so it's friday morning and today i'm showing you another farm project
that's the farm where i spend a lot of my time it's fqt farm film caprata in french
and it's a farm project that i started in 2015 it's a training farm where 10 apprentice per year
get the opportunity to work really hard here it was a project that when it was started the goal
was to create a holistic farms where there would be vegetables there would be
animals there's there's chickens on the farm that are
in and chicken tractors there's pigs that are in the forest and there's beef that are on pasture
uh in the summer and uh then there's a big market garden it's about a you know five six
acre market garden and the reason it's so big is because we want to have a lot of ground to train
the people that come here at the farm so that it's really intense and that they
get the vibe of a real working season and yeah let's just let's just walk around
the original concept was that there would be field blocks so you know here at this farm and like on
my farm at galinet we work on permanent raised beds they're all 30 inch wide and the pathways are
18 inch and they're all standardized to 100 foot and we've grouped them together in field blocks of
of ten beds and between each of these beds there's flowering hedgerows that are acting as windbreak
but also they're acting and they're attracting pollen pollinators and they're creating a really
different landscape that we're used to when we're talking about farming uh and each field block is
a botanical family in a rotation and uh yeah let's just let's just walk around hello chance
so you really feel that it's the fall here at the farm it's the first day of october and
for jm it's also sober october starting today really excited about that
so you really see here the designs so there's the field blocks with the beds
and then there's the hedgerows there's about 400 of these permanent beds on the farm so it's quite
big and each of these beds will be cultivated once cultivated twice sometimes three times in a year
and now the crew is harvesting greens because we always start the harvest with mesclun which
is a big part of what we grow here at the farm so the whole concept of the design of this farm
was to create as many ecological niches around the field blocks around the growing area and the goal
was to create a space where we would have super high yielding production but also a lot of nature
and just a lot of beauty a lot of flowers and there's a lot of birdhouses in
uh in the flowering hedgerows and you know it was all about you know trying to connect what i
had learned in permaculture with high-yield market gardening and finding the sweet spot between both
this farm is not the you know it's not a it's not a perfect place but it's it's damn
it's pretty cool what we've done here and this is my working place so you know four times a week
i commute from lagrelinet so you know i have a meeting with motherland and the crew and then
sometimes you know i just head out and then i come here i spend the day here and then i come back to
my farm at night and that's been that's been kind of my life for the last six seven years there's
one big fat greenhouse where we do tomatoes it's a really really interesting greenhouse
then there's three other greenhouses that are 42 by 100 foot long so
other three other greenhouses and then we have five cold houses that are not heated plus we
have about 10 caterpillars that will move on the farm it's giving you an idea of the
kind of the scale of this farm and again this farm is for training so the goal when we set it up
wasn't to have like a a super big market garden just for the sake of it it was to have a lot of
beds to have many people work the beds a lot of carrots for people to harvest and seed a lot of
carrots to get practiced but today on a harvest like today our goal is to harvest for about
20 000 in sales this weekend at farmer's market so it's a pretty big harvest today
do you guys know what this is
hint it's in the bottom if you dig you find the vegetable
so that was the nord field we just did a little walk around and then there's another part in
the south and in between and in the center of the farm is the nursery where we do all of our
starts the washing station that is connected to it then there's the greenhouses and then there's
the the command center where we meet every morning and afternoons at the board where we
give the instructions of what we're doing and where the garage is and so that's the center
of the farm and then there's the north field and then there's the south field
so this is the main tomato house this is where we grow all of our greenhouse tomatoes and then
because it's the first of october we've ripped one bay out this week and then
we've transplanted some of the winter greens that'll be you know in the field in the in the
greenhouse for the whole winter so this is a mix of bok choy and kale and we have also a mix of
swiss chard and some and some and some scallions and then we have all
the tomatoes that are left but usually the full greenhouse is filled with tomatoes and
each of the growers that are farming here they have one row and they they
they do their their row for the whole season this was our best tomato year ever here at the farm
like really the plants are still healthy even at this part of the season it was really amazing
so a big part of the training here at the farm is to teach them how to really grow
using best practices and then growing tomatoes in greenhouses there's a lot of skills to it there's
a lot of things you need to learn manipulate manipulate the plant but also how and when to
fertilize how to irrigate properly how to heat and dehumidify the greenhouse it's a lot of work
so to the right here we have the flower garden really nice job the crew did here to this year
shout out to sophie who's been a really really great flower farmer at the farm this year
so this is we have three of these greenhouses and they're for winter
production but also in the summer we grow a lot of cucumbers in them so you see the cukes here
cucumbers a big part of the job that we do here at the farm is to manage
those cucumbers really well got a really nice patch of radicchios here so great fall crop
so this are all our greens for the winter we get them established really early in
september and then we'll harvest them throughout the whole winter
and then this greenhouse
was where we did the eggplants
this summer and again we have our winter greens that are in the ground for the whole winter
so a big part of running this project is ah yes the garden and then you know doing the work doing
the the work correctly and in timely fashion but it's also just being together with the crew and
then you know they all live together so it's kind of like a it's a really interesting program they
come here for for a first season they learn the basics most of them have never farmed some of
them have a little bit of farm experience and then the second year they manage the first years and
so they each have a role in responsibility that's established and a big part of doing all of this is
is coming together and making sure that you know people are learning yes to farm but also to manage
and we're also learning how to deal with you know the pressure of farming we're learning how to deal
with conflicts between the team we're doing all of this and and i'm hell i'm there to kind of help
all of this get along so these are the five cold houses one of them is for the chickens
that's where they nest in the winter so it's not heated but it's enough for them to be really happy
because there's sun and when if the sun is out it gets warm in there and then in each of the
cold cold houses we have our crops that are in for the winter
so this is a really interesting building this is really the center of the farm and it's the nursery
that is heated year round so that's why it's so well insulated and quite high and then connected
to the north wall of the nursery is the wash and pack station and that's where we process
and clean all the veggies and store them in the cold rooms and so that's the north wall
and that's the south so together they're they work really well because you know the washing
pack station wants to be cool and the nursery obviously wants to be warm so we'll go inside
so this is a pretty high tech greenhouse and the reason is because we're heating
year round it's well insulated it has a lot of you know it he's even has
thermal blankets that shut down at night so that the heat is stored at lower temperatures
and again now it's the end of season there's not that many transplants left they're all going
into the the houses for the winter greens and now we're connecting with the washing station
so this is catkin the amazing captain hello she she now runs the crew this used to be my job and
she's really good at it and i really appreciate her now she is preparing for all the greens that
are coming in to be washed in the bubbler and to be spin dried and so this is the washing area
it's not busy yet but in about 30 minutes it's gonna be busy until five o'clock this afternoon
so we're planning to sell for twenty thousand dollars of veggies this weekend
it was designed to process a lot of veggies and everything can be clean
and sanitized that was really important you know all the the crop with soil come in from this
part and then they're washed and then they're stored so it's like a
it's like a clean linear sage and all the except for the bubbler everything is on
wheels so we can move and configure the washing station differently it gets really busy here
this is where all the tools are uh bcs walk behind tractors
um and then really this is the command center this is where we meet morning and afternoon and
that's the whole week of everything that needs to be done on the farm is written on the board
it's subdivided by different roles and responsibilities that
each of them have on the farm and this is this is the weekly schedule of what will be done when and
we all we all decide this on monday and then we kind of execute the plan as the week goes down
so that's it for this week quick tour of fqt farm a big part of my life a big
project that i started six years ago and uh put a lot of my heart and sweat into this one
but it's amazing and we have an amazing crew and there's more people that i'd like to show you
we'll have a part two where we'll show you perhaps the animals and the chickens and other people that
are gravitating around the farm today was kind of a busy day with a big harvest but
hope you liked it if you like the channel if you like this make sure to subscribe it to the channel
and if you want to learn learn more about how we farm here check out the market gardeners master
class if you want to be part of the community check out the work that is done at growers and co
and if anything else i'll see you next week hope you're well farm on
you