today I'm going to try to answer five questions to give you a better sense of
what is going on here at God Shaw farm over the past 30 days or so our Channel
has had just massive growth here on YouTube we've more than doubled in size
there's all sorts of new folks watching our videos
I am so super appreciative of all of you guys who subscribed and decided to
follow along with us as we try to build a farm here in northern Vermont but I
also recognize that a lot of our videos might leave you with a bunch of
questions so what I was gonna do today is try to answer five questions for you
guys that will help you better understand what we have going here on
the farm know a little bit more about us and make your entire viewing experience
will have much more interesting question number one what's your deal so what is
our deal well Gold Shaw farm is a tiny little farm start-up in the Northeast
Kingdom of Vermont it consists of myself Morgan my wife Allison our barn cats
Pablo and Lil this gigantic old falling-down barn a whole bunch of
pasture and woods some baby trees a flock of egg-laying ducks and yeah
that's about it for right now we are just trying to start a farm we are in
the earliest phases we are only occasionally selling farm products but
our vision is to someday have a sustainable farm one that's sustainable
economically one that's sustainable environmentally one that's sustainable
for us and our own personal energy neither of us have farming backgrounds
we both moved here after spending probably the last 20 years of our lives
living in various cities whether they be Boston Hartford New York and most
recently Washington DC I personally only moved up here about six months ago and
so it's just been a process of trying to adjust to life here on the farm
trying to build things out and get things started here on the farm and so
far it's been pretty gosh darn awesome I do most of the video making around here
Allison does a lot of stuff here as well that you probably won't see as much on
camera really camera shy but you'll also see
plenty of ducks and plenty of barn cats question - why do you farm so the reason
we farm is because both Alison and I feel really strongly that sort of the
conventional food system that we have here in America is broken and that there
needs to be some sort of better model in place that both economically rewards the
farmer does good buy the land and then also does good by the consumer so that's
the main reason we farm the other part of it all is that I personally find it
crazy rewarding so whether it's growing a tree or raising a duck or starting an
entire farm business I love the process of taking something small and watching
it grow and flourish question number three how did we decide on which
products to grow so I put a lot of energy and thought in determining which
farm products we should be growing it was a combination of things the first
thing we focused on in the first things that we put into the ground which we did
back in the fall of 2017 was we planted about 600 tree crops and shrubs the
thinking is a lot of those perennial fruit and nut crops which included
chestnuts elderberries hazelnuts mulberries butter nuts
black locust apple trees you know those types of things they take a number of
years to get established we knew we wanted to have perennial tree crops and
we knew that was gonna take a long time we wanted to go with ducks because the
egg business is a relatively straightforward farming enterprise to
get into we went with ducks instead of chickens because nobody in this area is
doing ducks in a significant way but everybody's doing chickens and so it
doesn't chicken eggs can go for like three or four dollars a dozen meanwhile
a half a dozen duck eggs can go for five or six bucks and so it was an economic
decision plus Ducks are just I find them to be the most amusing and incredible
animal to work with they're goofy they're stupid but they're also adorable
and lovable and you know relatively low stress the other thing that's important
about sort of why we picked both the trees and the Ducks as places to start
it was because I personally believe in this philosophy of it is better to be
different than be better one of the key elements of a successful business
strategy is to differentiate yourself how do you make yourself stand out from
the competition and I think one of the easiest ways to do that is offer a
product that most of your competition isn't offering and so that's why things
like chestnuts or ducks become very distinctive and it allows us to try to
stand out as we try to get established right now we only have those two
enterprises going here on the farm I hope next year I'm going to add a third
one that'll maybe talk about in a future video but my plan has always been to you
know build slowly because I don't have a farming background because I don't have
a lot of farming skills I didn't want to try to jump into anything too quickly
and so you know this is very much a you know learn one set of skills get good at
it get a system down and then once you get that established you can move on to
another system I've seen so many wannabe farmers and homesteaders crash and fail
because they do like everything all at once they want a garden and they want
trees and they want pigs and they want ducks and they want sheep and they want
they gonna all going all at once and they get burned out they get frustrated
they make mistakes they don't know what to do and they fail and and so frankly I
didn't want to be in that sort of place and so we've taken this approach of
adding one Enterprise at a time question quattro is the farm your primary source
of income absolutely not I continue to have a full-time off farm job working in
insurance Allison has a part-time job working as a nurse and she's also
actually in school and the farm income that we have doesn't support us the farm
income right now doesn't even break even I feel like we're on a good financial
path but we're not making money from it we still need money from off farm
activities to support us we don't come from wealthy families we don't have
trust funds of some sort magically sitting there all we really have from a
money standpoint is our personal savings combined with income from an off farm
job I think that's an important thing to note because one of the things that I
see a lot with folks who are beginning farmers is they get really tangled up
and twisted up in thinking about capital and you know they take out loans on
equipment and they take out debt and it becomes this high-pressure thing I mean
heck you look through the history of the American farmer and debt has often been
the the cudgel that has it just absolutely crushed them over and over
and over again so so we've very much had this philosophy of starting our farm
with zero debt and doing everything with cash that we have on hand that means
that we're growing slowly that means that I need to have a non farm job but
I'm ok with that because the other dimension in all this is I'm still
growing my farming skills like I said earlier I have never had a farming
background I grew up in the suburbs I don't know what I'm doing and so to try
to start a business while you're learning on what
they even do that to me just seems like such a bad decision and so so that's
something we're avoiding doing question number five why are you making YouTube
videos I think question number five is a very
reasonable question you know I think you should be asking any YouTube creator why
are you making YouTube videos so the reason that we're making YouTube videos
is this as we try to build out our farm business and as we start to have farm
products to sell I think it's actually very important to have a branded place
to have people who know your story and have people who actually want to buy
your products I think it's a key part of any good business strategy and so I
figured people would find it interesting to watch us try to build this farm and
then actually be able to participate and buy products from the farm so that's the
primary reason that we're doing these YouTube videos the other reason that
we're doing these YouTube videos is that I just love making videos I have so much
fun creating stuff YouTube videos are great they're quick you don't overthink
them they allow you to have such a good direct connection with the people who
watch your videos so having this activity that can scratch a creative
itch you know that to me is awesome I can work on the farm and tell the story
about the farm and have this creative outlet as well and then this fringe
benefit though that come from all of this is just all the relationships and
friendships that have come from people in the YouTube and homesteading
communities out there who've connected with us who've supported us we've made
videos with it's just awesome and and so you know I'm really appreciative all all
of that and well that wasn't a reason why we started making YouTube videos
it's been a huge reason why we've been consistently producing them a couple
times a week over the last six months or so so I know this video has just been a
lot of me talking and blathering on hopefully you found it educational but
let's go watch some action so why don't you either watch this one or this one
and you'll get a better sense of what's going on here in the farm and again
please don't forget to subscribe we really appreciate it
and I'll see you guys in the next video