Bird Flu Lockdown; new flocks arriving...

It certainly seemed like the most hectic start to a season we've actually ever had here at Ridgedale this year.

I guess we are somewhat known for being super organized and effective, but the yard feels like the biggest mess it's ever been in. And it's just really made me wonder.

Today whether I should have started messing.

Around with our perfectly good eggmobiles and bringing up the stress level at the start of the season. It's going to be a mad few days now.

Okay, food truck is here.

Hens come tomorrow.

We were very worried that the truck.

Wouldn'T actually get in the yard because.

Of all this mess. This is the messiest the yard has ever been.

And I'm still on the way building these eggmobiles. I've had to pull the eggmobile out.

While the feed comes in, but it.

Reaches good news.

Unfortunately. There's a little jackdaw who's just been building a nest up here for the last few days. I've been watching a Carrie Stickson. You might be able to just see.

Some of the sticks poking out. So she's going to get mightily disturbed right now.

But there are plagues of jackdaws around here.

You might remember in the past, they've.

Been getting electrocuted on the old electric line. So the truck is blowing the feed up here through these pipes. And you can see why we were a bit worried.

With the.

With the access here because we got so much timber in the yard. He's got longer pipes than this, but the longer his pipe, the less efficiently the silo actually blows. And so they can struggle to fill it if it's too long. I guess that bird is out for lunch. We're taking one load of boiler feed. We just use a stove starter and we mix that up with grain that we get from local organic farmers. And that does this for turkeys and for layers, boilers. But then for the layers, we're using three different feeds. The first feed before they start laying, and then they go on to slightly different formulation, and then they go on to a different formulation again as they get older, which is particularly important as they go into tunnels in the wintertime to lower the protein a bit and stop them getting stressed in the wintertime. So, big day today. As soon as that truck is gone, I can get the eggmobile finished.

Hopefully.

We've got Malta arriving, who's going to be on the layer team this year, coming from Germany.

And then.

Yeah, try and get this ready tomorrow. Big day to get the birds in tomorrow.

And then we're going to have to.

Get these down to. Docked up onto the polytunnel here.

We're inspecting some lambs in the coming weeks and just a few sheep for our own purposes. Still thinking that we'll take a team to Coletta and build up the fencing there, that we can leave the sheep there over the summer. The main reason being that it'll be much easier to run the cows using a single wire than using nets.

You if.

If we've got lambs, etc. And because our cowherd is growing, we want to know we have enough grass. And I want to keep the grass cut at Cletus so I don't have to go and do it mechanically.

So lots going on.

We've got a big shipment of trees.

Coming, hundreds of apples.

We've got aronia to put out in.

The field where some of the hazels.

Have not done so well. We've got lots of ornamental plants coming.

For landscaping around our house, a few.

Assortments of nut trees, things like that. So lots of logistics with the birds.

These next couple of weeks and lots.

Of logistics with trees getting everyone settled in. It's always this ramp at the start of the season.

So this is where we got to to get bird flu ready. We have got two eggmobiles parked outside the tunnel. This is the more spacious original model, which we've got quite level here. And tomorrow birds are arriving. We're going to fill the eggmobiles. They lie. Normally we go up to the turning circle at the very top of the farm and put the birds in there overnight and then move them out into the fields. And the birds typically don't come out for a few days. But we've decided to minimize stress. We bring them straight down, put them in the eggmobiles and that gives us time then to build tunnels that are covered that will get them into this structure and hopefully it'll just be a few weeks. There's been five, six days without new cases, which means in theory, in three or four weeks it could be lifting. Hearing some of you folks in the uk, it's lifting at the end of the month. It's not going to be that soon, but this was tricky. We basically had to back this in with the rhino and then we had the tractor on the other side, just to be sure. We could pull it in if need be. And at the other end of this tunnel, you can see the other model, which has been very problematic for me. It's slopey land here. We need to come and jack this up tomorrow. But we actually fixed the puncture with some of this gooey gum stuff. And then as we moved it here, the other wheel punctured. It's just. It's been a day like that now. This side is not even finished. I've just put a temporary cover here, I've put in a nice cover here and I've managed to level the nest where it stands, but it's not ideal. So what I'm going to do is move this around in the morning before the delivery comes. Then what we'll have to do is have someone on the ATV and the trailer bringing crates of birds. And it's going to be more logistical than it normally is. Normally with the old style nest boxes. Someone's inside just uncrating birds. They knock on the door, pass out an empty crate, someone passes in a full crate. This time, I think with the nests and the constriction on size, we'll have someone inside and someone at the door passing them in, someone taking them further. It's going to be a bit more logistical. But then it's only for an hour or two. Every year I made a new door for this one that opens up outwards on the actuator and all systems are operational. Got the solar panel up on the top and so this eggmobile is going to be docked at this end of the tunnel. Now, as I said in previous videos, we don't actually plant out these tunnels until late May, early June for our tomato crop, but we can usually get a salad crop or one and a half salad crops in beforehand. That's going to have to change. This year we are definitely keeping the birds in for three or four weeks and hopefully no longer than that. If it comes around that the bands are extended, then we don't know exactly what we're going to do yet. That's for another video, another time we'll have to do some serious thinking. But it's. Yeah, it's been a hectic, frantic day. We've got more of the team turned up now, so we have apprentices turning up in another week and a bit. But the main team is here right now, so we're just meeting everyone amidst all the hectic getting things together and yeah, it feels like the most challenging start to a year yet. Obviously things have become quite routine here and so it's. Yeah, I'm laughing even though it's been supremely challenging because I guess there's not a lot else to do. Just gotta get it done and go with it. But as the ground starts to thaw out now, it's super muddy. It's hard to maneuver things. And so, yeah, we've done a good job considering and a little bit of tweaking tomorrow we should be able to get these level, get the tunnels built and then that should be fine. We can have covered tunnels and the birds can get used to that environment. And we were thinking to divide the tunnel so we'd have two pens with the separate flocks, but I think we'll just let them settle in. We can always put poultry net to start with and we can divide them up again later if need be. For now, we just got to get this happening. We got food delivered, so now it's on to getting people situated nicely and the rooms have been getting renovated, which is really nice. Meet the team and then we've got building projects, got the platforms to finish, we've got structures to get up and the logistics of all the poultry coming. And then in four or five days the boilers come. The whole brooder is full of new teepees and stuff that needs to sort out. So it's a lot of ramped up days now. Super happy about all the support for the Kickstarter. Thank you so much, folks. Will it all be worth the effort? We'll be reviewing this over the coming weeks. And that was the intention of this whole project, was to test these out, find the little nuances that make things work. And yeah, there's a few little tweaks that I need to do and for sure, as birds come, we'll find out a whole bunch more. And that's fine. That's the aim of the project and it gives me great joy to be, you know, working on a creative process like this that can benefit a lot of people potentially. And that's, yeah, that really stimulates me and I feel great about it. So done what we can for now. And that will have to do for now. The birds are coming and that's it. But lovely spring days we're getting. Just gonna turn you up to the sky here and it was lovely and warm today, but it's the sort of weather where you're putting your jumper on. T shirt jumper. T shirt jumper. Still minus degrees at nighttime, but then in a few days time it's starting to rain for the first time since last autumn and it'll be above zero night and day. So things are coming, Spring's happening. Can't wait to see green grass growing. That's going to be really the start of spring in my heart.

Well, got to say, at the end of this, last I checked this was rolling at 140% funded. That's amazing. Thank you so much everyone. Don't forget to get your hands on a copy of this. This is a CAD builds 3D model manual of how to build all the structures you see in our book and on YouTube. And there's bundles, PDFs and hard copies as well as copies of Regenerative Agriculture, our seminal work defining a new era of small scale diversified human scale farming. You can pick up both as PDF or hard copies. Thanks so much for your support folks.