A market garden manager's farewell monologue from Ridgedale farm, full of stories about growing vegetables, collective work, and 6 pm dinners. They're starting a new local farming operation and want followers to stick around for what's next.
Chapters
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the first episode of hijacking other people's YouTube channels. It's my last day at Ridgedale, so I thought, I'm taking over the YouTube channel, talking about Ridgedale, telling you all the dirt about the dirt. Well, what can I tell you about the farm? I mean, there's a lot of stories about people that have come and gone, of course, as you can imagine, and a lot of characters we've been following along with Richard for this past year. It's the fourth season, so you can imagine all the different stuff that there is to share. And I don't know exactly which stories are most appropriate to share with you, but some of the things that. One of the things I remember in particular is when I came as the market garden manager for the first year, which was last year, and I had no experience. I had, actually my only experience growing veg was having gutted a piano and where the keys would be here and the piano bed, the key bed, I put soil and started to grow some food. And the leeks got to be about this tall. And I wondered if, you know, that were fully grown, which sounds really crazy because of course I knew that in hindsight I knew how big leeks were. But, you know, this is the level of experience that I had. So I harvested about 50 leeks that were about this small. I had them in an omelette. I thought it was great. It's difficult to think of one, you know, story in particular, let alone two or three that are really funny. It's, you know, stories that are difficult to tell to someone and things that we can all relate to. You know, something we can all relate to, I think, is that we often in our workplaces, whether it's at home with the work we love to do, the work we're getting paid to do when you're working as an individual, but also part of a team, you know, so that happens here. That's. That is pretty much what it is to work with a lot of people on a farm. You have your responsibilities, you have your individual work, and collectively you're working together and really working. And it feels quite good. It's a really nice feeling. So dinner here is at 6 o' clock. And there's always someone saying, hey, what are we doing tonight? What are we doing tonight? And the general theme of it is it's an individual work, collective feeling party. And by theming it in that sense, we're always partying. It's always an individual work, collective feeling party. There's no shortage of Things to tell and some things to share with you. Maybe you're wondering what it's like to be here, you know, and it's fantastic. Everyone has their own individual reasons for coming here. People shared reasons for coming here. Oh, I want to start my own operation. I want to save the world. And there's no shortage of ability for people that come here to say, you know, something about why their actions are contributing to the whole and why they feel that's important. However, it is a very interesting observation to see that no matter how dedicated people are in their own path, it's almost impossible to get everyone to use things like the recycling station in a proper manner. So what do you do? You do what most people do. You put a sign on something. This is for plastic, metal only, cardboard only. And it has a lid. So you have to walk up to the bin and your brain has to tell your arm to your hand to lift this lid and put the proper material into the recycling bin. And it just doesn't happen. So I wrote a song called can you read English? I can read English. Metal recycling, plastic recycling. Sam, I can read English. Can you read English? What are some other funny stories that I can really tell you about Ridgedale? I mean, funny things happen all the time. They're not necessarily remembered. And what the totality of all of these, you know, funny moments and memories is that you enjoy being where you are. I think everyone can relate to that, Sam. Well, this is it for me. I'm gonna sign off and I just want to, you know, say thank you to everyone who's been watching on the YouTube channel. I really had no idea that people were like paying attention to other things happening on the farm other than what Richard is talking about. And it's really nice to get that support from people saying, you know, wishing me well, you know, people saying don't go and stuff like that. It feels quite nice. And I don't actually know precisely what I'm doing yet. I just know that I'm going back to start a farming operation to produce food for the local community. And that's going to be in my friends backyards to start. They really want to start a farm and I'd love to be able to share what's going on with you. So when I do start a YouTube channel or you know, face gram and Insta chat accounts, whatever they are, I will certainly let Richard know and he can let you know and it would be great to share stuff with you. It's a lot of fun. So thank you for everyone for your support and keep, keep watching. If you, if you like the video, click, click, click the little thumbs up button and check out, check out our book, Making Small Farms Work. We're bringing Kurdistan to the farm next year. So if you want to see Kurdistan, you can go to Stockholm for a one day seminar with Richard. So thanks everyone and thank you so much for your support. Thanks so much for your support. I really appreciate it.
