(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

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- Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Springfield in front of what appears to be just a normal suburban house, but a closer look inside shows that appearances can be deceiving.

This is actually a micro farm and we're about to learn what actually goes on inside.

Jessica Hicks, this two-car garage is no longer used as a garage.

- No, not at all.

(both laughing) - You and your husband were kind of thrown out of work when this whole pandemic came along and you said to yourselves, "Well, we're gonna make a change.

We're gonna do something different."

And part of that difference was changing your house from a normal suburban home into a garden.

- A micro farm, yeah.

- A micro farm, and here we are standing in your garage and this is where the process starts, right?

- Yeah, this is where we begin.

So all of our soil and our seeds are stored in here.

So we are actually in two parts of the two-three-car garage.

We've blocked that completely off.

It's specifically dedicated to our microgreens and our market garden as well.

So we start out with our soil.

We have Pro-Mix BX that we use here.

We use a different Pro-Mix for our garden outdoors for the lettuce starts, but this is where we'll start with our microgreens.

We actually store it in a big toter here.

It's actually a converted kind of trash can, but we keep our soil in here.

It's a little bit easier to scoop out.

We can scoop our soil from here into a tray.

We'll fill up our trays.

These trays have two parts to 'em.

It's a two-tray system, a bottom tray that's solid, and a slotted tray for the top.

- [Mark] Oh, that this lets a little moisture through.

- It lets the roots grow through and lets the water come up, but we can actually bottom water this way so we'll lift up the tray and put the water underneath.

That way your microgreens don't get too wet.

We'll seed the trays after they've been watered in soil.

- What are these seeds here?

- [Jessica] This is actually our radish.

So these are radish micros.

- [Mark] What a beautiful color.

- [Jessica] And this is a lovely blend.

This is our spicy mix or our salad mix.

We call it a micro-mix in the stores.

It is broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, arugula and Southern giant mustard.

- [Mark] You're able to buy it this way?

It's already sorted for you.

- You buy it pre-mixed so these guys are designed to grow at the same pace so you don't run into microgreens at different heights and times.

And then here we have our speckled peas.

These are a lovely variety of speckled peas.

They'll actually get a lot larger once we soak them.

These guys soak for 12 hours.

- What do they look like when they sprout?

I mean, because it's the sprout that you use, right?

- It's a little larger than a sprout.

These guys are considered microgreens and these guys are considered shoots.

So these guys will get three to four inches tall and these ones will be about six inches tall, five to six inches.

They bloom out just a little bit with the leaves.

You wanna catch them before they grow their true leaves, so you want them to have their cotyledons, little heart-shaped leaves, and then beyond that you don't wanna let them grow past that.

You don't want 'em to get woody or fibrous.

- Now, we're gonna see, you've turned your dining room and your living room into your grow area.

- Yep, we've completely converted that.

- So we're gonna see what you're talking about here because your microgreens grow for anywhere from just little bitty shavey guys to all the way maybe this tall and some of your lettuce is even taller than that.

- Yeah, the lettuces grow really well too.

- So we're gonna see the process here, This interesting because what you've started for us in there and what we're gonna see are the stacks of these trays with your peas already started, right, so you can show us how that goes.

- Yeah, we can peek at those for sure.

And yeah, they grow anywhere from seven to 10 days.

We try to do a 10-day cycle on almost everything we grow.

So you'll see the peas that are in there growing on the racks are at day seven, about day seven right now, so they've got a few more days before we would need to harvest them, but you'll kind of see the stages as we go.

- And I know it's not good to have light on them, but you can let us peek.

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

We can check 'em out and look at the germination area and then we'll look at 'em under the lights.

- Okay, now we're gonna come back into this room later because this is where the packaging.

- Yes.

- And there's a lot of work that goes on here besides this, but we're gonna come back in here, but really where I would like to go next is to the, what do you call the grow area?

- The germination area and then our grow room.

- Yeah, the grow room, because that's where, I mean, people are gonna get a look at what a micro farm really looks like.

I mean, 'cause and these, I call the sprouts.

They're used for anything from stir fry to salad fixin's to- - Soups, you can put 'em in smoothies.

They go great in smoothies in the morning.

- Is that right?

- Yeah.

- I wouldn't have thought of.

- Yeah, the broccoli and the kale are really great for smoothies.

- And do they add a flavor or is it just you're doing it for fiber?

- Nice mild flavor.

It's mostly fiber and nutrition.

The microgreens are anywhere from four to 40 times more nutrient-dense, so that nutrition can really be added to any meal really easily.

- Well, let's go take a look.

- Absolutely.

- Well, Jessica, this used to be the living room, huh?

- Yes, this was the living room.

- And the dining room, but boy, look at it now.

It's full of color and life.

- Yes.

So we grow our microgreens, this is called the grow area, so this is where all the lighted area is.

We've got a lot of varieties growing right now so this is our arugula, sweet peas, sunflowers.

Let's see, we've got broccoli over here.

Some kale up top, radishes.

And this is that spicy mix, the micro-mix that we were seeing out there.

- [Mark] Oh, okay, the one we saw where you said they grow at the same level.

- [Jessica] Yeah, so they have a nice level canopy and then you can see a little bit of pops of purple from that purple kohlrabi.

- [Mark] Oh, it's really pretty and smells good in here too.

- [Jessica] Yes.

- [Mark] Okay, but I wanna move this way because I wanna see these peas that we had talked about how you stack 'em.

- [Jessica] Yes.

- And this is a good example.

So we saw the pea seeds.

- Yeah, and then you'll see that they actually grow quite a bit, they expand.

We soak them for 12 hours before we sow the seeds and you can kind of see that they're starting to get little tails there.

They're starting to get going.

These have just been in here for a few hours, so they'll get going.

- [Mark] Oh, wow.

- Within three days you'll see them actually pushing the tray above it off.

We put a 15 pound paver on these guys.

It simulates that weight of soil being on them outside and then that'll help them kind of get a reason to push up.

The roots will push down into the soil really well and help 'em get rooted, and we can even shook it if the root system's underneath the- - When you you harvest this, will you harvest the whole pea?

- We'll harvest right above the soil line.

That's one of the key differences between sprouts and microgreens.

When you're sprouting, you're eating the seed, the root and the plant.

When you're doing microgreens, we actually harvest above the soil line so it's considered produce just like a lettuce would be.

- Oh, okay, and then is the bottom usable then?

Is it usable again?

- The bottom is not usable.

Technically some of them will grow back, but nutritionally, your first grow is the best nutrition.

We actually take these guys out to our chickens to take care of from there.

They'll actually pick out any.

- Chickens gotta eat too.

- Yes, so they'll take care of that.

We'll put it in the compost and it actually goes out to the market garden after this.

- Okay, show us to popcorn.

- Yes.

Popcorn we grow in complete darkness, so we have this little area set up here to grow our popcorn.

- [Mark] And that's popcorn seed and those are the sprouts.

I don't know if that's the right word or not.

- [Jessica] They're shoot.

- [Mark] Shoots, okay.

And that's what you're looking for is the shoots there.

- Yes, so we'll grow those shoots a few more days.

They'll get beautiful golden color yellow.

We source our seeds from Toohill Beef up in Clinton for those so we try to keep local.

- [Mark] Do they taste like popcorn at all?

- Super duper sweet.

They have a corn undertone.

It kind of tastes like a kettle corn almost, but they're really super sweet like a stevia almost.

- Amazing.

This is a whole new world for me.

I've never eaten or shopped for these kinds of things.

Okay, so let's work our way down this row here first.

- All right, so these are peas here.

So as you can see, they've- - You can actually see the peas at the bottom.

- [Jessica] You can see our peas at the bottom and if you lift the tray, this is how we water 'em, we'll actually lift up the tray and put water underneath.

You can see excellent roots underneath here.

And that's why we put that weight on there so those roots can grow through the soil and they can get their water underneath.

- So you water from the bottom, you don't water from the top.

- Yes.

Well, we'll give them a top water one time just as they come out of germination, but the rest of the time we wanna keep the top dry as much as possible and allow that bottom to be the moist.

- What's up here?

- This is actually lettuce.

So we're doing a little bit of an experiment with indoor lettuce.

So these are growing pretty well so far.

It's mostly for personal use, but we might be bringing these to like a winter market if they do really well.

And then we'll actually- - Will that grow again after you snip it off?

- Yep, we'll actually do, it's a cut and coming in kind of lettuce so we could actually harvest and it would regrow.

We have some over here that have already a been cut a couple times and they're all regrowing.

They're a little bit smaller.

You don't get as high of a yield after the growths, but we're trying to see what we get out of them.

- [Mark] These look like clovers.

- [Jessica] Yes, this is arugula so it's gonna have that lovely, spicy peppery taste to it like a big arugula, only more condensed flavor.

The flavor and nutrition of microgreens is much more condensed.

- Now, if I'm building a salad, how much of that would I use.

- The arugula, I would just do a sprinkle.

Definitely just a sprinkle on the arugula.

Broccoli we use is by the handful.

We love the broccoli by the handful.

It has a nice mild broccoli taste, but it is a really good flavor.

- [Mark] Can you show me broccoli?

- I can, we're gonna go over that way for the broccoli.

- [Mark] First, this is an interesting-looking crop here.

- This right here is actually an experiment on some new fava seeds.

So we have our fava beans that we grow.

So this is a little bit of an experiment with that guy.

We're doing some test trays, see how it goes, yep.

- [Mark] And this?

- This is another pea.

This is actually another test as well.

So we did not soak the seeds on these and as you can see, they are not growing as well, but we wanted to see what it would look like if we didn't do a 12-hour soak on the seeds, just to see if it would be a more efficient process.

- Trial and error.

That's how you learn, right?

- Absolutely.

- [Mark] Now these are flowering here.

- This is actually overgrown buck wheat.

Buck wheat is used commonly as a cover crop by farmers.

It's actually completely edible, even in this form.

The flowers are edible as well.

They're beautiful, they've got great stems.

We've got some littler ones over here.

This is what size they'd normally be for harvesting and packaging.

They go in our farmer's salad and we sell 'em as individuals as well.

They've got almost like a little bit of a sour undertone.

They're really great in salads.

They definitely have an excellent flavor.

High in levatin, I think it is called.

Don't quote me on that one.

But we let it overgrow to see how well it would flower and if we could get it to go to seed just for an experiment on our end, but I like how they look.

- [Mark] It looks like it will go to seed, doesn't it?

- Yes.

And they're beautiful, why not?

This right here is our leek.

I don't know if you've seen these before.

- [Mark] That's really unusual.

- [Jessica] So if you're familiar with leeks in the store, those are a large garlic onion kind of thing, yes.

So we actually grow these about this size.

This is about ready to harvest for these.

- [Mark] Do they taste like onion?

- [Jessica] They taste just like 'em, yep.

Great flavor, they keep their little seed on top of 'em.

They grow in a U shape and they'll take their seed with them whenever they grow.

- [Mark] Real nice tender feeling in the mouth.

- All right, and then back around here is the broccoli, so this is all broccoli up here.

- [Mark] You sell a lot of broccoli.

- [Jessica] We do sell a lot of broccoli.

- [Mark] Now is this as big as it'll get?

- [Jessica] This one here has got a few more days.

These guys right here are ready to harvest, so this is actually what we'll be harvesting today.

This is at day 10.

So it'll have about three or four inches height and then we'll pack these guys up for sale.

- Will you just cut it right off at the- - Right at the soil line, yep.

So we'll harvest right at the soil line.

You don't wanna get any soil or roots with it, just so it's considered produce at that way and they'll stay really good and clean.

- I know you mentioned this, but you were talking about the, the how much more nutritious.

- Yes.

- The greens are, the microgreens are.

- Especially- - The real plant itself, like broccoli, for instance.

- Yeah, especially with broccoli.

Broccoli is up to about 40 times more nutrient dense, so the nutrition of big broccoli all condensed about 40 times more nutritious.

- What's your biggest seller?

- Probably would be the broccoli, actually.

Between the broccoli and our salad mixes, we do a lot of blends.

So we've got our farmer salad and that one's sunflower, sweet peas and buckwheat.

But we do a crunchy salad mix, which is sunflower, sweet pea and broccoli and that one's probably our number one seller.

- Well, this is, now, do you ever have a, this is your kind of slow time of the year because you have an outdoor garden too, which of course you can't be working on now, but is this the time of year when you're actually, when business is better because it's wintertime or when it's a little slower because people don't have their outdoor gardens.

- It is a little slower right now on our end.

We do sell more microgreens right now to the grocery stores, right now, and then come spring, we'll get really super busy with trying to get the garden going and really growing more lettuce and beets and carrots and stuff like that.

So we grow what we like to eat out there more so, and then whatever we can bring to the market, we bring to the market from there.

- Well, you know, your husband's your partner in this operation and I wanna talk to him too and I wanna go back out in the garage 'cause he actually kind of retrofitted that garage so it would work for your purposes here, right?

- Yeah, we've done a lot of work in there and he's really been awesome at helping me kind of put everything together and kind of design it for ease of use as much as possible so we're not having to go gather anything.

It's kind of set up perfectly to grab what you need and do what you need to get done.

- Good.

Hey, Michael.

- [Michael] Hello.

- That's quite an operation in there.

- Yes.

- I mean, it's really something to see and your wife knows what she's doing, doesn't she.

- Oh yeah, she does, she's great.

- You've only had, okay, it was early 2020 that you two decided that you had to do something else to make a living and you chose this.

- Yep.

- So in two short years, you all have become rather expert on this.

- Yeah, you learned a lot once you start growing 100, 150 trays a week of microgreens.

You get a lot of learning in.

- And she really knows what she's talking about.

- She see's done a lot of studying, she's great, yes.

- You had to retrofit your garage though and I find it very interesting.

Maybe you can walk us through your needs here and how all this fits together.

- Yeah, and we'll just start kind of the beginning.

You know, we have a bathroom on the other side from the house, the downstairs bathroom, so we ran plumbing in from there so we could do all the cleaning, washing your hands and all the cleaning, all the bubbling of the lettuce, everything else that we needed plumbing for and we just retrofitted it all in.

- What is this three sink?

- This is a three-compartment sink we got from a place of shutting down a restaurant, whatever, so we clean all the dishes here, all the trays from when after we get done harvesting, we clean all that there and then we store 'em over there after after cleaning.

- And we saw the trays you're talking about.

Those are those double trays that the seeds go in.

- Yep.

- Okay.

What's behind you?

- And behind me is the bubbler that we use for the lettuce, so during the summer and the spring and fall when we're doing lettuce, we bubble.

This machine comes in here.

It's actually PVC piping with the bubble and it just bubbles it.

- Okay, so this is the lettuce that's grown outside.

- That's grown outside, yes.

- And you sell a lot of lettuce.

You're growing a lot of lettuce at the farmers market.

- Farmers markets.

- It has to be washed, but the stuff you grow indoors doesn't have to be washed.

- Does not, no, does not.

- In fact, you don't want it to get wet.

- No, you don't want it to get wet 'cause it just will wilt so fast 'cause it's so small and delicate.

- Yeah, okay, and then behind you, that when you need to dry the lettuce, that's what this is for.

- This is what this is for.

We retrofitted just a regular folding table and built this.

So this just comes off there, so both sides come off and you put this to the side.

And then this is a deep thing, so we can put the lettuce in here and dry it and just we got the fans up here that we just turn on.

- [Mark] Oh, I see, okay.

- And it blows down and dries 'em and then water, you know, obviously goes on the ground.

- Can you layer the lettuce or does it have to be just- - Oh, you wanna spread it out somewhat, but you can layer it still 'cause you just come in and tumble it every couple minutes or whatever.

- Just long as it's dry.

Like you say, it only takes a few minutes, huh?

- Yeah, 15 to 20 minutes tops.

- Okay, and that's nice, you built a frame for your fans and those are just box fans that blow down, right?

- Just box fans that blows down.

We just built a frame to put 'em in and tied 'em all together with a cord over there and yeah.

And then storage up top.

- Okay, and then you gotta keep it cold then, right?

- Yep, once they're done in packaging with the microgreens or the lettuce, whichever one, and will go right into this cooler that we got here, industrial size cooler, multiple shelf layers here, and we just put all that in here and pack it in there.

- There's nothing in there right now.

- Nothing in there right now.

Everything's already been delivered this week.

- But Jessica is gonna, she's gonna harvest some stuff for us so we can see.

Then you also, kind of somebody else's misfortune was your fortune with the restaurants going out of business the way they did these last two years, you're able to get this big cooler over here.

- We were able, yeah, to get this big walk-in cooler.

It's an eight by 10 walk-in cooler that we got and we're gonna retrofit it for us for our use here.

We're just waiting on a system to show up that right now it's just got a bunch of storage in it in there and then we're gonna fit it into making it cold.

It's pretty cold right now, but so we're gonna take that AC unit and put it in there, cut a bigger hole out of there.

This was a beer cooler from the restaurant we bought it from, they have lines going through there so we're gonna use that hole, put the AC unit in there and then we're gonna get a CoolBot system and trick that thing to stay down at 38 degrees and it'll cool this and we'll have a lot more room to use.

- But right now you say it's used for storage.

You guys do a lot of business at the farmers markets, so you need tents and you need coolers and you need all kinds of stuff.

- Tables.

- I be you setting up for those farmers markets is not an easy thing to do.

- It's not.

- It takes a whole day in advance, doesn't it?

- Oh, well yeah, you gotta get everything prepped and ready and everything else a day in advance, get everything loaded in the vehicle that's non-cooler stuff and be able to go there, so, you know, that takes an hour or two the day before, then an hour or two in the morning to set up and hour to break down.

They're work, but they're well worth it and you get your product out to people that normally wouldn't see.

- [Mark] Which farmers markets could people find you at?

- We do downtown Wednesday and Saturday.

- [Mark] Downtown Springfield.

- Downtown Springfield, yep.

And then we do Lincoln on Saturday as well, up at the fairgrounds in Lincoln.

And Thursday at the ag tent, ag building down at the fairgrounds.

And Sunday in Rochester.

- Which is the best profit-wise?

Which one do you find the most profit?

- The downtown Springfield is probably the busiest one of the ones we do.

The Lincoln one is great as well.

And then Rochester, we just love going there to support a small community there as well.

- And you're very close, you live very close to Rochester.

- We live very close.

We're in Springfield, but very close to Rochester.

- Well, thank you.

- Yeah.

- Well, Jessica, we got kinda lucky because we showed up on a day when you had to harvest some broccoli.

- Yes.

- So you can show us how it's done and this is the same method you use to harvest all of the microgreens, right, so this is just what you would normally do with whatever's ready to be harvested, correct?

- Yeah, on a normal, larger scale.

- Yeah, and you'd be doing trays and trays and trays.

You're gonna do one for us today.

- Nine or plus trays a week, yeah.

- Okay, well let's get started and show us how it's done.

- [Jessica] So we have our package here.

We wanna tear that off on the wait for the scale so we to make sure that zeros out.

Our broccoli we sell at a 1 1/2 ounce, so this one's gonna be a little bit of a smaller variety, but these guys are super nutrient dense.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna gather them together in a little bunch.

I'm going to cut this way and I'm gonna cut across.

And this cuts right above the soil line.

Wipe off any little soil or anything that could be like roots and I'll bring it over to our package.

We're really close on our weight here.

- [Mark] What is it reading?

- [Jessica] We're at 1.2.

- [Mark] Okay, and you want 1.5?

- [Jessica] I want 1.5.

We wanna make sure everybody gets a full value with that so we usually try to make sure they're at least the 1.5, 1.6 is perfect.

- Now, as far as servings goes, what would that do?

Would that be one serving or three servings or five servings?

- About three servings, really.

You can use as little or as much as you want.

You really can't eat too many microgreens.

So we will pack these guys up and I'll label them.

Our labels do say wash before use.

We don't wash the microgreens beforehand because they are so delicate.

We wanna make sure they're harvested and packed dry.

- [Mark] Turn that around for us, there you go.

- And we say wash before eating.

You wanna keep them refrigerated, so as soon as we're done with this, we'll pack 'em up and we'll put 'em in the refrigerator, keep 'em nice and cool.

- Boy, it smells good.

- Yes, nice broccoli smell.

- I can't say, it doesn't smell like broccoli, but it smells really fresh and almost minty.

It almost has a, do another for us.

- Absolutely.

- It smells so good.

- It smells so good, we'll do another, absolutely.

So we'll gather it up.

Cut across and over.

And we try to keep it as efficient as possible so I never really move my knife off the tray until I am done with the tray just so we can keep them as efficient as possible with the harvest.

- [Mark] Okay, where we?

- [Jessica] 1.6.

- [Mark] 1.6, okay.

So you get a little bit of extra on that one.

- [Jessica] A little bit of bonus.

We don't mind at all.

- [Mark] Now, if I went to the grocery store to buy that, you don't know exactly what they'll charge, but give a neighborhood of what- - We try to keep these guys anywhere from a about a $4 price point.

Some of them are up to 4.99, depending on the grocery store.

But we do try to keep that 4 and $5 price point for the smaller and our larger salad varieties as well.

- And you know, we haven't discussed this, you all have had really quite success with some grocery stores because you're in like 13 of them right now, right?

- Yes.

- And these are big stores.

These aren't little stores where people go in and drop a buck or two, these are big stores.

- We are very, very, very fortunate here.

Locally we are in our Harvest Market here in Springfield.

We are at Harvest Market and Champagne as well.

We're at Hy-Vee here in Springfield.

All of the County Markets in Springfield, except the one downtown, working on that.

And then we are in Food Fantasies.

Apple Barn does us seasonally and Robert's Seafood.

They all so carry a couple of varieties too.

They do like the salad mixes really well.

- [Mark] And some restaurants as well.

- Restaurants as well, we do some local restaurants.

They really enjoy things like the popcorn, things with the color and stuff, they garnish really well.

Great flavor for those too.

- Well, thanks for showing us.

This is very interesting.

- Absolutely.

- You have a whole room in there to harvest in the next week.

- In the next couple days here, yep.

We'll finish off a couple more broccolis for a small delivery for today and then we'll be letting those guys grow for another round.

- Yeah, thanks.

Well, Jessica, not only have you transformed the inside of your house to a farm, but your backyard doesn't look like a backyard anymore either.

- [Jessica] No, this is not a typical suburban backyard.

- [Mark] It wasn't one time, wasn't it?

I mean, you got your privacy fence and you've got, you know, this would've been just where the kids play and where you barbecue, right?

But it's not that anymore.

- [Jessica] No, it's a fully functional yard.

- [Mark] You decided we're going full garden, right?

Okay, so what we've done here is you've got your chickens, of course, and I imagine, are those egg layers?

- Yes, they're all hens, so laying hens.

- And do you ever use 'em for meat?

- Not currently, they are dual purpose, so if we did want to go that route, but currently we're just kind of enjoying the eggs.

- Okay, and they also get, part of their diet is what you throw out after you harvest, right?

- Yes, so they have a really healthy diet of microgreen scraps.

So anytime we harvest off a tray, we actually finish off that tray of broccoli, that'll go out to the ladies.

The compost is within their area.

The first three stages of our compost is in the chicken area, so they'll take care of all that.

We'll flip all the compost there.

- And they add to it too, don't they?

- They add to it as well.

- A little fertilizer in there as well, that's amazing.

So and now we were talking about lettuce, you grow a lot of lettuce for your farmers markets and that's where this happens.

Of course it's January or February now and of course we're not seeing anything, but this is where that happens.

- Yes, so we do have one tunnel that was still partially active and we actually have a little bit of personal use lettuce left in that.

This last hard freeze really got to it pretty good.

This tunnel we broke down to not too long ago and we'll finish putting it away.

You can kind of see where the lettuce was in these and we drill, we put holes in the landscape fabric to prevent new weeds and dirt getting on the lettuce as much, but we'll have, we had two tunnels and then further on that way, there were more beds here.

We'd let the chickens take care of any debris that was left over from the beds.

We'll rake that out and create new there as well.

- [Mark] And what will you grow?

Will that also be lettuce?

- [Jessica] That'll also be mostly lettuce.

We'll have beets and radish and carrots there as well.

- [Mark] And that's for your use and for your farmers market sales, right?

- Mostly ours, and then also farmers market as well, anything we can't use ourselves.

We actually have fruit trees behind us as well.

We have peaches and pears and apples.

- And do the eggs ever get sold at the farmers market?

- We bring eggs to the market when we have extra, but almost all of our eggs are actually used by our home delivery.

Almost all of our home delivery enjoys the eggs.

- Can we walk over that way?

- Oh, yeah, absolutely.

- You really have to be careful.

This ground's frozen and it's very rutted up.

- Yes, the chickens do at their job thoroughly and as soon as it thaws, we'll be able to till this back up and flatten it out and make beds.

- And actually you want that.

They work it for you, don't they?

- Oh yeah, they work it all out.

They get all of the debris left over from our harvests and they take care of everything that was here.

- [Mark] And these are called the ladies?

- [Jessica] These are the ladies.

(both laughing) So we have quite a few varieties of chickens.

They actually lay different colored eggs.

So we have some blues and greens, different shades of brown.

So they all have different colored eggs and we might have some in the box if we wanted to look.

We do a roll away box so we can collect eggs without having to fight with the chickens.

- [Mark] Okay, well, I'll tell you what, we're gonna look at those eggs at a later date, but certainly nice.

Appreciate the, yeah, they're beautiful chickens.

They're just gorgeous.

The colors are very- - [Jessica] Well fed.

- [Mark] They're well fed and they do their job, don't they?

- [Jessica] Yes.

- I wanna thank Jessica, you and Michael for inviting us in.

I know you're really busy 'cause you got a lot of growing to do and you deliver all this stuff.

- Yes, we do.

- So we'll let you get back to work, okay.

- Perfect, well it was great to see you and definitely enjoy this lovely warm weather.

- Yeah.

The Itty Bitty Microfarm in Springfield is sort of a new creation and it came out of a difficult time for these two folks when the pandemic was at its height, but you can see, if you've got some ingenuity and you've got some imagination and you wanna work hard, you can make a positive out of that.

With another Illinois Story in Springfield, I'm Mark McDonald, thanks for watching.

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