 Hi, this is Chico again. Now for those of you who've been following the math videos, you remember in 2013 I got together with a couple of friends and we produced a series on the mathematics of farming We filed it under a food and farming and put it into the math and real life section of the site And basically the idea was basic to sort of go over Some of the mathematics that you you know we need to learn to be able to farm to be able to grow food and What we decided to do after we produced that series all three of us really liked it We decided to sort of continue following more of a menace's project what they're doing with the CSA and To do updates and to look at more data as they acquire it basically they're growing this business from scratch So to look at some of the mathematics behind that now in 2014 I didn't get a chance to cross paths with Marvin as they were really short on time And I was running around getting really busy and their stain Vancouver was very short for 2014 So you just we just didn't end up crossing paths. So unfortunately, we didn't produce any videos for one season But this year mark did make it back to Vancouver and he stayed a longer period And I was I had a little bit more time and what we ended up doing I ended up getting together with Marv and we decided to go for a walk and You know talk to him get a little get a lowdown of where they are and what they've done since 2013 and what their future projections are and take a look at some of the logistics of You know farming and what they've encountered the pluses and and the pitfalls and the negative aspect some of the problems they've encountered So what I've done right now is edited the video that I made with Marv me and Marv made when we went for our walk and I'm loading that video on as a raw and what we're going to do for 2015 as Marv Sends me more data more information. I you know, I do my due diligence and research and you know find out What it is exactly that he's talking about and what's involved in farming? What we're going to do is that take some of that data and takes, you know chunks Snippets out of this raw interview and put them together and do basically what we did for 2013 make little short videos little segments and really specifically go into Certain topics just little snippets and in the end Hopefully, I'm not sure how long it's going to take us Where me Marv and Vanessa are happy with what we've produced, you know We'll try to put together a package and a booklet and basically have a little mini course introductory course for the mathematics of farming and you know Some of the things that you have to think about So right now what you're going to see is just a raw interview of me and Marv just talking and you know him getting me caught up with what they're doing and where they are and For 2015 what's going to happen is, you know, hopefully He'll send me some data and some pictures and some videos his shot of the farm and we'll put that stuff together and produce you know set number two for Mathematics of farming for the math videos we're creating for food and farming. Okay So this is the raw video you're about to see and I guess I'll see you guys in the next video Okay. Bye for now So last time we left you guys you guys had four Sections and they were 60 by 70 feet, right? And they were all separate and you had I forget how many clients you had at the time Would have been about 30 I think or 26 or yeah 25 to 30 clients and they were paying you guys 25 bucks a week and every week that we're getting a Variety a variety of yeah, like eight up to eight items or eight minimum of eight items of vegetables and It would change during the season. So okay, so you're eating always in season And you guys were running your season was 16 weeks. Yeah, so we stuck with that when you stuck with 16 weeks Yeah, okay, and you basically start your work off in the winter when you're taking In the in the greenhouse and you built a greenhouse and there's a fantastic video of them building the greenhouse And what you told me this year you you have a bigger greenhouse going on right now Yeah, we got a like a real one that isn't all built out of you know salvage material which is Which is fine and good, but now now this one's a little more professional So it's it's steel steel ribs and it's 48 by 20 feet Which is plenty of space so we have four rows in there and we had it full of tomatoes and and those are Those are the places where you're growing the seedlings to a certain height and then planting them Yeah, yeah In this case we were still growing in the old one because we hadn't put the new one up Oh, so we were transporting the seedlings out to the field But in the ground we were growing tomatoes in the ground out in the field where the greenhouse where the new one is now Okay, so this is this new greenhouse is Substantially larger than what you guys had before yeah, and you mentioned one thing you got You got subsidized Awesome deal. Yeah, well, there's a there's a plan that New Brunswick has that's To help beginning farmers sort of It's called a season extension grant. Okay, and the idea is to promote longer seasons more sustainable sort of So so there isn't as much import, you know So so producers can have a longer season. So it covers everything from root cellars to Greenhouses that you can get stuff in the ground earlier. Okay, or or have storage crops later in the season So whatever extends your season you can give them a proposal Yeah, and they'll subsidize some of that and that's being mainly because Canada We're we're in Canada by the way and Canada gets Certain parts of Canada huge parts of Canada. We have a summer We have a winter and there's maybe two-week transition of spring and fall and the seasons are short You're really dependent on the weather. Yeah, for example, we had frost in May May 28th was our last frost and September 15th or September 18th was our last first frost so that's that's usually there's a safe time like every every zone every growing zone has a sort of a Average frost date and you plan around that because there's certain things that just can't take seedlings can't take frost For example, as soon as frost hits your your plans are done. Yeah Well, there's some things that that can like there's a lot of like kale for example does really well in the frost Yeah, the gross here in the winter as well in Vancouver ruin Vancouver right now. So the season here is much longer It's so it's a zone. It's it's called a hardiness zone and it's out there were zone four I believe and it goes zero is like a tundra, you know, basically and and tropical would be I think a zone Nine or something nine or ten. I'm not sure. Okay. So it goes from zero to ten the scale. Yeah, okay Okay, good here. I think we're seven or seven or eight. Maybe I don't know. Wow. Okay. So anything anything that Extended your season the government Substitizes and you guys got basically your area increased huge compared to what you had. Yeah So this year you're gonna start working in the in the new greenhouse. Yeah, and you needed that because you've From what Mar show me they've really extended the area that they're growing now You're you were four lots four sections 60 by 50 feet and what you've done You've connected those sections and you've started some other sections. Yeah, correct. Yeah So should we draw this out for them? Yeah, do a layout and then what we're gonna do is Mars gonna show us You know, they're doing crop rotation and stuff. So we'll talk a little bit about this Just get a quick little load on of what's going on with them And what we're gonna do we've got sticks So we've got sticks so Mars gonna just basically lay it out for us and let us know What the what the work area so? Yeah, the original squares would have been There would have been So what they've done here, let me show you this thing I'm not sure if you'll see it, but I'll I'll post it up on the thing. So what they've done is The squares that they had there were four squares here and they've joined them join them together and made a rectangle Okay, so let's assume let's take this as the rectangle this whole thing That would have been all tilled up So this was a hayfield originally in 2011 we came and it was all hay Okay, and we essentially started with one of those squares in 2011 layout is like this and then you have One section here. So there's another section here Yep, and then you got two big sections here now. Yep, so This one this one would technically have been Over there, but for the purpose of framing things will we'll put it here Yeah, and and when you add these up I sort of calculated roughly. That's why I did these squares here. Yeah, just for a scale So it does come out to just over an acre. I think an acre would be Yeah, like an acre of cultivated land so a crew you got acre of crops That you're planting yeah, yeah, okay, okay cool because last time when we talked you had Point four acres. Yeah quite a bit less the number was point four acres All four sections together was total point four acres now You're up to a full acre of crops that you're planting and how come you how come you expanded? Why did you grow? um the idea was Basically we're chasing higher ground. It's it's a flat field like when you look at it It looks flat, but what we've seen from these like big weather events that sort of are coming that higher frequencies is that There are lower areas that tend to flood a lot more and flooding We do have other ways to deal with it like we can do raised beds which kind of elevate the The soil how far are you raising them? What we're doing it by hand. So sometimes if we have extra help Yeah, yeah, it's you we have the tractor the tractor treads are Five feet apart. Yeah, and so we we take it down to like just under four feet. So it means shoveling it up you know like you have The tractor beds and we want to we want to make it down to Like we'll shovel it up from here and kind of like okay. Okay. Yeah, you know push it in building. Are you building? a sort of a A dyke There's no material. It's it's yeah, it's all soil like we're not putting wood in anything But the idea is that if it does flood it'll stay in the lower areas and protect the Yeah, so your rows are now raised Some of them are some of them are narrower and raised. Yeah and the idea with that also is If you can keep that you you don't have to till every year because Too much tilling first of all it takes more fossil fuels second of all. It's Not good for the there's like I think it's micro risel structures Like micro stuff that that I don't really mesh out that you're breaking apart Yeah, that you're breaking and you're and what they do they all help in you know the sort of the The ecosystem of the of this of this Soil and so it's kind of a permaculture technique that people use they Raise their beds and they you don't really touch it. You you weed it and you You know use hand tools, but you're not like you're not so you don't you don't tell it at all Uh ideally few years low till is is more Sustainable let's say like it's it gives healthier soil and it maintains the nutrients and it maintains all the Sort of the unseen stuff that that's going on in the soil that You know it's all good for the crops, so but it's a lot more labor-intensive. Yeah. Yeah, yeah Yeah, it's not on a on a large scale like You would need a there are things that you can get a bed shaper for example for a tractor or you can get a A lot of small farms would have a walk behind tiller Which is they make really good efficient walk behind tillers that that will Raise your beds and make narrower beds Okay, okay, so that's that's an option that we're looking at as well And I guess the reason that one of the reasons that you went from basically this and Little bit here this you extended this one as well. Yeah. Yeah, we had this is where our new greenhouses Oh, that's where you put the new greenhouse. Yeah, we got a it's supposed to be a movable greenhouse So it's on runners. Oh, we built wooden runners and the idea was to You also as a season extension thing to be able to plant late crops here Slide the greenhouse over to here and have them mature in the fall And then in the spring start something here And move it back here and have whatever's growing. So, you know, you're essentially doubling your area. That's Undercover because undercover it's a lot more Controlled like you can control the light and the well not so much the light, but the the conditions are a little more Say growing tomatoes like you can't you can grow them outdoors out there But it's you're looking at blight and for example, if we had that tropical storm with outdoor tomatoes, it would have been Catastrophe just destroys. Yeah, just destroys it. Okay. So we yeah you You want to a lot of people grow strictly undercover because it's Just for that reason you you take out like there's so many random factors that you Kind of eliminate. So yeah, and that the whatever 2013 You had 25 26 clients or so. How many clients did you guys have this year or last last season which would be then? 2014 we had 40 clients and some of those were half shares, but 40 like 40 total clients clients buying from you guys Yeah, plus plus a farmers market. So it was oh, yeah, you did the farmers market every every week Yeah, for about 12 weeks or 10 weeks. Yeah 10 weeks you did farmers market, which was the same schedule as you had before So basically you you expanded your market about 80 percent or so 40 26 to 40 whatever that percentage comes out to Yeah So that was a lot more money you were getting at the beginning of the season What did you guys end up doing with that money? Like you bought materials for the farm and you you obviously Pitched them to get a bigger greenhouse. Yeah, so the government covered the new brunswick government covered half of that cost Okay, sweet sweet. So, um How much how much was it total? I think it was about 2,500 2,500 that we paid or I'll have to check my numbers on that. Okay around there. I think like uh They can for for that size, you know, um, it's got roll-up sides and it's we didn't get like the Super fancy package with end walls and stuff So we had to build our own end walls and do a lot of little things little modifications So, yeah, I think it was 2,500 That you're you paid So it was about five thousand dollar greenhouse. Um, or did we or was it 2,500 total and we paid half Okay, get get back to me. Anyway, yeah, yeah, but it's well worth it because it's expanding So you're able okay fantastic. So are you guys thinking about doing more greenhouses getting more greenhouses or um, there's uh an option of doing a It's called a caterpillar talent caterpillar tunnel, which is um, it's steel conduit tubing like round one inch or something and It's curved. It's not quite as big as it's not 20 feet wide. Okay But you can go long you can go up to 300 feet long Oh, I think I've seen him around here, but it's it's it's arched. It's arched. Yeah. So ours is like a gothic It's it it stays up the plastic stays on all year. Okay, so it sheds the snow. Yeah The the ones that are just a simple curve. It's um The snow stays on there. So you have to take the plastic down Every year. So it's a little more labor intensive, but but it's lighter and it's less material and it's It's same same idea like growing undercover You can do, you know, all your your hot crops like your sweet peppers hot peppers egg plants and tomatoes You start out there and yeah, and then so is this so one one hectare You said you one hectare or one acre acre one acre. So one acre you're working with and that's sufficient to supply 40 Clients for the csa. Oh, yeah, and then some and then some and the farmer's market, of course Yeah, and the farmer's market was going well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah selling out of stuff. Oh, yeah It's we kind of have the luxury that we're Most of the most of the season there. We're the only vegetable producer. Oh, wow in the farmer's market Yeah, which is it's not a farmer's market. It's a it's a market. Yeah, lots of lots of crafts and jewelry and um People go there. There's a breakfast and so and it's a really old crowd like it's it's Average age would be probably 60 like late 50s 60 So not not the same kind of food consciousness that you would see in larger cities where people are like Oh local food, you know, it's it's still kind of people are like Why are you charging this much for carrots when I can go to the store and a lot of education a lot of like You know, this is what this means This is how these are our practices. We don't use chemicals and this kind of thing So so but word of mouth is getting out obviously if you're getting more clients coming in you're selling out of stuff Okay, okay, and what's that? What's the population density that you're That's coming that you're supplying to like Are you near a big city? Like how many people in the area accessible to you? Like do you know, um, like we're talking 100,000 people 500,000 people in your area. No, not even close Not even close. No, if you look at um a map of New Brunswick, which I can send you a little graphic We're on the northeast There's like a it's called the Acadian Peninsula. Okay, and The largest city would be probably where we city. I mean, it's a town. It's called trackety. That's where we go to market Okay, and I think it's about 5,000 people. That's it. Yeah, and and the town Close to where we grow, which is 30 minutes to the south. Yeah, it's called negwak and it's 1200 people So you're getting 40 clients Uh from about 2000 people that Have access to you. Uh, they're from both they're from other communities But we have like sort of depots where so they pick up at the farm on thursday Or the other half picks up at the market on a saturday so, um between those two and and there's plenty more demand like because there's not a lot of uh At competition, let's say there's not really The people that that do want local organic food There's no nowhere to get it unless you drive say to monkton, which is two hours south. So, um Yeah, so we're we could definitely expand if we had like say the You know, if we if we would hire employees for sure So it's just you and venessa basically doing this right now And venessa just uh, she got a full-time job mid-season. So that was another this was a kind of a weird season Because uh, it it kind of fell on me and then we did we did sign up with a Uh an organization called help x which is kind of um, like woofing, you know willing workers on websites you can go online and Decide to join a farm. Yeah, and basically people come there an apprentice with you guys Or or even less less formal than that like just they drop by for a week and help you But we have a profile that writes up exactly what you can expect kind of like, you know You'll be staying at a guest guest house that a small guest shack that I built that is like No running water and you got a you know Crap in the woods and yeah, but there's shower like we have access to a shower But people kind of go for a more of do you pay them or no, they're just there to learn We feed them you feed them three meals a day. So yeah a rough room and and board And they do a little bit of work and learn about farming and stuff like that. Yeah, quite a bit of work Like I mean and and a lot of it is is not that hard like and it just goes faster when you have more people Oh, yeah, like weeding or whatever it is weeding, especially or especially or monotonous things that you know, even planting out sometimes takes Just a lot longer Yeah, so, uh, how's the how's the growing going? What were you guys doing in each one of these sections? Um, we're treating this so every year we would We uh prepare the soil like we we till it and we feed it with compost We also started using crab meal, which is uh, I don't know. Maybe last year we were doing that as well It's a byproduct of the of the there's a large fishing industry. Yeah, you mentioned that When we did the the interview the talk before you mentioned you were getting a little bit From the fish the factory and you were getting a little bit of uh From the peat moss or something like this. Yeah as well. Yeah as well. Okay, uh the crab meal is good because we have a local supplier that's um, they ship it to japan I think for I don't think it's for agriculture purposes, but um But nobody in canada really uses it out there even though it's a really good Like organic approved input for your soil that has a good good sort of chemical makeup deal for this. Yeah, it's it's uh I think 10 bucks for a large but like a 25 kilo bag Oh my god And you mixed that with the peat moss and the soil and sometimes we actually sometimes that we just we scatter it on And it's like a powder. It's not it's compost is quite heavy to you need, you know A lot of shoveling or we have a tractor bucket, but we'd rather you know With the with the crab meal you can kind of just sprinkle it on or so is it dry or is it wet? It's dry. It's dry like fish food kind of yeah, really stinky, but really about whatever the plants like it. Yeah, yeah Okay, um, so we yeah, so that's how we prepare it and then Each I mean each crop requires a slightly different um approach to like develop the conditions, you know For example corn we grew corn and it requires a lot of feeding like a lot of nitrogen and um That's another reason to do the raised beds because nitrogen is If you know anything about industrial agriculture, that's the big problem That's depleting a lot of the soil in the midwest or all over north america. So is that what they're using potash for? Um Not yeah, um, that's for probably for potassium But a lot of chemical fertilizers are Nitrate like yeah, so they're they're petrochemically derived nitrogen or or they you know, it's it's just Obviously, it's not working. Like yeah, yeah, it's definitely all beats the hell out of the soil And it and it usually leaches into the waterways and there's a lot of reasons not to use that So that's basically the thing behind organic farming one of one of the the big reasons for organic practices is to build up the life in the soil rather than Kill it spray it with everything and then add, you know, because it's not holding the it's not holding the content Yeah, I know from the geophysics. I did there's a lot of water contamination near Huge agro business like because there's a lot of leaching So what's going on with with the with the cross? What are you guys doing? Are you guys doing rotations? So yeah, we um a lot of uh, we we decided to do large squares here. Um We figured we'll do it this year and even if some of it rests a year. It's it can be okay if if we uh, Um We'll eventually use it kind of thing or or we'll uh, you know, it makes sense to rotate your crops because certain for example insects can stay in the soil Over winter and and they pick a certain crop like um cucumber beetles or or potato beetles The Colorado potato beetle is a large problem that most organic growers even even conventional growers have Um, but uh when you rotate crops, so we grew quite a bit here We had about 20 rows here and uh You don't necessarily want to plant the same thing in the same place every year because like I said the bugs Okay, um also because certain nutrient balances. Um, there are certain types of plants that grow Uh better after you know, some plants are what's called nitrogen fixers, which they um dandelions Yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot of things that are considered weeds are are actually quite good. Yeah, um And So in addition to the rotation, we started doing some cover crop for example This whole area which we grew in the year before or in 2012 And 2013 We covered with oats. We just we took uh, we got a bag of oats like seed oats and uh spread it with a hopper or with like a Lawn cedar and what a cover crop does is it it uh Uh acts as like How would I explain it like it's what's called like a green manure? So it it takes the nutrients and it puts it into the plant you let the plant stay there So we don't use the oats that we don't have to harvest It's it's you need machinery for that like you can do it by hand, but uh on a on a large scale It's it's like you have to crack each individual kernel We like oats we eat oats, but it's not that much and uh, But it's really good for the soil because you leave the nutrients are in the plants You let them die and they fall back in and essentially instead of composting you that's what it is Yeah, and also it suppresses other weeds because you pick crops that grow fast for example clover or buckwheat or alfalfa They grow fast and they they they're a competition for the weeds. So, okay Um, you're keeping the good plants growing Uh, and the weeds kind of don't have as much of a chance So they grow slower than the oats and stuff. So oats and whatever it is it grows faster than weeds. Yeah, okay So so for these things for for example, you planted cucumbers here So next season you're going to plant cucumber somewhere else Yeah, and the bugs don't find their way there most of them die off Uh, ideally they wouldn't but they do they of course they bugs always find a way like you're not dealing with 100% Of the bugs that have slept. Yeah, that's right. They're hibernating there. Yeah So the smart ones make their way to the new crop But it depends also on a lot of things like timing. When did you plant it and and if you With the rotations you really have to it's a long term. It's maybe a five five year rotation you do, you know, so Eventually your potatoes potatoes are a really important one to rotate for example They may end up in five years in the same area But this is something that we're you know, it's not super high on our priority list, but It's something that you have to plan ahead well in advance. So if you have something tilled And you sort of maintain it just by maybe giving it a till in the fall and a cover crop It's it's a lot easier to use it in say three or four years Because it's already been worked rather than yeah, so you're not growing crops That you're selling on all this land. There's areas where you're doing cover crop or you're You're working to prepare it for the next season. Yeah, but it's it's mixed in within each square It's not like we we're not so organized that that We'll designate this to rest It's it's more like we'll have You know We'll notice that these work really well Then we'll leave a gap here and then we'll we'll plant say beans and something and then but then we just keep keep a sort of a record A loose record of yeah We can't grow in there and so or or it got flooded, you know, or it's like it's unusable for this year and then We'll we'll add to it next year. We'll we'll put more compost or whatever needs to be done Do you plan on uh extending the area growing this season or you're going to work stick with this and see how that goes Yeah, oh it's plenty with the greenhouse since you got the greenhouse. Yeah, it's plenty. It's it's we don't need more Yeah, you don't need more. Yeah, unless like I said if we because with the volunteer help We can get a little a little more done, but um It's unless you have like a full-time employee. You really can't um So what are you going to do if you can't work that much? What are you going to do if uh, you get a lot of people wanting to buy into the csa? How are you going to supply them? Uh, well, we're we're limiting. We're probably capping capping it 40 or so. Yeah, you're going to cap it because you still have to go to the farmers market The farmers market is generating a fair bit of income for you guys. Yeah. Yeah, so that one's it has to be in the play Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it has to be in your economics. Yeah to make sure you're getting enough funds for next season stuff like this Yeah, I mean we've built up our clientele and they they expect, you know, they expect us to be there They want their vegetables. Yeah, and it's nice, you know, it's it's nice to interact on that level Okay, another thing we did at the farm pickup on thursdays is Because venessa got this job mid-season we sort of switched that one to a Market style csa so they prepaid we had the they paid a lump sum But we gave them a little more choice to alleviate kind of the stresses of For us of having enough for the market for the other csa customers Um But it it was just a trial run to see okay, like if we give them This much choice, you know, who will buy? What, you know, so you do a sort of market test to see what people want. Yeah Oh, okay. Um, and it's it's been interesting. Some people they they just that were customers the year before that they They for example didn't buy something that we were giving them already for a year, you know our first season and It made us think like yeah, what were what were they doing with it? They don't eat it, you know So now it's kind of I don't know, you know a lot of it is People are used to a certain shopping experience and this is new for a lot of people So so do you give people a list like they have a grocery list of people checking off like a like a restaurant like a menu They get there. Yeah, there's a list of what we have this week and It's not in advance. It's not an advance. No, we'll tell them. Okay next week We'll probably have this because we look at the field and we know what we have But we'll say we might not have enough of this. So if you really like Beans, they're they're a really hot seller. They're like yellow beans or people love them. It's part of a traditional dish. I'm like yellow Yeah, me too. They're delicious But they're we're always like, okay get here early because you know, they'll sell out They'll sell out so and there's certain limits like we want everyone to have like carrots and peas and stuff and things that that we grow pretty well, I think and we want everyone to have still a variety but This this is kind of like a it's less formal. It's not like You know, here's your here's your share with everything in it. You have to take all of it. Okay. It's kind of like flexibility Yeah, a little more flexibility. Okay. So how did your finances work this year you guys or last season? It was it was good enough to cover your expenses And for you guys to expand obviously and you made some adjustments to what you're going to do this season coming up Yeah, it's Finances. Yeah, it covers it. I mean, we're we're in a sort of a unique situation where we're not paying rent for the land We have for use of the land We have a tractor at our disposal that we really just have to gas up Which is and it's not I mean, it's it's fairly efficient like it's not It's nothing close to what what a bigger farm would have like so we it's just old school like tractor that Yeah, it's actually it's not a bad. It's it's a good track fairly big john dear. Vanessa's dad is an uh mechanic and he loves Fixing things machines. She loves big machines. It's too big for us, but I'm not complaining You know, like it's I learned to drive it and um as as much as I don't like the smell of it the alternative of Digging each row by hand would be like a cow impossible. I mean, yeah, we could have workhorses workhorses. Yeah Hard you got to feed them. You got to feed them You got to take care of them in the winter and stuff like you got it Isn't there is a guy that was offering us a horse actually Oh, because we have this is all hay. So he said, yeah, you got to feel the hay, you know, just fence it in and We said thought about doing that fencing off an area and letting people graze They're animals to graze and stuff Yeah, uh, is there a demand for that? Um There would be demand for yeah, maybe a cow or a pig that's that's the that's the total area we'll take Uh, I'm not sure. Uh, yeah, I don't know much about livestock and stuff, but but there isn't that much Uh How should I say it like a tradition of of raising animals around there? It's it's lumber and fishing basically Oh, okay. That's yeah. So it We do we do know a cattle farmer that that he uh, he grows all his own grain and he does He's he's old school and and he yeah, he's good But um, oh, that's nice fog horn fog horn. Yeah, it's foggy here in vancouver right now So it's you can see the sun sort of disappearing and getting Darker and it's chilly. It's winter. It's january right now in vancouver But it's for january rest of canada's frozen vancouver. We're sitting it around I don't know what it is eight degrees probably or something eight or six degrees And uh, yeah, fantastic weather. We've had yeah, I mean we've had I think it was minus Wow, it's been like minus 2030, but um, even in november we had like, you know, your cold cold weather Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the winters where you guys are is like freezing. It's super cold. Okay. Okay Um, is there anything else that uh I mean you're gonna send me a lot of info So more more as agreed to send me Some info and hopefully I'll get a chance to put some videos together And go through to some of the mathematics of what they're doing and you know, we'll take a take a look at this and Maybe the car or farm lay out the sections and figure out You know what they've been growing and how they've been rotating and what their yield has been and Some of the economics of it, right? Is it is it feasible to do something like this on a personal level? Um, I mean you guys love it. You're growing amazing food That's keeping you fairly healthy because you're getting a lot of nutrients. Oh, that's one of the things about economics It's not just how much money you're getting back from what you're producing But is that worth keeping you healthy so you don't have extra cost to You know maintain your health. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's all outdoor work It's some of it's a little bit, you know, hard on the knees in the back But yeah, I wouldn't you know, I wouldn't trade it for an office job I have to get a gym membership to stay in shape. Yeah, yeah And that's the thing in in the cities in in Canada anyway because it the winters are pretty harsh here Or there could be pretty harsh here the outdoor work activities Reduce a lot for a lot of people. So, uh People end up if you're active when you're coming out of the winters Uh, you have to sort of take it easy slowly get into more active physical stuff because you end up having a lot of injuries Come spring. Yeah I know this from personal experience as well You're you're all gung-ho when the sun's shining a little bit warmer to go out there and do your thing and you know You might hurt yourself. So you have to there's a transition out and transition in and there's a lot of hibernation We're like bearers here in Canada We do hibernations in the winter and eat a lot and grow a little fat and wear it off in the spring and stuff like this So and hopefully we're eating good food, right? Because we need the nutrients and stuff No the minerals from the soil But with this as well, I mean it's seasonal work and winter is definitely uh Like we go until november when we're really like There's a lot of maintenance work at the end of the season to prepare the soil like for example to mulch or or a certain thing like garlic over winters. You have to mulch it and Other things that you have to Consider So that you know, it's kind of like hibernates well and then that it's ready to work in the spring if Depending on what kind of spring it is, you know might be a late spring and and you don't have time to do the prep work so But again, yeah, it's it's seasonal work. So you do have to find kind of ways to You know maintain some kind of activity Yeah, or or yeah, so in the winter you're here because Right now the amount of work you have to do on the farm is minimal Yeah, I mean I can afford to take off take off take off and do a thing or you get another job Doing your downtime If you need the funds if you need the funds right myself I mean I I use winter as a because because I do a lot of art and it's sort of my Time when when during the summer I really can't even get in the creative headspace. Yeah Or or it's a different kind of headspace, which it's also creative, but not in the Surrey way. Yeah in media. Yeah, because more of As some of you know, I've used a lot of marv's music for my math videos And he shoots video edits video and he's produced some fantastic stuff and You have some of that stuff that you're going to send again this time around and we'll cut You know, I'll we'll show you some of the work that marv's doing With with the media producing because that's a great creative outlet And when you're stuck inside in the winters in canada It's a beautiful thing to have a computer to to create to to produce work. Yeah, absolutely Anything else you don't want to share this is this sort of gives a pretty good lowdown of what's going on where you guys are Yeah, and this year you're going to maintain this level what you guys have Supply your 40 clients for the csa hit the farmers market Do crop rotations and see and one thing I was going to ask you. How did you guys? How have you guys figured out how to do the rotation? Are you guys reading up on this? Oh, yeah Yeah, so it's not just trial and experiment that there is that as well But you're reading up a lot of research to see what works with what yeah, yeah The the thing to keep on top of is because of our diversity We're growing about 40 varieties of vegetables. Okay, so To keep them kind of Blocked together like You don't want to mix too much. You know, you don't want to alternate like Too many things In one there's nothing wrong that season with doing that It's just uh later on if you do want to implement a crop rotation You want to have like say your carrots and your like there's Groupings like brassicas for example these are this is a I think it's a family. I'm not sure of the taxonomical Thing but it's it's like your cabbage kale broccoli bok choy things like that It's good to have them together so that then you can kind of move that block and be like This year we're growing That whole block somewhere else. So whatever it is 10 beds, whatever bugs, whatever pests were feed on that You know, you leave them there and move on. Yeah pests and nutrients as well nutrients Take the nutrients. Okay. Okay. Uh, so just you mentioned that there were some problems some some failures some pitfalls that you guys had So what were they what what were some of the problems you encountered? Um, it probably would have been a lot of a lot of it stemmed from that big rain event It was post tropical storm arthur Yeah, it was a hurricane and then it was downgraded. Uh, but that hit us in june and uh So as a result, I think or we think that uh a lot yeah a lot of the nutrients of the plants that we had just kind of fed with compost Were probably just leashed out just sort of yeah drained out washed away. Yeah, and uh And we had a lot of like really weak looking for example We couldn't even sell cabbage like I think we sold three heads of cabbage this year. No, we're like, you know, yeah There's softballs, you know, oh my god, and uh broccoli If you have Weak seedlings, uh, they they seem to be more susceptible to insect damage Also, there was a lot of weeding issues. We didn't get on top of weeding If you let the weeds go too much or if you don't thin out for example carrots or beets Anyway, I itemized all our crops all our varieties and I put kind of you know, this one thrived this one Needs improvement and this one totally failed. So There was quite a quite a bit of absolute failure like there would be beds whole beds like for example, we had Up here, I think we had like two or three beds of The brassica as I was saying the cabbage Cabbage and broccoli we had a few back here that just got destroyed by by pests and um well and it becomes kind of that's when you really You question everything, you know, are we growing too fast? Are we um is our timing off or You know, so mid season we had a kind of a hard time of that's also why we implemented that market style csa because We didn't want we we actually couldn't provide Exactly what we promised so so it was a way of kind of giving a bit less but More diversity because we could we could still salvage some of it, but Also in the end we We cut it down to 14 weeks. So we actually some people still we had a few things but it kind of the structure fell apart at the end so Yeah, we told people well in advance it it's probably going to be 14 weeks and then we had to It was a bit painful to pay them back their money, but you know, that's the deal You know, so were your clients happy everyone was happy. I mean one was happy. Yeah coming back next year Yeah, so basically you promised 16 you delivered 14 and you took that ratio and reimbursed people whatever The less the two weeks whatever that percentage comes out to yeah Okay, and everyone was super happy because you want to go from one season to the next with a clean slate You don't want to have you don't want to carry debt. You don't know you want to go clean slate Yeah, we don't want to have like because our record keeping is honestly not Not great. So sometimes we you know, we write things in pencil and we Write it on scrap to paper. We're getting better, but Well, hopefully this will this is this is doing, you know, we'll start doing to keep a nice record Yeah, presented anyway. We'll put it, you know, put it all together that way you have all the information I mean and it helps just even to talk about it just summarize the year because Sometimes I mean this year we were so we were almost we were just like, okay We're done, you know, we were really done at the end of the season. We don't we didn't really want to Deal with that deal with it. Yeah, you just don't want to stress about it So but now it's we're getting back into planning phase, you know, like thinking about adjustments to To avoid some of the pitfalls again Yeah, definitely something you want to be aware of when you're ordering seeds Like you have to order seeds for the next year. You use some of what you have left, but Um, planning the crops like, you know, the other video where it was all about crop planning and You can avoid a lot of Right, like a lot of problems by Proper planning proper planning. Yeah Yeah, that's fantastic. So there's a lot of research in this and hopefully You know, we're we're we're trying to share as much as we can Yeah, whatever Marvel Vanessa have learned and and I'm still learning too like I mean Vanessa studied it for years and and and we're still Yeah, reading up on it because it's it's it's really a lifetime of knowledge You know a lot of second generation farmers probably take it for granted that You're supposed to plant this at this time and it's kind of ingrained in the Tradition, but when you jump into something as big as farming, it's There's just so much knowledge that that is There's good resources, but it's it's it's a lot to wrap your head around. Yeah, ideally education systems should be set up We're oh, absolutely a apprenticeship. There should be some kind of apprenticeship in farms Where you go there every year if you really want to get into growing food Where you get an idea of what's required to do something because there's an easy way to do something And a hard way to do something and the wrong way to do something, right? Yeah, yeah I mean, I would think even just something as simple as you know for kids to to see the The progress of you know from seed to germination to You know caring for a plant and just that the amount of It doesn't take a lot of vigilance It does its own thing, but you as long as you're there to see it and Know the stages of it you automatically understand it. You don't really you know that You get an understanding that's beyond uh, okay food is in the supermarket or like or I don't like vegetables It's like you you have to like vegetables after that you have to be like this is amazing You know it came it took power from the sun and like, you know There's a lot of beautiful things that that you learn along the way that are just Amazing, you know as much as you can try to manage it It's it's it does grow on its own, you know and a lot of weeds come up and nature will You know sort of self up. Yeah. Yeah, so that's great to to just see that year after year and And kind of try and optimize things, but you can't really push too hard. You can't really Force things, you know, otherwise then you start growing under Laboratory conditions, right and then that's not farming. We're not we're not a war with nature We should be working in harmony with nature. Yeah So, okay. Thanks a lot more. Yeah, much appreciated. Yeah. Yeah, we'll We'll we'll come back to them and do updates Whenever they come to Vancouver, we'll touch base with them and see what they're doing. Sure. Okay Thanks for watching and again, I guess I'll see you guys in the next video and hopefully go over some of the stuff Some of the numbers some of the logistics of it And we'll try to you know, keep it coherent and hopefully towards the end I don't know how long it's going to take us to get a full package together, you know, try to create a workbook and You know math in real life, right mathematics of farming See you guys in the next video. Bye for now