The Global Stewardship Podcast

Planting car parks and empty spaces with Jack's Patch

• Hannah • Episode 6

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Join me for a fun chat with Jack from Jacks Patch (@jacks_patch) • Instagram photos and videos

We chat about what led him to market gardening and what hes doing now, installing gardens and reviving abandoned or empty spaces around the UK.

Thank you Jack for sharing your journey and insights with us!!!

Back nect week with more and praying for a quick and full recovery :)

Welcome back to another episode of the Global Stewardship Podcast, where each week I record an episode with a different farmer or food system leader to talk about all things food and farming. And this week I decided to bump up an episode that I recorded a while back with my friend Jack. I've actually been sick for several days now and recorded this episode in hopes of it being kind of my default in case something happened, episode. And so here we are. I'm sick in bed recording this. Intro with no mic. I'm just gonna play this one for you guys this week. It wasn't my original plan, but things happen. It's such a bummer to be sick during the summertime. I feel like I'm normally only sick in winter if that. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode with Jack. He is Jack's patch on Instagram and although I've never actually met Jack in person. We've been online acquaintances for years and years now, so this was a really fun conversation and good time to catch up. He was a market gardener like I am, but he is now gardening for different people all across the United Kingdom, and doing some exciting projects that I think we could be inspired by and possibly implement. All over the world. I hope you all have a fantastic week, and I plan to catch you again next Tuesday. Hopefully I'll be feeling so much better, especially because between now and then I have four podcast recording episodes lined up with people from Uganda, Malawi, several different countries, and so I really want to be on my A game to talk to those people and then get to share those conversations with you. Thank you for faithfully listening to the Global Stewardship Podcast every single week. Here is my episode with Jack. We're just gonna jump right in.

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Would you tell us a little bit about how your whole journey with growing and farming, where that all began? Yeah, sure. Actually similar to yourself, traveling quite a lot. I'll see you are here, there in everywhere and it looks great. And traveling with a kid, which is. Quite must be hard, but a lot of fun as well. Yeah. Um, but yeah, 2013 I started my trip to Australia on a work travel visa. We get like a one year visa that can be extended by doing 88 days agricultural work in Oz, and 99% of the farms sound. Awful that you have to work on or did, like 10 or so years ago. And I just was, it's like a, a moment in my life where fate came into play and completely changed the direction of my life because after a couple of months there, I was sitting in the backpackers. Drinking like every Brit does midday. Mm-hmm. Because we are backpacking and we're, we're just enjoying life. And, a farmer came into the hostel and the hostel, um, manager looked to us after their conversation was like, you, you, you, you are gonna be 8:00 AM you're gonna be up. You gotta be working with this guy. And he's farmed tomorrow. Wow. And he was like, oh, okay. Cool. Finish this beer. And then like, ha. Get ready for the next day. And um, yeah, we got picked up in the morning and taken to this farm, which was middle of the east coast of Australia. So a place called Yamba. It's ecologically. Beautiful. It seems to be the most medium point of temperature as well. It has like a cool winter, but a beautifully hot summer, not too humid. Mm-hmm. And um, yeah, just a real nice spot like near Byron Bay, if any of the listeners know where that is, is real beautiful spot of Australia. It sounds amazing. Yeah, so it's so nice. But what was different about it is as we was working, we was just going around the farm and seeing like the chickens were completely loose all day. They were eating food scraps. We saw the ducks, um, by these banana trees. And what we realized was that the sink inside the house, the water was being flushed out. So the, the gray water was going towards the banana and then the ducks would just be in it all day. Um, there was cows on the farm grazing. The gardens were just so abundant. Um, it's like nothing I'd ever seen before, but we were given, uh, a machete and a lighter and told to go into the woods, and there was contours going through the, the woodland, and you could kind of see'em, but it was just taken over by Lantana, which is like a, a vine that kills the trees. Mm-hmm. So he was just told to chop and drop. Create mini fires to burn it. And then we created a lemon and lime orchard going through the woodland. Oh, wow. Um, which was really cool. And so, so all the time stuff was going in, not a farming background at all. Worked in a city as electrician my whole life. So this was completely new experience to me. So at dinner, he told us to go pick stuff from the farm and we cooked. Never seen eggs, orange in my life. Like so bright orange. I had the same experience too when I started farming. Yeah. So for, for me it was going from city and especially uk. We've got a real bad rep for our food here being like really bland and boring and I kind of grew up on that being just. More sustenance rather than like, food should be an experience like the Italians and the French and most of the world have. Yeah, and that just fascinated me. Eggs or orange. And then we, I think we made an omelet because I was like going through it, going, oh my God, what is that? Why does that taste like that? Why does that taste like that? But it was the, the tomato of biting it, getting the burst of flavor being. Wow, that it just changed my mind. It was like a light bulb moment. Yeah. Where I was just, yeah. From that point on was like, what are you doing to this food? And then, yeah, he just was like, I'm a permaculture Zion soil scientist. So then just really plucking his brains every lunchtime. He certified all the islands around Fiji and Samoa, so he flew planes to each island teaching them about food, growing and improving the soil. So he had so many stories and I just started to work there, done my 88 days, which gave me a second year in a, but then it was a whole shift of me with like, my, um, decisions at the supermarket or going to the farmer's market or buying off him directly. So it just pivoted, my direction, but also I've had three big epiphany moments in my life since then and they're all while shoveling manure. So there no way. It's all like, yeah. So it's all like, it's like a meditation for us growers, isn't it? Where we're just doing a mundane job and then you have a light bulb moment. But there it was like I was shoveling manure in like 40 degree heat. For you guys. It's like plus a hundred fahr hatt. Wow. And um, yeah, it wasn't fun at all, but that meditation of just doing it, sweating and it was almost like hot yoga or something. But um, yeah, just going to the garden and just having like a light by moment like. I actually love this and I wanna do it for the rest of my life. That's so funny'cause you were shoveling manure in extremely hot temperatures and you're like, I love this. Yeah. It was just like, there was something about it just being outdoors, natural, you're eating well, living well, being outdoors. Hard work. I was already in a labor job, but working indoors and kind of industrial and dusty, to like that there was something about it. It was, it just tapped in like the. The, uh, like the playfulness of being a kid. Yeah. Because again, your hands dirty, right? And all this sort of stuff, so yeah. Really, really cool. So went from Australia back to the uk. And at 25 I'd grown my hair long being like surfing all the time and, living on a farm. And, just instantly got called a hippie by my friends, but I got an allotment, which is a community garden in the uk Yeah. Um, at 25. And I just traded going to the pub, seeing my friends to shoveling manure and grand vegetables. Um, on the weekend. I love it. And then, um, yeah, went from there. Someone saw me riding a bike, picking up compost from local cafes and, uh, coffee waste. And, that same person, the grandma had land was like, you need to meet my nan, she love you. And then within the same day, I got given quarter of an acre to, to just look after grow, do my thing, grow veg, as long as she got a veg box each week. Oh my. So yeah, it went, the progression within just, it was like two or three years went from Australia to then owning my, well, renting a farm. Right. Similar to you. Yeah. Yeah. So very similar. Yeah. I still don't own any land. Yeah. And it, it worked, it seemed to be like these people there with land, but, and there's people there that want to grow and it's just like there needs to be a emergent of the both. Yeah, because like people can't really afford to buy the land, but then there's people with land doing nothing with it. So, yeah, especially like somebody's man, an older lady, you know? Mm-hmm. For sure. She had 64 acres and it was wow. Most of it was undeveloped or unused. So like me taking over a old horse. Paddock that was just long grass. It just made sense for me to be there and do what I was doing. So yeah, just quit. Quit my job and done like re seeing YouTube videos of like back in the day it was Curtis Stone, Jean Martin, Fortier. There's quite a few people that I think me and you both probably aligned them as following. Mm-hmm. Same as the listeners. And it just really spoke to me, just the whole, how you can turn. An urban space into a, a productive farm and, and grow food. And yeah, I think that that wasn't really happening anywhere here. So to then build it and be that person in my community, I started to find out about restaurants I'd never heard of. People doing really cool projects and yeah, just build it and they'll come. And that's how that kind of happened. That's amazing. You mentioned the allotment system where you started out. I know a lot of people are not familiar with that at all. Can you just briefly talk about that before we dive into your whole farming journey, just so people have kind of a foundation for what gardening even looks like in England and the opportunities that are out there. So here, we're so lucky that I think post World War ii there was a whole um, dig for Victory movement. So people were. If they weren't like, grown in their back gardens allotment style to provide for the family and the like, pretty much the street. Mm-hmm. Uh, these local community patches that are divided up into individual spaces that you can, I mean, there's some that are private, which are a monthly cost, but the council or, um, what do you guys call it? The moose, uh, municipality. What is it called? Yeah. Municipality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just say like, our local government. That, that's it, right? Mm-hmm. So, split up into like, it's like 23 pounds, which is like, what, like 30 bucks for a whole year to rent? Which is insane. Insanely cheap. And you've got That is so cheap. Yeah, it's crazy. I it is still great system. There's, wow. So there's free manure, free wood chip, there's water butts everywhere that's being fed from, um, like local water system and yeah, you get to do what you want. There's like some constraints, but I think there's even old laws that people kind of push the boundaries, that you're even allowed chickens and goats on them, but mm-hmm. They're not really big enough. But there's just laws that have never been changed. Um, which is kind of funny. But yeah, you can completely be almost self-sufficient for yourself or a small family because they're kind of large, depending on where you go. Right. And it's just so, I just can't believe that access to land is there in a small way. But it just, it's something that we do, which not a lot of the world have. Mm-hmm. Um, I don't, it it's not in America, right? Something else? Uh, not, yeah, not really. No. Um. But I did go to Spain this past winter and a little bit in the spring and saw a lot of people are doing kind of private allotment gardens like you were mentioning, but I mean, people can charge as much as they want when people don't have land. And so it's really unique that it is a government kind of. Ordeal. Um, yeah, super beautiful. And I have been wanting to have an allotment grower on the podcast and so was just really excited that you had mentioned that.'Cause I think it is something that we could implement all over the globe and, uh, in Spain, some of the few that I passed, you know, they would be under interstate passes. So in between where two roads cross the little triangle of land. Wow. Instead of it just being weeds and grass, it'd be like. 13 different squares that people could grow for their family. I saw some really crazy things. I'll have to post like footage of them on socials when I put this podcast out, but just like, why not utilize the land, especially if it's just getting mowed over, like it's not even wild flowers or native grasses. Like you might as well use it for nourishing the people in your community. Just seems like a no brainer to me. Yeah. I mean some of them here are like so old, a hundred plus years old, maybe way before that. Um, wow. Yeah. There's one in Nottingham in the middle of the uk, which is really famous'cause of the, it's so vast. Mm-hmm. Um, and it's takes a while to be on the waiting list to get a spot because, um, it's so developed. Yeah. Like hedge rows, um, even to split each individual plot. And I know a girl she like has like a brick, um. Pot shed slash greenhouse. It's massive. You've put skate ramp on it. That's how big it was. Like a half pipe. Mm-hmm. Yeah, she built a half. That's so cool. Yeah, it is. It is. It's insane. But there's, um, I will recommend some people that you should talk to as well where there's a, a friend of mine and we just done a job together that we built bespoke allotments for like a house in development, but he's got like a. Allotment company now. So yeah, that is private, but they're taking over huge plots of land in the uk and because the waiting list is so long for the, local government ones, they're taking up land and then making it accessible for people. So they give you everything, seeds, tools. The soil wood chip, like knowledge workshops, it's become real community. It's what what it does, it accesses community where there isn't any and people like, that's like all they have sometimes is their allotment space or to, because even here where you go through the gates, people won't talk to each other on the street, won't even say hello, where I'm from because it's still like, yes, like work, work, work. And don't even speak to their neighbor. But the minute you go for a. Doors of an allotment. You can't get away half the time. You're not growing food, you're just chatting, sounds great. That's what we've been building we're now a cooperative farm, so have a ton of different farm businesses on the same property and. Literally, I'm telling you, every single day I have to budget an extra hour of my day just for chitchat with everybody. And it's crazy. You get back in your car and get on the road and you're like, man, nobody else is gonna talk to me today. Out in public. But you get to the farm and it's just anything and everything under the sun is up for grabs for conversation. It's really, it just, I don't know if it's the nature thing or just like-minded people, but it really shows how powerful working with the land is. For just mental health and for community for sure. Yeah. Well, definitely working with soil is great for your mental health, seeing bees, birds, butterflies, and, and I think when you're in this space, it's like you geek out, right? So Yeah. It doesn't matter what age group you are. Um, true. Yeah. It definitely changed my life. I mean, what I talk about now to what I talked about when I was 23 is in insane. Yeah. So, um, yeah, it does definitely change. Um. Yeah, it's, it is great and I think it definitely heals people in many ways. So that community aspect of it I think is a really beautiful thing. Yeah. So when you had your farm on this woman's property, can you tell us how it went, and then why you stopped? So it was from 20. A team like December. But prior to that I went to a permaculture course in Costa Rica, so it was like a edible food forest in the middle of the jungle, which I spent a month off grid, which was great. But then there was just like this kind of yin yang of that was sub-tropical. And even though I was learning about temperate, I needed to learn a bit more about temperate climate. So I've done Charles Dowden's no dig course here. He's almost like the David Attenborough of the gardening world in the uk. Yeah. Um, he's like a real, uh, father figure here that everyone uses. No dig. It's like a bit, it's quite a big following here. And went to his course in December and he was still producing so many, like, so much food in the depth of winter here. So super inspiring, but also the questions that need to be answered of like, when can I start? And he was just like, start right now. Like winter is the best time to start a garden. I dunno why. At the time I was like, I've gotta wait till spring. And it was just those little push me moments to be like, this is how you do it. And the no dig is the kind of setup I took for the market garden. And just the layout of the, it was kind of mix of like how he does it with his width of beds, but also how I feel like Jean Martin Forer does it with the 30 inch beds, uh, because it's like similar to the tool sizes, like the rakes and the broad forks. And it was just a bit of a mix and match of stuff I'd seen on YouTube and, what I'd learned, uh, on the courses. So yeah, it was, was a like great first year. No dig straight away. I actually had goats and alpacas come in. It was like rent a goat where they came in at all the um, like any brambles, any thistle, the grass looked like a, it was like golf course lawn afterwards. It was great. And then I just start to implement, no dig from there. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it was a lot of hard work on my own because. My social media was like in, had like a few thousand followers, like 8,000, 9,000 at the time. But it was still really hard to get PE people to like volunteer to maybe help. But the minute it was done, veg was in the ground and looked to BUN and I def, I had like messages and Instagram like, when can I help and visit? Nice. But sometimes you gotta like. Do the hard work, you on your own. But what I like about a garden is like we're, it's the blank canvas. Like we are the kind of like artist and nature gives us all the tools and then you paint a beautiful picture. But that's doing all the hard work. So it was really cool to see it come to life. Then working with chefs and doing local veg boxes. And then I've done that for about four years. And as you know, like it's a lot of hard work. Mm-hmm. And then you start finding what works, what doesn't work. You find niches as well. And I think that's such an important thing for anyone starting is like find your local niche. So whether that's like at first those grand things that. Probably did. I was growing too many colors of certain things. Right. And people didn't recognize what it was at the farmer's market, like people were buying chard, thinking it was rhubarb people. Uh, I, I did the same thing. So yeah, people like these are the biggest, like, radish I've ever seen, but there were beet roots, but just different colors. Um, so yeah, it was just trying to get people to, or like for example, like I was growing mushrooms and they were like. Can you eat that? I was like, well, I'm not selling it for you to get poison. What do you think? Yeah, I know. Oh, they were like, oh, what, what mushrooms are you selling under the table? Like silly questions like that. Um, but. Yeah, buy'em and find out. Yeah, pretty much. But he was just trying to like work, like I think the first two years he's finding that out and then you've just gotta be a little bit like more streamlined. Start speaking with the chefs, what they want, speaking. With customers growing what they recognize, but then add in certain things that they don't, that have like a higher, higher value. So like, cut, come again. Start to work with kale and salad and celery because they've got a higher value, but you're gonna keep'em in the ground more over stuff like kohlrabi or brassicas. That's like cut once and it's everything. Wants to eat it. Yeah. Um, so you bite in the pests. But yeah, I started to find little things like je flowers were really big with my chefs, different colored tomatoes. Edible flowers was a big, big thing. Just they were growing everywhere abundantly and as a companion plant, but used to sell'em at a higher price. And then for me it was mushrooms and microgreens, which is great because I turned a 20 foot shipping container. Yeah. During COVID into a microgreen mushroom grow retainer. And within 20 foot by eight foot, I grew tons of mushrooms and tons of microgreens. Wow. That's amazing. So much how prolific that tiny little space can be. I mean, it's not tiny for you guys, but for a lot of the farmers listening, I mean they're, they're working with hundreds and hundreds of, if not tens of thousands of acres. And so it's always really fascinating to have these conversations with larger scale farmers.'cause they don't realize exactly how much. And how bountiful a small space can be when you're growing super tight spacing and inter planting with companion plants and it's, it's really profitable and it's super environmentally friendly. I think because we are focusing on every square foot or square meter more so we're densely packing it, there's more biodiversity, not just above ground, but in the roots as well. So there's that like kind of mimicking forest conditions on a micro scale. So I think for smaller growers, they can grow like such an abundance and people don't think, if you're in our position, you see it, but then on a bigger scale you're just trying to, it's like volume, isn't it? Right? Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I think it's kind of cool because here, a lot of farmers are having to break up their land due to not getting the check from being in the EU anymore. So they're thinking diversifying their farms. So whether that's Airbnb or camping or bringing more market gardeners onto the land to like, so one acres being run by them, one acres being run by someone else, one acres maybe, uh. Dairy or, or whatever. So it's like being a bit more clever, which is kind of a bad situation. Solutions are coming out of a problem there. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, I'm always pro market gardening here and permaculture is big for me, so I'm always mixing the two. And I think, uh, one of my next projects.'cause now I don't have the farm is, going back to building a market garden on a wellness hotel. Yeah. So why did you stop farming that space? Was there a big pivotal moment that happened do you wanna share about it? Yeah, sure. So. It's like, uh, a situation of one door closes, many open. Um, and at the time I was like stressed about it, but there was, my farm used to be riding quite near a road, that's one of the biggest roads that circles London. And they wanted to develop it. They were like, we want to extend the road. So the, the lady kind of gave me a heads up saying, I've been given a notice that I. Have a per compulsory purchase of land. And now, I dunno when it is, could be like, now it could be five years time, but I would suggest you start thinking of moving because it could be like next year and you could be midway for a season and they come through your bulldozer and just destroy the land. So I was like, as gutted as I was, I just made that decision of. Packing up the farm and then at the same time, people asking me more I like what you're doing, but can you do it for me? Yeah. So it was like, whether it's a back garden or a cafe. And so there was just like a pivotal point of like, well, this door's closing, but something else is coming through. So yeah, I just pivoted and started going down the road of doing permaculture design or like urban space design for, people's backed gardens or rooftops or the commercial businesses. Can you explain what your working definition of permaculture is? It's such an umbrella term, isn't it? Right.'cause of That's why I'm asking. It's really like, it's hard to put the finger on the pulse, but so there's a few things. It's working with nature. Alongside it holistically. So instead of being like a pyramid where humans are the top, we're a spider web where we're a part of it. So we have as much. Right. A part of the system as a be and a Worm. But we also need to look at people being the solution and not the problem all the time because it's easy for us to destroy a space, but people power like what we could do with a lot of people, tools. Soil plants, within a week we could create an a garden or we can create a wildflower meadow. We have the ability to destroy, but also create super quick, more so than nature. So we can implement really quickly. Yeah, we can, if with our help, the earth can heal a lot faster. Yeah. And we have the, we have the solutions. We just have. Idiots in charge that just block us from doing it. Yeah. Um, and yeah, just the power's in the wrong hands currently, but it shouldn't make you powerless because this knowledge is there. And we can start, like I always say, even with like a flower, if you've planted a flower and a bee lands on it. Then you've changed the course of that bee's life.'cause it's now got pollen to go to the next flower or enough energy to go back to the hive. It's, it's like these small decisions make like a super ripple effect. So if you like concentrate on like the macro, um, the micro, it has effect on the macro. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah, so permaculture, sorry, I went a tangent. Went off skis there. It's like working with nature, being a part of the system, but I like the output over input solutions of how, um, maybe two things can work as one. So even like the placement of a pond. On the north side of a greenhouse. So the south sun bounces off the pond to heat the greenhouse in the winter, or having chickens in, um, like a poly tunnel in the winter that warms it up, uh, through their body. Heat for crops. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, little things like that I just find so fascinating. I love the off grid. Style of it, and I'll give you two examples from Costa Rica where this food forest was 90% edible, if not medicinal. For example, after a few days of being there, they were like, oh, by the way, check out the path you've been walking on. And it kind of just looked like a, a small, like webbing. Like a chute, but it was interlocking, like a grass. We went like this, boom, and it was peanuts, so we was like walking on food as well. So that's what it, I enjoyed the Willy Wonka style of grand food and I, I kind of have that as my approach now of just put food everywhere, even everywhere. I'm, I'm in that same boat right now too. And it's very life-giving. And I think it's like really good to give people that vision as well. Like whether you're speaking to other farmers or clients or just people in general to inspire, like this podcast where you could be like, just grow food like anywhere, everywhere. And, and depending on the crops, as long as you've got soil and a little bit of space and a little bit of heat, and a little bit of water, like you can grow some stuff anywhere. Yeah. Um, you could turn a car park into a farm with raised beds and vertical systems and all, uh, really, like the possibilities are endless with this. And I guess you see a lot right when you're traveling mm-hmm. From farm to farm. So you are seeing many ideas as well. Bringing them back home. Yeah. One thing that I've actually been really discouraged by is kind of in this modern, gardening, new homesteading movement. Everybody has to have the perfect looking raised beds and the perfect systems. And uh, I find that those actually can be really limiting. And like you said, it can happen anywhere. You know, we don't need to spend all of this money to grow food. I think that, I call it big gardening. The big gardening organizations and companies, they want you to think that you have to have all of these things and you have to have it in the perfect four by four raised bed. And, you literally can just grow food anywhere. Just like you said, just. Cut the grass low and put it in your yard it's, yeah. It's so simple. Um, and so, yeah, that's, that's what we're trying to do. And I love going all over the world because people are doing it everywhere and it's just, uh, it's like this whole movement is catching fire and spreading and thank God, like, you know, praise the Lord that people are mm-hmm. You know, doing this more and more and more because, it's, uh. It's a shame. We kind of lost it there for a couple generations and I really do, I have so much hope that more and more people are coming back to growing their own food and in a way that's sustainable and really gonna nourish the planet, I think. So it feels like there's such a wave and energy about this, like even, uh, 10 years since I was on the farm. Like even when I was looking at YouTube back in 2015 when I'd come home, there was, it just seems such a limited amount of YouTube channels talking about food growing and I couldn't find much. But I found some that inspired me. But now it's, it's like Instagram is, I suppose. It's our world of Instagram. Right. The algorithm for us. Yeah, that's so true. But it just seems a lot. It seems like it was, it's just exploded and there's just many people doing lots of cool things. Um, and even going back to like grand food anyways, like I started to grow in like tetra pack containers to like cut out my la uh, carton of, I think it was like, uh, just like plant, like plant milk or whatever. And then. Ah, got'em from cafes, filled'em with soil, and then just, uh, yeah, microgreens. So seven to 10 days of growth and anyone can do that. So I teach kids at workshops how to do it, but I teach kids exactly the same way I teach adults and because it's like so easy, um, is literally soil seeds on top, a bit of weight On top of that, the seeds push on the weight. So they grow really strong roots. So force down first, and then you get a nice carpet of seeds with literally spraying a bit of water on'em and it's like some of the most nutrient dense foods you can grow. And it's, yeah, because all that energy's packed in that seed. It seems, it is crazy. It's so, and it's so simple. Like for me, it took a while to like realize how simple certain things were. Like even grand mushrooms. I thought you needed all the equipment like Heisenberg from Breaking Bad like hazmat suit and everything had to be clean and sterile, which it does in with like lion's mane, et cetera. Right? But oyster mushrooms will grow on a pair of jeans or a book. If you leave it with the mycelium, it is just wants to live. So yeah, little bit of straw. And the right mycelium in a bucket. I mean, yeah, it, it goes for it in about three weeks. You can have your own oyster mushrooms. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure if anybody's listening who isn't a farmer who doesn't grow, but I always tell people, you know, if you don't garden yet, you literally can start indoors. You can start in your windows sill, or. Whether you're in the UK and there's allotment systems or you're somewhere like here, like find a farmer like me that is hosting families and beginning farmers. I mean, we're looking for all kinds of people to join our team and I know that there's farmers all over the states, all over the world who would love to partner with people. So, you know, the lack of land doesn't have to be a limiting thing. And, kind of on that topic, so. The road was gonna go through your farm. Yeah. What, what were all of these new opportunities that were kinda falling on your doorstep and what has that become now? Well, I definitely, the beauty of social media, so posting about what you do, because at the end of the day you are like, if you are a grower, like you are, you're inspiring people what to do. You are like your own brand. If you wanna start selling it, you are marketing. But so I just was, I was always about document over create, so just document in the process of the farm. And I think people just enjoyed that. A lot of people used to message me because I don't have, I'm not a typical farmer. I didn't come from a farming background, so, mm-hmm. I, where I live. There ain't many farms. I'm from like a part of the world in the uk, which is kind of a little bit materialistic, a little bit. Um, there's even a show about where we live and like it's uh, it's kind of like, um, I. Real Housewives or Jersey Shore, whatever. What's the show called? It's called, the Only Way Is Essex. Mm-hmm. It's, yeah. Anyway, it's reality tv, but it's kind of funny because not a lot of people do what I do here. So it was always like a break the mold, um, sort of thing. So obviously I'm doing something a little bit different and people find it cool and they find it, they can relate to me'cause uh, of where I'm from. So they were just reaching out and going. Whether it was just like little bit advice from the garden space or taking pictures of plants and what's, what's happening. But then one or two people was like, Jack, do you actually build the gardens as well? And at first I was like, you know what? I like farming is foot on. But then there was times where I just had a few weekends where I was like, I could go and help you out. And it started with just setting up some raised beds for people, telling'em what soil to get. Then I would go to like wholesalers and get plants, or I had extra plants grown over. Mm-hmm. And it got to a point where then I was going to a cafe and they had space at the front and they were doing it, but really poorly. And then, um, I just said, yeah, I'll, I'll do it for you. So it went from. My old background of being electrician, so I've got all the tools for doing construction, and then I just started building a, like raised beds, start with raised beds. And then it got into, someone asked me to do a pond, to add more wildlife to their garden. And it just started to snowball from there. You do one, you post about it, you do another, you post about it, and then it was, uh, a pub. That within the car park, they had about three meters from a tree line from where the cars stop in the car park to a fence of someone else's garden. It was just a strip of weeds on a terrace. Wow. Um, on a hill. And then I just terraced it. Um, with some raised beds and now it's like a meter of grow space over about 39 meters. And I've just done a edible food forest. So started with fruit trees as the top canopy down to soft fruit, herbs, ground cover vines. And they were just. So anything the pub wanted, I had a list and then I added stuff like com free. So like a mulch? Mm-hmm. Like a chop and drop to, to help aid the plants. But then I started to, it was adding like rosemary, thy sage, lemon balm, mint soft fruit, like raspberries, anything the pub wanted. And then they started being really niche. So certain edible flowers. Edible leaves like lemon VA or oxalis, and now it's a really abundant, now it's year free. The fruit is coming through quite hot. So lots of pears, lots of apples, and it's just so cool to see. And you can't even see it from the carpark. No one knows it's there yet. There's edible food forest at a pub. And now the chefs go out there daily and I've got videos of them going out just taking little frons of fennel, sage leaves rosemary, and they just don't have to buy pay for that. It's now Yeah. Bomb. Like Well, and they brought life to that little piece of land too, that holy right. There's bees hover flyers. Every time I'm there, there's something going on. Um, but yeah, it's just that whole like, uh, farm to plate within literally 10 meters to the kitchen. I'm a big, big fan of that. So if any cafe restaurant has even like the smallest space to having like a part of a car park or a little bit of land out the back, which a lot of pub gardens here, even just having like whiskey barrels with loads of plants in, or like loads of herbs, right? Yeah. And the chef can go out there and I think people pick up on that if they see the chef going out to just. Uh, cut a little bit of rosemary. It just adds that intention and that consciousness around the mill. Mm-hmm. A little bit more. I'm a, I'm a big fan of that and I'll push that all the time, so, yeah. That's so cool. What a cool project. Do you have any other examples of really cool inspiring projects like that, that people could think about implementing other places around the world? Rooftop gardens in cities. So if there's like maybe a restaurant downstairs. That it's like that insect insulated layer at the top. So it's like a heat trap. It's a storm water trap. It's um, yeah, it's just like a, a haven up there, like that square footage on top of a, a restaurant maybe in a city or, um, for example, we'd done a indoor grow for a cafe growing mushroom. So the cafe had mushrooms growing. In it, literally in the size of like a, it's just a hydroponic tent. They can control the conditions of bringing oxygen in and taking the carbon dioxide out through like vents. But they were growing eight kilos of oyster mushrooms a week in the size of like a IKEA tent or something you could buy at. Yeah. Um, I'm just trying to think, I'm trying to think of an American equivalent of a furniture shop, but Yeah. Something that's like six foot by one foot deep and they were growing tons of mushrooms or microgreens. Mm-hmm. Grow a lot of food in a small space. So I think it's just seeing how chefs can have that relationship with the food and it even being grown within the restaurant or just outside, it's just, it creates a harmony. That's one thing I noticed here is the chefs go, we're farm to table, but they know where the meat comes from and they know where the fish comes from, but they still ring a wholesalers here for their veg, which I just find so detached. It's the same here where I love too it can be harder with vegetables'cause they need such a quantity that's not always grown super locally and maybe they're using things, you know, that are outta season. And so steps like this, I think chefs and restaurant owners start to become more aware of what's on their menu and, uh, how local it really is. And I think slow steps like having even just a small garden that where they get some things. Usually once a restaurant implements that what follows is supporting local farmers. And it's a mindset shift that comes with it over time. And so I definitely agree that that's a super impactful thing. Transforming people's mindsets and giving them even the outlet to just have that intimate relationship with where their food comes from, that they don't get to have, even if it's just. Seeing the chef pick some rosemary at a dinner at their restaurant, it's uh, it's something that a lot of people are still missing from their lives and don't even realize it. Definitely. I think it's more. It's something, especially in the US and the UK is like maybe our food culture is inspired by a lot of other countries and but our original food, what we're like known for. Mm-hmm. Food culture is pretty not the best food. Right. So having an experience with fresh food. For me is it was life changing. It really gave me the passion to be like, you need to try this. You need to have farm fresh food. You need to come to this restaurant, because they've got maybe a radius around the restaurant where they only buy from those suppliers. But there was even restaurants when I was supplying them where I would do a talk before the dinner because maybe 80% of the menu is from my farm. But it was like small covers, so maybe just 20 people in there. Yeah. And it just created that bond of oh, this guy grew the beet root we we're eating and but why is the beet root golden and not purple and boiled? It's actually had got like some real nice flavor and earthiness or Yeah. I just find that really exciting. And the whole movement of more people not being farmers, getting into farming is cool. Like kind of breaking the mold of dogma of it has to be done this way. It's more like, oh no, there's a whole new wave of how to do it differently is very interesting as well. Yeah, that's beautiful. What kind of projects do you have lined up in the future or anything that you're working on that you're really excited about? Yeah, so the next big project I've got is a wellness. I think it's a, would they would describe themselves as a wellness hotel where it's an old manor house that's being converted into an area that will have rooms that are even so the beds are like. Earthed, they've like, it's all about the sleep is important. So they've got like the best mattresses in the world. There's got ground wir in them. Even the water is like coherent, so it's like mother water. I'm not sure if a lot of people would've heard of that, but, yeah, because that tap water here is obviously. Not the best. So they're just trying to get the best water possible. But then that also helps in the garden, to have good clean water that's has the good minerals in, um, and less chlorine. They've gonna have huge saunas, gyms, Pilates. We've got 55 acres of forest that can be, has loads of foraging opportunities, but also sound baths, um, like forest bathing. All the things that like people are trying to connect to. That's like very primitive for us as humans. We kind of like gotta go back to square one. The world and our environment's got so hectic that we almost need a reset. Um, yeah, that definitely sounds like a great place to reset. Yeah, it's, it's in a beautiful part of the UK and the South Downs and, um, lots of wildlife. Very natural. Very kind of similar to you. I recently saw that you, well, was it last year? Used in the lakes? These streets here? Yeah. In March. All of March. Oh, wow. Okay. So it was amazing. Actually I was there I think March or April, and it's just the most stunning, like part one of the most stunning parts of the uk, but there's a lot of the UK that looks like that as well. So yeah, just very how you would imagine the uk. Yeah. Very, very beautiful. Well, that's funny that you say that because for Americans, I learned really quickly that Americans don't imagine the UK like that. We just think London for the most part, we see, you know, I, I took a poll on social media and everybody's like, we just, visualize the flag and the queen and London, like Big Ben. And, uh, that's about it. I was just totally, my whole like vision of England and the UK was transformed by going to the northern part and experiencing the lakes and, just driving all around. I mean, just road trip after road trip, some of the most, it's very loaded. It's kind of lord of the Rings, isn't it? A little bit like that. A little bit like how you imagine Hogwarts and uh, like kind of the, that stereotypical England, it's more. Mm-hmm. And what I think I saw some of your posts where like you can walk through fields where just sheep are just chilling, but that is the way you've gotta go. Oh yeah. Everywhere you are walking past people's animals and they just don't care. They run away a little bit, but some of the animals, like the cows come up to you. You can stroke'em, but it feels so unnatural. Like, am I gonna get charged here or Yeah. Are they gonna be cool in the us? You know, it's like. In some states, the landowner would come at you for being on their property near their animals. So it was really crazy to like, it's culturally normal and it's part of your heritage to have the rights to just walk up and over the fencing and into these fields and yeah. Just trek through for miles and miles and camp and it's just like, what is this place? It was, it was magical. Yeah, it is. And it, and I think it's just. Like, same with a, same with a hotel. Where that is is just beautiful castles around and there's old, what I noticed as well driving around there is these old practices of like coppery and natural hedges. Have you seen where they Yeah. Um, it's called hedge bleaching that, so they. Right. They kind of cut 80% of the hedge to lay it, and then they like weave it. So it, it actually creates longevity for the hedge. Yes. And keeps it more, more in intact. And I just think people need to see those old traditions. They're starting to come back as well slowly here. Where people are like willow weaving or weaving hazel to create fences or structures or living fences. And I find that so fascinating as a craft. Mm-hmm. And as a skill that we need to be going back to. So we are working with our hands again rather than, I know like the, the phone is like one of those things. It's coming to our world, but we need to have a balance of like that. Yes. And that because we, we can't escape it really. But yeah, just going back to the, the hotel, like I'm there to. Implement a, a farm, they wanna make it biodynamic if possible. So, uh, we are gonna like work with like biodynamic practices. And I'm gonna implement as much permaculture as possible talking about the input output. So hopefully the chickens can have some time in the poly tunnel in winter. As well as the crops being grown at the same time. So there'll be inner coop in there and maybe a run to the compost heap so they can scratch and mm-hmm. And turn, turn the compost. But yeah, just trying to make everything dense. I've got maybe over a quarter of an acre there, a slightly bigger area. So I want to make it so productive that. People can eat there. We can have lavender that can be dried and put on their pillows in the hotels. So have better sleep and probably push the whole sensory experience, like smell, taste, touch, and create tea. So all the teas will be like mint, chamal, lemon viena, um, et cetera, et cetera. But that's my, my idea is it like when you step into the farm, you're stepping into another world of food, but sensory experience. Yeah. But this is sort of things that come with time of learning about grind, right? You start to go down more rabbit holes of things that find, tickle your interest, and each year I'll go down a different rabbit hole, whether it's edible flowers or mushrooms or microgreens or trees or whatever. I'm always, yeah, I think this is a fascinating job to have.'cause you're always learning. Yeah, it's also fascinating'cause you can kind of just jump on other people's ideas too. Like they, they say, Hey, I've got this little piece of land and I'd love to see it in production, or I'd love to see it brought to life. And you're like, okay, well you know, this is what, this is what I'm on about right now. Kind of get to experiment at different places and build something that will serve a lot of different people. I really love this phase of life that you're in right now, like just watching from afar.'cause doing work like that benefits so many different people and different areas and, uh, in a way that having just a stationary farm, like may not always. I agree. And so I think it's really unique. Yeah. I feel like now, instead of just having that corner to like, that's great for pollinators and it was all. Also cram food for like local community. I feel now I'm having more of an effect by them being like, because it's not located just where I live, it's around the country. So it's having that like ripple effect everywhere and just having your stamp, but then also saying like leaving it, knowing that's either potentially getting better or more people are seeing it, more people are interacting with that space because some of the jobs have even been community spaces where. The community come to have like a free lunch from the cafe, but now they're sitting in a garden that's got that sensory experience, right? Rather than just looking at a brick wall with a bit of grass. It's now a, a food grown area, which was something like a project I've done last year. So I wanna inspire people to like look into the field of like not just growing for yourself, but maybe even. Turning it into a job where you can even start like at a local community center or working with kids and working at a school if you're a teacher and implementing a small garden. Because I think there's a new phase of jobs as well where like we need more growers in commercial spaces. Just like having that implement of change. Like if there's landscapers come in, sometimes they might not be good at the growing, they'll put up the sleep arrays, beds, or they'll just put like that fake mulch down and you think, oh, that could have been something else. Right. Yeah. I think that all the time. Like what a what a what a waste of space or you know, they were, they were on the right path and then brought and they fell off. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's, there's, there's definitely opportunity there. Um, for sure. Yeah, well, like you were saying, you know, with your experience in Australia tasting this just absolutely delicious fresh food and how it's led you to where you are today. I, I've definitely had similar situations that are the reason I'm here today as well, and by you setting up these different gardens and working with other people who are interested in permaculture. I can't even imagine the amount of people that that will reach, who taste, taste that fresh veg or, instead of seeing the brick wall, they see the pollinators and it's, for them, it's that butterfly effect for them that they want to, whatever it may be. But change the outcome of their life. It for sure, like just, you just reminded me going back to that community project, um, because there was people coming in every day. A lot of them wasn't working. They'd come from like troubled backgrounds and that place was giving'em a free meal and a free coffee to like get'em through the day. Um, so some of them were just like, can I help? So they'd volunteer like putting the compost in the beds or some lady just come,'cause she just really wanted to get her hands dirty and plan. And she was just like, what time can I be here tomorrow? I'm really excited. Like she just worked for free. Yeah. But I think it gave her purpose that day and was. Just the comments we could hear from people coming through. They were just sitting there and hanging around longer than they normally would've because there was actually something to look at and there was something to interact with. And then I got a comment saying how much the kids went from like. At first we used to abuse the space to then respecting the space and, and interacting with it because like there was like bee hotels and they were like fascinated by watching this. The bees go into the holes and lay their eggs and yeah, it just, that's amazing to think about. Yeah, right. Oh my goodness. We don't go out to dinner much, but I went out to a meal last week and looked around the restaurant and like 90% of the children were on their screens. Like, oh no, is this, how is this, what's happening out here? Like, holy cow, that's not good. So, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine how. Just transformative that would be to have that kind of atmosphere in a restaurant or just Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's simple things.'cause even in the UK we used to have like play areas for the kids on the outside. Kinda like how Matt, you know, like McDonald's used to have that, right? Yeah, yeah. Same. Yeah, same in the US where it was colorful and. At least they were playing and keeping fit and stuff. Right. So it's kind of like that. But in a garden space, whether it's a cafe space and they're just like fascinated to look at like the bees or like wasps or, well, maybe not wasps'cause they sting, but dragonflies. Yeah, I know all sorts of things that make kids kind of intrigued and interested. Mm-hmm. So there's definitely space for that. And I think if you've got a kid. And you might have not been thinking like that. Then maybe think like that because mm-hmm. Yeah, there's, there's so much opportunity. Even just drilling a few holes in a bit of wood. You create a habitat. Yeah. It's, so, it's as simple as that. Like even, for example, I've been been working with a guy here and he was saying there was a patch of what, two patch of wildflowers. One here, one there. The one that had less wildflowers, but there was mounds of sand in between, was doing better because it wasn't just the food, it was the home. So those bees were living in the boroughs of the sand, but then coming out for the flowers and people were like, it was changing my mind on how to even just leave some spaces bare as well. So there's always, these are this stuff, we're always learning, but it just, it fascinated me that. Now I'm going down a rabbit hole of bugs, I guess is No, I, uh, I do that every day. And it's just funny that you said your friends started calling you a hippie. Everybody said the same. But when you do this and when this is your new life, like your whole mindset changes in the way you see the world changes so much, you know? Yeah. It, hopefully you can inspire your friends as well if they see what you're doing. Even at first there's a bit of pushback, but then if you give them eggs or they buy a chili plant and they want advice on how to keep it going, and you are the person in in that and they're like, oh, this is pretty cool. Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you so much. I know that everything that you've mentioned will. Really open people's eyes to the importance of doing this in urban spaces and restaurants. And I just, uh, yeah. I feel like every time I have a conversation with somebody on a podcast, I'm like, oh, I need to go, I need to go do this. But it really does make me think what all these restaurants in our town that have this space and just have just mulch and no plants and or they just. You know, pay a landscaping service to mow their lawn or whatever. They could have just some really incredible things if somebody kind of took initiative and made this happen. And I know that listeners will probably agree, there's always somewhere you can grow. So they could be saving money, they could be put in deal on sage or whatever on the plates. Yeah. Saves a few bucks per week. Seriously. Or more depending. Yeah, it just seems like the current setup is just not, you know, people think, oh, it's convenient to just pay somebody to come and mow it, but I don't know, not if bringing this whole space to life would bring in the community and, help boost your restaurant and make it a thriving farm to table place. To me, that seems like a really great option. I agree. Very cool.