S4 ● E51 Farm Scale Permaculture/ Regenerative AG Online Training Update

Today's video is just a quick update of the online trainings that we've been putting together and tell you a bit about where we're at with that because some people have been asking via email. So as a quick update on where we're at and what we're planning with that. So it's not a farm update. And so for many people that are following the channel now, it's probably not very interesting, but I've just been spending the day in Gothenburg today picking up a lot of filming gear. We already have a lot of filming gear, but I wanted to pick up some more to film the two week course that's coming up starting on Wednesday. It's a 10 day farm scale permaculture design course. We're focused on regenerative agriculture and so we go deep into Howard, start from nowhere and design and plan and install these systems that we're working with as well as other systems that we support around the world. You know, things that build soil, build community and are economically viable. We're particularly focused on low cost startup enterprises that are quick to return profit and work in practice. It's a very pragmatic course. Our approach to design is very pragmatic. We've done a lot of design work and we're really focused on agriculture, not urban design and small scale stuff. So much so the online training. I spent all winter writing the curriculum and building the structure for an online training and it's 70% complete. I put it down to start the season up a couple of months ago with all the planning and seeding of the market gardens and stuff like that. So there's a lot of work already done and there's a lot more to do now I've got about 140 videos detailing everything around the farm and how we do it and all the little details that make it work. There's ebook chapters of our book which many people already have read, but then it's also including all of our spreadsheets and they've been. I've invested in professional spreadsheet maker to make them universal that other people can pick them up, see a copy with our numbers and data from our farm, but also with enough notation that you could really utilize those sheets immediately and put in your own data and understand that you've done it correctly, as it were. So it's very valuable resource there for starting up broilers or egg layers or you know, the cost of having people around or setting up a tree nursery or whatever it is. Silver pasture lanes. So there's a lot of data there. It also includes a lot of legal paperwork like building your own slaughtery. It's got all our HACCP plans and all hygiene routines of running a certified kitchen and all the sort of back end stuff that's hard to find, that's hard to find people that will share that stuff. And we've been thinking about, because I'm passionate mostly about supporting other people to get started on the ground. People that want to design a property, build it up into a business and live there, run that and have a joyful, you know, life there. That's my focus. So. But juxtaposed against that is there's a lot of people who would love to attend our courses who just can't afford the time or the investment to come here and do that. And you know, people follow us from different parts of the world and there's also people who are interested and not necessarily going to do it for themselves. So I've been thinking a lot about this recently and I'm thinking to offer this course in a way that can benefit the most people. And so the strategy that I'm thinking of now is to release a six month training that begins in my winter season when I have more time to follow people, because I really want it to be a program where I follow people through their design process of their land and business and can offer tangible feedback that will obviously take a lot of my time and I need to follow that person and whoever's in that group through this whole process. And so each chapter of the book forms a framework of a module of the training and there are actions that you must do and I give feedback on those actions. I don't just answer random questions necessarily about what type of tree shall I place here? For example, I'm asking you to apply this thinking or this spreadsheet in your context and then we'll look at the numbers and say, hey, is this looking good? Could we reduce some costs here? Could you find a more innovative way to deal with this thing? Same with design work. I love designing properties and I've done that a lot and I've worked in many climate zones. So I feel like I'm in a good position to support people in different parts of the world and it's much easier to do that from Sweden and not having to go places. I've got less and less interest to travel abroad now because I just love being here really. So I'm thinking to make this really accessible, the ultimate bit of it will be a six month training that's released every couple of weeks and requires you to follow through that training. But that will be quite expensive relatively, because it will require a lot of my time. So to make this stuff accessible to many people, we're thinking of offering like a really low price just to watch the online course. You have like 100 hours of footage of our training that we run here. So it's really low cost, accessible to anyone that wants to watch that who may or may not go into doing this for themselves. Then we might have another tier that's a bit more expensive and it includes all of the videos of the Farm showing you around all the enterprises here, and includes all the spreadsheets and things like that. But it still doesn't require my time. I'm not going to be answering questions or dealing with people's queries, etc. It'll just be a resource you can take and utilize as you wish. And then the full training will be the main package for people that want mentorship through the design process of starting up their land based design and their own regenerative enterprise. So that feels really good for me because we really want to benefit as many people as we can. And I feel like there are many people who already have written as saying that they want mentorship through this process and they can't find that anywhere. And I'm happy to do that, but it has to pay for my time because it will be quite absorbing and it needs to be limited to a small group of people so I can really follow people through that process. And I think it works very neatly to do that in my winter season when I have more time, but also to do it within a set time frame so that you're working with a group of other people, all focused around the world in their context and climate zones, who can act as a supportive mentorship or peer group as well. So we're thinking to film quite a lot this week. I've bought several cameras for making sure we can film everything on the whiteboards and everything outdoors really nicely with much better sound than we get in these YouTube videos. And, you know, much better quality overall. And by the time October comes, I'm hoping to release the whole thing. And it will be three different tiers of pricing so that it's accessible to anyone anywhere. And you just choose at what level you want to interact with that. So that's where we're at right now. That might change massively in the coming months. You know, a lot's going to happen this year at the Farm anyway, and you know that could change for me, but it's got to work with the other work that I do, managing the farm alone in the winter and the other interests and projects I get involved with in the winter months. So that's where we're at with that. I know a lot of people have been commenting on the audio. I basically, I'm not interested in addressing those questions and you know, I'm not replying to comments in this way. It's, it's a time issue and I, you know, I run a pretty hectic schedule here, down to the minute from 6:30 at night till after midnight, sometimes doing all the back end stuff. And I can only do this if I'm not spending, you know, more than half an hour. So. So currently I'm using an iPhone with a gimbal, like an OSMO gimbal, so that I can get cleaner shots and the audio will be patchy. I'm not covering the microphone, I'm not, you know, it's just the way it comes out raw off an iPhone. But that's the only way I can make this work. So I'm sorry if you can't bear with that. You maybe have to leave the channel if it's too much for you. But I can't spend any more time on this and I have much better audio equipment but to put a mic on and carry around the osmo, it's just not going to happen. My day is too busy. I'm working fast and hard and managing a lot of people and it's just about to get really busy here. So I'm, you know, I'm really grateful that many people find it a benefit and enjoying following the videos and I really appreciate the support and comments there. But I can't do much about the audio. I'm not willing to spend more time on it because I'm simply flat out and you know, I love doing what I'm doing. And this is me trying to help people out by sharing a bit of our production season from up here for people who can't make it here themselves. Please let me know in the comments if you're interested in this kind of thing. I can't really release anything about the pricing yet, but it seems to be really affordable and accessible to people all over the world in different climates and economic situations, etc. But it's a nice place to calibrate the interest in which level of engagement people are interested in. We can possibly also offer different levels of engagement than the ones I've thought about. These are just rough ideas coming up in my mind, so let us know in the comments. I appreciate that and that will help shape the development of this exciting new chapter for the Farm. Thanks so much for your time and yeah, I look forward to interacting with people in a different way through this training in the future. It's a really exciting next chapter for us, really. So sorry it's not the most exciting video today, but I wanted to put that update up there because people have been writing regularly about taking the training, but it's going to be delayed till October now. As always, thanks for watching the videos. Click subscribe if you haven't already. And we'll be doing a lot more Farm updates next week. It's going to be very busy around here next week.