Celebrating our first 6 months at the farm

These first 6 months at Ridgedale have been epic to say the least.  Good design, amazing people and the combined expression to be of benefit have led to the seemingly effortless unrolling of the design for this land.  Here's a brief photo stream of some of the happenings at the farm this summer.

Thank you so much to all who contributed to this first year establishing what has quickly become regarded as Scandinavia's leading example of farm-scale Permaculture, hosting several hundred people from 25 countries this summer.  2014 has been a super busy time for us, we have hosted 20 weeks of Internships and 3 PDC's from the farm as well as running trainings in Belarus, Thailand and twice in Mexico.  On top of managing our farm development we have also conducted a dozen farm/ property consultancies and are looking forward to the winter "down- time" this climate offers.

Some of the stats from this years activities;

• Served over 10,000 organic meals
• Planted several thousand trees & shrubs & over 80 species in silvopasture, savannah & riparian plantings
  
• Created a workshop
• Converted barns & magazines
• Built 2 x 9m yurt platforms
• Keyline subsoiled all paddocks
  
• Introduced Layers Broilers, Goats, Dairy Cows, Sheep, Ducks & peacocks to the farm
• Inoculated hundreds of  meters of mushroom logs with 13 species
  
• Conducted various ongoing research studies on the land
  
• Received several hundred visitors
  
• Installed reticulating RAM pump/ well water system around the farm
  
• Installed 2KM of Deer/ Elk/ Lynx/ Wolf fencing
  
• Designed enterprises for upscaling in 2015
  
• Held 2 x 10 Week Internships at the farm
  
• Held 3 x PDCs at the farm
  
• Held 2 open days
• Conducted trainings in Belarus, Thailand & twice in Mexico
• Consulted to a dozen other farms & projects
• Harvested copious amounts of wild mushrooms, fish, berries & herbs
  
• Grew several tons of vegetables
  
• Put down over 200m3 of mulch
• Saved over 1M SEK moving things around Europe & intercepting waste streams
  
• Crowd funded $8500 towards innovative ATV funding
• Spent nearly 2000 Euros on screws
• Drove half way around the planet

We learnt and shared so much this year.  We feel clear that by opening up our farm gates to those who are serious about regenerative design & enterprise we can leverage these initial stages of setting up the farm to benefit so many.  Thank you for all who have got involved, either by participating in our trainings or following our activities online.  We are doing this together to help inspire others into action regenerating their soils, land & communities.

We have always planned to share our financials, however see clearly this is not of most benefit out of context online.  We openly share all aspects of our farm & design enterprises with participants of trainings, as we see this is most useful to upcoming folks, so have decided to keep things like this.

Having a clear vision & design, effective organization and planning and getting tangible experience establishing these systems is all anyone needs to start.  We have been reflecting a lot throughout this season and will be announcing our 2015 schedule in the coming weeks.  Our Internship program will be a little different next season as we are scaling up production with the aim of generating income from the farm enterprises next year.  One of our objectives has been to generate a family income from the farm within 3 yrs and so our focus will gradually shift to running & maintaining effective local food systems.  If you're interested in the unique learning programs we offer then why not join our mailing list and we can keep you updated through the winter.  Whatever we decide to do, it's going to be awesome!