Conversation between Richard Perkins and JM (co-founder of Krautgaart, a no-dig CSA in Luxembourg). The farm was founded from student projects (ideas started 2015; founded 2016; CSA operation launched in 2017) and began at very low cost (<€15,000). It now serves roughly 140 members from about one acre (≈4,000 m² / 0.45 ha) of rented, no-dig growing space, employs three full-time partners plus an apprentice and occasional helpers, and runs a weekly member pickup over a ~34-week season. Early years included a pivot to a local market stall before full CSA launch; the team continues to scale up and hire.
Questions this video answers
2016
140 members
About one acre (≈4,000 m²; nearly 0.45 hectares)
Approximately 34 weeks
Less than €15,000
Chapters
Okay. Welcome to a new episode of Farm Like a Hero, folks. I'm Richard Perkins. Today I'm here with JM from Krautgart, which is a no dig CSA in Luxembourg. It's founded in 2016. Today the farm is serving around 130 members as well as a restaurant from approximately one acre or 4,000 square meters of growing space. And the farm employs a team of three people along with an apprentice. The produce is collected by members weekly over a 34 week period. And both the original founders, JM and Max have been over at our farm for pastured poultry and market garden training. So also featured in our book Regenerative Agriculture. I think this is a super exciting farm started up at super low cost and I think listeners are going to get a lot of insights and value out of this. So Jem, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.
Yeah, thank you too. It's really exciting to be part of this and really looking forward to the whole what this is going to look like, what you're going to create. And I think it's going to be besides the book already a precious resource for everybody who is running a farm already and wants to change some stuff or get some inspiration or. Yeah, just wants to get started to show that it's possible and there are many different contexts you can start from.
Thanks for joining us. And so maybe you could just give us a snapshot of where you're at now, is that correct? You're serving around 130 members.
The numbers you mentioned are from last season. So this year it's similar but we serving this year 140 members. We increased the number of beds. So this year the market garden is around, it's more than one acre, it's 45 paths. Do you say like this in English? It's nearly half a hectare. Yeah. And the team is growing too. We have, we are three full time partners and one apprentice, one woofer and we are hiring probably next month, one more an employee market garden scaling up.
And you're driving a great revenue and you've built up a really nice business. But I'd like to jump back to the start because you and Max actually started this project up while you were still at university, right?
Yeah, yeah, we started back in 2015. That was the first ideas coming up. And yeah, I was writing my master's thesis in environmental sciences about beavers and Max just finished his one in botany, also a master's thesis. And yeah, we just, we had several experiences in this year and the year before that. We Just to spend a lot of time in the office or behind books. And yeah, it just didn't suit us very well. And we thought, okay, what I am going to do with my degree after this, I don't want to end up in an office. And I don't know. Yeah, we felt we could make a bigger difference through doing something with the knowledge we acquired over the years and, and through doing something really on the, on the field.
So.
Because that's. Yeah. And so that was little. The German, the germ or the. Where we started. And then. Yeah, we just started with. We didn't even know this would be. Would go to professional market gardening. It was more like, okay, let's do a garden, we want to do this and then see where it goes. We actually were three people. One of them left us pretty fast because he had more like a really romantic picture. And he said sitting on a tractor and driving around and having a good time making barbecue all the time. But that's part of it too, but not the main thing. So, yeah, from there it started in the first year it was like, okay, we had a lot of good feedback and people actually, we grew potatoes mainly because we didn't have much time and yeah, so we started with that and everybody wanted to have this potatoes. So we saw, okay, there's really a very local demand for good food and we saw that people really appreciate knowing the producer and that we really got huge satisfaction out of the fact that. Yeah, from the feedback from our first customers, so to speak. And. Yeah, so from there on we decided to make a test year in 2016, starting with the CSA was the plan. But then it was a little. Yeah, we didn't want to. Yeah, we went too fast. So we saw. During the first season, we saw actually because we didn't have any, both of us, no farming or market gardening background. So we had to learn a lot this first season too. And so we didn't want to take the risk to disappoint our customers. So we switched pretty fast to a local market stand where just people could come and buy what's there. And that was the preparation for starting the CSA in 2017.
Let's have a look at that. So you were both university students strapped for cash. I know you started this up at super low cost. You put like less than €15,000 in and that's an incredibly achievable startup cost for any business. But how did you go about, like, how did you get land? You're on rented land, right. How did you go about finding access to land.
When we started the project, we were looking, it was quite easy to find a piece of land because we we didn't have really high expectations and it wasn't like, okay, this is going to be a farm. So we talked to some people and we got a small piece of land that is probably the worst piece of land to grow vegetables on. Okay, but we don't have anything else.
To listen in to. Unedited Long Form Conversation I'm super excited to announce the Farm Like A Hero experience is Now Live. Our 2020 special features more than 70 interviews with Europe's best regenerative farmers in long form conversation weekly Q and A sessions with myself, as well as the private Facebook community. Our Epic Hero membership is now only open until June 11th, so join now@farmlikeahero.com and we'll see you in there.
