In this episode we chat with Rob Rock of Pitchfork Farm in Vermont. Rob has been organic farming since 2002 and has been an innovator in the field of “slow tools”, tools made for human scale, ecological farming. In this wide ranging conversation we dive deep into topics such as the role of technology in small-scale farming, community building and the importance of local business, the future of small farms amidst climate change, and how we all need to take part in designing the future we want.
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we get to do this thing that we wake up every day and we know that we’re doing something um positive uh beneficial for the community and you know if you have friends that have jobs you know working for the street department or something they’re they’re often like what am what am I doing and that feeling of like why am I you know what am I doing with my life I have never felt that it’s just not entered my my mind you know I’ve learned so many skills SKS and how to deal with people and how to like grow and run a business and be part of a community we need these small businesses because they’re the they’re the soul of the community I think like I’ve come to like really appreciate that people look at small business owners as like you know wow you’re like some kind of like doing something like you’re like you have this really important role and I used to think like why you know we’re just like I’m just running around trying to survive and I have no idea like what I’m doing half the time and it’s like what’s the next thing but yes it it is the soul of your community like and that’s cuz that’s where people work and that’s where they make connections and farming is fundamental to to your community like let’s not ever we should never accept that that it’s like well it’s something that happens somewhere else and we can truck it in I just don’t think that’s that’s right so hey everyone today we have a really cool guest a really special guest Rob Rock from Pitchfork Farm in Vermont and um so so happy to have you here man thanks J nice to see you man yeah it’s cool and um you know I was just saying to you like you’re one of the few uh farmer guys that I know that has been around for you know as long perhaps even more than I have and that’s still involved and what was your first year what was your uh uh we started like Ginette in 2004 and um you know prior to that we had two years of kind of woofing and experience but that man I I would say 200 was my first full season yeah and then 2003 I was woing uh California and Oregon so yeah we’re like right there in the same yeah that’s crazy yeah to think about but uh I remember meeting you we had a it was a farm hack event at the Intervale in Burlington and this was when uh San do you remember from the greenhorns she was just so good at getting everybody organized and uh that was when we were discovering each other like oh there’s other people doing this like it was sort of a pre internet what years oh that was probably 2008 2009 10 perhaps I’m not sure so yeah we weren’t on Instagram yet like kind of bouncing off each other it was still like what do you mean there’s in Quebec there’s like a small organic farm I had no idea yeah you man you’re bringing me back like for R Chris like to to take the van and to drive an hour to go to Intervale in Burling and just to go to Burlington Vermont was like oh my God like this is so so happening this was so eye openening and I remember that farm hack I don’t know where it was but it was more more in the in the north side yeah we were in like the community bar maybe something like yeah and then then like I was just meeting you know meeting all these Growers that were kind from a different tribe Y and uh it was epic before you could witness everyone else’s tribe and have the illusion that you’re all together you know via social media like you actually were going somewhere that you didn’t know yeah you had tour around and I think that uh at that time too we were like going to conferences that was another big thing to like find other people ho so great yeah that was that was that was the Golden Age like I led conferences just like listening to people give talks and workshops connecting having beers together and just kind of learning that we’re all doing the same thing do you feel like it’s uh some of that energy is faded out or is it sort of just less uh CU yeah I there comes a point too where you’re like sit through the workshops and you’re like I’ve kind of heard some of the yeah the techniques a few times yeah so it gets harder to uh well you know I think today Rob like if if if we’re not giving the workshop then we’re there for the party got because you know we’ve we’ve you know we know our craft a lot and but but I I really enjoy I still go obviously because because of all the work that that’s surrounding the farm but like I enjoy partying I enjoy getting together um I really enjoy it still great so like I don’t go as much for the learning pieces so much although sometimes I I listen to interesting stuff but definitely hanging out I still I still like it yeah I’ve caught you there a couple times I feel like great yeah is the social not one of the most important parts of farming yes y I mean that’s when I became a farmer like the first thing that really attracted me in was just the the Community Village kind of life style that existed on my farm at least and it was just blown away by that level of connection to others and I didn’t experien that before mhm yeah there’s definitely something that brings us together and and you know everyone feels that we’re kind of a part of something yeah and uh then there’s there’s colorful people you know farmers in many ways are very interesting colorful like I was in North Carolina and we went to was it yeah I think it was Asheville is it Asheville in North Carolina that sounds right and and yeah this is like the craft beer city of the of the us and we went to like bar hopping in a few places and I was with you know four or five farmers and everyone was so fade in their in their style everyone was dressed kind of like whatever but the farmers we had hats we had boots and we were just kind everywhere we went I was kind of looking at us and say hey we have a lot of style here I don’t know even the car heart just like the car heart garments they just look so good in yeah you pop out yeah yeah farmer swag farmer swag and so I like it obviously can we talk about tools we can talk about tools I don’t see any better place to start off with you rob um you know looking at your kind of presence online whatever I what is there I I get this idea of like a mad scientist in terms of inventor of tools and and thinker about tools so I think that’s really yeah it’s been a big uh that’s really marked my my career I’d say as sort of like the I do the I’m a grower I’m out in the field farming dealing with you know clients chefs everything employees the whole thing is happening the the full yeah the full uh you know impact of it but um there’s this thing that farmers do uh For Better or Worse where you you sort of say well I could maybe build that or if you see something and want to like make a modification or like have this idea like I’m going to weld up a little uh toolbar you know and sort of see if I can get something that works better for my system um and back when we were kids uh it’s way less true today but you couldn’t find a lot of tools for our scale of farming that’s true um and so we the idea to invent things was strong and I think like um you know we’d see something that they would have in Europe oh like in Europe they have all this great stuff and we just don’t have it in the US CU all the farming in the US is like it’s gone you know super industrial yeah yeah of course so we’d see a picture of something from like a farm in uh Germany and we’d try to build it and I can remember I would like um you know early on I would like 3D print uh like a finger weer mold and like cast it in urethane until like cuz you couldn’t buy a finger weeder in the US so I was doing kind of strange stuff like that uh in my spare time um and uh let me think what happened was uh we had flooding on my farm like really early on like 2011 uh we had a tropical storm called Irene come through and that Irene yeah that really banged us up because it was like right in August where we didn’t have time to replant anything or like recover any of the season and I was like wow this is really uh this is an intense situation CU I was by then I had been farming for you know 78 years I was I was devoted to it but you know how are we going to make a living with this reality of uh you know kind of a climate event that could take your season out and so I I think from there I really was like I need to learn another trade that goes you know parallel to farming like it felt like a really strong um imperative and I picked welding I went to like uh I went to like all the adult Tech schools in the area and I took like every welding class you could get and I got certified and I did all the testing and you know the guys that the teachers were so great they were oldtimers back then you know what I mean like yeah um and so from there I was like wow this is a great skill that I can like do in the winter when the farm was offseason and so I started to uh I started working for artists like sculptors uh I built industrial cranes one winter that was a really heavy duty industrial job uh but I got really good at that trade and I continued to you know invent tools and it just kept escalating I just kind of uh kept at it and I still do it to this day I’m still kind of uh all winter like thinking about things uh designing projects and uh experimenting did welding become like a passion like just the art of welding or is it more like just like what you want to achieve in welding is a is is is a way to get yeah welding was sort of the like uh the road into it but uh it’s it’s just one aspect of designing or like thinking yeah so design was really the um you know that’s that’s the uh I guess that’s the word for for what I like to do and yeah welding is an aspect of making things or um and so from within welding I learned CAD modeling and I learned how to use a computer to think through a design project and that you learned all of that as you were going like as as in your 30s like yeah think about it like um let’s see so the Irene flood I was 31 so you know I’d already kind of been in farming for 10 years almost and that after that I think I got really serious because I think uh uh that that year 2011 I made like 5,000 bucks or something and I was living on my brother’s porch I mean you know he had like this three season porch and I was like hey man uh in Vermont yeah I’m in you know I’m in kind of a bad situation and I couldn’t get to the bathroom in the apartment cuz it was like between the bedrooms so I was waking up putting my you know snow boots or whatever and going to like the cafe in the morning to like brush my teeth and stuff because those guys my my brother and his roommate were sleeping late M and I was like this is a yeah time time to like think about maybe like should I go back to school like all those things that that come up in a farming career when you have a couple of Bad seasons because it can happen and it does it does I can relate it makes me think of my almost a year in a bus yep there you go on a farm but you know yeah making do yep well you you know you talked about Irene in 2011 yep uh and I’m sure we’ll get to it but like was it two years ago you there was pictures of your farm and you’re canoeing last summer yes and this is crazy like this is this is the most crazy farming scene I’ve ever seen in my life do do we have it do we have that picture you think it’s better on your Instagram or on uh this from the yeah this is from the hold on I didn’t think about that oh there’s one man oh yeah so that that has happened twice now those were big floods yeah and there’s been some small ones and so we’ve changed our cropping and we’ve sort of figured out um you know if you if you have a field of peppers and they get a little water in there and the plants die there’s no time this far north to to replant MH but if you’re growing a lot more like uh baby salad greens you know and even though you know scallions herbs that stuff can come back once the fields try out and so we found fields we we’ve changed strategies around for you know if there’s a um a little bit of water that can get in the field but when there’s a flood like that where the water is like 5T deep five 5T over 5et over the over the the garden yeah just you know everything’s gone yeah everything was gone so swes won’t save you in that circumstance no and is it because you’re you’re close to the river river bed is it is tricky Vermont’s tricky because we’ve got uh um it’s a it’s a state with a lot of mountains right and it’s it’s the good Farmland is along the waterways and so a lot of farms in Vermont have this exposure to that flooding yeah and I think uh you know that’s the big question that everyone was asking in the media like what’s going to happen to agriculture in Vermont um because we’ve got something really special there uh we’ve got all these great uh small farms incredible Farmers all over the state we’ve got a market we’ve got a community that understands what we do like really understands it and they support it and so we’ve built this precious like almost Inc you know inconceivably precious thing and it’s under threat now from uh from climate change from climate change yeah yep wow it’s giving me it’s giving me shivers man yeah yeah and if you think like there’s a river here yeah I mean if you think about it that a lot of a lot of folks that have gotten into agriculture too they’re concerned about doing something about uh environmental degradation and climate change and but who you know maybe they weren’t expecting to be kind of on the front lines once that reality hit us yeah cuz they’re they’re taking the they’re taking the hit and I think for us we were lucky we were a little more established and we we sort of weathered it but um if you’re starting out it’s it you know it make it can feel really Haywire or uh you know yeah what what what did that do for you emotionally like how did that to this day like how’s it effect it’s a horrible feeling cuz you it must be like imagine your ship you know is like out in the harbor and like just watching it sink cuz you’re helpless to really you know volunteers will show up and if you have cabbage that’s ready you can sort of pick it and get it into bins and get it out of the field but um after that you know you just sort of the water comes in slowly it’s it’s not very dramatic it’s not like a tidle wave or something it’s very strange so you can go out and there’s you know 3 in and everyone’s walking around and everyone’s you everyone’s drunk everyone’s drunk Yeah by like 9 in the morning cuz it’s just forget about it like it’s like this hopeless heartbreaking situation and uh the Water keeps coming in and then you you know overnight it’ll Peak and then you come back in the morning and that’s where the canoes come out [ __ ] and you make the best of it yeah we go out and we paddle around in the sunflowers you know that are they’re like down at the water level and you’re sort of paddling by them but uh it is a it is um it’s a slow burn like you because you can also see the the river predictions are so good now and so you know a few days ahead of time like it’s coming and you watch the the prediction graph going up up up up up wow how ominous yeah you know everyone started calling to everyone listening go see the uh the Pitchfork Farm uh Instagram and look at the pictures of what what Rob is talking about it’s like it’s crazy like yeah you’re you’re talking it from somebody that’s lived it twice yeah but for me looking at that last year I was like oh my God like I I never imagine something like that that’s even possible yeah like 5T is a lot of water and that was not a hurricane that was not a hurricane that’s what’s kind of weird to me cuz growing up in Jersey you know the we had a few hurricanes over especially when I was in like around 200 I think like 5 2010 there was at least there was Irene there was yep I don’t remember one of the others but heavy flooding we had on the RAR big and hit New Jersey hard yeah and you know those cause floods for sure but at least you know I don’t know it’s a hurricane so I I feel more like Okay I accept the hurricane caused the flood but just kind of run-of-the-mill rainy well I have I have all these like theories you know like I when this kind of stuff happens you’re like but what but why why and it was noo year and so the ocean gets warmer and the the surface of the ocean gets warmer because of the way the currents are circling or cycling and uh the air gets warmer and warm air holds more water which is going to be this big thing with climate change like the the ocean’s going to get warmer the air is going to get warmer it’s going to rain more there’ll be more precipitation and I guess the way that rain will move will kind of dry out it zones in its wake um but yeah so I think it was like an El Nino kind of a just a tropical rain that blew up from Florida and just just nailed us right do you know if historically the because you know like obviously in the past there’s always been random odd wacky weather events yeah it’s more about how often they happen now but did do you know like did that River flood where you were like was there some historic events that youw yeah so ver Vermont had this uh back in the early um 1900s people were cutting all of the trees down in the state to raise sheep for Marino wool this is this big uh yeah this big money-making story of all the old stone walls of New England it’s all about sheep yeah they had all these sheep everywhere and they cut down every single tree on every single Hill wow and uh there were Mills along the rivers in Vermont that you know they had hydr power and they were making the they they were processing the wool there and what a tree does a big tree filled with leaves when it rains it’s holding water like little drops of water are on every single leaf and The Roots and everything around it slows that water down from pouring into the river and so back in like 1920 there was a really really big flood and it’s because they had cut down every tree along the wooki Waterway but we’re doing that again we’re cut everyone’s just developing everything cutting every tree down yeah it’s housing that’s kind of creating the problem parking lots roofs that are impermeable surfaces and it just pours the water uh into the river and uh if it’s raining more you’ve kind of got this mixture of uh mhm H yeah yeah so is it going to happen again what is the future hold I I’m I’m imagining yeah that there will be more like this and will the frequency increase to the point where you know it gets difficult to grow crops along the waterways in Vermont I I don’t know well it seems to me that you know it’s a it’s more risk it’s like you can do it five times out of you know 10 times out of 10 perfect but you never know when you’re going to have an off year or yeah an event and it kind of reminds me like you know when when I was young and we would we would listen about you know what’s going on in parts of Africa and sub Sahara where they they’re going to drought and they they they’re losing everything yeah and it it like we never we never see the world like that because we have so much of everything here like but when you lose a crop due to climate due to an event it’s like you you lose all the income from a year yeah it’s it’s really yep yeah and I mean I don’t want to diminish what anyone’s experienced like obviously like uh I think about um Bangladesh is some place I think about because the ocean as it rises it’s going to come into the it’s a very Coastal Country and and the saltwater will come into their crop land and once it starts to get salty they won’t be able to uh to to produce there and that’s a country where you still have 50% of the people are in agriculture MH and you know for various political reasons they’re not going to be able to move their population around to bordering countries and so it’s going to be bad you know it’ll be such a disaster but we you know we in the US we can you know you can go get if you have a flood you can go put on a clean shirt and go get a job in town I guess but but it uh yeah not not to diminish it but you know we aren’t we aren’t in the same like do or die yeah but you know in a way it’s like yes because we need to be have people farming uh I you know if it’s if it just gets to be and I I was going to add that it’s a weird contradiction you know our in some ways our modern system is like very resilient sort of because like we can persist all of our lifestyles tend like here we are sitting in this room with all this equipment like we’re pretty lucky yet at the same time it’s it’s also so fragile to certain things particularly like what I don’t know it’s it’s like simultaneously both of those things because we’re just picking and but I think more than anything we’re we’re choosing now at the expense of of later you you you I want to hear you on something Rob because you just you just it really touched me when you said you know in Vermont we have something that’s very special we have people that are conscious about local about local food and the whole local economy and you know as as a young as a young guy when when my wife and I we would go there that’s what we would that would Inspire us because we’re like wow you know the mindset here is really where it should be we’d come back here and we tried to recreate that but you just mentioned you know we need small farms yeah and and you know obviously I’ve been advocating this quite strongly for many years but why why do you say that why do why why do you come up to that conclusion yourself that is such a great question um and maybe it’s easier for me to answer because I’m in it and I’ve I’ve experienced like what a great uh lifestyle it is uh and uh you know from somebody that’s lived it it’s like oh wow we get to do this thing that we wake up every day and we know that we’re doing something um positive uh beneficial for the community and you know if you have friends that have jobs you know working for the street department or something they’re they’re often like what am what am I doing you know I’m like making like a you know I have a friend who does like a maybe like does like a drawing for like a change in like a city street that never even gets a project that never happens you know and that feeling of like like why am I you know what am I doing with my life I have never felt that it’s just not entered my my mind mhm um so yeah being in it it’s like oh it’s it’s good it’s positive it’s uh you know I’ve learned so many skills and how to deal with people and how to like grow and run a business and be part of a community but uh you know from the outside we need these small businesses because they’re the they’re the soul of the community I think like I’ve come to like really appreciate that um you know people look at um people look at small business owners as like you know wow you’re like some kind of like doing something like you’re like you have this really important role and I used to think like why you know we’re just like I’m just running around trying to survive and I have no idea like what I’m doing half the time and it’s like what’s the next thing but yes it it is the soul of your community like and that’s cuz that’s where people work and that’s where they make connections um and farming is fundamental to to your community like let’s not ever we should never accept that that it’s like well it’s something that happens somewhere else and we can truck it in I just don’t think that’s that’s right mhm this episode is brought to you by bootstrap farmer bootstrap farmer is an amazing company it’s focus on making highquality durable and ecological products for farmers and gardeners they really stand out for me because one they manufacture their product right in the US instead of relying on overseas factories and two they’re focus on durability and sustainability this means no single-use plastics that you have to Reby every year and no cheap flimsy metal that won’t last their hoop house kits are among the best out there made of super thick galvanized steel that will stand out to the elements and last you a very long time I guarantee it and their seating trays are absolutely indestructible believe me we did a test here at the farm a car ran over the trays and they literally didn’t even the form on top of that bootstrap team is passionately dedicated to seeing the farming Community grow and Thrive and that really means so much to me you know that’s why I do what I do here at the market Gardener Institute so if you care about what kind of companies you support with your dollars check out bootstrap farmer you can find them out at bootstrap farmer.com thank you bootstrap for all you do love you guys see you soon you agree with that This is Gospel like I’m listening to this and and it’s so it’s this is what this podast podcast is all about like farming Community lifestyle ecology uh and and and you know raising raising Consciousness around that because it’s once when you you know in Chris was saying like he got you know he drank the co Koolaid and ever since he’s been on this journey and and and the community that we have here and you’ve you’ve been here around a few times now and it’s like it’s epic like and it’s because of the farming like there’s the farming and the fact that there’s enough people that want to support it yeah both of them together you know yeah yeah and I you started off talking about how you’ve never felt like your job was pointless and that made me think of a few different things all at the same time like one I recently became aware of a book called bullsh jobs which I never heard yeah then he has a you know kind of this theory of of how so many jobs are just basically pointless we’ve just invented the the need for it and so all these people really don’t feel any sense of meaningfulness in their life and that when you pair that with the fact that a lot of intellectuals right now are saying we’re in kind of like a meaning crisis in our current culture and a lot of that’s exacerbated by social media and we were talking about this before the podcast and I’ve always felt like connection to Nature ecology Community is always wrapped in that as a feeling that like what is the difference between one’s love for farming and just one’s love for I don’t know playing soccer like is there’s a difference are they you know what I mean like could you with the person that just whole life is about soccer would they argue like I love soccer just as much as you love farming man and there’s I’ve grappled with that before actually cuz I’m like does is it separate I know yeah the way people make meaning yeah I guess that’s a very private I would often come back to is that though that well yes that it might be meaningful to them but it’s not like meaningful in the in a a broad enough context that it really connects you to like the rest of the world yeah does the world does the world respond to you in a way that like uh reinforces your your meaning making and I think farming does it’s it’s just sort of it’s around the clock it’s a it’s inherently meaning for it’s food I mean you can’t and it’s the basis of humanity and and culture for like all of time eating together growing things making things I don’t know if it really gets any more Elemental like I remember like I I was in my kind of Surfing years wannabe Surfer yeah I you would hear a lot of people say yeah surfing is my lifestyle and I was like at one point I was like you know what like there’s more to life than surfing surfing is great but you know having purpose and building something it’s you know it’s for me as more depth and you know you could I don’t know if if surfing would be all that I do in a day I think at one point it’d be like pointless yeah you know and I think there’s other occupations that we think about like that but you know the fact that we’re building something the fact that we’re also creating you know because we’re planting and we’re nurturing harvesting selling directly I think that’s that’s a big part of it yep yeah we’re creating so many things more than just the plants that that kind of what makes me want to just talk about Pitchfork a farm and sure if I mean we we’ll Circle back to anything we everything everything’s everything everything circles yeah um because you know you’ve have Pitchfork you did you co found this Farm or uh so I have a business partner there Eric and he um the intervail was it was an incubation uh spot so you could uh back starting in like the late 90s the uh intervail Center the nonprofit would take business plans and you could kind of rent some uh rent some land and try out a business plan and some some pretty wild stuff people have have have done down there is it still is still happening the incubation program is done and I I think um you know I I I don’t really know the internal decision- making there because it’s the this nonprofit that uh that directed those decisions but maybe some of it had to do with just the risk of uh the flooding flooding down there and you know making sure that the established businesses were were able to have access to resources and not you know cuz there have been a few uh you know and this is any business some folks like will come through and like uh you know start a a business with eggs or something and they have all these hoop houses and then just leave them you know and the and like there the garbage kind of get would get pushed up and you have to clean it up over time but um so I was at I worked for a few years for another Farmer on the Intervale and then I joined some friends they wanted to do a cooperative and we worked together for three years and that kind of fizzled out when um a couple of people in that business decided to move uh out of Burlington and Eric had been down there for a few years sort of on a they put him on this like horrible back parcel uh and he got he he got flooded a little bit out there uh but you know it was like a minor uh a minor flood uh not for him at that time but um let’s think what happened one of the bigger Farm businesses moved bought land and moved off the Intervale and so Eric and I partnered up in 2009 and took over this 4 acre field okay which for us at the time was like huge holy moly what are we going to do you know uh and so that was a that was a big thing and then from there I think um it happened pretty quickly within like a couple years like oh this could be like a viable business you know this is like growing mhm and Burlington was just responding to Vermont was so Advanced I I feel like yeah uh for a lot of the country like people were just so responsive and you can kind of knock on the back door all dirty with like a bag of lettuce a lot of the roots of the organic movement are like really in the region right yeah iast in general but in New England especially in Vermont Burlington and some of the folks who’ve been doing like organic farming for since like the 70s or on yeah yeah you’d go to the airport 20 years ago and buy local Farm is the future it’s like yeah those are the guys yeah those are the guys at the skinny pancake those guys are way ahead of their time yeah okay so so you started on 4 Acres Pitch Four and and just fast forward now what is it now is it is it still 4 acres and how many people are on the farm yeah let’s see we’ve got about uh we just added a couple Fields I should really look this up I think it’s like maybe 28 Acres now something neighbor right okay so it grew grew yeah yeah we’ve been growing and growing and we uh you know with the exception of the floods and the pandemic which is another kind of curveball yeah uh we’ve had a pretty steady uh trajectory of yeah I mean because you get better every year that’s like another amazing thing about farming is like you learn this the soil and you learn the seasons and you learn the market and so we’ve just gotten better and better at what we do the markets are more precise also you know who you’re selling to what they need and yep um let’s see employee wise there’s like sometimes there’s like 12 15 people depending if we can get the part time like in the past few years we’ve been trying to go more to like full-time committed crew because the part-time thing during the pandemic went you know when you have like 18 people 20 people kindgarten you don’t know who’s coming in today youd start the morning meeting like all right who does anyone know if uh Kevin is here this week and like but yeah there’s there’s a lot of people to deal with in farming home man it’s a big thing yeah we’re starting to feel that I think Eric and I as we sort of get older it’s like just the the vendors the the crew the the clients it’s a lot it’s a lot yeah yeah but the crew is the is the is the where the energy goes yeah and then you can get from my experience you can get S you can get high on that because when the crew is working Harmony and everyone’s doing the work so fun so so fun yeah can I I wanted to queue in with something um I noticed on Instagram I don’t know you either you wrote it or perhaps your partner but had a post where you said you know having a crew loving the people you work with is just so so important and I want to ask you about that cuz in my past experiences for sure like the crew like the best years of farming for me it was all about that it was the little you know close-knit kind of family that we had that was just like that was the really the magic of yeah the season and um I just want to ask you to reflect on that and I also was curious if you do you have some members that have been recurring over many years so you kind build longer term relationships of course and then uh you know seen people grow into like new things into their own farms and become you know Farm managers yeah we’ve seen all of it um I think uh yeah I think like part of the lifestyle of like when you’re working so hard and you’re out there all day like at the end of the day you know might as well just kind of like hang out for a little bit after working that uh that doesn’t happen um because I’ve had like I mentioned a lot of jobs sort of you know welding industrial cranes or whatever no one’s going to hang out out after work it’s like ding 5:00 you’re like out of there yeah yeah um but yeah we just we hang out after work and and uh that’s just where it kind of starts I mean the the crew like they people make such close connections with each other and it kind of like goes for years cuz you work getting that opportunity to work so closely with someone on something meaningful is a big deal in this in this modern world I think you know like in seeing your results and knowing what it is I think people really they really bond in that environment and so and the challenge of it the overcoming of the challenge yeah yeah and it’s like we’re all out there with mosquitoes on our face to you know together and sort of uh and some things are grind you know picking string beans like yes yeah keep going keep going uh but uh yeah you know we we make an effort to really be you know Eric and I just to be with with everybody and be with the crew as much as we can and we we do kind of goofy stuff we’ll make uh we make lunch every day and it’s always the same exact thing which is mindboggling is it is it beans and rice it’s beans and tortillas and like I knew it it’s like it just works I’m in year like 12 of that maybe and I still like will stop by and like eat the and it’s got more sophisticated um let’s see we’ve got like a crock pot and we make like fresh beans which is [ __ ] it’s the best really nice yeah yeah it’s a good put an egg and some cheese to spice it up this is like really wild when we had a piece of cheese with with the beans is like oh my God today we have cheese yeah yeah yeah we have to we have to make sure there’s cheese in there’s a few there’s a few basic things that sort of yeah yeah the the um what else will I say I don’t know you’re yeah it is it is important to have it’s funny man you’re describing my my dream dream job like it’s true like like you’re like my years running fqt farm with the crew was the best years of my life like just like so deep into it and and so dedicated to and what’s great about farming is like production is driving what’s going on yeah like we you know we can’t just stall there needs to the work needs work so we’re all committed to the process we’re all in it and when you have someone like you I’m sure that’s kind of fully into it people are just kind of like tagging along it’s like okay we’re yeah following Rob we’re doing this we’re planting this we’re doing that and at the end of the day when you crack open that beer oh yeah feels it feels good yeah we we keep kegs in the in the walkin cooler now that’s been a big uh Evolution for us that the fresh beans in the in the kegs I’m always trying to like reduce the amount of uh weight you know cuz we you open the dumpster it’s like man it’s filled with beer canids we got to fix this I okay just like because yeah it’s just more yeah more more yeah like we have we all have cups and jugs so let’s good I love it yeah we’ve had a we had a keg of cider more than once in our walking because we were had a connection with a cider farm and those were good days at lunch you know just oo lunch really just a quick single little drink slippery slow yeah no one was letting loose yet um one other thing uh that started in the pandemic the pandemic really changed I think the vibe too because we were in like a bubble you know no one could go do anything after and that I feel like changed the culture a little like people really started hanging out like at the farm and like making other things happen at the farm okay and so like the you know we have like Gardens now that aren’t nothing you know for part of production it’s just for fun and it’s gotten so nice since the pandemic because people they get really they I don’t know so people drive to the farm yeah the crew and their friends will come and like everyone’s like planting flowers and things like that and then uh that’s gotten so sophisticated since the pandemic because it turned into like a a thing that people uh did in their own free time crew Garden yeah the pleasure garden and then uh yeah I get it it’s like we um on Wednesday nights my dad my dad comes to volunteer on the farm on Friday mornings nice he’s uh look like he’s a 72 yeah and uh God is he 7 he’s 73 and he plays the uh saxophone nice and we um on Wednesdays during the pandemic we like got an old barn drum kit and we like set it up in our wash pack house and just started playing and it turned into this like huge thing and it’s still going like I I have to host this on Wednesday nights so I’m a little bit like kind I’m kind of getting done with it but uh sometimes there’ll be like 18 people and it’s just you know it’s a jam yeah TR instruments around and sort of uh uh you can feel that this like energy and like Community comes out of the farm it’s sort of part of the do you have community events Like official ones yeah well we’re a little bit limited uh in Vermont because of um uh how you can use your agricultural land and I think Vermont doesn’t want Farms to just turn into like wedding venues yeah all to be AG tourism yeah yeah so we have a couple of like coins we can spend per year on events really or whatever you however you want to call it and so that’s interesting uh we’ll have the Pitchfork uh music fest nice when is that I should reserve it yeah come through it happened last year in uh I want to say maybe September but good timing I uh I’m trying to get my friend a friend of mine to organize it so I don’t have to know anything about it at all it just happens that’s even that’s more fun if you go to enjoy it than to organize it yeah great so all these years creating that that farm creating the community and what’s the relationship with uh the the chefs and the restaurant owners that you’ve been working with I know that it’s a big part of your business yeah I mean it’s the it’s uh it’s everything it’s everything we do really we sort of uh we’ve got a couple of there’s the co-op in Burlington which is big and uh Healthy Living couple grocery stores but we’re mainly working with restaurants and we’re in there like you know they tell us what’s going on we look at the menus they sort of know what we do by now and they can plan around it a little bit um but yeah it’s uh we have maybe 50 or 60 accounts I’d say oh [ __ ] that’s a lot oh [ __ ] it gets crazy wow um wow that’s a lot and I think it kind of it happened because of um there was a period where we had this idea of like anyone on the crew that the only way we make any money on the farm is if the vegetables come out of the field and go to uh a client and so we told uh anyone on the crew if they can find a new client they can take a sales commission boom 10% nice and so some people went like really and just went and like knocked on every door and so that was a kind of that I think expanded our Client List a little bit but uh interesting that says a lot that so often like all it really takes is just just go find the person ask them just do it not being like change your clothes first like wear something clean before you go that’s one tip I have yeah uh but bring the salad mix and then boom but there you know there’s only one human being can only really talk to to so many uh you know especially if there’s little questions or like what time are you guys going to be delivering and if you’re if you’re getting those like those little Communications all day you can kind of you have a limit and you start to miss or make mistakes because it’s a lot of organization did did the growing of the accounts co-evolve with the kind of growing of the farm in terms of just size number of beds all that yeah you know if we see like um I think like the natural feeling has always been like there’s a there’s like a little more we could be doing yeah and it kind of went hand in hand yep Y and I imagine you probably expand it to like you know big patch of watermelons big patch of squash big like that kind of yeah the you know it’s gotten big for us is cabbage my God weow so much cabbage big big patch okay interesting we um that for kimchi or yeah that’s related we have like um let me think how this happened the whole evolution of this we uh back during the um first wave of podcasts I don’t know if you guys were tuned in back then but there was always the commercial for Blue Apron yeah and I was like what is this crap is this another like load of crap that we’re going to get from like yeah uh corporate you know yeah take over into our Market yeah and so I ordered a couple of them and I and I was like this is this is terrible these were meal kits yeah meal kits meal kits I remember that this is crap it’s full of you know packaging we can do we can do better than this we can do something local uh and right around that time and I was thinking that I met these guys from uh right outside of Atlanta Georgia uh Joe from Love Is Love Farm okay and his wife was running something called uh peach dish Peach plate Georgia or something and they were this local Blue Apron thing and she like I saw her at an event and she like told me about it and I was like oh let’s do that and so we got a little um commercial space and bought all this like uh packaging stuff I mean really cheap uh and got a chef a friend who was a chef and a photographer and we started trying to make like this meal kid idea and then it uh and it never launched it was like the reality of like what it would have taken I and I saw a blue apron I went there and visited there you did it’s like it’s a lot of work have you ever met a farmer that like sold directly to them and they tried they tried they they were they were they were it’s funny because they tried they was so big they were shipping all across the US these meals and they had they were in in in in uh downtown New York City and were fully organized that was their warehouse in that was their office their office like had 250 people working in an office like I was really impressed because you know I had never seen an office space like that yeah and um we went into the warehouse I remember with modelan and she was like oh my God it’s like what is this but they were trying to Source from small farms but they couldn’t because they had so much volume yeah and they had people working full-time trying to figure this out never happened yeah it’s nice to know they were trying yeah they were trying but it’s like when you’re trying to fit a square into a hole it’s like it won’t happen like if you’re trying to sell nationally like working with small farms is not it’s not where it’s at it uh are they is that I think they’re out of business yeah but now there’s other things of similar nature like home delivery of groceries obviously is Big yeah that’s taking off to you the do you uh sell direct to customers like via an online meage we’ve tried doing that a little bit but um it just hasn’t been the same uh uh we haven’t had the same level of Interest as just dealing with restaurants so much easier yeah um so so after this uh local meal kit idea we had all this like we had the stainless 3 Bay sink and a little walk-in cooler and we had some commercial kitchen stuff and an opportunity came up to um to be part of like a new uh incubator business incubator space in the South End of Burlington and we brainstormed um and came up with the idea of having like a pickle shop like a fermentation nice spot and so that uh that um has spun off into its own business by now okay and it’s and it’s doing its own thing and has this whole huge uh what’s it called uh Pitchfork pickle nice now you go we love it already but we grow the we grow all the cabbage and uh it’s been great when we go to Burlington where can we find it the soda plant on Pine Street yeah plant oh yeah I know where that is yeah I’ve seen that isn’t that near citizen cider am I right yeah yep yep the um the co-op the uh the grocery Co-op what’s it called again I I City Market City Market it’s been there for a long time y it was the first time that I would go and that was like 25 years ago and I would see pictures of Growers yeah where the produce were they’ve been really big on that early on are they you know what’s what’s the the politics there cuz not Whole Foods is around I know we just don’t have Whole Foods around they’re not around they’re not around not in Vermont no they they were threatening to come in they were making inroads and I think they had cited out a a place and that would have changed a lot of stuff for everybody I’m sure but uh really um so there was a produce buyer Mary she passed away a couple years ago uh man she was so great she took all of us like really these kids who knew nothing about running a business and you know so patient and just kept you know ordering and like you guys will get it you know get get me you know get me this product and she really like I think had a lot to do with growing Burlington’s sort of local food scene and really supported Farmers uh she was incredible since when was she doing it uh I wish I knew the answer to that maybe in the 90s or 80s yeah that might be yeah see she probably saw waves of new Growers and then helping them also figure out how to you know this is what I need this is how I need it I think too she really established this idea that we’re going to take you know there’s all these different crops you can grow and we’re going to spread them around to different vendors and make sure people have you know a shot at something they want and the meetings were all very serious in that way in the winter like you know this is this this uh crop belongs to the diggers mirth farm and you you know they’re doing that from June to September but if you want to try to come in a little early as long as the diggers don’t you know they have this is their they’re the primary and I think that that that kind of vibe from you know whether she established that or not I I I believe she probably did that kind of spread out to like other uh just the way we thought about doing things and think she was working for a City Market yep yep wow it goes to say like these folks like they have such a an important role to play what we’re all thriving for you know yep wow she had a big impact on a lot of people that I can think of yeah do you think that whole food didn’t make it because there wouldn’t have been like a an upress or like I just don’t know that they would have that we needed it I mean they were where they were looking at um coming in was by a a store called Healthy Living which is also done a lot to really support local lag um and I I I don’t know how they were were who knows what their methods are to research a market but I don’t know what they were thinking and this was just for a year so we heard news but uh I’m glad it didn’t happen yeah yeah I’m glad for you that is a company owned by Amazon yeah it’s not not what we needed yeah and it’s um it makes you know saying how important this woman was it reminds me of something Dave Chapman said to us which was he was reflecting on how much things have changed in just his lifetime like how absolutely drastically so many things have changed and to think that in one more lifetime how much more can change and could it be better and it just like what is could we have that role that that lady had and I don’t know makes you really think about like doing some good that extends into the future that’s far beyond just right now too yeah you know I think for this movement to keep evolving and and to thrive obviously there needs to have farms and farmers but the support cast is so important like the people that are organizing farmers market doing a good job at that doing a good job in grocery stores you know even the the restaurant owners it’s not everyone that’s we had we had Dave McMillan here from Joe Beef yep uh and he was telling us you know it’s really easy to open a big catalog and order everything like col to you know shrimps to peppers from one place I heard that that clip actually and I yeah I’ve often you know like I wish I understood better from the chef’s side cuz I know they’re making an effort to deal with us and uh you know just thinking about uh there’s one of our restaurants we deliver to they have you have to get the key on the side come in and turn off the door alarm to deliver because they’re not there until noon or something like that and it was tricky um to get the deliveries coordinated and get all the steps figured out yeah and so I I felt bad I’m like calling and apologizing to the chef and I dropped off uh everything to him late a couple weeks ago and he’s like listen man uh it’s totally cool like I’m not like you’re all good like I know it seems like I’m a little frustrated but I’m just trying to you know you’re you’re totally good like yeah and he could have you know been you know pissed off pissed off for like what am I dealing with this for it’s no you know it’s extra it’s just extra work but yeah it’s because they care yep they care they care about the product they care about the mission and they probably care about you and what you do and it’s about it’s about caring and it’s the same here at the Old Mill like you know Eric deals with all these people and he it’s for him like it’s that’s not even a question mark like he does what he does because of because he cares about this yeah this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Ubie ubby stands for out of our own backyard and it’s an online platform built for small farms and food hubs just like you so they’ll help you increase sales simplify packing and optimize deliveries all so that you can focus on what you do best which is growing incredible food hundreds of Independent Producers are already using Ubie to sell directly to local customers and build thriving businesses and here’s a special offer just for the market Gardener listeners mention the podcast at sign up and Ubie will give you 75% off the unboarding feed that’s right 75% off to get you started selling today Ubie 40’s by.com putting smallscale back at the heart of the food system so for him it’s just Farmers care about you know we go to these restaurants too and we’re there like yeah yeah it’s all part of the like yeah it’s really great to do yeah yeah and farming is the same way we we do a lot of things that aren’t necessarily the easiest possible way we could do it we we strive for efficiency and but we have limits to what is going to be acceptable yeah you know just like I want to run for another coffee and then I want to talk more about tools oh yeah I noticed in my notes like wait a second we didn’t actually really get too into it so shall we get back to tools let’s talk about tools again cuz cuz because Chris earlier on reminded me of this and I forgot about it we met also at the slow tool summits Y and uh this feels like way back wow 2009 10 yeah plus it was then 12 13 14 I think it stopped in 8 2018 or something like that just before the pandemic yeah and and you would come up with these tools You’ come and show off what you’ve built you designed these years stuff yeah um what’s your memory of that I don’t remember how I even got involved to be honest I think I knew Adam Lemieux from Johnny’s maybe a little bit um what is slow tools by the way so the listener understands if they haven’t heard I mean you know this is from ancient memory at this point but um I feel like the the slow food movement was this idea that uh uh yeah we were like going to address Our Food Systems in a way that was like Humane and like small scale and thoughtfully paced and maybe a tool design could be something similar to that uh and I I think I got that right away I like got the concept I was like yeah it’s sort of a you know we’re not we’re not looking for like mass-produced uh tools on the farm we need stuff that’s like really thoughtful kind of evolves yeah everyone’s got there yeah designed for us um but I think um I got involved uh with Farm hack too I think that was another those things were Rel related in my mind a little bit but um I forget who it was it was Ben and Lindsay from uh yes yeah yeah they did the first event at MIT yes and uh I think I saw like a thing on Facebook or something and it was like CU by then I kind of had in isolation been you know doing my thing and I like a cool this is like a community around this and I went to that MIT event and uh it kind of had that fun hackathon feel where everyone picked like a subject and there was team that got together and worked on trying to solve a problem um and I got really pumped about uh Farm hack but it the idea was it would be open source right Y and as I started to um you know maintain a workshop buy materials and uh you know prototyping everything C would like cost money and so if you’re developing software you know everything’s you know your time isn’t free but you can kind of change your code and bounce it off somebody and it comes back and forth and people are contributing and I still feel kind of uh guilty about this because I loved the idea of farm hack and that whole idea of uh developing things slow tools and like as a community but earlier on I was like I feel like this isn’t like addressing some like elephant in the room where you know these Hardware projects if they’re going to be open source who’s paying for this who’s paying for this and so you know I had done some s grants uh which is something in uh the US it’s sustainable a research extension grants um wonderful program yeah and so I think that was my first project uh I had seen the prone platform hand weeding machines you know and there was a company in uh called elari or something I can’t remember maybe maybe it was an Italian company um and it had like a gas engine on it and like for people with like tank treads yeah and you know we just you know so people are weeding on their bellies yeah you can lay down and sort of what what I thought the big Advantage was I could right away I was like oh both your hands are free cuz when you’re when you’re weeding into a bed you’re leaning on one hand and it’s Tak it’s taking away half your yeah and if you’re if you’re reaching all the way across it be a bit tough tough yeah it’s tough and you could have a shade over you know like oh this would be great and so um a friend and I did a S Grant and we built a pedal power like a human powered where you I remember that I I remember that the Bal power I don’t know if I have ever ref videos I don’t know if I ever put one up there uh maybe there is well there’s the thing like I remember I remember that yeah this thing has the um it has the uh Motors and the batteries on it by this point um the first one was pedal powered the first one was pedal powered it was a s project right yeah and so by this point uh I’m probably years ago Planting onions yeah and really cruising in some sense you know going way faster than um but uh you know we had never seen this in real life and so I was like I’m going to build one and uh and you know being involved with Farm hack it was kind of fun and sharing the ideas and talking about it um but the amount of effort that went into something like this in the cost you know was just it was non- negligible yeah is a lot and so I started to have like a internal conflict with it and philosophically I was like I don’t know if I can uh continue to put energy because I was driving around New England going to events uh all on my you know personal whenever you know yeah and I think um and remember the washing machine hacking yeah yeah good God is that you the start of that by the way I no whoever whoever I I would love to know who did that first I would love to I can I can tell you that in 200 and one yeah I was in New Mexico and we were spin drying Greens in in washing machines but we weren’t hacking them they were just straight up in them wow what I think what happened over time is you couldn’t just we lost the ability to put it on the spin cycle had the uh started to have microcontroller or whatever in that’s true so that screwed everything up and you know during that time I I was figuring that stuff out and talking about it publicly a little bit at these events and I was starting to get you know like during the day like a phone call like hey man I’ve got this uh Whirlpool g175 4 you know with this redwire does and I’d be like man you got to be kidding me right now I I you know who’s wish I could help but like there’s got to be some better way to handle this uh there’s no documentation and why am you know I get that uh we’re doing this open source project but what why are certain contributors you know getting the majority of the the pressure to like keep the thing going and looking back on it I wish I had just said you know what stuff that like let’s keep this project going and I should should have stayed committed I feel bad that I I felt to the you see what I’m saying though right no no I I get it like when because I get it because now I’m involved in tool making and I have a tool company and I see that you know when when people are freely designing sharing giving it’s like at one point somebody’s going to take it and commercialize it and you’re going to be the yeah you know it’s like and and it’s too bad but unless somebody commercializes it really like not everyone has your skill set to weld and to even you know some of that like looking at this earlier prototype the welder that did some of those welds was like 2500 bucks at the time yeah and it’s quite s sophisticated yeah and how how many people if anyone are using some of these out there like if you made some I ended up as I moved away from uh Farm hack and uh I started to get better and better I I I worked for um so as I mentioned I worked for some artists uh some you know doing sculpture uh um and then from there that I worked for an industrial Design shop that did interior lighting and and like furniture and I started to get really good like I was getting really good in there and like I was like oh my God I didn’t know I could even get to this level and I was sort of inspired to by working in manufacturing to try to do it on my own and so I did commercialize this stuff and I built maybe like seven or eight of these things and they got a lot more sophisticated than that yeah for anyone listening we’re looking at yeah it’s like second from the top that’s a little more close to what it ended up as cuz this one has shade and everything too yeah and I think it has the Dual benches but um for two people yep and this this became a company called uh Upstream EG yeah I’ve heard about yeah it started maybe [Music] 2000 I can’t remember at this point maybe 200 efficiency of that and uh you know I think this all it all is connected to this little bit of like idea in the back of my mind that like we could have a bad season it could flood I need to have something else going on yeah uh and it’s just put an extra like pressure on my farming career so I’ve had so I I decided okay I’m going to do like this um manufacturing startup in the winter away from the farm yeah and so for maybe like uh boy 5 years or something I would go right from the farm season in November and boom right into the shop and start taking like orders and I built a lot of flame weers yeah th th you want to show it the flame he has a that was one of his was um one of these or do you want to show one of the you also you have tractor ones that one was a this thing was more for fun I I think that that was great cuz you’re mostly doing tractor mounted ones right yeah yes yeah man that like that for me is I want to reild this thing I think this is not great like this is this is so cool for anyone listening it’s a it’s like a cart hovering over the beds that’s bicycle like pedal powered and it’s flame weeding in front of what’s the party they go to in the desert in the burning man it’s like burning man this is Burning Man for me like farming Burning Man stuff yeah have you been to burning man how you guys no no obviously we’re too busy yeah it’s a pharmacy um yeah but that that’s typical of what I remember of what the designs you were coming up with and if if you want to look any of these videos up it’s Rob Rock on YouTube if people want to see some of these I have an Instagram called Upstream yeah I have it pulled up okay yeah that’s got a better this is going to be more more recent yeah there’s a there’s a good examp Sor we’re showing old stuff no that thing yeah so I built maybe like oh yeah I’m not logged in I bet I built like 75 of those things and that’s a it’s a heavy duty like uh what is it it’s a tractor mounted flame weer okay it’s a flame weer we see it there yep there’s a that that one there is on the intervail that looks bigger with a big white uh yeah that was a really difficult project and uh cuz I was just saying yes you know someone would call me up and be like hey can you Steve Tomlinson can you make a can you make it so I can turn off the burners and make them turn I remember his project was a little custom and I was like yeah sure and uh cuz you know that’s how I thought you had to do it um I was teaching people to weld and uh had fully involved oh yeah my God and I had this full complicated like quality control program well these tools are I mean that’s legit looking these are you still doing this or is this more now fading fading out what’s what’s yeah you know I don’t uh I’m at a little bit of um a Crossroads because I’ve continued to design stuff and I do I do it like almost like um like every day I’m kind of thinking about something or trying something out um you can see that video with the pink uh sprocket that’s from like a couple weeks ago I feel like is that for a cedar yeah well what it what it is is um I figured out that you can get really inexpensive um Overstock uh food grade conveyor belts but you can’t get the sprockets okay so I started to 3D print them with a food grade material so I’m curious like what what can be possible in the pack house with you know do we need to does everything need to be stainless steel no there’s other Plastics and things that are food grad and so okay so that was two weeks ago so you’re still yeah I’m still kind of yeah thinking about stuff and uh um Upstream though it was it was a beast I was because I you know I was never going to stop farming I think that was what I couldn’t uh yeah what I that’s what I would have needed to do is to like back away from the farm and and I just didn’t have the I didn’t have the um feeling that I wanted to do that I met with this um not a private Equity Group but like an investment Club let’s call them one time and they wanted to to uh to invest some money in upstream and the director of the fund he said to me I don’t believe that you’re going to stop farming and let this business you know take over your life for the next five years yeah and he was right and I you know be being a little stubborn about it I’m like doesn’t know what he’s talking about I can do both things easily uh but he was right I I just I wasn’t going to ever uh back away from farming and it got uh I mean it got to the point where I was just I was just doing too much yeah and I remember coming home one day uh from work I was working there like seven days a week sometimes and I came home from work one day and my roommate at the time was like sitting on the couch and he he you know we were really good friends he cared about me you know he’s like dude you’re coming home at like 9 o’ did you even eat dinner and I was like listen dude do not start right now okay like just don’t start right now and I I walked up into my like little office I had and I turned my computer on to uh I had to like write another email or something and I fainted really and smashed my face like smashed my face down on my keyboard and like came to like oh my God what am I like that was a little moment of Reckoning like what am I doing I’m like too much wow I just have too much going on and I think after that I sort of should I back away a little bit and then I’m sure I just kept going but it was like a that definitely like dropped a a pin in the time line where I was like I don’t know if I can handle this when the pandemic hit uh I still had orders but like the the workshop that I was working in was like a shared space and we didn’t know what was going to happen I didn’t know if the farm was going to just be cuz all of our customers were restaurants yeah so when the pandemic hit I was like I didn’t know what situation we’d be in and uh luckily at the time um Burlington has like those City you know like a city bike or a bixie bike they had a thing like that and the guy running that was like can I use the space just to bring the bikes in and repair them cuz they’re going to be we just need space for the summer we’re going to expand it and so I I kind of let go of the shop for a little bit during that time uh and it felt like a good time to step away from Upstream but it’s still there it’s still kind of there and I still like I’m still you know it’s still a p like a passion thing and you can’t really like stamp that out but I don’t know which direction it should go in or um interesting yeah like I I really relate because you know the farm is the heart your heart probably you know your heart’s there and you want to do it and it’s hard to do the farming halftime yeah like you’re not it’s not the same you can go in and kind of you know crew crew boss around and and and do some management chores but it’s not the same thing as being in it yeah and it’s hard to do two Ventures at once like I know because I’m I’m doing that right now and at one point you kind of need to choose yep which role you’ll do yep and it’s hard to pull up a business like that and commercialize and become you know what’s the end game yeah the end game is it you have 25 employees and then you’re running a factory and what’s the end game I think maybe I imagine that cuz I was going to uh you know I was around like talking about my work and like going to setting stuff up at trade type of shows but I was like a maybe somebody will like I’ll meet somebody and there’ll be like a little chemistry and then that yeah you know I don’t know why I I imagine that maybe like a fabricator that has space and employees that make things I was trying to figure out how to you know cuz I thought it was like I was like oh this is cool like somebody’s going to want to yeah to do it yeah jump in but it just didn’t kind of happen that way and I think uh like the the fabrication shops I worked with they weren’t going to be like you know what all everything we’re working on now let’s stop let’s stop it and focus on this like way you know what I mean so yeah uh I just uh maybe it was like the wrong products too I was building this huge these huge things and um I you know one of the things I was doing at the time was like this little plastic box that you could plug into a washing machine so that it would run on the spin cycle yeah and well that’s a good idea it was it was good in a way but I was like this obviously like voids the warranty of the of the washing machine I don’t know this should be something that I should scale or yeah and I remember uh Curtis Stone called me in that time he’s like he’s like dude you should you should massively do that yeah go big go big and I talked to uh I talked to um an attorney about it because it was like you know this isn’t something you could have insurance for you know I don’t know I mean not to sound like I was just curious you know like what would what would the the implication implications be of yeah it makes me think of kolbot yeah like where what’s the story of kolbot who how far back does that go I think I think the the story of kbot is probably something like Rob is describing designing something tinkering it and then he yeah I know the the um boy I wish I could remember his name off the top of my head but he uh he was he did the electric conversion of the um Alice chmer G tractor okay uh as a s project which was a really successful open- Source Hardware project maybe the most successful in our industry yeah cuz a lot of people did that they reproduced the conversion and got a great result and uh he uh so the guy that did that he was a far he was farming in New York state and his college roommate was an electrical engineer who I think helped him with the G conversion and he mentioned something offhandedly about the cost of refrigeration and his electrical engineering buddy like prototype this thing that you know you can uh trick an air conditioner into yeah going it needs to run yeah and so those guys went like into every I mean everybody uses yeah well that’s an example of the the the crossroad that you could have taken yeah like you would have become or still can or still can but you know I think it’s it’s it’s looking at it now from from somebody that also has tried business and like it’s it’s interesting but is it so desirable to to become a business that really makes it it’s a different set of problems a it’s a different lifestyle it could be good it could be great but you I’m I’m not I’m not fancying myself anymore into these kind of like oh like oh this could be the big thing like Growers and Co when we started Growers like I thought it would be like Patagonia like seeing it as Patagonia and I’m like you know what I’m not sure I’d be happy running Patagonia today like you know those are good questions to ask on I I mean I am I’m so glad I I did this and took it as far as I did cuz otherwise I probably I probably would I guess yeah regret it or be like satisfied yeah and so sometimes when you have a big idea maybe the best thing is to do it and like taste the fruit of like oh actually it’s just a ton of work and stress and it may not fit into your lifestyle and at least if you’ve like you know whether it succeeds or fails you’ve like you’ve like eaten that apple or whatever you know like okay I did that that was that is like it it’s like laid to rest in my yeah in my soul and but it’s so whatever now when I you know when I’m designing or building stuff I’m just thinking about Pitchfork and like it still inspires me and I’m able to do the same exact work for your farm yeah I just don’t have you know I’m just not worried about the quality of weld that someone else has done or any other number of you’re not getting the phone calls about which wire to cut no no still I still get I still get phone calls about the flame weers I I answer the phone I’m here yeah uh what makes a good tool to you oh my god uh I don’t know there’s just a there’s a feeling of rightness but like when you get something but everything’s always changing like um like those prone weeders were great at a certain scale of our business when there was like four five six of us in the field so if we had a couple of them four people could be using them but when there’s 15 people you know there’s no point anymore to to try to keep those things in circulation so I think a tool I don’t know it always has a time and a place and um what makes a good tool I think you said it also in your description I we saw it earlier like appropriates appropriately scaled yeah it’s really what it is like depending on where you’re at is it 4 Acres or 20 acres the tool will change it’s not the same tool sure it’s the same concept it’s the same thing but it’s it’s a different size or it’s a different yeah getting something scaled down I think has been a big part of like uh the tool development and scaling down because don’t flame weeders for tractors technically exist from you know very large that’s something that yeah yeah absolutely but you were making it of a certain scale like yeah kind of um made it smaller and I think uh my idea you can see like the final version uses a slightly bigger propane tank but anybody can buy that at a hardware store I maybe we scroll down a little more we’ll see one oh there we go uh one two on the right there it’s sort of a fall day so those propane tanks you can take them off you know they’re 40 bucks a pop you can take them off and refill them uh you don’t have to buy a really huge expensive uh tank but you can still do a good amount of flaming so if you have if you have three four or five beds to Flame you don’t need the you know 20,000 it’s funny just looking at the names of the people that are common thing these are all people that I know yeah it’s such a great community of of people that are do do you um what do you feel about about uh Farm hacking and Tool sharing and and just like the community of where it was where it is now obviously there’s a lot more people manufacturing tools and commercializing small tools now you think we might go back to sharing designs again or is it I don’t know I think um Farm hack is has been resurrected I I believe the I don’t know how much of this is super public yet but I believe they’ve brought it back and turned the website back on and I think they may have some Grand funding I’m not totally clear about it but and I think it’s severon might be connected it’ be interesting to talk she was great man I haven’t seen her I haven’t seen her ages but I think she was in California okay yeah do you know s have you heard no but I know I know of she used to run the green horns yeah and she wrote the Ford in book she wrote the Ford in my book she was one of the first person that I met you know around that time and I was like wow what a Powerhouse what a what a person that is putting so much big Ideas into play and I was so impressed by that Y and uh she and she demanded that like people meet each other that was like her main like it was incredible I remember one time we went to this gathering this Barn uh Barn what was it called like not a barn race but it was something around the Barn Barn party and the name tags were seed packets oh nice and then we would write our names on the seed packets and I was like these little attentions for me they make me glitter anyone named John was lucky didn’t have to write anything Johnny yeah I’m talking about Johnny’s like I I was just with Elliot Elliot Coleman on the phone this weekend and he he’s he’s you know not super happy with some of the because he’s always been advocating tool sharing and the fact that you know nobody would built them anyway so he was sharing and now there’s some manufacturers that are patenting some of his designs oh my God so he’s he’s really pissed about that yeah I can imagine so I I oh yeah did you no just just that it’s part of reality as as this as this becomes more you know more people start small farms you know what’s great about is that it creates an industry there’s products that are more available for everyone to use but it creates also business and there’s good business and there’s not so good business y yeah I wanted to ask you at what point do tools stop becoming slow and you know at what point are we can we go too far and just like re-enter industrial if that means it makes any sense like kind of where do you see the kind of uh I don’t know like well I mean the the next here’s the thing that’s going to happen and none of us are ready for it although we hear about it all the time is that uh the so if you if you call it AI like that means something very specific right now it’s like chat GPT conversations or something but what you can do now is you can teach a very inexpensive computer like a little $50 Raspberry Pi it’s a little teeny cheap thing and you can plug a webcam into it and you can teach it to see things on your farm and that I think is it’s just could potentially change um something about tools and Technology on the farm and it already has like the the big farms in California I I don’t know if Quebec or in Canada if you guys have the same like yeah we have the idea that you’re competing against these huge industrial yeah yep cuz in the US it’s like California yeah they’re setting the prices they’re setting the quality standards but these these cameras would would take look at insects they would look Farmers I think uh you know even uh what who are the manufacturers that are um they’re in Quebec uh du orisha huh orisha no uh un univerco maybe how do you say it yeah yeah univerco yeah they’re they’re in yeah so you know they’re like uh it’s something that like um you’ll see uh a weeder that can see your crop and it has actuators where it’s like getting the inro weeding done and I think uh univerco is building like um a Precision like a camera based a camera based like appc you know application for uh whether it’s fertilizer pesticide I’m not sure but these Precision you know sort of guidance um and this stuff sounds like super farfetched and uh how we’ll never see this on a small farm but we will already but we will and the reality of this stuff is that it’s uh anybody with a little interest could uh build one of these systems and teach it what a weed looks like and what a lettuce plant looks like and because this stuff is easy to do now all the documentation is online it’s all mostly free so it could go at night it could yeah it could just go if it had if it shined a light on the ground yeah yeah yeah yeah and imagine the next morning you’re waking up and the farm is Weed Free it brings and then five you know 5 months later you wake up and the Machine destroyed the whole field and you’re like [ __ ] it actually total aside but it’s a very funny story have you ever heard um with the uh with those robotic vacuums that people have in their houses there’s stories of people their dog poops overnight and then the vacuum just smears it across the entirety of their house and it’s like what a so yeah but but this is interesting what you’re what you’re bringing up Rob uh for me and and Chris knows this like what I’m observing because I’m in these conferences International conferences about climate smart farming and I’m I’m I’m when I’m going there what I’m trying to just say to everyone’s like hey man we just need people farming like forget hydroponic supersonic Farms like technology technology scaled to help small farms yes but that’s not what I’m hearing the money is not going there the money is going into these big big operations and all all of this technology has the only I mean the only real aim of it is to reduce the amount of Labor yeah which which for us would be good for small farms if it’s if it’s geared towards small farms what’s the problem the qu I mean the question I have is like uh in North America what is it one or two% of the population is in agriculture and that that number could drive down to 0 5.2% I is is this going to be you know this next wave of tools is this going to like you know cuz think about the job of hand weeding right yeah um we grow three four acres of of carrots and beets every fall root crops right and we get them in the ground at the right time we do everything right we flame weed them we cultivate them but there’s always going to be a job to go through and like do that first quick hand weeding and you know what they what they this the technology that it’s just it’s coming they have camera guidance systems that can will be able to see these weeds and they’re treating them by hitting it with a laser oh I’ve seen a so that’s uh like flame like Precision flame weeding in a way the laser is hitting the the weed and it’s heating it up enough to but what do you think would be the cost of something like that this podcast is proudly supported by tesia green houses T has always been one of my top choices for green houses and tunnels for over 45 years they’ve been manufacturing high quality and incredibly strong structures right here in North America their products can withstand the heavy snow loads we faced here in the Northeast and their prices are among the best in the market taia offers excellent service and expertise always ready to help with customized Solutions I particularly appreciate their commitment to Innovation and their willingness to listen to the needs of Growers at the Old Mill we use several of their Gothic caterpillar pill tunnels and micro tunnel for season extension and I’m always impressed with their design and built quality without companies like TCA food sovereignty just wouldn’t be possible so thank you TAA for helping us Growers feed our community year round you guys rock use promo code MGI 10 for 10% off your first order and free shipping in select regions right now it’s it’s got to be like buying a house you know it’s got to be hundreds of thousands of yeah let’s say it’s 10,000 yeah let’s say it’s ,000 cuz I think um you know what do what do we spend on that labor every year and it’s a job that you know people don’t like it but they don’t hate it it’s kind of fun you know and like it puts the whole crew together in a way and but would you just be like you know what I’ve never ever hand weeding another beded carrots ever again it’s weird to think about that day will come where it’s possible cuz I mean I’m more of the mind that like you know doing the work as a person as a human is is a big part of the value and of course I want to reduce to a degree but there’s like there’s a degree there’s I don’t know there’s a tipping point at which it’s like I don’t want to take away everything right so then it’s where do we draw the line there got to be line somewhere I don’t know if you know obviously it could just be individual choice and blah blah blah but then is price competition going to further drive out human scale you know how the Amish uh answers answer that question it’s very clear for them rubber tires that’s where they have clear boundaries that’s where it stops for them it’s like rubber tires for us is too fast so no rubber tires and it’s like that’s a great way to put it it’s like okay that’s the limit for us will it be I don’t know it’s like we don’t want to have robots your hands have to I don’t know yeah I think uh I think it might even uh be like a question of what do I like doing I like uh I like bunching cilantro I really like it I would never you know pass you know pass that off to a to a machine but I mean certainly there’s something out there that can just cut it and bunch it but certainly having access to Market is is the is the defining thing because I could see for me I could see a farm like yours having you know super high-end small technology operating in the fields but none of that could replace your relationships that you have with the chefs and your message and your aura and and you know the message of the farm so for me if that stays and that keeps like having better technology for smaller Farms I don’t really see a problem it’s when Big A has all the distribution yeah that’s when it becomes scary yep you know yeah and those massive hydroponic Farms too those were spooky for a minute they organic it seemed like they were going to work and I I think the news now is that they didn’t or maybe c yeah I mean some of the bigger stuff is I no you think there’re still I there’s there’s a lot of talk about them yeah because because because it’s climate smart because y because if it’s pouring rain for two weeks they can still grow yep so for them it’s like food security they’re they’re really clever at putting the right words for these things yeah food security food sovereignty uh you know climate smart farming I’m like what what are you talking about how they do this is not this is not climate smart farming like diversity have growing 40 different crops yes perhaps putting hros flat you know just building biodiversity but and anyway um yeah money pouring into the multiplication of small ecological Farms you know the S programs and there’s a few initiatives but mostly we’re not getting a lot of it yeah do you have thoughts on the the future of of this movement in general just like what’s the next move for small scale a like where should collectively we all be going uh you know I feel like the when we were starting maybe it wasn’t an industry that anyone even took seriously or thought about but now it feels uh it feels normal um and uh that I think maybe we’re at the right spot you know like something when something becomes established in um Society in a way they’re like oh yeah this is just obviously how things work um that’s where it should that’s how it should be everywhere and I was in I went to Miami this um winter and I saw a French Farms Chris French down there he’s in Homestead there’s this huge agricultural area just south of Miami interesting so wild weird and you know they’re growing uh all the house plants for I don’t also you know food flowers things like that but um I was astonished I was like wow look at this incredible uh agricultural Zone and just listening to them talk about the market in Miami I was like there has got to be an infinite Market there and maybe they just don’t quite have the um the attitude yet or the feeling of we need to be sourcing everything we can from these local producers that are right like right down the road from Miami it was incredible uh so maybe that’s the next step is just to establish this thing so firmly that food hubs yeah or just you know everywhere you go that people need to know that uh there’s there’s a food shed in your and that needs to be primary to how things should work uh but a lot of the world like hasn’t lost that you know what I mean if you go to I’ve spent a lot of time in uh Central America in the last few years and they don’t really have a notion of we need to like bring this back because it’s it’s never gone away they still have local production um so we still I think maybe we’re like recovering lost ground still um I don’t know where it goes after that maybe I’m curious what do you think have you got a you have any uh Visions H that’s a good a good question it’s a good question Mir the mirroring here happening NeverEnding thought really I I kind of uh relate to a lot of what you’re saying I don’t go back as far as you do in in the farming scene but I came into it in 2015 and I don’t know it revolutionary to me but also just because of where I was coming from and for me it answered a lot of the questions that I had prior to that point and I wonder how many more people are out there like you know the whole outdoor wreck world the whole camp like all these different niches of people that love nature for instance or or or love food I guess but like I I just had this feeling that my desire to always go camping on the weekends and do outdoor wreck was just simply rooted in the fact that I wanted to be connected with nature once I found farming I was like oh yeah half a lot of that stuff I just I no longer really was Desiring it cuz like my entire life was checking the boxes and I yeah I want that to continue that for more people to to see that that there’s this whole world that maybe they’re not aware of and it and it and it’s not just a little niche like it can be your whole world real and established and you can participate in it and people are making a living yeah doing this work and it’s real and it’s not uh and you don’t have to necessarily be a player as you know you could be Supporting Cast like you can be in the world and and you’re so welcome because you’re going to drive it off I don’t know there’s that’s yeah I I think we just need to keep I mean I guess there it’s not really a new move it’s just keep going is is all we have to keep doing yeah we’re so we we’re so aware now uh all the time of the future this is the future is this thing you know and it’s like looming over us uh and everything we every decision we make and how things change and the new habits we adopt and how technolog is changing um you know humans didn’t have the future like to deal with like we do and there’s climate change there’s all these like factors that have come into this uh the future idea but you know we can imagine I think we can we should beag iming what we want it to be like uh and this is a it just needs better branding it needs to like there needs to be like a better somebody needs to like tell the story before it happens and the only kind of thing I’ve seen um like there’s like people have like taken the aesthetic of something like um cyberpunk I guess you would call it where the future is dystopic and we’re driving these like super fast like motorcycles in Tokyo and it’s raining and there’s Smog and a war has happened maybe so like this is this like this like uh aesthetic of like a dystopic future yeah and I’ve heard of this uh and I don’t know if this is the right or even very good branding but uh I’ve heard of something called solar Punk which is the answer to cyberpunk where you have community-based with technology woven into like a natural ecosystem focused um Society where you know you’ll it’s more of an aesthetic thing kind of like cyberpunk where you’ll see um uh houses along a stream with tilapia and there’s a green roof and maybe there’s like a little robot drone like clipping a tomato or something it’s like an artist’s like concept yeah but it made me realize I I saw this and I was like wow we’re not we’re not creating an an aesthetic or an idea or telling a story about what we want this thing to be it’s right now right now it’s just gloom and doom gloom and doom yeah we’re going to have it’s going to be a mess um you the robots are going to take all our jobs these things are they’re coming you know maybe maybe if they or maybe you know maybe Society collapses but I I really doubt it our culture so divided yeah yeah and may what do you know what what do we want to see happen how will it look and feel and like do we what do we want to participate in that reminds me of a question I asked you the first episode we did which was if if you could imagine a a a kind of environment you would just hate to live in whether it’s like very specific thing whether it’s I don’t know a suburb in a particular area that you’re aware of like how would that environment have to change for you then to be like now I want to live there now it’s good I mean have you been to uh what’s that place outside of Santa Barbara there’s that really great Farm there in that Suburban neighborhood uh in gulas I don’t know I can’t think of what it’s called but uh so right outside of santar Brothers suburbs to the Horizon and they’ve got this great little like beautiful veggie farm with the avocado Orchard it’s like fenced in uh Michael abelman I think uh was he okay that was that was many moons ago Michael aelan had a farm there yeah yeah in California if you if you ever go to see it you’re like holy crap like this is so great cuz you’re in a it’s like those cookie cutter they Great Farm and it it just really like changes the whole game I’m sure people love it you know it’s like it’s crazy it stinks there’s chickens and tractors and stuff but it seems to have done well and are you kind of saying that in that otherwise you know let’s well I’ll call it desolate cuz that’s what how I see it but like in that landscape just creating that one little yeah that little Oasis of boy I don’t know I see like um yeah Suburban North America is tough uh Dubai have you seen what they’ve done there like they’ve made this really artificial Dubai is creepy weird City yeah and it’s like no one’s there like I mean I’ve never been there but I’ve seen like people like travel Vlogs are like look at this no one’s in this whole huge uh Park and yeah very strange very strange it doesn’t seem like the right yeah it makes me think of the stuff we’ve talked about with suburbs before yeah about like imagine every not necessarily like zero lawn or something but just a garden all over the place like everyone having Gardens everyone planting Paradise lot everywhere why not like the that solar Punk like I think that’s I I want to look that up and you know I want to answer that question too because you know I’m so I I think this is the podcast where I’m the most excited because Rob I I just feel that you know whatever the future is like the run that that we’ve had and that we’re having is a good one yeah and it’s cool and it’s fun and it doesn’t need to be more than that just in itself farming the farm scene growing that being surrounded by younger people yeah just like all of that for me is like it’s plentiful and it’s fun yeah and it’s just like in itself you know it’s just it’s just it’s just great I I I mean people ask sometimes too they’re like what you know what what should a farming career look like and how do you D AAS do this and that but some people come into farming for two three four years and they experience it and they they go on to something else and that’s just as successful I think yeah as you know going until you’re 65 or something but yeah come in and enjoy it experience it while you still can yeah no we but uh but yeah you can come in and bring your paddle board to the farm oh my God [ __ ] anyway it’s a good point though I mean a lot of crew members come and go right yeah yeah and you can still be just as successful in farming if you’ve you’ve taken you know your time with it and experience it it’s uh you did the right thing yeah do you have a hope for what your own kind of Legacy so to say might be in in this oh no I’m not thinking about that at all yet yeah no let’s not go there you want to finish off with our question yeah I also wanted to mention uh what we were talking about with the dystopic Future made me think of that quote from Charles eisenstein to you want to read with him I’d have to pull it up but do you know Charles eisenstein no sacred economics and some other anyway I think we I think we’ve talked I think the solar Punk is a great answer to no it just made me think of it yeah um what’s a book that you’ve read many times uh about far the one straw Revolution is a book that I love Yeah magical book do you guys know this one yeah I have not read it but I’m well aware of it it’s sort of uh you know my a lot of what I think about in my or what I thought about in my career is technology and this this was a very like anti-science and anti-technology story in a way because he was looking for a natural way of being in the world and so that happened to he had to address technology of his time um but I think he he would be rolling in his grave to see the direction that farming is G what’s the gist of the book so masanobu Fukuoka he was um he grew up um uh in shikoku an island in southern Japan where they had a subtropical climate so his father grew rice had a citrus Orchard and he um when he was really young became a lab technician I’ve read this book like 10 times I St he became uh he worked in um Plant Pathology with um one of his professors discovered the hormone that can make a seedless grape or something so they they were working on stuff like that um and he uh he had an experience when he was younger and I guess you would it would be considered something like Zen Buddhist maybe where he had a vision of uh the the true nature of things and that Vision to him it was clear didn’t the true nature of things doesn’t include human the human thought process or the way that we take the world break it down and change it it has nothing to do with that it’s its own perfect self-contained reality and you know he quits his job he tries to tell people around him this vision and everyone thinks he’s you know get out of here so he goes back to his father’s farm and he decides to take this idea and test it he’s like I was sure that it was correct he was a 25-year-old kid and so he goes back to his father’s farm and he stops pruning the cistus trees and the branches get tangled the trees start dying and he’s like I thought for sure that human meddling was like not part of Nature and he you he’s kind of turning this idea over over in his head and he sees a rice plant growing one day that uh just you know a volunteer along the fence or something and he’s like you know for thousands of years all over Asia they’ve flooded the rice fields this is just common human knowledge and to do that you have to grow a transplant plant it in the field weed it you know by the time you’re harvesting it you’ve gone over by hand the whole field two three four times and he sees this rice volunteer this rice plant and he’s like I’m going to grow uh rice without flooding the field without weeding and he develops this natural system um where he uh he seems to eliminate fos well he does he he no fossil fuels no no weed of the fields he grows a white clover um cover crop underneath the rice and he develops this really incredible natural system that I don’t know if it’s been reproduced like to that level but he did that by trying to see if he understood uh our place in nature a very interesting story and when I I read that when I was maybe like 2021 and I was like I’m going to farm man I love this it was like it was punk rock to me and it was like I’m doing whatever I want and I’m you know inventing my own life and all those things really appeal to me and sort of like uh I’m sold now I I actually like I’ve heard the book so many times I never actually really knew what it was about but now I think he would enjoy such a magical story yeah but he and he passed away in 2008 I wish I had gone there to uh to you know check out the farm I guess before he yeah but sometimes we’re disappointed when we yeah yeah true true he an old man I want to add how it’s so funny how many kind of small scale Farmers have the punk the punk rock back something it that attracts those that are bit wanting to have system it’s funny because I for listeners at home I’m wearing a I’m wearing a Ramon’s t-shirt yes that’s the spirit I I pulled that that book out of my bookshelf yesterday it’s really funny that because I didn’t remember that I had it but I pulled it out yesterday so it’s kind of I think I’ll go over and read it myself again yeah uh what’s some advice you heard let’s go to Japan you guys want to go to Japan I want to go to Japan I’m learning some uh I’m about a year in on the basics of learning the language I want to be able to you know order a beer get some basic stuff done but I want to I really want to go check out the Farms I want to go to Japan seem the Farms seems so cool and like there’s a like I don’t know just the where they present themselves like there’s a goofiness to what they’re doing but it’s huh the the guy that was on in the greenhouse this morning yeah tataka yeah from Japan oh cool he’s our G he’s he’s the plug is he the plug he’s the plug let’s go man I would love to go cuz I I think that in Japan they’ve scaled down farming so everything’s is small scale and they have great techology big yeah so they have great technology working for smaller Farmers I’d love to check out the tools some of the like transplanters March 2025 sound like a good sounds great sign me up and shitake cultivation cuz I used to grow shiak on law that’s what I did in that’s I mean that’s where that comes from um yeah what’s some advice you heard when you were really young that you only really appreciated much later in life some advice I heard when I was young I don’t know I had a I had a lot of older Growers like tell me not to be so like Star eyed about stuff and romantic about every little thing I think that when I was a kid I was like yeah I didn’t really fully appreciate it and uh shout out to along Longo who Farms one of my neighbors but you know he’d be like let’s face it Rob Rock we’re just picking stuff up and moving around all day and I I don’t think it you know as a kid I was like oh man you know I was how can you how can you say something like that but no I I kind of get it yeah there is an aspect to uh you know there’s an aspect to what we do that is a little bit like gez man you are picking up like boxes of moving around yeah that’s something that reminds me of a a chef I used to know would he would say like everything I make ends up in the toilet oo yeah that but it was I mean he lo I mean he was like the number one supporter of local farms in our region but it’s just I don’t know there’s a bit of like I don’t know feels like a weathered people kind of have some of these perspectives that are a bit more nuanced I guess you could say yeah weathered people yeah yeah they they’ve been through the storms uh and what advice do you often give to people if there’s anything that stands out to you oh I’m a I’m Relentless relentlessly telling people to have a little side some side develop side skills like learn some car pentry learn some metal working learn I really really would love to see more people use the computer to design stuff it’s a little harder but why is that it just comes in such handy and you can save so much time and money like even if you need to build a little uh shed uh just to be able to draw it up and and know what your material list is going to be so handy so I’m I’m always telling people to learn some one software like Google SketchUp or something yeah SketchUp is a good one start yeah and then um uh uh that that that’s really handy it’s free I think it’s still free and it’s just a handy thing to have uh and then if you want to get into more uh complicated tool design some of the stronger CAD software um like solid works is uh you can get a maker license for 100 bucks a year and you can get pretty good um to like that 3D printed gear I showed you earlier you could get to that level in 25 30 hours of practice we’re not talking about a quick qu your job for a year type of thing very handy to yeah computers handy thing to know a little bit about welding right welding is yeah been really handy um uh I don’t know yeah so that’s that one of my I don’t know you can make a stpo and a pinch like just with some yeah learn concurrent or learn parallel skills to the f I think is my uh uh get some financial literacy really early especially if you’re running the business so important yeah yeah I think people are could you tell me a bit more about that I don’t know maybe there’s like an allergy to uh even just making basic uh projections for what you’d like to you know it’s it’s amazing how if you say in the spring I want to have sales that look like this I want to do $100,000 in sales it happens it’s so crazy but you have to do it you have to make that plan and then you’re kind of like oh yeah we’re almost there like it’s working as you especially you can follow the stabs and then it’s like this feedback that yeah you think it’s cuz a lot of also young Growers are is any of it have to do it they’re just so unsure of themselves they they feel like they can’t predict CU they’re like I don’t know what’s going Happ you know like going back to like you have you know you grow up you’re like a punk kid or whatever like I’m GNA do whatever I want and I I don’t have to take a shower ever again kind of vibe yeah but like uh there’s a little bit of a a sneering like or an allergy to this stuff and it’s just going to hurt your uh just going to hurt you if you don’t take it a little bit seriously and you know there’s things too like the way you can um I mean this is a great example like we use a a rewards card to buy we don’t buy a single anything without getting a reward on a we pay our credit card bill every month no no never we never pay any interest but we take the reward and it’s a credit card and you have to sign up for a credit card to get it and people are like I’m not doing that I’m like well I don’t know it’s like worth I’m going to Maui yeah for a month on the point get a free plane ticket or it’s worth over the next 10 years it could be worth thousands and thousands of dollars just to just to you know instead of using a running a check or or or paying cash right yeah I think you know I don’t want to I don’t want to like if someone does have a personal objection to that I think that’s fine but you you can say what you think you know it’s not the route that you you would take no no yeah yeah you got to be you got to be smart keep your cash for when you need it borrow the money when you can yep what are people not talking about enough uh what are people not talking about enough the future that we they want I think it really does come back to that and then uh being like more active in designing it because I think the the vibe right now is really like like what what’s G to happen and I think uh it’s something we like like we don’t have agency in what yeah we don’t have any yeah yeah there’s just going to be this like a this like faceless thing that just sort of dictates what you know and they’ll be uh I like that how you say it being active designing yeah yeah being a part of it because it’s you know we’re just we’re humans and so we everything that’s around us is just made up by somebody none of it’s yeah dictated by yeah I mean our entire like guess system of yes of government and money is all made like this didn’t exist like 70 years ago a lot of them yeah right it’s like these were small roads You’ see small farms and it’s like this is all new is you’re thinking about that is it related at all to the fact that you are a designer at heart like you like to design so kind about you imagine you have more agency than you really do I guess maybe that’s no no I think you actually I think you realize you have the amount of agency that you do have but most people don’t realize how much they maybe have because they’re not making anything so like uh I know it’s just interesting parallel I thought the way you use the word design people are here’s the thing people aren’t talking about enough is like bringing like there’s so so many differences in people generally in the way we thing politically or people aren’t talking about the way back at all like there’s we’ve just accepted that everything’s gone uh one way and the other but what’s the what’s the end game with that that can’t go on forever and ever and you know when what you know what is the what’s the road back and there’s places we connect still and I always you know this gets in all kinds of territory that I don’t but like you know when you’re farming you have a you’re you’re going to encounter a really broad uh spectrum of people uh in your community all over the all over the the place and it’s really fun I love that part of farming uh I mean people they’re not all lefties they’re socio economic status yeah I it’s not a saying that people aren’t talking about but it’s a way that people aren’t talking and I I think that’s just with with Nuance like it’s just we were losing nuance so much more in the uh you just because the way we commun communicate online the sound bite sound bite is the way yep sound bites are the echo chamber I guess right you’re sort of di what what one thing that is never going to go out of fashion is strong leadership and strong leadership the real real leaders that are the people that are trying to connect how the we get back together yeah not all of them some some are making their career out of dividing well you know wars were started by people leaders that were dividing us and and bringing us to these horrible places but the real the real leaders are the ones that try to close the gaps and so y that’s a good point who knows who knows is there a culinary experience from your childhood or your young life that kind of stands out to you in your memory from my childhood or young life that stands out to me H not necessarily A an exact moment but like I don’t know yeah I mean I guess you know you relationship you had yeah growing up with food uh in the US in the 80s there was just uh it was junk food bananza and uh I don’t know what else to really say about it I think though like yeah there was definitely like because you could go and um like eat a strawberry like out of a like you know my parents would take us to that kind of stuff and you’d be like the hell is this when you like pick it but I don’t think that was like formative or anything well actually maybe it’s this I I like same kind of way like you know suburban American upbringing in the 90s for me and perhaps a lot of the thing that drove us to farming was that feeling that we missed out on something yeah yeah not eating yet I think that did i’ I’ve thought that for sure like having like you know uh eating a lot of that kind of junk like growing up in the 80s and then one day and then finally being like wow this is awesome yeah like yeah uh uh we were talking about figs earlier my I went out to my friend’s house in Oregon when I was like 19 and his mother had this fig tree right by the front door and I was like you gotta be kidding me and just standing there like eating them like what the hell I don’t think i’ ever seen a fresh fig before yeah so good so simple to grow it just grows y did you have anything I never asked you that question I think it’s the same as Rob like I grew up on Pop-Tarts and yeah you know you know commercials watching you know the GI Jo’s and just like this is this is how it was like my father would he would do the corn the sweet corn was something that he would take a detour and go to a farm yeah my parents did that too we had a local Farm we got corn and I worked on a a farm in my town as a teenager but it it wasn’t like I didn’t make the connection then and it was a I I didn’t feel all the things I ultimately felt later but I I think it did it showed me that I at least loved like physical work outside that’s for sure and and my first my first remembrance of of gardening or or was cuz my my my pops had he had a garden but my my first remembering is the pesticide shelf that I I couldn’t he told me not to go there so obviously I was always there opening the shelves and looking at all these cans they had like they were so spooky yeah and that’s that’s what I remember from so it wasn’t even that it’s like yeah stays with you yeah it was pesticides and it was it was all these products you’ve had a lot of progress in that way yeah in many ways yeah what’s the what’s like a a best or really great difficult decision you made in your life uh I don’t know maybe one of them was uh letting that thing uh kind of go for at the time that uh that was smart um your tool your tool yeah yeah that’s yeah I wonder what my life would be like if I had tried to go full speed for 10 15 years um let’s see yeah can I go I’ll go with that or a similar question but slly different ailure like what’s the best mistake you ever made if something stands out to you uh yeah I wish I uh I I treated College like a giant joke and dropped out of college um it was man you’re free to like study stuff and you have all this time it’s so great and people are helping you learn what a waste but I was just like just didn’t I just didn’t get it at the time and I have a really similar experience as well same thing for me I didn’t drop out but I like just it was it just I didn’t learn anything yeah and I could have I guess that’s what mistakes were for guys just like it’s all good it’s all good absolutely that wraps it up for me that wraps it up man this was a great talk thank you for coming fun and so we’re going to the party the Pitchfork uh Pitchfork Fest Pitchfork Fest we’re there tell us when we’ll be there for sure get that one on the books and then uh I’ll pencil in Japan 2025 all right and so everyone I hope you guys like this podcast this was a great time thank you again for coming Rob and I hope you guys are all doing well I hope everything’s growing we’ll see you next time hope you’re enjoying the podcast these are important conversations and and we’re really excited to have them and to share them with everyone uh you can check out the work that we do at the market Garder Institute you can check out our website the market gardner.com uh our mission is to multiply the number of small ecological farms around the world and we do this by offering training online courses to new aspiring Farmers but also to season Growers we’re helping them take it to the next level so you can check out the work that we do uh you can follow us on social media you can sign up to our newsletter to get a lot of freebies about gardening farming but also about how small scale farming is changing the world and that’s really what we’re all about and that’s really what this is all about so again super excited that you guys are on board we are changing the world
6 Comments
I'm not sure that the sea is rising. Very interesting science saying completely opposite of the narrative. Infact climate is going to cool
I'm listening from Bangladesh
Great memories! Great podcast and still using that flame weeder!
Totally. Those were probably the first 2 years in the entire history of the earth in the area of Vermont that it's ever flooded…
Inspiring.
Great podcast. Catching up with all episodes. Greetings from Bulgaria 😊