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EP46 - Judith Horvath
46 Plays9 days ago
"The same piece of land that used to support three generations, three generations ago, can now only support one generation."
Most people entering regenerative agriculture do so not from farming families, but from boardrooms — bankers, lawyers, construction company owners, people whose families got sick and started asking harder questions about what they were eating. Judith Horvath is one of them. A biologist by training, she spent 25 years in corporate scientific research publishing before the pandemic made a decision for her: looking out over her sheep from a makeshift dining room office, she knew she wasn't going back. That clarity is now the foundation of her consultancy, Regenerative Ag Design, and the lens through which she reads a farming system in genuine crisis — one where multi-generational families are financially trapped by shrinking margins and depleting soil, and where the younger generation leaving the land is often the rational choice rather than a failure of values.
Judith Horvath is the founder of Regenerative Ag Design, an agroecology consultancy based in Ohio, and the owner-operator of Fairhill Farm. A trained biologist with permaculture design certification and over a decade of hands-on farming experience, she works across three client segments: new farmers who need a Sherpa, affluent landowners developing regenerative passion projects or homesteads, and large-scale agrihood developments. She is a part-owner and agricultural designer of the Hickory Run agrihood project in Northeast Ohio, host of the Fairhill Farmstead Life podcast, and has a forthcoming book on natural and low-cost parasite control for livestock.
Learn more and connect:
1. Regenerative Ag Design, Judith's consultancy — https://regenerativeagdesign.com
2. Fairhill Farm — https://fairhillfarm.com
3. Fairhill Farmstead Life, Judith's own podcast — search for it on your podcast app of choice
4. Hickory Run Agrihood, the eight-enterprise regenerative community Judith is designing in Northeast Ohio — currently in development
5. Judith Horvath on LinkedIn — search "Judith Horvath"
Explore these valuable resources to further your journey in regenerative design:
Discover more about regenerative design at Paulownia Landscape Architects: https://www.paulownia-la.com
Dive into the 12 Universal 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 session with Matthieu for immediate results: https://calendly.com/garden-of-your-dreams
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Transcript
Introduction to Regenerative Practices
00:00:00
Speaker
I found myself looking out over my fields and I could see the way my sheep moved and I could see what my animals were doing. And just watching them, I felt this upswelling of this message which came very clear to me, which is you cannot go back. The soil was calling me, life was calling me, and I had this glimpse of what was on the other side.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Regenerative Design Podcast. I'm your host, Mathieu Mehuys, and in this show, I interview the leading authorities in the world of regenerative practices, people who do good and do well.
00:00:33
Speaker
Are you a person that cares about your environment and our planet, that wants to leave the planet to our children to be something that we can be truly proud of? to enjoy for many generations to come.
00:00:43
Speaker
But are you also a person that believes we can do all of this and do good in business? I have really good news for you. You're here listening to the podcast that is all about making our planet a better place and making your business more successful.
00:00:58
Speaker
Enjoy the show. All right.
Judith Horvat's Journey into Regenerative Farming
00:01:00
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the regenerative design podcast with your host Mathieu. And I'm super excited to announce the next guest, ah Judith Horvat. And Judith is also, it's very interesting how things just magically line up. We had Rob Wolf on the show.
00:01:16
Speaker
We just finished Alan Savory in the last episode. And now we have another expert in the field of regenerative grazing, regenerative agriculture. specifically working with animals. So I'm very excited to talk to Judith. So Judith is the founder of regenerative ag design, where she helps to design farms to be more regenerative, to set up holistic management plans, kind of part of in the footsteps of Alan Savory, definitely big part of that. And then we'll talk a little bit more about that. And she also has her own farm called Fairhill Farms out in Ohio.
00:01:53
Speaker
So Judith, I'm super excited to have you on the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing well and thanks for having me met you. I have been looking forward to this conversation for some time and I'm excited to chat with you.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, me too. So, um, I always like to ask like first to understand, like, were you born on a farm?
Challenges with Conventional Agriculture
00:02:12
Speaker
Were you like three years old digging in the soil or how did you get into, into farming and and the work you're doing today? Was it clear from a young girl, young Judith that you would do this work that you're doing today?
00:02:24
Speaker
It's funny you ask that because I've always been a nature girl. ah My parents moved around a lot. i grew up in a military family. And so I was always the new kid every two years. And it was me and my dog and nature and books when I was growing up.
00:02:40
Speaker
So I very much dove into the natural world. And then as things happen, you know, life happens and reality sets in and I got pulled away. But after 25 years in corporate and one pandemic later, I felt the calling and the pull. And even though I had been an organic gardener my entire life, I had moved from suburbia. That's a whole story in itself. I had a, a, a,
00:03:08
Speaker
strange situation with the homeowners association where I left a neighborhood and, uh, because of some. tax Can you tell a more about that? Because I find homeowner associations in the U S it's a very interesting concept and they're, yeah, they're very much against doing it greener and more organic. And is that, was that one of the reasons?
00:03:28
Speaker
ah Yes, I got busted by the Homeowners Association for illegal backyard chickens. What? Yes, that's how this whole thing started. First of all, my found chickens are illegal in certain homeowners. In the United States. Yes. Now, when we purchased this home, the Homeowners Association was not on our disclosure document. In other words,
00:03:50
Speaker
We purchased this home and we were told there's no homeowners association, which is one of the reasons we purchased in this development. And it was not active. But after we had lived there for a couple of years, as apparently lawyers in the United States are able to do, and some people in the neighborhood, they resurrected the homeowners association. They charged everyone back dues. And by then I already had my...
00:04:11
Speaker
ah backyard had been already turned into like a little food forest and an organic organic gardens and mini orchard with backyard chickens and everything. um That was in an attempt to not only save money, but be greener, mow fewer lawn and also help with general health. My my kids were both having some severe food allergies and- Interesting. we came to find out that it wasn't any of their foods, it was the additives in the foods. And this was many, this was, you know, my goodness, this was almost 20 years ago at this point.
00:04:48
Speaker
And so it was much harder to find healthy food nearby. and at the same time, we were in the economic downturn and I had ah lost my job.
From Backyard to Rural Farming
00:04:57
Speaker
So we were really saving a lot of money and producing a lot of our own food. I had already accumulated these skills for, you know, fun and also for health reasons.
00:05:08
Speaker
But when we had a downturn, it was something that we really were glad that we have and relied on. And it was, it was a huge financial help for us. And then we got, I got busted by the homeowners association for illegal backyard chickens. And I fought it and I lost. Yeah. So we, uh, put our house up for sale and I butchered the front, the chickens in the front yard out of protest. And, um,
00:05:32
Speaker
Yep, we left. We bought a rural property, which was not a farm at the time. It was a dilapidated fixer-upper. And this was back in 2013.
00:05:43
Speaker
And we started designing and building a farm. We didn't know what we were doing. Right. When the tractor was delivered, I asked the guy to teach me how to drive the tractor. And he's like, I'm not your tractor coach lady, go to YouTube.
00:05:55
Speaker
So it was, and and everyone around us was all commodity grains or cows or confined hogs. We were the only people who were interested in anything remotely regenerative. So we were kind of an island. We didn't really fit. So I had that same sort of feeling, right?
00:06:13
Speaker
that I had when I was a kid where I knew what I loved and I believed in what I was doing and learning and and trying to accomplish. but And you kind of the odd fish in the neighborhood. Yeah, the social pressure was awkward.
00:06:25
Speaker
ah So anyway, we we managed to get some sheep and some goats and some chick. We got all the chickens we wanted, you know. And turkeys and all the all the animals over time. we We slowly reclaimed the pastures and got fencing in and fixed the barn and fixed the house and fixed the wall. mean, there was so um put in hydrants and, oh my goodness, all the things. And I was still working corporate.
00:06:48
Speaker
and kind of soul sucking, hating my job. Very, very good. But I found it unfulfilling because it wasn't anything concrete. At the end of the day, it was virtual things that I had accomplished.
00:07:01
Speaker
What was it, if I if i can ask you to also understand more?
Contrasting Corporate and Farming Worlds
00:07:05
Speaker
scientific research publishing. I was in charge of their global support and we supported patent offices across pretty much every patent office across the world for scientific research. Oh, it sounds quite interesting though.
00:07:18
Speaker
but Yeah, I had ah a team of PhDs working for me and i had a very comfortable position, ah ah lucrative, pretty fun. I love my coworkers, but Seeing how the scientific research is produced from the inside, that's a separate conversation, but it was eye-opening.
00:07:40
Speaker
It's interesting that you're bringing it up because that's exactly what Alan Savory was talking about, that the whole scientific world is is very... i don't know corrupt is the right word because they even... you're right. Maybe not even on... um It's probably corrupted, but also like, it's just like peer reviewed and this one agrees ah on that paper. And it's, it's more like a social club where everyone agrees on whatever one says, then actual, like getting to the science of what are the evidences? What can you prove? And yeah. So that's interesting that you're bringing that up to the, the
00:08:13
Speaker
Two biggest problems are irreproducibility. In other words, you can't reproduce the same results someone else got, but yet you cite it and you base your next research or your retrospective upon that. Number two is the source of funding and the way that then number three, I should probably say there's three things. And the three is the way that the data gathering and analysis is structured. And then you get into abstracts. It's all gateway kept and it's all peer reviewed. And if it doesn't fit the current narrative, then it doesn't get reviewed. Then you have to pay it to publish. You have to pay to review. If something's very groundbreaking or new or it goes against the current narrative, it gets mothballed. It gets slow walked. It gets rejected. um It's very, very hard to break through. And I'm a biologist by education. um and I can tell you,
00:09:02
Speaker
communications and biology, I can tell you that that's not the way science is supposed to work. Science is supposed to be searching for the next advancement.
00:09:13
Speaker
And, you know, if we don't make advancements through genuine curiosity and willingness to accept something that feels different or it's uncomfortable or it's new or it goes against the grain,
00:09:25
Speaker
then we're not really conducting pure science that's applied research, but they're called scientists. And and many of these scientists are so married to these findings that they will defend them even in the face of alternative evidence, and then they will sabotage and influence so that new research cannot come out that disproves what they had previously done. And often that's tied to number of citations. It's ego-driven. They draw their personal identity from some theory that they have named after themselves, and they can't let go of it. And that's
00:10:00
Speaker
terribly, terribly unfortunate, but that's some of the reason why we're running into the resistance to regenerative methods that we are running into today.
Pandemic-Induced Career Shift
00:10:12
Speaker
but Alan Savory is absolutely right. you know you start You're on the inside and you see how the sausage is made and it's nauseating. So that kind of takes me to the next piece of the story, which is then we were all sent home for the pandemic to work from home, which was fine because you know I was running a contact center where my people were speaking to scientists all over the planet, so we didn't need to be in one place. We're all working remotely. And I found myself, I had converted my dining room into a makeshift office at the time because my husband was home too, and I found myself looking out over my fields and I could see the way my sheep moved and I could see what my animals were doing. And just watching them, I felt this upswelling of
00:10:54
Speaker
this message which came very clear to me, which is, you're not going back. You cannot go back. You have come too far. It is now or never. You must do this. Do not go back. you know you risk your effort you you You risk your eternal soul if you go back to this. oh wow. The soil was calling you. The soil was calling me. Life was calling me. And I had this glimpse of what was on the other side. so What it was on the other side?
00:11:20
Speaker
Well, what I'm doing now, which is i had an opportunity for an exit. As soon as the pandemic was over, they wanted everyone to come back to the office. And I said, no.
00:11:30
Speaker
And I had an opportunity for an exit and I took it. And so I had, you know, a nice severance package, but not infinite. And I said, well, I have this much runway and I need to be successful at this. Well, luckily I had already been doing regenerative things my entire life, not realizing it was regenerative. And I've been farming essentially since 2013. And this was, you know, after a decade of farming under your belt, you learn more than you realize. And so I decided it was time to bet on myself. And so I did.
00:12:00
Speaker
And so ah I... went and got my permaculture design and used my biology foundation, my love for nature, my lifetime experience, my farming experience, my business savvy, and then my permaculture design certification.
Community and Support in Regenerative Agriculture
00:12:18
Speaker
Then I did extra certifications on top of that and then formed my consultancy. And that is what I do today. Yeah, that's about nine years ago. it I think when you started the consulting business, right?
00:12:32
Speaker
I was consulting even before the pandemic, but it was very much on the side. So I just took it to the next level. yeah Okay, got it. And so then I'm curious to know what what did you focus on early stage? Because this might be valuable for the listeners to be like, oh, i want to ah I'm stuck in a corporate. I'm stuck in this. I've already got some experience with gardening or farming or...
00:12:53
Speaker
um i feel the soil calling me like it just reminded me actually of the festival in the uk called groundswell i don't the way you put it it just sounded like something uh that's related to that i don't know why i'm saying that but that's just how it felt so i'd love to hear from you how how are the beginning years of your business and what did you focus on the most to to get going The biggest thing I focused on was reaching out and finding my community of other people who were doing the sort of things that I wanted to do. i was looking for mentors and partners and friends and peer support.
00:13:29
Speaker
And what I found is that unlike business where everyone is your competition, the regenerative, specifically regenerative agriculture movement is very dispersed,
00:13:41
Speaker
ah and very hungry for contact with others of like mind. I think all of us are accustomed to swimming against the current and we're tired from pushing against conventional agriculture and and big business who is not interested in regenerative practices, regardless of the greenwashing that you see from food companies. Yeah, starting now startinging no they'm using the term... and understanding the greater ecosphere
Broader Impact of Regenerative Agriculture
00:14:09
Speaker
of how agriculture and ecology, agroecology, because technically that's what I am now. I'm an agroecologist, fits in with human health, um community, and society, and then also food.
00:14:24
Speaker
Food is medicine. And then obviously ecology, the planet and climate and things like that. There's there's a whole bunch of satellite entities that surround regenerative agriculture and soil building, and which is definitely central to all of this, but it touches everything in our society, in our economy, in our culture, in our bodily health. it it It touches everything. And anyone who has studied permaculture realizes that permaculture is not just about the soil. It's not just about food. It's about the way, everything I just described, it's the way it touches everything. Earth care, people care, fair share, right? It's culture, it's society, it's a way, it's a lens of viewing our role as steward and keystone species on the planet and our responsibility of how to steward this planet Earth yeah for the next generation, next seven generations. Yeah. Some generation. Yeah, I know. I fully agree with you. And I think that's super important to focus on that. But, and ah and and I agree that it's super valuable to, to get like in two communities with like-minded people that people that agree. with you so you can share your experience and kind of regroup and then go on into the into the big world again but what i found and i'd love to hear your perspective on that is when you go out into the world with your let's say advertisement marketing reaching out to your ideal customers with that type of a message which i used to do in the beginning of my business you only reach like a very very limited group of people and usually this is like the people that have
00:16:08
Speaker
have have a lot of money, they just maybe exited their work and they want to have a regenerative farm and they don't and they mostly want to do it because of legacy and improving health of their family and all these aspects which are super important. And I'd love to talk more about how you work with these types of clients. But what what what has been your experience when you present this to like conventional farmers,
00:16:31
Speaker
How do you talk with them? Because my experience is like, okay, you talk to them and they're like, uh, I don't care. Like I'm trying to run a business here. Uh, all these aspects I don't, I don't really care about. Like, have you come across that? Have you found ways to overcome that? What I have found is, and I have, first of all, just to give you a baseline here, full disclosure, I have many friends who are conventional farmers, first of all. Okay. Many. And I'm surrounded by them. I've got commodity green, just the next generation next next property over and then yeah down, you know, my anyway. Yeah, there's no pointing fingers. so Yeah.
00:17:07
Speaker
Lots and lots of conventional farmers around me. And then personal friends who are also conventional farming. And i like them as people. Mm-hmm. They're part of my community.
00:17:17
Speaker
And overall, I feel like I have one viewpoint, which is if they only recognized how things could work differently, it would be better for the planet it you know and it's and it would be better for them and better for our community and and better economics for everyone. you know We don't need more corn, more soybeans. We we could use more pasture and and grass raised proteins and meats and and local vegetables, things that people can actually eat, right? I can't go into the field next door and eat soybeans and like eat the eat the field corn. Now, you know that's going to animal feed in CAFOs.
00:17:56
Speaker
So that's one layer of the way that I regard them. The next one is I have a tremendous amount of sympathy because as I have gotten to know these people and these families, they're fifth, sixth, seventh, 10th generation farmers.
00:18:09
Speaker
who are financially trapped in a system that is extractive. It's just as extracted to the humans and the financial wellness of those families as it is to the earth.
00:18:22
Speaker
And they have this sort of generational inertia behind this responsibility. They don't want to be the one who's going to lose the farm after. It's been in the family for eight generations. And then a lot of farmers simply don't retire.
00:18:36
Speaker
So they, because they can't, They don't retire and they don't relinquish the stewardship and the decision making to the next generation.
Succession Planning in Farming
00:18:46
Speaker
The succession planning in farms is a massive problem in the United States. And I think a lot of people do not really understand how this works. It's it's cultural, it's psychological, it's financial, it's genealogical. It's all of these different layers and it's in its and it's complex and it's complicated and it's emotional all in one.
00:19:05
Speaker
so it And they don't realize the inner workings inside of family where it's pretty rare to have two or three generations that will agree on a path forward.
00:19:17
Speaker
So yeah it's really, really hard. But at the same time, you have this tipping point in our society today where we have the younger generation. They have to leave the farm in order to support their family because the farms are becoming less and less and less profitable.
00:19:33
Speaker
Because of the extraction. The soil is depleting because of the extraction. The inputs are becoming higher, which means, you know, lower' margining the the the profit is becoming thinner and they're floating more and more and more debt.
00:19:48
Speaker
You know, they're floating $900,000 a year or worth of debt in order to take home $48,000 a year in profit. And it's insane. What kid is going to look at that and say, Oh, yeah, I want that too.
00:20:00
Speaker
No, they're not. They're going to leave. And the parents are going to say, hey, just please go be a dentist, you know, whatever. And that makes a lot of sense to me. At the same time, there's something wrong when we are finding that the same piece of land that used to support three generations, three generations ago,
00:20:19
Speaker
can now only support one generation. And that does not bode well for ah succession planning, because now you have the parents and the grandparents and the kids pitted against each other for, you know, profitability on the same piece of land. So again, the kids are being forced off or they're like, forget it. i don't, I don't know how to do anything else. And I don't want to do anything. I don't, I don't want to live that way. And they're trapped.
00:20:43
Speaker
So, yeah, my conversations with conventional farmers have been largely unproductive, but I don't want to come across as preachy because I don't come from a farming family. I'm a first generation farmer. I do not carry that burden. I haven't walked in those shoes. I don't want to judge. And they're not trying to do the wrong thing. It's not that they don't care. Like you said, maybe they don't care. They do care.
00:21:05
Speaker
They just aren't comfortable that they will be successful and they feel this burden of they have to succeed the first time. There's no do-overs. There's zero financial buffer because they're barely making it as it is. So they're afraid to do something different. And so they're so risk adverse that they would rather hang on and hope for something better than make a big change.
00:21:28
Speaker
And that's human nature. And i I can understand that. And so I kind of, I feel sad for them, but I understand then I don't know. It's it's a tough thing. you know i i don't I don't judge, but it is sad to watch because some of them have lost their farms. So it is a sad thing.
00:21:45
Speaker
On the other hand, the other people who are embracing regenerative agriculture typically... for the most part, do not come from agriculture. They're coming in from the outside. And so to your question about marketing and meeting people, it's hard to find people who are the next client because they're bankers, they're lawyers, they're dentists, they're, they're, you know, excavators, they're people who own construction companies and dry cleaning companies. and And, they're even, you know, exterminators and things like that. They're everything. And they, And they they want to get into regenerative agriculture because they believe in it. And I would say 90% of the people that I have run into, they all have a story because I say, what brought you to this? And almost without fail, it's my mom got cancer. My wife has cancer. My kids have allergies. I've got an autistic kid. you know My whole family's all sick. We've got lupus. We've got blah, blah, blah, all the different things. And it usually comes from a place of, hmm, we got health problems.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, it must be in the food. And the intelligent ones figure out, well, it's environmental and it's also food. So what's the answer? And honestly, I understand that completely because that's where I started.
00:22:57
Speaker
That's exactly where I started. Yeah. No, that's your story. No, thank you for framing that. and And I'm very happy to hear that you have lots of conventional farmers because ah Maybe it's not the right time yet ah because the whole story that you just framed of your friends, it's ah it's like exactly how I grew up. My father is a conventional farmer. My brother got into the business and myself, we we started to implement regenerative farming.
00:23:23
Speaker
But every step that we took, me and my brother, my father was like, no, if we're not going to do this. It's going to fail. It's like, you know, he knows his finances. Like, uh,
00:23:33
Speaker
a loss for a year on a crop, it can be devastating. But then we started to just like, well, me and my brother kept pushing like, okay, just give us like a small field or something that we can prove what we're going to do is going to work. And, and I still remember we were actually doing, ah We were doing early harvest of potatoes, which is like a kind of a, we call them spring potatoes, but they're like early summer potatoes that are harvested early. And the next year it would be pumpkins, which is only planted in ah late spring. So there's almost like a whole year, at least nine months of no, no crop. Maybe you would do some grass for cows, but you didn't get a ah good price in the region where where we were. So i I convinced my father, like okay, you do half of the field for the pumpkins the way you've always been doing it. And we'll do another field with more cover crops and restoring the soil. And then we did that. And then the next year harvest of of pumpkins was like 20 to 40% higher.
00:24:32
Speaker
and we could reduce the inputs by a lot because we would like plant the in the conventional system you plant the pumpkins and you spray in between the rows and you still have to do a lot of manual ah labor in the row because you can't spray the the weeds in the row or outside of the row so it was um a lot of manual labor and where we did the cover crops the the pumpkins just exploded so the The field was covered by pumpkins probably like four to six weeks earlier than the conventional system. And my father could like literally see it.
00:25:05
Speaker
And that's where he made a click. who was like, oh, okay, we got to do more of this. And that that I think was something very encouraging to see to kind of um avoid those risks. And we still made a lot of mistakes too. Like this is one of the success stories. We tried a bunch of other things. Like we wanted to grow edamame beans, like the soybeans, because it's a high end product.
00:25:26
Speaker
that failed completely. um And I i did like agriforestry plantations with apples, which there wasn't a market for. So that was a mistake, too. So it was definitely like a lot of trial and error.
00:25:39
Speaker
um But I think the best thing that we did with the farm was to start opening the doors of our farms when you're in ah in a local community and preferably you might be close to a city or or a village or a town and you you start doing like open farm days and then we we redesigned the whole farm we we opened it up for visitors we added flower cutting gardens we started selling our own honey we did activities so now we could add a lot of extra income from diversification on the farm so now our farm is like more financially secure it's still really hard but we have like a whole community of people that want to buy our products if we do an event lots of people come we have the mobile chickens uh like that's what my brother started to do we have grass-fed beef um that we're selling directly so it took a bit of time to adjust but it it actually works Um, and I don't know what the farm would look like if we kept doing what my father would have been doing. They wouldn't just, they wouldn't have been.
00:26:42
Speaker
I'm, I'm, I love my father. I'm not against him. I get, I get it. He was pushed into that way of farming. Um, but it's. It, there wouldn't have been a job for my brother. And in the meantime, my sister has joined the business. She's doing marketing and direct sales. We have, uh, another, farm worker that came, we have lots of seasonal workers for activity. So we're creating like a small local economy with job creation.
00:27:08
Speaker
Uh, and we're, yeah, we're growing further. So that's what what's kind of changed. And I think it's it's because my mother was not she had her own business.
00:27:19
Speaker
ah She was in hospitality, so she kind of had a lot of well, she also financially, she had her own input into the family. ah yeah, into the livelihood of our family, which enabled me and my brother and sisters to kind of travel and open our eyes and meet other people. So that had a massive influence too. So I think, um, for young people, when they're in that situation, it's good to, to leave the farm for while, open your eyes and and go see some other places and then come home and and just tell your father farmer or whoever is in charge, like,
00:27:53
Speaker
we got to do some things differently if we, if we want to keep the farm going for the next generations and then start experimenting with small fields. And and then, yeah, that, that's something ah that works. But now I'd love to hear more from your, so you're mostly focused on, on the people like yourself, let's say yourself. ah That was 20 years ago. You, you, you got your,
00:28:19
Speaker
homeowner story that didn't answer well. And then how long ago did you get into your farm? ah we We have now been here 13 years. 13 years. Yeah. So are you focusing on like yourself 13 years ago as a client so that you don't have to make open mistakes?
Mentorship and New Farmer Support
00:28:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I had to because remember, there wasn't a farm in place. We were building it from scratch.
00:28:43
Speaker
Mm-hmm yeah. And so now you help the, your, your active clients, your, your, let's say your avatar of clients is people that have not been in agriculture, but want to get in. Is that, is that correct? Well, I have a couple different client segments.
00:28:57
Speaker
I have people who are starting out in farming themselves and they need mentorship and they need some assistance and they need some extra planning help. That's great. Happy to help those people. I have other people who are ah usually self-employed, affluent business owners who want to do something agricultural and They may or may not want to be hands-on, but they want to facilitate it, whether it is a property that they own and they live on, and then they have a farmer come in and and do the farm. So they're the landowner, and they want to benefit from it. And it might be ah ah a weekend home. It might be a passion project. It could be their own homestead that they're beginning. Homesteading. Starting. Yeah. Maybe they're starting a farm and then they're going to be retiring into it within the next five to 10 years. Typically that's the pattern. That's that. And then the third, the third section is a different type of client. And that is the design from the ground up of a community, which is an agri village and agri hood, something like that.
00:30:01
Speaker
And that is another piece of business that I do. So I kind of have three personas. Yeah. yeah You know, someone, a farmer, a new farmer, a first generation new farmer needs a Sherpa. Then you've got a upper, upwardly mobile, you know, affluent business person wants to have an ag passion project. And then there is bigger long-term projects, multimillion, even billion dollar projects where you have a entire community that's being designed from the beginning. And then I act as the agricultural slash ag business organization.
00:30:31
Speaker
knowledge that comes in and helps with that agricultural overlay on the entire project and as it touches all of the other pieces with the commercial and the residential elements. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This podcast is brought to you by the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass.
00:30:46
Speaker
Are you struggling with finding the right tools and tricks for your garden? Are you lacking the confidence to be a self-sufficient gardener? Do you sometimes get overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge and time you have to actually do gardening? Then the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass is for you. and What excites you the most to or what's like your favorite project to work on that you've already done in the past and and what are you looking forward to to do the most coming up?
Development of an Agri-Village in Ohio
00:31:11
Speaker
Well, right now I am a part owner of an agri village that we are actually building in Northeast Ohio and ah it's called Hickory Run.
00:31:21
Speaker
And We are in the process of finishing the planning. we are through the ah We are through a lot of the planning process, but we are in the process of putting together all of the financial pieces and then doing fundraising. But we have a team of, geez, I think we've got like 15 to 20 people at this point working on this.
00:31:44
Speaker
And that is my biggest focus right now. I just finished a I would say it's probably a five to seven year implementation plan grew ah for eight different enterprises on the agricultural portion of this piece of land. And that was exciting and fun. And I can't wait to see it come to life over the next, you know, five to 10 years. And i'm I'm in it for the long haul. So I'm very, very excited about that.
00:32:10
Speaker
I love that. Yeah, agrihoods are becoming quite popular in very early stages. i haven't seen too many. Well, there's a few in the US that that are like in construction. There's probably a few older ones that have been established long term, but i I didn't see those. So it's Very interesting to see that there's a that there's definitely a demand for people that say, okay, I'm very intrigued by farming. I know that that my health really depends on what I eat. I know that most of the food in the groceries is not good for my health. and so
00:32:42
Speaker
But I don't want to become a farmer myself. and and And maybe I want to do a little bit of work on the weekends. or also give my kids the space to grow up in ah in a healthy environment, which is also very hard these days. So I think the Angryhood concept is is really great where you live close by a farm and everything in that community is fully integrated.
00:33:03
Speaker
um And yeah. That's a really cool concept, but I'd often understand a little bit more from that specific project. I had two questions. One was, how is it landing with the municipalities? Have there been, I'm assuming there's been already conversations around that.
00:33:19
Speaker
And then two, how will you deal with, um, with the homeowner association aspect of it? and And what's the, what's the overall vision for, for the project? Maybe it's a threefold question. We can start with first, if you'd like.
00:33:33
Speaker
ah Okay, well, let's start with the township. First of all, um before we even went to a township, actually, we ended up going to a county because it there was an unincorporated township. Well, we went to the township first and they said, we got to talk to the county because we're unincorporated. We said, yeah, we know, ah but we want to always start hyperlocal.
00:33:50
Speaker
Talked to the people immediately. So he secured the land, talked to the local people, talked to the township, went to the county, presented to them. But we went to the county completely prepared with a ton of research, planning, due diligence, expertise, competence, expertise.
00:34:09
Speaker
curiosity and best intentions. We went with our entire best plan. Your Rolls Royce. we wanted to make it easy for them to fall in love. And sure enough, they said, we love this idea because first of all, you've done your research, you've got experts on it, like all the things that I just said. And then we said to them, we also approached it differently where we said, this is what we want to do.
00:34:38
Speaker
How should we go about executing it in a way that works for you guys? For you. Yeah, that's super clear. And that's very different than we're going to come and we're going to do that. like yeah You can't just walk into a community and strong arm them and and you know declare that you're going to do something and think that you're going to ram your way through legally. It it doesn't need to be adversarial unless you're in...
00:35:00
Speaker
an area that is ridiculously over-regulated and overburdened, red tape and things like that. And my advice to people is go somewhere else.
00:35:10
Speaker
There are plenty of places who want these communities. You don't need to go fight these townships that cannot see the light. In the same way that the conventional farmer cannot see the path forward, there are townships that cannot see the path forward. And same way that you have human physicians and doctors who cannot see that the first line of defense is not just a pill, but patient heal thyself. And what did you do? You actually sleep? What have you eaten for dinner? What do you eat for food? and And what are your other activities? They can't see the bigger picture. If you have a town and a city and a bunch of ordinances run by people with that mindset,
00:35:48
Speaker
Don't go there. Pick somewhere else. Set yourself up for success. Because when we have more of these successful communities, yeah than the other then the others will want to follow. And it's not that they're evil. Yeah, they're not evil. They just can't see it Yeah, exactly. They want to see that it works first.
00:36:07
Speaker
They're adverse to risk. Well, that's how we're successful as a species. We're risk adverse. You know, we like to do the same thing that we've done before, as long as it hasn't killed us, which is what made us survive. So that makes sense. That only works if you see risk adversity short term. But what the people that see risk adversity long term say like, OK, if we don't do this, like set up an agrihood, then it's going to be very risky for us. So it's interesting when you...
00:36:33
Speaker
Risk adversity short term versus risk adversity long term. It's two different stories. It's a very interesting concept that I just realized thanks to you. Well, ah you're exactly correct. However, you're not going to make friends and influence people by going and saying, if you don't do this, you're going to die in the future.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah. Who needs that message? no one's going to receive that positively because you don't want to be motivated out of fear or whatever. Now, people will be motivated out of FOMO, fear of missing out.
00:37:01
Speaker
yeah Okay, that's different because that's intrinsic motivation, but it's not. yeah If you don't do this, you know emergency, emergency. but People are sick of emergencies and and problems. like Everyone's sick of the law the long emergency and and the the next the climate crisis and and the next problem and that the pandemic and the disease and the pestilence and flood and fire and blah, blah, blah aliens and whatever. you know Whatever the next thing is, they're sick of the fear.
00:37:28
Speaker
yeah And so it's much better to you know light a candle and say, hey, we're going to build this. the want to be Want to be on the winning team? Let's go live in a nice, quiet, analog fashion. Let's let's let'ss start something awesome here. And usually the right kind of people are like, hey, because I've been contacted by people from across the country. Like when you're ready to start talking actual numbers and and locations and stuff like that, let me know because I'll move there from Wyoming. I'll move there from Florida. I'll move there from New York City. And people are willing to locate from all over the country to these communities. The trick is to set up these communities in such a way where the regenerative agriculture piece is not an amenity.
00:38:09
Speaker
It's not a feature.
Integrating Farms into Communities
00:38:11
Speaker
It's a core function. And I traveled as my due diligence before i even started this project. I traveled and went and visited a whole bunch of agri-hoods.
00:38:20
Speaker
And... almost without exception, what the developers did is they took the concept of a development, a residential development, and, you know, from the 80s or 90s, and they took out the golf course and they plopped a ah farm in its place. for And that doesn't work because it's an amenity. It's not cultural. It's not integrated. It's not steeped throughout the culture. Yeah, it's a nice to have and then... Yeah, I... I've visited agrihoods where the CSA development, ah the CSA participation rate is like 1% of the population.
00:38:56
Speaker
1% of the residents participate in the CSA. That is a failure of the people who designed the the the community itself. It's not just a fiscal failure.
00:39:08
Speaker
That is a cultural failure. And so by visiting all these different places and seeing what did they do well, what did they do wrong, how can they be better and then asking a bajillion questions, the same bajillion questions to all different people. When I would visit Niagara Hood, I would talk to the the architects. I would talk to the developers. I would talk to the land planners. I would talk to the people who run it. I would talk to the residents. I would talk to the farmers. I would talk to the farming manager. I would talk to the employees. I would talk to everyone there, the groundskeepers, you know the the utility people. I went and talked to everyone
00:39:45
Speaker
everyone who's involved with these communities to say, how are they set up? What's working? What isn't? And almost without fail, the farm was treated as an amenity. That's why it doesn't work.
00:39:57
Speaker
I think it's a fine start. It's a good generation one, but I'm not interested in building the first generation agricultural community. I'm interested in like Gen 3. Mm-hmm.
00:40:09
Speaker
Nice. So how are you going to go the extra mile in that sense? Well, first of all, it's only about 30% residential and commercial in the middle and it's 70% ag.
00:40:20
Speaker
Those residents and those small businesses are sort of like tenants on the farmland. I wouldn't call them tenants, but they're surrounded by it. And that's intentional. all food production related?
00:40:33
Speaker
Yep. And it's also not just live here, drive off and work elsewhere and then drive past the farm on your way back home. No, it's live and work. So there's co-working space that's planned and and other like commercial ventures. So it is geared towards people who are interested in being at least partially self-employed or maybe small business owners or something like that. So they can live and work there. But there is an agricultural influence and an agricultural element completely surrounding everything. In other words, one of the things that I did is into my plan, I designed into my plan lots and lots of places where cars are going to have to stop to let the livestock cross.
00:41:16
Speaker
mean It's not separated. It's integrated. So... they will need to, they have to drive through the farming area in order to get to their homes. they They look out their backyards and they see the farming area behind them. And there's a lot of different things going on. It's not just a hayfield. It's not just sheep.
00:41:38
Speaker
It's not just trees or corn. It's a lot of different things going on. There's activities. There's multiple different enterprises. There's ah going to be events and things to learn. There's going to be an educational element. There's going to be a research station. There's going to be internship programs. There's going to be a lot of things that really draw in interest from the outside as well as the inside, all different generations. And it's all tied into the agricultural elements.
00:42:09
Speaker
Yeah. To have more the ecosystem be ah supported by different angles. So just like a farm, you want to It's always a challenge on a farm to diversify because now you're you're reducing your risk, but then you still don't want to over diversify and then you cannot manage all those things. But it seems that in those agrihoods, when you have other than people living there on a farm, you have all these other embedded businesses and education, science, so that
00:42:40
Speaker
if the farm goes a little bit wrong for a year or two or something isn't working, you still have all those other things supporting it. And the more you can give different options for people to to do their own business, have co-working
Convenience and Accessibility in Agri-Villages
00:42:53
Speaker
spaces, the more they're actually going to be like fully integrated in the community rather than what's currently happening where it's like,
00:43:00
Speaker
Okay, I live on ah in an agrihood, I drive in and out, and and maybe at most once or a couple times a year, i go to the farm and pick a few carrots. Right. Because that doesn't work. I've seen that. It's very interesting with the community-supported agriculture. I've seen many projects all over the world, and mostly people are willing to pay for it, but then they don't show up um and pay.
00:43:24
Speaker
they have like so much food leftover, which then, okay, they can still give it to the food banks and people have paid for it, but they just, yeah, it's just like we or people are the like so drawn to convenience that if you have to now go to the farm, pick up your veggies, go to a butcher, get that,
00:43:44
Speaker
Like they'd rather with the limited time they have drive to a a convenience store. That's why why the name comes from, I guess, to get everything at once. yeah Indeed. Is there to to kind of balance that out?
00:43:56
Speaker
How is the convenience of of the farm? Let's say I want to live in in your community, but I don't want to ah I don't want to farm. I don't want to volunteer. I don't want to co-work there. Is there still an opportunity for me to be fully integrated in that community or will you say no for you? This is just not the right vo location.
00:44:17
Speaker
One, that's the first question. And second is like, how how will you tackle like convenience to still make it a no brainer for people? Yeah. so One of the things is as they drive in and out, they have to go right past the farm store.
00:44:28
Speaker
and The farm store will be stocked with local goods, like a grocery, and products from not only our farm, but surrounding other regenerative farms within probably, I would say, 50, 70 miles. We plan on aggregating from other small producers as well. yeah So there will be, the goal is for there to be continuous wares and foods so that they have to drive right past it. It will be easier to pick up something on the way home or go to the entrance and like walk over and then walk home than to drive off of the property and, you know, go elsewhere. So it's closer. So it's proximity. It's also the route.
00:45:06
Speaker
You got to drive right past it. Right. Yeah. That alone is already huge. Have you seen that in those other agri-hoods that you kind of have to get out of your way to go into the farm shop or, or how was that set up?
00:45:17
Speaker
ah The other places that I saw was there was a big blob of houses and then there's the farm shop that's only open from like 10 to 3 Monday through Friday on the edge. And if you lived over here on the west side, you had to drive all the way around to the east side and had to be those hours. No, no, no, no, no. no no This is going to be much more available, much longer hours. Yeah.
00:45:40
Speaker
I mean, I'm even... Maybe pre-order or home delivered. Yeah. Yeah, home delivery obviously is going to be a piece of it. i Everyone's used to that now. How else are you going to compete with DoorDash? Okay, not a problem. We can we can deliver here. For a price? Sure, no problem.
00:45:54
Speaker
And then the other thing is the potentiality of like ah an autonomous grocery for off hours, things like that. They already have it in the airports. They have it in, like there's there's a a company called Nourish and Bloom. They are in Trillith and they also have many, many, many different autonomous groceries all over the place. So we're looking to leverage some of that tech in order for that to be utilized there on the community. So that should solve the availability 24-7 situation. Convenience, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's what we're planning to do. And then the other thing, of course, is profitability. It has to be profitable, because if it's not, it's not going to... You you can't expect that the community is going to be willing to support something that fails.
00:46:38
Speaker
They just don't want to be paying yet another tax for something that they don't use. It just becomes... repressive and and and they resent it. And so this must be fiscally viable. And so what we have done is we have designed all of these different agricultural ventures to work together, have lots of different ventures, so that just like diversity in a stock portfolio, you have diversity in streams of income. And then we also have, just like on your family farm, how you have experiential and and membership things and events and yeah educational and field days. and Maybe hospitality.
00:47:12
Speaker
Right. We will be offering things like that also. And those are additional you know streams of revenue. So we're trying to be very, very thoughtful. Actually with the 70% farming aspect versus 30% development, that's going to give you like you the or land wise, right? yeah the Exactly. That's what I was trying to say. It's land wise. 70% is...
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah, ag or wetlands, it's green. it's not it' it's it's ah It's not paved. It's not paved or developed, right? It's going to be it's other other than residential and commercial. is the The private lots, right? Or are private lots? Or are you only talking about built environment or does it include the lots of every house? ah Think of it, if if it was 100 acres, which is not, but if it was 100 acres, 30 of those acres would would be dedicated to living and working and buildings and roads.
00:48:04
Speaker
The other 70- But including like private gardens or private spaces. yeah. There's community gardens and people can put gardens in their backyard. That's their business. Sure. Sure. Yeah. You can do whatever you
Inclusivity in Agri-Village Design
00:48:14
Speaker
want. Mm-hmm. People can participate as much or as little as they want because you're going to have plenty of people who want to live in that environment and they cannot participate.
00:48:22
Speaker
They might be disabled. They might be, i don't know, families with nonverbal autistic kids, um elderly, whatever the case may be. Allergic to everything, but they still want to live there. Okay.
00:48:33
Speaker
You know, that's fine. Everyone's welcome. sure yeah you maybe they just want to have those the access to the fresh veggies because uh yeah i've seen so many evidence how it can actually heal people from from all sorts of diseases um yes that's another congress yeah you'll have people that only will come for that they maybe don't even care about the farm or But maybe over time they will be like, oh, i'm I'm going to sign up for a farm tour and maybe I'll do a a potato workshop or whatever, or pumpkin workshop or something. And then they'll be like, oh, this is much more interesting than I than i thought. so
00:49:10
Speaker
But at first you'll definitely have to kind of the people that really want to live there, of on a broader sense, but that's really cool. I'm very excited for that. Oh, and help me remind after the interview, I have to put you in contact with someone who could help you with financing the whole thing.
00:49:27
Speaker
Oh yeah. ah Yeah. So we just, we'll talk about that offline. I met a gentleman who's actually specialized in, in regenerative real estate development. So okay that'll be a good contact for you if you haven't met him yet. So yeah, I think what you're doing is amazing. um I'd love to understand a little bit more of like, what is your what are your biggest challenges today in in continuing to grow your business, like your top three?
00:49:54
Speaker
Yeah. what What is that today? I think my biggest challenge right now is finding people who have committed to taking the time and the money and the mental energy to take a piece of land and thoughtfully work with a land planner such as myself to turn it into their actual vision. Mm-hmm.
00:50:20
Speaker
And it's not an easy thing. But whether someone is, you know, in a walkable community and they only have a half an acre yard or they have a quarter acre backyard, you'd be amazed how much you can do. But people do not realize how much effort and time and planning it can take. You know, you can spend 10 years modeling through yourself or you can...
00:50:43
Speaker
move forward and get some help with design. And they underestimate the complexity, the science that's needed, the data to be gathered, the methods, learning the methods and the terminology. They underestimate that. And then the other thing is when they do projects themselves, and the homesteaders definitely do this. I started as a homesteader, so all you homesteaders listening, I feel you guys. I totally understand. But bootstrapping and figuring things out from the beginning, it's fiscally cheaper, but it is much slower, and there's a far greater risk of misstep and burnout.
00:51:22
Speaker
Because people will get too many animals and they don't have the infrastructure in place and then they only have animals. They don't have the other pieces supporting it. And it's it's because they're excited and they're enthusiastic and then they get burnt out. And yeah yeah that's the worst thing ever because if someone goes out and they say, I've tried farm, I've tried homesteading and you know you spend $20 for a single tomato and and then everything else dies. Well, it doesn't need to be that way. Yeah. You need a mentor. you know People go to school for this stuff. And if you've never done it before, don't expect that you're going to have wild success right out of the gate when you don't have this generational knowledge and you don't have this experience and you don't speak the lingo and you don't have the network and you don't understand the concepts underneath it.
00:52:06
Speaker
I really recommend that people... Take the time to say, hey, I'm not the expert here. I need someone who can help guide me. Even if it's just like a hand on your shoulder and a little bit of, you know, help along the way. yeah yeah absolutely. And I have to this day, I still have lots of mentors. And then I also have mentees. And you maintain that.
00:52:26
Speaker
You maintain that. Those relationships. And it's really important. Only 1% of the population is farmers. Okay. And only about like 5% of those right now, they think are regenerative. So if you're getting into that group, you're already going to be a unicorn and you need to meet other unicorns. And it's going to be very hard to get good advice.
00:52:48
Speaker
Yeah. from others because there's not many of us around. You can model through, but you don't have to. You're not alone, but get some help. No, it's, it's, uh, I fully agree with you. Cause it's like, if you do it, like you're going to,
00:53:04
Speaker
Do it on your own. It's like shooting in the dark, but you might actually shoot in your own foot guess while doing that. And I've seen that a lot and it's, maybe it's getting even worse because now we were like in the, in the world where you put something in chat, gbt you can try it out.
00:53:20
Speaker
And then if it's wrong, you can try again and nothing. There's no damage when you fail kind of, we're in the world where you can try and experiment and it doesn't. in the AI world, it doesn't, it doesn't affect anyone and you can always keep starting over.
00:53:34
Speaker
But then what I've seen is like people making such big mistakes on their lands. Like, oh, I had a guy reach out to or to another agronomist who wanted to collaborate. He had a client who ah said, yeah, I'm going to start a farm and umm um I just bought all the land.
00:53:52
Speaker
And I've just bulldozed all the top soil because I i thought that's all bad soil. So I just said, and he was like really convinced. So yeah, the land was like full of weeds. And so I just bulldozed all the soil and put it aside. So now we have a clean slate and we can start farming.
00:54:08
Speaker
And it's like, dude, you just destroyed. You set yourself back a decade, buddy. And it's super costly. You already bulldozed land. You now have these piles laying around on your land and it's just like ridiculously expensive.
00:54:22
Speaker
And now you have to reverse that. And it's not just like control, alt, delete and you do reverse it and you can start again. No, you, you, like you said, you lost 10, a decade of work. So people have to understand it. And I think it's also you, you and my responsibility to educate people on that. That's why i'm very active on LinkedIn, like getting people incentivized. Like when you get into land, it's not just like,
00:54:47
Speaker
building a house or building something and you can fail and try again. When you can, no problem. You can do it the hard way, but it's going to cost you a lot of extra time and money. And most people don't have, they may have a lot of money, but they don't have a lot of time. Uh, cause they're often already in later stages in their life.
00:55:05
Speaker
So losing a decade, uh, maybe they can't afford losing a decade. So think focusing on, on that in our communications is what I think is very important.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah. The other thing they like, they do is they say, I want animals. So I'm going to just bulldoze all the trees. That happened? Like, yeah. Oh, sure. Oh, I've cleared all the trees already. Ready to go. I'm like, what?
00:55:28
Speaker
You should have called me before this. I have a dream of having an established silvopasture here, right? Like, do you have any idea? Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. So the other thing is, folks, anyone listening, if you say to chat GPT, I've got all this forested land and I want to create a cattle farm and what should I do first? Chat GPT is happy to say, oh yeah, clear all that land.
00:55:50
Speaker
Put in fences, clear all that land, get your cows, enjoy. like AI is going to agree with whatever your idea is that you put in there. yeah you know it's It's not there yet.
00:56:01
Speaker
ah so I think it's very simple. AI is ah is a great tool, but if you ask it generalized questions, you'll get generalized answers. But if you if you know how to talk to the AI and and what science to use, like regenerative, and like it's a little bit more complex. But if you prompt it well, you'll actually get the right answers.
00:56:21
Speaker
So just like how people use it rather than... i don't think AI is evil either. It's just like how you're going to use it. Well, it's also trained on the model that has been 99% conventional farming. Yeah, well, that's fine. And so on unless you specifically direct it into an area and use terms that as a newbie you don't know yet...
00:56:39
Speaker
yeah it's kind of how you buy glyphosate and spray everything right right how do we get rid of weeds oh yeah get the weed killer yeah yeah nice well i think we're we're nearing the end of our conversation here uh judith i really appreciate your time what is like your last message to our listeners people that may be in early stages of like, oh, I'm considering to get out of the corporate or i want to maybe go part-time and start a farm or a homestead. Like what's your best piece of advice for those people that are listening or the ones who want to get into a regenerative business too?
Advice for Aspiring Regenerative Land Designers
00:57:19
Speaker
The people who want to want to change their lifestyle for the healthier and develop a piece of land for themselves, their family, or for some other venture, I really recommend that you speak to a regenerative land designer
00:57:34
Speaker
ah such as myself, an agroecologist who can help you with that planning. Make sure it's someone who is a certified permaculture designer and someone who has actually had experience doing some farming. There are lots of people out there who can do very beautiful land plans, but the functionality might not be there. There are people who can help you run a farm, but they might not be great at design. So please do your due diligence and make sure that you find someone who is familiar with your local ecology. In other words, if you're Pacific Northwest, you're probably not going to do very well getting a designer who's based out of Florida. And you know by the same token, someone in Maine might not be as good at helping you if you want to do this in Phoenix, Arizona. So make sure that you have someone who is familiar with your bioregion and has these types of qualifications.
00:58:22
Speaker
And then when you speak to them to make sure that you know you have a good rapport and that there's understanding and things like that. Be prepared to spend money for that. Knowledge is free, but their time is not. So make sure that you have planned into that construction cost. If you will, you have that budgeted and you have that considered into your plan and make sure that you have that expertise. As far as anyone who is going to be getting into a regenerative company or starting their own practice, make sure that you know what you're talking about and that you have mentors yourself and that you have people you look up to, you have a strong network. If you are not consulting with someone else, I mean, unless you've been doing this for 20 years, in which case that's probably, I'm not the one to answer the the question right now that you know you're not in this category. but if you People starting out. Yeah. But people starting out, if you are not consulting with other peers and knowledge sources on a very regular basis, if not every single one of these engagements, you're probably doing your clients an injustice.
00:59:22
Speaker
Maybe. you know Because there's always something new that has been developed. There's always a new discovery. Citizen scientists are coming up with the newest things. If you are not constantly doing webinars and seminars and classes and reading books and listening to the podcasts and reaching out and doing networking events and talking and...
00:59:42
Speaker
attending these symposiums and workshops and field days and following new people and watching these new developments. If you are not consistently learning learning, learning, learning, you will fall behind because this entire industry is moving at lightning speed. The stuff that's being done out there right now in the war in the world of regenerative agroecology permaculture design for land and land management It's probably three to five years ahead of universities. Do not count on a university to give you the knowledge that you need to actually excel and do right by your clients out there. You need to be out there doing it. You need to get your hands in the ground. This is not theory. This is theory and practice and science.
01:00:23
Speaker
And then there's also kind of a... It's kind of ah ah a woo element, if you will, too. There's sort of ah there' sort of a spiritual element to this as well. Do not discount that. So and my advice is anyone getting into this, make sure you've got a good, strong network and start small.
01:00:38
Speaker
Start small, get partners, get friends, follow along, contribute to other projects and get your feet wet that way because community is everything. Yeah, thank you. Wow. That's a beautiful message for us to enter the conversation right here. So thank you very much, Judith, for coming on the show. And then finally, last question, when someone's listening to this and says, like I need to talk to Judith, I want to work with her, I want to learn from her, where can people reach out to you? Where can they get in touch with you or follow your journey?
01:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for that. My consultancy is regenerativeagdesign.com. My farm is called Fairhill Farm, and it's at fairhillfarm.com.
01:01:20
Speaker
And I also have a podcast called Fairhill Farmstead Life. where I talk to regenerative farmers, ranchers, and adjacent entrepreneurs. I am going to be having a book that's going to be coming out in the next couple months. It is just about almost natural parasite control and cheap.
01:01:38
Speaker
And then you can probably see me at different places where I will be speaking and attending. i guess that's about it. Nice. I love that. And then you're also on on LinkedIn, most social media. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I am very active on LinkedIn and you can just look me up under Judith Horvath. Awesome.
01:01:57
Speaker
Well, thank you very much, Judith. Take care. Thank you.