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Ep. 9: Ryan Cullen: Transforming Agriculture: The Power of Market Gardening and Regenerative Homesteading for a Sustainable Future
48 Plays7 months ago
Have you ever wondered how a simple shift in mindset and lifestyle can transform not just your life but also the world around you? What if your passion for nature could be the key to a more sustainable future? Many of us feel the pull towards something greater, a desire to live a life that’s in harmony with nature and to make a meaningful impact on our communities. But how do you turn that vision into reality?
Have a vision for your future and then reverse engineer how you get there so decide what it is you want and then break it into chunks or steps and then go one step at a time yeah have patience and build the resource base beneath you and around you that you need to get to where you're going’
Ryan Cullen is a passionate farmer and educator who has dedicated his life to market gardening and regenerative homesteading. Starting his journey in Thailand as an English teacher, Ryan’s path took a transformative turn after discovering permaculture. He’s since combined his love for teaching and farming, working on various projects that integrate sustainable practices into everyday life. Ryan is here to share his story, experiences, and the knowledge he’s gathered along the way to help others find their niche in the world of regenerative agriculture.
You can explore Ryan’s newly launched online education and training platform, the ‘Horticulture, Food & Farming Institute’, to gain valuable insights and skills.
Follow City of Greens Farm in Ontario, Canada, to stay updated on their journey, or connect with Ryan directly on LinkedIn: mrryancullen.
Explore these valuable resources to further your journey in regenerative design:
Discover more about Paulownia trees and their sustainable potential at https://www.paulownia-la.com/.
Dive into the Twelve Laws of Nature and unlock the secrets of harmonizing with our planet at https://www.12lawsofnature.com/.
Fulfill your garden aspirations with expert guidance from the Garden of Your Dreams masterclass at https://www.gardenofyourdreams.com/.
Ready to take actionable steps towards your dream garden? Book a complimentary 30-minute training session with Matthieu for immediate results: https://calendly.com/garden-of-your-dreams.
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Transcript
Preparing for Transition to Regenerative Living
00:00:00
Speaker
Start to plan your lateral move. Don't just stop doing what you're doing. Plan your exit strategy. Start building up infrastructure. Start developing the gardens, the beds, the property, the land. Buy the tools and machinery you're going to need.
00:00:17
Speaker
and just slowly start getting there and don't put pressure on yourself to achieve the goal tomorrow. Have a vision for your future and then reverse engineer how you get there. Decide what it is you want and then go one step at a time. Have patience and build the resource base that you're going to need, whether it's transitioning from your current job to running a farm or having a farm or whether you're transitioning from conventional agriculture to regenerative.
Introduction to the Regenerative Design Podcast
00:00:49
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Regenerative Design Podcast. I'm your host, Mathieu Maheus, and each episode I interview leading authorities in regenerative practices, people who excel at doing well and doing good.
00:01:04
Speaker
So are you passionate about protecting our planet for future generations while thriving in business? Well, you're in the right place because this podcast is dedicated to making our world better and your business more successful.
00:01:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome again to the regenerative design podcast.
Meet Ryan Cullen: Farmer and Educator
00:01:29
Speaker
Today we have another special guest and his name is Ryan Cullen. Ryan is a farmer, he's an educator and he is most occupied with market gardening. And I'm very excited to have you here. Ryan, how are you doing today?
00:01:46
Speaker
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm excited. Yes, awesome. So, Ryan, you are also having a big impact in our world and we'll discuss that more later on in the interview. But just for our audience to understand better, where did all of this start? What's your backstory?
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, fair. For me, it started in Thailand, actually, I was teaching English overseas. And I'd been there for like five, four or five years. And I really kind of just, I read Bill Mollison's permaculture design manual. And that kind of changed my life. And I thought this is what I've been looking for.
00:02:31
Speaker
for a while and this is the direction I'm going to go and then I really started stopped going to the beach on holidays and started going to permaculture projects in Thailand and then you know I bounced around a few permaculture projects there and
00:02:48
Speaker
really fell in love with it and then decided to come home and get a little bit more formal training in Ontario and in Canada. And then that led me to getting a diploma in horticulture, food and farming, studying some forest gardening with a place called the Living Centre in Ontario.
Journey to Permaculture and Education
00:03:09
Speaker
And then I got lucky enough to
00:03:12
Speaker
end up working with Jean Martin Fortier in Quebec and go to his training farm and yeah and one thing just led to another after being a student at our local college for a while and I trained with Jean Martin and then I went back and actually taught and managed the urban farm at Durham College which is a local college we have where I live and they have like a high tech high yield urban farm farm to table restaurant
00:03:42
Speaker
So I ended up managing that farm for about four years and teaching in their program and then while there started a couple of projects designing a passive solar greenhouse which we built and then started my market garden business essentially and then partnered with some friends who bought some land and a house and we've since been building a regenerative homestead and commercial market garden operation. That's the short long story.
Understanding Market Gardening
00:04:13
Speaker
Awesome, yeah. Just for our audience to understand, just to make sure, can you explain in short what market garden is? Sure, so it's primarily annual vegetables, and so typically organic
00:04:34
Speaker
vegetables. In my case, it's bio-intensive and so we have very tight spacings, really focused on building soil, typically permanent raised beds, typically human scale, so not necessarily a tractor, but hand tools, human scale tools, and we grow all kinds of
00:05:00
Speaker
and market garden vegetables so you know veggies to take to the market i guess traditionally and for us we really specialize in salad greens we do like five salad mixes and then like kind of complementary vegetables were pretty small scale so we grow
00:05:22
Speaker
limited varieties and typically things that are high yield per square foot, high market value, quick turnover, so quick days to maturity so you could be maximizing your yield per square foot during
Integrating Market Gardening with Regenerative Homesteading
00:05:37
Speaker
the season. So these are some of the principles when dealing with market gardening and then we're really integrating it into
00:05:44
Speaker
We have 10 acres, so it's not 10 acres of vegetables or market garden. We have about a half acre to three-quarter acre market garden, but we're integrating it into a 10-acre property regenerative homestead. So we have some complementary enterprises that we do that aren't necessarily money-making commercial, but they generate revenue and generate
00:06:11
Speaker
yields for us so like things like bees and honey, flowers and like insectary plants to create biodiversity. We have chickens with eggs and laying hands for eggs and so these are complementary small little enterprises that work with the market garden and we leverage them to
00:06:33
Speaker
kind of try to cycle nutrients, create closed loops and just add value to what we're doing in the market garden. So the market garden is really kind of the commercial enterprise and then the rest of it is a bit of a regenerative homestead. Oh yeah, I love that. Well, we'll dive more into that later.
Ryan's Personal Journey to Farming and Teaching
00:06:51
Speaker
I first want to understand more in depth like
00:06:56
Speaker
Because I like to understand oftentimes that in people's life, early on in their life, there's already hints that will take them on their journey of doing what they do when they are really in alignment with what they do. And you are definitely doing that. So as a child, was there any indications that you're going to end up doing this today? That's a good question. I honestly don't know.
00:07:26
Speaker
You know, I didn't grow up on a farm. You know, I did grow up going to the lake. You know, we had a cottage on a lake as kids and, you know, just being outdoors, being in the forest, being in the water, you know, outdoor activities. I very much like a city.
00:07:44
Speaker
kid, grew up in the city playing sports and so I think maybe the you know the draw to nature in those experiences young at the cottage in the summer were pretty liberating and I think maybe subconsciously drove me to where I'm at today. I think growing up too I always
00:08:06
Speaker
I think I always envisioned myself being a teacher in some sort of way. And so I think, you know, that's obviously that's the path I've taken. And I don't know what attracted me to that. I mean, I personally just love learning all the time. And I've always been, I guess, a good student when I was a kid and an avid learner, and I like to consume knowledge.
00:08:29
Speaker
And you know, constantly be learning. So I think that drew me to teaching and education and then, you know, naturally drawn to some sort of agrarian lifestyle and nature and outdoors. And I've the last decade really tried to just like synergize all that into some sort of cohesive lifestyle. I love that. Now let's talk about your
00:08:56
Speaker
What for you is your cohesive lifestyle? Let's dive a bit deeper into that because you said you're doing it to market gardening, you're educating. So what is, or let's put it in a different way. Like what is your perfect day? How does your perfect day look like? Yeah, good question. You know, for me, it's very much about
00:09:19
Speaker
It is about lifestyle first. You know, I didn't get into farming per se to, you know, get rich or just make a living. We very much kind of design and plan. At least I do my lifestyle around the farm and around agriculture. And so, you know, a perfect day, I guess, is
00:09:43
Speaker
I'm learning something new, probably reading something or at least like taking time to like observe and understand and comprehend being outside in the sun, in the garden, in the elements and just like
00:09:58
Speaker
Being in nature probably some time alone to think and just work and focus on your craft I think you know, I Every day. I'm I really try to just get a little bit better 1% better so we can continually be iterating and my what really drives me is to just be improving just getting better and trying to be You know that person that you strive to be all the time and then finding
00:10:27
Speaker
I like the word niche, like finding your niche, like finding just an organism, trying to make a living in the world, you know, and then and try to do the things you love. And for me, it's working outside. It's it's running my running your own business and being your own boss and, you know, being accountable to yourself, but also like creating. I really enjoy learning and creating and taking what I've learned.
00:10:50
Speaker
in creating and trying to share that with other people. And I love things like this, conversations like this about big picture ideas and concepts and like synergizing those ideas together. And these are the things that I love. Those are things like in a perfect day for me. Nice. I love that. Yeah. Then a podcast like this would fit in quite well in a perfect day. Awesome. Now,
00:11:18
Speaker
Let's talk a bit more about the education part of your work.
Synthesizing Passions into Education and Farming
00:11:22
Speaker
Where did this start from and why are you doing that?
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I mean, it really goes back to Thailand again, you know, even when I was, I was first learning, like studying permaculture, I went and worked on a permaculture farm and just volunteered. And I actually like didn't really take the PDC course. The guy was offering, I just went and volunteered on the farm and lived there for three months. And then, you know, naturally just started helping with the course and actually helped redevelop the course, you know, and I'd been teaching for,
00:11:57
Speaker
for four or five years already now teaching English in Thailand. But I had enough knowledge and experience and ability to take a course and revamp it and understand what people needed to learn and understand the material and make it interesting and engaging. I think that really was a big catalyst for me to
00:12:26
Speaker
understand how I could kind of synergize my journey or my passion for like an agrarian lifestyle with like learning and teaching at the same time because they're very much hand-in-hand, two sides of a coin. And so like that's what I've tried to synthesize really the last 10 years is how can I keep learning and keep teaching and then even when I went and you know I went back came back to Canada and
00:12:56
Speaker
went to school as a student, you know, at like 32 years old, took a two year diploma in horticulture, food and farming at a local college. And, you know, even while I was there,
00:13:08
Speaker
as a student, you know, I still felt like I wanted to be teaching others this stuff. And so in the back of my mind, this was the goal. I was just kind of acquiring knowledge. It was a means to an end and knowing I wanted to start my own farm. And then, you know, going to work and train with like Jean Martin and his training center is very much education based. And so I'm really attracted to
00:13:35
Speaker
Just that education side of things and then trying to synthesize it with you know what we're doing in agriculture and local food and all those things and what really drives me is trying to change the paradigms in like our
00:13:50
Speaker
society and ecology and culture and that's at its core very much why I'm I try to do what I'm trying to do to educate others and share my experiences so people who are where I was a few years ago you know I had great mentors and trainers pass information on to me and I'd like to do the same with other people with the goal of you know
00:14:15
Speaker
changing the landscape, you know, and how we kind of live, work and play. And that that's really what's kind of driving me to to synthesize these things together. Yeah, I really love that. I think that's so important. And even like probably in any field, just a human experience of that. There's so much information that we have gathered over a very, very long time and it has to be passed down from person to person and from generation to generation. Right. So I really love the approach that you took from
00:14:46
Speaker
going into learning permaculture, going into the horticultural, let's say the mainstream way as well, working on a farm. You seem to have gathered a lot of different angles that you're now kind of synthesizing and bringing out into the world. I think that's amazing. Now, what is more like your typical client or what would be your ideal client for the, or what is the ideal client for the course?
Farm Design and Educational Clients
00:15:16
Speaker
It's kind of twofold.
00:15:20
Speaker
you know, part of it is design and consulting. And then another part of it is education and training. And so I think, you know, ideal client wise, you have somebody who maybe has a property, wants to actually develop a farm, has the capital and enthusiasm to do it, helping guide them to start up something to take to do what we've done, take like a piece of property and turn it into a productive landscape and
00:15:50
Speaker
maybe a farm business, so somebody like that or an organization that wants to add some sort of horticulture, food and farming element to their business. And then the second side is people who want to learn how to
00:16:08
Speaker
Change the world, really. I've tried to build an education and training platform that's more for agroecological entrepreneurs and not just how to grow these vegetables or how to grow these crops. It's very much, as we were talking about before,
00:16:30
Speaker
broader scale from high level patterns down to the details, right? And big picture, what kind of skills, knowledge, skills and abilities can we give people so they can then go out and like make a difference where they live. And so it's geared a little bit towards design and business and entrepreneurship, as well as education and training with, while also like,
00:16:57
Speaker
Taking a lot of the experiences I've had, which I've been lucky to be not just market gardening, but in permaculture, forest gardening, even urban agriculture and vertical farming, I've had a plethora of experiences which I've been lucky to have.
Empowering Community Change-Makers
00:17:13
Speaker
I see kind of all these different ways in which I think like the puzzle pieces could fit together. And it's trying to like find ways to, I guess, excite people and educate and train people in those paradigms and in those areas so we can build an army of change, you know, world changers, changers in our local communities, right? There's such a need, I think, for
00:17:42
Speaker
at least where I live, a cultural shift in food and consumerism and our local economies. And for me, that drives me as to, can we grow, not just crops, but can we grow people and train people to change the immediate paradigm they're living in, not just for themselves, but for the community and culture around them. So it's been such a big shift
00:18:09
Speaker
in my life to go down this path and be part of some of these projects I've worked on and train with some of the people that have and learn from them. To me, it's a lifestyle I think people are attracted to.
00:18:27
Speaker
And it's not always a straight line path. It's not easy to navigate your way through it or even find your niche in that whole thing, right? And that's where your support becomes really important.
00:18:43
Speaker
Yeah, you're actually helping me talk it out a little bit right now. That was nice. I think that's our main thing is trying to help people find that niche.
Balancing Lifestyle and Farming
00:18:51
Speaker
People want to get into this agrarian lifestyle and they see other training and YouTubers and it's like, well, I can set up a market garden and that's going to make me money and then I'm going to be good. But it's not always like,
00:19:06
Speaker
about, it's not always about the economics, right? It's about, for me, it's about quality of life and enjoying what you're doing and pursuing the passion, the areas you're passionate about. And how can you turn that in? How can you, one, monetize it so you can make a living, but also like pursue the things that you're truly passionate about. So it doesn't have to be a market garden, right? I really, I really love that approach because how I look at this as well is that
00:19:36
Speaker
Now that there is a revolution coming in AI, robotics, a lot of jobs that are boring and useless that people don't even like to do are going to become obsolete. There's going to be so much free time, let's say, for people. Now, they can continue maybe their current job or do it only for a couple of hours a week. And then if they have the ambition, they can start a small farm, maybe start with growing their own food and
00:20:06
Speaker
and really starting it from a diverse perspective in finding different angles that work or inspire you. I was also interviewing another farmer. He said the fact that he is doing regenerative farming also on a market garden scale, he could now attract
00:20:26
Speaker
clients to come and visit, to learn to garden and to put their hands into the soil. And just to see the people, he said that how they interact with nature and gardening or farming is one direct way to interact with nature, that they are just so amazed by growing one tomato. It's the feeling of growing your own food. It's something that very little people know and experience. So I think there's a huge market opening up
00:20:56
Speaker
very soon, because AI is going to take over, or it's going to eliminate a lot of jobs. And I see it as a positive thing, because then people can actually do things that inspired them that they love doing. So yeah, I also saw this like on internet, on Instagram, this kind of vision for the future where you have all kinds of integrated technologies, and then a bright, beautiful, diverse landscape and technology is embedded in it as well. So I think
00:21:26
Speaker
There's no need to be scared of it. I think to your point about AI and that's a beautiful vision. I share a similar one and I think we need with this AI revolution and
00:21:43
Speaker
I think we need more generalists, more people who have broad-based skills.
Being a Generalist in the Evolving Job Market
00:21:47
Speaker
I think our economy and our industry of old has put everybody into a box. This is your niche. This is your specialist area. They've told everybody to be specialists, but AI is going to replace the specialist. If you have one skill,
00:22:06
Speaker
AI could replace you. And so if you're a generalist and you have general skills and you can adapt, I think you're more of a game changer in what you can do in the world. And I think people have an innate human desire to be doing that. And we've been put in these little boxes to say, this is your job, this is your role.
00:22:29
Speaker
do this one little thing very well and that makes you very easily replaceable later and I think probably not really happy because that's not really what we're supposed to be doing, I don't think. No, I agree. And then one major aspect that you touched upon is the effect or the potential that farmers or people that want to get into farming
00:22:51
Speaker
can have such a huge impact on their local community like there can be all sorts of events like even on the farm of my brother and my father where i also designed the gardens and we changed quite a lot and we decided to open up the farm because it was a kind of industrial farm with let's say closed doors it was not common that visitors would come and we started shifting everything and we invested in making it more beautiful making it more biodiverse
00:23:18
Speaker
There's also like a flower garden, a cutting flower garden was added. And now people just love spending time there as well. There's also like a huge field kitchen. There's more employment. Even lots of people are starting to work on the farm because there's more job opportunities. So I think it's a beautiful way of doing that and looking at farming, at least for this type of farming from a broader perspective.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think, you know, when you look around like our built environments, the cities that we live in, this is lost. These kinds of things are lost. You know, we build, at least where I live, you know, we pave over farmland and build neighborhoods that have very little life and they throw in some generic trees and a lawn and then they build a Costco Plaza at the end of the road and
00:24:15
Speaker
You know, a big part of my vision is like farms and agriculture at the center of communities. And like, I think we can live in a different paradigm and it doesn't need to be big box stores and tight box neighborhoods with all kinds of straight lines and some generic park at the end of the road, right? Like we used to have
00:24:36
Speaker
30% of the population involved in the agricultural process and now it's like less than 1% and getting worse and so I think we just we need to for ourselves as a culture and to be more self-sufficient and less dependent on you know global supply chains and industrial agriculture and our own health and wellness it's important I think we we change these paradigms and start to think differently and and
00:25:05
Speaker
observe and interact with the things you were just talking
Farms as Community Centers vs. Industrial Farming
00:25:09
Speaker
about. I think that's the draw. If we can have more of those built transformative landscapes, that's going to change our culture and it's going to change the way we're living.
00:25:22
Speaker
That's what drives me all the time. Really, I love it. It gets me really, really excited about bringing food together with community, with nature, creation. Because what I also see far too often in the paradigm, at least in Europe at the moment, is that
00:25:38
Speaker
There's so much pressure on farming. There's so much paperwork to be done. The politicians always change every four years. It's like farming has become something that is outside of society. Most people don't know farmers anymore. What I want to get at is that
00:26:02
Speaker
We need to get farmers back to be part of society because it has such a rich, like it's most of the available landscape and we can do something beautiful with it as well, rather than getting it as something separate. And this is something that I see so often in the paradigm of today. It's like, okay, we need to separate agriculture because it's production and we have to make it super
00:26:31
Speaker
industrial and like as if it's an industry and then we have to have another area which is nature. So we make nature reserves and no humans should interact with it. It's like we fence it off and it's now part of nature because humans are evil. We're bad for nature.
00:26:49
Speaker
And then everybody has to live in the concrete city and keep things separate. This is kind of the paradigm that I see a lot. Whereas I don't see it as to be necessary at all. We can all mix it together. Food production, living, nature. So that is what makes everything way richer because we're on one planet. It's not like you can actually make borders between these things.
00:27:16
Speaker
I'd love to know your perspective on that as well. Yeah, totally. I got a lot of thoughts on that actually. I think we're still living in very much the remnants of the Industrial Revolution, right?
00:27:32
Speaker
and industry, we like to take everything apart and put all the pieces and components into its own little area and work in these silos.
Critique of Industrial Silos and Holistic Systems
00:27:43
Speaker
We've become an economy of middlemen and people who
00:27:50
Speaker
just exchange and make money on exchange, right? There's not, there hasn't been, we've moved away from this idea of like primary production and direct sumer and this, the relationship with the person growing the food, whatever, not even just growing the food, making the product and the end user and everything's been commoditized. So people in the middle can make business and make money. And I think,
00:28:18
Speaker
this is this is we've become a little bit lost in this way like nature functions doesn't function like that like nature doesn't function silos you can isolate one thing in nature and it's not going to behave the way it behaved when it was part of the whole right and so for me i i'd like to look at it as very much a holistic approach and think of think of systems in whole systems and how are the unique
00:28:45
Speaker
whatever it is individuals enterprises within that whole operating as a whole as well and how do you connect to that greater whole but we haven't done that in our society we've taken it all apart and put it in little boxes and individualized operations and silos and nothing functions interconnectedly and you know we had this is why we have so much I think waste and illness and disease and
00:29:10
Speaker
We're not functioning as a whole. And I think the more we can get towards that kind of paradigm and achieve some more wholeness, we're all going to be better. Our economies will be better. Our health and wellness will be better. And, you know, really like our ecologies, right? Where a lot of the food that we get
00:29:32
Speaker
You know, it's coming from, it's being grown halfway across the world in ecologies and economies we're not even connected to. And so we're extracting resources from one place to add resources to another instead of
00:29:50
Speaker
thinking locally and not just extracting the resources, but moving resources from one place to the other within that hole that you're operating within. We need to get back to that somehow and it's a big problem to solve, but how can we do our own little part in the little corner of the world we're operating in?
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up because that was actually going to be my next question related to the topic of you already started answering it, but related to the topic of holistic design, holistic management. I know this is a big part of your work as well. Yeah, I think it's based mainly on the book from Alan Savory, right? Is that correct? Or how did you let's talk about let's talk about holistic management in your perspective.
Applying Holistic Management to Market Gardening
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been really inspired by Alan Savory's work and holistic management. And for those people who don't know what that is, holistic management traditionally was
00:30:57
Speaker
really I guess designed or set up it's a framework to holistically manage landscapes and the environment and traditionally it's been used by larger scale ranchers or livestock and it's very much a holistic grazing system but also a whole farm management system so you know
00:31:20
Speaker
while I've been studying it for a lot the last few years and like idol graze livestock by any means I'm a market gardener and small farm kind of grower but the principles in holistic management we can take and apply
00:31:36
Speaker
to our context, right? And holistic management is very much about balancing and thinking about the whole system. And so thinking about ecology, culture, and economy as one functioning system. And how do we bring that into our landscapes, our business, our lifestyle, our community culture society?
00:32:00
Speaker
and integrate our farm operations into that kind of paradigm. And so it's about on our farm, it's about how do we set up our landscape to cycle nutrients, to cycle water, to build in community dynamics. You know, it's not just a market garden of annual vegetables. We're playing with perennial agriculture, small scale livestock systems in the forest.
00:32:26
Speaker
Thinking about our property as a whole, how do we catch and store water and in a regenerative way? So it's not just running off our landscape and how do we use it in the garden? How do we cycle the waste from the market garden? Like we use our chickens to create compost for us. We get a harvest of eggs.
00:32:47
Speaker
We eat the chickens at the end of the year and so there's all these functions that we're stacking and multiple yields that we're getting, but we're trying to close the loops constantly on our farm and we really approach our design and our lifestyle that way as well, thinking about our context.
Social and Community Elements in Farm Design
00:33:08
Speaker
For me, there's three families living in this house on this property.
00:33:14
Speaker
It's not just about designing the land and running a farm and building a business. It's also about how do we interact socially? How do we make it work as three families and three people living on this property? How do we build a community and a lifestyle that's healthy and positive and fun and exciting and passionate where we can all achieve
00:33:39
Speaker
our own personal goals while achieving, kind of acting as a whole to create this kind of common goal kind of vision. And so this is the approach I take to like education and training around agriculture is that, you know, we have to think of
00:33:57
Speaker
these systems as whole systems and within those whole systems, there's other whole systems that are individual holes and how are they connected to the greater one, right? And when I worked at, you know, I ran the urban farm at a local college and, you know, there's a lot of moving parts there. You know, it's just a farmer on your land anymore. This is like you have students coming into the farm. The farm is trying to run as a
00:34:24
Speaker
as a production system that produces crops that are marketable but then we also have to integrate education and training and labs and work with faculty and teachers into the farm production process and then there's obviously the greater picture of the farm is part of.
00:34:41
Speaker
like a center for food which has a hospitality and a farm to table restaurant and you know then you're part of the bigger whole which is the college and how do we integrate our program our farm into the vision of admission of the greater whole and how do we work with the stakeholders in our community of the college and in our programs
00:35:05
Speaker
And so you have to think about these things and it's a complex,
Interconnected Systems: Farms, Education, and Community
00:35:10
Speaker
right? Nature is a complex system. A farm is a complex system and so is society and culture. And so how do we manage that complex system in a way that doesn't put it in silos? So we can actually like find synergies, find functional interconnectedness, stack functions, improve yields.
00:35:30
Speaker
and maximize our return on the energy we're putting in, on the investments that we're putting in. I think when you think of things this way, you get more holistic outcomes, right? You get more community-based outcomes where it affects the whole in a greater way as opposed to the individual working within it. I think this has been
00:35:55
Speaker
a mistake that we've made, I think, in our culture that we're very, we've been very much in the West, at least. And this is something I've really, that's, I think, come home with me from, you know, being in Southeast Asia. It's very community-based. They're very holistic thinking. You know, families live together and they all support each other and there's a hierarchy within that, but they're all working together towards a common goal. There's a mutual support.
00:36:22
Speaker
and symbiotic relationships in their culture. And here in the West, we're very individualized and we're pursuing our goals oftentimes at the expense of the greater good or the greater whole. And so I think it's about repositioning our perspective on how we look at things and taking a more holistic approach. So that's the long-ended answer to what my view of holistic management is.
00:36:53
Speaker
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00:37:18
Speaker
I love it and I think you very beautifully explained what the holistic approach is to look at different holes and bring it together and that is so hugely important to them. Obviously you have to start understanding it but then you also have to start managing it and actively finding tools to
00:37:39
Speaker
implemented and this this system that you talked about the holistic management approaches is really beautiful to do that because now you're you because if you want to go as a farmer into a direction that is more about diversifying your farm
00:37:54
Speaker
Because that's what it kind of boils down to diversify just like nature is way more diverse and then you have so many advantages like you're way more resilient because if one crop fails, you still have other systems that can hold your business. That's actually one of the biggest
00:38:15
Speaker
challenges for farmers these days because they're so specialized in one thing that first of all, their cash flow is stuck for one year in one crop. And second of all, if one if one of their main crops fails, they might be out of business immediately. So it's hugely risky. And now with climate change taking like making it even more difficult, it's kind of for me, it's kind of a no brainer for farmers to diversify, it's probably going to be the only way to farm in the future to to produce healthy food.
00:38:45
Speaker
So that's why I think it's hugely important. And then the approach that you talked about is so important to take, not just as a farmer, because most farmers go from crop to crop, and they work every day, and they're doing one day after the other, and they're like, bam, bam, bam, bam. And that is important. Farmers work hard, and you have to work hard.
00:39:07
Speaker
I mean, you don't have to work hard, but at some moments in the farm, you have no choice, right? But that's important to do that. But then also taking a moment in the year, maybe a couple of moments in the year to reflect and kind of start with an analysis of your farm, like how many hectares do we
Setting a Vision for Farming Success
00:39:25
Speaker
have? What is the resources that we have? And then starting to work with that process to basically build your vision and your long-term growth.
00:39:33
Speaker
your long term goals because then you have the ability to look behind year to year. You look behind or behind crop to crop and that's where all the magic starts to happen and it's an exercise
00:39:48
Speaker
I did with my brother and my sister, who's also involved in the farming business. She's doing more the marketing approach that we took a moment like three to four years ago and did the whole exercise. I really started where do you want to take the farm? It's kind of in between two generations.
00:40:05
Speaker
Where do we want to bring it? And we set some amazing goals that we thought, OK, this is like long term, right? And then now four years down the line, we finally revisited it, like the initial draft. And it was amazing to see how many things actually happened. We were like, well, yeah, this happened. OK, this is happening. This is on the road to become part of the farm. It was incredible to see that the exercise really helped to stay connected to the long term vision.
00:40:35
Speaker
I'd love to hear more about your perspective as well on vision. I think it's a massive part. How are you incorporating it in your work? You touched on a few key words there that are important in the vision process. For me, it's about being regenerative. It's about being resilient. How do you do that? Part of it is through diversification.
00:41:04
Speaker
you know, what are you what are you aiming at? And, you know, this is the this is a regenerative podcast. So, you know, I think regeneration is a big what does that mean? Right? The word gets thrown around a lot. Right. And so for me, it's a big part of our vision and like our ethos is to be regenerative, not just like in the landscape, but like,
00:41:25
Speaker
health and wellness like personally like climate of the mind kind of stuff but also like in our relationships too like if you don't take if you don't if you don't design your life you know i got some great advice from a guy my friend of mine in thailand like
00:41:41
Speaker
design the life you want to be living. Just design it. Don't let other people tell you how to be living. And so if you're trying to design a regenerative and resilient lifestyle, you need to be able to have those times and those moments and the systems in place
00:42:00
Speaker
to actually regenerate each season, each week, each month, like whatever that means, right? You need to apply that to your landscape. You need those ecological services and systems to regenerate your water, your nutrients, the inputs you need.
Designing a Regenerative Lifestyle
00:42:16
Speaker
Where are they coming from? How do you build in systems to regenerate the inputs required for the farm from an ecological perspective? But then how do you regenerate
00:42:25
Speaker
like the inputs personally for yourself and your family and your community, right? And so building those systems into like your vision, setting goals and strategies and processes and procedures. So like for me, I want every day to be enjoyable. Like I don't want to go out and like work 60, like I'll go work 60 hours a week, but like,
00:42:49
Speaker
Some people are like, I want to have to do it, right? I want to do it. It's not work. You don't want to have to do it. Exactly. It's setting up your day and your system and your operation so that the work is enjoyable. We talk a lot about, everyone likes to talk about work-life balance.
00:43:10
Speaker
That's super great if you don't like your work I love this like you're in balance right like if work is life and life is your work to me that's work that's work-life balance it's not about like turning off
00:43:27
Speaker
your mind at four o'clock and then having dinner with your family. Integrate the family and your lifestyle that you're living into your day-to-day work. Integrate the things you're passionate about and interested in. Find a way to monetize that so you can afford to go do those things and just change your lifestyle so that it's like,
00:43:52
Speaker
this is the life i want to be living this is the work i want to be doing and how can you carve out a niche make an organism making a living you know doing what you love and there there is a niche there and like man with with the way the internet is and the advent of technology and ai and like all these things like we can all be entrepreneurs and
00:44:14
Speaker
one person businesses and you just got to find that that sweet spot where your passion meets like the work you're doing and it's provides value to others and so for me like that's part of my vision and then trying to create a system that to your point is diverse enough that it can absorb shocks to the system and be resilient right so like
00:44:41
Speaker
I'm not just a farm.
Balancing Seasonal Farming with Education and Wellbeing
00:44:43
Speaker
I'm trying to build an education and training business as well, because one, I'm passionate about teaching and learning and education. I love farming, but where we are, it's very cyclical. We have pretty cold, harsh winters, and it gets harder to make a living in the winter. And so how do you balance the seasonality of that out? And you work so hard in the season,
00:45:07
Speaker
You need time to regenerate energy-wise, physically, mentally. You push so hard in the eight months of growing, you need a month to just be in the dark and be in the cold and sit by the fire and read some books and regenerate your mind.
00:45:26
Speaker
start anew, start again and I think across the board we can do these things and build diversity into our system so you have multiple sources of revenue, multiple domains to exude your passion in and this brings more returns and brings more returns in different domains.
00:45:49
Speaker
and more yields in different domains. And you're more resilient as a result of it, because if you have shocks to the system, you can adapt and bounce back. We just went through some crazy stuff with COVID. And I actually lost my job during COVID. And if I hadn't have started this farm on the side as an extra source of whatever you want to call it, production, passion, income,
00:46:17
Speaker
been able to like lean back on that and you know things and if I didn't if I didn't build up the resource base I had I had been building right we've infrastructure on the land I partnered with some friends that makes life a little easier you're not you're not out there doing it on your own with a mortgage and kids not there's anything wrong with that but like this is the way we've built our lifestyle so
00:46:44
Speaker
it's easy to adapt and we don't have a lot of pressure week to week, day to day to make it all work. And so thinking about it holistically and designing in that resilience and that regeneration, that's a big part of my vision. And it's a big part of, I think, what I want to try to educate and train people into and to think about because we very much get
00:47:13
Speaker
courses on how to grow this or do this or do this job or set up this farm operation, but we don't talk a lot about like the internal stuff and like the things in the ether, right? And how do you like, how do you think about that? And I think it's equally as important because you gotta go do this every day. And I've seen a lot of people get excited about the idea of like, I'm gonna go start a farm and then they go
00:47:42
Speaker
They're in love with the romantic idea of it but they don't plan it well enough into their lifestyle to either transition over or to be regenerative and resilient so they can do it for the long term and then they burn out, quit and go back to whatever it is they were doing. That makes me sad to see that because we just need more farms. We need to multiply the farms and we need it as a society.
00:48:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think you touched on two very important aspects. One is that what stood out for me now is that you mentioned the fact that what happens if you lose your job? What if you don't know how to grow your own food? Like even if you're in a good job today, who knows what if your job will be still around in the future? So just that idea is already like one
00:48:35
Speaker
one important aspect to start considering to do the exercise before actually starting to before making any changes like I just came up with the quote like there's a quote live life by design and now I understood it we have to say live life by regenerative design because you can already start thinking about it today
00:48:57
Speaker
Where do you see yourself in the future, even if you have a full-time job now? Do you want to keep doing that? Do you want to live on the countryside? Do you want to start a small farm? Or do you live in the middle of the city and do you have a small backyard garden and you want to start growing some food there? These are really important questions, I think, definitely for farmers, but basically for everybody who's listening.
00:49:23
Speaker
Like, if you don't have the skill to grow your own food, it's something that is very scary because in a lot of Western countries, during COVID, the supermarkets were empty. And then it's like, okay, COVID was difficult, but who knows what else is going to come or what is going to come next. So if you don't have that resilience in your own life, you're
00:49:48
Speaker
you're going to be in trouble. So that's something important, I think. And then what else stood out for me is that whether or not you're a farmer or you're thinking of making the transition is to look at regenerative farming
00:50:03
Speaker
on your personal perspective because this is something that I see way too often with farm consultants is they will analyze your land, you'll look at the soil type, you'll see what crops could be good for your business.
00:50:18
Speaker
you'll look at all of these things but they're missing one huge aspect that you mentioned is the farmer himself.
Farming Career: Personal Preference and Lifestyle Fit
00:50:24
Speaker
Like does he want to grow carrots or does he prefer to be free during the summer or he wants to enjoy winter like you said like you do or like these are super important questions to ask yourself because if you don't take the time to decide on this or to set out your long-term vision
00:50:46
Speaker
And it's a really fun exercise, actually. I remember it. It really inspires you as well. Then this is your road to success, right? Because if you don't do it, you'll just, and this is what I love that you said as well. It's become very popular to start your own farm or to start growing your own food. And YouTube is full of success stories of how somebody ages his backyard in seconds, it looks like. And people are like, oh, nice. I would love to do that as well and sell my vegetables left and right.
00:51:15
Speaker
But it's not that easy. I'm not saying that it's not possible. But you have to ask yourself, is this really something that you want to be doing or not? So yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I love that.
00:51:27
Speaker
Well, just on that note, I think it's not just about regenerative farming. I think it's really much about a regenerative lifestyle and you don't have to be growing your own food. You can easily just diversify your relationships, build a resource base where
00:51:46
Speaker
you know a farmer or you know your farmer and that builds in resilience because you've cultivated a good relationship with someone growing food and you could be doing something else that you're passionate about it could be architecture could be whatever art or something right but it's about looking at your life holistically and you know part of this holistic management framework is about setting holistic goals and the goals aren't necessarily like
00:52:14
Speaker
I want to make $50,000 this year. It's how do you want your life to be? What's the quality of life you're looking for? And you don't have to be a farmer to go through this framework. Like every person could ask themselves this in their own lifestyle, and you can apply it to a farming paradigm if you like, but it's like, how do you want your life to be
00:52:37
Speaker
What are the actions you need to do every day what are the forms of production that produce the life you want to be you want to have what do you want if you do those things.
00:52:50
Speaker
What is the future resource base look like? What is the future you're envisioning that you're going to get to if you do these things? And then it just becomes a matter of like, am I doing these actions every day to achieve the life I'm trying to live? And if you're not getting the outcomes, then you need to revisit
00:53:12
Speaker
the actions and ask yourself, well, why am I not achieving what I'm trying to set out to do? And, you know, this isn't like, it's not a linear thing. It's a life cycle approach, right? You need to go, you need to set some goals, act on those goals, have some ways to produce those goals. And then at the end, whatever it is, quarter, season, year, decade,
00:53:39
Speaker
Ask yourself, am I where I set out to get to? And if yes, great, then continue to evolve those goals because you never get to the end. You just keep going. There's no end. You just keep living. And so you have to continually be reinventing yourself.
00:54:03
Speaker
And I think it's about a regenerative like I love what you said like design life by design. That's brilliant. I think it's not just about agriculture and farming and growing your own food.
00:54:15
Speaker
I think it's a change in perspective, changing the way we frame our lives and our vision for our lives. We've been put into boxes, man, and told this is the way to live. Get a job, have a family, buy a house, have kids, retire. You're going to enjoy your life when you're 65. Start living now. Start designing your life now and change whatever you're not happy with.
00:54:45
Speaker
and build in regeneration, resilience, diversification into your everyday.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And I think one major aspect in achieving these goals, because obviously once you set out the vision and the goals, you kind of connect with that. And if you ride it out, the odds of it happening have increased already by 10, 20 fold. There's even research showing that, proving that. But then one major other aspect I think is that to have a supportive system around the journey to get there,
00:55:18
Speaker
and some support that keeps you accountable and that like because if you set up your road, the way is not going to
Role of Mentorship and Community Support
00:55:26
Speaker
be straight. It's impossible. There will be things that put you off track. So then having a supportive system is massive because it's also from my own personal experience like in the last
00:55:37
Speaker
Two to three years I have been surrounding myself with a lot of mentors and people that support me in growing my business, but also we looked at it from a whole holistic approach, not only in business, but also in life, like where do you want to go? And this has made all the difference because
00:55:57
Speaker
This is another beautiful quote that I like related to this. It's saying like, you can run fast alone, but together you can run a walk way further. So I think that... I love that. I think that's a massive thing and that's where your work comes in beautifully because you can start to build a vision and then have your support along the way to check in like, am I on the right track? Is this really my goal? So is that something that you were working on as well?
00:56:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's really about like cultivating a resource base and building multiple forms of capital, right? So like, everyone's always just concerned about how much money they have in the bank. And that's the key to survival. But it's like, you can build, it's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? It's about how do we get to, for me, it's about self actualization, right? And can you explain the, the, the, you mentioned the name, I don't understand. I don't know the concept.
00:56:57
Speaker
Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so it's basically a pyramid. At the top is like self-actualization, but you can't get to self-actualization if you don't take care of the basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid, food, water, shelter, social relationships, all those things, right? And so it's about building a resource base that
00:57:21
Speaker
achieves those things like where do you get your food from is it a real is it a real if it's from the grocery store you're dependent on this system like
00:57:30
Speaker
So you could start with growing your own food or knowing a farmer or being part of a community that does grow their own food, food, water, shelter. How do you take care of that first? And then how do you, where do you build in those like social relationships in your community, your, you know, build in experiences? Like if you, if you, if you need, if you want to,
00:57:53
Speaker
Do whatever, X, Y, or Z. You want to build a farm, start a farm business. What are the skills you need? And if you audit yourself, if you don't have them, go out and get the experiential capital you need to achieve your goals.
00:58:10
Speaker
Develop those social relationships that you need to get where you need to go like change the paradigm on your life, right? Like if you're truly looking for self actualization, which maybe not everybody's looking for I think we get caught in the trap of this just like Go to work make money to like put money on the table for the family pay the mortgage pay the bills and
00:58:35
Speaker
rinse, rinse, repeat. And we've just, I think we've got trapped into that lifestyle. And I think we can live a totally different way. You know, you talk about what you've done and like approaching it holistically and
00:58:50
Speaker
Searching out mentors and this is something I've done and I think everyone should do. Find the people doing the things you want to be doing. Go work with them. Go learn from them. Keep building your resource base and it's going to take time.
00:59:07
Speaker
You don't need to do it tomorrow. You don't need to run. We're always running so fast, right? Everyone's running so fast. Make it in the paycheck, paying the bills, feeding the kids, going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Slow down.
00:59:21
Speaker
where you're trying to get to piece by piece and enjoy the journey, enjoy the process. If you know where you're going and you have a vision where you're going, you can bear all the burdens of the now. You have something you're aiming at, and I think oftentimes
00:59:42
Speaker
where a lot of people were not aiming at the right things or aiming at anything at all. Well, I love that. And this is something that I think you mentioned it before the interview. I'm not 100% sure now, but that you said you're improving your life or you're improving things 1% every day. That's like your approach.
Iterative Improvement in Long-Term Farming Goals
01:00:04
Speaker
Continuous.
01:00:05
Speaker
improvement and innovation just, and this is what's beautiful. This is what I love about like brought farming is every day
01:00:15
Speaker
or every week and every season is another at-bat. It's just another way to iterate on the last day, on the last week, on the last season. But you have to be observing what you're doing and knowing that you're getting better and aiming at something that's in the future, the future person you want to be, the future resource base you want to have.
01:00:39
Speaker
Are you moving incrementally towards that, right? Everyone likes to set these big goals, but if you don't have a roadmap for how to get there, how do you know if you're getting closer or not, right? And so I try to set up whatever you want to call it. A good example of we make a schedule. I make a schedule.
01:01:04
Speaker
for the whole year. There's a great quote. I think it's Jim Rohn or something like, don't start the year until you've finished it. And so plan the whole season. Make a schedule.
01:01:19
Speaker
have a plan, have a roadmap, and then go do it. And then you're going to get punched in the face, man. You're going to fail. Things aren't going to work. This isn't going to work. But you need to adjust. And this way, you become more efficient every day. You become more disciplined. You become more regimented. And that's how you get true freedom and true work-life balance is
01:01:47
Speaker
It's that pursuit of iteration and getting better all the time. Then the work's enjoyable. Then it's not a grind, man. It's not like I just work 60 hours and I'm dead and I got to turn off and go on a vacation or whatever. That constant improvement and that constant discipline, I think,
01:02:11
Speaker
gives you a marker and a metric to say, okay, I wasn't good yesterday. And this is the reason why. And now I have an indicator to say, well, this is how I can be better. And then, you know, then it's on you to, to actually act on, on those thoughts and those observations and try to improve. And when you do this, you're going to see bigger results, you know, like for us,
01:02:38
Speaker
I've left a lot of money on the table on our farm because I value lifestyle and energy and enjoyment and peace and enjoying the work over making an extra
01:02:54
Speaker
a few hundred dollars a week or a few thousand dollars a season, I could push myself to the limits of what? To what end? Then I'm not enjoying my lifestyle, right? It's like I'd rather enjoy the lifestyle and make a little less money and find ways to save or spend less.
01:03:11
Speaker
and make the whole work than to try to like burn out and achieve big goals real fast. So it's about enjoying, I think, the journey and the process, but iterating on it consciously, right? And just getting better every day. Keep taking the jump shot, keep getting up to the plate and swinging the bat, whether you're winning or losing. Yeah, I love that. And that's like,
01:03:38
Speaker
the kind of duality of it as well that you have to set the long term goal. And then once you have set that goal, improving each and every day by 1%, which is doable, it's not that much becomes
01:03:52
Speaker
it becomes part of who you are. It's not even a question, oh, how can I improve? You just do it. And you know, like, oh, I'm getting closer to my vision. Even if it's really far away still, you're enjoying it because you're getting closer. And maybe the journey is the way, and you don't even have to achieve that long vision. I think it should be great. And I hope everybody achieves that. But then if you achieve it, you'll probably set a new goal or a new vision.
01:04:21
Speaker
So the goal is not to get to the goal is not the purpose of enjoying life to the fullest, I think. So yeah, thanks a lot for mentioning that. And yeah, I think we're nearly going to have to start wrapping up here. I think we could keep talking for hours and hours. And it's been really interesting. I would love to now give some more advice to our listeners here. Like if there's people listening that have a feeling like I'm
01:04:49
Speaker
Considering to make a transition, I'm considering to start gardening, growing my own food, or if there's farmers that say, I really want to make the shift from the, let's say, the mono-industrial system to something that's more diverse, what would be your single most important advice for them?
Reverse-Engineering Success with Vision and Planning
01:05:12
Speaker
Have a vision for your future.
01:05:15
Speaker
and then reverse engineer how you get there. So decide what it is you want and then break it into chunks or steps and then go one step at a time. Have patience and build the resource base
01:05:35
Speaker
beneath you and around you that you're going to need to get to where you're going. Whether it's transitioning from your current job to running a farm or having a farm or whether you're transitioning from, let's say, conventional agriculture to regenerative.
01:05:56
Speaker
Start to plan your lateral move. Don't just stop doing what you're doing. Plan your exit strategy and then reverse engineer how you're gonna get there. And so start saving money, start building a resource base, start building up infrastructure, start developing the gardens, the beds, the property, the land, buy the tools and machinery you're gonna need and just slowly start getting there and don't put pressure on yourself to like,
01:06:25
Speaker
achieve the goal tomorrow. I think there's like a mental health
01:06:30
Speaker
Depression thing there that we don't we're not where we ever want to be but it's because we're we're trying to We want to be there now and we're in a rush like that point like make the plan have the vision enjoy the journey and have have a process and then find balance in that and usually its patience and being able to delay gratification I Love that. That's I think that's also a beautiful
01:06:58
Speaker
summary of bigger parts of our conversation here today. Thank you very much, Ryan. This has been a pure joy. I feel like we did a very enjoyable brainstorm on how the future can look for people that are listening for ourselves. So that's been amazing. Now, how can people best reach out to you or find more information about your courses?
Introducing the Horticulture Food and Farming Institute
01:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I've just launched like an online education and training platform called the Horticulture Food and Farming Institute. So you can find that online. You can follow our farm. We're in Ontario, Canada, a City of Greens farm. And you can message me, you can find me on LinkedIn or connect through social media by following our farms or following my online platform.
01:07:53
Speaker
And thank you for this great opportunity. And it's been an amazing conversation. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you, Ryan. We're going to make sure that all the links you told here today, that we're going to put them in the show notes. So Dan, is there anything, any final thing that you would love to share with the audience here?
01:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, just keep fighting the good fight, I guess. Pursue your dreams and find a way to get there and, you know, don't give up. Like, have the patience, have the tenacity, have the resilience to just keep moving towards your goals because you can get there and you just got to be resilient.
01:08:43
Speaker
Wow. Well, thanks again, Ryan. Thank you very much for coming on the show. This was a really cool interview and probably see you again soon. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Matthew. Bye bye.