HELLE BAUER: An update 1 year later with Jasper de Wit (part 2)

As well. So you've been planting trees. You're planting a lot of trees this winter?

Yeah.

What's going on? This is the land you own. And then now you've got. Got land where the chickens are. We'll go and see them. But that's the neighbor's land you're renting.

Exactly.

What's your plan with trees? You've got lots of understory and shrubs between the orchard that was already here.

Exactly. So the orchard was ready here. And I'm putting in proper closed tree rows. So there on that row there's two hazels between each apple or pear tree and then between that, a nitrogen fixer. And on the south side, I haven't completely finished it yet, but there'll be berries.

So this is. It might be hard to make out the structure on the film, but These are what, 12 meter rows?

Here's 12 meters.

Yeah, yeah. And so these are going to become linear blocks and then the chickens will be able to roll through there. What else are you planning? You said you're going to plant a bunch of maybe hedgerows and stuff.

Exactly. I put in around the whole garden. I put in the hedgerow and here there's also. We would have put in. And I want to plant more, definitely more hedgerows. Maybe double up the one in the garden just to close it up a little faster. What else do I want to plant?

That's winter work you're planning for this time now. So folks that watched the previous video will remember the eggmobile at U and Albertville, which is awesome, but you've had a bit. So in Germany the regulations require scratching space. Right. So this, this is something that quite a lot of people have asked about. And here the regulation stipulates that the birds must have 24 hour access to a scratching space on the ground and they must have access to food and water throughout the night, which is ridiculous because the birds are asleep and they do not drink or eat in the night. Scratch or scratch. So tell us about. You've had to sort of adapt the eggmobile to meet regulations. So this is for 350 birds. And maybe you can just clarify what, what is the regulation? There's a cutoff point in 350 birds here.

And what's that exactly? If you have less than 350 birds, you don't need an egg packery.

Can you sell to shops and restaurants?

You can't. Then you can only sell to the end customer. If it's sold or used, then you.

Must have a certified packer. Exactly. So dimensionally, this Eggmobile is big enough for 350 if they have a scratching space of what it has to be.

At least a third of the total size of the egg mobile. Egg mobile, exactly.

So that would be what, 9 square meters? Something like that. And so how have you adapted?

So what I've done is in the middle of the egg mover, I've put like a little hatch that I can open.

So there's a hatch coming out the very bottom through the sort of wire floor.

Exactly. Just wooden hatch. And then around the wheels I can just pull a piece of one of these chicken nets pulled around the wheel. So that's a closed off section, I'll open the hatch and under that section I've had to put in like a plastic sheeting.

So there's a third of the floor in. It's a wire mesh floor, pretty typical for eggmobile. And it's got a sheet that covers a third of the floor. Because they weren't happy with what birds being able to shit on top of other birds that are out there, basically. And so that meets the regulations. They're happy with that. That's really cool. So there's always solutions. Like we meet a lot of people that are, you know, coming up against limitations with their local regulations. It's critical you, you know, do the research to look at your local regulations. But there's always a way, another way we just chatted about that. You could easily do this is sticking like a Saladin pen with wheels on the back that you tow behind. That has a drinker and feeders and has some access chute at night.

So that wouldn't have to have drinkers and feeders.

It wouldn't need to. They can be in the eggmobile. So there's nipple water system inside here and a feeder in there. So that would also be a very simple way to do this. So there's always an option and it just might require a little bit of modification over time. So you've now got what, an additional one and a half hectares or something on this field here?

Yeah, 1.3 hectares the top of it. I'll not be able to take the egg.

No.

Well, up there, because the way I built it, it's so only works in flat ground with the rollaway nest boxes.

So you have them out longer than we would in Sweden, I guess. But you put them in, you have one of your barns just over here that you do like a deep litter system over there.

Exactly.

And then you replace the flock in the spring. Is that what you've been doing start of March.

So we get new birds, put them out on the egg mobile out on pasture and then when they start laying then start getting rid of the old.

Ones and you are selling them. You sold them on ebay. Now the last flock sold them all.

Just live birds for people. I mean they're still laying eggs. They're just not going to be laying enough eggs for me. So people are happy to take them for a good price and everybody wins.

So apart from like the modifications to the to meet regulations, like how's it going with your rollaway nest box and that sort of thing, Is it working how you want it to?

It's working well. I really like how you can collect eggs so easily. Just stand there and roll them in.

There's a few in the old video. You get more of a view inside mobile and how they made low cost nests. Because the dual sided rollaway nest that you'll find in here is mimicking the commercial sort of style nest boxes. But they're about seven grand for something this size and you guys built that for a few hundred euros. This was a €3000 build to set the hen end price up. So that's awesome. So it's really nice. You've kind of like it's something we've talked a lot about in the workshop is just not trying to do too much and really just optimizing things you're doing. So to get the goal of two salaries off, this small farm is doubling down market gardens and the hens and you've got perennials that will come on over time. But that's really enough. You don't need to be any more complicated than that. That's a smart way to start. Don't eat asparagus. So we should take a look at the buildings. This is one of the buildings that's now used for the wintering of the hens, isn't it? But this, if you look back at the old video like this place was highly degraded and that's why it was like it was incredibly cheap for what you were purchasing but obviously needed a lot of work done. You guys have done a lot. And so a big process has been replacing all the roofs. But then inside the house you remember they were doing clay plasters and they've totally renovated the house. So we should maybe go and have a little look at the awesome job you've done there. So contextually like this farm is to supply you your emerging family incomes, but it's also a lot more. It's about Meeting all your other interests in life, isn't it? So this big barn has been. This was the old pig barn that they've basically totally transformed by putting there was the wall collapsed at this end. So that wall's been built up. This is going to be your yoga studio up in the ceiling and the farm shop perhaps. So it's massive long term life building project and it's amazing the sheer amount of buildings that open up capacity because these guys are really working with their community and bringing people here. And it's amazing what resources you've got already and the amount you're going to have when you finish building this up. So it's a really nice project of restoring something that had quite a lot of significance in the village here we should take a peek and see how that's transformed. So part of the process replacing all these roofs in Germany. This is sandstone roof, isn't it? It must be hundreds of tons of stone up on this old barn and it's worth hundreds of thousands of euros and it's usually purchased by people like the church I guess for listed buildings.

They don't make it anymore. So.

And it's got a lot of holes in. I mean it would be too expensive to restore. So these guys, there's a nice system here where companies will come and take the stone away and they make their money on the stone but they will re roof the building for you. So that's going on and this will turn into the big workshop over time. So to refresh folks memories, we'll just have a look on these. So this is a whole. You're going to build a couple of apartments on this side that you can host people or rent it or whatever.

That's the idea. I'm not 100% sure yet but we're still coming up with ideas.

Let's have a look. Just for the context of the viewers that maybe haven't watched the old video. This is the stuff. State of disrepair. So these guys got a huge amount of buildings and space but obviously they've put in a huge amount of work. This is the sort of state that everything was in. So a major project. The property was very cheap but no one really wanted to take it on because of the state of it all. This is all ancient oak framing that was obviously some of it's been used in other buildings previously. There's brickwork, there's adobe work, there's all kinds of things going on. But obviously you can see the extent of this repair that everything's in. But it's rather transformed on the other side. Wow. So look, this was. You just plastered this when we visited before, hadn't you? So this is all mud, plaster, lime, lime paints and plasters on top. Absolutely beautiful. Look at this new puppy. So this has been a major project, getting the heart of the house together. It's a bit of clearing up session after the training. But look, this is beautiful. This was bare. You hadn't built the kitchen. I think last time in the video it was raw plaster. You just exposed these beautiful beams. What a beautiful space out onto the farmyard and you're planting a big tree in the middle of this yard. How many tons of plaster and material do you reckon you've put up in here?

I think 14.

14 tons of mud blaster.

Like bags of it.

Like a premix plaster. Yeah, yeah. I think we saw the raw material in the last video.

Yeah, that's right. I think we've got 14.

Such a lovely feeling to the room and just to have all natural material like this.

Beautiful.

Cool. So we're going up to the top of the house. So in the previous video. So a year and a bit ago, this was squeaky floorboards that were a bit unsafe and it was full of old memorabilia from the Second World War. So you've totally transformed it. These are all the original floorboards. You've just worked to cover some windows.

Sanded all the floors down, took the all the plaster off, re plastered.

There's so many little pockets of space in these buildings. Obviously going to take a couple more years to get it all together. But this was an old hayloft that you couldn't even safely walk in, wasn't it? So you floored that and you don't even know what you're going to use it for yet. There's more space to shake a stick at. So this is obviously not funded by the farm. This is a family project to rebuild a beautiful home and future for you guys.

Exactly. So my girlfriend's father, he just retired before we started the project and he was looking for a bit of retirement project at the same time. I just came back from Richard with a business plan and idea what I wanted to do and it sort of just worked perfectly together so that we could take on this project together.

So he's been largely responsible for the sort of renovation. I know you guys have all been super busy doing it, but yeah, super nice. It's gonna. The potential of this place is unreal and I think it's going to become an important hub for meetings in the community, isn't it? And wider community over time. Probably something beautiful here. These are oak staircases that are worn down by the footsteps. 100 years of footsteps. Really beautiful. It's really cool to see you guys all together too as people have come through Ridgedale. And it's really nice to see the networks that build up. And there's a bunch of stuff going on in Germany with some of our past participants and people that have been influenced over the time. Like maybe you want to say a bit like what's going on in Germany through the connections from our sort of network, as it were. Yeah.

Guess Richter has been inspiring many people. We've got about three or four farms setting up in Germany now. Being heavily inspired by Rich Dale's work.

There's probably more.

Going through the farm.

And you're off now, Hannes to Hamburg with Astrid and Albert and Stefan. So they're all people that met at Ridgedale. And it's awesome you guys are networking.

Let's see what comes from that.

So that's. That's a big market garden with planned grazing. You're becoming a savory hub over there.

Yeah. From January on that's planned.

I'm working with pastured boilers and the.

States management training and. Yeah. And from next year chicken laying hands and broilers. We're gonna give it a try with the dirt purpose breed. Let's see how that works out. And yeah, if we can prove that it's economically viable with breasts or coffee and cream. And also do a purpose on the partnership. An old heritage breed. Both nice and fat and good milking. Milking in the field. Some falls on micro dairy. We'll see what comes from that.

What else is exciting you lot? In Germany.

There'S a few good projects. That's super exciting. There's two young gardeners started last. Last year via Hope. The music at.

Where's that nice for folks that want to check it out.

I think it's around Frankfurt. I'm not 100% sure to be honest, but I met them. They came to visit the farm last year. And from the pictures and videos that they're posting, it looks like they're doing an awesome job. There's a few other projects.

There's a nice, nice, very clean and tiny market garden close to Munster. Gruyks Julian is sitting up there. Also heavily inspired by Ridgedale. And that's a neat setup.

And you were saying Nils and Toby. They were at the conference with myself and JM last November, but they're engaged in some stuff around here too.

They are organizing together with Manuel, who organized this workshop as well.

With the Singing Frogs. Yes. Okay, cool.

Two or three weeks, end of November and Hanover.

It's really valuable having these networks. And it's great. You guys are inspirators in that here. So keep doing that. It's awesome.

So we've been talking about a lot.

Of stuff that I wish. I always wish we could just pick.

Up loads more stuff on film that.

Would be beneficial for viewers.

But something we talked a lot about is the need to set up a support network, particularly for the couples working together in business. Because it's often the case where one figure is at the forefront and the other is supporting and feeling unseen in.

Different ways or whatever.

And that's been a big story for. For me with Johanna and our farm. And it's the case with every sort of farming couple I meet, really. And it's hard to run a business anyway. It's really hard to run a business with a partner who you didn't generally meet to go into business with more for romantic reasons. And so I just thought it's cool because you guys are at this early stage where you obviously going to have a lot of people coming, coming through here over time in different ways. And the people issue is always the hardest bit to manage, I find, like, physical work is easy. Managing people and their issues, that's the tricky bit. And our farm is quite extreme because we have a lot of people in a very intensive way. But it's tiresome even just having a few people coming to help, isn't it? And I know your lovely partner has been talking a bit about that and we've had some great discussions, but I thought it's just good to include this in the video. It's like you guys are at this stage where you have people coming during the season, but currently they use your house to some degree.

And you've got a lovely big house.

That you can accommodate that. But we've been talking a lot about setting up boundaries and how to get that stuff in place. And this is really critical stuff that we don't talk about enough. And that's something we've been discussing is like a. Within our own network to get together as couples or as business people to talk about stuff where we all know the context of what we're discussing. But I know you've been having a lot of thoughts and reflections after your second season and maybe you want to.

Talk a bit about.

Yeah, things you're thinking, things you've observed or need to consider, etcetera.

Yeah, well, for me, like, it's awesome having people on the farm. I guess the first thing you have to say, it's really, really great. People are willing to give their free time to help out on the farm. That's amazing. We appreciate it so much. But you're working on a farm which is, as you know, super intense. And it's obviously in the season. So that's a super stressful and super busy time. And if you have to share, you're not only working together, but you're living together. You're 100% together when you're on the farm. Because.

And these are people. These are not strangers necessarily. They're people that you're friends with, but working in an intensive way.

Network and sharing everyone intensive way, which comes with its challenges. And you need to figure out, like. Anna gave me a few notes. Anna's been working super, super, super hard during this past five days to. And everything. And now she's with sick. She would love to say a few words, but she gave me some notes. So Anna said the most, three most important questions that we came up with is how much can I include people in my everyday life? And how much time and space do we need for ourselves? And how much time and space do we need as a couple?

Yeah.

And that's, I think, three questions that people really have to put. Maybe be clear about ourselves. Something we're gonna reflect a lot about now in the winter and figure out what we need. Because it's challenges. We never thought about it.

Just I couldn't picture them until you get taking a day off in the week for a date night or having Sundays out of bounds for other people and like, hey, you're eating breakfast in my kitchen. But we're like in Alan's own. Or things like this make a big difference too.

Like a big thing that we did.

At our farm this year after six years of having people cooking in our kitchen, was to make the house totally out of bounds. And we built the outdoor kitchen. And that was huge. You know, that's a little thing that people would generally probably want to do from the beginning, but we didn't have the resource to do that.

But it's.

It made a big difference. But even managing a kitchen is a, you know, a whole job in itself. So there's always a lot of sacrifice to your personal space. And it's beautiful. But it does have challenges and it's not talked about enough, like how to manage relationship at the same time as business, at the same time as being open to People and supporting their learning and growth, etc.

As part of a community.

So what's your thoughts?

Where you're at?

Like, where do you see things going? Like, what are clear challenges and how you've responded to them up to now?

Just at the minute we're still thinking about it and planning how we're going to deal with it in the future. And obviously every challenge has a solution or some way you can deal with it. But one thing we've been discussing and myself is to sort of set up a bit of a structure because we came into this and we weren't living in the house from the start and everything was super unstructured and just figuring out as it goes along. And I think now for us it's important to set up a structure. Like you were saying. For us, I think it would be important to have one day a week where we can spend time.

You were talking earlier about, like having.

Very clear guidelines, like for people that are coming to visit or help or employed or whatever. It's like getting crystal clear about the boundary conditions and what your expectations are and where your limits are, etc.

Communicating really well in a good way, maybe once a week, sitting down and just meeting. It's something. Everybody gets their needs.

Yes, precisely. It's something we've done that you can look on our Ridgedale Farm website about, like, for our internship program, because we have a group of very different types of people coming for three months, bringing all their baggage and life experience. So we, we have a very clear protocol about our expectations.

And I think your reflection before you.

Came as an intern was like, whoa, that's intense. But now you were saying like, oh, yes, I see why that's there. It's like that's come from years of these same challenges. And they're not unique challenges. Challenges anyone that's working with people in a farming situation where it's complex. It's a complex job that requires keen observation and timely, responsible action. It's going to bring up issues. And so it's great that you guys are getting very clear about this early on because it's taken Johanna and I years and it's cost us a lot emotionally and energetically.

So the quicker you can get that.

In place, the better. And I think it's a great topic to keep talking about and one that we don't hear discussed so openly. And it is a challenge running a business with a partner for sure. I haven't met any couple that are starting out in business together. That doesn't make it Harder in some ways, of course, it's joyful in other ways, but it's tough and it's definitely. I really like this idea of making a network support network. I think that's an idea to develop.

It's been super cool to come to Germany. It seems like there's a groundswell. There's a few people who have been through Ridgelow here right now and we've just had a great conference with people from quite different walks of life. There's several thousand hectares of farmland that's being offered up for people, people that.

Want to get started in regenerative AG here in Germany.

Lots of people interested in different things. So it's really nice to see the.

Network building and I felt last year.

There'S a real groundswell happening in Germany right now and a lot of people getting involved. So these folks are great people to connect in with because they're really at the heart of it and connected into the network going on here. I know you've got like singing frogs coming to do no Dig seminar here in November and lots of little events going on. So it's really great to connect in to Germany right at this point. And something I've been talking about is a big tour around Europe next summer, looking to film and document all the people doing amazing stuff all around Europe and really lift up people's profiles and connect everyone in their network. It's such an important aspect of what we're doing and it's been great to.

Come and visit Jasper again and see.

All the great work. They've been doing.

A lot of hard work.

It's awesome. I think people are learning a lot from being able to come here and I recommend to come and see these guys at a time that suits them. Somewhere in the future when you have an open day and you can find out that sort of stuff on your website, I guess when you have open days, etc. Come and see what they're doing on Facebook. So we'll put that in the links below. But a nice place to come and connect into things that are going on here in Germany. So I hope you found that interesting to get a little update on the video we made last year and you'll be hearing more from Jasper, I'm sure, as time goes on. Thanks for watching, folks.

Thank you.

See you in the next video.