The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.58 Community Financed Agriculture

Episode Date: October 2, 2015

This episode, contributor Scott Humphries' interview with Sean Butler of Ferme et Foret. To finance part of their farm's growth, Sean and his wife Geneviève asked friends and family to invest in their vision by selling 'bonds' that paid a small rate of return on investment. They call it 'Community Financed Farming'. Sound familiar? The couple took some inspiration from Paul Slomp of Grazing Days Farm, who talked about his own success with this model on episode 20 of the podcast.  Also: I asked for some good ideas that you implemented on your farms this past season, and, well, one of you responded. Dan Brisebois of Ferme Tourne-Sol tells us about all the labour he saved this year by mulching his garden pathways with landscape fabric, and how you can do it, too. 

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. The Ruminant is a website and podcast that explores what good farming looks like. At theruminant.ca, you'll find photo-based blog posts, essays, gear and book reviews, as well as show notes for each episode of the podcast. I tweet at ruminantblog, and you can email me day or night at editor at the ruminant.ca. Okay, on with the show. All right folks, so this week I have a real treat for you in that I'm not conducting the main interview this week. I've mentioned a few times now that I have a collaborator, Scott Humphreys, who's out in Ontario, and he's offered to give me a bit of help with the podcast,

and he's given me some great insight so far and some other kinds of help. And for this episode, I'll be featuring an interview that Scott recorded with Sean Butler from Fermé Forêt out in Quebec. As you'll hear in the interview, Sean and his wife financed at least part of their farm using a model they call community-financed agriculture. Now those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while will recall that in episode 20, I interviewed a farmer called Paul Schlampp who funded his beef operation on a similar model where he reached out to friends and family and essentially sold bonds, raised money via bonds, and paid a small rate of return to the people that invested in his farm. So you can check out that interview if you like if you search through the archives of the ruminant. But here's another example of this model being put to work and actually as

you'll hear Sean Butler mention in the interview, he and his wife know Paul Schlomp, and I think they took some inspiration from him. But I don't need to say much more. It's a great interview. Thank you to Scott, and thank you to Sean Butler. And if you want to learn more about Fermet Forêt, and that is my butchered attempt at pronouncing their farm name which is in French that is f-e-r-m-e-e-t f-o-r-e-t dot ca so that's farm in French ferme et which is and and then forêt f-o-r-e-t which is forest so

farm and forest dot ca only it's ferme et forêt. Oh man, I'm sorry, everybody. I'm sorry, francophones. Okay, so Scott Humphrey's interview with Sean Butler in just a moment. But I'm also happy to announce that I have been getting the odd response to some of the questions I've been putting to you folks. Two questions that are kind of floating around right now. One, what's a really good idea that you implemented on your farm this year that you think other farmers would want to know about? I would love to hear from you so that I can help you share your insights with other listeners of the podcast. You can get a hold of me at editor at theruminant.ca. You can record a voice memo on your smartphone and then email it to me at that address.

You can text me 250-767-6636 and just let me know that you want me to call you and I'll give you a call and we'll chat about your insight. Or you can call my Skype number 310-734-8426 and there you'll get a voicemail and you can just leave me a message and either record what you want me to include on the podcast or just ask me to call you back. The other question that I've kind of been floating out there right now is what are you doing in your off season? What are you doing either just to keep yourself occupied or to just make ends meet? A lot of us really need to find some income in the winter and I'm curious to know what kind of solutions listeners have to that challenge. So after Scott's main interview I've got a response from a listener and a response to the question what's a good

insight or what's a good idea that you implemented on your farm this year. So it has to do with a certain approach to mulching some of your pathways in your market garden so that you save yourself a lot of labor. So stay tuned for that. But here's Scott's interview with Sean Butler. If you could actually just introduce yourself, the name of the farm, and kind of what you guys are growing. I'm Sean Butler. I'm one of the two owners at Fermet Forêt, just north of Wakefield, Quebec. And we grow maple syrup and harvest a lot of wild foods. We grow shiitake mushrooms on logs in the woods. And we keep a flock of lane hens.

We make granola. We have an orchard and a young asparagus patch. I think that's about it. What farm season are you guys in? This would be our second full season. Now, specifically to do with your maple syrup, this is the first full season that you guys have done that. Is that correct? The first season with our new big evaporator.

We have done seasons in the past with a small evaporator outdoors and producing about 150 litres. But this past year we produced 1,700 litres. So our first season doing it on a much bigger scale. To fund the large investment of the maple syrup bush, can you tell me a little bit about how you guys funded that? You guys had an interesting funding model for that. So we used what we call a community-financed agriculture project. And so we basically got people, mostly people who we know,

friends and family and acquaintances, to lend us small amounts of money for a short period of time. And we'd pay them some interest. So we raised money that way. Yeah, so where did you originally... So what's the actual term? Let's just get it right there. Is it community financial? Community financed

agriculture is what we decided to call it instead of play on community supported agriculture yeah and we got the idea originally uh from a friend of ours named paul slump and he started a uh beef csa called grazing days in ottawa and he he financed that in the early days through selling bonds but he got people to uh lend him money in that in that way and that allowed him to purchase his cattle and he rented lands you know so he didn't have that but that's where we got the idea from is from him how was like how did you kind of pitch the the community financed uh agricultural thing to friends and family like i know that you pay them back a certain percentage but how was the reception to that or like um you know did you face kind of any challenges or were you pleasantly surprised

i'd say we were pleasantly surprised like we actually had to turn some people down at the end we had borrowed as much money as we wanted from people, so we were turning people away. So it went quite well. I think people were happy to have something that they could invest in that they believed in, and that was a local business starting up, rather than investing in some faraway stock markets where they weren't really sure where their money was being used for. And we paid them three or four percent interest. So it was still a decent return on their money. That's great. So you didn't, so there wasn't really any challenges in doing that.

Is that something you would do again going forward? Yes. In fact, we have done it again this year. We raised a bit more capital that way as well. So, you know, we don't want to get too in debt to people. So we're, you know, going slowly with it. We want to always be sure that we can pay people back. In fact, one of our sort of criteria was we didn't want to borrow more money than we could.

Even if our farm business failed, we'd still want to be able to get jobs and pay people back that way. So we don't want to be so in debt that we can't do that. For someone trying to do a similar model like what what kind of suggestions would you give to them or like how would you what would be kind of ideas going forward for other farmers wanting to use it? I don't know I mean we wanted we wanted to keep it mostly to people who we knew because we didn't really want the pressure of owing money to strangers in a way it was like less pressure to owe money to friends and family some people might feel differently about that but that's how we felt and also we didn't well we really didn't have to sell ourselves very much because people already knew us and trusted us and

knew what we were doing and believed in what we were doing so we didn't have to invest a lot of time really in selling us or our projects so that's nice if we were approaching strangers more it would be less of a payback in terms of the time that we put into it we did have one investor who's just a neighbor, lives down the road, who I wouldn't call a friend really, but he's someone I've known for a few years just from living in this area. And he gave us a substantial amount of money. So that was a really nice vote of confidence too, to have a neighbor who's also a customer,

comes here and buys our eggs and stuff to have that from him was was really felt good how many investors did you guys get yeah that's a good question uh i think it's uh i think it's probably around 40 or so if i remember correctly yeah yeah so not an insignificant amount of people and And so how did you kind of like initially send the call out for that? Was it just via email, via Facebook, like kind of through social network channels? Or was it like personal conversations or a mix of all of them? Yeah, most of it came from an email. And people would just email us back.

And a few people asked for like a business plan or something like that. But most people just, you know, trusted us basically and said, yeah, sign me up. A couple of people might have wanted to actually meet with us and talk to us. But that's basically how it landed. It was pretty easy. And did you have a business plan put together kind of at that point in time? Like for the people who asked you if you had a business plan, did you like, here you go, here's like the plan? Yes, we had like, I don't know,

a 50-page business plan. It was pretty extensive that we put together mostly for government granting and lending agencies. So, yeah, we put a lot of work into our business plan. Okay, so it's not quite as easy as you made it sound, I would say. So you essentially put together, like, you did have a pretty significant business plan

put together, which, I mean, you should anyways if you're starting up a business. And then you kind of, like, did a call out to, like, friends and family for potential investment. Yes, but the friends and family didn't want us, they didn't really care about the business plan, is what I'm saying. They trusted us. How much to date have you guys raised through the community funding? I think about $45,000 to date. Yeah. Yeah. So we've got some of those are one and a half year loans and some of those are three year loans. So we've got that period of time to pay that back. And we try to space it out so that we're not paying back too much each year. And sorry, just to kind of clarify, there was a minimum investment too that you guys had?

Yeah, we asked for at least $500. So our model was sort of like bonds. We're selling like $500 bonds. So it would be increments of $500 that people would invest in. But they're not officially bonds. They're not legally bonds or anything like that. And that's another thing. We could have gone deep into making this super, super legal and stuff.

But because we were those friends and family, we just kept it to a simple one- or two-page contract that we drew up ourselves. We didn't involve a notary or a lawyer or anything in this. We just drew this up, got them to sign it, and that was enough for people. So that was another way that we kept it pretty simple and and manageable and and and this funding is kind of like really kind of helped you guys kind of get off the ground kind of get getting things running like we just took a tour of your farm and it's like looking really good and it seems like you guys have made some significant

investments so i'm assuming that's helped quite a lot in terms of getting your farm going yeah for sure like we wouldn't be here if we didn't have have that money like you to do anything with farming you need equipment to do it on scale so you got to find that money somewhere and we weren't finding that money through traditional lenders or granting agencies so we turned to to our community which has all sorts of other pluses to it as well in terms of getting people engaged in what we're doing here and you know probably a lot of those people who lent us money are going to be more likely to be our customers too in the future they're sort of getting behind the project here so it feels feels good. And I think

the people lending us money are happy to do it. So it's just a win-win all around, I think. That's great. Yeah. Thank you. That's what, unless you have anything else you'd like to add? No. Okay. Perfect. Oh, Scott Humphries, you are a delight. Thanks, Scott. That was great. You know who else is a delight? Daniel Brisbois. Dan's with Fair Maternusol. And if you've been listening, you know Dan because he has been a perennial supporter of and contributor to the podcast. And Dan came through once again. When I asked all of you to get a hold of me and let me know about some good insights you made on your farm this year, well, Dan got a hold of me right away and he wanted to share the following with you.

Yeah, shoot. Okay. So I, you know, Dan, I put out a call to listeners to talk about a good idea that they implemented this year. And what was, what was something cool you guys did on your farm? We decided to use geotextile and straw mulch in the pathways between our crops that are longstanding in the field. So flower crops, like cut flowers, and then also seed crops, and maybe a couple other things, too. Yeah, and the geotextile we purchased, like, 300-foot lengths, which are the lengths of the alleys between our beds. And then for the straw mulch, we actually used the forage harvester to chop up rye from rye beds and throw it into kind of a manure spreader thing. And then we kind of dropped it beside the beds and spread it a little bit by hand trying to minimize the amount of work to do that okay so some some quick uh follow-up

questions then dan what are your what what centers what bed centers are you operating on and how wide are your pathways so our our bed centers are um 60 inches uh from center to center. And the pathways, I guess they're either two feet or two and a half feet. I guess it's probably two and a half feet. And did you find a geotextile that was that width? We had a geotextile. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. I think the jet I probably got was two and a half feet, and it fit perfectly almost everywhere. A couple places, if, I guess to step back, to go back, if we don't have black plastic, our beds are about 30 inches and our paths are about 30 inches. But with black plastic, it goes beyond the 30 inches,

but the rows are still usually 30 inches apart within. So as long as the geotextile was on the outside of the plant and not smothering a plant, it was fine. In some places where things had been planted a little crooked or a little off, or the plastic had been laid a little bit off, in that case, we would kind of fold the geotextile a little bit under to pin it in the ground. Yeah.

Okay, so I have a few more questions. First of all, why was this a good decision? Like, let's get to the outcome. Did it save a lot of labor on weeding in the pathways? Yeah, well, for us, the month of August and early to mid-September is just crazy on the farm. There are so many things to harvest and process. There's garlic, onions, tons of seed crops, in addition to the CSA harvest, and then we move into squash and potatoes and all that, And then, you know, and we move into squash and potatoes and all that.

And we just don't have time to weed. But also for seed crops, having the big weeds in there can hinder ventilation and can hinder harvest and stuff. So it becomes a problem. And at worst case scenario is you could have weed seed mixed up with your seed, which you really don't want that. So we really wanted to reduce the amount of weeding that we were doing in the month of August, and it worked magnificently. We were thrilled with it. So, Dan, why not?

In the past, did you ever just try taking a narrow tiller through there? Or were there, well, I'll just leave it at that. Did you ever try that? Well, that's what we were doing in the past is, when you say a tiller, you mean like a BCS? I guess, yeah, something small that would fit in the pathway that you'd walk behind. Have you ever tried that before? Well, we would use wheel hose.

We didn't use a rotor tiller, but we'd use wheel hose. But still, every path, you have to do it multiple times. Yeah, right. And, and eventually, there's time, time just lacks. Okay. So could you quickly take me through the, the order of things? Okay. And so I'll tell you what we're going to do next year, rather than what we did this year, because this year was an experiment and we didn't want to spend much money until we saw how it worked. So next year what we'll do

is we're going to lay down the black plastic first and we try to lay down our black plastic in early May. Okay, so that's, sorry, I got to interject. So there is another plastic you're talking about. You're talking about some plastic you're using on your beds versus the geotextile and the pathways. Is that right? Yes. So there's two plastics and I should have been more clear on that too. Yes. So we use on many of the crops that are on the ground for long season, we use a biotello biodegradable plastic mulch on the bed top. And at that point,

on the bed top right so and at that point before we plant anything in it we're going to roll out the geotextile and we'll we use pins to pin it down and i think the pins are like every three or four feet not totally sure but i think about every three or four feet um and then so we'll have a nicely prepared area that's either black plastic or geotextile. And then after that, we will go and plant into it. Right, okay. And then you're putting the mulch over top of it? Are we talking about straw mulch or geotextile? You mentioned, I meant the living mulch, like not living, but the plant mulch.

You said you took some rye mulch and you were mulching as well? Yeah, so I would say there's two different systems that we try. like not living, but the plant mulch. You said you took some rye mulch and you were mulching as well? Yeah. I would say there's two different systems that we tried. One is geotextile and the other is using plant mulch. The challenge with the system that we used this year is that we were chopping stuff from our cover crop blocks, be it rye or maybe some clover. I'm not totally sure if we got to the clover or not. So by the time there's enough biomass for that, it's kind of mid to end June.

And once we apply the mulch, it does a really good job for keeping weeds down. But, you know, it means there's six weeks from the moment we put the black plastic down to the moment we're putting the chopped mulch down. And so that's six weeks of weeding. It also means that by the time we get the mulch down, we've already planted crops in the beds, and in some cases we've put trellises and stuff. And that makes it a real pain to go in there. Yeah. The timing just doesn't work. And is this geotextile, I'm not familiar with the term, is it a reusable material or are you using it once? It's also like a landscape fabric. Right,

right. Okay. Did you choose one that admits water or is it impermeable to water? No, it's a water goes through it. I think it's supposed to have a five or six year life span, but I have a feeling they're going to last longer than that. Like, well, at the end of the season, we're going to roll them up. I think that will probably identify what crops there are beside to have a little bit of a rotation so that we don't have um uh you know a disease transmission ah good point crop to crop which is a huge fear for us especially like for solanacea crops um and uh yeah so just kind of rotate a bit that way um right okay and uh and then i i guess by saying that you plan to reuse this for many years, then the foot traffic on that geotextile didn't kick the crap out of it this past season.

No, and it's meant to be walked on. In our greenhouse, we use a fabric like this as the floor of the greenhouse, over the soil. And we've had the same one there, I think, for nine years. It's kind of places where something got caught on it or it's been worn through a little bit but very few areas. For the most part, it's really working good. If someone wants to source this stuff, because there are various kinds of landscape fabrics, is it enough to say geotextile, go looking for geotextile or do you happen to

know the brand name? I don't know the brand name. We got it from Agri-novation south of Montreal in Saint-Rémy, where we get a lot of our stuff. But nurseries, all kinds of people have different stuff in supply. Sometimes the width can be hard to source exactly what you're looking for, but I don't think it matters as much. I would definitely go for something that water goes through

because you don't want to have lakes in the middle between your beds. Definitely. Well, Dan, I've surprised you with this phone call. You've been very gracious in receiving it. I would probably feel even guiltier were I not secure in the knowledge that you saved all kinds of time this year because of your mulching of pathways so that you had these few minutes to communicate this good idea to the ruminants listeners well it's a pleasure to do that thank you dan brisbois you're welcome jordan

well folks i think you all should be like Dan and get a hold of me. And tell me something that you're proud of that you're doing on your farm. And we'll talk about it on the podcast. Anyway, that's another episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And I'll be back with you soon. And I'll let my wife Vanessa play you out. We're no closer, we never have laundry.

We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves Live life like it was meant to be Ah, don't fret, honey, I've got a plan To make our final escape All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars And maybe a roll of duct tape And we'll run right outside of the city's reaches we'll live off chestnuts spring water and peaches we'll own nothing to this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be

Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country, with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching, and here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong. So we'll run right out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be Hello. Corey. How's it going?

It's Jordan Marr. I see who it is. You don't see anything. This isn't a video phone. This is the information age is here, my friend. Cameras are everywhere. That's creepy. I'm going to start calling you big brother.

What's going down? Well, I'm trying something new with my podcast i'm just i'm saying to hell is it about spying on people or sort of because if so i'm in yeah well i know you're looking for any reason to get out of farming so am i um i'm saying to hell with like booking interviews because i end up having like 24 emails go back and forth oh yeah and i'm trying something different i'm phoning uh respected and respectable farmers and i'm asking them this question is there something new you tried this year that worked well that you want to share with others um having low expectations

yeah i don't think that's very new i don't think that's very new. I don't think that's very new for any farmer, Corey. I thought organic farmers were all starry-eyed and excited, you know?