Ep. 417 - Why We Have a Tenant Farmer

A tenant farmer is a person who contributes their labor along with at times varying amounts of capital and management on land owned by a landlord.   Wikipedia  

Join Rob as he talks about why York Meadow Farm has a tenant farmer.  Today, you'll hear the backstory about how the current tenant farmer came to be and what the future has in store.  

We are actively accepting inquiries for anyone interested in tenant farmer positions for the 2023 season, in addition to those interested in part-time or online apprenticeships.  

~

Connect with York Meadow Farm on social media! 

• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/yorkmeadowfarm
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/yorkmeadowfarm
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/yorkmeadowfarm
• Telegram Channel - https://t.me/yorkmeadowfarm
• Flote - https://flote.app/user/yorkmeadowfarm
• Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1315009008651464
  • It's small...but it's there!

~

Connect with All Around Growth on social media!

Like and share the NEW podcast Facebook Page:

• Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/allaroundgrowth 

Check out our other social medias:

• Telegram Group Chat - https://t.me/allaroundgrowth 
• MeWe Group - https://mewe.com/join/theallaroundgrowthcommunity  
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/allaroundgrowth 
• Flote - https://flote.app/allaroundgrowth  
• Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaroundgrowth 

~ 

• Follow this link to ALL EPISODES   

~ 

• How To Leave a Rating & Review in Apple Podcast App
  • This really *does* affect the algorithm...
  • ...as of recording in September 2022 - I would invite you to do this!
  • The podcast game is changing - help us with a rating and review!

~ 

Send tenant farmer and apprenticeship inquires to Rob at:

• allaroundgrowth@gmail.com or yorkmeadowfarm@gmail.com

~

Discussion Links:

York Meadow Farm: Lacto-Fermented Foods
Rich in probiotics, our fermented foods are also paleo and keto friendly. Eat a proper human diet.

Fountain: Value-for-Value Podcast Player
Fountain is the only podcast app that rewards both listeners and podcasters for the value they bring

Strike | The Easiest Way to Buy Bitcoin!
Download the Strike App and earn an $10 sign up bonus! You get $10 and I get $10. Value for Value.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Well hi there and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. Today is Thursday, September 8th, 2022. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. This is episode number 417 of a show where I talk about building a life and homestead with my family. And in this show, we learn the five W's and how as I grow along with the homestead. And the title of today's show is Why We Have a Tenant Farmer. Okay, now for those of you who are new to the show, you might be wondering who We is. And We is York Meadow Farm. And that is our family farm that was established over 10 years ago. And just to keep it simple, I'm going to read what we have on the website from the founders about the farm. Robert J. Kaiser Jr. and Denise Kaiser purchased the land where York Meadow Farm is located in Medina, Ohio in 2005. At that time, the land was being conventionally farmed in grain as it had been for decades. We got a close look at conventional farming. Five years after purchasing the land, Bob Kaiser assembled the family to plant approximately 100 blueberry bushes in June of 2010. The following market season in 2011, Bob and Denise made their first appearance at the Medina Farmers Market, located in the beautiful Medina Public Square Historic District in downtown Medina, Ohio. We enjoy building and developing new skills as a former suburban family learning to build our small acre regenerative farm and homestead businesses from scratch. Sign up for our newsletter and join us on our journey. Okay, you can see there's a lot of parallels with what we're doing and where we're at with the farm and what I'm doing and where I'm at with my life. Now, I've been a part of everything that's been going on here from the very beginning, and I actually flew back here from California in 2010 to help my folks plant those blueberry bushes. I had escaped burnout 1.0 in 2009. That's how I ended up in California. And by 2012, the holidays come around. Get to talking with family. I had broken up with my girlfriend out there, and I decided that back home was the best place for me. And that was, you know, this raw land that was in its state that at the time only had blueberries and a very small, modest market garden that mom and dad were working. And I thought, yeah, we can do this, we can build a homestead, we're gonna do this. We didn't know how, but we had the resources to do it. Resources was the land that my parents initially bought for their retirement home in 2005. And when they decided they wanted to stop the farming commercially after a few years, um, they decided that the blueberries would be a good first thing to plant. And that was after some consult with Maurice Small, who I talked about in a past episode. Um so they put in blueberries, put in a small market garden, and decided to, you know, try to supplement some income and participate in the farmer's market and you know, participate in the community that way. So from the initial thought on a retirement home in 2005 through the housing market crash in 2008 to basically where we're at today, ah how plans have changed. Um, at any rate, you know, while living in California and after that conversation with my parents and making the decision to move home, I developed and implemented an exit strategy which allowed me to save what I needed to get myself home. And that involved one last project on the road where I worked in the central Texas, southern Oklahoma, Texarkana, Eastern Louisiana territories before finally landing in Ohio in September of 2013. Now, you guys may be wondering at this point what does all of this have to do with the tenant farmer? You know, is this just Rob going on another diatribe talking about whatever it is that he's talking about now? No. Um all of this is relevant to why we have a tenant farmer, and you'll see why uh as the story continues. Now, like I said, I I landed back here in September of 2013, but my arrival here to Ohio was a little earlier than planned. You see, during that time in the Central Texas area, I had scheduled a camping trip to the Utah backcountry, Capitol Reef National Park, to be specific. And upon the return of or after that trip, and and and upon the return to my friend's house in Denver, I suffered a series of seizures. Now, the end result of this uh series of seizures was was basically me being in a state uh called status epilepticus. And that landed me in the neurological intensive care unit in a medically induced coma for a few days. And it was this event in September 2013 that accelerated my return home to Ohio and ultimately facilitated a uh career change at that time. I mean, what savings I had were depleted with all the medical bills that accompanied that event. And, you know, over the next couple of months, I basically spent a lot of time uh recovering, walking around the woods here on the farm, helping friends with simple tasks like cleaning chicken coops and shoveling manure, and just trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, not to mention trying to coordinate a plan that would involve getting my belongings from the company vehicle that was stationed in Austin, as well as all of my belongings that were in a storage unit in San Diego, along with my Subaru that was parked out there at my boss's sister's house. So this was a little bit of a logistical nightmare in late 2013, but nevertheless, I pulled it all off with some help from my sister as well, making the most epic road trip of my life. And ultimately, after all of that took place during the holiday season of 2013 and 2014, I found myself employed at a wholesale tree farm and nursery again, very similar to the various operations which I worked in my early 20s out in Colorado. So, you know, after everything that I'd gone through, this was a very familiar environment for me and one that I could ease into without much challenge, and it was a good fit at that time. And quite frankly, it was a good fit up until May of this year when I left, when it uh was no longer a good fit. Now, when I began working for the tree farm way back in 2014, I had been bitten by the permaculture bug and I had been bitten hard. Now, even though my finances were tight on account of the accident and the coma and everything else, I couldn't resist the calling and the temptation to attend the very first permaculture voices conference in Southern back in Southern California in March of 2014. Now, during that conference, I heard and met people like Jeff Lawton, Toby Hemingway, Joel Salton, Paul Wheaton. And as a matter of fact, I was actually lucky enough to connect with a bunch of people and stay in a house with a bunch of people from the Permice community and Paul Wheaton himself. And that was that was a pretty cool experience. So also got a chance to, you know, meet Jack Spearco and Mark Shepherd, Joseph Simcox, John Kittsteiner, Curtis Stone, and many other people. And some of these people I connected with more deeply than others, but ultimately that conference was a life-changing experience, and thus began my permaculture journey, which, like I said, was hard and fast, and it lasted for about three years. I'm still on that journey in many ways, but you know, I really identified as a permaculture guy during those years. Now, over the next three years, you know, 2014, 2015, 2016, I attended a number of local conferences. I went back to each permaculture voices conference. I founded a business, I built a high tunnel with uh NRCS equip funding. I was working full-time on the side trying to be the next rock star and market farmer, and I was doing all of this while working full-time on a wholesale tree farm. Okay, so that was a recipe for disaster, and I found myself unhappy, unhealthy, deeply in debt, and miserable during the late summer and fall of 2016. And it was at that point where I had a very difficult conversation with my parents. I had to make some changes in my life, and I told them that I was done with market farming, and I was gonna focus on my career, and I was gonna focus on Financial Peace University, and I was gonna focus on getting out of debt. And I was gonna focus on my health. Now, by that point, you know, my parents had largely transitioned out of produce themselves and into other products such as bath and body products that that mom was making, and dad was making a lot of bread at that time. Now he hadn't really gotten into fermented foods at that point, but he was making, you know, Italian baguettes and sourdough. I mean, he was this was a multi-day process, and he he was getting up at like two in the morning on market days to bake all this bread, and he just couldn't make enough of it. You know, we it it it was he was trying to figure out how to scale that up, and so not selling the the whole point of all that is not selling produce at the farmer's market wasn't going to impact them in a big way because at that point they weren't really known for their produce, they were known for these other products, and produce was just a the stand was basically an outlet for me to sell what I was producing, and uh so you know they understood and they we let it go. Um but I had literally just built a 30 by 96 high tunnel the year before, and I put in some serious work with the soil and cover crops, both in the tunnel and the surrounding areas, and I you know I didn't simply want all the work that I put in there and and my parents put in there, I didn't want all that to go to waste. So with the knowledge that I took away from all the various conferences over the years, I decided to create an ad and post that the space that I was leasing from my parents was available for lease. Now I didn't really frame it like that, I just framed it as something that was available for lease, but basically it was going to be a sublease agreement with someone interested in the high tunnel and approximately 1.2 acres surrounding it. And hopefully, this was going to be a long-term arrangement, you know, someone that was going to be here and stay here, and someone that wouldn't, you know, just want to come in and work for a season, and you know, much easier with the longer-term arrangement. So luckily, shortly after posting that ad, Ken Rowe contacted me, and in spring of 2017, he jumped on board and started working the gardens. And I'm not quite sure if it was fall of 2017 when Cody came on board and started working here as well. As the uh basically his parents moved, and then the space that he was working was on his parents' land is when his parents moved, he kind of lost his space, and you know, we had the space, and he was able to partner with Ken. So they whether it was fall of 2017 or spring of 2018, it doesn't really matter because um, you know, Ken and Cody were working together during that 2018 season. Now, a couple years prior, I'd purchased an old trailer from a farmer friend that was it was basically like a trailer you'd find on a job site, but the guy that previously owned it converted it to a living space with cabinets and a sink and shower and um you know sleeping area in the back. Just a just a nice little you know uh business office, right? So we we we moved it and ran power out there, installed a subpanel, and then you know, rewired the trailer and got this thing operational so that you know, just just like me, Cody too could have a little business office himself here for the long hours that he was putting in. And uh, you know, over the years during the 2019 or yeah, 2019 and then 2020 seasons, Cody was putting in more and more time growing the gardens more and more. And um especially during the 2021 season, Ken began spending less and less time on the farm. And basically during this season, the 2022 season, Cody has been effectively managing the market garden himself completely, and Ken is almost done moving his equipment out of here as he helps his son build and develop an endeavor somewhere else in Ohio, down in southeast Ohio, I believe. So basically at this point, Cody is running the show, and he's also had several different people helping him throughout the season, as well as the son of a customer who is loyal to both of us. Um and they attend both markets here in Medina. They give us business, they give Cody business as well as other vendors, and uh yeah, their son is going to be working out here, and that is that is pretty cool. So, you know, back to the original question, you know, why do we have a tenant farmer? Well, it you know, it takes a lot to run a homestead, and like I said, you know, I I reached I reached this burnout point trying to do too much too fast in 2016. And you know, after experiencing a career burnout in 2009, basically doing the same thing in the corporate world, you'd think I'd have learned, but no, I most certainly did not. I apparently I had to do it again. Now, am I gonna do it a third time? I basically did it with my health. Um, but uh, I don't know, hopefully not. Only time will tell. But as far as the tenant farmer situation is concerned, luckily we have Cody now, and he has become this long-term arrangement that I saw it six years ago. And so the the beauty of having him here in this tenant farmer arrangement, and he's cool with that, you know, we talk about that. I I don't want to ever um you know talk about what what he does and how he he fits in here with us in some kind of dismissive tone or something. He's very much a part of our farm. Um you know, he's been we see him daily, we we see him routinely, and quite frankly, um he's almost like family with us. You know, my parents have known him for geez, my parents were actually telling me about Cody when I lived in California, when I expressed my concerns about not finding people that were gonna, you know, be like me or people that I could be friends with here, um, that it was gonna be weird or something. And my parents actually told me about him because he had started up you know his first couple of seasons there while I was still living um in California and you know told me that, oh no, he's you know, he's into this barefoot movement and you know, primal movements and and and you know, hunting, and he's he's just this kind of like wild man, and you know, you I think you'll get along with him. And here we are, over a decade later, and indeed we do get along. I'm proud to well I'm proud to call him a friend. And uh you know it's that's what homesteading is like. It's it's it's it's cultivating these relationships with people that can help you do more than you can do by yourself. Because we can't do this by ourselves. I mean, yeah, I'm here with my parents, but my parents are getting older. I can't do this by myself. And Cody's also got a family of his own, and things may be changing here as time goes on. So we're actively seeking applications for new tenant farmers as well as apprentices. Part-time online, I'll speak more about that in a minute. But um having a tenant farmer here is is just a beautiful thing, and and having Cody here especially, you know, keeps me motivated to capitalize on on offers like the one we received yesterday, which which was basically a free high tunnel. All we needed to do is disassemble it and get it out of there. We could have it at no charge. And and moreover, we we we received a free shade cloth to fit the tunnel. And this thing's about 16 by 24, and the shade cloth's never been used. So I think you know, Cody was. Well, I mean, obviously both of us were really excited about that, but I think he's going to use it as some little propagation house. Um and maybe devote the propagation space inside the larger tunnel to more beds. I'm not entirely sure. I don't think he's entirely sure. But you know, if it wasn't if it wasn't if it wasn't for him, I I I probably wouldn't have taken advantage of this of this great offer, um, which not only helped or would have helped me out, but it also helped this other guy out. It got this out of here so he could put some equipment there. And basically who this guy is was uh somebody who has been uh gracious enough to give me some side work recently. So I help him, he helps me, get this out of here, win, win, win, win, win. Everyone wins. So in a nutshell, that's why we have a tenant farmer, because we're building a homestead. And we can't do it alone. Now, a homestead means different things to different people. And if you have the right mindset, you can be a homesteader. Now, for us, we've got enough land that we can't manage it entirely ourselves, and it's created a good opportunity to cultivate these long-term relationships that I've been speaking about with other local farmers. All of this has resulted in us thinking about the farm operation as a co-op of sorts. And as we continue to grow, we're trying to figure this all out as we go. I mean, in the meantime, mom still works full-time as a nurse on the administrative side over at Metro Health, and dad had been working full-time up until you know just a basically uh a couple years ago when he went to teaching part-time, mostly online, but now we're back to real-time classes. But he teaches math part-time as an adjunct professor at a local college. And uh as of May this year, June officially, I have stepped in here full-time to assist with their various enterprises, specifically the fermented foods as of late. Now, Cody, our tenant farmer here, really helps us feel like this place is a functioning homestead. And we're hoping to have livestock down the road, maybe sheep, uh, because we have two acres of prime pasture that would be exceptional for that, like right now. And I mean, I guess with that said, if you're interested, if you're interested in being a tenant farmer, if you're in the Medina, Northeast Ohio area, um, and you want to run livestock, need some space, looking for a couple of acres, want to run uh or just want to be involved in market farming, um it's available. Positions are available. You can apply for a tenant farmer position, you can apply for a part-term, part-time rather uh internship, or even an online internship. So um we are actively accepting inquiries for all of that, and that happens to be you. I would encourage you to check out Yorkmeadowfarm.com. You can contact us through the website, or you can simply email me at allaroundgrowth at gmail.com. And that brings us to about the end of the show. I would encourage you to check out the show notes for everything we talked about today from our show sponsor, which is York Meadow Farm. And because the Farm and Homestead serves as the show sponsor, I would definitely encourage you to check out Yorkmeadowfarm.com. Sign up for the newsletter so you can stay tuned on the upcoming launch of the online store, which is happening two weeks from today. If you are an email subscriber, you will get a special discount. And I'm not quite at liberty to reveal what it is yet, but it's a pretty good one. So we'll be offering this for a couple weeks after we launch the online store. And um, you know, if you like what you hear on this show and you want to support me, you want to support my family and what we're doing, then that is a great way to do it. Uh, show notes will also include some affiliate links, which you can also utilize as well. Um, and uh the big one that I've I'm promoting now and have been recently is Fountain. Fountain is my new podcast player of choice. It's it's the only one I've been using lately for uh really since I reset my phone last week. And the reason I am using it is it is the only podcast player out there that rewards both listeners and podcasters, like myself, for the value they bring to the platform. You can download Fountain on iOS devices, Android devices, and what this like okay, so what does that mean? It rewards you for the value you bring. It rewards you in terms of Satoshis, okay, in Bitcoin. So as you listen to podcasts through fountain, you are earning Satoshis, you are earning Bitcoin. You can it's not just a podcast player, it's almost like uh like a social media of sorts. And what I mean by that is the podcast player has some cool features like creating and sharing clips, which allow you to very easily, I might say, save or or snapshot a small segment of a podcast, 30 seconds, and then just share that almost as a teaser to bring people in and get them to listen to the whole thing in its entirety. So, you know, you can follow people, see what they're clipping, they can follow you, they can see what you're clipping. And um, if somebody is creating something that you really like, you can boost that and tip them, you know, extra Bitcoin, extra Satoshis. It's it's it's just a it's a really cool thing. Um, I would encourage you to check it out. You know, if you're interested in Bitcoin and interested in the Lightning Network and interested in in just kind of fiddling around with this that is uh with this cryptocurrency without really getting too deeply involved, this is a great way to do it. There's a cool community of people that are into fountain at this time, of which I am one, and uh you can be one too. So check it out in the show notes, and um I would also encourage you to use my referral link when you do so. And speaking of earning Bitcoin, if you just straight up want to buy it, then I would encourage you to check out Strike. Strike is basically the in my opinion right now, it's the easiest way to buy Bitcoin. You can skip the fees that you would you know be stuck with buying through other platforms, and you can just stack your SATs. So when you buy a hundred bit uh or a hundred dollars of Bitcoin through Strike, what you get is a hundred dollars of Bitcoin. Okay, and it also gives you the ability to transact with it, send, receive via the Lightning Network. It's very easy to use. You don't even have to understand anything about the Lightning Network, you just have to, you know, you you can just use it, and it's even set up for direct deposit from your employer. I can validate this and verify it. I tested it before I left my day job, and it works perfectly. You can have a portion of your paycheck go directly to a Bitcoin purchase if you want. Now, you know, as a Dave Ramsey financial peace guide, is this something that they recommend? Uh, that's debatable, okay? And uh I would say yeah, you can fit it into your budget. And if you do, strike is a great way to do that. And again, check out the link in the show notes because what happens if you use that link and you're not already using Strike is that you use that link, you earn $10 as a sign-up bonus in Bitcoin, and I get $10 in Bitcoin for the referral. So again, win, win, win. And that I would say is value for value as well. So that's about it for today, guys. In all honesty, I'm not sure what tomorrow has in store. But if you want to contribute to show ideas, simply send me an email at allaroundgrowth at gmail.com or join us in the telegram chat at t.me slash all aroundgrowth and send us your ideas there. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.