How a small farm makes $275,000 in 6 months

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In today's newsletter:

• 💰 The big idea: How a small farm makes $275,000 every 6 month season

• 🌎 Natural wonders: floating under the surface of an Alaskan river

• 🤏 The small idea: How to build soil with plants

👨🏼‍🌾 How a small farm makes $275,000 in a 6-month season

On a small 25-acre plot of land on the outskirts of Stockholm, Sweden, Richard Perkins is redefining the economics of farming.

Ridgedale Farm is an oasis of permaculture, keyline design, and holistic management that churns out more profit every year than all of its historical expenses combined.

In other words, Perkins is making over double the US average farm income (including subsidies), with less than 1/10th of the land. How?

Perkins had a long journey to figure out how to operate his farm. He started out in agriculture school at 18 to study organic horticulture and crop production. He says, "I left there with a lot more questions than answers, so I embarked on a longer global trip looking for people that had better solutions."

On that journey, he found permaculture design, keyline design, and Allan Savory's holistic management. The one thing he didn't find? Anyone willing to share real-world data on their systems.

Frustrated by the lack of information, he created his own regenerative farm with numbers as a centerpiece.

Perkins says, "We're a farm that homesteads as well as farms, but our three primary enterprises here are pastured poultry — so meat chickens — and we have pastured egg mobiles producing eggs and a no-dig market garden... [and we're] creating a place that shares the sort of data that I wish I had had access to when I was learning."

Ridgedale Farm is half forestry and half pasture, so the area that Perkins actually farms is tiny compared to most commercial operations.

The market garden takes up less than 0.4 acres, and on the pastures, he runs about 1,200 laying hens and 4,000-5,000 broiler chickens (meat birds) every six-month season. He has income broken down to the most granular level in each enterprise. For example, on a 10 m long garden bed that's 30 inches wide, Perkins harvests 40 kilos of greens every 42 days. That harvest nets 500 euros.

"We are driving a very high level of economy in a very small space, in a very short growing season, in the middle of nowhere. We manage to shift about a quarter of a million euros [in] products in a six-month production, which we then sell throughout the year like meat products and eggs."

Using permaculture design has bolstered the success of the farm. Permaculture preaches the use of diversified systems to support year-round income, and Perkins does it intensively.

He says, "I remember those words of Joel Salatin, 'It's much easier to find a hundred customers that will spend a thousand dollars with you, than to find a thousand customers that will spend a hundred dollars.' And that's certainly my experience running a mixed diverse farm."

What does a day in the life look like?

Perkins says summer is long hours, but it's offset by limited activity in winter. At 59 degrees North, he works on a short season. Frost-free dates are only between the 6th of June and the 15th of September, so Perkins jams most of the work in a 3-month timeline.

In the summer, he says, "We get up at 6 o'clock, got to open the egg mobiles... we move the cows and sheep who cut the grass in front of the egg mobiles, and we time their interactions so that they receive all the fly larvae from the cow manure and follow them around the pasture like that. Then we move all the broiler chickens... and then we basically spend the rest of the day in the market garden. Market gardens take a lot of hours, so that makes up the majority of the workload here."

In the winter, he's complimented by six months of solo work for one hour a day. He feeds cattle, harvests eggs, and calls it a day.

What inspires him?

"I'm really inspired to spend time in nature watching the ecosystem here develop. I'm totally motivated by feeding my family amazing food; that's why I wanted to build a farm. I knew I wanted to bring up kids and raise the family around amazing food. We've become a little island that nature's moving back into because we're not sprayed, and we're not bare ground. We're creating a habitat whilst producing amazing, diverse food, and that inspires me a lot when I wake up every day."

What's next for Richard Perkins?

After running such a highly profitable operation for the last six+ years, Perkins is transitioning to a few years of homesteading. He's paused the commercial operations but still teaches new farmers every few months on the property.

Throughout it all, he's also managed to write a few books.

Permacultured note: I've read them, and Regenerative Agriculture is the best book on farming I've ever read. Worth every penny.

If you're interested in hands-on training, he's one of the best in the world. You can learn more at his website or check out his hundreds of videos on YouTube.

Know another farm we should feature in Permacultured?

Reply back to this email so we can share them with the world!

🌎 Natural wonders for your eyeballs (10/10 guarantee):

• 🌊 What happens under the surface of an Alaskan river

• 🌄 An epic sunrise from a mountaintop

• 🍄 A rainbow mushroom haul

🌿 How to build soil with plants

Cover crops, nitrogen fixers, dynamic accumulators, mulch makers, and more. Certain plants can transform bare, dead dirt into premium soil.

How do you use them? What are the best choices? We did the hard work of finding them so you don't have to 👇🏼

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