In this episode we chat with David McMillan, chef, author, and co-founder of the famous Joe Beef restaurant in Montreal. David left the restaurant business in 2021 and now resides and works on his small farm, Hayfield Farm, where he is re-discovering the ‘art of living’ in the countryside. In this wide-ranging and colorful conversation we explore the power of cooking with homegrown foods, how social media is hurting regional cuisine, viticulture & natural wines, traditional French food culture, and how David has found true happiness in his new life on the farm.
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my whole career I’ve had a great career and supposedly high quality dining I’m cooking the best food in my career is happening at the farm right now farm right now that nobody’s getting nobody’s paying for it my chickens yeah with you know mushrooms from the forest and let’s say the my small asparagus patch plus my onions plus my last year’s little butter brazed radishes whatever dude it’s Lights Out it’s like sometimes I cook a meal I’ll be like 400 50 bucks this this is what I would charge to eat this because it’s so impossible I enjoy thoroughly you know watching the sunrise from my bedroom I see the sunrise over J Peak you know from my pillow I also like having coffee alone by myself I like lighting the fire by myself so my family is warm when they come downstairs M I love putting on my rubber boots I love letting the chickens out of the CPE you’re you’re explaining my mour and my life yeah I want wine to comes to a magical garden and that you know that was grown by a family of which I admire their values and way of handling themselves right I don’t really want to drink wine from a cigar smoking Lamborghini driver you know not to be but that’s all cool if that’s what you want all the power to you but I’m just saying I want to do small Farm wine yeah I’ll make a nice dinner you know meat and potatoes and vegetables good salad everything you want yeah some fruit but then no eating after 700 and you know no eating U no eating dur the day after 7 I eat at 5: you eat at 5 yeah I ate early too well usually you know why it’s funny it’s it’s theck the restaurant business ah because you have stff meal yeah 4:30 I would eat staff meal still to this day I’m like 7:30 reservation at 7 you know even when I come here it’s not because I have a baby I’m like always the first guy here when I come here it’s funny to make your life in the restaurant Biz and then serve people late late dinners but then yourself only think like that’s crazy people wanted to eat at 11 I was like what 11 yeah that’s kind of like super bedtime I agree with you how you going to sleep tonight I see people eating like you know hard to digest things like like rabbit or like lamb you know uh that’s hard to digest lamb yeah yeah for some people it is we know that in the you know in the restaurant business there like sometimes you’ll have a customer complain uh I ate at your restaurant last night I didn’t sleep all night and nine out of 10 times I’ll kind of like go what did you have and they like oh we had the rabbit followed by the lamb and like we kind of know that you know people at home often like have lean leg of lamb sliced lamb you know that’s pretty neat but when we’re taking the whole like the the the stomach flap of the lamb and we’re wrapping around the loin and we’re doing a more like intense French preparation of lamb that sometimes you know the fat of the lamb and the fibers plus you know everything else that they’ve had in a weird meal you know in a restaurant meal you think about a restaurant meal sometimes it can be some clams oysters shrimp urchin a bunch of vegetables that they’re not used to eating that may or may not be not cooked enough or rawi is you know Then followed by proteins and starch Then followed by cheese and dessert it seems it’s a lot of different foods when plus all the wine plus all the wine and your daily diet might be a lot more pure and simple mhm you know if you look at a tasting menu right if you look at like a 12 course tasting menu and you put all of that in a blender you know it’d be kind of gross I definitely occasionally feel hung over from that kind of meal with no alcohol just the food it does a number even if it’s all good if there’s I guess too much VAR thanks have a little bit of roasted garlic a little bit of like pole beans A Little Bit of Swiss chard a little bit of cabbage that was maybe raw like in a SLO followed by let’s say two kinds of meat it’s you know the milk Shake which is your stomach you know our stomachs are you know like a 750ml bottle of water you know it’s uh it can be hard to process you know yeah and your evolutionary biology is asking how the hell did you do this how did you get all this food it doesn’t make why are you doing this to me yeah yeah yeah how did that that’s not even possible yeah that shouldn’t be possible uh Jam do you want to ceue us in and you can actually pick up on this conversation hey all right everyone so today on the podcast we have a really special guest uh Dave McMillan uh who is uh you know formerly from Joe Beef uh the famous restaurant here in Montreal uh world famous really really really good restaurant and uh Dave lives not too far from here now and he’s uh he’s picking up on new adventures but he’s definitely a connoisseur of good food of good wines but also of just like the whole Spirit of just like farming and now you know now you’re a farmer that’s I’m the worst farmer in that area probably I’m not the best Farmer in the neighborhood I had a nice career in the restaurant business um but I I always like uh you know craved waking up early yeah and going to bed early yeah uh you know so uh my favorite relationships in the restaurant business were always you know based on the relationships that I had with either oystermen uh you know clam people Lobster fishermen fisherman and then uh all the farmers that would you know bring us stuff to the back doors of the restaurants right I’m relationship with the end diive person with the mushroom people right uh was kind of always like you know my Pathway to the country right um I think when I got tired of the restaurant business and it no longer interested me you know I’d started building this Farm while I was still supposedly happy at work right I was planting a 15,000 Vine Vineyard you know while I had a full-time you know job and ran you know multiple restaurants uh you know with my partners at that time what’s funny about that though the parallel is like I was pretty good at the restaurant business I a really good reputation as like you know a great Canadian chef and so on and uh it’s really humbling to be possibly you know the worst vitic culturalist I’m sure and farmer i i i cycle through the your Vines and they look great do you think there’s a lot of uh there’s a lot of uh chefs and restaurant owners that have that special relationships with the farmers absolutely you know it’s one of the greatest parts of being a a chef I think you know and the the great chefs are uh the ones that you know I see have the most success are the ones that are closest to that right cuz it’s really easy just to be a chef and order everything from one phone number you you know everything from yeah and everything from you know the the fruits and vegetables market right cuz you it’s easier for you it’s way easier your life is going to be a lot easier if you can order bleach mopads chickens frozen shrimp iqf in you know iqf frozen fish portions uh you know lamb portions everything from one phone number right uh as opposed to having to call a guy in the townships that you know may or may not have hubard squash yeah right calling another uh you know a girl down the road here that you know grow specializes in Asian vegetables uh remembering to always call maren because she’s grows elephant garlic and you better call her once a year if you want to use that garlic right so your job as a chef can turn into you know 50 phone calls as opposed to two or three was jealous of like the sushi guys right the sushi guys you know they’re you should see these cataloges they’re amazing there’s this company called True World they Fisheries I think they at one part at one time in history they were kind of part of the Moonies you know you know remember the Moonies the Moonies the Moonies it was kind of like a cult like a religious cult but they were also really good at business is it a US cult a cult in the US no it’s an Asian cult but they were they used to be in in like airports and you know Google it it’s interesting and um anyway True World seafoods has a a a a food catalog the size of a phone book you can order tables chairs uh kimonos hats banners you know Japanese banners you can order lamps you can basically order the restaurant the whole restaurant and then like the shrimp page is eight pages and maybe 1,000 skews you going have really cheap shrimp if you’re going to be a really cheap gas station Sushi rest restaurant and you can have the best shrimp flown in from toyu toyu Market wow right uh the tuna is incredible the tuna page is like all grades of tuna whole loin Fresh Blue Fin yellow fin flown in albore or uh portioned are preut uh and everything’s like super deep freezer right minus 50 de and so on it’s a it’s interesting right um and and so I imagine there’s a lot of there’s a lot of restaurants that are operating in that kind of mind frame because it’s better for business it’s better for business one phone call and one invoice right it’s so it’s so much easier right so then what’s the drive to do it the harder way well you know that’s why there’s many restaurants but only a few that are that are truly exceptional right if you look at you know most of the restaurants we drive by every day you know there’s we don’t think that there’s 100 restaurants in cville there’s probably you know 50 but some of them are you know commercial chains like yeah you know commercial chains don’t care where the green beans are from whether they’re from Guatemala California Argentina you know Europe here you know and you know generally they all wish that they could be Frozen and you know so that’s that’s the that’s what you look at right why as a chef then did you care I just work for the right people very young you know I I worked for for for great chefs at a very young age when I was open to to learn when I was uh very influenceable right I worked for a guy I worked for two chefs in France in uh one in the the countryside of uh in burgundy in Oz I worked at a little French restaurant there where it was Catamount right the product was that’s all he talked about and but it was also he talked about wine in the same way talked about cheese in that way talked about bread in that way so it was just the part of the conversation right it wasn’t nothing about the restaurant business to those guys was going to be easy right everything was a struggle right the conversations my God I must be 20,000 hours deep into bran bluefoot chicken you know like you know how to feed them how to you know stop from stop them from feeding on grass and move them to powdered milk what the powdered milk should be what is powdered milk you know uh how to make corn Penta to fatten them up uh all these different things right so many of those conversations so much useless information you know inside inside my brain about about those things like you know viticulture is another like how how many hours have we spoken about viticulture with my colleagues and friends you know it’s like you know there’s a lot of there’s a lot of information to process and and the second the second Chef was is that is that your I worked for a special Chef he was called J he was known as like a very creative fellow he was the son of the son of a guineen chicken farmer they both were you know praised applauded uh bre on you know and you know anything about Val bre breast chicken tell us so breast chicken is you know considered the finest chicken in the world you know there’s many chickens in the world but one of the most specialized it’s an uh growing systems for these chickens in the breast region of South burgundy is uh the breast chicken so it’s a it’s like the French flag number one it’s a blue-footed white bodied with a red Crest what red white and blue like the French flag that’s the thing right so it’s got I’ve got some at the farm nice blue feet really cool and um so they uh Farm these chickens in an area of the breast which is quite swampy so the measure of earthworm they’d measure this by the way in the Appalachian the measure of earthworms per square meter is indicative about how many chickens you can have per acre on your property you will never see a breast farm that has any dry patches of grass it’s usually just pure lush green fields and these spotted with these red white and blue chickens throughout most of them have an in and out abire on site so they process their own chickens on their Farms they’re really cute micro abars uh they’re controlled and uh they’re spotless that’s in the US that’s in France in France in the bre region you can buy now breast chickens you know chicks I guess people have managed to smuggle some over they are available here but to raise them in the conditions that say that the French do with the AOC that’s for the chickens uh is quite special even the way they go to market they come to Market head on feathers on still okay okay the blue feet are on all the all the chickens have a a band uh like an aluminum band around their foot they’re kind of Japanese packed into a little box and they’re wrapped in cheesecloth in a in a very tight little mumm mummified little way and uh and then they have their beautiful red white and blue Bron Crest sticker and these chickens can go you know we we see chickens at the grocery store here you know in our town you know you can get a $15 chicken you know you get a pretty good chicken like you know a grain fed one for 22 maybe and then you might get an organic one for around 26 27 bucks how much was that one they can a chap what they call a castrated mail there would can go like 100 bucks wow yeah so to have let’s say a a Val de for four people in a restaurant in uh in France is a big deal it’s an expensive thing it’s more expensive than you know double coat de buff in a Montreal restaurant of excellent beef right so how do we get on that have you eaten yeah I worked in restaurants so I worked at that Tia guy you know and he was the son of a breaston chicken farmer so you know we cooked a lot of breast on chickens there and you know his big thing was that you know in his restaurant when you get a chicken leg you know at the table they’ll on the the band around the foot they’d all said oh you know uh so that was a that was a big deal so those chickens generally are roasted salt and pepper blah blah blah served with beautiful full you know vegetables or a medley of vegetables but also you know the big there’s there’s two big recipes there there’s one on visi where the chicken is basically poached and steamed inside of the bladder of a pig right okay and uh and then there’s H the vet famous with morels and chicken morels and U Von you know the yellow wine from the Gira or just uh you know then there’s variations on that it can be burgundy wines Village appropriate to where the restaurants are right so definitely like the listeners now in ukis are understanding that Dave is a great Storyteller and and A Fine Food connaisseur because this is all the influence that we get from from France mostly you know prior to now but then Joe Beef and and just so I I don’t know they if you can just kind of I don’t want to sum up Joe beef but just so that the listeners kind of have a feel for what the restaurant is and how it became so popular and and just kind of the story line I think Jo beef was a perfect storm back in the day like I was close to Fred and Allison and of course with you know with maredith back fan my ex-wife Julie used to work with us and we you know a bunch of us had been working in different Montreal restaurants for a long time you I think notably Fred and I were had a pretty long career I think Fred and I worked for a few years at Globe back in those days and um Allison was around globe and bonon so was Julie so was Meredith Vana of course famous Vana philipov suier was uh was always with us every day in all our adventures she now owns um um V La V yeah and she owns a wine agency called van damjan and U you know one of the possibly most prolific uh you know wine people in Canada most influential wine people in Canada and her husband of course Mark Mar olier Frappier yeah who’s also chef and owner of laang was with us uh for years at Joe Beef has chef he was my first connection with Joe beef with he was buying my veggies and a very solid kid like you know he calls everyone uh he he’ll drive to he’ll drive 11 hours if he can figure out there’s a guy who’s got white fish caviar yeah you know like he’s very passionate about products and locality and you know deservedly is the best restaurant in Canada yeah he’s put in his time people don’t know like that guy he opened V and is today the best you know best chef in Canada best restaurant but yeah he had a good job he had a good job with you guys and then decided to to take take his own what I’m trying to say is he’s been the one of the best chefs in can for a longer time than people understand right you know he was uh Chef the cuisine and Joe Beef when Joe Beef was you know receiving you know major Awards in top three restaurant uh you know accolades Marco was the guy there so he’s been a very you know influential important Chef for a long time so Vania you know they were integral parts of the of of Jo beef group restaurant and V papon we opened with them as well and so on anyway to make a long story quick yeah we opened Joe Beef in that neighborhood it didn’t seem to make sense financially nobody believed in it we were kind of like the canaries in the coal mine if you think about a small restaurant I think it was like 28 seats with two Cooks me Fred Allison Meredith Vana uh my ex Julie and uh you know we didn’t care we kind of fed up with the restaurant business and we wanted to run a 28 seat restaurant and do quality and at that time we were pretty SK Fred and I were very skilled you know like we’d been working at Globe doing like 180 customers at night every night for years you know not every night but you know yeah big numbers streamlining the you know the kitchen and then make for us to go into a 25 seat restaurant wasn’t fair almost you know like we were used to you know like massive stress massive volume and even you know the work that we did uh at those big restaurants I I still stand behind like you know we did good work for 180 people at globe and uh and for years you know we you know we push those restaurants forward and uh we we never sacrificed our ethics even if we were in like a fashion district kind of hip restaurant that turned into a little bit of a nightclub after 11:00 p.m. uh I feel that the food that we did there you know between uh you know 6:00 and 10:00 at night was always you know very good that’s the famous St Lawrence St St la vi you know and then so when we opened on notredam it was cool too because we were the only restaurant there back then there was tons of empty stores it was only antique dealers down there there was Zero restaurants on notra street today notredam street is one of the streets you go on if you want to eat good food in Montreal yeah you know it’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a great address you know there’s countless restaurants from one end to the other now that are great yeah so then you know it was just a flash after that we opened the restaurant and we just started doing our work and then you know we got to make the restaurant a little bit bigger we got to buy Liverpool house which is basically next door uh eventually went to Van Papio uh eventually we did Van uh it just goes real quick you know and then that’s 20 years oh I think it was 15 or something I even know I’m really terrible with that stuff uh and it was great we had fun we wrote a couple books uh you know but you know I always felt there was an emptiness in me m you know like we had the accolades it was cool I but I just I couldn’t believe that like and I struggled with am I just going to sit here now and show up two or three days a week and like watch you know Lobster spaghetti and this and that go off you know and I was like it was unfair you know and I I was you know struggling with you know personal stuff like just having all the success in the world but being unhappy kind of yeah yeah yeah you know the restaurant is like a success but you’re like everything’s a success I’m a success even you know I would go out and people oh my God you know those guys amazing we love you blah blah blah but I was just like I felt like a hole in me you know and it was definitely I was unhappy and it was M manifesting itself that way MH uh I knew that when I’d get into my car I bought that Ram shakle old building that farm my farm on Dutch heyfield Farm yeah for nothing you know and it’s a nice spot it’s a nice spot but when I would go there to work on the weekends you know I knew then it was like I don’t know light filled my soul you know could could I say a few words no no I just want to I want to have a jumping off point here to start us into the next portion of the conversation but I’m sure we’re going to circle like so many times sorry I Ram it’s perfect well because everything’s connected so how could we not Circle back and but what I wanted to say is that you know your first book and something I’ve heard you say many times is this phrase The Art of Living and you’ve said this term and I think you were inspired a lot by things in Europe but you were using that term back when you were living the high paced City restaurant life so I’m very curious as to how the art of living is for you now in your new life on the farm that’s exactly it it’s the Art of Living um I enjoy thoroughly you know watching the sunrise from my bedroom I see the sunrise over J Peak you know from my pillow you know I see the Sun come over the crest of J Peak shine into my bedroom J in Vermont I I can’t you know like that’s still it never gets old Al also in my restaurant life I never saw the sunrise I was in bed you know 1 2 3:00 a.m. every day so so you know I had seen a sunrise so I’ve been you know living this new lifestyle now for like what four or 5 years and it doesn’t get tired I also like having coffee alone by myself I like lighting the fire by myself so my family is warm when they come downstairs MH I love putting on my rubber boots I love letting the chickens out of the coupe you’re you’re explaining my mour and my life yeah but you know uh now I do the Ducks I do the chickens I let the chickens out then I go visit the Ducks um and you’re right they do soil their water frequently so I change their water a lot more I was and uh and then I kind of you know as I finish my coffee I summarize what work is it that we have to do today and what priority farming is interesting it reminds me a lot of catering in the restaurant business you can make one decision on the farm if I have people coming to help let’s say so I have one full-time employee Emerson who does uh you know most so the pruning and viticulture and tying up of the vines he kind of specializes at a certain kind of work that needs to be done excuse me in a time in a time frame but then I have other yeah friends and uh volunteers and some ukrainians that come and help out as well and when we make decisions about how we work in the farm they have to be really thought about because when we intervene in the vineyard there’s 46 rows of vines with a totality of 15,000 Vines so if we decide to do an operation on one Vine it means we’re going to do that 15,000 times in 46 rows so you really can’t just make a spur of the- moment decision like tonight the salmon we’re going to serve with asparagus decision done it’s over now then the chefs they go off and they peel as arus and they cut salmon right and they make a sauce but now we have to think a lot clearer you know are we leaving the canes longer are we taking buds off the bottom are we going to clear the root of the base of the vine the trunk with hose right to free up so are we going to weed the garden manually you know are we taking the is the soil too soft to take the tractor into the vineyard today uh when am I spraying when was the last time it rained uh can I spray less you know uh it’s so funny when I hear that Dave say this like for me I don’t want to say this is all easy I’m not saying that but I’m saying compared to running and owning a restaurant for me that’s like much much more s for I get all that’s your specialty yeah your Specialty’s always been farming right and you look at the restaurant like oh my God I’m the opposite I’m like yeah I can open a restaurant like no sweat I can fix your restaurant I can go you like I can consult no problem been there done that I think I’ve opened 15 or 20 restaurants I’ve had eight or nine myself right uh but there’s something beautiful in learning a new craft and humbling and humbling and not being good at it yeah right I love like that love that too top three chefs in the city kind of arguably for years yeah and and I’m like everybody in in s ARA is better at viticulture than I am you get what I’m saying I’ll get there but I do appreciate Zach from L I appreciate Kevin and Mano from Pigeon Hill I appreciate my neighbor Pi alexand who’s also in a startup mode at valel in s AR Fred Big Fred I love big Fred you know he used to work for me and like uh his little Farmstead and his his his agricultural project is inspirational right they’re wonderful people um there’s a a saying that’s like in order to become really good at saying you first have to really suck at it and I tell myself that all the time when trying to learn new things because it’s because of how uncomfortable that is that’s the only reason most people don’t do it oh yeah because it’s so uncomfortable to suck but how enjoyable is it at the same time if you can Embrace that and go through the suck cuz event that’s what you have to do yeah was like you know you think four years ago you know we planted the vineyard and it was time to like you know start kind of weeding it and stuff like that and had a tractor that I was scared of yeah you know cuz I driven how I’ve been what three hours in a tractor in the totality of my life at 53 years old um and then I buy this piece of equipment like a a shredder you know to shred the cane that we leave inside the rows and I don’t know three point hitches and a PTO who does that I do that yeah not that not that many uh wine Growers do this do you say do you say wine Growers how do you call the the industry like yeah sure wine Growers Rin Growers yeah Rin Growers or grape growers Ontario they call the grap Growers of Ontario different places for different things yeah uh yeah basically you know wine is not part of the game right it’s like the first job first and foremost the hardest part is growing grapes yeah you know growing grapes because without grapes you don’t get you know wine is that’s another thing right yeah people forget that link e yeah they drink the wine and they they don’t they don’t understand that it’s connected to not just grapes but a grape a moment a time a way of doing it’s made me change the way I think about wine that way what you’re saying it’s like I’m like when I taste the wine now I’m like looking I’m tasting struggle temperature deficiencies I can you know I could say must have been cold because of the acidity or you know or the short shorter growing season you know the whole I look at it completely different you know uh I you can taste climate and weather and soil and soil through the Vintage yeah right whereas you know before just like you’d use you know weird soier words right you can taste the story I it’s funny to hear you say this because I would have thought that well you’ve always been someone that appreciates the story of food and that it adds to the experience of it and here you are saying your experience fully changed just from that because you already had a story of it I guess right but it was from other people that you just took it 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that’s why I do what I do here at the market Gardener Institute so if you care about what kind of companies you support with your dolls check out bootstrap farmer you can find them out at bootstrap farmer.com thank you bootstrap for all you do love you guys see you soon I used to have weird thoughts about wines you know in the restaurant I was always fine if we you know if we only had burgundy Reds and whites on the wine list people say that’s insane you have to other things I said I don’t know this like you know of course I bent and you know people talked me out of these insan insane you know theories that I had but I said like I think a restaurant at a certain point should be like it’s your restaurant it’s your farm yeah I grow what I want yeah and I don’t care what you think right so the restaurant business certainly for the beginning years you know I think Fred and I and all we didn’t open I think we open at 7 people say we want to be at 6:30 sorry we’re open at 700 we don’t unlock the door at 7 right later on of course that changed right but uh I’m going around in a circle no but it’s it’s good it’s like what you’re saying is that you you’re setting you’re setting the tempo you’re setting you know what what’s going to be happening here it’s like on the farm it’s the same like like I I haven’t heard a lot of you know grape Growers shred their canes yeah well you know it’s not a thing really so you know think about that for a second right so we prune all the the vineyard and we’re dropping all of the canes in the middle row yeah right it’s it’s an awful mess yeah and you know uh my rows are you know 225 meters long right and I have 46 rows that way yeah uh it’s just like again goes back to the restaurant business I calculate the labor on this and I’m like this is ridiculous how are we going to get to first of all I have to buy a very expensive piece of equipment to be able to rake all of these canes out of the vineyard and once I rake all of these canes out of the vineyard I’m gonna have a a ball the size of a of a car yeah of canes at the end of each row and then then what’s my move so I’m have 46 car-sized giant balls of Vine you burn it I don’t think that’s the move right that’s like people say oh yeah it’s beneficial the ashes I don’t know not as much as the chips would be yeah right chips but you know there used to be a standard and there still is is there’s there’s naysayers on that they say mulching the canes back into the vineyard might promote you know might keep disease I I don’t believe it yeah I disagree with that dude and I bought the Mulcher and of course you know Instagram is you know if you stay away from all the nonsense you know there’s great people posting great stories on Instagram about their every aspect of everyone’s hobby yeah so there’s there’s great wine makers like here I bought this Shredder this is what the row looks like before this is what the row looks like after and when I saw a few of those videos I was like wow look at that like it’s like basically paper right and after doing it myself you couldn’t even tell after seven days it’s gone it’s gone like there’s like if I if I mow even like 10 days after mulching canes there’s not even a bit of uh a fragment left right it’s it’s reabsorbed into the soil and I’ve noticed that you we’ve been changing the soil now for 5 years I can take a shovel anywhere in my Vineyard now and just drop a drop a spade in the middle of the row and I guarantee you fat juicy earthworms and that was not the case when I planted that Vineyard you know uh we have beautiful uh middle row uh how do you call it you know uh dandelion grass Clover uh let it gr pain I let the middles grow right I like you know like always in my head I’m always working towards can I walk in this Vineyard Barefoot can I walk in this vineyard with sandals can I get married here yes you know but staying you know you know within the confines of regenerative organic agriculture like the other funny thing is like my vard’s a basically a stone slope that leads right to my backyard of my house where my well is right so my when when when I think about you know chemical spraying and you know doing interventions in the vineyard my thoughts are further than if it was a plot of land 20 kilometers away yeah in a forest yeah you know I’m I drink shower and swim in the water that drains off my Vineyard and I feed it to my animals right so what we do in that Vineyard is always on my mind mhm you know to to the detriment of the vines you know I spray so little that you know I do have know little fun fungal issues you know it’s a microcosm of what we all because you’re just like seeing literally a slope goes to your well but I mean everywhere the water is going into other water and but like I want to Circle back to to your question of the Art of Living because you know knowing knowing Dave from you know personally now but also from reputation and then the fact that you own like a very successful not just a restaurant but a chain of restaurant you’re very I don’t own anything well you used to own okay whatever you’re you’re you’re part of that group you know there’s a lot of people probably in that kind of uh uh motion that would have just like I’m the owner of a Vineyard down in Tuscany and that’s how they express their love for farming like I own this Vineyard I own this I but you know that’s not what Dave is doing Dave is like saying you know I I’m going to go back to square roots and just cut start a Vineyard myself and that’s for me that’s that’s the real connection of of this podcast even it’s like this is what this is all about it’s being real and and doing stuff for real for the right reasons and I want to be exhausted you you see like I can’t have this like career in the restaurant business you know what I got to the end of my restaurant career I was not exhausted anymore because I was I was like the boss of 140 people with my partners right and I wasn’t in any kind of job my only you know stress at work was anxiety right and uh about what could be what could go wrong about what could happen with all the staff about hope I hope everybody got home safe last night uh about uh I hope we don’t get robbed I hope we don’t have a fire I hope you know that they put the garbage away properly I hope like all the moving parts that make restaurants happen was always like this like nightmare of stuff all right so that was the exhausting part but I want to be physically exhausted at my age right I used to love being a line cook when I was a line cook and there was four guys ahead of me that were going to be Chef before me I used to love having my station when I was just I was in charge of appetizers yeah and I used to love doing that I’d show up put my apron on Rush do my shift do my work clean my station go do my orders go home I was tired yeah and beer tasted good time went fast time went fast and I enjoyed what I was doing I didn’t have the stress or the burden of leadership M right when I come back to the farm you know what I mean eh oh yeah burden of leadership I hear that so so when I come back to the farm it’s listen it’s me and Emerson Emerson works alone his his he’s the happiest guy probably I’ve ever met right that guy barely says hi to me in the morning and he puts on his he has his little like JBL speaker that hangs around his neck and uh he’s dressed for the apocalypse right doesn’t let any son touch his body uh and just prunes and Tucks Vines all day long listens to sports radio podcasts very quiet man are you listening Emerson yeah he probably not uh he’s Italian right so he’s very much Italian it’s all Italian podcasts and um I I enjoy it so much like the exact same thing like when my my best days are the ones like you know being in the vineyard at 8 8:00 well coffeed up and like I hope I can get eight rows done today or seven rows done today and you know and I’ve listened to like 11 podcasts and five you know hours of music and you know my wife and my my my my my kid brought me like a sandwich that I ate in the vineyard you know sitting down and over the years now I’ve noticed like you know different more birds and more yeah it’s changing like we’re changing the landscape right before that was just basically a corn field and had been a corn field for what do you think 100 years uh I would say 40 40 years that that that that field behind my house was a was a corn field I’m surrounded by soy and corn and forests but like I every day I see 40 Deer 30 turkeys a couple of groundhogs we have a bald eagle now that goes around s ARA carand the other end of San ARA can see the B Eagle in the morning I’ll see him in the afternoon we got those sayings what do you call in English uhu uh yeah they’re like big birds that eat on the vultur oh vultures those things yeah I almost hit one this morning coming here yeah yeah but the the deers though we should uh we should shoot them all they’re they’re problem they’re destroying the the ecosystem of of our area I feel like it L I don’t know any anything anything so much about you know how many it just seems that there are quite a lot they’re def the I don’t know if I should see 40 that problem I don’t know how healthy that could be is much worse the further south you go and and it’s slowly just coming up CU you know everything that’s changing slowly like the deer population just keeps increasing further and further north basically yeah tell us tell us what the experience was in New Jersey with deer population there yeah actually so in New Jersey the deer population is 10 times too many that’s like the a statistical fact based on analysis by by scientists which is crazy and in the fall it’s like clockwork when you go for a drive you just see dead deer all over the roads because there’s there’s like thousands and thousands and thousands of car accidents with and then they had an unlimited amount of in many parts of the state if you’re bow hunting the the limit for Doe’s is unlimited and here it’s they’ve went from one to two yeah and there we had a symposium in fishburg and that that was the a big talking about I got up and spoke about what New Jersey is doing not that I you know know what is best for here but seemed to me that two is maybe not enough like could it at least be four five I it just felt like such a baby step in a problem that’s about to become so much worse like every year you let it go but the first year that I the you know five years ago I would see a couple yeah no they but now I see like herds yeah yeah I just I just hit my first one uh last two weeks ago oh wow it went it was 6: in the morning I was D ding going to hockey and then it it I just hit it and it flew and I was like I was thinking myself this is not the last one I hit this is this is one of many the closest I ever came was coming back from your farm actually right on that you know all the huge corn fields there both sides there’s like 200 of them it’s our standard uh how can I say it’s our standard greeting and goodbye at the farm like I hear my wife always like okay so you’re coming be careful for the deer I can’t stress that enough put your P beams on if there’s no other cars coming drive slow when you’re coming anywhere within 5 6 km of the farm please be careful he says it to everybody that you know comes to the farm and anybody leaving yeah cuz you know got the city people we run an Airbnb and uh they’re just [ __ ] you know cruising with the for sure for sure and I’m like dude you can’t like speaking of deer as as a meat Source cuz I know that well you you’re pretty passionate about all kinds of different meats and and about food being of story and of place so are you are you eating deer are you hun yeah I love deer I don’t I don’t hunt I’m not a I’m not a killer I just like I don’t have the patience like I guess I do it but I just never have the opportunity or it’s not in my list of interests yeah you know but uh I have all my neighbors hunt and I can you know I’m giv G I’m giv deer like constantly do do you like the meat do you think it’s it’s is it nice is it good oh it’s delicious I’m actually making right now I’m curing uh two uh hindes as pruto okay in Italy they have PBA which is dear p p I guess and uh I got to a point in my career where I feel like I can turn anything into Pudo I’m confident like that any animal can be Pudo yeah uh I’ve done that before actually with a hind of a deer I was lucky my people I lived with one of them is absolutely brilliant chef and so he he took it and salted the crap out of it and it was amazing what we ended up eating I don’t even think we really ever gave it long enough to fully finish but we were just slicing off pieces every day to I I would say my my only little thing that I would say about deer Meats like all this GMO corn that they’re eating it’s like yeah there’s something to that I I I don’t know if I’m over you know if it’s if it’s drama for nothing but it’s still no for sure it’s a thing man they’re in the cornfield every day my Farmer said that he’s uh my neighbor said he’s going to have no crop because that massive herd which is like across the street from my farm where that pig Nursery is there yeah looks like my house that I bought the house that I have was exactly that building the same building and um well there’s that massive herd there and he said we’re going to have no soy out of that field that’s like not a small field that’s like that’s a seven or eight or N9 acre field of soy he says we’re not even going to pick it they spend every night in that field of deer yeah you know and it’s funny because some you know my my buddy Primo he’ll go out at night you know for a for a roadside pee before going to bed and he brings a flashlight turns the flashlight on and they de like just on the other side of the road they’re all standing there like 10 ft from the house that’s the Art of Living oh boy well you know it’s it’s just part of the it’s it’s it’s the Terry right now that’s what it is and there’s so many laws that can’t allow us to cook like at the restaurant here I’d love to serve we tried years ago um I think noral and Marte along with uh some lobbyist name who I forget want tried to uh open up open up that you know and I think at that time poin Mar government thought she was going to get in you remember that that was a few years ago anyway whatever I wasn’t interested in in restaurant things at that time but I thought it was a you know a good a good plan you know it it’s not much like we’re not asking for much like look at tuna right so gaspay now you know that wasn’t a thing like eight years ago getting blue fin tuna from gas Bay to Montreal restaurants was not a thing you never heard of that I didn’t even know there was blue F tuna out there I don’t even think the fisherman knew either right so it’s a new the the the Tunas it’s new that they’re there the blue fin Tunas being trucked into Montreal restaurants is a new thing right it’s like not a new thing 10 years old you know I think it was first like Norman shantan I saw that fish like it’s bigger than the table oh yeah they’re huge they’re like Austin minis sometimes um and I think the number one fish kind of still go to Japan because it’s a very sensitive way of catching that fish and and uh and and killing it and bleeding it and getting its body temperature down really quickly okay right so but so those fish that say that do pass muster at the dock where the fishermen aren’t you know know more what they’re doing perhaps than the others those those those are prize fish and they may go straight to New York or even packaged in a thermal blanket with ice and sent over to Japan they’re they’re just Japanese buyers or guys that are certified to buy for the Japanese all along the east coast where tuna’s being caught because there are some of these fish are 50,000 bucks $20,000 you know it’s no joke that industry and uh but we see those fish this a wild caught fish now and the restauranter have found fishermen you know but just by getting into the Yellow Pages uh and calling a few guys with boats you’ll figure out you know who who’s got the licenses and uh we see some fish now showing up in Quebec and some restaurants like P koson will buy a whole one and break it down and you know and took okay we’ll get one loin Joe Beef might get a loin and then charlon you know they’re broken down around the city yeah and it goes well and it’s only a seasonal thing right it happens once twice a year at one at a certain time uh I don’t see there’s no reason that that couldn’t happen with deer uh you know with the the the phone uh you still have to get your tags I don’t know can we you know we still have to the animals have to be butchered in a real place it’s also that because that problem has so much history behind it which is that deer were almost driven to Extinction in early like in the early 1900s they almost were extinct in North America from Market hunting because that was how people were sustaining themselves so then income the regulations all there’s um various things that happened along the way and then that now brought the population back to too much in so many places but the main worry with selling wild meat is for one you’re now incentivizing like a kind of more of like a black market of it of some sleazy people that go out and kill a bunch at night M and try to make money off of it so but you could just regulate that right 100% a sturgeon fisherman a sturgeon fisherman we used to have a house in camarasa and in camarasa there’s two big fishmongers there there’s one of them called wallette I think he still has a sturgeon a sturgeon license right and uh one night I saw the lights were on at the at his fish store like past 9:30 and I saw like the pickup truck was right backed up to the front door it was this trail of blood like through the front door of the shop so I said oh this is interesting I was just walking back from a restaurant and I follow and I go inside and there’s an eight or n foot giant sturgeon wild CAU that he he brought in caught from stence up there it’s the water is salty and uh there’s a lot of sturgeon there there’s an eel fishery in camarasa still to this day and uh it’s good fish and uh so I saw these big sturgeon and I go what do you do with the caviar and he explained to me we have to when we catch the fish we gut them and we we have to throw the caviar out isn’t there a major penalty for that if I bring in if there’s an ounce of caviar in my boat or they will freeze my bank account yeah close my store down seize my boat my V like it’s no joke like they follow that to the line right it’s if you’re caught even with a cup of caviar you’re basically doomed so he’s throwing it away they have to throw it right back into the St Lawrence because it’s a meat industry as sturgeon meat right because well if they opened up if they said hey we’re starting a caviar thing they think there’d be no sturgeon left in the St Lawrence 5 years later yeah because of how much money you can make from it right yeah so that’s probably you know like I’m sure that’s something we screwed up in the past hence incredible legislation today uh the same thing with deer they’re just terrified of opening it up again and then who what restaurants get deer meat is it going to be the top 10 restaurants and then you’re going to have the top you know 100 restaurants angry right so if you open it up you kind of have to open it up yeah the politics of all of that it should be a government call they used to do it up North with the Caribou when the Caribou was plentiful today they’re not plentiful they’re even I believe endangered from what I understand um um so you know uh but you used to be able to buy government call Caribou Hinds and then uh I think a disease swept through the herd there and they’ve never theyve having big problems are covering one nice thing that’s done with deer meat it’s done quite a bit in the US I think there’s smaller programs happening here but they’re not as well known yet is like Hunters helping the hungry or the homeless programs where because in in New Jersey for instance hunting there’s a major side of it that is all is known as conservation hunting it’s people that are really hunting with that as their primary purpose in mind of of just simply reducing the population because the the deer are preventing Forest regrowth so like they’re essentially threatening the the future of a of a given Forest which is wild and like you know the the dominant P species that are going to be in that climax Forest that’s what mostly the deer are eating all the saplings of so the for conservation Hunters you know the conservationist they want someone to come and kill a 100 every year and then they’re just donating all those to homeless or or these programs which is pretty interesting but I don’t know if there’s parallels there with what could be done as well I’d be pretty pissed if I was homeless and I was getting deer meat all the time like it’s good but like you know I struggle with it I like eating it but like I don’t know you know once a month yeah not even once a week Chris yeah I don’t know if that was in your in in your cards but I’d love to hear more about natural wines oh actually I do too yeah and uh you know you’re great Dave at explaining what natural natural wine is what it isn’t it’s like the 101 because you know obviously there’s a lot of hype around it and there’s the essence of it that is in my opinion really pure and really what we want but then there’s all the misunderstanding of what it is and what it is yeah so let’s get through the misunderstanding part right uh natural wine is a weird thing you know I’m also feel like I’m getting away from the term myself personally because I just expect wine right to be natural well yeah wholesome say like uh I eat high quality eggs mhm right and we all know what it takes to for you know non like a a non good egg and a really good egg uh I like wholesome vegetables I like to buy you know good Quality Meats when I say that I’m not talking about A5 wagu super like I’m just a good a good a good chicken a good rabbit a good duck some good local asparagus good pumpkins good you know good butternut squash good good food right uh and I expect that from the accompanying beverage you know I expect that from beer you know I’m sad that a lot of beer is not organic you notice that there very like the the craft beer movement it’s kind of hip and CHS out a lot almost excessively too much different beers but I don’t hear the craft beer movement upside from L castal to be honest yeah we don’t really know them L castal is organic yeah they’re not that organic grains they’re popular in the city yeah uh so whatever so I’ll move aside from that but let’s say just not a shout out to you craft beer guys maybe your next mood move is organic uh grains the small farming world corre I feel like they don’t really or it’s not happening so much yet yeah it should I feel it should be kind of maybe more the play than the latest cool hops from New Zealand on the other side of the world um so when it comes to natural wine I just think I a wholesome product when it comes to Wine I don’t want to say natural anymore right uh just a good healthy small Vineyard I don’t want any wine that say we bring into the house or that my guests drink to be you know I don’t want it to be the 1 millionth bottle produced of that that vintage uh the same thing as the chickens I don’t want to buy chicken from a giant factory farm I’d like to buy some good chicken perhaps from my neighbors or from a local butcher shop you know uh same thing with wine right so we want wine to basically come off good regenerative Organic Farms or biodynamic Farms whatever the people choose that works best for their situation I don’t see any you know you’re organic or you’re not you’re regenerative whatever uh or you just believe that you don’t need to fill out all that paperwork yearly and pay those extra dollars that you’re a good dude and you know a good family and and you’re doing a good J it’s not the label it’s not the label it’s not the label we we we see anyway like you know does this van used to say does the wine come from you know I want to drink wine that comes from magical Gardens yeah that’s exactly what I want from a from a friend you know food from friends is yeah I I want wine to comes from a magical garden and that you know that was grown by a family of which I admire their values and way of handling themselves right I don’t really want to drink wine from a cigar smoking Lamborghini driver you know not to be but that’s all cool if that’s what you want all the power to you but I’m just saying I don’t want to do small Farm wine right from mavi mavi is was great you know all everybody was great at one time and you know at one time Robert mavi’s story is just like most fascinating you know those are great Vineyard sites The tokalon Vineyard uh what they’ve done for the American wine industry is like can you know be counted and encyclopedias is amazing work what it turned out to be sadly you know as a corporate money grab thing you know it’s sad that we can’t even I I haven’t even seen a bot of mandavi lying around like know from the SAQ for a long time used to be able to get all kinds of products when mandavi was alive or even his kids but that’s not really much of a thing anymore I feel at least um so yeah you know and then there’s that vinification aspect so let’s say just assume that the vineyard is a magical garden and that the the family that’s farming The Vineyard is doing the best that they can at uh biodiversity at intelligent uh fungicide control or you know low copper spraying uh uh you know looking to use alternative sprays like um you know um microbes whatever like you know some people are using microbes we’ve seen baking soda harm harmless baking soda do wonders here in this climate in Quebec don’t know for how long it works or you know but so far you know I’ve been spraying baking soda in the vineyard and it’s great um whey some people use whey you know it’s supposedly really good uh uh term outs with wayy and anyway so that’s one thing so let’s just say the vineyard is the the fruits grown well then there’s a second part the the vinification you know the vinification should be kind of the same Spirit Same Spirit just let’s just try to do the least possible here that we can we can merate these grapes for a little bit we can we can direct press them we can uh do a little bit of both right uh we can choose to use wood we can use to choose Amora we can also choose to use aora from clay from the that that’s local that the pot are made down the street we can use glass we can use recycled glass you know we do all these things to you know and to also do a clean vinification means that there might be you know sometimes wines taste a little bit flawed no matter all your best efforts along the way now chemicals can correct so many flaws right so what what your move do you correct the flaws I just wanted to ask though like what is on paper the difference between a natural wine and just wine I’d say Supernatural wine would be like organic viticulture followed by zero sulfur uh additions of uh the wine so just like a natural fermentation uh and then settling of the wine naturally and then basically no added anything to the wine so because the other wines are adding things to do what exactly they’ll add sulfur filter uh I’ve heard that they can add up to 100 different products to oh yeah couple see the thing is is like I don’t even know that’s why when I say like I can talk about food yeah till I’m bleue in the head but it’s also a good thing to like the I know so little I don’t know what the chemicals are and I’m better off that way to be honest yeah yeah I hear you cuz if you’re a full-blown analist and no respect to anist no disrespect to anist whatever it’s too much information I only know how to make natural wine okay because it’s just the simple way of making wine I don’t know what yeast looks like I don’t know aside from the sulfur that we use in the vineyard right the powdered sulfur there’s another sulfur to put in wine I’ve never seen it right yeah I don’t know what it looks like so it’s like when people ask me what what is this uh weed like I don’t really know weeds because my Gardens are always clean like I I don’t it’s it’s true like I don’t know the whole gamut of different weeds and all the different pesticides that you can use in conventional farming because for 20 years I’ve been farming not that way like it’s the same thing yeah it’s just say apples you crush the apples and they ferment and you bottle them and you hope for the best yeah I’ve always felt that or I’ve always seemed to me that natur when I hear about the natural one I’m like that just sounds like when you make cider like like it traditionally it seems like generally speaking most cider is like natural cider in the same way natural wine is natural wine sure but the cider you look at the weird point of cider you kind of want like Fallen fruit from never sprayed trees that you harvested wild would be the Apex of cider yeah yeah yeah you know you discover this ancient Orchard off a road somewhere down here it’s got these massive trees full of weird apples that are unidentifiable right and you turn that inside that’s kind of cool right that’s like the best of the best yeah right these 100 like 100y old trees of weird apples yeah probably cider apples you know but but you’re right to connecting the the natural the natural uh wine movement for me like i’ I see it a lot in Europe in France mostly it’s like what it has allowed is to have smaller Vineyard smaller independent ly owned wine makers have a market and really Thrive and really push products that are just kind of not commercialized well kind of what you did to farming is that natural wine is to like you know everything used to come from bigger farms and then you came along and taught all these people to grow have small farms and now we have restaurants it’s we have many young people that have followed your model that want to sell it to restaurants and so that’s really cool the same kind of thing happened let’s say in natural wine if you think all of there was there was this I want to rewind a little bit and just explain there was this kind of period in time where there was these restaurants that were using topnotch divver SE scallops beautiful duck from whatever Farm perfect chicken so the chefs already had this beautiful mentality of seeking high quality proteins and pairing them with high quality vegetables the chefs were already working in the local parameters you know all the food that the chefs were buying was sourced to the closest to the kitchen as possible and then there was this this cut off this thing that didn’t make sense the wine list didn’t make sense so there’s the chef and his team in the kitchen the back of the house we say producing all of this beautiful crafted food made you know from local farms and then you have this saw in the front of the house in the dining room suier who’s basically buying the wines of wine spectator magazine right basically he’s focusing on wines and what they scored or what they are raided on where they’re from uh the Rarity of how they’re complicated to get and the psalm didn’t really have the same holistic approach as the chef did there was a there was a a disconnect a disconnect there and I see that like very you see like this to witness that and think why is it this why is this wine list full of weird Italian wine like they know commercial Italian wine and Commercial California wine and Commercial Australian wine and and the food is Sublime but there’s a disconnect with the wine list this podcast is proudly 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chefs and wine buyers because there’s you know Psalm is relatively new there’s very few Psalms like even 10 years ago you know it’s kind of a new addition to the front of the house restaurant team that’s that in Montreal terms I mean right we couldn’t even afford to have a a person on staff that was buying wine only right but as the Psalms started eating out and say having better friendships with the restaurants I think that the S wanted to do as good of a job on the wine list as the je was on his menu so there became there became to be a connection there so we see restaurants becoming drastically better quickly and don’t forget also there was there was a problem there was an we needed years to educate the the clients but he couldn’t just all of a sudden you know wean the dining room off the white and red wines that the general population were accustomed to mhm right there’s a for for kind of like transition it’s a multi-year you can’t all of a sudden you know the whole wine list now is like only natural balet and weird wines from the lir and uh you know you can’t people you know are accustomed to drinking Cabernet Soo and chiraz and Oki chardonay this is a Jeff he lives an hour away and yeah I remember I’ll tell you a funny story like you know I used to run globe and the wine list was more conventional at that time we were doing good work in the kitchen and um and one of my friends back then Jean Philip from G was he’s an importer who’s still a prominent importer today you know was bring start you know bringing in started off basically like the f one of the first natural wines that everybody tasted all those years ago was Marcel La Pier morgon which is still beloved today yeah you know but today seems to be a little bit more stable of a wine you know on a bigger Market than it was back in those days but but I remember Jean Philip had brought us this Chateau de comone that was vinified by Marcel La Pierre you know back in those days and uh I’d never had any wine like that he basically opened the bottle and it start it had refermented inside the bottle and it was it was foaming and he goes no don’t worry about it you put your thumb on the top and then you shake it up and down and eventually the bubbles go away then you serve it to your customers and I was like I can’t do that customers going to freak out and walk away and plus what is this flavor oh this Carbonic mation this one is like you know he’s kind of like the Godfather of Carbonic mation so you know so we had to go and you know orange wine was a stretch you know getting everybody had their first orange wine in the last eight years yeah you see what I’m saying and everybody was it couldn’t get enough orange wine and now we see like the orange wine sales kind of dissipating to where they should be right yeah so cuz for for a long time there was just like they say there was three wines red white and Rosé all of a sudden there’s red white Rosé natural white natural Rosé natural mation you know like all of a sudden we have like nine wines to deal with and we just had three or four right I want to tell you what I feel it is like the natural L is exactly what you said this guy doing this in a very special way probably limited kind of bottles it’s not just like a and that’s what the S is here to say and they like we’ve tasted this wine we like this guy we like how he works we want you to experience this with this person’s you know expertise is and and I think and then from one wine maker to the other The Taste is different because they have different experiences different moods ter ter they’re working with this and and just getting back to wines that are told in that way for me is what this is and there’s an extreme that can’t be taken too you I see it happen in Montreal restaurants like you know you know when people there’s things like this happen there can be extremes like in Portlandia a little bit yeah somewhat like Portlandia like they said like my mom you know or my dad like yeah they they they’ve lived their lives yeah and they deserve not to be spoken down to by a 31-year-old somier who’s a zealot for natural wine my mom just wants a glass of sh do your [ __ ] job sorry should but but do your job and get my mom a glass of wine that tastes like she doesn’t want you to explain to her that this guy’s got goats and he puts seaweed in his Vineyard and you know like just you you when you work in the dining room you got to be a chameleon you got to be a different guy at every table that you’re serving for you know you got to so my dad likes a nice red wine just get him a nice red wine okay don’t get him don’t get him something that’s fizzy don’t get him something carbon just get him a normal glass of red wine so you know we’re getting there though now you know I feel that even natural Wine’s turning around turning the corner to becoming clean wine we have like nice wines that taste like CH you know like finished chiseled precise classic wines but that are sulfite free and originate from organic Vineyards and that was you know the play from the beginning we had to have all the weird experiments and this and that but at the end of the day give me a beautiful super clean Chardonnay that was farmed organically and that was vinified clean okay tell me Dave educate me here because when I travel in the US oh it’s so tough I don’t I never see this kind of wine and I’m wondering is is is the US kind of behind on this why why isn’t there like all these local young Farm doing natural wines everywhere there are and there’s a Resurgence and we’re going to start seeing that now because there’s a lot of even young wine importers in Montreal uh that are paying attention to the young wine makers of California that are coming up you know so it’s oh yeah it’s totally happening yeah the thing is is I don’t know you know how much the W how the wines go to market you know the grocery system and the distribution system in the USA is something else right so to get natural wine into like a into into like a a grocery store I think is where you know may never happen the way that it looks like to me right but there’s great natural wine importers in the in the US zro Vine selection Jenny and franois that can ship all through the USA right Kermit Lynch has always done a great job on the west coast on you know Sylvester rovine on the west coast does a great job uh and so far you know natural wine availability is uh getting better all the time there’s a great app called the raisin app right and wherever you are in the world if you kind of turn on this app and uh you let it geotag you it’s basically going to show you where natural wine is around you you can be anywhere like you can be in a place where not like I I I spend I like Miami for some weird reason because I like eating Seafood but I go to Miami and the we can find natural wine in Miami through the raisin app that’s usually how you get good food too yes they they they kind of Link together in or restaurants that fit the style of life that you live and the people that you know you yeah that’s just how it is because we are just like hobbyists if you think about it right we’re we’re H we’re Farm hobbyists kind of you know but there’s also a podcast going on right now somewhere where there’s three guys wearing Ferrari shirts talking about Formula 1 right yeah yeah so and those guys like different restaurant than we do we’re just there’s a great movie if you want to see it about natural wines called mondovino M and it’s I highly recommend it to everyone it just explains what happened with what was the the famous uh American guy that Parker yeah how Parker kind of like distilled the whole Blended the whole taste because he he kind of had a strangle hold over the wine industry for a long time because he was rating wines basically on on a concentration scale yeah like if you ever taste a wine from Robert Parker that scores 100 points I I believe that to be completely undrinkable yeah he deemed that restaurant that that wine 100 points but you know that’s the whole industry into kind of like putting all these chemicals to have wine that would taste that just to follow the trend somewhat kind of you know the movie kind of explains that and I think it’s a great primer for people to kind of get it a little bit you you have that those lines are never going to disappear you know those big wine those big wineries they make you sick like if I drink one glass of red wine at the airport man it’s the next day I have a headache if I drink three glasses of wine of natural wine like the next day I’m ready to barbecue yeah I believe that sometimes there’s a you know there that’s re let’s say be more like allergen free I think sulfite you know and sulfur affects people in in a certain way just like they say MSG safe for you but I know that if I have food leading with MSG I get this kind of weird left of left left of my left side of my brain headach you know that that I can’t get over I like the way MSG makes a carrot taste you know but I also know that it’s also going to come with a headache but supposedly according to science I’m wrong yeah but but whenever I have MSG I do get that headache yeah right can we talk about chickens yeah we can talk about chickens cuz it seems to me like there’s there’s wine on your farm and there’s also chick chiens and that you’re really into chickens I like chickens a lot uh you know they’re dirty little animals and um I wish chickens were friendlier you know like you could cuddle them yeah that’s kind of what I wanted when I started like you know getting chickens and they wouldn’t poop on you while you I thought that I saw myself having dinner you know having dinner over like watching the sunset over the vineyard you know surrounded by my chickens with one my favorite chicken maybe sitting on my lap wow you know and like the reality of that ising on you right exactly yeah but then you know we have them free ranging around our house there’s three of them and they always are in the front porch like in front of the bay window and then that’s where we enter and leave the house and there always [ __ ] there and every time I open the door even sometimes they’re there they’re in the house and then if they’re not there the [ __ ] is is there and I’m like oh my God like chickens for me like it’s like I would yeah do you have a rooster I don’t have a rooster I mean I’m actually a big fan of roosters yeah I have you have you have a good rooster yeah yeah and when we just hatched eggs from from them what kind of rooster you have there you know it’s a Brahma but before that we had a a blue won do but he died un unbeknownst to why probably swallowed it just happens and then we actually just had a chicken this weekend I think it’s called SAU crop you ever had that or you know what that is it’s their crop like which basically the equivalent of their not really their stomach but it’s where they hold food uh before like and where it starts to get digested it can have like a yeast infection some I think it’s that and then it if you hold them upside down they actually essentially vomit but they’re not really vomiting the way we do it’s just pouring out of the crop and it’s but it can kill them the sour crop and how many chick do you have uh we just have seven seven we’re going to add more to the oh I have 18 but will be up to 60 I think in the next 3 weeks okay ah yeah and we’re going to hatch some more we just put in I believe to be 45 Ducks maybe okay are you hatching your own uh I’ll the chickens yeah I have an incubator yeah uh my flock is a little bit weird right now because I went through like a flock then we incubated uh a new flock the problem is is you know I had a bunch of different roosters M so so I’m not sure what everything is right now everything looks a little bit mixed blood and uh but we have a great rooster now we had a bunch of different roosters that were I don’t know man there a mean rooster is a terrible thing to have mean and just like dumb or just unregulated like crowing all the time like you know I was just like you got to go buddy like I love you you’re gorgeous but yeah you know so now we have a good Bron rooster who crows in the morning and when there’s danger right and he’s very prolific and uh he he’s a solid rooster I have to say like we’ve had a few roosters and this is our best rooster yet uh so now I’m going to start incubating his eggs but I want to separate the female brons from the other birds that I have and just do pure brons with him uh and why why did you get chickens in the first place I was always Bron uh because of that first chef you work with yeah but also like I’ve read about brons I I’ve visited Bron Farms I’ve eaten Bron chicken multiple times uh I eat my you know my breast on chickens and uh listen I’ve I’ve at multiple breeds of chicken it’s it’s I have to say it’s the first time really honestly like it’s the first time that I hear a chicken grower if you can say that kind of talks like a chicken is a chicken yeah it’s not it’s they they’re not like there some are good for different things the bran chicken is one of the only chickens that takes fat intramuscularly Okay okay so you know humans we carry fat around our waist right you know around our arms around our legs uh you’ll see that with Highland beef I love Highland beef I love looking at Highland beef it’s the most beautiful beef to look at it’s not the greatest beef to eat because it carries very little intramuscular fat okay then you know we see today the crazy with wagu and we see like you know obscene examples of like very marbled wagu beef on Instagram which is more white than red you know it’s kind of gross you know it’s like eating a morbidly obese person somewhat you know it’s like it’s not it’s not it’s not okay to do that to an animal to a certain sense to have some good intramuscular fat structure on on a on wagu beef is is good you know this white beef that the Americans love so much is basically the Japanese don’t eat it it’s an export market for the US right um anyway that said the Brant chicken is one of those chickens that carries a lot of its fat intramuscularly so when you have a good fat uh chicken like a rooster um and you Slaughter it you’re going to notice like that there’ll be very little fat around the cavity where a lot of that fat is very little fat around the the thighs where that yellow fat is around the thighs but there’ll be this this weird layer of fat between the skin and the meat and then striations throughout the breast right that are just basically these little lines of fat right that you know basically it auto bases right uh it’s a great Bird plus their demeanor is funny because you know I spent a lot of time working in France and they are emblematic to the French this red white and blue chicken yeah and they’re they’re like my French friends they have the same kind of Paris Vibe attitude you know yeah they’re talkative I guess yeah but they there there there you go see right there I see it so those are going to Market see how they they they’re they’re all uh head-on the big uh nice that’s Happy than yeah to yeah this one to the right to the right just you see the blue feet yeah I see them when I go to market in Paris they in France they’ll also have a chicken that looks like that called label Rouge yeah you want to open it Chris this one yeah yeah you see him with that’s what he was talking about with his head on see the band around the leg the ring around the leg Yeah Yeah Yeah man I’ll tell you like it’s this is exactly what in my opinion the food Revolution is about like coming back to knowing the kind of chicken like having a special thing about it it’s like this this I when I look at that I’m like you know this is this is special you know you know you always say what is high quality dining you know high quality dining like my whole career I’ve had a great career supposedly high quality dining I’m cooking the best food in my career is happening at the farm right now farm right now that nobody’s getting nobody’s paying for it and like you know my chickens yeah with you know mushrooms from the forest and let’s say the my small asparagus patch plus my onions plus my last year’s Little Tokyo butter brazed radishes whatever dude it’s Lights Out it’s like sometimes I cook a meal I’ll be like 450 bucks this this is what I would charge to eat this because it’s so impossible you know the greatest meal I ever cooked once I was in camarasa and I was walking along and they were hunting geese and I ran into my neighbor who was a goose Hunter he just gave me a goose so I put I th I had a bag with me I threw it inside the bag I keep on walking and I I picked like a cup of juniper berries out of the Juniper bushes that grow along the the stone outcroppings along the the St Lawrence River then in the tidal pools there was all this Krill like baby shrimp I took my I had a trucker hat you know with a Sie in the back and I cved out another like two cups of these like tiny little Krill right I kept on walking I picked four or five apples off this like abandoned apple tree right and I kept on walking and I found these slippery Jack bitas mushrooms right so on my walk I was gifted a wild goose I got juniper berries I got an old sour apple I got two cups of krill shrimp out of a tidle pool oh I got a bunch of a sea parsley and a little bit of sea asparagus right and I went back I I cleaned that that that um that goose I brazed its legs right into like a kind of Stew I peeled the breasts I roasted off the breasts I deglazed the pan with the chopped Apple uh the Juniper uh and then right at the last second I added a little bit of butter and then I added the Krill shrimp right so then it is basically roasted goose with apples wild parsley uh C asparagus slippery Jack bolitas and krill shrimp like dude this is so not carrots and onions and no it was just like this is a a 1eh hour walk I took in nature and everything was from nature and it was a a dish that was worthy of like you know a shared dish for four people in a top tier Paris three Michin Star Restaurant gorgeous gorgeous meal you know I have like a million questions off of that I don’t even know where to start you go I I I just I just I I see the time and and I I want to hear you on on something can I cut you off for one second I want to say something I want to say something about so see that what I explained that that happens here at this Farm yeah you see what I’m saying I’ve eaten here sometimes you know I I I’ve eaten here a few times okay M and I’ll I’ll have a bottle of wine with my wife that was made here a kilometer from here yeah okay and and I’ll have in my during my meal eight or nine vegetables that are grown like I’m looking at the patches while I’m eating my meal where the vegetables are grown Y and and that young Chef is serving me a bit of chicken from a farm right around here and a little bit of beef from a farm right around here so we don’t have the silverware and white tablecloths and men in tuxedos and crystal chandeliers and and a and a and a wine list like a phone book and a beautiful address on an expensive Al of Paris right [ __ ] The Old Mill we at the Old Mill eating on a wooden table having perfect perfect food grown here everything local and it’s it’s it’s just genius right right and it’s not precious it’s not there’s locals that eat here that have never been to the city and go to restaurants or even my neighbors have no clue what Jo beef is or any clue about my career they like me a nice guy sometimes I need a hand they’re they you know but you know what what they’ve managed to do here is make people feel comfortable in this room eating uh this food right it’s good not I’m rambling I point my I appreciate it man like coming from I’m not just saying like I know because you’ve told me before that you like it here I just I like high quality food and it’s it’s it’s rare and it’s hard to find could you speak a little bit because you’ve mentioned you were talking about the objects of the dining experience and I’ve also heard you talk a lot about you know Hospitality like extreme Hospitality by like you know your passion for the kind of old timey dining experiences train cars all that kind of stuff where does that uh all those things kind of fit into your thinking now in your current life there still that you know and to be you know history the history of things has a a large uh you know impact on my life I I live I read about history and I don’t make any move without consulting history I love that Saturday Night Lights uh that Saturday Night Live skit that they did the other day did you see it the one about the Roman Empire no no no you didn’t see that it’s like Dad what are you thinking about like I’m thinking about the Roman Empire anyway I think about the Roman Empire a lot right um interesting yeah you know I look towards those things you know I was I was reading about bread the other day and then I saw this like article come up about about the bread of Pompei and the Roman bread the panis quadratus right which is basically a heavily spiced bread that’s like that was cut in split in four with a rope and that’s what the people ate back then and I was like that’s weird you know like that seems like if I was a baker I’d be all over this and I was like I was like [ __ ] bakers man up your game how are you guys all not making panis quadradas right like how is it that me who’s not a baker I’ve just read like 10 scholarly articles about panis quadradas right so the answer to your question is like history I guess like I like the history I like an old teacup yeah you know I like an old glass I like an old chair I like an old silver fork oh my God you know Cutlery I’m obsessed you know I have way too much information in my brain about Cutlery than I should like of an oyster Fork collection must be 700 oyster Forks just the fact that we’ve lost that we’ve lost that today yeah so yeah because everything’s mass produced and I like dude I have coffee I have teacups made in you know preoccupied Japan you know and I like love drinking tea out of them and then tea be going about tea like everything you know yeah just be inquisitive about silverware for fish oh yeah specific saw spoons people don’t even know what those are yeah a fish knife people don’t know what that is yeah you know we’ve lost a lot of of culture last night you know I’ll tell you this funny thing I don’t know and my girlfriend you know is French Canadian I’m I’m I’m raised like I know angone Kea and uh I’ve been seeing these like Instagram reels pop up on laen do you remember that the hockey or no that that that show oh they would come and do stand like they would go to different towns in Quebec and then everybody would come to I don’t know the church basement or the town hall and they would sing there there was guy and they would sing their songs from their Village and they’re always like answer back songs like you know today you know everybody go you know like and dude that that show like lasted that that show is bigger than tonal if you think about it it lasted 32 years so she’s it was on every Saturday I I grew up watching that show I’m old enough that when I was I think it ended in 78 right but from from 2 years old to 8 years old you know we had three channels on the television and I watched that show every Saturday and sang along while this guy visited all of these basically agricultural towns all over Quebec to assemble the locals and they sing their traditional songs right and I was like stunned like like I have two very you know Pro kebec French Canadian friends my wife being one of them and I said how how have you never heard of this and she goes I’ve never heard of it and then I I said text your dad so she texted her dad and her dad said yeah my parents used to watch that and her dad’s older than me whatever so we started watching them on YouTube so they’re available on YouTube watch them [Music] sayen on YouTube there’s a bunch of different videos some of them are dancing but they’re mostly sh and that’s like I was like what a massive thing that we lost with this it brings me back to that saying I’ve said before progress takes away what forever took to find and it’s that’s the everything you’re speaking to Kentucky embraced the Blue Grass thing right and today it’s kind of preserved through that right even the the cooking of Appalachia is preserved somewhat through young people wanting to reconnect with their past I’ve even met young chefs in Florida that are looking closely at what exactly is Florida cooking and I’m like that’s super fascinating import important and small scale farming is exactly this cuz the majority of these people did not grow up in farming like I feel like most new small scale Farmers they’re like Suburban Urban kids yeah most tricks that I got are from books from the 1800s like or early 1900s we’re going back to that even in viticulture like looking at those books like you know there’s the new prunings I’m actually we’re pruning a very old way this year just to combat we had a little Frost episode last year where I lost a good amount of my crop and uh so I’m pruning in a in a way that most people wouldn’t even approve of right most of my neighbors go are you insane and I’m like I know I don’t maybe I am but let’s see let’s see I’m leaving a lot of buds on and I’m leaving four canes instead of two and and I’m keeping one tucked in the earth and uh that’s what’s going to happen this year T TV plays a big role in culture for sure there’s a you know TV plays a big role which which brings me to Anthony boring because you were you were friends with him and you you have a history of him like I you know not that many people now in following me I would say know who this guy is really he was famous for his shows he he wasn’t he wasn’t super into farming but you know he had something about him that got a lot of people to be interested in food and Fine Foods and and what was what was his quality of of being somebody that’s kind of a carrying that message well you know he s described himself even on his Instagram profile I think his only there was only one word and it said Enthusiast right sounds like you too yeah well bet he was enthused like he loved all high quality food but could also you know penetrate through the nonsense and get to the Core Essence like is it let’s say Vietnamese food what’s my move mhm they would consult with many people do a lot of research they would go this is the move that’s the Vietnamese restaurant right uh French cooking same thing right like he was enthusiastic about about food but also about the purity of food where it comes from right if you look at London London is really difficult place there’s a lot of really great restaurants there’s a lot of money in a town like London is beautiful or Nate you know but you have to cut through all the smoke all the mirrors all the all the all the makeup you know you have to scrub it off you know you have to shave its head you have to you know and you say what is English cooking and why is it right yeah so he was real about that yeah exactly you know but in every capacity like every time he made a move like you know it was like you know he knew that Fred and I were too you know highly experienced Cooks crazy cooks that you know loved obsessed about French cooking and Cutlery and glasses and like Alan wine glasses and oyster plates and you know like all the you know all that stuff you know Fred was super into trains and you know we we always nerded out and then we get we built this restaurant where we could nerd out together and about all our nerd things and Tony was just another super nerd who like can I see the oyster Forks like you know it was just he was into it he was he was a super nerd as well he just understood that we were two boys playing all right and uh and we were and he also understood that Martin Picard is a big boy who’s playing yeah Martin is just living his life doing his thing and but you know what is Martin Picard he’s a big boy who’s built the sand castle you know of stuff you know he’s got his own way of doing things and he made it happen Norma same thing and then you know there’s a you in every Province there’s a me in every city you know like it’s just finding those people yeah you know and then he was also historically you know a nerd as well like you know we could talk for hours we spent hours in the car we drive you know from weird places like and our conversations or music history Cutlery you know food and Cutlery I know well I it speaks so much to me because I’m like I love old tools I love old things in general I Tony and knew about fireplaces like we talk about jodal jodal St number the squirrel one what’s the one with the arch in it where you can put the pot like you knew that stuff and I was like no no I love I love all cuz all these things again they’re another layer in the story of something that’s why that’s why history is so cool it’s another layer that was my point before when about theen when I said that people don’t even know what this is anymore yeah my my my un not my unilingual but my my unilingual French friends don’t know anything about these songs these songs are so important like I know them and then last night I proceeded to play 10 or 15 very obscure buts inan songs that I know off by heart and my wife is like this is a whole other side of you that I don’t know how do you know all of these French songs perfectly I go because they’re historically based there’s a song about torer where he basically the whole song He describes how to make torer and you just listen to the song and you like understand how to make torer right I said this is a super important song this may I’ve had somewhat of like a forlorn feeling occasionally recently of just thinking like looking at social media like what are have we just lost we have something that we’re never like there’s a weird feeling I feel like it’s very in the moment of just a loss of something that I don’t know if we can get back like a I way existing you know that we’re just soing homogenizing is exactly what it is very freaky we saw food take a hit with Instagram right yeah local food you say there was the thing you know B like there’s food but Montreal food it was a thing right then there wasn’t right because in what when Instagram well I’ll tell you two stories fast though take your time when I was a kid when I was a kid and we were cooking at Montreal restaurants you have to understand that this is I graduated high school in 1988 let’s say I was already working in restaurants by 1991 which today seems a [ __ ] long time ago okay 1991 92 yep uh 94 95 like for us to get information there’s no internet there’s no archive menus no they the buap magazine existed uh Gourmet magazine existed but nobody published their menus if we wanted to see menus of of famous chefs that we read about in magazines cuzz that was it yeah we we drive to New York City with a camera and we would go to restaurants and take a picture of their menus we go to 10 restaurants in a night we had no money and we’d look through the window at the food that people were eating and I would take mental images of how what plates they used how they plated the duck I’d heard that Jean George at this one restaurant had this giant uh glass tank full of pineapples and vodka and at the end of your meal you could get pineapple vodka or something like that or pineapple alcohol right but it was really impressive it was behind the bar there was like 40 pineapples in a giant glass tub with a little spigot right but we couldn’t that information was not available unless we got into our cars and we found it we took pictures of menus and then we develop them and I’d study these menus with my nerd friends and then we’ practice things and that’s how we got our information right and you had you had to be creative yeah a little bit yeah we oh that’s a good idea I don’t I like that less I like this this could apply in Quebec and you didn’t have all the information so you connected some of it to your own kind but then you come back to Montreal and back in those days the top 10 restaurants in Montreal were like La Michelle olier uh sh like it was leard it was a it was a completely different landscape right it was all super French it was amazing yeah it was like f we sell fvo that we used to sell brain like I worked in a restaurant where every lunch we sell 18 lit buckets of brain at lunch I couldn’t give away F like like I we sell two whole livers at lunch like two whole livers 47 portions of liver in a restaurant in Montreal at lunch on a Tuesday right kidneys you know know like whoever did kidneys in that restaurant was busy he did like 35 orders you know sold very little chicken breasts people had no interest in chicken breast or anything like that you know people e kidneys liver sweet breads uh weird fish anyway anyway I digress but back then Instagram came then Instagram came along and yeah it was a great homon homogenization right all of a sudden the young chefs had all this information at their hands and they didn’t know really what to do with it so like let’s say Noma the amazing Noma became a very deservedly so important restaurant in the world because Rene repp’s mind and his crew were doing something we never the what’s what’s Copenhagen like what is Nordic Cuisine like what is all this right all of a sudden we were being flooded with all this new information about like Nordic Cuisine and some of it applied a little bit to like Quebec you know we also have Juniper we also have pine cones we also don’t have vegetables in the winter we also like you know so so you saw this like Noma stuff kind of like because of Instagram growing over the globe all of a sudden there was restaurants doing kind of Noma food in Southern California at the detriment of the cooking of Southern California yeah because it completely takes away any swaying how Cooks cooked in San Francisco right it was swaying how Cooks cooked in Chicago it was swaying like before Rene rppi there was the other big like I would say cataclysmic food event was uh Fon Adria right from Spain right Fon Adria’s restaurant was the first time we’d ever heard of molecular Cuisine it looks like an olive you know smells like an olive tastes like an olive it’s not an olive it was some kind of like you know process to make something that looks like an Olive from cellulose or whatever I don’t even know nor do I care right uh but then everybody wanted to cook like Fran Audria then everybody wanted to cook like Noma and this the the the device that was propagating this information to all the young brains being molded was Instagram and Facebook but so we’re getting that information right I would even so say that you you know it was also somewhat responsible for basically the somewhat annihilation of I’ll get in a lot of trouble for saying this and I’ll say it anyway uh the annihilation of French cooking in France right because everyone’s looking elsewhere for and that paired with the the Michelin guide was almost the the the bullet in the head of country French cooking [ __ ] you cannot find and you go drive through the jur find the traditional cooking of the jur in the jur forget about it it’s gone the only place you’ll get it is an old ladi’s house personal homes private homes right you cannot find it try e the classics of burgundy in burgundy rest in peace that is finished escargo coov joner uh can gone finished I can bring you to five places in bone that serve nachos though right I can show you restaurants that existed for a hundred years in Burgundian Villages that serve cheeseburgers now okay uh so you know and also I’ll show you Michelin starred restaurants in the countryside that have three stars that when you go into them you feel like you’re walking onto the bridge of the star ship Enterprise modernity gone South the doors open you go into the bathroom the glass changes colors becomes opaque so they can’t see you uh the cutlery is weird all the waiters are wearing like shirts that button from the left top to the bottom right like like you know like design gone wrong modernity gone wrong the plating of food that say oh this is tonight we’re doing on my version of chicken with Morel and yellow wine right which is a dish of chopped whole chicken cooked in cream gravy morel’s and you know and yellow wine which is generally served in the middle of the table with rice or mashed potatoes right now it’s like a a little piece of wing with a line of sauce maybe a piece of coxcomb on the side of the plate one Pearl onion and the totality of that weighs like I don’t know 2 ounces like 52 grams of food as your main course right uh the chef as artist the chef as artist yeah it’s not you’re not an artist dude you know I have respect for artists the chef is a you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re a worker man you’re a you you you’re like a butler you you exist to serve I never forgot that too I existed to serve Hospitality right I am there to cook for you thank you the end the end we’re there to serve you yeah Wine and Food greet you say good night hope everything goes okay yeah and and and you learned from tradition and then you at one point what you happened is that you put a big constraint where said we have just a few places and we’ll be creative that way but it’s the same in farming like I see a lot of young people starting farms and they’re like Reinventing how we grow grow vegetables and there’s people out there that’ve been doing it for so long and they’re not all right these older Growers but you know especially if you’re following in the footsteps of tradition sometimes you know there’s not a million ways to redo a dish or to grow C or sometimes they shouldn’t be redone yeah so what’s next we’re GNA have young young artists like you know repainting their versions of Picasso paintings or their versions of uh Winslow Homer paintings like you’ll I guarantee it we’ll hear it one day yeah we’ll hear some kids say I wanted to reinterpret the great painters of Maine this is my version of like Winslow Homer paintings like oh my God man you know I blame Instagram you know like it’s sorry can I yeah for sure it’s no it’s interesting I like I I feel like we’re collectively losing also our ability to think because we just let like we think we’re thinking but we’re only thinking through the thing we’re watching and reading on social media so much of the time cuz people just fill every void of thought with something to look at and you’re thinking about what you’re looking at but you’re not really thinking also being influenced sometimes you’re influenced wisla Homer again one of my favorite painters uh you know um said this one in one of the books that I have of him said this interesting line he more less said like to paint freely you have to basically never look never go to an art show don’t be friends with artists don’t look at anybody else’s art uh live us like only focus on your thing you know I believe that too I said Young Chefs like just find your [ __ ] find your move find your move find your move I found my move young and I never deviated yeah I never used square plates I never put a line of sauce I cooked this Bourgeois French cooking right that I learned I fell in love with and I practice it my whole life Fred same thing you know Fred still does it he’s still there today hammering it out he’s still very much in love with the old style French cooking whereas I see other people just grabbing like they’re just grabbing Instagram Trends you know they grabbing they’re grabbing they’re doing this like I sometimes I look at like you know the younger guys man who in no disrespect for younger chefs man you you know they’ll figure it out they’ll figure it out but I see like I look at their menus and I go oh he got this he has this book this book and he follows this guy on Instagram obviously because none of this is his right whole menu is copied right that’s that right what’s the importance of home cooking to you more important than anything I wish I had big bigger family right I have a big family I got I got I got four kids uh uh bigger than four kids you’d have eight it’s not that I wish like you know my parents lived in my house I wish that Andy’s parents lived in my house like C for it’s like you wish you had a bit of a village it’s kind of I like cooking dinner a lot it’s one after a hard day working it’s one of the things I enjoy doing the most it’s that’s what relaxes me and I also I’m like kind of maybe not verbal like so much like I love you you know like so much you know my my way to show you that I love you is uh through cooking through cooking like I’ll over compensate in cooking I’ll cook you a very lavish Tuesday night meal for no apparent reason right and uh cooking for two sucks right it’s just not just nature is not bu that way yeah rabbits are for four ducks are for four chickens are for four yeah you know a bottle of wine is too much for two people yeah perhaps no a bottle of wine is yeah exactly so better for three there four so you know if we’re 12 it’s fun I mean two chickens yeah you know and three lbs of asparagus one bag of onions you know 5 PBS of potatoes it’s nicer it’s nicer meal you know that at our farm Dave like and Chris you know model and my wife she cooks for every one every lunchtime for 20 years so there’s four to eight people at the house at lunch and then she cooks for everyone year round she’s a special woman that one yeah and she’s it’s all simple food and it’s all you know she takes 30 minutes to cook it and and it’s always good are there any Specialties that stick out things that are repeated a lot it’s like beans you know just but it’s just it’s always the vegetables the vegetables that are always there but to say that you know big part of us farming was also eating eating together with the crew not not at night not in the morning at lunch because we’re working together but that’s perhaps where you could create something with your own staff it’s like okay lunch you know meal time for lunch it’s like yeah and do you think home cooking is something that’s too many people are missing out on and is like in kind of threat of I understand in some places it’s tough you know like I I have friends that live in New York City and I just don’t see like them enjoying cooking at home like you know when your apartment’s just not great you know yeah uh same thing a lot of friends in London have like small places and you know depending you know if you have the luxury of space yeah cooking at home as wonderful also it’s more economical right uh eating at the restaurant has become you know prohibitive almost even for me I’m at a fixed income like I run a farm uh I I I you know I calculate my money um a little bit more than I used to and um you know a dinner out at the restaurant could be upwards of 200 bucks real quick you know 250 even easy and uh you know I can uh I can go to grocery store and do a pretty good job for 150 bucks and eat for week and a half you know for everyone so you know yeah and I feel like home cooking is akin to Growing your own food and Akin to making it’s just all of it is about taking a direct action in your own vitality and living 100% yeah I enjoy it so much um yeah I have a question actually before we go off that topic cuz JM had brought up Anthony Bain and I want to ask the question which is you’ve said before that you know The Culinary Kitchen world is all a bunch of pirates and and with Anthony you lost your captain so first why Pirates like why why is that the term that’s you’ve kind of chosen there and then how so was he Captain thanks for that question on um so that’s an interesting question I have thoughts on it the that are counterintuitive Maybe at that time yeah okay uh there’s been like a well Gen X versus gen Z okay we were basically all Gen X Cooks uh we just a different sensitivity a different mentality we’re raised differently uh we were more aggressive we were grown we were we were taught differently uh and that was like a weird Clash you know a few years ago right when Gen Z started coming in and working in Gen X restaurants we saw problems with that we saw you know we couldn’t use the same language we’ve been using for years we couldn’t push people or like the way that we were taught to push people uh we couldn’t do a whole bunch of different things which is for the better I’m uh appreciative and a fan of the sobriety morality empathy and kindness of gen Z I might not agree with everything right but I am a fan of my children my 21-year-old daughter her friends uh the up to I believe what right now is it 35y old crowd I would say is Gen Z is it might be wrong whatever no no it’s Millen I find the kids the kids are not self-destructive maybe the education system has changed I don’t know but this gen Z Kinder smarter uh gentler um more empathetic uh we just and it it and and we couldn’t keep on working the way we were we were like ah Vikings kitchen bro let’s all get tats let’s all get tattoos let’s like drink and like you know do all our paychecks up our nose and fight and you know like come on you know it was unsustainable I didn’t even enjoy it while it was going on half the time because I was always a nerd I always wanted to get back to reading my old cookbooks I always wanted to get back to like having a peaceful kitchen you know uh where we’ listen to the CBC or VPR and uh and work together on you know vegetable projects and Butchery you know and Cake projects and then have a service uh a dinnertime service that was trauma free right I loved working in those restaurants where i’ like more nerds you know but you know in the 80s and 90s kitchens were like you know it was like the Gordon Ramsay screamers and Marco Pierre White screamers like a lot of the alpha like the Renee reppies and the Fon adrias of the 80s and 90s were hard ass people right they were just they’d learned even in France they put an end to it right in France their chefs were brutal they used to hit I got hit in kitchens in France multiple times punched in the face slapped I got hot oil thrown at me salt in my eyes like the things that were done to me in French kitchens good God you know like incredible and you know it was time for a change it was time for a change I’m happy that it happened kitchens should be a safe place to work and with you know kind people and we can’t sobriety is a wonderful thing I I you know I went to rehab many years ago and uh you know I spent four years sober today I drink a bit of wine with my wife normally you know I no longer work in a high stress environment like a restaurant uh there’s not 25 wine agents trying to make me taste their wine every day uh all those things I can simply have wine with dinner you know with my wife and be in bed at 8 and not go to a bar you know like it’s like a normal you know wine thing but only after 4 years of like deprogramming and like you know being you know getting my stuff together like living a very simple life you know learning how to be normal again you know it takes a while to do that but you you have we have to say you have to say that it’s still it’s a special thing to be bogged together like I see them here in the kitchen like they’re a special group they’re different they I don’t want to say they’re like a this autistic but they’re kind of weird in their own way oh they all are all the kit are weird still you know they have their codes and it it’s like a farming crew but it’s even more more bizarre because I guess they’re tight you know they’re in a tight space it’s tough it’s it’s it’s in incredibly tough work like listen I I still there’s mornings that I wake up where I see opportunities like oh that build that space is empty I should open a restaurant but then I think about it for 10 minutes I’m like oh yeah okay and I’ll be taking out the garbage at 1:00 a.m. and you know and then the stops not going to show up and then you know like all the bad things that go along with it keep giving me advice about how to run this though that that I’ll appreciate the which one the advices about this restaurant just about about how to do it better like that’s that’s you know and if I can help on the farm side we that that way I I actually have another question about these thoughts of opening something um I heard you in 2018 when you and Fred were on Joe Rogan you were actually talking it sounded like about the ston farm for like the very first time or it was very early on and I guess it was kind of unclear maybe what it was to become but at the time I feel like you were thinking of like could it be like a small few tables and it was like when you on like was there a what were you thinking about sure I still think about that all the time like is it happening with the air I bought 50 chairs I remember je Martin’s partner here told me about this place where there was chairs you bought 50 of them about them all nice yeah I have enough chairs right now at the farm to cook dinner for the neighborhood and you don’t need to have a restaurant you could just do that just do it for the neighborhood I know but there’s a part of me that says do it and there’s a part of me that says dude just go to bed at eight you’ve you’ve served enough meals in your life AB you know you you don’t owe anything to anyone the second you start doing it you’re going to tell yourself what am I doing like yeah you know but you know when you did something for so long sometimes you you’re kind of you know you sucked back in a little bit right but the reality is now that I finally found like somewhat inner peace you know I’m sleeping a better you know I’m not still you know waking up thinking I’m in the kitchen and I forgot to order everything that’s like four years later I haven’t been in a professional kitchen for four years right and I still have traumatic dreams that the restaurant is full and we don’t have any food and we didn’t order anything and the staff didn’t show up and I wake up sweating freaking out right yeah all the time right it’s uncontrollable I can’t fix it still to this day right 4 years later I still some nights I spend the whole night working in a horrific service environment where everything goes wrong where the lights go out where there’s no more gas for the stove there’s you know like all the bad things they just happen to me three times four times a week during my dreams um so you know that said I’d like to do you know one dinner this year but I’d like to do the dinner when the garden is cracking the vineyard’s full of fruit like a popup a popup dinner or an event I just like to have a pop-up dinner and just not even many people like 12 or something 16 make a beautiful table at the bottom of the vineyard near the Garden near the pond do you do that frequently at all like just for friends and like larger groups of friends like have and I me I’m sure you do but yeah a lot of the people who come to the B&B uh our ex customers mhm and friends right um so I end up doing it more often sometimes like I don’t know I don’t look who’s staying there but sometimes I’m like holy [ __ ] it’s last like last year was Alan Richmond Allen Richmond’s like one of the most famous food writers of all time right that guy used to fly around on the Concord reviewing restaurants right for GQ and uh whatever other Publications the he was famous for having that giant fight with bour right because he was one of the most powerful food writers in New York for a long time time and he was in uh remember when bouran was Consulting on T the HBO Louisiana documentary anyway alen Richmond had a cameo in that so at the Airbnb there all of a sudden there’s like he’s there the most powerful food writer in the world is staying at at the Airbnb so you know he’s like and he’s older now you know and he has cancer and he’s a fragile man so of course he go down into the cellar find you know the best bottles of French burgundy and I made him a beautiful chicken with morals and yellow wine wow and uh we had dinner outside at the bottom of the vineyard wow sitting in the big chairs surrounded by chickens and uh I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again because he’s old and possibly has a disease like a cancer or something and uh I was happy to like cook for Alan Richmond one last time with the bottom of the vineyard he was he was probably happy also he was the best best best P vanon he’ ever had you know yeah that’s high praise that’s that’s nice did you do you feel like you knew at the time why you were buying the farm when you bought it or was it very unclear and you didn’t really know what was going on I think I would say that the latter you know just it was escapism uh it sucks to tell you that you know I’m 54 and I I can say that it’s almost sad but I’m not sad about it like I have no regrets about anything but like it took me to become 54 to become happy in my life you know even with like you know books and success and like you know like knowing all these having had wonderful meals all over the world blah blah blah blah blah blah I was just always a [ __ ] miserable person but your story of it is speaks to a lot of people because it’s all it’s like a homecoming of sorts you just return to I guess you could say the basics yeah but it’s kind of weird because when you analyze it you’re like [ __ ] man it’s a long time being unhappy yeah but you know it’s like the the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago today the same thing that’s a good one you can never forget that saying yeah always useful yeah yeah yeah but you know everything with all the good there’s a lot of the bad right and just I don’t know I love I love today I love now I have no regrets about the past and um it’s uh I still in love with cooking uh you know this is a wonderful part of the world you know this is the last by the way this area here it’s the last untouched part of Quebec I think like we don’t have we barely have gas station we don’t we like we don’t I don’t think like we don’t have nothing we have farms and good food we have farms and good food and there’s good wine and there’s good there’s good products and yeah we haven’t had urban sprawl happening there’s no uh strip malls there no Subway hasn’t made its way into here with Tim Hortons yet you know yeah and uh there’s not too much hype also it’s like it’s still I don’t want to say a secret but like even this restaurant you know we advertise it but we don’t we want to naturally you know attract who needs to be here and then that’s for us that’s good enough you know restaurants are tough though you know because as you know like you know they have to they have to bring the money have to make well they have to break even yeah for sure like sometimes a Country Restaurant yeah like losing money you know break even in the country is good enough pay all your staff you know keep the place looking nice all the fridg is working we’ll make it work Dave yeah we’ll make it work it’s it’s the second year that we’re doing it the first year was not perfect and the second year is going to be good enough the third year is going to be we we we’ll get there yeah make the change there’s no change to me this is busy yeah the changes are in the economic aspects of it running by the Numbers uh Dave are there any new projects on the horizon like books or shows or things like that yeah I’m actually working on uh I have a book coming out uh I don’t even know the title of it for God’s sake so before covid we sold me and my friend Stefano tagged along with uh Zev roine a natural wine importer in New York City basically one of the most important natural wine importers in the USA and uh another friend of ours xaviera who’s a photographer kind of pitched this book uh which is kind of based on the iconic meals of natural wines first families so these are not professional Cooks they’re professional wine makers right uh but when youy travel in in in France and you go visit these folks I believe that everybody has this one dish that they’re good at producing for six to eight people I believe you have one and I believe that you have one and I believe your wife does it every day for lunch right so it’s I wanted to capture that right so with zev’s portfolio and other wine wineries that he doesn’t represent we basically sold pre the concept of this book to rosoli which I was shocked you know rosoli is a pretty big imprint to buy such a collectic weirdo book but they bought it and then Co happened so we kind of sat on it and then after covid the the kids they went out to Europe and uh did all the photography of all these these these dishes and did all the traveling which is grueling right it’s like you know 20 something wineries you have to spend two or three days at each basically eating and drinking sounds like a no sounds like super fun but it’s not fun at all it’s a lot of work yeah yeah you know sleeping and like a car maybe or a tent or you know the barn or whatever stuff like that so that’s on the way I believe for the fall or the spring of next year or the fall of this year I’m not sure uh but it’s that’s coming out I don’t know the working title yet but it’s basically it’s a book of recipes and I have to rewrite all these recipes because these guys are not professional Cooks so there’s a lot of like weird like nice things it doesn’t make sense but I have to leave it in I have to work around it because I can’t change these recipes to my recipes right so we’ll see how you know it works but I test it a lot like most of them and everything seems okay but it’s going to be an interesting book for for natural wine fans that’s a cool thing super cool also pre-co I’d written a a treatment with Steph again for uh what was it called world’s oldest bars and restaurants I like just Netflix I like Netflix and I like all that stuff and I’m they they they rarely appeal to my uh sense of History right like I could just watch like Roman Empire documentaries like every day right but they don’t produce them and egyp stuff and right and I I am fascinated through my life I’ve been fascinated with like forever restaurants right that have not gone to tourist hell yeah right so there’s there’s a lot of them that have but there’s some that haven’t so I I sold that concept and then we had covid and then the company that bought the rights to that show basically started doing shows for the Canadian government with Federal money that were based I don’t know on uh other things anyway so now that show is being retooled old friends of mine that did know you know Montreal guys remember the movie hang the DJ so these these twins the lavila brothers they’re like producers I think they worked for scors and stuff for a while I don’t know they’ve done a whole bunch of stuff they did a documentary on Juventus they just did a documentary on the famous photographer Tony vakaro uh you know they’ve done all kinds of really interesting produ projects and you know somebody should actually make a documentary on them they’re so interesting but we kind of have this friendship and they kind of asked me what’s going on and I said nothing much they wanted to do a documentary on the farm like two years ago and I was just I’m not I’m making my way with stepping out of like the public view which I’m happy with right and uh I kind of told them I got wind of the my show is back I got this wrote it let me send it to you you can read it see if you like it I think it has to be Rewritten because it’s 2 years old and uh they took a look at it and now we’re we’re in process of getting it done oh so we’re kind of show I’d want to watch it’s kind of neat yeah I I was hoping that I didn’t have to do it right we could like find some cool but they want gen Z kid you know cuz all that traveling that it would require that’s not a fantasy for you that’s hard work it is actually like you know cuz I don’t particularly you know want to go to the oldest restaurant in Madrid that much yeah you want to wake up have your coffee and look at chicken right yeah but but you know for the sake I’m also on a fixed income and haven’t had a job in four years except for the farm so you know I kind of have to eventually figure out that I need to do something from November to may you know I I would work doing something from November to may like so right now I’ve been entertaining like working at the hospital as an orderly working at the Home Depot uh working at the fruits and vegetables section of a grocery store which I started doing when I was a kid which I loved which I seem to be the happiest doing MH and um not not going back into restaurants so we’ll see if this show if the show goes for it maybe I’ll do that but I am fascinated by working at the Home Depot still to this day I think I would be really good at it there are and especially like retirees that just go and do that for fun they’re so great at it they’re really helpful by the way I have a a personal question which is do you have a longdistance trains to recommend to go on I’m not the Fred was always the train guy uh but the I just sent this the French government put out last week that link for the students on that France did you see that no I think it’s like uh 300 bucks you can take the train wherever you want all over Europe for the whole summer wow France sorry just through France yeah so the as long as you have a valid student card from anywhere anywhere in France no but you don’t need to be French you have to be a French uh passport holder which my kids are okay yeah so they can do whatever they want there I’m fascinated still to this day from the Toronto BC One I hear that that’s really nice yeah that’s and you know I like via it’s cool like you know the sleeper cabins are good uh it’s five days though have you seen Viking Cruises though to get away from trains for a second have you seen these Viking Cruises I don’t think so so check out they their website they’ve got these like you we see them in Europe sometimes in the in the rivers like in the mosal and things like that it’s like these tiny cruise ships they’re really oh yeah yeah they they I feel like they advertise to to old people basically even though to me I’m like that looks more interesting not the big cruises no no they’re tiny little boats but they go through the rivers of Europe yeah yeah I’ve seen the ads yeah and they look great and then dining looks like solid dining room solid quarters and the boats are low to the water so I think every room has really good view it’s more old school it’s less of the carnival modernity yeah there’s also that uh the oran Express is back but I believe it’s prohibitively expensive yeah like it looks like for Louis vuon wearing influencers only and pek Philipe watch wearing guys like it looks like it’s beautiful to look at the images of the the new Orient Express I also think the food is inst being cooked by a three Michelin star chef and so on yeah it’s too bad because I you know I see in old movies the the the long distance train riding just looks like such a yeah classy way of going there’s just such a something about it Burlington New York is not a bad one nice okay that’s Burlington New York you can just drive to the station not an overnight thing but it’s still hours yeah it’s long drive you can eat on that I don’t know if you can eat probably not but you I’m a picnic basket guy I actually just bought a picnic basket like a real one yeah you know we have we have picnics here but a real picnic basket there with the flaps it open yeah yeah you they have some cool setups on Amazon yeah classic rapid fire rapid fire just some quick questions of random nature we’re running what’s a book that you’ve read many times or that you give to people many times the history of food by magalon T Sama I believe you can’t uh it’s the most important but like I’ve based everything on it right did you read that really early on I read it early on I’ve gifted it 40 times yeah and then any uh all of the Robert Hughes his selective essays on Art Robert Hughes was an influential art critic um of what era I’d say that you know 6070s 80s he wrote a book on Goya he’s written books about the the the the Fatal Shore was one of his most fatal I think one of the great Robert Hughes books is the Fatal Shore which is a book about the history of the uh emptying out of the Jails of London and uh bringing the prisoners and uh unwanted people unwashed people people of London to uh New South Wales in Australia so the the migration of uh The Unwanted people of London to New South Wales it’s like a historical epic but you know think a lot of things went wrong on that cannibalism not surprising yeah a lot of things but also all these Europeans that had always lived in a in a city all of a sudden are on a giant continent full of different animals and bugs that will kill you it’s an interesting uh historical read but I first and foremost me Sama history of food and then maybe any Robert Hughes book but fatal Shore you’ve convinced me to me too I want to read it uh what advice did you hear when you were really young that you only appreciated a lot later in life always my mother used to say always work like you’re the owner of the place you’re working at no matter if it’s a gas station a deener uh a restaurant a farm and I’ve always and that’s I don’t know why that stuck she said so much stuff to me that didn’t stick but that’s stuck so when I work for you I work as you right I take care if I work for in your restaurant I take care of your restaurant like it was my own right I believe your I your your what you want to achieve in your business I also want to achieve it for you and my for myself and there’s no limit to that if you’re going to pump gas be the best at pumping gas if you’re going to wash dishes be very good at washing dishes right if you’re going to be a waiter be be a great [ __ ] waiter and wait on people like you own the restaurant right when you I cooked for I cooked in many restaurants I didn’t own right but always cooked in them like I owned them and I got angry when things didn’t go my way as my the fictional owner of the restaurant you know yeah yeah what culinary experience of from childhood really sticks out to you in your memory if any My grandmother used to make uh toast but I don’t for this to this day and I’ve tried to do it a hundred times and I don’t understand how it how she did it but she used take grocery store sliced bread she would toast the bread slices in the toaster then she would butter them then she would put them in the oven for I don’t know for how long for maybe 2 minutes I don’t know but I’ve been I’ve been able to recreate everything that I’ve ever tasted that I you know through trial and error decipher and get there but I can’t decipher how my grandmother made toast and why they went in the toaster they were buttered and then they went in the oven and why they tasted the way that they did interesting yeah yeah and it’s been like illusive that’s really cool that’s what that’s your final mission to yeah figure the toast out um and what’s uh the best difficult decision you ever made I you know leaving the you know leaving the the restaurant business like leaving uh leaving being you know Joe Beef I what how many restaurants did I have at that time you know cuz I had people s me you’re insane don’t do that you know yeah and your whole life was I just like driving to that point right yeah but I was just like no I I’m done like I believed it my guts you know uh yeah I’m I’m content I’m content that they’re thriving I am I am content that they’re thriving yeah it was traumatic for for everybody you know a little bit uh I’m content they’re thriving I I’m content I’m thriving but it was it did cause me Stress and Anxiety and I did question myself for a long time you know of course afterwards you know but it’s all again only recently when I became comfortable in vid culture comfortable in the at the farm comfortable you know I just think I’m a better dad and I Ely when I became a better dad I had to leave the restaurant to become the dad I wanted to be right to speak to my children not in the way the chef speaks to 140 employees but like to like deprogram myself and become like I these fantasies of becoming the man the guy next door the guy who just worked at the post office his whole life that drives a little Honda Civic and eats the camera steak once a week has fish on Fridays how a pickup I just normal guy you know like I just always wanted to be that you know right have eggs and sausage and like not and read the newspaper you know and speak to my children gently and you know you know yeah so that happened right beautiful weird does that sound weird sound it’s like for the record I wasn’t speaking to my my children way no no but no it’s like when you’re when you’re I know how it is when I wake up and I have like when you have like five restaurants 140 employees at that time and then Co and you know there’s a whole bunch of you’re just like not not gentle yeah you know and the the gentling the gentling of me Y is a bigger deal than I like I wanted it it was elusive the heart work I had to do on myself was the gentling of myself m is that weird to say gent we had we had a we had a grower a farmer here uh come and say that you know her best advice that she got was you know never trust a farmer not to exploit you because he’s exploiting himself that’s smart yeah it’s kind of like probably in the restaurant business say that about the restaurant business it’s kind of the same you know that’s very very true because a lot of people exploit themselves I listen how many kids that I graduate that are doing so well like you know how many chefs came through those kitchens that are all doing well but you know what I feel like you know I bet they all feel that they were exploited by me and I feel like I I I feel I exploited them you know like 100% but I was doing the best that I could at the time with the knowledge and education and skill set that I had yeah and the training the training that I received was I was being exploited as well well yeah that I was trained to do the same right these line of works like farming is the same like my 20-year-old you know worked for on the crew with me for 5 years and it’s like we’re all about efficiency we’re all about business we’re all about come on let’s go and uh you know there’s many opportunities that I could have had to listen to what he was thinking about caring about was like okay come on let’s do it what’s the plan for today let’s make it happen and it’s like that is he still farming no he wants to be a banker so so so exactly though isn’t that the point right but that’s okay that we have scared out of it which is kind of I bet but that’s what the work requires you know if you want to be successful in farming you need to at least what I was doing running a crew of 10 and just making it happen it’s like it was all business one of my regrets in the restaurant business was always that it was like wh why did I why did we capitalize on it like that’s you know mhm that was like you know we let’s you go from doing like $5,000 a day in sales and then next thing you know like we’re trying to do $10,000 a day in sales and then we’re trying to do $112,000 a day in sales and then we’re like looking at the sales globally for the week and then say we’re like we did 80 that’s really good hopefully we can do 90 next week and I said that’s kind of where things you you know imagine we just say no we’re just GNA do 5,000 bucks a day forever or 10,000 and work less right you see what I’m saying yeah that that’s the anti capitalization of it perhaps but of course you have partners and you know everybody’s got different parameters and the waiters want to make as much as they can this and that it’s not only you you know driving the boat right you have to listen to everybody else at the table because we’re all like rowing the boat together but um yeah but one thing for sure the wake is not driving the boat that’s for sure and that’s where we always need to be doing a check-in with ourselves like okay where I’m at where am I going because the W if the Wake drives the boat then yeah I think we’ll leave it at that it was a great conversation I’d like to thank you both pleasure to see you again we’ll I’ll see you see a bunch of times this summer great to meet you yeah you too Dave love to have you over at the farm anytime yeah I’ve driven past a number of times I can make you a couple of bran chicks in the incubator so you can have your own actually yeah or if you want to trade some because we’re going to do some more batches with other people’s rooster with their eggs to try to get you know who’s got the best rooster on closing I know we’re closing this down but you ever see Big Fred’s rooster at I’ll send you a picture after the podcast that’s like I’m dying to breed that rooster what breed is I don’t even know I don’t think they know I’ll say I’ll show you the picture he’s just the most majestic musular looks like a Mr Olympia bodybuilder just a beast and proud loud and chill rooster screw you Hawks I’m here all right so that’s it for this week folks I hope you guys enjoyed this talk we certainly did and uh tune in next time to the market Gardner podcast I hope you guys are all growing I hope uh everything’s well yeah and make sure to subscribe to the podcast download the episode those things really help us out all right see you then see you next week guys J out thank you hope you’re enjoying the podcast these are important conversations and we’re excited to have them and to share them with everyone uh you can check out the work that we do at the market Garder Institute you can check out our website the market gardner.com uh our mission is to multiply the number of small ecological farms around the world and we do this by offering training online courses to new aspiring Farmers but also to season Growers we’re helping them take it to the next level so you can check out the work that we do uh you can follow us on social media you can sign up to our newsletter to get a lot of freebies about gardening farming but also about how small scale farming is changing the world and that’s really what we’re all about and that’s really what this is all about so again super excited that you guys are on board we are changing the world
3 Comments
I have chickens that I can cuddle. I will sit on my office chair with either of my roosters. Have to get them used to you when they're very young is all. Then just persistence. They tend not to poop when being held. I've been pooped on maybe twice in three years? lol
These podcasts are so good and informative, so many details and intricacies being talked about on each one. keep them coming
Great podcast. . All of this relates to the cannabis industry as well. This is how things should be done in all types of agriculture. Regenerative farming can regenerate the planet.