uh
hey everyone i hope you guys are doing well this week's in the episode i'm doing something
special i'm actually in seattle doing some consulting work with a good friend of mine alex
from equilibrium farm and i thought it would be great to introduce you guys to him and his
concepts of farming that are really interesting he's doing brilliant work here and me coming down
here is to help him set up a new farm project that i'm hoping to document and really perhaps show you
guys more of what we're going to do here so make sure to subscribe to the channel if you like what
we're doing here it's important it gives us the signal that we should keep on producing these
and the magazine came out last week hope you guys are enjoying it if you haven't check
it out growers magazine it's a bomb you guys are amazing okay equilibrium farm let's do it
i am alex mizelish uh the owner of equilibrium farm here in the king county smamish valley of
washington state my purpose here is to create a culture around food in the field uh at the
dinner table and in this community to share a little bit more about what's going on here
uh we got the south 47 which is 47 acres uh we've got five farms here maybe six
of those one two three four five farms uh three of them are market gardens at this point
you are in like with others in this piece of land but now we're migrating you're migrating
away to a permanent land and a lot of the things that we had seen that are not quite perfect here
will be adjusted on the new piece of line absolutely absolutely it's a
classic reiteration right i mean everyone's always doing this and we get a chance to really take what
worked what didn't work and and design it from the very beginning want to show us a few things
that you'd like to perhaps do a bit differently on the new place absolutely let's go walk around yeah
look when they built this place when they put these in in the 90s i imagine
i'm sure this was dry land but oddly this is one of the wettest parts of the property we've got
that hill over there and i think that water rushes down it and tries to everything's trying to go to
the northwest so literally these greenhouses are understanding water in january and february so the
area that should be able to be 12 months growing is not effective right not it's some of the last
land i can get in okay so you know properly properly sized first of all you know this is
20 by 50 i'd like 30 by hundreds or 105s um but also properly sighted right with good trenching
good drainage tight seal if you look out here i mean you've heard me say it before or shipping
container and porta potty farm i do want a slightly more infrastructure um you know we're
cold in the winter and i get that the winter is cold we literally have nowhere inside to go here
the only place inside we can go in this farm is in the walk-in or in a vehicle but other you know
that's just a poor level of infrastructure to really have a you know happy employees or just
warm you know effectively warm up you've said it from the first time you came out in 2018
i remember we walked out to the walnuts and you just commented on how spread out it was right the
design here just didn't flow right we got a wash pack three four hundred yards from some fields
but then also you know we've talked in the past and and you know that the culinary part's really
important to me and it was a challenge here right we ran a dinner series 500 yards that way with no
power no potable water having real infrastructure to run a nice dinner program we're so close to the
city we work with a lot of the great chefs in the city to have them come out do on-farm meals but
but but with real infrastructure because there's a heavy lift for them uh that's going to be great
and i'm really excited to get back to that so in your mind in your business plan the idea of having
a culinary lab or a space to really do some some hosting and some absolutely some dining even not
a restaurant but some an event place yeah not a restaurant from a zoning standpoint we can't be a
restaurant i think that uh you know i've looked at some of the county code i'm beginning to dive into
some of that jurisdictional stuff you know there's not a lot written about agritourism when you look
at the code it's 100 years ago agritourism is this weird beast that the county doesn't quite know how
to deal with but to me it's it's the part of a farm i want i think it's part of a modern
farm that diversification um it's it's i'm always thinking about what are the services we can offer
and i think you know because the products got that narrow range so from a monetization standpoint
i think those on-farm events are huge people are clamoring for it people want it and i think
you know as you can see if the location is is right in the heart of the wine district here and
people can be looking for it so i'm excited alex i think that you're also you're selecting cultivars
that are you know really more specific to perhaps the taste of chefs and are you into that or yeah
for me some of the the most fun i have in winter is is from a farming standpoint is going in and
handing chefs seed catalogs you know and i love the chefs that really like the seed catalog right
because to me it's um i i i want to do what i want to do with their envisioning and join them in
that sometimes i sell pre-sell beds and just say what comes off of this is 100 yours i think it's
interesting because then in july when a chef says i want green tomatoes you know june you know you
wouldn't normally take off green tomatoes but i say it's your bed you've already paid me the money
i'll do what you want you want the vine for a decor great i think that's an interesting way
to do and i think again that so you're renting the growing space or you did that in the past
that's what you'd like to do or what's tell me tell me about it well i want to just explore the
other ways of doing i think for so long it's been the farmer sits around thinks about what
they're going to grow brings it to market and hope the market bears it right and reflects on
oh we saw more of this less of this but i think to join people earlier on in that process um
brings them along makes them more invested in it and and i do think it so i'm always
looking for ways to do that and one of the iterations i had with one of our clients was
was yeah to sell pre-sell them the beds and i think it it reduces our risk and i think you know
we have a lot of risk is what we try and do is predict nature which is you know a fool's game in
a sense and but an enjoyable process so wherever i can reduce risk i want to and that feels like
the conversations with your your purchasers your customers is a way to reduce that risk
on the new farm alex yeah what what do you see is going to be the big difference between what you're
doing here and what you're going to be doing on the on the new farm well i think it's carrying the
elements of market gardening and taking it there i think better design i really think that's a huge
a huge difference just having having a space that works a little bit more i feel like
we're constantly just kind of making it work and i just think that in aggregate we lose i mean i
know quantifying it doesn't make sense but you know that's 20 percent less efficient of a wash
pack you know 20 percent less efficient of a of a road and 20 less efficient greenhouse you just
you bleed out everywhere and so just really having that design up front that that allows
for efficient movement and you're really thinking about standardizing your bed lengths and blocks
and putting biodiversity and hedgerows and that i think that you got interested in that through fqt
farm what you saw there and i think so yeah um i mean i think i look the background comes from
am i wearing it what am i wearing yeah i mean you know working at foothill horizons right working
in the california environmental ed scene was it still drives me right i mean really making
a robust ecosystem making a farm part of a robust ecosystem is endlessly interesting to me and it's
fun because we know how to grow plants but then also how to create great habitat you know every
time i see a new species of you know today we're looking at the kingfisher and the heron right
and the kestrel that showed up and the barn owl that comes i mean this is this is exciting that's
yes i understand the business side of it and the money uh to operate and you know selling things at
a premium but another way to think about success is the ecosystem success you know and and uh
and anytime i come across an operation that i think is um inspiring that regard i i respond
great to it i think fqt has done a great job with it i love the hedgerows i love the idea of
the blocks with hedgerows between i think that really makes these islands of of ecosystems that
are really cool i'm curious to see as we work with landscape architects and architects in general um
can we build pawns in can we um you know add and you know get more amphibians there you think you
get comp you can get compensated through either some somehow this can be paid for by the state
or a ton of grant money there's a ton of grant money in this county and just in general i think
there's you know it's something i also want to be better at and then also share that stories
i think there's a lot of money out there for farms you know you begin to look for through usda
through counties obviously our county supports small farming wanting to make a pretty robust
local food economy so there's there's there's money there
and i hope to have the culinary kitchen paid for with some of that as well but yeah i think
for example this i i hope we can walk and everyone can see it but we we did a ditch dredging project
which was a three-way partnership between uh king county that we're in kcd which is the
conservation district for king county and us and we dredged uh 3 000 or so linear feet of ditch um
you know cost fifty thousand dollars and forty of them came from the county right and so
um that goes that goes a long way that kind of cost sharing and i know people that are
better that game than i am i wanna engage them in the conversation people that have
you know get good good gra it's not a game i feel like get good grants and know that
landscape i'm excited to learn from them and see what's out there so grants are there and
it's just up to people to go and get them yeah and i think up to organizations institutions
that can specifically help them get them because farmers have a ton to worry and think about so
these are all the layers that i think make a an awesome community uh that supports the farm it's
not just the farmer it's not just the farmer and the crew it's and and i think that people
are serious about it and i think a lot of people are invested uh beyond just farmers and eaters in
making local agriculture work exciting yeah i'm excited cool i'm glad you're part of it buddy
so here we're at the new farm that equilibrium farm and alex and alex's team
wants to build it's a it's an old vacant farmland farm lot that has has a lot of potential really
does and it's just a matter of designing it well and understanding the contours and
understanding the opportunities of the land and also the constraints that the land has so where
should we put the field blocks where should be the greenhouse where it should be the washback station
with you know just like kind of assessing all of this because sometimes even if there's a building
it might not be the smart way to just do everything in that building because
if it's at the other end of where you're going to be putting your market gardens then it might
be better to just have things simpler something not as expensive built closer to it later on we
are meeting with architects and the goal there will be to have their perspective on some of
the constraints that might be legal that might be with regards to permit what's possible what's not
and also in the end to have a clear map for a lot of growers they imagine that
there's a cost that's too expensive to hire people to help make designs but
from my experience it's better to have that and make make the errors on paper before like
going over the design looking it from a bird's eye view allows you to understand what your
what your flaws might be or problems and what you thought or what you didn't think that you should
be doing and it's really advantageous to have that done on paper beforehand
you can just see how dark it is but you can also see that still has the glass in it
this is great i know that's the best
we got to clear that that is really amazing soil for real i'm not joking i know it's very rich
it's very rich it's it's incredibly peady and there'd been horses and cows on it um
pooping for years
it's it's pd you see there's no like we're at 18 inch and it's still one solid oh dude i sold
it ours and oh horizon arizona or horizon we dug a pit because when we were exploring for septic
you'll see the septic pitch down there we dug one there he went as far as he could go in the mini
excavator seven eight feet it was still i saw wood chips at the base of it it just heat the whole way
down yeah and if you taste it you really get a feeling for the minerals that are in it and uh
it gives you a feeling of this is the right place it's fertile i can i can taste the fertility in it
the fecundity it's very second and it'd be great if the greenhouse connects connects to the to the
eating room and then there's a big glass wall and even the first 10 15 feet of the greenhouse
can be converted into yeah yeah yeah that that would be that would be fantastic you want to
walk the whole way back yeah it almost feels like a bog like a peat bog and many people don't know
this but market gardening the the word comes from the french word magashi the magazine the original
market gardeners are from from you know paris in the in the 1800s and magashi that word is
called after the mage which is boggs and because the the market gardeners what they
would do is that they would they would work in soils like these and they would drain them
and then there was black soil like they would go really really deep
really fertile soils and then they would put a lot of horse manure into that but that's that's
the that's the origins of of you know intensive vegetable production is working in these bogs
and so that's really interesting how this soil is somewhat that
so that's it for this week's video i hope you guys enjoyed it we didn't show you this in this video
but we were also there because we were doing grows and goes launch party and that's probably going to
be showed in another episode because it was epic and it also highlighted alex's really deep sense
of community and why he's involved in farming and you know what's his goal thanks again for tuning
in don't forget to subscribe and share share the video to friends of yours that might enjoy this
material that we're making we're having a good time doing it i hope you guys are enjoying it too
don't forget if you want to know more about the master class the online course that i teach
check it out on themarketgardener.com and if you want to be part of our community
check out the work we do at growers and co hope you guys are well be safe have fun farm on jm out
you