HELLE BAUER Second year update with Jasper de Wit (part 1)

So we are back in Gudelheim in Germany at Jasper's place. We've just done the four day regenerative ag workshop here with people from all over Germany, Croatia, Italy, France, Ireland. It's a good time and I thought it's nice to have a little update. You'll remember the video we put out last year in April when Jasper was just starting up and lots of amazing work's been happening here since. So I thought we'd have a quick update for you, see where things have gone over the last year. So Jasper, you've had, you built up a market pretty good. Maybe you can tell the viewers like you're selling box games still and like how many boxes you've scaled at now. And it'd be cool to tell us a bit about how you generated customers through the open days and things. I know you had great success with that.

Yeah. So last year I had, at the end of the season I got 40, just over 40 boxes and I had a farm shop which had twice a week opened. And this year I extended the garden a bit, put in a few new beds and increased that to 75 boxes. And I was also still doing the farm shop twice a week.

So you're doing nearly 50 grand on your how many? 6,000 square meters or something.

Bed space, it's 1200 I think, including the tunnel.

That's awesome. And I think it's really cool to hear the story about like the events you put on and how that generated interest. That's a really good story strategy for others to know about.

So last year at the start, like I was planning to, I think I was aiming for 40 boxes last year and come middle of the summer I think at 33, 34, something like that, it wasn't really what I was planning for. I needed a bit more attention and basically we decided one of the things I definitely wanted to do was get the village involved, get the local community involved in what was going on here. Show people what's happening, show people what's possible. So we thought we were doing open day and the open day was a massive success. It was crazy. I couldn't have imagined it. I had a good friend of mine who's a chef from Holland, he came and made awesome, like really, really awesome food. We had lots of stuff, there's lots of young families around here, so lots of stuff for kids to do, bouncy castle face paint and all that kind of ST stuff.

So big free open day with lots of events and stuff.

Exactly.

And then you started doing epic tours.

No, I started doing tours. So every hour I would go for a tour, basically, and somehow the tours always managed to be 50 minutes long, even though I just kept chatting. So basically every hour I was going for a tour. And I'm not sure how many people stuck around that day, but it was a lot.

Like over 500.

Maybe even I was well over 500, I think, to be honest, it was. It's hard to say because there's people coming and going the whole day, and I didn't have any overview anymore.

And for context, this is like a small town of.

In the village here, there's a thou just over a thousand. And the next town over, Hookster, which I think it has 20,000, but I think that's including all the villages around it. Yeah.

So. So a lot of turnout and then that basically you were fully sold out.

Yeah, after that day, the next day I was fully sort of sold out with the waiting list for boxes.

That's awesome.

And the shop was pretty much sold out every day. Yeah. And I took that momentum then into the new year and sold all my shares really fast. At the start of. The start of this year was also. Now again, I have a waiting list of 40 people or something that want boxes, but I just. I can't produce that much.

Any big changes in cropping this year? I see you got some ginger here and any new things that you're excited about?

So I put in some strawberries at the start of the year. Didn't go that well because when I planted them, it was really, really dry afterwards, and a few of them died. But I'm gonna. I took a few small strawberries out to fill up the holes, and it'll be taking a lot more, and I think next year that'll kick into production properly. Like I said, I made the garden a little bit bigger, added a few different crops.

We're going into winter now. This was obviously in cucumbers and tomatoes.

Was it two rows of tomatoes, a double row in the middle, two rows of cucumbers here and then two more rows of tomatoes. And here I had eggplant, and there I had bell peppers.

By your analysis, cucumbers, one of your best crops. Thank you.

Cucumbers. They're very, very productive.

So just like we do at our farm, we use a slightly longer root trainers for the strawberry suckers. But there's, I estimate, about 3 to 5,000 suckers on the strawberries they've got out in the field. So, you know, you can sell these to €2 a piece. Potted up next year to passersby on their bikes. This is enough to really expand their production into next year. It's a great crop. So for folks that don't remember when you got here, like, obviously these huge buildings that we'll take a tour around in big disrepair. So you bought the farm incredibly cheap, but obviously with a lot of repair to do in the buildings. And then you set up the farm super cheap. But one thing that you were doing from the beginning is you had quite a lot of rented asparagus fields, didn't you? And the shop is just about 100 meters up the road. And that was already an established asparagus business, which really helped you in the cash flow. But you've kind of. You've turned that off now. You're not doing asparagus anymore.

Exactly. So I've done that for two years. I was started with seven hectares last year. It was just over five hectares. Took a bit away because it was too old anyway. And it was really good for getting into the market and definitely for cash flowing at the start of the asparagus season starts around end of April, start of May. So that's obviously when you need a bit of money on the farm. And it was a hell of a lot of work. It was really, really hard work.

Kind of burns you out before the real season begins.

Just as the vegetables are starting, you're completely burnt out. It's three months of work, and every day, all day.

This region's kind of known for this white asparagus, isn't it? So it's mounded up and it's covered.

With plastic, so don't see any sunlight. And then harvested white.

So you've used that as a tool to cash flow. I know it turns over a hell of a lot of money, but really large labor costs are really exhausting right at the start of the year. So you. This year you did a little less, but this was the last year.

Yeah, this was the last year. It doesn't really fit in my context. It's definitely, in a way, regenerative. I mean, it was organic, but it's just far too much plastic, far too much machinery, and doesn't really fit.

So how does that affect, like, do you keep access to the shop that you've been using?

No.

When you sell in, you'll just sell from the farm.

I still have to sit and plan that out now in the winter. I'm not sure I played with the idea of just swapping completely over the boxes because it's a lot easier than a Shop. But there's a lot of older people in the town that definitely appreciate having the shop here and stuff. And I don't need to have a think about it. I need to have a sit down and think about it in winter and plan it out a bit better.

One of the benefits of all the extensive buildings that you've got, that you've got really put a lot of work in restoring is that you could easily have a shop on farm or something. So you've been running this season 75 shares and your hands and mostly with like one person helping you. Yeah. And how's it going? How have you been learning about business and accounting and all the. All that side of things? Is that. Have you been on a steep learning curve with that?

Yeah, for sure. Didn't really know anything when I got started. But the best way to learn is just dive head deep into it and figure it out. I mean I made a few mistakes and a few of them are also costly mistakes. But that's how you learn the best way. And I'm getting there.

So by having. So next season you can see already without the asparagus, you're going to be. Have far more energy.

Yeah, for sure. Here.

And just double down on what you're doing here.

That's the one thing I noticed because then I was so burnt out coming into the season when I was basically just starting. Fell behind in garden work and didn't have the energy that I needed sometimes and basically didn't have a break from February until November. And the last two years that's been pretty tough. Next year my focus is really just to intensify. I don't want to grow the garden anymore. I'm putting up one more tunnel, but I just want to intensify and really.

Drive more revenue from the same store.

Drive more revenue, but also figure it all out in my head, make all the processes super streamlined. And that's what my focus is for next year.

And for context, the goal here is to create like two salaries off the farm. And that's certainly achievable.

Yeah, for sure.

And then you have. You're passionate about teaching yoga and things. So in your downtime in the winter, you have you building up a space for being able to do the other things you're interested in.

Exactly.

That's awesome. So mainly you're working with the teratech wheel, hoe and jang cedar and some simple hand tools, rakes, oscillating hoes. How's your feeling about the tools that you started with and are they Working good for you?

Yeah, I'm happy with most of the tools I have. I love the jang, it's awesome. The wheel hoe, to be honest, I think I've used it once. What I'm not too happy about is four row cedar.

That's the pinpoint cedar. We're going to look at that. It's a cheap but very low quality cedar. You're thinking of getting the six row cedar for you.

Exactly.

It's just the componentry and build quality is just not anywhere near the six row cedar.

And if you want, if you want good, if you want good seed in the ground you need to really, really, really spend a lot of time preparing the bed to make it absolutely perfect. That's the right moisture everything. So it's just too much work to get, get it figured out.

So a little upgrade there.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's a bit windy out here that it might affect the audio. We didn't bring any gear down here but this is where the new tunnel is going just outside the old tunnel. So you've already got that. That's a winter project. We're here at the end of the year so there's still some veg like kales and leeks to sell but you've got a bit of a winter clear up going on. So Jasper's doing no dig and got a lot of. You get free compost, don't you? Municipal.

It's free. I just have to pay for delivery basically.

Yeah. So the compost these guys are using currently is municipal compost. It's free. You just pay delivery. It's mainly woody stuff. It's not high in nutrition so obviously you have very high in organic matter and then they're using chicken manure, etcetera to increase fertility. But it's fascinating how much worm activity is going on in the beds. It's a really high level of activity. I don't know if you'll make this up but this land is just absolutely covered with worm castings and it's very cold now. You see fungi here. It's very cold. So the worms are probably getting down in there now. But there's an absolutely huge amount of worm activity in here. You've been extending. There's strawberry up at the end here and I know you're growing field sort of scale potato around the side and you're talking about putting in a lot of more trees for windbreak around here and just really doubling down on this base as the main component of the farm. So what's the sort of square meters of beds when it's at full production in your mind.

At the Moment I have 70 beds outside. 20 meters long exactly. And 7 meters in the tunnel. These beds are going to be going. That's five. So I'll have 65 beds outside.

Yeah. And where do you reckon your target sort of revenue will be from those beds?

I'd say 50 would be nice from those beds for next year. You could probably intensify beyond that to be honest. But I think that's a good target for next year.

Stable target for you. Something that's really nice that Jasper's doing if we look over here is this is really how I would see an idealized market garden is every block of 10 beds or whatever is interspersed with trees and perennials. So berry fruits or here there's strawberry under fruit trees and these are getting double up spacing. So another tree in between each of these. I think that's a really nice structure for a lot of Europeans to work with with their market gardening. It's something I've always talked about with participants but we're not allowed to plant trees on us. But I think it's really neat idea.

That's really nice. What is it? Five beds took out of production but put a few new beds in and this year under the trees I just planted cut flowers and different herbs. It's a really nice aesthetic value in the garden too.

This cycle way, you might remember from the old videos is a very popular cycle way. So there's plans to get signage and information out here. They've been growing flowers all this season to just beautify the space and welcome people in. It's really nice how you've been bringing the local community into this space.

I get a lot of help from the local community too and a lot of support. So I think it's nice. Just do it together. It's not just my project. I get so much help from everybody else so it's nice to give something back.

So second season no dig and you've been a bit overrun with all the asparagus and building going on. So what's your reflections Jasper at this point about the approach you've taken with no dig etc. Any thoughts that are useful to people watching?

No digs. Awesome. Like I would do it again every single time. What's important is just to keep on top of it. That's one thing I struggled with the last two years. Got a bit of weed pressure just because I didn't keep on top of it. Right.

Like horsetail couch grass, that sort of.

Stuff, bind weed, just the annoying stuff that has rhizomes and you have to get it out. Yeah, I really, really love having woodchips path too. This year I got free willow from just the tarn. They cut a lot of pollarded willows around here and for them it's waste resource. So they just dump it on the garden.

It does. It seems to decompose very fast.

It decomposes seriously fast. There's not much of it left and I put down a good 10cm over the whole garden. But at the end of the day it's nutrients that's going into the garden. So it just means a bit more labor to spread it all out once a year.

But a free resource. So it's a trade off with like in Sweden we are putting down spruce which seems to last a lot longer, but it's not so beneficial for the soil. But it's something we've been talking a lot about in the workshop is having clean crops that don't need washing. And that's a great benefit of no dig is there's no soil bouncing up on salads and when you have wood chips in the path, you're not getting muddy feet or there's a lot of little benefits that come out.

It's like a sponge too. Like I was saying to you earlier, we had 50 mil rainfall event in like 20 minutes and 5 minutes later I could have went out and worked in the garden again. It just sucked everything up.

Yeah.

Whenever around the villages around there's flooding and load of madness going on. But that's a great thing about no dig, especially with your pathways. It's just like a sponge.

So you guys have got this pretty simple wash pack station. So a little root washer here, tool boards, collection things, simple washing station and you run it through the whiteboard there. What's your. How do you actually sell? Just to give context to the viewer, like where. How's the process of getting veg out of the garden and two customers?

Well, we have two days a week where the shops open, so two harvest days, Tuesdays and Fridays, which will start early and basically, well, with two men come through here, harvest everything, stack it there. The van will be parked at the back. And that's only one disadvantage of having the shop a bit further away. You're constantly driving to the shop in.

Context, the shop is on the other side of the buildings up there, so you're not needing. You've got cold storage in the shop that you've been using. So you basically get stuff off the field and then straight to the shop where it can be in Chile.

Exactly. And then like I said, one day harvest, next day the shop will be open. Boxes will go on. Friday evening. I also have a pickup point so I'm taking 35 boxes into Hookster and dropping them off.

So this setup is working fine for you?

It's working fine. I mean, if it's more than two people, it gets a bit splashed in here and logged in. But there's definitely ways you can improve that. Just put another table here so there's another area to spray down.

Something characteristic of no dig beds after a couple of years is you. You basically don't need to use this tool like this, virtually doing nothing useful. And that's what we've experienced after three seasons. We didn't broad fork our beds at all this year and it looks like these beds are heading in that direction as well.