A March 2020 vlog by Richard Perkins announcing that a planned Norway tour and related farm events/courses may be disrupted or cancelled due to the emerging coronavirus pandemic. He explains an event was cancelled, outlines concerns about travel restrictions, school closures, and economic impacts, and notes uncertainty about how this will affect collaborators and farm plans for the year.
Chapters
What's up YouTube? This is a more unusual video but I'm putting it out here as a way to communicate to our following, which I can also post this video on our Facebook page, etc. But I just wanted to. I've just had an event cancelled. I don't need to wear this silly mask. I was meant to be going off to Norway, 10 hour drive away to present the Farm at a book launch for Norwegian author and that's been cancelled due to coronavirus. So basically all gatherings, over a few hundred people are shut down and a lot of businesses in this region are cancelling travel. And it's unclear what's going to happen with this coronavirus. You see such diverse opinions online but you know, basically this whole tour that we're planning could just fall apart. And it's likely that the more northern regions of Europe will see, you know, massive amounts of cases in the next few weeks. So we really just going to have to ride out. I really don't know what to do. And I've been thinking of this trip for the last year and yesterday I sent out all the emails telling people the dates that I proposed on our plan, when I'd visit and 99% have come back with yes, that's perfect for us. And it just feels so seamless and easeful and the collaboration that's been going on the background to really leverage the benefit of this tour, it just feels up in the air now because my collaborator obviously is relying on it to create an income source for the work she's doing. And we don't know what to do actually. And I don't know what to say. I need to, you know, my intention is if I can go on this trip, I really want to go on this trip, but it really could blow up. I mean, the school closures, the governments around here are, are concerned. And if you've seen what's happening in Italy, people in Italy are really urging other countries to take much more serious action before things kick off. There are people out there who just aren't concerned about the whole thing and I haven't been paying it so much mind because I've been so busy. But this is the sort of thing that could really hamper all movement across Europe. You know, borders can be shut and in the Schengen Agreement, all countries have the right to do that in an unprecedented way. And it's likely that there will be major, major disruptions to so many people's business this year. And you can see there's always a reluctance to shut things down because of the massive economic loss. But this is something that I don't think countries know how to relate to, and I certainly don't know how to relate to it. If it's possible to travel, I'm going to be a sole person moving around to very specific rural places. So I'm not going to be in dense population centers at any point, really. And as long as I'm not sick or people I visit aren't sick, then, you know, there's a possibility that this can go ahead. But I felt compelled to make a message because everyone's just been responding and super excited for this tour. I'm super excited for this tour, but this may disrupt everything. Johanna's trying to organize the team at the farm this year. There might be travel restrictions for people even coming in. I don't know what this will do for our Joel Salatin course or the farm scale Permaculture design course later in the year. It just might not be able to happen. And, you know, a lot of people are going to suffer from the impact of this, so we're going to have to just see how it plays out. I mean, as I said, if there is any way I can do this trip, my intention is to see it through. But if it becomes impossible, then it's going to radically change everything about our future farm plan for the year. And I don't know what that looks like yet, but I wanted to give a heads up because I think everyone can understand that this is a, you know, very unusual situation, that nobody really knows how it's going to play out. And so it might dramatically change everything we're offering this year. And, yeah, that's all I can say for now. And, yeah, Interested to hear people's thoughts and see what you think about it. Okay, bye for now.
