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everyone welcome to this special edition of digging deeper special for me because
I'm announcing today kind of a big shift in my farming career for anyone that's been following me
um you know for 12 12 years I had my own Farm like really net which my wife has been running
for the last seven years without me because during those seven years I was also running a teaching
farm fqt farm doing a lot of research and a lot of teaching to a whole cohorts of apprentices
and I did that for seven years until last year and today I'm announcing a new project which is
about seven minutes from my own Farm but it's a farm to table with a restaurant and a place to
host people host groups and invite people to what I want to do next so I started this last March uh
the farm and the restaurant is called The Old Mill it's in stanbridge East
Quebec Canada and I'll show you around okay so this is a pretty typical Market Garden uh
for this project my beds are 50 feet long and there's going to be all in all
six field blocks so 68 beds and a big Greenhouse that's going to be minimally heated in the winter
to grow year round and the whole goal of the garden is to feed the restaurant a real farm
to table where everything that is sourced from the garden goes directly to the kitchen and where
people can come and eat in season year round in our Northern climate and so that's really
what got me excited the space is amazing it's really beautiful there's a really nice River
close to it and there's rooms where people can stay and there's a really nice kitchen that we
just renovated a big project big project for me but really exciting because for all these years
selling to chefs going to restaurants I really am interested in the culinary arts and I really
appreciate fine dining but also the whole concept of hosting and inviting people and so for me
having the garden as a public space and being the grower for the restaurant it's like a full circle
and it gets me really really excited even though there's a lot of challenges to doing all of this
so the Old Mill is located in the historic village of stanbridge East this is a village
that was settled by a lot of the loyalist people that left the United States during the war to come
and settle here in what was Canada back then still Canada today but it's just an amazing beautiful
space there's a river that goes through it with the mill that used to be you know in service
for all the farmers that were growing the grain around the area and so it's an historical site
the building is from 1840 so it's an old building and for me it's really exciting because a lot of
the things that I want to do in this project is to kind of research and better understand how
you know people used to live back then and I think there's a lot of insights that we
can gain from revisiting the past a lot of my market gardening tips and tricks a lot
of the my knowledge of Market gardening was found reading books French Market gardening
books of the 1800s of the 1900s so for me the historical context of the place and of a craft
is important and I think this site's really you know does that for me it's really amazing
so you see the gardens are just there the greenhouse the year-round Greenhouse is just
there and we'll go into the kitchens about 30 Steps From The Garden to the kitchen which is
the whole concept of this is where to combine both worlds and have really the culinary arts
being done there and having all of the Craftsmen ship done in the Market Garden
and then combining the two so that's really exciting I'll show you the Kitchen come on in
I'm really lucky and happy to be partnering with an amazing Chef Eric you'll get to meet
him especially if you come and eat here but the kitchen is amazing and it's again it's like 30
Steps From The Market Garden and a big shout out to Garland which has helped me a ton with a lot
of these equipment they've helped by sponsoring some of them so that's really cool so the kitchen
is here and then you get into actually the dining area The Old Mill we just put a lot of work and
effort into this making it nice there's a bar and then there's a the place where people will eat
and there's a lounge and again big shout out to Lodge bubois help us sponsor the space really
cool company from France a lot of nice material and there's also the office space of the market
Gardener Institute which are the fine people that are helping with the master class doing all of
the a lot of the leg work that goes into doing an online course like the master class there's a lot
of people behind it so everyone is staffed here now that's really exciting for me and again this
is like for me it's you know uh the pandemic was a big reset in many ways it was a big reset for
me what I want to do where I want to be what's next with me and having a space like this to be
able to to be wholesome to be not too far from my house and to be able to invite invite Growers
from all around the world invite chefs I think I'm a bit done to travel and share my expertise
everywhere I'd like for people to perhaps come down and see what I'm doing so this is going to
be a great space for that but it's also a great space for just me to be happy to farm which is
the most important thing you see this is a picture of how it was in the 1800s so it's
a really it's a historical building it's really interesting it's full of life and we've kept it
as genuine as possible which is like part of the work that we've been doing here you go outside
we're connecting with the washing pack station that's connected to the greenhouse we're going
to do the barn raising tomorrow so that's really exciting there's a crew of really good Craftsmen
that have been helping making this building it's going to be really beautiful that's my buddy
Marios he's the Builder as well yes so that's it for this week's episode there's going to be
a lot more to share and show as the weeks go by don't forget to subscribe to the channel I have
a lot of inspiring things to share this project is really cool and if anything I'll see you next
time on digging deeper hope you guys are well hope everything is growing I am JM out foreign