S4 ● E118 Our most exciting announcement yet....

Today's a super exciting day for us. We're announcing the launch of our online training we've been talking about for over a year now. Ever since going to organic agriculture school when I was 18, I've been dedicating my life to deepening my understanding of natural systems and how to apply that to profitable regenerative agriculture. This training has come about as a way to respond to the constant calls for consultancy as well as the overpopulation of our trainings at the farm. There's so much that you can benefit from coming to the farm and seeing and feeling things with all your senses. But what I've noticed, even with our longer term trainings, is that it takes a long time to clarify your context and really think through all the aspects of, of a diverse farm enterprise. So I put this training together primarily to allow me to mentor people over a longer time period, giving them time to really absorb all the information we have to offer and put that into their own context and clarify what they need to do to make their business thrive. So there's over 50 hours of footage filmed around the farm, looking really in detail at what we're doing here and why, as well as lectures in the classroom looking at all aspects of the design and concepts behind regenerative agriculture. We put a lot of time into really thinking through what's of value to share. And what we wanted to do is put forward our direct experience of making farms work. You know, we're in one of the most intense climates and hard regulatory and tax frameworks to make a farm work, and yet we're succeeding really nicely. So what I wanted to do with this training is really offer people a really insightful journey around the farm as if you were here. It was like spending many days being personally toured around the farm and looking in detail at all the enterprises and how we go about designing, installing and then managing those systems. I think one of the greatest strengths of this training is that not only have we been educating and designing for over a decade now, we're also farming full time, making a living from it. And I think that's where the real back end stuff comes into play. If you're not working with these systems on a daily basis, it would be impossible to really share the intricacies that make it actually work. And so that's what I think we have to offer people. So the way the training works is you have chapters and each chapter follows a module from our book, Making Small Farms Work. And it starts with the ebook of that chapter and then goes into lectures and videos of the relevant aspects of that around the farm. And each module is between 1 and 13 hours of videos. And in the full course they'll be released weekly. And we'll have a webinar with myself answering your questions directly each week. And then there's a place on the website for your completed tasks. So each chapter has a task. The idea of the whole training is to follow the way we would do a design consultancy with you.

When you sign into the course, this is looking at the full course screen. It gives you here all your lessons. These are released weekly for the mid January when we start the course and the first week you will get the first two chapters. And each of these dots represents lessons to go through and complete. And they will be either videos or text lessons or spreadsheets for download that you can then start creating plans for your specific enterprises. As you go through these on your own screen, it will show you you can mark each one as complete. And I can see when, where you're up to and follow the participants through the training. If we just click into one, let's say keyline design here. Each chapter starts with the learning objectives for that chapter and as you go through you click on the top as a navigation. Each chapter begins with the ebook chapter and you read that and then move forward to the video trainings. So we're looking here at the scale of permanence as a framework for order and design work. And this is a two and a half hour lecture and these videos are all available for streaming with lifetime access. And we're here developing keyline design thinking and looking at patterns in nature and how to actually create keyline patterning in different types of landscapes using digital tools. And then we go on to looking at the keyline plough and how that works and talk about how it works in action. And then there's maps here you can download to practice on and get feedback when you upload them. So each chapter has a. At the end of each chapter there are tasks that it asks you to do and it gives you resources here and then you can post your responses here. So here I can add files like videos or documents, etc. And what you can then do at the top of your bar is go to discussions and there will be a discussion for each task and then some random question boxes, etc. So this hasn't been set up yet, but everyone's response to keyline design tasks for their different properties around the world will be in one place that you can go back and visit them. Likewise at the top here you've got webinars. And so all the webinars are scheduled. They're not actually happening right now, but the event is set and you can add that to your calendar here. It will also email you the day before the webinar just to remind you and then you navigate back to the lessons up here. So these lessons in the self led training, you'll have access to all this information immediately. So, so it starts with the introduction, like what is regenerative agriculture? Introducing some of the concepts and themes, then goes into creating your holistic context, which for us is the foundation of all of our training. And so it guides you through that process of how to do that. So by the end of the first week you should have clarified your context. And that's the platform we build our design on. Then we look at maps and mapping and build our base maps, understand keyline design and all the intricacies of how that system works, which has been a major influence on our design work. Then we go into the water systems at the farm and we're really just showing you like a guided tour around our farm, over 50 hours of video that leads you through every little detail of what we're up to here and then gets you to look at what you need to consider for water on your property. And then you'll upload that and you'll get feedback from me directly at the end of that week. Then we go into trees and woody crops. And you see some of these chapters are much bigger than others and they're between 1 and 13 hours of video in each section. And they'll be more or less relevant to different people, depending on what your goals and context is. We're looking then at chapter seven, Building Up Infrastructure and Fencing. Then we go into some of the specific enterprises, pastured boilers, and this has all kinds of information for everything for, you know, it shows you how we run our entire system from brooder all the way through making pens to raising birds, to slaughtering the birds in our own farm facility. And then you get all kinds of spreadsheets and downloadable resources. This is all the actual documents we supplied to the government to enable us to start a slaughtery. So this is like a blueprint of how you can handle all the bureaucracy. Just this alone saves you weeks of planning. And, you know, the value is in like having this concrete information of someone that's gone before you. And then you have your spreadsheet. So for example, I can download this spreadsheet and save it on my desktop. This is then an Entire enterprise planning sheet based on our actual numbers. So there will be a spreadsheet populated with our actual data and then a blank sheet where it tells you what to fill in and you can translate the currency and the price of feed, where you are, etc. So these are really neat resources that give you a fast track in being able to set up this enterprise for yourself. That's the same with the next chapter. It's looking at the pass through the layer operation. And we're not putting this out there suggesting that people copy our enterprises as it were, but it gives you a really solid grounding into the things you need to consider the way we go about planning. So pastured Hens and Eggmobiles looks at how we build eggmobiles, how we use the hens to improve pasture, what we do for winter, how we keep eggs clean, and how we monitor all of these enterprises. So we give you the sheets of how we collect data which is so important around the farm. Then we jump into grass and grazing and looking at how to fill in holistic management, grazing charts, etc. Then we jump into the no dig market garden, which is a very big chapter looking at all aspects of how we run our no dig market gardens. Then we look at nurturing the soil food web, how to make our own soil preparations to keep nutrient cycling on farm. And then we get into the last chapter which is farm economy marketing and phase planning. And if you've been through this entire training, you should have a complete workable plan, including bill of quantities and if you've been diligent and worked hard, all the costings and sources of where this material are and that will lead you to putting down your marketing strategy and then how you're actually going to design the phases of the development of the farm over time, as well as some of the branding and looking at the whole farm economy. So it requires you to do a lot of work. There's no shortcut. If you want to set up a diverse beyond organic operation like we have here, it takes a lot of effort. And the whole point of this training is to give you a fast track, being able to set up real smart and efficiently based on years of experience, you know, over half my life in the field now, and that's what we want to do, is support people to really get going. The landing page is on our Ridgedale website. And so this is where you can get some of your questions answered. It's also where you sign up for the course and the two courses are here. So we have the course that includes the webinars and my direct feedback with your design work here. And then we have the three month self led training. We're saying three months because that's what we recommend. You should structure your time to, you know, really go through the material in a structured way to get the most out of it. And then there's some information here that answers some of your questions. It gives you an insight into what's included in each of the chapters so you can really have a good look and see is this relevant to me and will I get the most out of this training? And then there's some frequently asked questions answered there.

So who's this course for? It's for people that are really dedicating themselves to this as a career. If you're interested in farming profitably with a mixed farm, then this could be for you. If you just want to run a, you know, 1,000 square meter market garden, then this isn't probably the best training for you. There's probably more targeted training specifically for that. But there is a lot about market gardening in our training, obviously with our no dig market gardens. That's a big part of the enterprise we run here. But this is really a training for go getters who are willing to dedicate the time. It's a three month full time training, you could say, and you need to put the time in. It's, you know, I'm not here to spoon feed people. So all of our consultancy and education is moving towards this platform. Now. We might continue to do short trainings at the farm, but all of our consultancy work and longer format trainings are now going online. So each week you'll be working on a section of your design, going layer by layer through the scale of permanence, which is the way we organize our design work. And at the end of each week you have a task to complete and we'll be working together using Google Earth Pro and different design softwares and everything's in one place on the website so everyone's answers to the tasks will be in one place. So you can actively engage with other people's work for your own learning as well as ask questions from your peers and that's in the full course. In the self led training you won't get any input or feedback from me at all, but you will be added to a private Facebook group that allows you to gain peer support from other people taking the course. That course starts whenever you like. It's going to be launched 20th of November. Sign ups are now open and so you can Sign up now to reserve your spot. Going to have limited places to start with, but you can take that whenever you wish and you get all the information. You get access to everything from the beginning. However, it won't be released till 20th November. The full course is also open for sign ups, but it's not set for release till mid January. That's because the content is going to be released weekly and it'll start with the first two chapters in the first week and then a new chapter each week with a webinar scheduled for each week and then my feedback on each completed task. Now, I'm not there just to answer random questions 24 7. I run a farm full time and have family, but it does mean that if you step up and complete the tasks and put your time in, I'll meet you there. I'll step up and go wherever you want to go and as I said, I'll respond more intensively with the people who are really going and putting the time in and doing the work on time. It's a peer engaged thing. So the reason I wanted it to be content released regularly is so that you're working with like minded people all over the globe and you can get a lot of inspiration as well as support and feedback from the other participants. And that's something that goes on after the course. It's lifetime access in both courses and we'll be updating that in the future. This is the first year so we're just going to see how it goes with limited places, but we'll be updating that in the future as things move along and as the farm evolves and develops. But you'll be able to stay in contact with people on an ongoing basis after that. It's relevant, particularly if you're in a cold climate like we are. But any European climate zone or equivalent you'll find elsewhere in the world would benefit a lot from this training. I think if you're in the tropics or somewhere in extreme dry land circumstance, then it's probably not the best training for you. You've got to look at what's on offer here and think do learn best from having a lot of video content and having to sit down and think things through for yourself. Ideally you have a piece of land.

Or site in mind.

If you don't have a property to develop, then you won't get so much out of this training. In which case, if you just want the information and insight into how we run our farm, I would recommend you take the training that's self led, and you can pick and choose the information as you wish. If you're into the no nonsense approach we take with our book and YouTube channel, then you'll probably like the training. It's filmed much nicer than I work with on the YouTube channel, and there's a lot of great information in there.

That takes things a lot deeper.

It's, you know, we're not into fancy marketing strategies and trying to hook people in. We really want people to think carefully.

Is this right for you?

Because you'll only extract the power out of this training if you're really about to set something up for yourself, and you just want support from someone much more experienced than you, perhaps, who can guide you along the way. My job is to be present throughout the time that the training runs and support you in every way I can, as well as support the learning community together.