S5 ● E18 Some dates and announcements...

So today I just wanted to give you an update with some important dates for the season. I'm super excited for the snow to melt now. It's been above zero during the days but as you can see I'm stood in the market garden and it's not going to be any direct seeding out here for a while. Someone asked do we do any direct seeding? Because I've been making videos about the first plants getting seeded in the lean to greenhouse and yes we do. We transplant most of our crops just so we can maximize cropping in our short season. But we direct seed things like mescaline mix and salad, turnips, radish and things like that. But I'm actually going to hopefully this weekend get out and seed into the small polytunnel and there's some spinach in there that's overwintered and I put in some different salads that will be transplanted in there later. But I might direct seed some quite crops in there over the weekend. So I'll make a video about that if I do. But yeah, a bit behind on the videos. Just a lot of organizing before the team get here and today I just wanted to give you an update on dates throughout the season now. So whilst we run a lot of paid education, really on point focused education for people essentially going into farming in a regenerative manner similar to what we're doing here, we like to also have some public open days. So the first event in our calendar is an open day on Saturday, 9th of June and typically a couple hundred people show up from not just the local area but also from different parts of Europe. So we really welcome you if you want to have a good tour. We sort of meet around midday, 1 o' clock or so and then the official tour is till 5pm but we welcome people from further afield to really take the whole day here if they're traveling from a long way. So if you don't want to take part in any trainings but you want to have a good look around the farm, meet ourselves and have a chat with us and get a tour of all the different elements going on while the farm's in full action, then that's the first one. There's one later in the season as well. The next event on the calendar is 13th to 22nd June and that's one of our internationally renowned farm scale permaculture design courses. They're quite unique in Europe and what we've done is really built over many years of experience teaching full integrated Whole systems design courses tailoring that towards agricultural production. So we've cut away all the fluffy bits of permaculture and we pull in all the things we work with and just teach you about the things that we actually think lead to success. That's namely holistic management, permaculture design and keyline design. And we mix in agroforestry and on farm processing of products and all the good stuff that's going on here. And we're really keen on integrated local food production, mixed diverse farming. So that's a 10 day very intensive training similar to our online training which takes place over three months. For those of you that can't travel to the farm and want to take such a training, we put together our online training that you see in the links below as a self guided training that covers all the things that we would cover in the 10 days here at the farm and videos of, you know, as if you were here at the farm. But then there's a lot more time obviously on the online training you have lifetime access there so you can take your time and really synthesize all that information. The idea of that training was like, hey, you know, a year or two of study downloaded into 10 days and it's the culmination of half my life working in this field. Giving you the most up to date best content of how to design a property for the long haul and how to design the businesses especially. So it's really focused on pragmatic, profitable, regenerative agriculture. That's a great one. So don't miss that. If you want to really go into your farming setup in style, then that's a great course to start that because not only do you get pumped up and meet a bunch of like minded people, we can actually look at your farm and I can give you input and advice in the designing of that. And then you're joining like a network of people that have passed through here. It's been amazing to watch how many of our past course participants have actually gone out and started setting up amazing enterprises. And you've seen some in the YouTube videos and I'll be visiting more this year hopefully. But that you know, you're joining part of a network of people who are totally engaged every day of their working lives in this field and can help and support you along the way. So check that one out. There's still a few spaces left for that. Next date in the diary is the 7th and 8th of July. It's a two day weekend masterclass pastured poultry. I'm really excited about this one because we haven't done this as an intensive at the farm before. One day we'll be looking at everything you need to know about running a pastured layer operation and then the next day will be pastured broilers and that will include everything from brooder to field raising, to monitoring all the spreadsheets, all the business planning, how we then run our slaughtery and get a bit of hands on feel for that too. So just two days, but a really nice one for producers that want to branch out into these profitable and regenerative enterprises and a massive amount of information downloaded in a weekend that's more easy for people to schedule into their busy working summer. So I'm super excited for that one. That one's selling out quite quickly. We still have some spaces left for now. Next event in the calendar is a couple of events where we're teaming up with Curtis Stone, the urban farmer and super excited to bring Curtis to Europe for his first educational visit. The first event's on the 14th of July. We're in Stockholm city centre for a one day master class. It's a seminar event where we'll be presenting our farms and talking about innovations and entrepreneurial approaches for people that want to get into the regenerative economy. Whether it's a small farm, an urban farm, there's so many opportunities available, so this is a good opportunity to come out and meet us. That's a one day intensive where we're going to be sharing best practices from our farms and also sharing a bit of insight into entrepreneurialism and what it takes to be successful in the new and emerging local food scene. And I think it's going to be a great one for those that are really busy and tight on time. Come out and meet Curtis and myself. I think we'll have a book signing after the event and just a great time to meet people from different parts of Europe as well as Sweden. And then for those that want more of an immersive training on our farm, we'll be doing a four day event. Two days with myself, two days with Curtis looking at all aspects of regenerative agriculture. That's 19th to 22nd July. That event is going to be super exciting. We're going to be eating awesome food. There's going to be a great crew from all over Europe and some from further afield. It's actually pretty much sold out. I think there's two spots because people have had to give up spots because of work and family commitments. So jump on them. If you want to come and be at the farm for four days, meet Curtis and his family and us and our whole gang and it's going to be a really nice training. I'm super stoked for that one and using it as a kind of experiment to see what it's like to bring some, some of the pioneering and top folks in the fields that you folks are interested in to the farm and try and bring in some other wisdom and insight and perspective into this whole thing too. So if you're interested in that kind of event, then leave some ideas suggestions in the comments below. I'm really curious to see. I'm always like looking at ways we can innovate and provide different levels of training for different people. And so if you've got any ideas what might be appropriate or people you would like to see us bring to the farm, then do let us know about that. After all that, we're having a couple of weeks downtime and just reconnect as a group. We've got a smaller team this year and it's important that we have a little balance with our team with all the influx of people here. So we'll be taking a couple of weeks off and then it's another open day on Saturday 11th August. So again, that's a free event that we welcome anyone to. Starts in the afternoon just after lunch and we'll do a big guided tour for four or five hours for anyone that's up for it. Often local families come with their kids and we'll show them round and people will teeter off after an hour or two. And then those that are really interested in, you know, the deeper aspects of what we're doing, I'm happy to go the rest of the day with you and show you around and all the little intricacies and answer questions, etc. It's a lot of fun and you can get some good food here and you know, buy a book or support us by buying some produce etc to take home with you. So put those two dates in your diary. Saturday 9th of June, Saturday 11th of August. Totally free open days for everyone and a good chance to come and meet us and have a look around the farm while it's in full swing, which is a sight to behold in the short growing season that we have here. Then the very last event we got scheduled in so far this year is the 18th and 19th of August. That's the weekend again and that's another two day masterclass, market gardening with a focus on no dig production because that's what we value here. We did that last year with Matt and it was a great success. We had a fully booked training and it was a lot of fun and I think a lot of people fed back that they would love to come on short two day trainings because they just can't make it away from their places for longer periods. So we're trying to offer, you know, a broad spectrum this year and just see what's most beneficial for people. As I said. Put suggestions and comments below. If you've got ideas of trainings that you think we, you know, would not be natural for us to offer that you'd like to do here. Something we've done in the past in our internships is holistic management training, keyline design training, all these kind of things. But it's not something we're offering so far this season. It's something we might consider if enough people are interested. So do leave those comments. I'll look forward to reading those in the coming days. And for those of you who are interested in our trainings that just can't make it here, then we have our online training. That's in the links below. You can see it's self led. You can start that anytime. Huge amount of information. It's got working spreadsheets and all kinds of resources there for you to really go through a step by step design process. And in a way that was designed to replace any need to go out and do consulting anymore because I'm just too busy. The idea is to empower you to go step by step on your own through a design process with a good insight into what we're doing here and why, and some planning resources to help you get started on the right foot. It might be that we do another training, the online training with myself. Over the three months training we've been doing this winter we've had a really good group and some amazing projects that we've been going through. This winter we're going through now a few more weeks till April. It's been amazing to watch some people's developments for their plans and projects and I'm going to wait to the feedback from the whole training before I decide if we run that again. I think it's been great for some people, I think it's been quite intense and fast paced for other people. But I'd like to get full comprehensive feedback before I decide if we're offering that again and when. But the self led one is there any time. So if you can't make it to the farm, then that's an option. Obviously you can buy our book Making Small Farms Work, which has got a huge amount of information and resources in it too. But as I said, if you can make it to the farm, we'd love to meet you and host you here and show you around the farm while it's in production. So bear in mind our open days if you're in Europe and you can get here easily enough. And if you're cycling here, we'll put you up camping or in one of the accommodations somewhere if you're cycling from long distance. So make the effort and we'll reciprocate. So one last thing to address as we wrap the video up, I want to just put a word out about how we're going to deal with Patreon. I asked our patrons recently how they feel about changing the format of what we do there. I really appreciate people's support, but I don't feel like just putting videos out a week early on. Patreon is really offering so much value and I've been using the space to answer people's questions there. But most people aren't watching the videos before they come out on YouTube because it's just easier to watch them on YouTube. It's one less step for a viewer. So I thought, well, this is a bit silly. Some people just want to support us on Patreon to say, hey, thanks, really appreciate your videos, learn something out of them. Hey, cheers. And I really appreciate that it does take a bunch of extra time when I'm busy enough anyway. And so I want to leave Patreon there as a place that people can just say, hey, thanks, I appreciate it, but I want to offer another level of value. So I think what we're going to do is establish a question and answer video every two weeks, starting sometime in April when I'm back from the UK and when the season really gets going. And I think Anyone pledging over $10 a month in support will have a space there to compile questions and I can go into a lot more detail. I feel like checking Patreon every day to write down answers. I don't feel naturally inspired to get into detail because it's just another piece of work to do. And I get between 50 and 100 emails a day and it's just too much to have all this extra places to reply to. It's why I've never really responded so much to questions and comments on YouTube. It's just too much and I really appreciate and value it. I do read comments I just don't have time to address it all. And this year, particularly, I'm really committing with Johanna to really try and strive and find balance. And it's a quest. So I really want to honor that. But I feel like I could offer a lot more value to those of you that want to be able to ask questions directly. I feel like I can get into a lot more detail that way. So that's just a little, you know, thoughts that are going on in the background, and I'll announce more about that in April. I really appreciate people's desire to, you know, reciprocate and support. It's. It's appreciated. But I'll let you know when we know for sure how that's going. Thanks, folks. See you in the next video.