utilization Center page, and we've got websites online that you can Google ah for either of those.
Brett: Mm-hmm.
Chad Niman: From the Woods Today is a weekly forestry show on Wednesdays that we're doing, and so that's another place that y'all might catch me. I really appreciate y'all having me on today.
Brett: Yeah. And you, i there's a several things that I'm already kind of thinking we'd like to have you back on and we're going to connect with other folks from out at the Robinson center. There's so much cool work you all have been doing out there in between major flooding events and everything else that all the other challenges that get thrown at us.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Brett: So um thank you so much for everything you do for the state and for our forests.
Chad Niman: Yes.
Brett: And um if you want to follow us, you can follow us on Instagram and at hortculturepodcast. You can also email us. We have a dedicated Gmail account, hortculturepodcast at gmail.com.
Brett: You can connect with us either place. If you get a chance to rate us, leave a review, let us know what you think. You can also email us with ideas you have. And until next time, we appreciate you being with us and we'll see you down the road.
