Richard Perkins (host) describes the 'Farm Like a Hero Experience' — a year-long set of interviews with European farmers about regenerative agriculture conducted in 2020. He is assembling an ebook (accompanying over 100 hours of interview footage) currently estimated at 250–300 pages and is considering expanding to a full printed, full-colour volume similar in size to his earlier book 'Regenerative Agriculture'. He proposes using a crowdsource campaign to cover printing costs and asks viewers for feedback and interest.
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In today's video, I'd love to ask you, my audience, what your opinion is about a project I'm considering. So welcome back to Clairto, folks. For those who are not familiar with this view and wonderful fireplace, I'm back on the west coast of our new property and I'm taking a few days in isolation to finish the ebook that goes with the Farm Like a hero experience. YouTube channels are typically about two components. The content creator, that's me in this case, and you, the audience. But in our case, over the last couple of years I've been trying to add a third element which is other farmers, and use my platform to shine light and bring awareness and connect people together in the network. And that's led to different interviews of different farms that you've seen here on our channel in the past and they've been some of the most popular videos and then that's really where the Farm Like a Hero Experience was born from. So all of this year 2020, I've been interviewing some of the best up and coming farmers from around Europe, all manner of enterprises covering the whole board of Regenerative Agriculture, and it was a super humbling and incredibly inspiring experience. Such amazing people doing incredible work and the real unsung heroes. That's why it was called the Hero Tour. People you would never hear about necessarily, who are doing far better than any of the celebrity youtubers, etc. So what we wanted to do, because I couldn't get on the road this year because of the COVID pandemic, originally I was going to drive around Europe and film the whole thing on locations, which would have been incredible. But what I've done instead is interviewed people and we've been posting the teasers for everyone who's curious about that experience. That was a live event running throughout the year. But soon, once this ebook is finished, we'll be offering that as a low cost package with over 100 hours of interviews and the ebook to go along with it, to really bring the visual element. I've just started putting this ebook together and you can see it's a beautiful way to bring the visual elements of each farm as well as hear a different tangent from each farmer that we've interviewed as they get to put things in their own words on a written form. From the beginning, this was always going to be an ebook to go along with the Farm Like a Hero Experience, which has been a purely digital experience. But as I've been putting this book together, I've just been figuring this could be built out into an amazing resource for the world to hear of so many new and inspiring farmers, as well as some who have farmed for much longer. It's such a treasure trove of information and inspiration for people who are new to farming or in the first few years of their journey and experience. It's incredible to have built such a network and to see how influential our farm and things like our eggmobiles and approach to no Dig gardening have been across the world. And what I really want to do is leverage this platform for the benefit of the whole. So I'm curious to ask all of you, my viewers and my audience, who are generally quite familiar with what we're up to and what we're doing, what do you think about the idea of developing this out into a printed book? This book, just the ebook version that won't be in print and will go out to the hero subscribers from this year's tour will be over 250, perhaps 300 pages long. I was thinking of potentially doubling that. An entire volume, just like my book, Regenerative Agriculture. So it would be a similar size book packed full with just the dozens and dozens of incredible farmers talking about how they started, things that were challenging, things that went better than expected, things that didn't go well, how they've approached sales, what money they invested, what sort of turnover and revenues and net profits they produced. And it's such a great thing. It just brings almost tears to my eyes to put this book together now and just recount the conversations I had with such amazing people all summer. But I just think there's such a beautiful resource that could be built out and I would love to include more of our students and other people within the network to contribute to a book like that. Now, obviously it would cost some and there's a risk involved of printing a book like that. So what I would intend to do is survey you through this video to get a sense of whether people think this is a good idea. And then I would approach this with a crowdsource campaign because that would allow me to make sure I can cover the printing costs. Obviously, big books like the same sort size as Regenerative Agriculture are very expensive to print. In fact, it's probably the most expensive book to print in the field of farming. It's so full of colour photos and just so many pages. But I'll be prepared to do that if I can get the backing of a crowdsource campaign. Now, it's impossible to know what a book like this would do for the community and how well it would sell, but given the success and enjoyment I've had out of self publishing both the previous books I've put out, I'm up for doing that. And we've also got plans to make the ridgedale cookbook over 2021 and I'm excited to create more in that space. It's brought back a lot of memories just putting this ebook together so far. There's still a lot more work to do, but I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Do you think it's a good idea to print this book in full print and it will be up there with similar price to Regenerative Agriculture given the size of the book and shipping, etc. I don't know any more details yet. It's just an initial idea to hear from you and involve you in the evolution of the resources that we dedicated our lives putting out to you all. Thanks so much for your time for watching folks. We really appreciate your likes, your comments and shares. And if you don't subscribe to our channel already, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Turn the notifications bell on to make sure you hear all future updates from us. See you in a video soon folks. It.
