Evening walks and Internship rhythms

So today's video is just a little talk about what's going on and what we're doing here with the internship and how different things are going. Just to give you an insight into some of the things that go on in a typical work week here at the farm. Strawberries developing nicely. It's going to be a little while till we have fresh strawberries. But these are just sitting in the pasture lane where we've come through here with cows and sheep. So something we've been putting some focus on is bonding with these sheep. They're very scared of people, but we've been spending a bit of time every day getting familiar with them and they're getting much more tame. And it's really important. This time put in now will pay dividends for all future moves. And so right now we've got the cows a little bit separated down at the bottom. We're at the bottom of top field here and we're keeping them in eyeshot of each other just going under a fence. But it's important for, you know, the time and investment we put in the animals now makes all subsequent moves easier. So yesterday we've been up, we're in keyline design training and so that's a really important part. Most people here interested in whole system design, farm layout, etc. Many of them have farms that they're developing. So it's a complex subject. And so we start people off simply with simple exercises. We use a program called Real Time Landscape Architect Professional which does offsets, parallel offsets, which is what we need to be able to do keyline design efficiently. I learned it by pen and paper and ruler back in the day. And that's a very good way to learn geometry inside out, but very time consuming. They've been stripping some bark of the alder in here. I'm okay with that because it's obviously very vitamin and mineral rich and these are just native trees that are coming back on the edge of the riparian here. But yeah, we start them off with easy examples. And it's a group of people that have very different levels of knowledge and experience and digital literacy. And so we're basically getting them set up with how to use these programs and then each day giving them a more complex task and a different design brief, building up to a whole farm design. So we've now got. We're midway through the week and they've been given a brief to do a sort of job that I would do for a consultancy gig. So this brief is a bit more complex. What we're doing is starting people up using the keyline program Real Time Landscape Architect Pro to learn about basic geometry and functions. And then as the week goes on, we've got more and more complex tasks. This is a farm in the south of England and the task is to lay out a silver pasture system for planned grazing, tree crops, windbreaks, and do catchment calculations looking at contours to work out how much water flows through this site. And so we're starting to piece together all the parts of complex farm design bit by bit, all working along together. And an amazing amount of people can actually produce something very useful and doable and produce a bill of quantities as well as an accurate land plan. And that's what this whole internship is about, is getting. Giving people all the tools and practical know how of how we run the systems here, combined with all the theoretical knowledge of how to go about planning, business planning, land design, all these different elements that we go through in our program. But it also involves all the nuances down on the field, like, you know, experiences. This week have been getting to know the sheep and getting to bring them closer to us so that we can make our moves more effective by combining the herd into a flirt. We've been building some fencing, learning about Tex Brown knots and different knots for fencing and putting up high tensile wire fencing, which is a great skill to have. And we've also been getting really into the different enterprises. So for two weeks they're managing broilers or layers or turkeys or cows or sheep, or working in the market guns. And so it's a real guided process. Today was veg packing. So we did the harvest and packing together, really looking at different crops and how they grow and how they're handled, how you store produce to prolong the shelf life, etc. Things like that. And then in the afternoons, they're getting project time to work on their own projects or work on practical projects out on the land. So it's a very guided process and it's a really lovely group that we have. They're very responsive and we're also. They're cooking for each other and cooking from food from the land and sharing that experience together too, which is. It's really nice, it's working really good. And so in the background, another thing we're doing is taking everyone that's come with their own property or design brief or business plan. We have to do some live design on the whiteboard and generate ideas. I basically interview them, get them to present a bit about their farm and Then I interview them, ask them loads of questions and we build a picture of an enterprise in very sketch form, but it gives people a really tangible direction of how to go forward, planning their own business. And Rob just came to me today, he's one of the team and he has a family farm in Wales in the uk, and they have an urgent need to get the business plan and land design together for their property. I think it's like a 50 hectare hill farm because of council regulation stuff going on. So that's a really nice example that we can bring into the classroom, get clear about what his context is, ask him loads of questions, learn about the site and all the topographic data and climate data, and then proceed to looking into the enterprises that might work with the budget he has and the investment that his father might put in to start his own business. And then we will rapidly, throughout the day, build up a whole picture of how that might look and how the cash flow might work over some years, so that you can then sit on detail. And it's a great opportunity where someone's learning to make spreadsheets with someone that's good at spreadsheets. Like, I'm directing them on how to input numbers and the formulas. We need to think about things and so we can go back in easily and change them. And we're working on the land design on the computer live as we talk. And it's. It's quite a fun, dynamic process that we've done for a lot of people in the past to give them a really good, clear way to accelerate their own detailed planning, getting really down to the numbers and the bills of quantities. So we're going up and have a look and think about what's been going on with hens and broilers and fences up here. So always good to come and compare up at the neighbours. This grass is topped out and you see it's very weedy. There's almost no leaf to this at all and a lot of moss on the ground between the plants. Very split bass plants, all the same species. We see there's ladies mantus. It's just stunted clovers. Stunted. We've got clover over my knee, huge leaves. There's a bit taller stuff here in this little patch, but this is what we've transformed into the lush pastures we have today. So just for reference, we're coming into Nutfield. So this is land that's had cows and chickens over it very recently, but it's a very different field now to what we saw. And we're Actually, on this little slope. And this is a very similar ecology to what we saw in the field up there. So having been grazed over with two eggmobiles and cows and sheep, it looks very different to that field. And, and here we are in the bottom and top fill, it hasn't been grazed yet. And you see plants expressing their full physiology and a lot more expression going on in here and a lot more biomass. Now, this is nutrient and water cycling working in tandem. So once we bring animals back onto the landscape, we bring back nutrient in the form of fertility through the manure, and we're allowing plants to grow better, photosynthesize more, root deeper and put more sugars into the ground, sugars and proteins through photosynthesis, and that's building carbon into the soil, which is allowing more water to be stored, which is allowing more plant growth to go, which allows more aerial expression. And then if we graze that well and compact it down through animals, trampling a bunch of it and eating some of it and shitting and urinating it out, it's an exponential process. And life always wants to thrive. It just needs a tickle sometimes if it's in a damaged state, to get it really rampant again. And so the same species, but very different outcome based on management. And so that's the details that we're sharing with the people coming here, all the little nuances in management that make ecosystems thrive, whilst making businesses that can work and can make us an income doing something very beneficial for local people, for our land and for ourselves. So it's 9:30 at night and they're putting lights in the eggmobile. Seems almost futile because it's not going to be dark till 11:30 at night. This is land that was grazed by the cows and bull and sheep just about five days ago now. And so you see they've trampled a lot of it down. But this is the investment in the soil bank, because new grass is going to grow back through there. It's been hot, sunny days and yet we have ground that's moist, covered in seed and insect life. And that's what we want. We want to trample a lot of this down on the ground and have them eat some and leave some standing. This standing grass that you see if I lower the camera down, that affects the microclimate. It creates a little wind barrier that allows insects to thrive. You might just catch out some of the insects. Best time to observe pasture insect life is in the evenings when the sun is low. You really can see all the cobwebs and Spiders and insects in all their glory. So we just had a switch over of teams moving on to new roles. And something I've observed has been that the number of B and C eggs, so we have A eggs, are perfect for consumers. B eggs are eggs that are slightly dirty or have a minor crack in them that are good for us to eat. And then sea eggs are eggs that are cracked in the field, or jelly eggs when they're first laying eggs or too dirty to be, you know, good for consumption. And the number of B and C eggs was higher than I wanted. And so we've been going through this whole analytical process of why is that? And it turns out it could be many things contributing to that. Could be someone is handling the eggs roughly. Could be the too many eggs are in the box before they're collected, and so they're backing up and they're cracking each other. It could be that they're not enough oyster shell, so the shells are compromised. It could be something to do with feed. So we've been looking at all these options in detail and it seems to be about timing of when we're collecting the eggs, because too many eggs were backing up inside the nest. So we've made some changes and it's basically had an instant impact, but it's still slightly higher than I want it to be. I want like 1% of eggs to be unsellable, as it were. Now, we eat a lot of eggs here, so it's not a problem. But it's these little nuances in management that are key learning for people here. It's one thing putting up fence effectively, learning how to move eggmobiles quickly, how to collect eggs and sort them quickly, but it's the little details in production that make it a viable enterprise. And so that's the juicy learning that we're taking away. So we're doing that with all the different enterprises. We had a little crisis in the garden, so, okay, what do we do with that? How do we manage that? And then we carry it out and monitor the results. And that's what we all need to do as farmers and land managers. So it's feeling like juicy times to really get into these little nuances in the theme of, you know, all the academic side of the study that we're doing half the day, every day, throughout the weeks here. So one downside of layers in this part of the world is they don't go to bed till it's dark. It doesn't get dark until about 11:30 at night here. Can't Wait for strawberry season. It's going to be an absolute joy. So these little guys get a lot of fertility from the passing boilers and layers. You can just see the tops of the boilers in the background there. Boilers are going really well, lairs are doing really good. But we just want to be sure that we are monitoring them correctly, like making sure the birds are equal. If any birds do get out of the fence, then people would automatically put them back in the nearest pen. So we've been just counting the numbers to make sure the birds are even, to make sure that we're feeding correctly. Because these birds are high production layers, they need to be fed very specifically. And people I meet that have irregular egg laying often are not monitoring their feed closely enough. And if you feed them too much, you'll create problems with their livers and the health of the birds and you'll get poor production. If you feed them too little, they will cannibalize their own bodies in order to keep laying eggs. So they must be really well managed and monitored. And that's the aim. Always got to have oyster shell as they need it. And so we fill these up so they're pretty much always full, so we can't run out. But they're going well through the little silver pasture lanes here. Someone asked about all the trees, how they're doing. I'll make another video about that soon. We've had a lot of problems with both voles, which are the nemesis of trees on our farm, but also the drought. We've got trees that are suffering, like you can see in the background here, from the drought Last year we had quite mature trees that suffered from from the drought. But I'm very happy to have this mobile flock who are further trampling, also foraging and eating. One problem we had last year, and the reason why we scaled the poultry down this year is because with the drought last year, grass didn't grow for 120 days. And so chickens are very good at creating dust baths. You can see a little one beginning here. And the birds are here for two days at a time. Now without the grass lying down after the herbivores, they are very easily able to spread that and make holes in the fields. And so last year with the drought, we had quite a lot of holes in the fields. Not ideal. So this year we wanted to reduce the amount of poultry, let the land recover a bit. And it's been so rainy and beautiful that we've had abundant pasture growth. So I think that was a good call and we planned that into our economy this year. And it's. Yeah, it's working out in that, in the way that we planned, which is great. So we're now into Topfield. They've had about 40 days, I think, in Nutfield, and we're actually taking a bit longer now to get round the farm, to get back into Nutfield with the cows and sheep. Now we're in our grazing plan, which has gone a bit out the window now, because what we're doing is bringing the cows and sheep up into the forest paddocks. Now we have a new fence. We decided to do that. A, to bond the cows and sheep together, but B, to allow the grass at the top of Nutfield to recover a little bit better. Because we're basically seeing grasses, like the meadow grasses that they don't tend to eat and favour are left standing and some of the grasses that they've grazed are. Are not yet recovered. So we want to let the grasses that we are selecting for recover fully. And that's all part of management. You can see here, this is land that was grazed a week ago and yet we have standing heads of some grasses. So it's all about observation and management and these little details are the things we're sharing with everyone. And so it's late at night now, you could say it's past my normal bedtime, but I'm just coming up to have a look around because something that I'm getting used to, again, having interns here is I've got to micromanage everything. And it's very. It's a challenging job to learn where people's knowledge and attention is at. And often people express that they are aware of something and know about something and then their action doesn't line up with that. So I've got to treat everything, you know, I have to monitor everything, basically, and the more I can get up and around the farm, the better, because I notice little details that a newbie can't possibly be expected to notice. So I'm just double checking waters and making sure things are clean and working properly. I'm checking if the pens are all good and there's no holes in the fencing. I'm checking every individual bird as I walk along and looking for any signs of problems that I can then make management decisions based on. So this is something I've always done, is get out and look around the farm all the time and it's. It's what you need to do. Now. This farm is just about as big as I can possibly keep my eyes around that 10 hectares 25 acres, but we have a lot going on mostly in, you know, three hectares of that. So it's, it's manageable to get my eyes around the farm regularly. But it's, there's lots of little things that come up in the season here where my attention is drawn in different places and I need to then go back and, you know, really look closely at things. You get a sense here of the impact the boilers have had after the cows. And this land will just come into life with a bit of rain and a bit more warmth as the days are getting a bit warmer. Now some of our young, very hardy chestnuts. This is oak, but another chestnut here. These are the avenue plantings along the road. I'm going to come and brush hog all this stuff. Saka's coming up the road here and just tidy up the farm. We've got Charles Dowding coming next week. So really excited to have one of the legends of no Dig market growing joining us and yeah, really looking forward to having a new influx of people coming through to that course. And yeah, getting into no Dig we've always been, been excited to share no Dig. It's the best way I've ever seen of market gardening and soil care combined. And so we're really looking forward. It's going to be super exciting. We'll try and make some videos with Charles while he's here. So here's Winston. He's a little lonely at the moment because the cows and sheep are off away. So we've been up here repairing this fence. So this got moved as we made this turning circle last year and so we've been up here stringing up this new fence which has worked out very nice, very nice to get out and about and people learning how to do non slip fencing knots takes a bit of trial and error, but that's what we're doing. People are learning tangible, practical skills, theoretical skills and the management and financial planning of how to go off and do this stuff for themselves. And that's why we're all gathered here doing amazing stuff. But I'm really excited because this now is going to become the next stomping ground for the cows and sheep. And my plan was to keep them down in the bottom at the riparian of Topfield a little bit longer than our original grazing plan because I haven't wanted to rewrite our grazing plan because I knew I wanted to include the forest paddocks in some degree. Now all the fencing up there is trashed from the forestry cutting. So we've just Fixed up this, put in a really nice strong corner using recycled poles from previously. So now we've got a fence that's capable of keeping the cows and sheep in the same space. The sheep are so flitty that they'll just run through sheep fence and break it. So we want to have a time where the cows and sheep are together, where they have enough space and a beautiful little habitat to get away from each other if they want to. But they'll get used to each other with probably two days, maybe three, that they could spend in here. And we have an easy way to get them all up here because we can gate off the road and use the road as a laneway to get them in here. And consequently we can get them from here back to Nutfield very easily, using the same road as a laneway, just by making a block at two ends. And then once we're in nutfield, we can basically herd them up to the top of the hill where we have a thin strip with the high perimeter fencing that goes around the farm and we can use the sheep net to keep them in together. Hopefully after those few days and a bit more love and attention spending time with them, they will hopefully be bonded together, that we can start moving them in nets together, and that will half the amount of moves and complications. Someone was asking about the sheep. So this is a Suffolk purebred ram, and the ewes that we have are Suffolk, Crosswood, Texel. So nice meat breeds. The only issue being they have long tails, which can cause problems with hygiene. But this was the sheep I actually really wanted from the beginning. And the sheep we had previously were a bit of a mutley crew, to be honest, But I'm excited we're not going to breed these. The ram is separated because we don't really want to put him on to the ewes until the end of the year to have spring lambs. And we've put the bull with the cows already so we can have, maybe it might be February, that we aim to have both the lambs and the calves. Now, we normally go for spring births, but this time we're going to see what it's like to have the babies in the winter because we also have a bit more time and focus then, because we're not rushing around getting the season set up. But really nice to get out here and do a bit of fencing. And people seemed excited to learn more skills. So we're going to do a bit more fencing up in the forest during this program. But weeks flash by because this week's keyline design and a bit of whole farm planning. Next week's market gardening with Charles Dowding. And then the week after, we're going to do some live design projects of different people's farms. We're going to be inoculating mushrooms in bags and also on logs, learning how to fell trees, use chainsaws, this kind of thing. We've still got a couple of our soil preps to finish up and we've been applying soil preps regularly to the trial beds as well as into the market gardens. We've got regular work now with the harvesting and packing in the market gardens. And, yeah, things are rolling on. So it's. There's a few more weeks with agroforestry being a focus, business planning being another week's focus. And it's, you know, it's very easy to fill the time here with so many stimulating things going on all the time. But our role is to give people targeted learning. So the interns are not doing, like farm labor all day. They're spending half the day in class with me. And then targeted learning, like doing a bit of fencing to make sure everyone learns important points about corners and structures and how to create bills of quantities, how to plan these operations and then the little details of how to make the knots and how to do things safely and, yeah, lots of different things to think about. And so we do that in all areas of the farm and it's an incredibly rich learning experience for me as well as for everyone else. And it's been really interesting for me this year just remembering what it's like to have an intern gang, because I have, you know, last year was a very different flavor and, yeah, it's been working well so far. So things picking up in the garden, as I mentioned in the last video, got beautiful. Hakari turnips and radishes and onions and leaves and peas. Going up. That's my trout. I thought I'd come down here because I knew it would jump when I come. There you go. It's feeding on the surface. I don't know how many are alive in here, but in the spring I saw some pretty fat brown trout. It's looking beautiful in here. One thing I'm talking about trees, the things that are not going well, tree wise is these are alder that we had grapevines up. We still got a few grapevines, but the voles absolutely love grapevines. So I've got a thousand cuttings in the greenhouse in root trainers, and we're going to learn to make our own root trainers out of building material. It's very cheap and commonly available during the agroforestry week and really pot them up big and so my aim is to take all those cuttings which is enough to do all the vineyard including the new alder over here and just grow them out really big before we put them out because yeah, voles is a problem so we'll also net the root balls and so that can't. So they can't get in there and cause damage but that's the. You know I said I'd retire once I get a bottle of wine out here but I can't imagine it'll be the best wine anyway. But that delays my retirement for a little bit I guess which some of you might be happy about I guess. Really love this spot. I don't get down here enough but it's a really nice thing to see this pond full and abundant with life. There's a lot of turf toad spawn and frog spawn this year that didn't get eaten because we don't have the ducks here but it's. Yeah it's an amazing little spot to. Whenever I come down here the trout is rising and hunting and yeah I feel like this is a very special little spot and after last year's drought where we just emptied this place it's very nice to see it alive and thriving isn't it Saku? This is a nice rock I come and make plans on. Yeah, beautiful. What a Nice evening. It's 10 o' clock at night now and this is what it looks like. We're approaching mid summer so it doesn't really get dark at this time. Good night turkeys. Small lot of turkeys this year. I love turkeys. That's all the protection they get. Simple net and they're gobbledygo but turkeys are pretty hardy birds. They'll be moving on tomorrow morning. Well it's time for bed for me. I'm just having a good wander around looking at things and had the first cuckoo today but I might have missed quite a few because I've been pretty busy. My days are pretty full. I'm up at 5:36 and I go out and do chores after trying to keep on top of the most urgent emails and yeah I'm busy till the evenings and then taking our son to bed or just doing a little bit of catching up with things so pretty full day but I hope that's of some interest to some of you at least and yeah thanks for watching our videos. I'M going to make a video to update you about our books soon. And I'm also going to make some videos more dedicated about trees and the market gardens and just keep you informed with everything that's going on the best I can. But thanks so much for watching folks. And don't forget to click, subscribe, share the video, like it, whatever you want to do with it, who cares? It's up to you. And look, we'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.