Richard Perkins posts a brief YouTube update (Feb 7, 2019) explaining reduced video output because he is writing a large new book (working title: Regenerative Agriculture), and announcing a four-day regenerative agriculture training in southwest Germany at Gut Hohenberg (April 5–8) that covers holistic management, integrated animal systems, agroforestry, and no-dig market gardening. He also describes his online training resources (80+ hours of footage, spreadsheets, live Q&A), gives specifics about the new book (≈550+ pages, 320×235 mm, expanded content and enterprise spreadsheets), mentions limited seats for the German training (≈30), and summarizes farm program updates (internship spots, upcoming trainings with Charles Dowding and Jean-Martin Fortier).
Questions this video answers
Over 550 pages.
April 5 to April 8 (year implied 2019).
Gut Hohenberg.
320 by 235 millimetres.
About 30 seats.
Chapters
Well, I'd like to apologize to the viewers for the lack of educational content going out this winter, but I am putting a lot of screen time into writing this epic book. It's over 550 pages at the moment, which is, you know, it's a huge book and it's gonna be amazing. I'm really excited about it and I'm having a good time doing that. But today I'm just making a quick video, particularly for people in southwest of Germany, about an upcoming training I'll be doing there in the beginning of April, and a little update about books and what's going on for the season. But for our regular viewers, you're going to have to wait till the season begins for regular content from me, unless you want to join our online training, which you see in the links below, which is the best way to find really well structured, organized, detailed information in everything we do at the farm. There's over 80 hours of footage, most of which you've never seen on YouTube, and there's a whole load of spreadsheets, downloads, peer to peer support, and I do questions and answers live on there every two weeks. So I rarely leave the farm in the season and especially in the spring, as we really ramp up getting the season ready and getting things together in the market gardens, etc. But I decided to come to Germany, coming on the 5th to the 8th of April, to a farm called the Gut Hohenberg. I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly. It's in the southwest of Germany and it's kind of placed between Stuttgart and Luxembourg. And so I hope a bunch of you will come and see us there. If you live in Freiburg or Frankfurt, it's not too far to come. And it's a farm that's going through a process towards regenerative agriculture. And the reason I wanted to come and support this was because when I was in Germany at the end of last year, you might remember, we were on my 1040 at the little seminar we did there. I feel like there's a real groundswell and a lot of activity going on in Germany now, and I just felt like I really wanted to come back and support that. We're talking about doing another event at the end of the season, looking at another farm in Germany, and we're going to be doing an educational seminar for four days and then looking at how to apply that in a specific time, place and circumstance there too. So it's going to be a day on holistic management and decision making, context setting and grazing of livestock. We're going to look at integrated animal systems and look in the numbers and how all that works and target it to the German market. And then we're going to look at agroforestry and how to apply that to our systems in the German context. And then the last day we'll be looking at no dig market gardening and it's going to be an epic training. It's kind of all the juicy bits of regenerative agriculture compressed into four intensive days and people are staying at the farm. I know there's only 30 seats for that and I know they've sold a bunch already. So do check that out in the links below if you want to join us there. I'm excited to come and meet some of you in Germany just before I get started with the epic season here. This is, it's a format I'm really excited for because we've done four day trainings like with Curtis Stone last year and I've done a few four day training formats in the past and I think it's a really nice length. It's not too long to take off work and yet we can fit an incredible amount into that time. We'll be using the evening times as well to further the discussions and learning. So I'm really excited for the format and content of this training. I think it's going to bring a lot of rich value and benefit to the people coming. So hope to see some of you down there. So yeah, again I apologize for the lack of video content I've been putting out, but I've been really putting as much of every day as I can into riding and I reckon I'm about two months out from finishing at the pace I'm going. But it's a lot of work and I'm, you know, I'm really stretching my days and waking up early in the mornings to be able to put the time in. I've been talking, I'm working now with a graphic designer who's working on a bunch of infographics and different illustrations for the book and it's a slightly bigger book than last time. It's 320 by 235 millimeters. So it's a little bit bigger than my previous book and it's 550 pages and that might grow a little bit. So it's, you know, it's like the designer's manual or something. It's a huge book. I'm thinking we're going to call it Regenerative Agriculture. Seems like a good title to me, and I feel like it's going to really set the tone for the field because it's a big comparative analysis as well as a major update and overhaul of my previous book. So it's a whole system approach to how to design farms from an ecological and landscape perspective, going through the scale of permanence that we've used to order our design work for many, many years now, but then going really into detail with all of the enterprises. So it's got a lot of data and updated spreadsheets and full spreadsheets that weren't included in the previous book, as well as lots of other enterprise spreadsheets for tree nurseries and tree crops and turkeys and microgreens and growing indoor mushrooms and micro dairying and pastured animal enterprises. And it's an epic work. I really hope I get it done this year because I tried last year twice to go off and do writing retreats and it's been a massive work. But I realized how much I actually got done last year and it's going quite smoothly. The book's going into a totally different format, so it looks really sleek and it's really beautifully edited this time. And I've talked to my editor from the last book who is going to go through it all hopefully in early April. I'm thinking I will self publish, and I'm thinking it's nice hearing some of your feedback and thoughts, especially those of you that are authors, because yeah, I share some of the feelings there. And so I think what I will do is run a crowdsource campaign to help cover the cost of the initial printing, because that's obviously a major cost. And so I think I'm hoping to do that in May at the moment, but we'll see how that goes. But yeah, I'm having a lot of fun. I'm really enjoying just updating things and reconsidering and revisiting all the information that's in the original book. But this book is over double the size. It's really vastly fleshed out and a bunch of new chapters, including how to deal with people and all this sort of stuff as well, which is really important and valuable stuff, plus this whole big comparative analysis piece. So I'm really excited and it's going well, but it's a long, long process, so forgive my absence here on YouTube and it won't change until the season gets going and I'm freed up. Hopefully. I think that's all I've got to update you on, really. Our internship program's pretty much full. We've got two spots on the autumn internship and you can find out details on our website for that. We've still got spaces for the no Dig market gardening with Charles Dowding. I'm really looking forward to that. For anyone that wants to do professional market gardening, but totally no dig, I think that's going to be an epic training. And then we've still got spots with Jean Martin Fortier, who's coming over for a week in the middle of the summer. And that's going to be an epic training also. And I guess those of you that follow Jean Martin know what to expect from that. But we're going to be looking at how to design, rather run, manage profitable market gardening and it's going to be a nice blend to look at the farm and the no dig setup. With Jean Martin's approach as well as the other enterprises running at the farm, we're going to be eating amazing food. We are pretty lavish with our dining at the farm, having a whole human diet raised at the farm and yeah, there's short trainings in pastured poultry, etc. You can also find on the website. So that's all for now and I think I'll give you an in depth, depth look at the book as I get a little bit further into it and show you what it looks like and the, you know, how it's been building and talk about that process a bit more because it's a fun process to share too. So I look forward to updating you on that soon. Thanks so much for watching and look forward to seeing some of you in Germany. See you in the next video.
