The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e97: Jean Martin Fortier! Cocaine! Compost Tea!

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

This ep: Jean-Martin Fortier returns for a quickie. We talk about fame, semi-fortune, cocaine, compost tea, the tool he's most obsessed with at the moment, and a few other tidbits.  One of JM's recent projects is an online course. He's pretty amped about it. It's called The Market Gardener's Master Class. We discuss that too.    

It's been a while since I've been called a rock star farmer, ever since I left British Columbia. This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Maher. The Ruminant is a show that gives equal weight to the practical aspects of farming and the culture of farming. And sometimes we dabble in food politics and food security too. You can learn more at theruminant.ca or contact me, editor at theruminant.ca or at ruminantblog on Twitter. All right, let's do another show. Hey everyone, it's Jordan. So not too long ago, my friend Jean-Martin Fortier, who is probably best known for his book, The Market Gardener, contacted me to ask me if he

could come on the show to talk about a new project that he's been working on and just to have a conversation in general. And since I always like talking to JM, I said, of course. And so here we are. Now, the project in question is an online course that he's done in collaboration with a few other folks. It's called The Market Garders Masterclass and can be found at themarketgardenersmasterclass.com. And just before we got going with the conversation, John Martin let me know that he wanted to give listeners of this podcast a discount of $150 off the price of the course. To do that, you need to do it by this coming Friday. I'm speaking to you on a Sunday and this will be released tonight. So you have about five days to go to themarketgardenersmasterclass.com and use the code, the ruminant podcast, all one word,

and you can get yourself a discount on the course. So we talk about that course in our conversation, as well as a few other things that I wanted to ask Jean Martin about. I hope you enjoy the episode and a couple more quick comments. One, just to be clear, I'm not deriving any kickbacks or other economic benefit from, uh, from helping JM promote the course. And two, it was a beautiful spring day on the farm and it was very sunny and lovely out when I had to talk to Jean Martin. So I brought all my recording equipment out into the middle of the field and set it up and had a nice conversation. And you will hear bird noises and the odd airplane and that sort of thing in the background. What else?

Oh, yeah. This is not meant to be an official episode. You're still going to get your Friday episode this week. This one wasn't planned. And in order to give you time to get the discount if you want it, I'm putting it out now. So you'll get another one from me this Friday. Consider this one a bonus. And yeah. Okay. Talk to you at the end jean martin fortier welcome back to the room in a podcast hey jordan it is a

great pleasure to be back good good i'm glad to have you back man uh so well how's it going uh it's going really well, actually. It's spring here in Quebec. We still have snow, and temperatures are still just below frost, but we're thinking that things are going to get better soon. And, yeah, since we've talked, a lot has changed in my life. I started a new farm project, a pretty big one. I'm still doing workshops and speaking gigs pretty much all around. And my wife is running my home farm really well.

She says that it's awesome ever since I left the farm. Much better. And I launched an online course that was launched last January. And that's really cool. We have students from 33 different countries. And I just came back from a surf trip where I was surfing for the last two weeks. And El Salvador caught some awesome waves. And then my last session, there was a dude that wanted to hit me in the face

because i stole his wave how did you how did you get out of that one uh i just got really lucky because he was a big big dude from there and all muscle and he was really angry at me. It's like, fuck. That's why I don't surf, Jean-Martin. Well, I also don't surf because I'm pear-shaped, and I would not be able to get up on the board, but also because I don't want to get beat up by El Salvadorans. I want to ask you

about the new farm, and a couple other questions to do with what you're doing these days. But, I thought we'd start with a a little on a lighter note uh i have a couple of listeners submitted questions for you cool uh this first one is from daniel brisebois in quebec who is that guy i don't know i've never heard of him anyway he writes jean martin presumably you've been doing well for yourself as a market gardener and agripreneur. Can you confirm or deny the assertion by Biggie Smalls that mo' money equals mo' problems?

Gotta love it. More money equals more problems? Yeah, true or false in your experience? False. False. False. False. Yeah, money is a great thing. Yeah.

You want to have as much money as possible. All right. Well, that's a straight answer, so I hope you're happy with that answer, Daniel Brisbois in Quebec. Next, last one. Listener Chris Bodner writes, JM, for years you've been called a rock star farmer, but I heard that you've become so famous that people have started calling you two's Bono a farmer rock star.

Is this true? Also, do you prefer to sleep on piles of money or in bathtubs full of cocaine? Also, do you prefer to sleep on piles of money or in bathtubs full of cocaine? It's been a while since I've been called a rock star farmer. Ever since I left British Columbia. I like that answer. But what about part two?

I would actually love to be starting coke. I have asthma and drugs don't do well with me, so I don't do that habit. But I would love to have a lifestyle like that where I'm just kind of reckless. So not all the rumors are true, JM. No, not all the rumors are true. And about the money thing, I think it's good to have as much as possible, but I think you don't want to have too many needs.

I think you're better to be satisfied with what you have and be in appreciation mode. That's really the secret to being, I think, wealthy. Because I hang out sometimes with the person that has the farm here. He's like really, really, really, really, really, really rich. And I don't see that he's more happy. He has a lot of problems. He talks about money all the time. And so this is for me just another proof that it's not the money you have.

It's your attitude about it and how appreciative you are about things. Well put, J.M. That's how I go by. Well put. Okay, so I made up those questions myself but let's get serious um okay so so a couple years ago now you i mean i really want to condense this jean martin but but you know you've got this new farm project it's funded by this uh wealthy canadian uh who kind of i mean i'm sure he had a few motivations, but he saw some promise in this style of farming.

If I understand, one of the core concepts of the farm is, could you take the 1.5-acre intensive model and expand it out a bit, and could you add some more layers of production? So maybe I'll let you take it from there, and just give us a summary of what the project's all about. Yeah, well, the project was more than that. It was about creating a farm that had uh it's a polyculture farm that had animals vegetables and a commercial kitchen

really high end and uh have all of this under one brand and and sell directly all of these things through the the marketing channel of the brand. And he wanted to invest to have a farm that had all of that, included a lot of permaculture in the design. The farm was created from scratch. And to show that farming could be more holistic, and we're really working with um you know ecological principles throughout the whole systems and then so that farm was his project his idea he wanted to fund that farm and his goal was to showcase what a different style of farm could look like. Something that is more, like I say, holistic and wholesome

and that, you know, grew better food, if you can put it that way, compared to conventional farming. Okay, but I'm almost more interested to compare it to your original farm. Like what, so, I mean, the scale's larger. I think you're growing vegetables on more acreage, but what else? What are the major differences? Well, there's larger. I think you're growing vegetables on more acreage, but what else? What are the major differences? Well, there's animals. So there's pastured pork, and then there's cattle, and then there's chickens running in

automobiles and chicken tractors. But the market garden is pretty much the same principles that I have on my farm that I described in the Market Gardener, but we scaled it times, I think, five or six. It's like seven or eight acres. It's 450 permabeds, all 100 foot long. And the reason why this was, because one of my goals

and the reason why I said yes to this project was I wanted to train more people and for everyone that's being trained to feel the pressure of market gardening you know having a lot of work to do the farm if i'm training 10 people then the farm needs to be big enough so that there's a lot of work and so that was that was the original idea and through that we were also investigating could this small scale farming model be kind of scaled up and the answer to this yes because we still don't have a tractor except for you know hauling compost on the farm and the first year the sales were 240 the second year, it was $540,000 last year.

And this year, we're moving to $700,000. And there's a staff of 10 working in the garden. And still, for me, in my mind, the tractor is not in the equation as something that would make the farm more uh you know more efficient we've put a lot of effort into the washing station and we're spending tons of time there we have a lot of systems on the admin side that helps but and new tools a lot of new hand tools that are really really cool i gave a a presentation i think people can see online about five new tools that are making a big difference on this farm

but overall it's the same model perma beds tarps and we're just kind of multi-seating things and just kind of pumping out stuff and so jm j I just wanted to ask you, when you say a projected 700K in sales this year, is that just the vegetables? Is that the whole operation? Just the vegetables. And I think that's what people listening can understand, kind of the scope and the scale of the operation. kind of the scope and the scale of the operation. So we did the crop planning for this year, and everything was crop planned to reach that target of 700K,

which, you know, it gets to be quite a lot. So, J.M., you might be getting tired of this question by now, but can you give a sense, though, of, like, I mean, you did have the backing of a billionaire to get set up so so um i don't know talk about that a little bit what what influence did that have on yeah on getting to scale and success yeah and i know it you know it turns a lot of people off because they're like oh fuck you're funded i'm not but you know whatever this is this is this is this reality somebody wanted to make a farm like that and and i was excited about creating this and there's been a lot of really cool offset to this project

that are helping other people elsewhere one being the online course um and me being able to try all these strategies and these tools we're doing a lot of experimenting with compost teas and we're researching about how to better plant. We're working with Penn from California. We're doing all sorts of stuff that if it was my own farm, I'd be much more worried about just making more money. And here the goal is that, to make the farm viable because the farm is a running business. But there's more to that. It needs to be a farm that helps other farmers in a way.

And I thought, for me, the goal was innovation because that's what I believe in. I've always been kind of a big believer in innovating strategies, tools, and principles in small-scale market gardening. Okay. Okay, so is that a good answer, Jordan? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to get at what kind of investment happened.

Oh, sure. A lot of money because the farm was created in like two years. Yeah. And you should see, you know, if people go online on my website, themarketgardener.com, they'll see pictures of the farm. There's been

so much work done with flowering hedgerows, building ecological niches for frogs, snakes, and toads all around

the market garden. There's so many things that were built into this farm. And that was mainly because there was money supporting, a lot of money supporting the project. And, you know, shrubs were bought big so that the process would go faster. It is a super big project, but it's really cool.

And I feel, again, fortunate and blessed to be able to do that. And one day I'll go back to my own farm, and I don't know how I'll handle me and my wife. We'll be able to be two boss now, but I'm here now, and I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. Well, I take, I don't know, when you describe it, I take some pessimism and

optimism from it in the sense that um it it kind of highlights well i'll start with the positive it it you you appear to be demonstrating that when you when you spend the investment to really set it up to create those niches for other for biodiversity um and do all these cool things as far as ecological stewardship you're demonstrating that that if you have the the resources to do that you can then create a profitable farm all the same even with all that other extra investment on the negative side it does it does it's it kind of serves to highlight how hard it is for the typical farmer to incorporate some of those features because it requires cash flow. It requires investment up front to some degree. Yeah, and that could be one critic of this project, but then that's not the mission.

of this project, but then that's not the mission. Like when I published the Market Gardener, I was well aware that the model that we were talking about was, you know, reproducible because of the low cost of the investments. That was the main reason to start a model like that. But, you know, it doesn't mean that I did that and i promoted that that i need to be stuck in this reality i'm not a new farmer anymore i'm a season or it's going to be my 16th year and i have i have and i have the opportunity to show that okay you can do it on the shoestring and it's awesome and i think you should be starting your farm like that but what if farms were not undercapitalized like and here in quebec you know the dairy farmers are

not undercapitalized they're well capitalized they have big barns and they have tractors and they have you know in big investments and and big loans and and big funding them, what if the same amount of energy, money, money being energy, was spent for small-scale farming? Totally. And I think that, yeah, I think that's the future, actually, of small-scale farming is getting more resources put into washing stations, greenhouses, landscaping, and better management tools. And yeah, I think farmers are going to need help that way.

I think that's what governments are for. Well, that's what governments are for, and that's what a project like this is for, to provide a test case. Listen, man, I want to be on the record of saying there are aspects of this project you described that I may, if I had more time, want to nitpick and criticize, but only mildly. I think on the whole, one thing that doesn't really bother me about it is that you have a billionaire investor behind it. I think it's a fantastic opportunity to test out some of these ideas. So I don't think you owe anyone any explanation for having decided to get involved in this project. I would jump at the chance, frankly. So Jean-Martin, I want to move on. I wanted to ask you, look, you've mentioned, you've already acknowledged that you've been blessed with a lot that's happened to you. And

it's a smart form of blessed. You've created a lot of your luck, I and it's it's a smart form of blessed you've created a lot of your luck i think it's fair to say but i agree you're blessed and one thing you're blessed with is is the opportunity to to really be on the cutting edge you get to rub shoulders with all the innovators um and so i just want to i want to close out the conversation by asking you to describe i i don't i i know people can go to your various websites and and learn about this stuff but can you talk about one tool that would be accessible to this the one acre gardener oh that is new new and exciting okay i have a lot i i wrote an article in growing for market about these five tools and i ranked them so if people want to go to Growing for Market, they can check it out.

But Growing for Market being the magazine about small-scale farming. But so the five tools are, number one, the TerraTech biodisc that is sold through Dubois and Johnny's. So it's a double wheel hoe. And so it's throttled the crop on your row. And then you have discs in the back that are just mounting the soil over your row.

So it's kind of hilling the crop, and so it's burying your weeds that are, you know, on your carrot rows. And it's cultivating between the rows at the same time. So you're doing two rows in one path plus in the middle of the row instead of doing like stirrup hoeing. You're just zooming down with this tool. It's really awesome. People should check it out. Cool.

So it's the Double Tech, Double Wheel Hoe from Tega Tech with the Biotis. So that was number one game changer on this farm. Like last year, on these 450 permabeds, we hand cultivated uh once wow so tarts and then that tool systematically here uh 10 days after transplant and 15 days

after the rexone and then the other one which which is awesome, is the Flextine Weeder, 30-inch Flextine Weeder built by two bad cats, two dudes from Vermont. Yeah, I featured them on the podcast before. They got good tools. These guys, these guys, okay, I met them at a conference, and they had this Flextime whip. I was like, do you guys know that this is going to revolutionize small-scale farming around the world?

And they were like, no, but do you think it's cool? I think it's awesome. Super well-built, light, really well-designed. This tool has been saving us hundreds of hours of cultivating in the field. So when do you, on a bed of carrots, when do you normally, or onions, say, when would you use it? At what stage? We use it usually 10 days after the rex zone. And you do two paths, so another five days later.

It doesn't eliminate all the wheat but it's a good 60 percent cool um and you're drawing yeah it's 250 bucks and you're dragging it down the length of the bed or across the bed uh the uh whoa i don't understand you're just dragging it on the bed it's 30 inch and you're just kind of going back and forth right really fast cool okay uh all right no because i want this this has been done i want people can go this is you just gave them a little taste they can go and find the article and maybe subscribe to growing for market if it's not available for non-subscribers yeah and they can and they can support a really good publication. Yeah. So now I want to ask you the same question for like a cutting edge. I get excited about these things.

I could talk forever. A cutting edge technique. I'll nudge you towards wood chips unless there's something even more exciting to talk about. Oh, yeah. Compost tea. Okay. Compost tea done every week. You know, and following the right procedures.

We're following somewhat of what Dr. Elaine Ingram is doing because what she stresses out is really important from the compost. I don't know the word in English, but the compost that you're starting with, that you're brewing with, that compost needs to be, you know, not just good compost, it needs to be, you know, super complex compost with all these different microbial life in it. So you start with that, and then you inoculate your plant, your seedlings in your

nursery every week by spraying the compost tea on them. And then when you're transplanting them into the field, you also want to give compost tea at least twice. And I think that's the future of farming, but I need to test it more. And dr elaine and she would she would bluntly say to you jordan if you do that you don't need to be adding any infertility and you don't need to put any insect nets okay your props it's like it's like magic and miracle so that's the kind of thing that i want to try and test okay so I've got two follow-up questions about that. Maybe three. Really quickly, as quickly as you can,

I'm aware of Elaine Ingham's work. How are you ensuring that you have the right, quote-unquote, right compost to make your tea? You buy it from somebody that's a geek. Okay, fair enough. So you're buying what you consider high quality. You're not doing Elaine Ing ingham's mic microscope test no okay let's just leave it at that yeah okay so and and we're not we're not talking about tons of compost we're talking about a bag

no no i understand i understand okay so um this is timely because the episode that just dropped this morning, the day that I'm talking to you, is a critique of compost tea by a scientist who says there's no science that backs up the use of aerated compost tea. Yeah. Which is true. There's very little science that says this is going to work. I'm not going to ask you to address that. That's not why I'm bringing this up, Jean-Martin. I'm going to suggest to you that you, in your earned, well-earned, but privileged position, are in a good position to perhaps do some trials that could be published. Think about that.

That's what we're doing. Good. That's what we're doing. We're doing that that and i talk about compost people i don't advocate it and i don't i don't tell people to do it i'm just me now i this is one of the things that i'm really focusing on because i understand the principles behind it and i think this scientist what i'm not sure that he understands that the fertility is in the microorganisms themselves. Right.

And when they multiply, then you multiply the fertility that way. And I really like the concept of filling the space. Like when you inoculate that there's so many microbial bacterias or spores or whatever on the leaf plant then it's it's completely taken so when when a pathogen wants to come there's no room for him to establish because the space is occupied by something else i'm so glad this came up jean martin because we you and i both know i'm going to squeeze this in as a non-episode uh because of timing constraints and it's going to come right after this episode with this uh with linda chalker scott i encourage you to go i encourage you to listen to it i think you'll find it interesting but also yeah man invite create the space you don't even have to do the science man invite invite some local soil scientists or other researchers to come

and do some peer-re peer reviewed research on your farm. It could be so cool because she's not, she's not this guest I just had. She's not like super, she's just pointing out. We don't have science that can demonstrate this stuff and we need that before we should reliably rely on this stuff. And I think that's a good point.

So, um, yeah, we should do part, part one, part two of this, uh, conversation. Um, John Martin, so um yeah we should do part part one part two of this uh the conversation um jean martin the only

reason i don't invite you back more is uh an assumption that you're too busy so if you want to come back i'll have you back man i love talking to you about these things this is awesome okay so look uh final part of the conversation you've got uh what i understand to be a pretty cool course uh yes and it's coming up or another round of it's coming up what do you what do you want to tell me okay so first of all it's an online class and what it is that i'm i'm showing best practice for all the crops all every step of the way and because what i've figured out running the crew here is that the way you handle your the way you pick your carrots in the end makes a big difference if it's done this way or that way or this way and the last three years the last the first two years i

was here i was measuring and researching the best practice for everything with regards to each vegetables. And because I'm trying to teach the students here, the workers that are on the farm, all these best practices so that when they go to their farm, they have, they know how to do this really efficiently. How you're spraying what you're done, how you're cultivating, everything everything how to hold your tools so doing that i came to the conclusion that okay well this needs to be filmed because there i'm doing i'm showing this to 10 people thinking yes they'll go and they'll train other people but you know there's a lot of people who'd like to have this information so that's how we

started the class and so we've been filming all these steps there's a lot of footage there's a lot of hours and a lot of the innovations a lot of the material that i'm that i'm doing here that i'm trying and testing that even works i'm filming it and i'm putting it into this class and uh so we put a lot of effort last year into it, and then we did a launch, and we had students from 33 different countries signing up, so that was really cool, and then we got all the suppliers that I've been working with and promoting, Johnny's and Dois and BCS and our tools, to give discounts to the students, so from 5% to 15%, 50% on BCS and our tools and to give discounts to the students so from five to fifteen percent

fifty percent on BCS so all these things are kind of happening and I putting my energy into that now into this class like there's a Facebook group and that's where I'm putting my stuff, because then when I was putting out my stuff into the greater world, it just became out of control. I started a group that was called the Market Gardening Success Group, and I think there's 30,000 people in this group now. There's no way that these are all serious growers, and then everybody's giving their opinion, but then not all the opinions are equal.

And so I'm kind of putting all my information into this thing, and then the students are committing to me, and I'm committing to them. We're doing Q&A sessions with them. We're having events. It's really cool. So when is the next? Does someone sign up and they start anytime, or how does it work?

No, there's cohorts because we want groups to start and end together. And so now in the next week, there's going to be three or four openings per year, and it's open for a week. So people, ideally, they're prepared for it. But now it's open for the next seven days until Friday. But now it's open for the next seven days until Friday. And the director of the class, my partner in this, Vika, she agreed that all of your listeners would get $150 off if they give your name when they register, something like that.

Okay, well, that's great. So what is the cost of the course, Jan? It's $1,700. Okay, and so... And it comes with a money-back guarantee if people are not into it. It's not helping them or that's not what they want, then they can get their money back.

Oh, cool. Okay, so the next cohort... So this is going to be ongoing, starting with different cohorts periodically, but the next one's starting soon. And if I understand right, my listeners have until Friday of the week this episode drops to go and claim a discount of $150 on the course. Yes. And the other thing, Jordan, is I've seen a couple of messages and posts about people saying,

oh, online course, blah, blah, blah. You know, we have people that took the class, like serious growers, and they're saying, this is awesome. Like, this is helping us immensely. So, you know, I would suggest that people that are listening, before they complain about anything,

check it out. Because, you know, learning from somebody that knows how to do this and that is showing it to you is the way to go. It's like if you want to be a good chef, you go train under a really good chef that really knows how to operate in the kitchen. And then you go on and then you do your own restaurant, whatever. But, you know, there needs to be, I think, better training of these little details about how to work, how to crop plan, how to manage weeds better, how to cultivate, how to harvest, how to store crops, how to do work in your nursery, how to be efficient that way. You know, there's so many things. And then you can just have your computer, your laptop, your phone,

and then you can just look at how we're doing it, and then you're on your own from there, and you can do whatever. So I think it's cool. Yeah, man. And, I mean, look, I think a good course is worth that much, and it's weird how we think, right? Like, I've dropped, for travel and fees and everything. I've dropped whatever,

a thousand, 1500, $2,000 going to a conference and back. But a course like this could easily give you a lot more useful information. So if it helps people out there trying to wrap their head around a $1,700 fee, actually 1550 after your ruminant discount. Ha ha. Just think about what you'd spend flying to Moses

or Permaculture Voices or whatever. Yeah, plus you get discounts. So let's say you're buying a BCS and you're saving $700 right there. I'm just excited about it. It's starting, like last year we did the first season but then i'm going to be putting a lot of material in the next few years into this class because that's kind of my that's some of my vehicle now for how i'm going to and i didn't want to do youtube or these things because i want people that are committing to being serious market gardeners, not just kind of wannabes.

Right. Well, Jean-Martin, this was a very hastily arranged conversation, and I'm so glad that we had it. I really like talking to you, man, and so I will have you back on to continue in the future. Thanks a lot, Jean-Martin. to you, man. And so I will have you back on to continue in the future. Thanks a lot, Jean Martin. All right, Jordan. Today I learned I don't need anything.

All right. So one more time, if you are interested in taking the course and you want to sign up by this coming Friday, you can go to themarketgardenersmasterclass.com, enter in the coupon code, TheRuminantPodcast, and you'll get yourself 150 bucks off of the course. Also, if you've been enjoying the show and you want to help keep it going, you can make a donation at TheRuminant.ca slash gift registry. Thanks, folks. I'll talk to you again on Friday. outside of the city's reaches. We'll live off chestnuts, spring water, and

peaches. We'll owe 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 Do do do do do do Do do do do do do