COWS, CATERPILLARS AND HENS

Welcome back to another episode, folks. Lots going on as spring really ramps up these beautiful days. Things starting to grow. Got the first caterpillar tunnel up. We've received our new two flocks of hens and the cows have gone out on pasture bale grazing today. There's times when I really wish I could just share more moments of my life when I'm not thinking of making any kind of video or whatever. I just spent the last two days doing a conference call based training for the only regenerative agriculture training actually in European University. And it's fun for me to do these kind of things. I'm used to doing online training stuff. But we got into some good topics. We talked in the first day about regenerative agriculture and about our approach to our farm and then the wider aspects of regenerative agriculture. And then today was really focused on market gardening. But we got into some interesting topics at the end like thinking about the permaculture movement and regenerative ag and what the differences are and why we still call ourselves richdale permaculture, etc. I wish I could get you in as a fly on the wall on some of those occasions because I don't think I could speak about it in the same way. Just speaking to the camera, you know, when it's an engaged conversation, I feel much more impassioned to speak about, you know, what's true for me and what my insights and experience are. Oh no. We were in town sending packages away and we just heard the birds already arrived. So we're late for the party. Okay, look, birds are coming in. All right. We got here too late. The process is almost done. But you can see how this process works in older videos. I think we've made full videos of bringing birds in every year we've done that. I was just speaking to the man that we buy hens from. He's one of the. Well, he's like the smallest commercial producer left in Sweden, doing about quarter of a million birds a year. Next step up is, you know, in the order of millions. But he actually had a break in, so he wasn't sure if he'd be able to deliver to us. But I was asking him about it and he thinks like one thing I was thinking is because of the sort of Corona crisis, a lot of people have become more interested in growing their own vegetables, having their own chickens or whatever. But he thinks it's just people targeting farms that have pigs or sheep or chickens and they're basically raising them up, selling them on block it which is like an online shopping store here in Sweden. He said it's the actual fifth time that he's had break ins to his sheds and barns. So they've put up some much better security now. So 12 birds to a crates. These are young birds obviously, so they are not in lay for a month yet. So they're a little bit lighter than they will be when they're fully grown up. And as we always do, we put the birds in here. And they're not used to putting. Being put in this kind of environment. So we will leave some food and water and just leave them here overnight before opening the doors tomorrow. So you can hear the commotion on the outside. But that's fine. It's a big day. Big stressful day of change for the birds. But they settle down pretty quickly as soon as we leave here. Just gonna get a view underneath. You can see them. Yeah, as soon as we leave them alone now. In half an hour. If I came back here, be quiet. And they'd all have settled down. The important thing is just not to put any additional stress on. So we'll leave them water and food and we'll just leave them here overnight. They haven't got the back supports down on this one, which is not ideal. You want to have these down to keep the. Keep it stable so they can't roll. I see they've chocked the wheels, but seems a little bit inconvenient. Then these birds won't really actually come out of here. It usually takes three or four days. And the first brave bird will come out on the ramp and then come back in. And it takes a few days till they start really coming out and exploring. The first days they do come out, they just sit under the eggmobiles. But then we have the lights on at night to encourage them to come back in and give it a week or so. And then you see on the clip at the start of the video, as soon as you open the doors, they're out in a big rush. Ragnar's got an insect. Wow, look at the color on that. That's. I don't know what that is, but it's cool. It's almost like it's got a light in its belly. So Pen's back at the farm. We've got two flocks filling these two eggmobiles. And that's gonna give us plenty of good eggs this year. Little details of these crates that are cool. This is how you're feeling when you collect the birds or you taking off the floor. Now this Position here is if you take it from cages and inside, yeah, it's nice. It doesn't have any fix. Obviously the birds can't get back out then. Obviously you've got a lid on the top if you're working off the ground, but that's nice compared to our crates which have a clunky locking mechanism that's just unnecessary. These are actually nice. So where do they come from? Are these from Sweden? No, Poland. Poland. There you go. Okay, so won't be long till they're naturally roosting. All of them on their roosts. You can see some of them already got the hang of it. It's important that you have this mesh, this 40 x 40 millimeter mesh. It's perfect for supporting their feet adequately. They've never walked on a mesh before, but you can see they're comfy walking on this. And you don't want any smaller than this, so it won't let the manure drop through. So we're going to put in some food and water now and just leave these girls alone because don't want any more stress than necessary. It's going to be three, four weeks until they start the first laying and then the egg numbers will ramp up steadily for the next few weeks after that. So. So they've got plenty of time to adjust and get settled in at the farm. Look who's here. Mama's got two babies. That's the first elk I've seen this year. See a lot in the autumn, but they're just pretty curious. The young ones are jumpy, but the mummer is curious. She actually headed back towards me. I just check in the fish stocks in my pond, see if these fish are surviving the winter. This fish has grown pretty good. I'm gonna get them back in. Wow, that was crazy. I just went down to. I wanted to know if the fisher surviving the winter because I put a couple of fish in there a few years ago and I also rescued a few that were dying in the streams during the great drought. If you look back at videos a couple of summers ago, you'll see even the stream that normally flows year round regardless, dried up and there were dying fish in the little pools there. Now that fish definitely has grown because whichever one it was, it was bigger than any I put in there and literally took that lure about three seconds after the first cast. So that's pretty amazing. I've always wanted to grow fish in this pond because it's quarter of a million litres and I used to read accounts of the monks In England in the 16th century, they would grow a thousand trout in a pond that size. Now obviously there would be big nitrate runoffs and all kinds of issues that wouldn't be allowed today. But there's a good case for stocking ponds with intensive storable fresh protein in aquaculture systems because they're not fighting gravity, they're not fighting cold because they're cold blooded. And so they're very energy efficient creatures. And so I'd love to get more into that. I haven't found people that I could get fingerlings off yet. But also brown trout don't take so well to feeding, whereas rainbow trouts from a hatchery would take much better to conventional feeding. But the aim with stocking that pond is A, make more uses of the pond, but B, put fertility in that pond. That would translate to fertilization for the market garden. So we'll see. But that was exciting. I was not expecting to get a big impact from a little fish like that in the first few seconds. They're amazing sport fish. I grew up fly fishing and whilst I was spinning then, it's, it's amazing to see how energetic these fish are and great to see they've survived the winters and I guess there's half a dozen in there, they seem to be growing really well. Ah, it's too dark. Second day in a row I've seen elk when we're in a calf. They'll probably come across the headlight soon. So gangly. It's like hard to believe they're even real noisy. Girls and boys. We're taking the cows out because they have got too antsy seeing the grass growing. Now we're going to be bale grazing for a little while yet. And so the decision to make at this time of year is how to graze when the grass is so early in growth. And what we'll do is try and keep them as long as we can on their little sacrificial spot. We're up on the neighbour's land, so we've got a little pathway going around to their paddock. But they have been balling this morning. They are excited to come out. Come on, girls. Okay. Look who's excited. These calves are gonna go bananas. Hello, Clovermay. Mrs. Boscow. Come on then. Hey. Up, up, up, up, up. Let's go. Violet's daughter's off. She's often the troublemaker that wants to go and find ways to escape. But they are super excited just to see even the first baby growth. What I've got to do is make sure the calves get up here off road in. Well, the calves are still lagging behind. They're a little bit jumpy, but the other ones have started to make it through, so they'll come in the end. And I've decided not to try and harass them through because they're just too jumpy. But they'll have their mamas come back for them. They'll soon work it out. It's going to be really nice for them to be able to run and jump and stretch their legs. Not sure where to go. Shoes on your hands. Is that because you're.

I can run real fast like this.

Nice. Good thinking. Ready for anything. Okay, everyone's here. It's so funny. I guess most people have seen videos of cows coming out in spring, but they kind of don't know what they're doing. They're just grazing frantically, zooming around to new spots. What you see as we start to go on to our managed grazing plan is every time we open up a new little paddock, they're judiciously working their way through it. Right now, it's just happy to eat something fresh and green. Now. These fields are much poorer than our land. Just to get a sense of scale under the ball here, the grass has only just started growing. You can see some cleavers and different flowers and grasses, so there's no way of stopping them taking them. They will graze them down. And so ultimately, we're knocking this patch of land back a bit and that's the way it's got to be. Like, the decision was based around not wanting to keep them in the forest when they're balling because they can see grasses growing, they know they want to be outside. This is going to be great for these calves to run and get their muscles built up now and they will transition off silage. So there's not enough grass to support these cows even for a day. But we've got two bales in here. For this many cows, that's probably eight days of grazing. And so we might just work our way slowly down this section of the neighbour's land. If you remember from previous videos, we've got a big paddock over here, small paddock, and then a big paddock up to their house. So we want to try and zip through that quickly, but not really until, you know, grass has just started growing. It's another month now until we. We'll see, you know, really good stands of grass. So we'll make decisions as we go. We haven't made our grazing plan yet. But we don't really need it because we're bale grazing and we know we're going to impact this land. But better to impact this land than our land because our land is in much better heart. So if we can get a good ground cover going on over there, especially because we've got poultry of the layers and broilers, I think that's a better way to manage it. Proud pepper so we're actually going to cut and roll out this whole bale. Now that's a common thing that people do but for much larger amounts of animals because once you open this is haylage as opposed to silage. It's very dry. And so that in some way respects the physiology of the cow better because it's not totally pre digested. But when you open these bales they start to go off due to reactions with the. The air. So it's perhaps. I mean we have so much. And we're going to cut again early this year because then we'll get a grazing in later to allow us to graze into the winter. So we don't have any shortage of it. And actually this land has got some really bare patches from when they did the forestry work because they brought all the logs in through the neighbors here. So it wouldn't actually be a bad idea to have some of this laying out on his track to help cover and seed it. So we'll see. It's. It's not something we've ever done due to animal numbers except when we had 50 sheep as well as the cows. And then we've. We've done it because they'll eat through it much quicker. But we'll roll it out and see what we. Watch out cal. Gravity. It's always on. You're just hungry for anything green, aren't you? Okay. Ragnar is so excited about insects. He said let's put up a caterpillar tunnel. But I think he's got the wrong idea. So we're putting up the little brackets. Everything in the hardware is still in position from last year. They're little eyelets here that hold the rope. Just gonna overlay the plastic equal over on each end and then we will lift it over. It's not too windy today. A little bit of wind and then we'll get the ropes. Show them how that works. That looks pretty good. Okay, so we just pull the plastic over. Now we get the ends tucked in, split ends and spool. We need to get a tension along the whole long line. And then you can bunch from there. Ragnar, do you think we're going to get caterpillars in the caterpillar tunnel? Yeah, that's not good. They're going to creep under and eat all our crops. Oh, no. Did you think it was called a caterpillar tunnel because it is a place to grow caterpillars? It's called a caterpillar tunnel because now we're going to put this rope over to hold the plastic down and it makes it like a caterpillar shape. You'll see once we're done, it's going to look like an almighty caterpillar. So these tunnels are extremely cheap, they're portable, quick to install, and you can move them season to season if you need to. These are the ones we supply. Having improved the design on the Farmer's Friends model with the ends that we've created to allow for a shorter end. Manufactured in the UK to save shipping plastic and metal across the Atlantic. We're not actually able to sell these right now because of the crisis. They've got a backlog, but they'll be available again soon. So very easy to put on the plastic once the frames are up. We leave our frames all year, take the irrigation and plastic off. But you can do this with two people. The entire setup in probably an hour, 20 minutes, a couple of hours for 40, 50 meter one. But it helps to have more people, like to have four people to get the plastic on, especially if there's little gusts of wind. Really helps. So a daily chore now is lifting up the plastic. And that's what these little pieces are for. These twist around inside to let you take the plastic down. And that's why the carabiners at the bottom are important. They hold the rope away from the metal. That allows space for the plastic to go down. So first one up, two more to go up. But that instantly gives us eight, 12 or 16 beds on the plastic. Just in the time it took to put the string on the inside temperature in here has gone up by probably 15, 18 degrees. It's probably 16 degrees outside, but it's already up in here. It's probably over 30. Would you look at that, Johanna, what is this? Yeah, this is a Swedish thing. What is it?

Oven pancake with ham.

Ham from the forest, eggs from the chickens. Okay. Yeah. Pigs that were raised in the forest. Okay, little update in Leantiff. First of the winter squash. They're going into the old trial patch just to make some crops for ourselves. Cucumbers are coming on with their first leaves. Got Some more up here. It's a bit tight in here for space. Look at these tomatoes coming on. These have just. I'm gonna just zoom out a bit so we can see that. But these are quite prolific. Now the trouble with this is that it's still a little while until they can come out. So we're not grafting tomatoes anymore. We're choosing to grow indeterminates on their own roots. And we feel like the soil care that we do eliminates the need for that. The only thing we've had trouble with is deficiency. We had blossom end rot on one row that you'll remember from old videos where we made our own cow phos solution using eggshell from the farm. But these are looking quite incredible. They look very healthy. So happy about that. Over here we've got the parsleys developing in their paper chains. Lots of multi stone turnips. Now we do see with the purple top you get way too many seeds per cell so we'll have to be thinning those out. But we'll do that when we're planted because that's going to be easier. That works a lot better with the Hakari. You get a lot better division of seeds just because the holes are smaller. First beans coming on here nicely. More mulstone, turnips. Things looking good. Beets, more beets. So there's a lot of stuff outside hardening off now, but this place is looking pretty full. We've got trays right up on the top, some mother stone lettuce down there and we've got some corianders and more kales and broccolis and lettuces. So pretty full in here. Now these days we're getting 20 degree weather, so the tunnel is a little bit. The leanta is a little bit hotter. It's up at 24 right now in the middle of the day despite the fact the doors are open. That's okay though. Everything's doing great and it seems like no frost for quite some time. You never know, it can get cold again. But super impressed with these tomatoes. Can't wait to get them out in the tunnel. So I've still got the other two caterpillar tunnels to get up very shortly. But I've been spending some of my time now doing interviews for the farm Like a Hero tour. We kicked that off with Kathleen Mooney from Heatherhill Farm over in Donegal in Ireland yesterday. Amazing interview. What an amazing young man. He set up a whole multi enterprise diverse farm totally on his own and is doing great time in motion studies and business. He's got his head around the whole thing and he's really optimized his workflows and fully automated his tool. Ridgedale Eggmobiles. And he shows you in detail in the interview how to do that, including schematics of all the wiring and where to get the pieces. Great solution. And I'm really excited about the tour. This morning I spoke to my dear friend Marco over at Terra, who we made a video of back in August 2017, talking about how their business is growing and how they are responding to the coronavirus situation that's affecting all producers around Europe at the moment, as well as further afield. And then a really interesting talk looking at how they implemented many of the changes that. Well, I think all of the changes I recommended them to to drive bigger production on the same square meterage rather than the typical response, which I've seen over and over again, which is to increase the amount of production to get more revenue. And sometimes it really pays to double down on what you're already doing and if anything gets smaller. And that's exactly what they've done. Driving €60,000 more revenue by using less space than they were before. So that's an incredible interview too. Now these interviews will have little teasers that come out on YouTube, but the full interviews will be found in our farm like a Hero membership site which will be launching very soon I hope, if all goes to plan. Now it's a low cost membership site. The aim is that everyone can be included that's serious about these things. It's going to be equivalent to like the price of a coffee per week for two or three long form interviews as well as a Facebook group and live weekly questions and answers with me. And then we're compiling a book of 75 or more of the best regenerative farmers in Europe in complementing the interviews that we have with more detailed technical stuff about each farm to create an amazing resource for people to be able to see what's going on in different places around Europe. It's going to be super exciting. So stay tuned for that and can't wait to be able to share content with a lot of you in that way. Next, soil erosion. One millimeter of topsoil, 10 tons per hectare. Look at this.

Look that some of them are hatching.

They're getting there. They're nearly hatching. So we're just out looking up in nutfields and the grass is just growing over the remaining thatch and the nut trees are just coming. This is a Peking, but I hear a Rumble. That means Christian's coming with the Eggmobile.

How could he be so strong?

Daddy? He's so strong because he eats lots of good food. He works hard. Look. And they're going up into Nutfield. Okay, Here we are right up at the top of Nutf. Perfect. So first day on grass. They've just arrived. But we opened the door because they were seemingly piled up against it a bit. They're a bit scared after the move. And so they usually don't venture out for some time. But we'll put up a fence. They're not going to go far anyway. They'll just sit underneath the Eggmobile the first times they come out. But we felt to give them the option. May as well open it up for the last hours of daylight too. We will put the fence up. You're going to pick eggs soon. Saku's going to chase chickens again soon. That's her favorite thing. Okay, let's get a fence up right now. They're all the same age. They're only 16 weeks old. So four months. So it'll be another few weeks till the first little teeny fairy eggs come. But they're looking in wonderful shape.

Are they only tiny eggs they lay.

In the very beginning and then they get bigger, don't they? Yeah. Takes a little while. Because it's quite a miraculous thing to just be able to lay an egg suddenly. Amazing birds.

They can lay tiny eggs now soon.

Not yet they won't. We'll get them used to being in the Eggmobile and being on pasture. Soon we'll have great eggs.

I think we can catch them.

No, let's not catch them. We don't want to stress them. We want them to settle into their new house. Look. They look very happy. I'm glad we got them out today. Just about. Do we get quicker grass growth? I hope you'll see this here. You can see the birch trees are just coming into leaf. And you can see the green on our land compared to here. Now. Grass is growing but there's a lot of thatch and it's just a lot less poor growth. It's the same for all the fields here. I hope you can make out the flush. So we've really got a nice strong start over there. Maybe you see it better there. The green flush. Wonderful.