AERIAL TOUR AT THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON and what to expect for 2021

All right, welcome back to another episode, folks. The season's officially ended here at Ridgedale. And so I thought it's high time we do a last aerial flyover. And I can tell you about how we've packed down and what we got planned for next year. So we've been having some misty days, a lot of rain. It's been absolutely torrential this last part of the year. You can see most of the garden has been super nicely put away this year after all the spruce seedlings that we had germinating. And I think if you look at the forest over here to the left, this was responsible for just an unprecedented amount of seeds due to the drought we had in 2018. And because we didn't get the beds covered up, it just gave us so much germinating spruce seedlings. You can see there's a couple of beds of kale left in and we still got some sales to do. But we're also hopefully going to hunt some deer. Now. The deer come down out of the forest to the top left and they eat from the market garden there. And so I've done my hunting test this year with Alex, who was here for the season. And so hopefully we can get some deer for the freezer here. In the driveway you can see our new camper van. Johanna and I decided that we would take our holidays locally with the COVID situation. So we bought ourselves a nice truck to have for a few years to be able to travel around Norway and Smith, Sweden and Scandinavia. I've been here seven years now and I just haven't looked around the country yet. Really nice job. So all these beds have been covered with the bedding from the chickens last year. So we've become self sufficient with compost here and they've been broad, forked nicely and put away. Perhaps one of the most exciting things is we talked to our neighbour and it seems possible that we can buy this land. I'm just going to zoom up and out so you get a sense of the scale. So the land that the north beds, the market gardens in view now is situated on is actually not our land. If you follow our channel regularly, you'll know that. And then that forest, it's about 2.6 hectares leading up to the back that's just coming into the shot now. We're hopefully going to buy that and the neighbor seems agreeable to that. And certainly the right hand section of the forest used to be part of the farm. You can see that from maps. So we're going to actually move the Yurts and put both the yurts that we normally have for dining and education and put them on the left hand side of the forest from where we look now. And the three tent teepees I've got are also going to go in there for camping and events. And we've talked to tent teepee and we're going to get to huge stratus, their biggest teepees that open out like a witch's hat to replace these yurts and that will give us the capacity to hold bigger trainings and pop up restaurants. We're also going to put a camp kitchen inside the slaughtery next to the Yiding yurt to be able to have a better workflow there and allow people to see the chef more. Put the chef in a central role on the farm. But it really saves us the market gardens because the problem with this is the neighbour would cut the forest soon and destroy our gardens in the stacking of the lumber. So what we want to do is keep this timber in place. As long as we don't get any of the beetle we should be able to keep this forest here. You can see it's got an access path up the middle and then to the left of the shot is where I would put the yurts. I would clear a little bit of trees to be able to get some light down in there. But it's a mid age forest that goes up to the back of what's nut filled for us. We'll just zoom around the back and have a look at that. Now it's raining at the moment so it might obscure the lens at some point. I'll just spin us around. You'll get a sense of what that will do for our farm to have all this forestry. So that backs on to the top of Nutfield. There's a little bit of a clearing at the top where they've taken some trees on the right hand side here but a couple of little streams running through here. It's a very beautiful space. And having cut our forestry which if we zoom over here you'll see up to the left. I really miss having bigger trees and so it really feels special to be able to buy this land back to the farm and to be able to open up another enterprise as well as host people. We get so many emails from people wanting to visit the farm and we just haven't been able to host them. So we're thinking of setting up a camping and then our farm chef will supply meals as an add on and people can check out the farm and see how we do things. Just going over nutfield where we've been grazing through lately and you can see a bit of mud and disturbance from the eggmobiles. Eggmobiles have now been put away. They've been power washed to clean the inside a bit and they're sitting here in the front of Topfield where we usually keep them for the winter ready for filling up again. We take the truck up to the turning circle that you see up here and then load the new hens in. But however, this winter I'm planning to build two new eggmobiles that meet all EU regulations. Low cost ATV powered. I'll make videos about that as we go but I'm looking to make sub €5,000 350 to 400 bird eggmobiles that can hold full automation for lights, doors, nests with roll away nest boxes with a roller. You can see the ewes, they're huddling over close to Winston and the other ram who is in this forest paddock. We're going to take that small ram now because Winston is better and in full health and puts Winston back in with the ewes. Cows are in their winter paddocks already. We have so much winter feed that the cows are in the forest here and that gives them good access to water and a lot of shelter from the weather. We still got some grazing over on the neighbour's land here that we never actually got to, but we'll take that early in spring so things really shutting down, leaves falling off the trees. But a nice end to the season with a great team and we're really looking forward to next year. It's going to be vast improvements on the farm as we invest some more money into the property and really special to be able to have this additional piece of forestry and to open up camping to bring more social elements in. We've got some exciting trainings next year. We're going to bring back the short trainings on pastured poultry and market gardening. We're going to run our farm scale regenerative agriculture design courses and we're going to have a farmer meetup, hopefully to make a low cost weekend event for all regenerative agriculture farmers in Europe or further afield to come for the weekend, share their stories and be together and network and I think that's going to be super exciting. Some great compost came out of here this year. We've been filling it up again, but there's more to do to turn those a couple of times to be ready to use. But we're slowing down, packing up Finishing the shutdown. You can see the truck we got there. We're going to head north in a couple of weeks to see the north of Sweden. Something I've wanted to do for seven years now. And then later in the winter we might head south to see our combined families and get a bit of winter sun before we start the next busy season. But it's been a pleasure to share with so many people through the farm. Like a hero experience this year we've still got places open for that till the end of the month if you want to join us. There's 70 odd of the best regenerative farmers in Europe sharing their stories. What's gone well, what's not gone well, challenges, etc. Really exciting time. I'll do another video soon showing you through this forestry because it's a really magical space. I'm going to build some walkways in here and a trail that people can walk all the way around the farm to see what's going on. Obviously it's not in its full splendor at this time of year, but battery is running out now it's time to return home. Hope you enjoyed the tour. It's been fun doing these aerial tours throughout the season just to see how the landscape changes. I'd safely return Battery didn't hold up long enough for a bigger tour, but I hope it gives you a sense of how the landscape changes here throughout the season. I always find it fascinating to get that aerial view and I think a drone like this, I mean you can buy cheaper ones and newer versions but fairly low cost for the amount of technology packed in there. And it's incredible what insights and decision making this is informed. It's such a useful tool that I recommend for anyone to observe their farm. So lots of exciting stuff coming up over the winter and for next year. First thing is that our core team employment and apprentice positions are listed online. We're looking for four employees and three apprentices and those are open until the end of November. Now we are going to be favouring people from Europe and pretty much the way the COVID situations affected things will probably only take people from Europe closer the better. And so have a look at that if you're interested in those positions and get your application in. And we're also excited to announce a few short courses as well as our world renowned farm scale permaculture and regenerative agriculture design trainings. I think we've succeeded in working a nine day format for that so people only need to take one week off work we'll run two of those next year as well as running pasture poultry masterclasses and a market garden masterclass. Something I'm really excited to talk about is the farmer meetup and so we want to make a really low cost weekend event for hundreds of producers to come here and share their stories, connect and collaborate for the future. It's going to be really low cost event just to cover the cost of food and hosting everyone, but we want all the producers in Europe engaged in Regenerative ag to come together as a producer event. I'm really excited about that. We've also decided to make our open days in Swedish for our local consumers and customers. But I've decided to run a couple of all day farm tours with Meals on the Farm from Farm Food and that's to benefit the people who don't have time to come on a full training but want to have a good look around the farm and and really understand the systems and our approach to agriculture. So we'll have two or three of those in next year's schedule. All those things will be posted online in the coming weeks as we firm up the dates. I think this year has been critical to have some rest and to take some time out to get perspective on the work I'm doing and where I'm putting my focus, but to take some rest from the relentless pace we've had for seven years now. It's been really, really emotional year, but it's been really good and I feel more excited than I have done for years, which is fantastic. So lots of things to look out for. I'm also going to hopefully finish recording the audiobook of Regenerative Agriculture as well as getting that in an easier format for people in the US and Canada to shop. And so stay posted for those things. Look forward to seeing you in the video soon. Bye for now. T.