Richard Perkins and Gracie announce a short film called Gracie's Backyard and share what their former interns and team members are doing now: Elin runs a 40-farm cooperative near Stockholm, Nicholas studies agroecology in Germany, Tage processes wild meats, and others are starting dairies, charcuterie businesses, and market gardens across Europe and beyond.
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We have some very exciting news today, don't we? Our friend Olivia has just released a little teaser of a film he made here with us at Ridgedale last year. What's it called?
Gracie's Backyard.
It's called Gracie's Backyard and we're very excited to see it, isn't it? Olivia makes awesome films. And so check out the teaser. But the video today is thinking about some of the people that were here that were in the film, thinking about what they're up to now. So who was here last summer? Gracie? There was Elin. Elin's pretty special. She was a chef with us the first year, wasn't she? And she cooks awesome food and she's been back quite regularly. She's Swedish and she studies food economy and ecology. And she actually has got a job working with a big cooperative near Stockholm that has 40 different farms collaborating to sell their vegetables and meats and dairy and even seafood. So she's doing awesome stuff.
So what's she selling?
She's helping them with recipes and stuff and doing awesome eland stuff. And then who else was here? Nicholas was here again. And Nicholas has been with us every single year. And he's been our farm sitter as well. He came first as an intern and then as a farm manager and then as our first employee, didn't he? And he knows the farm probably better than anyone other than myself. And maybe you. You know your way around pretty good.
Be hard to get me lost.
Yeah, you wouldn't get lost around here, would you?
I could get lost if you. If I got in the forest.
If you went too far in the forest, you might get lost. Yeah, But Nicholas is amazing young man. He's very skilled in all kinds of different things and knows his way around the farm really well. And he's just been coming back here time and time again. He's now he's in Germany and he's doing a agroecology master's. So he's actually going to be in Norway, I think, and maybe in France some of that time. And then there was Mikael. Magic Mikael from Denmark. You love Michel a lot, didn't you? We've just been down to his place to do a little course. And Michel loves. What. What's he got on his farm? He started a farm. He loves cows and breeding cows. So he's starting his farm up this year and he's imported a chicken caravan from Australia, one of these fancy egg mobiles to do pastured poultry. And I just heard that Anders and Katrine, who are also from Denmark are moving to his farm this summer to do vegetable production and that's super exciting. Anders was an intern with us the year before and stayed on as a core team member and his partner Katrine came as an intern and they are both super awesome. And Andish has been out in America at Neversink Farm and at the Rodale Institute and met Jean Martin and he's got really passionate about starting vegetable production. So that's super nice. And who else was here? Taga. Tage. Tage. Swedish. And he was helping sell some of the products at the markets and drop off points. And he's very interested in fly fishing, isn't he? He's from the north of Sweden. He loves tying flies and catching salmon. Who's coming salmon fishing with us? And he's actually started a micro processing plant for wild meats near Stockholm and he's really passionate about that. So that's really nice. And then there was Chin and Michele. They were chefs from Italy. You liked them a lot, didn't you? And Cin is super passionate about making cheeses and they both love making things with meats, sausages and cured meats. So they are actually thinking of moving to Sweden to start a charcuterie business which is interesting. That could be really nice. Italian flared Swedish sausages and things like that. And then there was Sarah, wasn't there. And Sarah was one of our core team members. I just found a big hole in my welly. Look at that. That's why I've been getting soggy socks. Sarah was with us as a core team member and she's an awesome young lady doing. She's very interested in resilient organization and leadership stuff and cultural stuff. And she was at Gaia University and she's now off heading towards South America, traveling a bit and is also looking to get into work in the field. Then there was Toma, wasn't there. Tomo's from Australia and I met him first in Thailand. He came here as an intern, stayed on as a farm manager and then he came back last summer to look at. He was particularly interested in compost at the time. Was making a lot of compost and looking at. He's very interested in holistic management and he's now back in Australia looking to start up grazing operation there. And there was Agnes, wasn't there? Agnes is from Sweden, from the north of Sweden and she's very excited about grass fed micro dairies. And she's just been off in Australia visiting Toma and been to some very cool places. Inside out management and people leading the holistic management scene over there. And she's now setting up a micro dairy in the north of Sweden. So that's super exciting. Yes. Johanna is in the fium too, probably. Johanna works very hard behind the scenes, so you don't see her much on the ground sometimes because she's busy doing all the orders and customer communications and dealing with the economy. And also, what's Johanna spending a lot of time doing now?
Looking after Ragnar.
Looking after baby Ragnar. And baby Ragnar was born after the film was made, wasn't he? But Johanna was very busy at that time with a very big belly. And Matt was in the film, wasn't he? And he's coming back. So we met Matt in Thailand at a PDC we did there, and he came here as an intern and then he came back the next year as a garden manager. And he'd never grown vegetables before, but he did a really good job, didn't he? So we offered him a job this year and he's coming back to head up the market gardens. He's from Canada and he's excited to go on after this year and set up his own enterprise. It's really fun for us to follow what people get up to living here. We have a lot of amazing people coming through here, don't we? We're very excited. Olivia makes beautiful films. We're really excited to see this one, aren't we? And you're working hard on the DVD covers. You've been doing some, like, key line design stuff and some funky animal stuff, haven't you? It's going to be really colorful and nice, so we're very excited. You can check the trailer out in the link below and yeah, thanks for watching our videos. Click subscribe if you want to keep up to date with the farm. Follow us on Facebook, etc. And see you next time.
