December 14, 2010 • 33 mins
Agritourism marries farming and tourism, but why do people pay to pick apples or work on a farm? And who does agritourism benefit? Josh and Chuck explore the history and various incarnations of agritourism, as well as the rationale behind it.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
that makes the stuff you should know. It feels like
it's been forever since we've been in the studio. Yeah,
this chair, my chair no longer stinks. They had time
to air out. And you know I've said it before,
I'll say it again. If we could roll the first
three minutes before we actually hit record on this puppy, Yeah, man,
well gold do you think? I think? What are the
(00:40):
ones they give for a spoken word? You can get
a Grammy for that, sure, or if it's like videotaped
and broadcast on TV, you can conceivably get an Emmy
for it. We I think we could win every award
with our three minutes before and after we record, and
people out there and they're like, oh, I want to
hear it so bad. To get this, that's it. This
(01:03):
is what you get and you'll like it for your freness.
Right all right, by the way, go like us on Facebook,
call you It would help us out personally, Chuck and
I would be helped out. If you go on to
Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know our Facebook
page and like us, like get us to fifty can
you please get us to the gent And for the
(01:25):
gentleman who said that it makes him want to unlike
it because we ask people to like it. Just what's
going on, buddy, what's going on in your life? So
it's called marketing. You're ready, Yeah, you're ready. Let's market
some agri tourism. I have an intro. Let's hear it.
So back in two thousand and seven, the little newsine
(01:46):
may have slipped past because it was south of the
border Florida. Um. A guy named that's usually Mexico. When
you say that, By the way, again, if we're not
in Texas, we're in Georgia, So south of the border
means Florida, Okay. A guy named Ronald Levins Sr. And
his wife Jequita Evans got some pretty hefty time. Ron
(02:09):
Evans got thirty years for what amounted to indentured servitude. Right.
This guy ran some Florida labor camps where people would
go and like this is where they would stay and
bunk and eat at night, and then during the day
they get bus to farms to work right Orange Groves wherever.
(02:30):
I think lettuce is big there too. Um the that's
all legal and kosher. They they even actually employed the homeless.
They would go around to Miami, Baton Rouge, New Orleans.
I don't think they came to Atlanta, but they went
to big cities in the southeast and recruited homeless people
living on the street and said, hey, we can give
(02:52):
you a job. You know. Yeah. The problem came with
the indentured servitude part. They had a company store at
their labor camp and it sold a gallon of wine
for forty bucks. And you should know right off the
bat that you can't get a good gallon of wine
that's all cheap. So they had really inflated prices. Cigarettes
(03:12):
were through the roof, and the crack cocaine was above
market value. The stuff they sold at the company's store
that they eventually got all the guys addicted to gave
them advances of crack against their paychecks and basically got
these guys mired in debt to where they were indentured
servants slaves. He's got the guy finally got busted. He
(03:34):
was a really smart dude. Yeah, because he was running
him not just in Florida, but North Carolina. Uh and
uh possibly South Carolina as well. He's like, I've discovered
something really really great. So that um is the exact
opposite of agratourism, and that's your setup. That's pretty good. Uh.
I thought I didn't see where that was going because
(03:55):
the whole time I was sinking. All right, that's fine,
he's paying these people, gets homeless people, put them to work,
puts them up in a in a bunk. What's what's
the problem forty gallon of wine? Well, the crack is
kind of a big problem too. He had all the
farmers paying him in cash in return for the labor,
so he could go buy massive amounts of crack. So
(04:16):
the company's store never ran out of crack from what
I understand. Well, and they were probably fairly secluded, you know,
it's probably the only store around. They probably didn't have cars. No,
they probably depended on that store they did and that crack. Yes, So,
like I said, that's the opposite of agraa tourism. What
is the positive the the I guess what is agri tourism. Well,
(04:38):
it's when you want to attract guests and visitors to
come to your business, your farm, to either observe or
actually take part in the business, the family business. Okay,
let's go. Is that good? That's it. That's that was
agra tourism explained. Like you know, let's just give it
one example. Say you can go to California and you
(05:00):
can stay at a winery and instead of just kicking
back on the porch all day and sampling wine, you
can go out and you can pick the grapes and
you can learn how it's done and in the hand
and uh eat eat the food that's produced there. Maybe
if it's a farm, that kind of thing. So I
think sideways, the film was entirely bankrolled by the California
Agritourism cartel, I think so. I mean, think about it,
(05:22):
like the whole movie is about an agritourism trip that's
essentially not even essentially like that is in every way agritourism.
Like they went from one one winery to another winery.
They watched the grapes get stomped. Did they even did
they participate in grape stomping? I don't remember, I don't remember,
But did you ever see that video on YouTube. Oh yeah,
(05:44):
the woman stomping grapes. Yeah, here in Atlanta. Yeah, it
was Fox five that it happened on. And have you
seen Keyboard cat Player out d d d Dodo Doo
ding do. Yeah, it's pretty It's really sad because she
seems genuinely hurt. But the noise that she makes, it's once,
you hear it once, it is stuck in your crawl forever. Yeah. Yeah,
(06:05):
that's grape stompings. So that's a that's a pretty good
example of agri tourism right and wrong. I think we
should well, yes, in her case, in her case, but
Sideways is a good um example. I took that tour,
did I know? No, No, No, that was northern California.
We we did the little that Sideways was done in
(06:26):
southern like Santa Barbara. Oh I thought it was in
Napa Valley. No, no, it was in It was in
Napa where it was. Well, then all those places I
went to that we're in the movie must have been
wrong in the movie. It was supposed to be Napa.
Five dollars okay. Actually, actually well, to h the one
winery with the guy with a big beard, I actually
(06:48):
hung out with that guy for like an hour of
drinking wine, the dude from the movie, and like we
were the only people in there. The sun was setting.
It was one of those magical moments that sounds touching.
So chuck, Um, what's the what's the point of agriturism, Well,
it helps there. Well, it's because farmers are having to
diversify a little bit in most cases to make dough. Yeah,
(07:12):
I read an exactly. Well, with the advent of the
factory farm, right, we've got very a very small percentage
of farms number wise, right, Um, say one factory farm
equals one farm that's an enormous farm. Uh, in both
like revenue and you know, acreage production. Um, they represent
(07:34):
a very small number of the number of farms, but
just proportionately large, um total of the revenue made and
of the stuff produced in the US. Right. So that's industrialization, right,
And one of the one of the other aspects of
industrial I know where you're going next, but one of
the other aspects of industrialization is um apparently you have
(07:55):
to have a gross revenue of fifty grand a year
from your farm to start to actually be able to
sustain your family through farming. Seventy in two thousand seven
seventy five. No, I'm sorry. This year, se of farms
in the US made less than fifty grand a year.
(08:17):
So this is one of the reasons why they're saying, well,
I don't really want to give up farming and become
a city slicker because I hate city slickers, but I
like city slickers money. So let's supplement our income and
start some agritourism. Yeah, yeah, that's a great reason. What's
the other reason that farmers are being forced to go
into agritourism. I'm glad you asked globalization because with the
(08:41):
way shipping is now in communication around the world and
things move at the speed of light, you're not just
competing with the farm like in your county or in
your state. You're competing with like a farm across the
universe from yourself for the world. In the world. The
world's fat enough. Don't bling the galaxy into this. You're
you're in big trouble, moon farmer. We get in intergalactic
competition moisture farmers. So we've got globalization, industrialization. Those are
(09:07):
pretty much the two big drivers of agritourism. But you know,
you can't put it past farm folks to to be
um well smart and farm smart, and that what they
call it. I never heard that, but I love that term.
I thought i'd picked that up from you. Are you sure? No,
I never have heard that before. Well there's farm smart,
(09:28):
farm strong. No, No, that's lived strong, farms smarts. So chuck. Um.
There's a few different ways that this can pan out. Right,
Let's say you're at the dollar level and you don't
care about new stuff. You're just fine sewing your old clothes.
But you want to keep farming. Um, you would you
(09:51):
would use agritourism as like a supplementary income, right, Yeah,
just add a little like you might do tours things
like that. And you know I should add that when
I was a kid. Was it Robert that wrote this,
Robert Lamb? Yeah, it's an unusually thin article from Robert
Lamb of stuff to blow your mind. Well, he makes
a point early on that, um, it provides a connection
(10:13):
that people has been lost between the stuff we put
in our body and in the person. Yeah. Because and
I've read that and it really hit home because when
I was a kid, and this wasn't in like the
nineteen twenties, we got our milk from a farm right
here in Atlanta, and it wasn't weird. Like we drove
to this farm and they had you pull up to
the cooler room and there was a guy standing there
(10:35):
on the porch and he would just ask what you
need and he'd go in the cooler room and go
get it for you. And it wasn't like I didn't
live in I was in a hill billy And it
wasn't the nineteen twenties. This is like in the eight
seventies and eighties in in Decabb County, Georgia. Yeah, but now,
I mean that seems really weird. Or get anything outside
of the grocery, It's not weird. It's more like token.
(10:56):
It's like a token experience, right. Yeah. And that that's that's,
by the way, is direct marketing aggrotourism, where like you
drive to the farm and like you just pull up
to a farm stand or something that's down the side
of the road. Um. But yeah, we were talking about
what's driving agro tourism from the farmer's point of view,
but you just touched upon what's driving it from the
consumers point of view. And yeah, this whole farm to
(11:18):
table movement huge. Well yeah, and it's having it's it's
it's the perfect time for aggri tourism because I think
it was, was it two thousand eight or nine? Very recently, um,
the world population tipped towards cities the first time ever
more people lived in cities than in a rural area. Right,
(11:39):
the sticks, the sticks. So we're we're we're getting further
and further away from our country roots. Right. People won't
walk around barefoot anymore, people wear shirts underneath their overalls.
It's just you know, urban um. So, I guess this
desire to be able to go back to the farm,
(11:59):
uh is is definitely part of of why this is
why consumers are going there right. Well, and Robert makes
a point which is very valid, which is especially if
your family, if that was your roots, your ancestry, you
may not know anything about that, and it might be
a neat way to get in touch with your your
ancestry and your roots. Go back. See what it's like
(12:20):
the milk a cow because great great granddad did that
for a living. Sure, pretty cool. Yeah, you can feel
your great great granddad's ghosts looking over your shoulder like
you're doing it wrong. Right, You got a yank down
and to the left. I've never a milky cow. I
don't know how to do it. So you've got supplementary. Uh,
there's complementary, which is where it's about half and half.
(12:41):
And a good example of this kind of aggri tourism
outfit is a pumpkin patch, right, so like they may
sell half of their pumpkins to you know, a wholesaler,
and then they may keep half of them for the
fall tours. And people can walk around and pick their
own pumpkin and then carve it and have some snotnose
teenager come and smash it, and some awful band will
name their band after that act. Jerry just left it
(13:04):
and she's like mentioned smashing pumpkin, and so that's complimentary.
And then there's primary. And primary is the one where
your farm is growing nothing but weeds, right, nothing you
can sell, and you turn it into an agriturism destination.
(13:24):
Like you all, almost all of your income is coming
from the fact that there are people coming to your
farm growing stuff. Though well you are you have to
like grow something, but it doesn't necessarily have to be sellable, right,
as long as people think it looks pretty, then you're fine. Sure.
Now there's Back in the director of the U C.
(13:46):
Davis's Small Farms program publicly worried that if ranchers and
um farmers didn't get in on the Agora tourism action
soon enough, the market was going to be open wide
enough for like theme park operators to do this, which
would be the primary enterprise aspect. And there's a guy
who's a former Disney exact who actually started a company
(14:10):
to make mazes that take about two hours to get
to on farms. Yeah, well, that's that's huge. The corn
maze in the fall, that's aggri tourism, buddy. Yeah. Yeah,
have you ever done one of those? I haven't. They
haven't been terrified at the thought of like getting trapped
in there forever? Really? Yeah? Wow? Mazes? Huh. I don't
like mazes. I bet the end of the shining is
(14:31):
pretty harrowing for you. Huh No, because I'm not there,
but yeah, sure, like my I've got like three mirror neurons.
If you're Danny, though, then it would have been frightened.
I would have just laid down and died and they
come kill me. Dad think a quit. Uh So. Robert
likens it to eco tourism, which is um, not too
far off. Whn't you think they both have tourism in
(14:54):
the name. Well, yeah, And the cool thing about um,
aggro tourism and eco touris are actually more aggroturism is
you don't have to necessarily throw a lot of money
into it as a farmer, because you've got the farm
you Sometimes you just got to open the gates and
advertise it, say, come to our apple farm and pick
some apples. So it's not like you gotta sink a
(15:14):
lot of money into an enterprise. And um, one of
the I think one of the rules of thumb, if
you're a agri tourism farmer and you're actually trying to
sell some of your stuff too, you want to keep
the littlest kids like occupied away from your protest because
apparently they represent a huge portion of shrinkage. Yeah, so
I guess petting zoos are the best way to do it.
(15:38):
It is because if you've ever wanted to watch a
small child inadvertently kill a rabbit by petting it too eagerly,
then agro tourism is right up your alley. That doesn't happen,
Sure it does. That's awful. Kids and their rough love
they just don't know. Let's talk about some different types
(15:58):
of agro tourism checkers. Well, you mentioned the direct market,
which is like fruit stands, that kind of thing. Um.
Robert calls this one education and experience, and this is
more along the lines of like a bed and bright
like seren By, you know, Sara By, South Atlanta. I saw, Yeah,
it's pretty cool. You know, they have an apprenticeship to
(16:18):
that lasts from March to November. Yeah, I looked it up.
Pays eight hundred bucks a week plus housing and utilities,
and they teach you the ins and outs of organic farming, UM,
keeping farm records. Like it's it's pretty well organized. It
sounds like there's actually, while we're on that, there's UM.
If you go onto the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
(16:39):
site and then search sustainable farming internships and apprenticeships, it
brings them up for the entire country. Yeah. So if
you're into this kind of thing, if if you want
to be like an ag culturist rather than an a tourist,
it's it's out there for you. You know, if I
was fifteen years younger and single, you would find me
down at Serenby Living, right, is that right, Yeah, man,
(17:01):
I'd love that really. Yeah, it's gorgeous down there. So
that's the idea of like the bed and breakfast package
where they say, hey, stay at our bed and breakfast
and work a little bit on our farm and learn
how to turn butter and eat the food that we
serve you that's straight from the farm from the table. Yeah.
You saw that one Maverick Farm and and uh Carolina, Yeah, yeah,
(17:24):
I love that. Throw throw that down. It's in Valley Crucis,
North Carolina, and it's a bed and breakfast. It's situated
in a hundred and forty year old, hundred and twenty
five year old farmhouse right. Uh. And it's a hundred
and twenty bucks at night for a room. But you
can work off up to I think bill at seven
(17:46):
bucks an hour by acting as farm labor. I love
farm hand. And then you eat with the family in
their home every night, stuff that they grow. Yeah, And
they said that you can and it's an option if
you want to donate a little money back for the meal,
you can. Well I'm trying to picture you there. You'd
be like, aw, you're working twenties a good rate. I'll
(18:06):
just be here on the porch watching you people work.
I'm paying to watch other people work on a farm. Uh.
And then the other type is recreation an event agriturism,
and that's um more like the Big Fall Festival, corn mazes,
pumpkin picking, hay rides, sheep here in contest did they
have those awesome yeah pie eating contest. Yeah. Basically, if
(18:28):
there's an event that you're attending and um, say a
pageant and it's miss and then insert your own vegetable,
that's the miss uh squash of Canton or whatever. That
kind of thing. Another one that was pretty cool that
um he mentions in here is the U. S Department
of Agriculture operates one called home Place by the Lakes
(18:51):
National Recreationary in Tennessee. And they go a step further
and combine a little like Colonial Williamsburg in with it.
They'll dress up instead of a Civil War reenactment, they'll
be dressed up in the old school clothes showing you
how to churn butter. Imagine like the AMAS should probably
be like, dude, that's our life. Have you come watch us?
(19:12):
You read exactly? Um, it's like the opposite of rum Springer. Yeah, Um,
that's what we just figured out the key to a tourism.
It's the opposite of rum Springer. Have have you ever
seen the alig episode Um where Barat goes to like
a living history farm in South Carolina. I strongly recommend
(19:36):
that one. It's hilarious. Uh. There's another one called the
Conner Prairie Living History Museum, which is sort of what
you're talking about right there. This one's pretty serious. Yeah.
This is in Fisher's, Indiana, and there's an outdoor museum
and you can see how things operated in the eighteen hundreds.
And then they go a little step further and they
actually have a program called Follow the North Star which
(19:59):
allow as you the chance to see what it was
like to be a slave trying to escape. Yeah, which
I wonder how they do that. I think they have
guys and dogs running after you. Really, yeah, tracking you.
That's what I took from it. Yeah, that's that's tricky.
I mean, that's living history right there. I don't know
(20:20):
if I want to do that. Can you see yourself
running through the woods like hete agritourism. This is horrible, So, Josh.
One of the ideas behind agriturism is that people will
be so uh, inspired by their trip, that it will
form sort of a relationship with the farm and that
they will want to support that farm even after they
(20:42):
have left the farm. This appears to be like a
long term goal of agritourism. It's not just short term.
It's more like they want to remind the city slickers
that farms still exist and that the city slickers are
welcome to come by and empty their wallets there, like
keep coming back again and again. And actually that works
(21:02):
because I was raised as an agritourist um going to
McQueen orchard in Holland, Ohio pick apples, and still to
this day, like my family when we visit Ohio, we'll
go to McQueen's. We scheduled it around the time where
the apples are ripe, amazing, best donuts in the entire world.
Like I kid you not, Yes, everything is just perfect.
(21:24):
They're just go go to McQueen apple fritters to be
apple fritters, apples there, apple cider is just I mean,
and the apples themselves. You just climb the trees and
pick them and eat them and you know, take off
your shirt and it's awesome. Uh So, where I was
going though with the with the repeat businesses. Um, you've
heard of the the c s A, the community supported
(21:45):
agriculture programs. Yeah, and that's when you sign up as
a collective. While you sign up personally, you form a
collective as a whole. And um, you basically pay money
up front to get a box of vegetables like once
a month. I mean, the programs are different delivered to
your home or sometimes you go pick them up. And
the cool thing is, and you should know this because
(22:07):
some people might not think it's so cool, is you
don't know what you're gonna get. Yeah, but you get
a lot of what you don't know what you're gonna get. Well, yeah,
so you gotta be open minded. You gotta be willing
to experiment with vegetables you may never have cooked with before.
It's probably a good idea to know how to can
things because you really get a lot of stuff. This
is one of the things I've always heard from people
who have co op subscriptions that like all this scale,
(22:32):
all this scale. Tennessee Tech has a program. They say
that they're the first university in the state of Tennessee
to offer a degree in agriturism because they say this
is the future, and you're gonna need managers and people
that know the trends in this business. I think this
represents the people who are like theme parks are going
to get into this. You think like let us land
(22:53):
that kind of thing. No, I wouldn't call it that,
but possibly. Uh. I got a couple of stats for you. Yeah, yeah,
it's successful, right, Well, yeah, I got one for the
state of Colorado. At least they say that agritourism contributed
two point two billion dollars to their state's economy and
that thirteen point two million visitors engaged in one in
(23:16):
last year in agritourism in Colorado. It's pretty awesome. So
the one I have is from the two thousand seven
U s Senses of agriculture three thousand, three hundred fifty
farms in the US. I have some sort of agritourism
thing going on, right, and about thirty six hundred of
those were making grand or more a year from it. Yeah,
(23:38):
this billion number seems really suspecting me. I wonder if
it's not a million for Colorado. Yeah, because the the
total for all of the US and two thousand seven
five sixty six million, I don't know if that was
gross revenue, because it sounded like your stat was um
like economic impact. That would include like the gas people
coming into the state. Yea, you know the hotels that
(24:01):
they stayed in when they were picking apple. But that's
what the Colorado State Extension Service said. Well, they're pretty
well known to be rather liberal with their numbers hippies.
So let's see what else, Chuck, I don't have much else,
do you The greatest winery scene of all time? Not
in Sideways, the British comedy series Absolutely fabulous. Oh yeah,
(24:28):
and you know I didn't watch that show. I knew
it was supposed to be great, but in that particular
episode was hilarious. Well, I think going through a winery
is a great way to uh participate in negraatorism. And
not just wineries. They have um like homegrown breweries now too.
What like brewery people grow the hops on their land
(24:49):
and make the beer and you drink it. Yeah. I'd
like to go to the sire Nevada plant. I would
say it's one of my goals in life. Find where
they make that sweeten nectar. Have you been to uh Sweetwater? Uh? No?
I never suck right down the street. It's like a
good little happy, our place. That's what I hear. Yeah,
(25:11):
it's fun, give you tastings and all. That is that aggrotourism. No,
not really, not at all. Industrial tourism maybe yeah, that's
visiting a brewery. So that's it. That's agritourism plus a
touch of industrial tourism, just as an extra little nugget.
That was free as it was alright. So if you
want to learn more about agritourism, read an article by
(25:34):
Robert Lamb. Just to complete the series, you can type
in agritourism a g R I tourism in the handy
search bart how stuff works dot com? And support your
local farm. Get on the internet and there's something near nearby. Yeah,
there's a ton of stuff. Oh and actually, what's that website?
You got one? I do um. I gave you the
(25:56):
one for the apprenticeships. If you want to actually be
the person working that people are gawking at. Right, if
you want to gawk at people working on a farm,
go to rural Bounty. Are you are a l bounty
dot com? I thought it would be aggrigawker the same thing. Okay,
it's time now for administrative details. You're ready? Should we
(26:24):
set this up for people who don't know what this
means because it's the worst title ever. It is not.
It's very sustinct and to the point. These are gifts
thank you as from fans that send us things in
and hopes that we will promote their little Etsy site.
Well not just gifts like sometimes correspondence correspondence postcards. So um,
well it's been a while and we've gotten some pretty
(26:45):
good stuff, a lot of stuff. This is gonna take
like an hour, it is. I just want to say
thanks to Mr Cohen at Waterford Union High School and Waterford,
Wisconsin for those nice letter and the information on um
goats that produced spider silk, including it drawing go badgers.
Yeah yeah he was actually was it bad Badger for
(27:08):
a while? Wisconsin. Oh, I thought I made that up.
Now you're thinking of Wolverines. It's a lucky guess you go.
Uh Center College women's volleyball team sent us one of
their T shirts. They are the Spandex Mafia. Yeah we
all three got one. Yes. Thanks to Kristen for even
more newgat Thank you Stilicious Kristen Ferguson with her neat.
(27:32):
Thanks to Sarah Michelle for the copy of Dianetics hardcover,
No less, you got that. Wow. Jeremy and Heather in Asheville,
North Carolina make Eco friend the artwork. Custom would carve
wedding cake toppers and they sent Um they made a
little Josh, a little Jerry and a little Chuck and
they're really awesome looking. I put it on Facebook. You
(27:54):
were very proud of this. I just thought they looked
really cool and they were you know, they look like us.
And you can shop with him if you would like
at ah You're a star house dot et s y
dot com. That is, you are a star house dot
etsy dot com. Nice Chuck. Thanks to Kentucky and night
Nikki for the postcard of the London I yeah. Thanks
(28:19):
a mill to Kevin at jadabug roasters dot com. That's
j A d A b u g Roasters dot com
for the not one, but two pounds of coffee that
why didn't I see any of this? You always give
me the coffee. This didn't even pass this one by you, man.
I'll bring it in for you if you want. David
Polly uh San Francisco. He runs a small print shop
(28:40):
and he sent um some cool custom concert poster city
prints and I collect these posters, and he said he
would keep me in mind for the future and sending
me some of these does very nice. Did he send
you two of the two versions of the same as
that the one I have that Jerry got one to
we all three got Okay, that's very cool, very cool.
I would have liked to have been at that festival.
Thanks to Casey from Huntsville for the very nice letter
(29:03):
and the sketch of the octopus. Keep listening, Casey, and
we will keep you laughing. Right. Jennifer of Lynchburg, Virginia
sent us little Nimn Christmas ornaments. Very cute. They are
very cute. Yes, thanks a million to Kate in Sunny
Vale for our awesome card. That's the one that has
us as the Estonian wedding couple. Uh. And the thank
(29:27):
you to Matt and Zach at the our List podcast
if you've been on there. Yeah, they sent the shirts. Yes,
they did send the shirts. And at first, without reading
the card, I thought it was a drawing of Uze.
These guys are adoppel gangers. Yeah, I saw it. I
was like, it's sort of a good likeness, but not really.
Right now, I'm like, okay, it's them. So they have
a podcast called our List. You want to check it out. Um,
(29:50):
it's our List podcast, I believe. And speaking of shirts,
standard clothing in print in Canada, North Carolina sent some
shirts and I got a Hoosier's T shirt, a Jimmy
Chitwood number fifteen. Who's your T shirt? It's because you
are a well loved celebrity. Jim Jerry got one and
you got one different ones and that is standard clothing
(30:11):
in print dot com. Thank you to Amy who sent
us her copy of or a copy of her doctoral
thesis A Metrica with an exclamation point about the metric
system and how it should be used in America. And
it's pretty awesome. I wrote a blog post on it.
She mailed it. I got it like two days later,
so you can check that out. Just type in A M, E,
(30:33):
T R, I C A and it brings up some stuff.
I don't think she has an actual site for it though,
although she's on Twitter much neglected Twitter account. A Metrica interesting.
I got two more. Matt invented his own chewing gum.
It's good too. It's called think Gum and it's supposedly
brain boosting with herbal extracts and naturally caffeinated and you
(30:54):
can find that at think gum dot com. And my
last one a little controversial. In my house, we got
handmade soaps sent to us from Jan Maurice Silvera Yeah
World soaps. W h I R L E ED soap.
And I told Emily about this because everyone knows my
wife makes her soup. She was like, let me see that.
She checked it out and checked out the ink. She
(31:14):
immediately looks at the ingredients. This first thing she always said.
She was like, Oh, it's actually you know, made of
essential oils and and olive oil and palm oils. Good. Yeah,
it's really good soap. Um. Thank you to Cameron, your
letter got to us just fine. Thanks to the Pinks
for sending their c D. Thanks thanks to l Michelle
down in Panama for the postcard. Very titillating postcard. Um.
(31:38):
Thanks to Vanessa for the Jackalope postcard. I still got
some more chuck hanging there. Thanks to Jan from Niagara
Falls for a postcard of the namesake of her hometown.
Thanks to amare It and Boone, North Carolina for the
nice letter We'll see what we can do. Thanks to
Laurel who sent us the Meyer Lemon Vanilla beam rmalade.
(32:01):
I didn't know about that either, Okay, I was. I
didn't know if I gave you some or not. You
just funnel some of these straight to Josh's house about it.
I had to ask you for the gum. Yeah, and
I gave you the whole box. Thank you to Nick
from mud River Coffee mud River Coffee dot com. More
coffee you. This is where I got the idea to
(32:22):
just keep the two pounds for myself. I was like, well,
let's split this year. Like, here're the coffee guy, you
keep it. Awesome coffee, um, let's see. Thanks to Katerina
from Lenifalou, Hungary for the nice postcard of Joseph Stalind.
Thanks to Robert for the Route sixties six postcard. Thanks
to zach Netzer for the awesome um Mix CD. Thanks
(32:43):
to Andrew Smith at Andrew Smith art dot com for
the DVDs Did you see this? Thank you to Jen
from Australia for the postcard of the theme park, and
thank you to staff Sergeant Rusting Kozahar cozy R. I
think it's cozy R for the postcard from Afghanistan. Be safe,
that is it? Yes, all of you, not just the
(33:06):
staff sergeant. Everyone be safe, um, and thank you very
much for sending us some stuff. If you guys want
to run in droves to the stuff, you should know
facebook page and UM. If you have a link that
you want to share with everybody, please do because all
this stuff was great. Thank you and if you want
to send us something, you can find our address by
(33:26):
emailing us. Uh. It's stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more
about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the
upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works
iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought
(33:51):
to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
that makes the stuff you should know. It feels like
it's been forever since we've been in the studio. Yeah,
this chair, my chair no longer stinks. They had time
to air out. And you know I've said it before,
I'll say it again. If we could roll the first
three minutes before we actually hit record on this puppy, Yeah, man,
well gold do you think? I think? What are the
(00:40):
ones they give for a spoken word? You can get
a Grammy for that, sure, or if it's like videotaped
and broadcast on TV, you can conceivably get an Emmy
for it. We I think we could win every award
with our three minutes before and after we record, and
people out there and they're like, oh, I want to
hear it so bad. To get this, that's it. This
(01:03):
is what you get and you'll like it for your freness.
Right all right, by the way, go like us on Facebook,
call you It would help us out personally, Chuck and
I would be helped out. If you go on to
Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know our Facebook
page and like us, like get us to fifty can
you please get us to the gent And for the
(01:25):
gentleman who said that it makes him want to unlike
it because we ask people to like it. Just what's
going on, buddy, what's going on in your life? So
it's called marketing. You're ready, Yeah, you're ready. Let's market
some agri tourism. I have an intro. Let's hear it.
So back in two thousand and seven, the little newsine
(01:46):
may have slipped past because it was south of the
border Florida. Um. A guy named that's usually Mexico. When
you say that, By the way, again, if we're not
in Texas, we're in Georgia, So south of the border
means Florida, Okay. A guy named Ronald Levins Sr. And
his wife Jequita Evans got some pretty hefty time. Ron
(02:09):
Evans got thirty years for what amounted to indentured servitude. Right.
This guy ran some Florida labor camps where people would
go and like this is where they would stay and
bunk and eat at night, and then during the day
they get bus to farms to work right Orange Groves wherever.
(02:30):
I think lettuce is big there too. Um the that's
all legal and kosher. They they even actually employed the homeless.
They would go around to Miami, Baton Rouge, New Orleans.
I don't think they came to Atlanta, but they went
to big cities in the southeast and recruited homeless people
living on the street and said, hey, we can give
(02:52):
you a job. You know. Yeah. The problem came with
the indentured servitude part. They had a company store at
their labor camp and it sold a gallon of wine
for forty bucks. And you should know right off the
bat that you can't get a good gallon of wine
that's all cheap. So they had really inflated prices. Cigarettes
(03:12):
were through the roof, and the crack cocaine was above
market value. The stuff they sold at the company's store
that they eventually got all the guys addicted to gave
them advances of crack against their paychecks and basically got
these guys mired in debt to where they were indentured
servants slaves. He's got the guy finally got busted. He
(03:34):
was a really smart dude. Yeah, because he was running
him not just in Florida, but North Carolina. Uh and
uh possibly South Carolina as well. He's like, I've discovered
something really really great. So that um is the exact
opposite of agratourism, and that's your setup. That's pretty good. Uh.
I thought I didn't see where that was going because
(03:55):
the whole time I was sinking. All right, that's fine,
he's paying these people, gets homeless people, put them to work,
puts them up in a in a bunk. What's what's
the problem forty gallon of wine? Well, the crack is
kind of a big problem too. He had all the
farmers paying him in cash in return for the labor,
so he could go buy massive amounts of crack. So
(04:16):
the company's store never ran out of crack from what
I understand. Well, and they were probably fairly secluded, you know,
it's probably the only store around. They probably didn't have cars. No,
they probably depended on that store they did and that crack. Yes, So,
like I said, that's the opposite of agraa tourism. What
is the positive the the I guess what is agri tourism. Well,
(04:38):
it's when you want to attract guests and visitors to
come to your business, your farm, to either observe or
actually take part in the business, the family business. Okay,
let's go. Is that good? That's it. That's that was
agra tourism explained. Like you know, let's just give it
one example. Say you can go to California and you
(05:00):
can stay at a winery and instead of just kicking
back on the porch all day and sampling wine, you
can go out and you can pick the grapes and
you can learn how it's done and in the hand
and uh eat eat the food that's produced there. Maybe
if it's a farm, that kind of thing. So I
think sideways, the film was entirely bankrolled by the California
Agritourism cartel, I think so. I mean, think about it,
(05:22):
like the whole movie is about an agritourism trip that's
essentially not even essentially like that is in every way agritourism.
Like they went from one one winery to another winery.
They watched the grapes get stomped. Did they even did
they participate in grape stomping? I don't remember, I don't remember,
But did you ever see that video on YouTube. Oh yeah,
(05:44):
the woman stomping grapes. Yeah, here in Atlanta. Yeah, it
was Fox five that it happened on. And have you
seen Keyboard cat Player out d d d Dodo Doo
ding do. Yeah, it's pretty It's really sad because she
seems genuinely hurt. But the noise that she makes, it's once,
you hear it once, it is stuck in your crawl forever. Yeah. Yeah,
(06:05):
that's grape stompings. So that's a that's a pretty good
example of agri tourism right and wrong. I think we
should well, yes, in her case, in her case, but
Sideways is a good um example. I took that tour,
did I know? No, No, No, that was northern California.
We we did the little that Sideways was done in
(06:26):
southern like Santa Barbara. Oh I thought it was in
Napa Valley. No, no, it was in It was in
Napa where it was. Well, then all those places I
went to that we're in the movie must have been
wrong in the movie. It was supposed to be Napa.
Five dollars okay. Actually, actually well, to h the one
winery with the guy with a big beard, I actually
(06:48):
hung out with that guy for like an hour of
drinking wine, the dude from the movie, and like we
were the only people in there. The sun was setting.
It was one of those magical moments that sounds touching.
So chuck, Um, what's the what's the point of agriturism, Well,
it helps there. Well, it's because farmers are having to
diversify a little bit in most cases to make dough. Yeah,
(07:12):
I read an exactly. Well, with the advent of the
factory farm, right, we've got very a very small percentage
of farms number wise, right, Um, say one factory farm
equals one farm that's an enormous farm. Uh, in both
like revenue and you know, acreage production. Um, they represent
(07:34):
a very small number of the number of farms, but
just proportionately large, um total of the revenue made and
of the stuff produced in the US. Right. So that's industrialization, right,
And one of the one of the other aspects of
industrial I know where you're going next, but one of
the other aspects of industrialization is um apparently you have
(07:55):
to have a gross revenue of fifty grand a year
from your farm to start to actually be able to
sustain your family through farming. Seventy in two thousand seven
seventy five. No, I'm sorry. This year, se of farms
in the US made less than fifty grand a year.
(08:17):
So this is one of the reasons why they're saying, well,
I don't really want to give up farming and become
a city slicker because I hate city slickers, but I
like city slickers money. So let's supplement our income and
start some agritourism. Yeah, yeah, that's a great reason. What's
the other reason that farmers are being forced to go
into agritourism. I'm glad you asked globalization because with the
(08:41):
way shipping is now in communication around the world and
things move at the speed of light, you're not just
competing with the farm like in your county or in
your state. You're competing with like a farm across the
universe from yourself for the world. In the world. The
world's fat enough. Don't bling the galaxy into this. You're
you're in big trouble, moon farmer. We get in intergalactic
competition moisture farmers. So we've got globalization, industrialization. Those are
(09:07):
pretty much the two big drivers of agritourism. But you know,
you can't put it past farm folks to to be
um well smart and farm smart, and that what they
call it. I never heard that, but I love that term.
I thought i'd picked that up from you. Are you sure? No,
I never have heard that before. Well there's farm smart,
(09:28):
farm strong. No, No, that's lived strong, farms smarts. So chuck. Um.
There's a few different ways that this can pan out. Right,
Let's say you're at the dollar level and you don't
care about new stuff. You're just fine sewing your old clothes.
But you want to keep farming. Um, you would you
(09:51):
would use agritourism as like a supplementary income, right, Yeah,
just add a little like you might do tours things
like that. And you know I should add that when
I was a kid. Was it Robert that wrote this,
Robert Lamb? Yeah, it's an unusually thin article from Robert
Lamb of stuff to blow your mind. Well, he makes
a point early on that, um, it provides a connection
(10:13):
that people has been lost between the stuff we put
in our body and in the person. Yeah. Because and
I've read that and it really hit home because when
I was a kid, and this wasn't in like the
nineteen twenties, we got our milk from a farm right
here in Atlanta, and it wasn't weird. Like we drove
to this farm and they had you pull up to
the cooler room and there was a guy standing there
(10:35):
on the porch and he would just ask what you
need and he'd go in the cooler room and go
get it for you. And it wasn't like I didn't
live in I was in a hill billy And it
wasn't the nineteen twenties. This is like in the eight
seventies and eighties in in Decabb County, Georgia. Yeah, but now,
I mean that seems really weird. Or get anything outside
of the grocery, It's not weird. It's more like token.
(10:56):
It's like a token experience, right. Yeah. And that that's that's,
by the way, is direct marketing aggrotourism, where like you
drive to the farm and like you just pull up
to a farm stand or something that's down the side
of the road. Um. But yeah, we were talking about
what's driving agro tourism from the farmer's point of view,
but you just touched upon what's driving it from the
consumers point of view. And yeah, this whole farm to
(11:18):
table movement huge. Well yeah, and it's having it's it's
it's the perfect time for aggri tourism because I think
it was, was it two thousand eight or nine? Very recently, um,
the world population tipped towards cities the first time ever
more people lived in cities than in a rural area. Right,
(11:39):
the sticks, the sticks. So we're we're we're getting further
and further away from our country roots. Right. People won't
walk around barefoot anymore, people wear shirts underneath their overalls.
It's just you know, urban um. So, I guess this
desire to be able to go back to the farm,
(11:59):
uh is is definitely part of of why this is
why consumers are going there right. Well, and Robert makes
a point which is very valid, which is especially if
your family, if that was your roots, your ancestry, you
may not know anything about that, and it might be
a neat way to get in touch with your your
ancestry and your roots. Go back. See what it's like
(12:20):
the milk a cow because great great granddad did that
for a living. Sure, pretty cool. Yeah, you can feel
your great great granddad's ghosts looking over your shoulder like
you're doing it wrong. Right, You got a yank down
and to the left. I've never a milky cow. I
don't know how to do it. So you've got supplementary. Uh,
there's complementary, which is where it's about half and half.
(12:41):
And a good example of this kind of aggri tourism
outfit is a pumpkin patch, right, so like they may
sell half of their pumpkins to you know, a wholesaler,
and then they may keep half of them for the
fall tours. And people can walk around and pick their
own pumpkin and then carve it and have some snotnose
teenager come and smash it, and some awful band will
name their band after that act. Jerry just left it
(13:04):
and she's like mentioned smashing pumpkin, and so that's complimentary.
And then there's primary. And primary is the one where
your farm is growing nothing but weeds, right, nothing you
can sell, and you turn it into an agriturism destination.
(13:24):
Like you all, almost all of your income is coming
from the fact that there are people coming to your
farm growing stuff. Though well you are you have to
like grow something, but it doesn't necessarily have to be sellable, right,
as long as people think it looks pretty, then you're fine. Sure.
Now there's Back in the director of the U C.
(13:46):
Davis's Small Farms program publicly worried that if ranchers and
um farmers didn't get in on the Agora tourism action
soon enough, the market was going to be open wide
enough for like theme park operators to do this, which
would be the primary enterprise aspect. And there's a guy
who's a former Disney exact who actually started a company
(14:10):
to make mazes that take about two hours to get
to on farms. Yeah, well, that's that's huge. The corn
maze in the fall, that's aggri tourism, buddy. Yeah. Yeah,
have you ever done one of those? I haven't. They
haven't been terrified at the thought of like getting trapped
in there forever? Really? Yeah? Wow? Mazes? Huh. I don't
like mazes. I bet the end of the shining is
(14:31):
pretty harrowing for you. Huh No, because I'm not there,
but yeah, sure, like my I've got like three mirror neurons.
If you're Danny, though, then it would have been frightened.
I would have just laid down and died and they
come kill me. Dad think a quit. Uh So. Robert
likens it to eco tourism, which is um, not too
far off. Whn't you think they both have tourism in
(14:54):
the name. Well, yeah, And the cool thing about um,
aggro tourism and eco touris are actually more aggroturism is
you don't have to necessarily throw a lot of money
into it as a farmer, because you've got the farm
you Sometimes you just got to open the gates and
advertise it, say, come to our apple farm and pick
some apples. So it's not like you gotta sink a
(15:14):
lot of money into an enterprise. And um, one of
the I think one of the rules of thumb, if
you're a agri tourism farmer and you're actually trying to
sell some of your stuff too, you want to keep
the littlest kids like occupied away from your protest because
apparently they represent a huge portion of shrinkage. Yeah, so
I guess petting zoos are the best way to do it.
(15:38):
It is because if you've ever wanted to watch a
small child inadvertently kill a rabbit by petting it too eagerly,
then agro tourism is right up your alley. That doesn't happen,
Sure it does. That's awful. Kids and their rough love
they just don't know. Let's talk about some different types
(15:58):
of agro tourism checkers. Well, you mentioned the direct market,
which is like fruit stands, that kind of thing. Um.
Robert calls this one education and experience, and this is
more along the lines of like a bed and bright
like seren By, you know, Sara By, South Atlanta. I saw, Yeah,
it's pretty cool. You know, they have an apprenticeship to
(16:18):
that lasts from March to November. Yeah, I looked it up.
Pays eight hundred bucks a week plus housing and utilities,
and they teach you the ins and outs of organic farming, UM,
keeping farm records. Like it's it's pretty well organized. It
sounds like there's actually, while we're on that, there's UM.
If you go onto the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
(16:39):
site and then search sustainable farming internships and apprenticeships, it
brings them up for the entire country. Yeah. So if
you're into this kind of thing, if if you want
to be like an ag culturist rather than an a tourist,
it's it's out there for you. You know, if I
was fifteen years younger and single, you would find me
down at Serenby Living, right, is that right, Yeah, man,
(17:01):
I'd love that really. Yeah, it's gorgeous down there. So
that's the idea of like the bed and breakfast package
where they say, hey, stay at our bed and breakfast
and work a little bit on our farm and learn
how to turn butter and eat the food that we
serve you that's straight from the farm from the table. Yeah.
You saw that one Maverick Farm and and uh Carolina, Yeah, yeah,
(17:24):
I love that. Throw throw that down. It's in Valley Crucis,
North Carolina, and it's a bed and breakfast. It's situated
in a hundred and forty year old, hundred and twenty
five year old farmhouse right. Uh. And it's a hundred
and twenty bucks at night for a room. But you
can work off up to I think bill at seven
(17:46):
bucks an hour by acting as farm labor. I love
farm hand. And then you eat with the family in
their home every night, stuff that they grow. Yeah, And
they said that you can and it's an option if
you want to donate a little money back for the meal,
you can. Well I'm trying to picture you there. You'd
be like, aw, you're working twenties a good rate. I'll
(18:06):
just be here on the porch watching you people work.
I'm paying to watch other people work on a farm. Uh.
And then the other type is recreation an event agriturism,
and that's um more like the Big Fall Festival, corn mazes,
pumpkin picking, hay rides, sheep here in contest did they
have those awesome yeah pie eating contest. Yeah. Basically, if
(18:28):
there's an event that you're attending and um, say a
pageant and it's miss and then insert your own vegetable,
that's the miss uh squash of Canton or whatever. That
kind of thing. Another one that was pretty cool that
um he mentions in here is the U. S Department
of Agriculture operates one called home Place by the Lakes
(18:51):
National Recreationary in Tennessee. And they go a step further
and combine a little like Colonial Williamsburg in with it.
They'll dress up instead of a Civil War reenactment, they'll
be dressed up in the old school clothes showing you
how to churn butter. Imagine like the AMAS should probably
be like, dude, that's our life. Have you come watch us?
(19:12):
You read exactly? Um, it's like the opposite of rum Springer. Yeah, Um,
that's what we just figured out the key to a tourism.
It's the opposite of rum Springer. Have have you ever
seen the alig episode Um where Barat goes to like
a living history farm in South Carolina. I strongly recommend
(19:36):
that one. It's hilarious. Uh. There's another one called the
Conner Prairie Living History Museum, which is sort of what
you're talking about right there. This one's pretty serious. Yeah.
This is in Fisher's, Indiana, and there's an outdoor museum
and you can see how things operated in the eighteen hundreds.
And then they go a little step further and they
actually have a program called Follow the North Star which
(19:59):
allow as you the chance to see what it was
like to be a slave trying to escape. Yeah, which
I wonder how they do that. I think they have
guys and dogs running after you. Really, yeah, tracking you.
That's what I took from it. Yeah, that's that's tricky.
I mean, that's living history right there. I don't know
(20:20):
if I want to do that. Can you see yourself
running through the woods like hete agritourism. This is horrible, So, Josh.
One of the ideas behind agriturism is that people will
be so uh, inspired by their trip, that it will
form sort of a relationship with the farm and that
they will want to support that farm even after they
(20:42):
have left the farm. This appears to be like a
long term goal of agritourism. It's not just short term.
It's more like they want to remind the city slickers
that farms still exist and that the city slickers are
welcome to come by and empty their wallets there, like
keep coming back again and again. And actually that works
(21:02):
because I was raised as an agritourist um going to
McQueen orchard in Holland, Ohio pick apples, and still to
this day, like my family when we visit Ohio, we'll
go to McQueen's. We scheduled it around the time where
the apples are ripe, amazing, best donuts in the entire world.
Like I kid you not, Yes, everything is just perfect.
(21:24):
They're just go go to McQueen apple fritters to be
apple fritters, apples there, apple cider is just I mean,
and the apples themselves. You just climb the trees and
pick them and eat them and you know, take off
your shirt and it's awesome. Uh So, where I was
going though with the with the repeat businesses. Um, you've
heard of the the c s A, the community supported
(21:45):
agriculture programs. Yeah, and that's when you sign up as
a collective. While you sign up personally, you form a
collective as a whole. And um, you basically pay money
up front to get a box of vegetables like once
a month. I mean, the programs are different delivered to
your home or sometimes you go pick them up. And
the cool thing is, and you should know this because
(22:07):
some people might not think it's so cool, is you
don't know what you're gonna get. Yeah, but you get
a lot of what you don't know what you're gonna get. Well, yeah,
so you gotta be open minded. You gotta be willing
to experiment with vegetables you may never have cooked with before.
It's probably a good idea to know how to can
things because you really get a lot of stuff. This
is one of the things I've always heard from people
who have co op subscriptions that like all this scale,
(22:32):
all this scale. Tennessee Tech has a program. They say
that they're the first university in the state of Tennessee
to offer a degree in agriturism because they say this
is the future, and you're gonna need managers and people
that know the trends in this business. I think this
represents the people who are like theme parks are going
to get into this. You think like let us land
(22:53):
that kind of thing. No, I wouldn't call it that,
but possibly. Uh. I got a couple of stats for you. Yeah, yeah,
it's successful, right, Well, yeah, I got one for the
state of Colorado. At least they say that agritourism contributed
two point two billion dollars to their state's economy and
that thirteen point two million visitors engaged in one in
(23:16):
last year in agritourism in Colorado. It's pretty awesome. So
the one I have is from the two thousand seven
U s Senses of agriculture three thousand, three hundred fifty
farms in the US. I have some sort of agritourism
thing going on, right, and about thirty six hundred of
those were making grand or more a year from it. Yeah,
(23:38):
this billion number seems really suspecting me. I wonder if
it's not a million for Colorado. Yeah, because the the
total for all of the US and two thousand seven
five sixty six million, I don't know if that was
gross revenue, because it sounded like your stat was um
like economic impact. That would include like the gas people
coming into the state. Yea, you know the hotels that
(24:01):
they stayed in when they were picking apple. But that's
what the Colorado State Extension Service said. Well, they're pretty
well known to be rather liberal with their numbers hippies.
So let's see what else, Chuck, I don't have much else,
do you The greatest winery scene of all time? Not
in Sideways, the British comedy series Absolutely fabulous. Oh yeah,
(24:28):
and you know I didn't watch that show. I knew
it was supposed to be great, but in that particular
episode was hilarious. Well, I think going through a winery
is a great way to uh participate in negraatorism. And
not just wineries. They have um like homegrown breweries now too.
What like brewery people grow the hops on their land
(24:49):
and make the beer and you drink it. Yeah. I'd
like to go to the sire Nevada plant. I would
say it's one of my goals in life. Find where
they make that sweeten nectar. Have you been to uh Sweetwater? Uh? No?
I never suck right down the street. It's like a
good little happy, our place. That's what I hear. Yeah,
(25:11):
it's fun, give you tastings and all. That is that aggrotourism. No,
not really, not at all. Industrial tourism maybe yeah, that's
visiting a brewery. So that's it. That's agritourism plus a
touch of industrial tourism, just as an extra little nugget.
That was free as it was alright. So if you
want to learn more about agritourism, read an article by
(25:34):
Robert Lamb. Just to complete the series, you can type
in agritourism a g R I tourism in the handy
search bart how stuff works dot com? And support your
local farm. Get on the internet and there's something near nearby. Yeah,
there's a ton of stuff. Oh and actually, what's that website?
You got one? I do um. I gave you the
(25:56):
one for the apprenticeships. If you want to actually be
the person working that people are gawking at. Right, if
you want to gawk at people working on a farm,
go to rural Bounty. Are you are a l bounty
dot com? I thought it would be aggrigawker the same thing. Okay,
it's time now for administrative details. You're ready? Should we
(26:24):
set this up for people who don't know what this
means because it's the worst title ever. It is not.
It's very sustinct and to the point. These are gifts
thank you as from fans that send us things in
and hopes that we will promote their little Etsy site.
Well not just gifts like sometimes correspondence correspondence postcards. So um,
well it's been a while and we've gotten some pretty
(26:45):
good stuff, a lot of stuff. This is gonna take
like an hour, it is. I just want to say
thanks to Mr Cohen at Waterford Union High School and Waterford,
Wisconsin for those nice letter and the information on um
goats that produced spider silk, including it drawing go badgers.
Yeah yeah he was actually was it bad Badger for
(27:08):
a while? Wisconsin. Oh, I thought I made that up.
Now you're thinking of Wolverines. It's a lucky guess you go.
Uh Center College women's volleyball team sent us one of
their T shirts. They are the Spandex Mafia. Yeah we
all three got one. Yes. Thanks to Kristen for even
more newgat Thank you Stilicious Kristen Ferguson with her neat.
(27:32):
Thanks to Sarah Michelle for the copy of Dianetics hardcover,
No less, you got that. Wow. Jeremy and Heather in Asheville,
North Carolina make Eco friend the artwork. Custom would carve
wedding cake toppers and they sent Um they made a
little Josh, a little Jerry and a little Chuck and
they're really awesome looking. I put it on Facebook. You
(27:54):
were very proud of this. I just thought they looked
really cool and they were you know, they look like us.
And you can shop with him if you would like
at ah You're a star house dot et s y
dot com. That is, you are a star house dot
etsy dot com. Nice Chuck. Thanks to Kentucky and night
Nikki for the postcard of the London I yeah. Thanks
(28:19):
a mill to Kevin at jadabug roasters dot com. That's
j A d A b u g Roasters dot com
for the not one, but two pounds of coffee that
why didn't I see any of this? You always give
me the coffee. This didn't even pass this one by you, man.
I'll bring it in for you if you want. David
Polly uh San Francisco. He runs a small print shop
(28:40):
and he sent um some cool custom concert poster city
prints and I collect these posters, and he said he
would keep me in mind for the future and sending
me some of these does very nice. Did he send
you two of the two versions of the same as
that the one I have that Jerry got one to
we all three got Okay, that's very cool, very cool.
I would have liked to have been at that festival.
Thanks to Casey from Huntsville for the very nice letter
(29:03):
and the sketch of the octopus. Keep listening, Casey, and
we will keep you laughing. Right. Jennifer of Lynchburg, Virginia
sent us little Nimn Christmas ornaments. Very cute. They are
very cute. Yes, thanks a million to Kate in Sunny
Vale for our awesome card. That's the one that has
us as the Estonian wedding couple. Uh. And the thank
(29:27):
you to Matt and Zach at the our List podcast
if you've been on there. Yeah, they sent the shirts. Yes,
they did send the shirts. And at first, without reading
the card, I thought it was a drawing of Uze.
These guys are adoppel gangers. Yeah, I saw it. I
was like, it's sort of a good likeness, but not really.
Right now, I'm like, okay, it's them. So they have
a podcast called our List. You want to check it out. Um,
(29:50):
it's our List podcast, I believe. And speaking of shirts,
standard clothing in print in Canada, North Carolina sent some
shirts and I got a Hoosier's T shirt, a Jimmy
Chitwood number fifteen. Who's your T shirt? It's because you
are a well loved celebrity. Jim Jerry got one and
you got one different ones and that is standard clothing
(30:11):
in print dot com. Thank you to Amy who sent
us her copy of or a copy of her doctoral
thesis A Metrica with an exclamation point about the metric
system and how it should be used in America. And
it's pretty awesome. I wrote a blog post on it.
She mailed it. I got it like two days later,
so you can check that out. Just type in A M, E,
(30:33):
T R, I C A and it brings up some stuff.
I don't think she has an actual site for it though,
although she's on Twitter much neglected Twitter account. A Metrica interesting.
I got two more. Matt invented his own chewing gum.
It's good too. It's called think Gum and it's supposedly
brain boosting with herbal extracts and naturally caffeinated and you
(30:54):
can find that at think gum dot com. And my
last one a little controversial. In my house, we got
handmade soaps sent to us from Jan Maurice Silvera Yeah
World soaps. W h I R L E ED soap.
And I told Emily about this because everyone knows my
wife makes her soup. She was like, let me see that.
She checked it out and checked out the ink. She
(31:14):
immediately looks at the ingredients. This first thing she always said.
She was like, Oh, it's actually you know, made of
essential oils and and olive oil and palm oils. Good. Yeah,
it's really good soap. Um. Thank you to Cameron, your
letter got to us just fine. Thanks to the Pinks
for sending their c D. Thanks thanks to l Michelle
down in Panama for the postcard. Very titillating postcard. Um.
(31:38):
Thanks to Vanessa for the Jackalope postcard. I still got
some more chuck hanging there. Thanks to Jan from Niagara
Falls for a postcard of the namesake of her hometown.
Thanks to amare It and Boone, North Carolina for the
nice letter We'll see what we can do. Thanks to
Laurel who sent us the Meyer Lemon Vanilla beam rmalade.
(32:01):
I didn't know about that either, Okay, I was. I
didn't know if I gave you some or not. You
just funnel some of these straight to Josh's house about it.
I had to ask you for the gum. Yeah, and
I gave you the whole box. Thank you to Nick
from mud River Coffee mud River Coffee dot com. More
coffee you. This is where I got the idea to
(32:22):
just keep the two pounds for myself. I was like, well,
let's split this year. Like, here're the coffee guy, you
keep it. Awesome coffee, um, let's see. Thanks to Katerina
from Lenifalou, Hungary for the nice postcard of Joseph Stalind.
Thanks to Robert for the Route sixties six postcard. Thanks
to zach Netzer for the awesome um Mix CD. Thanks
(32:43):
to Andrew Smith at Andrew Smith art dot com for
the DVDs Did you see this? Thank you to Jen
from Australia for the postcard of the theme park, and
thank you to staff Sergeant Rusting Kozahar cozy R. I
think it's cozy R for the postcard from Afghanistan. Be safe,
that is it? Yes, all of you, not just the
(33:06):
staff sergeant. Everyone be safe, um, and thank you very
much for sending us some stuff. If you guys want
to run in droves to the stuff, you should know
facebook page and UM. If you have a link that
you want to share with everybody, please do because all
this stuff was great. Thank you and if you want
to send us something, you can find our address by
(33:26):
emailing us. Uh. It's stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more
about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the
upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works
iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought
(33:51):
to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you
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