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0:07overnight essentially all of our restaurant accounts closed or scaled significantly back due to this

0:15developing kovat 19 situation it happened so fast and there's been such an incredible change to our way of life

0:23so rapidly and it's so uncertain and unknown what what's gonna happen next

0:34hey I'm Todd Bentley and Krista Bentley and our son Eli we're sweeter days farm here in Ashland City Tennessee and we're

0:43growing right at about an acre and a half of vegetables edible flowers cut flowers and culinary herbs for chefs and

0:52Families so before farming I enlisted in the Army where I served as a combat

1:00medic for five years and while I was in Afghanistan me and a group of other medics we're talking about what we

1:08wanted to do after we got back home and we just said we've got to do something peaceful and farming sounds like a

1:14really peaceful option my mom sent me this letter that said you know Todd sweeter days are coming and so

1:22for years and years I knew that that sweeter days was what I wanted to name this farm

1:28I met my wife Krista at a square dance at Bell's Bend farm and we dated for a while and we were always talking about

1:36well when I have a farm and she was talking about when she had a farm and one day we finally it would just kind of got real serious and it's like here's the question do you want a farm with me

1:45it was like yes

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1:49getting access to land was the biggest question up front so what we chose to try to do it debt-free and so it has

1:57taken us a few years to to purchase all the infrastructure and the tools we all have off-farm jobs either

2:05full-time or part-time the end goal is for all of us to be able to work here full-time but you know one step at a time

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2:17tarps are probably one of my favorite tools I think we have seven tarps now and I can cover like a third of the farm

2:26if I need to they're not glamorous they're not really pretty to look at but in terms of saving you work there there's no other tool like it in our

2:35region we use them a lot when there's rain coming we'll plot all these tarps to keep beds dry if we're not quite ready to plant them it is way easier to

2:43just pull a tarp over four or five beds then to home two or three times we knew we needed a tunnel and so we were trying

2:52to decide what type what brand typically you can build things cheaper yourself and so we started pricing out top rail

3:00and hoop bender options and we priced it out found out that it was actually more cost efficient per square foot to just

3:09buy a kit through farmers friend and it kind of became a no-brainer

3:16we just had our first son three months ago his name is Eli you know it's been really special having a son out here and getting to see him sort of discover

3:25things for the first time maybe he'll love farming maybe he won't that's okay but we're definitely going to give him plenty of opportunities to be outside

3:33and enjoying the magic of watching food grow from a seed it's still special for us and we've seen it over and over and

3:42over and I hope they'll fall in love with that too

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3:50so up to this point about 30% of our sales have been to restaurants in Nashville and another 30% to farmers

4:00markets and that's all changing rapidly due to this developing kovat 19 situation that we're all facing globally

4:09we're having to pivot our sales away from restaurants unfortunately their businesses are suffering and so we're

4:16personally as a farm pivoting towards doing home delivered week to week boxes based on harvesting the maximum amount

4:25of food as we can out of the field and sort of looking at maximum yield at this point and trying to get as much food as

4:35we can to our community my heart is hurting for everybody that's experiencing economic loss the loss of

4:44their health and their people in their community I hope that we can rally around farms all over the United States

4:51to come out of this healthier and maybe better than we were before I think we have a really incredible and

4:59unique opportunity to do something really beautiful with this tragedy

5:08this is a good environment for me especially coming back from Afghanistan to be quiet and peaceful and I think

5:15that farming is a tool that a lot of other veterans are using to to find healing coming back from war and it has

5:23definitely been that for me I just love working in this field I like the quiet

5:33and I like being independent the business of being a small-scale farmer motivates me

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5:44if I can create an environment that instills joy and peace in our lives like that's a win for me

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5:56it's satisfying to me to be enriching people's lives through good food that's satisfying