S4 ● E130 5 Things (Rest, Winter, New book, Dates, Patreon?)

So it's been over a month since I made a video and I've just been having some real downtime. Just taking time out from the farm, from all my other work and business. And I'm just making a quick update to reconnect in and tell you about five things on my mind right now. As you know, if you've been following us. I went off to Southeast Asia with Matt and had an amazing time in Thailand. Really amazing to connect back into some places I love and cherish. I went there first when I was 18 back in the millennium and I've been there every year since. I used to go for a lot of meditation and I've really enjoyed traveling in Southeast Asia in the past. Great to connect back in with some great body workers. One of my favorite masseuses is blind man, Mr. Nut in Chinese, Chiang Mai. And I had a lot of body work. I've had a lot of aches and pains with my elbows and arms and shoulders and lower back this year. So great to do a load of body work and take some time out eating mangoes and jackfruit and durian and yeah, Matt and I just gouge a lot of durian, which is awesome. It was great to have some time with Matt to connect and just like, you know, end that time together. That's, you know, Matt was on a PDC with me in Koh Phanyang back in 2013. I think it was just before we moved to the farm and I was laying out how we were gonna, you know, plan and design this farm, how we were going to install all of that design. And Matt wanted to come that first season but was going through some family things, so he didn't come that year. But then he came and was here as an intern and then a farm manager, then an employee. And, you know, he's been a very significant part of the farm and the last few years. And so I've always been really sad that he's not joining us next year, especially with all the changes as we go down to much less people and a profit share model. It's a shame he's not here for that. But I'm also super excited that, you know, he's going off to do his thing. So it's great to have that time. And you know, for me, it was very significant to go away because it was. It felt like I was standing up on a rock and relaxing after just treading water and keeping above water for the last four years. I mean, my workload's been super intense. And while I've been in it, it's been, you know, just what I'm doing and I'm passionate about it and excited about it every day. But I, you know, I live and breathe and educate about this stuff 24, seven, pretty much in all my waking hours, seven days a week. And I really haven't taken a break. And it's. It's taken me this last month just to sort of come to terms with that. And yeah, it's been a really interesting personal process. It's allowed me to reflect and rest really deeply. Rest and not get up for anything and not think about the farm. For a few weeks. We had Astrid here looking after the farm. She's one of the most capable young women I've ever met. And so. So I knew the farm was in good hands and I am with Johanna also. So I just totally relaxed and it sort of hit me. It caught up with me a bit and I was spending a lot of time at hot springs and massage and spa and just doing nothing. And that was great. I needed it. I feel like I can't have that kind of head space here at the farm. My life is too wrapped up in daily chores and all the other things that are going on. There's been really great to just say no. I've just been saying no to all kinds of requests of my time, invitations to go and speak and do things. I'm generally doing less and less of any of that. As I've mentioned in the past, our online training is taking on all of our consultancy and work like that. And I'm just turning down so much stuff and it's been really liberating to take that rest. I feel so much more relaxed than I did this summer. And I know many of our viewers commenting like, you know, that I was looking exhausted and a bit rough this summer and I was. And it's been a really tough year. It's been a really emotionally hard year. I got really fed up with people. I got really disillusioned with having so many people coming through here and that's a really difficult and sad place to get to. In a way, it started to affect, you know, my communication and way of relating and made some difficulties in my relationship. And yeah, it's been really important for me to take some time out and reflect because it's a horrible place to get to, to not, you know, feel super excited and valuing the amazing people that come through here. But yeah, it's. It's been a long four years of putting other people before my needs and. And that's changing now. This feels like a really positive new chapter where it's like, hey, we're at a stable place. It's taken four years of hard, hard graft to get this place set up and to establish a business and get to a stable place where I can reduce my working hours by nearly half and have a normal working life, you know. And of course I'm super passionate about this stuff and my spare time is put into writing and thinking and sharing stuff with you guys through videos or whatever. But putting family higher up in the priority list has been really important and putting my relationship higher up. It's been really tough for Johanna and I. She's stood by me, you know, it's been so stalwart these last four years and it's not been easy for her either. It's interesting dynamic to have all these people sort of invade our space for six months of the year and then the total opposite for the winter. It's been amazing, but it's hard for us. I don't think it's relatable what it's like to live a public sort of life like that and then live a totally closed private life during the cold, long, dark winter. So we've been having, you know, some weeks now of just reflecting together and really spending a lot of time together, thinking about what we value, what we want for these next years and yeah, putting family in relationship first, which is. It's sounds really simple and obvious, but it's been really big and there's been some great shifts for us, which is really nice. I feel like we're really moving into a new chapter in a way that feels, you know, it couldn't be better. It's so positive and I'm super excited. Even though Matt's not here, Carla said she's joining us next year again as one of the profitshare members. And that's awesome. She was here as a garden manager last year and super capable young woman. She was a great member of the team. And so to have Nicholas and Carla back is awesome. And we've been having a lot of applications for first year apprentices. They're open for four more days. So if any of you are interested in applying for joining us for the six months next season, you've got four more days to apply. And just a little update for anyone that has applied. Nicholas is coming back on the 5th and so we'll be starting to look through applications then we won't be getting back to anyone until probably the middle of January. But yeah, thanks for everyone that's applied and we're looking forward to going through those carefully in the next week or so. So, yeah, it's really great to just have this extra time. Like the farm. I haven't put videos up just because I've been going through a lot of this processing with myself and with Johanna because we've had people here up until I went to Thailand, Matt and Nicholas were here. So this has like been our first time to just connect back in together and really think about what's happened and where we're going next. And farm life is quite easy at this time of year. I wake up and the nest box is already open. So I collect the first lot of eggs straight away at like 6:30 in the morning when I feed them and I feed the cows and sheep and the pigs. And then I go back after breakfast, maybe 9:30, 10, I'll come back, take the second lot of eggs. And I do that in the winter when it's freezing to make sure none of the eggs are frozen out there. Then I feed everything again at lunch. And then it's getting dark by 3:30, so I'll come and just check everything's got water, close the nest boxes. Then just before bed, I'll open them up again. And that means that the chickens are all asleep and they're not going to go in the nests, but they're open in the morning. I have a light that comes on just before I do so that they go in the nest boxes and don't lay on the floor. That's really helpful. But yeah, that's going really well and it's really smooth and easy. I'm doing micro greens on the side and we've got two half hour deliveries and that's the weekly schedule. It's really nice to just have this, you know, really simple routine that just structures the day and spend the rest of the time with Ragnar and Ragnar and Johanna away. Actually, my daughter Grace is here. We've all had a nice family Christmas and Johanna's gone to visit her family. So I'm with Gracie for the next couple of weeks. And we're off to deliver eggs today. But just taking it real steady and slow and it's really nice. I'll make some videos of how things are doing around the farm. I know I've been a bit absent of late, but there's not so much to show. But it's been hovering about 0 degrees to minus 10. And really as January, February come in, that's when winter really kicks in and it starts to get really cold. But everything's functioning really well and it's, you know, nice time of year to just rest and get into some other projects. So those other projects include starting to work on my next book. So you might remember back in episode 96 this year, I was talking about this idea of an infographic that I was thinking about all last summer about comparing all the different enterprises under the regenerative agriculture sort of heading and looking at the input costs and running costs and the profit that comes out of them and the area needed to do them. Because I've had thousands of participants in my trainings now and I see that people get really confused if they're coming into farming without that pragmatic farming background. Like, I really believe in new entrepreneurial farmers because there's so many benefits to coming into this without a conditioned way of thinking. But if you're not familiar with those things, you've got no idea about the sizes and scales and numbers involved. And I feel like most of us that got inspired by reading people like Joel Salatin's books, they were really important because they had facts and figures and data in them. Not lots but enough to give you an inkling of how to get going. And I really value that personally. It's really hard to find that for different enterprises and it's hard to find a comparison of them. So, like, for example, I've made people have inherited a hundred hectare farm and they just want to make a market garden on 2,000 square meters of it. It's like, well, you've got all this land. Don't you realize you could run a poultry enterprise and put in one third at a time to get the same income and make more use of your land whilst regenerating your grasses. And some people want to start a micro dairy, but only have 4 hectares of grass. It's like, well, can you make an income, a useful viable income like that? And people that want to go full on microgreens and do 30 kilos of microgreens a week that have no marketplace for that. So I feel like this idea has been developing and I've been making a lot of notes here because I think it's turning into a book. Because what I want to do is take all of these things. The benefit of our farm is we've got all these different enterprises running in one place that we can give a comparative analysis. We've done a lot of detailed time and motion studies. So I know exactly how much time goes into things. I know the minimum Amount of area needed to do them. But I want to do like ratings and comparisons of all these enterprises. Things like how newbie friendly is this? You know, how easy is it for someone with no experience to start this up? What specialist skills are needed? What is the minimum startup cost you would want to put into this? What is the profitability? How much is the running cost? What do you get out each year? What's the labor input and what labor could you put onto an employee? And what would it look like if you employ someone to do that? What's the stimulation and diversity of your daily work like if you do this enterprise, you know, is this thing more exciting on a daily basis than this thing? What's the ease of selling this product? What's easier to sell eggs or vegetables, meat or milk? How storable is the product? How can you spread the selling of them? How does this enterprise scale and what's the mobility of the enterprise? Can you expand onto neighbor's land? Could you pick up your farm and move it if you had to? What are the ecological benefits? Market gardening, very profitable per square meter, really high inputs, not very good for the land necessarily. You know, it's an extractive enterprise. Whereas some grass fed animal enterprise is really beneficial for the ecosystem that is working with it. How do we compare those things? You know, what is our context? What are we trying to achieve? And then what fits the jigsaw puzzle, as it were? What's the minimum land required? So the way I'm going to do this so far is what I'm thinking is I'm going to scale all the enterprises. These are going to be microgreens, market gardens, tree nurseries, tree crops, pastured layers, pastured boilers, pastured ducks, pastured turkeys, pastured sheep, grass fed beef, micro dairies, pastured pigs, and put them all through these lenses, write a chapter on each about how to run this enterprise and then go through each of those headings I was talking about, really listing the pros and cons and all the details that someone would need to know starting up. Now obviously this would be different in different parts of the world, in different marketplaces, of course, but I feel like if I put enough data in there about these comparative points, it will give you a good enough inkling of like, yeah, okay, I've got three hectares of grass, four hectares of wood. These are the things, excuse me, that I could do here. Now let's get deeper into this analysis. With the time I've got the resources, I've got the money, I've got etc. So I feel like this is a companion to my other book, which is more of a textbook, but this is more of a pragmatic how to compare your situation with enterprises available and come up with the most concrete plan to get started on the right foot that will make you income in your first year and get you rolling as a farmer. So I think it's really cool. And yeah, I'm going to base it around each enterprise producing an annual salary for a family, which here in Sweden is about €30,000 after tax. So it's got to drive about €56,000 of profit. So how many microgreens do you need to make that in a year? How many eggs do you need to produce? How many pasture broilers? So I'm going to put it all down in that context in a written form so that people can get into getting clear about designing their enterprises. And I'm really excited about it. I think it's going to be an excellent resource and something that just doesn't exist in the regenerative ag and permaculture literature at the moment. So there's some dates coming up I just want to let you know about. We've got four more days now to the end of the year. That's the ending of the early Bird tickets for the one day event in Stockholm with Curtis Stone. So you'll remember we're bringing the urban farmer Curtis Stone to Stockholm. If you want to see Curtis in Europe, that's going to be your only option now because there's just one seat left on the farm course, I believe. And so there's no other events planned in Europe. So if you want to see Curtis, make sure you sign up for that. And the tickets will be going up by €20 after the start of next year. And it's also the last day of the year is the last time to put in an application for the apprentices positions here next year. And one thing I'd like to ask all of our followers is something I've been considering for next year is whether to start a Patreon account. Now I've been happy doing the YouTube channel the way it has been. It's been amazing to watch it grow from about a thousand subscribers to 20,000 subscribers. I was expecting it to get to half of that this year. So it's been amazing to see that growth and all the support and comments from around the world. I know some of you have followed it really closely from the beginning and watch all our videos and I see from the analytics that A lot of our viewers watch all of the videos and all of it and they don't turn it off to the end, which I really value and appreciate. And it makes me feel like, yeah, we put out some interesting things. I not needed any support in making that channel. But as you know, if you follow this, it's just me whipping out my phone and trying to capture a bit of what's going on here at the farm every day. And I know some of you appreciate that kind of, you know, simple vlog style way of doing it. I know there's been some audio issues and things like that, but to be honest, like, I have not been willing to do anything differently because it's, you know, I haven't had time. So I've been considering like where to take the channel. Now you'll notice if you look back at the last year, I put season four little numbers on each episode so that people can make sure they've seen all the different episodes and can communicate about them if they wish to with each other. And just thinking about that made me think, right, we're starting season five in a few days. So it's a time that I would consider starting a Patreon account. And I want your opinion because what I would do with that, I think it would be a subscription per view, like per video created. And I would have videos going out a week earlier on Patreon. And anyone that subscribes to our Patreon account, I would answer their questions as priority. You'll know I just haven't been very good at answering any questions this year and I don't have time to, to be honest. But I would consider answering patrons questions and you would get videos a week earlier and then they would go out to the public anyway. And the reason I would raise some income is because we've separated the businesses now that my other work that's not working on the farm with farm animals and produce is separate now and it's got to fit outside of my share of the farm chore hours, which is a full time job because we're all working in this profit share and I'm equally part of that. So my farm labour is a full time job and all this stuff is got to be additional to that. So in that way I feel like I would like some support in that. And if there's enough support, what it would allow me to do is to take this as a more serious thing and put more time and organization into it to improve the quality and consistency of videos and the educational material within that, but I think I would also use it to travel to go and see other pioneering farmers in the region and, you know, make more, more of an effort to share a broader spectrum of solutions than we have going on just here. I don't know which way to go with this. I don't really mind. I'm not attached to it either way. I would like your opinions, especially those of you that really follow our channel and really understand, you know, my perspectives and what this farm's about and what this channel's been about. I'd love to hear from you because I could go either way. I'm really. Yeah, as I said, I'm not attached to it either way and I just feel like up for hearing what people want to do. Yeah, it's something I need to check out more. I'm not very familiar with the platform, but I know some people have suggested it in the past and it's something we could begin for the new year and it would give people away, like having access to me for answering questions directly as we go through the season. So we'll see. I'd love to hear from you. And thanks as always for watching our videos. And I look forward to start putting out videos again more regularly now. And I think the last video of the year is going to be a look back at the last four years, just looking at the growth of the farm in the last four years and just celebrating that before we start season five at the farm. So thanks as always. You can find out more in our book, Making Small Farms Work. Hope you've had a great holiday period if you've been celebrating whatever you've been celebrating. And a good new year to you. See you in the next video. It.