S4 ● E88 "Yeah BUT".. (Part 2) Doing more with less labour

the intensive left which means I get to do farming again I want to talk today about the importance of time and motion studies and challenging yourself to do things smarter and faster so it's inside the last video of the year but attitude was quite popular and people had a lot of things to say and so I won't follow that up not that I'm around here to convince people you know what their experiences or whatever but more that I think it's a lot more to say on this topic it's a theme in our trainings and we talk for weeks about these kind of things then but I think there's naysayers out there who you know come with pride and arrogance and and find it hard to believe that those models that outshine the models they've grown up with or being practicing for often decades and it's out of you know wanting to be a benefit to people that are following us and wanting to implement some of these models so I would like to share more about that and our team has got smaller suddenly the interns have left at the weekend and a couple of the core team have left and we are now down to a core group who are much more clear about their commitment to this place and with much better communication between us and there's been a bit of a process I won't linger on too much yeah but we sometimes need to eliminate weak links in the chain for the chain to be functional and so this place has some basic requirements and people have don't living up to those requirements you know it's not the place for them but I wanted to show you a few of the enterprises and how much more efficiently they're running with their people and we put a lot of data out online about the number of hours involved in running these enterprises but I just want to show you the results in the last couple of days and a lot of people at the farm these birds have been so did four versus unit Monday specialist in their game at the time much smaller team I think we're going to have an awesome day part of the intention of the internship program is to give people exposure to really how to run these enterprises how to manage them the back end of them as well as the detailed running of day-to-day operations or how to make them really efficient and smooth because ultimately that's what allows you to generate the revenue need from the small farm and have time for the quality of life you're looking for now the boilers were the least favorite enterprise based on the feedback I got and part of the issue I think is people didn't choose to use the dolly so a lot of people left the farm not really understanding how this enterprise works efficiently now let the in terms of gone I get to be on the ground more and I love challenging myself to see how efficiently and well I can do these jobs each day I'm working with Astrid and we're doing layers and boilers together and that's quite a big job there's thousands of birds we have 20 pens on the field and we have 800 layers on the field - it took us about 16 minutes to move both the egg Mobile's this morning takes me usually 20 minutes on my own so that's the first time in 3 months it's gone quicker by having people now I'm not saying that is any criticism to anyone take more time with more people and I'm bouncing on from the video I made about free labor because people think that because there's many people on the farm a lot gets done because of that and sometimes it's true if we want to paint the barns it's obviously a lot quicker if there's 10 people painting the bun but all of the basic enterprises as I've explained in many other videos are quicker with less people and today we've got the smaller slaughter team we've ever had and I think we're going to be the fastest we've ever been because everyone is focused and there's no superfluous people now after the rocker and together we did all the birds 2 minutes per pen that's 40 minutes it's normally taken for people an hour and a half so it's really important to track these things otherwise you don't know what you're capable of doing now I went along and moved all the pens using the dolly and it's a very quick process using the doll is very efficient to move the birds without risk of harm or injury and then after we came along did food and water times like this when the waters on the back and we're moving this way we don't need to empty the water if we're moving the opposite direction we need to empty water I've talked in the past how we need to leave the plastics facing in the right direction because of the dominant wind patterns here and that's a major part of the pen design here is keeping three-quarters of the roof sheltered and keeping two sides alongside a short side but two minutes of bird is quite nice because we've got four pens at the top of top field three pens at the bottom of top field we've got four pens here and we have ten right up the top of there so part of the time it takes it's just moving the dolly and food etc around the field water lines we have at the edge of each field and so we've been moving them around we have a hose in each field and we move that manually some people have asked why we don't use automated waters water is but let's just in practical and the setup we have because we have three lanes we need to split the pens up quite dramatically so that as we go around the tree Lane and back again they don't create congestion so we also had another cast from Juliet who's feeding her calf right now and it seems like the cows have come a bit of a cooperative very still feeding each other Lila is quite skinny she's got the twins and they're both quite big twins so it's taking a lot of toll on her but the twins are feeding on clover May and viola too but they also very well and I think will be looking to sell the cows and calves as well as the sheep I think we will send the Sheep off at the end of the year and put them into next year's food supply we might solve some life now but the cost of the meat is worth more to keep to us than to and sell on in a way and so we're going to put away next to the food supply there's only going to possibly be eight or nine of us at the farm I'm going to do it but how the business is changing but things are clarifying and we're going to have a lot less people at the farm next year and really drive the efficiency in double productions with a small dedicated group we'll probably have four interns who will be highly selective and be here for six months but will also earn some income during that time but they won't be doing class study they'll be working hard alongside us learning each of the enterprises inside out it's so important to see how efficiently you can do daily things on the farm because ultimately if you want to set benchmarks when employee or have time to go fishing or spend with the family whatever if you want to be doing you need to do these jobs that you do daily very efficiently the only reason our farm is so profitable and works efficiently is because we work with that dedication and the cool people that come here multiple years all have that capacity to work very efficiently spot any errors at the same time as moving things because in the beginning what happens is someone focuses on moving faster trying to keep up and they're not checking the tops of the wires or breakage in the wire that needs to be identified to be dealt with later so it's not just about moving things quickly it's about checking them at the same time checking all these birds any birds that look sick any birds that have injuries that need to be addressed with and double checking other people's work so there's a break up system so eggs has been one job that obviously needs doing every day seven days a week 365 days a year that's a job that a couple of people have been doing cover the last two months typically taking between 3540 minutes and an hour for two people yesterday I did all the eggs from two egg Mobile's that's two of these big stacks at thirty two minutes to do that job so it's really important to understand are not them put in these videos how to criticize anyone or to one-up anyone or anything like that it's really important to me and to anyone running these kind of things too know what you capable of because ultimately you can't scale your business or plan like any expansion if you don't know what that fully involved you also can't do a gross profit analysis and see which enterprises give you more income for your time put in so you really aren't in control of your business if you don't know what you're capable of and you know that desire to push the edges and find smart way to do things can really pay off and make the difference between a couple of weeks off and being able to afford to pay for so I'm going to come and look after your place so you can have time off or not and so for me that's been really important this is an enterprise where we actually could already sell double the eggs but that we have so that's about 16 just over 16 tons a year we produce but we could sell about 30 to 35 tons of eggs so we're thinking to build two new egg Mobile's and have four Eggman bills going around the fields next year and so it's you know it's 32 minutes for cleaning and packing and stamping to lots of eggs so it's a now turnaround housework to do double and so I know I can plan that into my day and feel really confident that there's a great enterprise that'll be an enterprise kicking out you know one hundred and twenty thousand euros each year matt is someone that we employ as a marque gun and someone who I'm bringing into the business well primarily ters of this vegetable growing but because of his attitude and aptitude to get things done and he's also interested in time in motion stones turn on you man any insights I'm making the video today about how things are going much more efficiently with less people and contrary to most people's idea that having more people helps a lot of the time it doesn't help all the time I don't know I think that the simplest one is depending on someone who doesn't necessarily complete a task efficiently you know it's like this age-old saying if you want something done properly you have to do it yourself not ideal in in a group setting you need to be able to depend on people so having a smaller group of more reliable people can be much more helpful than the fun abundances help yeah and you've been setting yourself targets in the gun now I'm just having you on the targets right now but we're doing it today the slaughter day so we're starting early and we also have we deliver every Monday to a local hotel and spa so because we're in the slaughter for most of the morning just until lunch we do the we prep their ads or order before breakfast and we also have a customer made a request to pick up their box today instead of Wednesday so a couple extra things going on yeah and have you notice you're on there like you've been keeping some time and motion studies how long it takes to prep breads and how long it takes to speed things harvest things do you feel like how do you relate to like challenging yourself to do faster and smarter like how's that Jenny cuz this is your third year here so you've seen quite a process in your time here yeah yeah it it's you sort of keep noticing little bits where you can get faster you know there's little nuances like how far away you are from the tools so you know one of the things I like to do is just establish that starting point where I'm at the bed with all the tools I need and that's one time to take and you know if I take if I'm two more minutes away from getting all my stuff together and getting all of the harvest back into the fridge then maybe that's taken separately but we have 210 garden bed so sometimes I'll think about it as like weeding for example you know if you take a certain amount of time per bed you multiply it by 210 moving up a man and he's not showing up for 9 nothing for two is he showing up at 9:00 with the tools the right tools and that's how we like to roll Gardens nothing beautiful man don't nice bread salad yes I do wow thanks I'm hangin fellas getting wait how much salmon beginning in the bed Nana getting up to our biggest harvest on our bed of mesclun this year 20 kilos Nick with that which is just getting a very nice cut with a sharp blade and some of the bags being harvested at a distance I believe our somewhere closer to the 14 15 kilos that's hypotenuse is about 165 grams Akita 16 community rose now offered 10 by 75 centimeter bed and these have been amazing this year no man hath away very happy release will be growing it again after it's one of my favorite farm answers ever doesn't like being on film sometimes but the reason I'm filming now is because we are trying some new boiler feed experiments and it's partly because we've changed feed we've got bulk feeds now and which is slightly different quality it's meant to be shallow quality as an organic and boiler grower food and we are trying what are we trying we're adjusting the ratios of we give them also grain from here this is organic wheat the note and so we're just in the ratios of different time because corners sounding unaffected but we're also going to try some reactors with layer food which is about 17% party and boiler food which is I think 21 but we need to confirm that but currently a big amount of time goes into weighing out for size feed ratios that I've talked about in the book and it's the biggest time consuming part of the coil attached is milling grain so we're also going to do some experiments with unmilled frame we have done this in the past but we're going to do it again in a slightly different way and just keep refining our program but we would like to our objective is to have very healthy better than zero and leg problems and let's work on the prepping styler clean so slowly we will set up for starting after breakfast we're starting at 7:30 and slowly it's ready the guns knives sharpened scholars hot just going to check the stove the template ship should be sitting at 63 little bit cool so what I'll do is just turn and up and that'll be good after breakfast very nice today we've got less people in the slowly than rest of year because people have been leaving and but I'm excited because it's actually quicker for me to work here when a lot less people so we've been having three on a restoration last two sessions I haven't been in the story and it's been taking longer to eviscerate Version three newbies than it would be to do Oh Mia however today our new chef Ben is here and he's the Michelin trained chef his work the Gordon Ramsay's and some other high-end restaurants and he knows about working hard and fast in a hot kitchen and he knows a lot about poultry also and how to use the knife properly so we're two of us that know how to unite use knives properly I think we are going to be faster today than ever before so that's just maybe a little adaptation to the kill station for the boilers so it's put these done up here in Europe you must use a electrical stunner or well you must um the birds and before they are bled out so it takes a bit more time and but you just made some simple adaptation to so we don't need a table in here to keep the Machine on as a wire brush that you used to clean the electrodes to make sure they deliver the goods current and birds are bled out here gloves collected before passing through the window here to what's called barely side and I say fashion first day of and south and towards opinion and we will be there that is what makes it not break down where you fold up into the cross when two fingers pull down so chance pull up under the rivet and the wind retinas orchestral Alan Eckman is that caramel can't finish not going through guts with separate cracking vivid reaching polish Antonio person who gets the gold leather flip side labor to help separate old Adam thank you go in the bucket each side of them and the from any cities we've got the painting from the local park without communicating part because I'm in London for the right makes available to the neck that the student 1 hectare and intimately sometimes this composition we were in Basel I do wonder like as much [Music] so we're going to have a nice big tidy up and clean up as we always do we had four people less than we normally do and we finished in record time the first is ever that we've ever done at the farm it's not even lunchtime and all the cleanup is done now how the laundry's gone out all the boots and aprons soca' cetera freezers full of 250 bird and salad at 7:30 and last birds came in about 20 past 10:00 now that's with four less people than we've had every slaughter so far this season been spiced was just phenomenal on as laundry and about double as fast as the quickest people so far about fifty seconds the third which is fantastic now he's worked in Michelin star restaurants working Gordon Ramsay's restaurant and so he knows how to work fast in a heated environment and this is quite easy stuff for someone with that sort of caliber of training but really you know we're really stepping it up to where I'd like this to be now and if we had three people of whispering of that speed it'd probably be two hours work to do 250 birds and and then to clean up another now on top of that the house so pretty good effort done it's amazing to see and it's you know it really goes to show it's important to see in the context of this if you have a team of eight people taking an hour longer is a full working day for someone and you can get a lot done in a day I can get a lot done there there so it's important to know what you're capable of and yeah as I said the reason for putting the videos out is not to be challenging or confronting to anyone it's really important that we find really efficient ways of planning and communicating and how to find motivation when you're working in the team flow to keep the whole thing moving along smoothly and to know what we're able to do in the day so we can you know plan our time efficiently and effectively so I'm going to make a separate video about how we're going to roll next year but we're thinking of four core people on the team who are getting an annual salary for seven or eight months work hard work in the summer we always work hard in the summer because we're producing all our revenue in this six months growing season that we've been showing you through the videos we're putting out this year and we're going to have probably one intern each and those interns will come for six months they will pay for the first three months and learn on the job and then they will get paid for the remaining three weeks if they meet our targets and so if they complete the season and do well they will earn a wage and that's a way the safeguard ourselves against people who show up who don't actually have the skills that they profess or and not capable of sticking with it now which is an important you know element of what we're doing here too and it also allows us to and you know reward the people for the efforts they put in got some beautiful onions developing here gardens looking great and really exceeded expectations this year that's doing a fantastic job and Carl has really been stepping into a role going to market a lot managing looks beautiful now and yeah it's really important to me that things look beautiful because this is front of house as it was yeah the first thing and it was how well taking care of everything else is in the farm we've had a bit of a shift around with the interns leaving it's been great to run the internship but it's just kind of interesting and relieving uten to to know that's the last time we're running that program it's bought a lot of benefit to a lot of people who have gone off and done various things around the world but I'm aspiring for me to be fully available from for people from 6:00 in the morning till often ten eleven and night and so I'm looking forward to a change and just getting into the farming as I said before and something that excites me is just having people on the ground I mean I'm making these videos just to reiterate what the facts and figures are in to see how efficiently we've had a bit of a change a couple of people have left we've point halfway through the season where some people lacking motivation and clarity about what their learning objectives are and so from my perspective we you know it's for the benefit of the whole team we need people who sort of sitting on the fence about the rest of their time here to to move on because we demand a bit of excellence and stepping up to you know meet the expectations of ourselves and each other and that's all gone okay I think it's you know it's I'm not going to say too much more about that act as those people aren't here anymore that they don't have a voice to add to the conversation but I just feel like it you know it's a part of running a place so this is some people always leave each year and it tends to try and encourage them to to clarify their own context and decide if it's right for them or not as opposed to demand anyone leave which you've only ever had to do twice it for people just through their ability to you know follow basic ground rules and things like that which soon we have very basic very you know simple things that look after the benefit in the whole yeah but it's always the way I always see the team changes in the team that start here and here we make different paths but it it's down to who's ugly you know there's amazing learning opportunities available here in a way that you can't go out and find many places I'm really enjoying there on the screen saying vegetables behind me it looks very beautiful and but yes it has been a couple of people leaves and it feels really fantastic now all the team who are all fully committed and clear why they're here and if the results are showing immediately in a couple of days that we've had less people on the farm just the amount that we can do together when you have a small committed clear team communication there's been an interesting issue this year and so we've eliminated weak links in that chain because it doesn't work for me or for anyone else who's really stepping into their roles here when communication is not working up to me so we've given those closest with some time and you know there's a point where you know it's just more beneficial to shake hands and move on as it were that's all today folks and I'm looking forward to putting up a video about what we're planning to do next year big things that we're talking about including new chief lock and investing in a really nice smoker unit and building a whole unit for processing up birds further as well as the people element of it and the the trainings will be offering here we can have far less people here in the future far more focused and profits showing we're totally transforming the business model so stay tuned for that thanks as always for watching videos you can find out more in a book making small farms wet see you next time [Music]

Channel: Richard Perkins

Views: 11,486

Keywords: ridgedale, ridgedale permaculture

Id: us-X21rqkDA

Length: 26min 38sec (1598 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2017