Farming: 2 weeks of Spring in 20 minutes...

Welcome back to another video, folks. Not so much time as I thought for making videos, but a little update from the farm just to fill you in with what's going on. Okay, big day today. Tomato planting day. Just been reorganizing the varieties. 600 odd plants go. We got music. We're gonna have a bit of a workflow getting someone digging, someone putting in and someone putting out, and we're going to water them in. It's too hard to irrigate the whole thing ahead of time. So we're going to water them in well and then get the drip on later. Okay, tomatoes going in. And this is laying them out under the strings that is being hold. We're coming along and we're just burying the str under the plants like so. And then we'll pop that in, string it loosely, and we're going to come back and water these in heavily with a watering can. Not too tight at this point, just stringing around between the nodes, taking off any flowers. First time we've ever had tomatoes flowering in the greenhouse. So we're taking them off and as long as they get well watered in, they're going to be just fine. Okay, that's the morning work done. Five rows of tomatoes at 22cm. There's six different varieties. I'll show you more about them as the season progresses. Growing different varieties than normal and not growing yieldy, which is my favorite of all. If you follow the channels, you'll remember that. So these have just been put in, watered in earliest we've put out tomatoes, but it looks like no frost on the forecast for the next while, so I think it was a good decision. What's their names? Gracie.

We have Chocolate Cake and this one's Egg and this one's Pork Pie.

That's the piggies. Gracie's anatol o. Hey, little gobbler. Okay, sheep shoeing, that is first up. We're all novices with our new tool, but the sheep are sweaty, so they're gonna be very happy about this. Sheep shearing 101. Okay, up into nutfield. So I went off to clutter to the west coast. The girls finish the sheep. Very nice new haircuts. Just turning the water system on. Seems like we're free from frost now, but we're just getting water up to the side of the field and we're on to a second field for the season. So funny every time the sheep are sheared just seeing how tiny they are underneath. But they seem in decent enough health after the winter and they Will be taken one by one as the freezer supplies dwindle up early. Moving cows. So we made a bit of a grazing plan to move quite fast at this time of year now. And I haven't completed the whole season. But I do know we've got 15 days to get through this whole field. So you need about a thousand square meters a day. So I've just bought the shade mobile. It's had a bit of fixing and gonna increase their fence now. Whoa. This will be the second time we've ever come to freakin with a boat. Nanny have found out that there are salmon trolling on. If we can catch salmon just on the other side of the village, life will be very different. So we're loading up. Kids go and look for big pikes, big salmons, eels and such luck.

Why am I doing it like this?

Oh my God. Look at all the pollen. All right. Abandon the girls. Become hundred. Wow. They did see hundreds. So this is an offcut roll from making the new yurt covers. They're not quite big enough. I've got to sew a 40 centimeter strip around the edge. Trouble is this is a 3D cone shape and I need a vertical piece that wraps around the frame. I've got enough cloth, but I've only got a small heavy duty ish machine. I've been testing some sewing this morning and it should just about make it. I've got to work flat on the ground. Out here is the only open space big enough. Really. Back to sewing. I've made 20 odd yachts over the years so should be fine. It's nice. Same matching fabric as the teepee. So should look beautiful up in the forest. Okay. So that was a success. So what I've done is left the original seam on this. Thank this. And I've just sewn a rope into the bottom that actually acts like a spring. So I'm not even going to bother putting eyelets around here to tie the bottom of the wall in because it's gone over the lip which is wider here. It's actually just holding itself in nicely. And it's not so windy here in the trees. So it fits pretty snug. And that saved me a lot of sewing. So I'm super happy about that.

That's not.

Okay. Compost toilet two is going up to the forest safety third. Put up the legs. Gonna drop this on top and we'll have a look at the yurts. It was a big success with the COVID and we've ordered nice bedding and carpets. It's gonna get there in the end. Okay, there's compost loo one, so we've got the teepee side over here. The second yurt is there. First yard is over here. So it's compost loot going there. Gonna have to walk it in from here. All right, now for a quick fish for pike. Little rainbow. This is a nice evening spot we like to come to. Catches the evening sun. It's a bit sheltered from the wind. Nice after a long day. Farm's right in the middle of the view up on the side of the hill there. That's the swim spot in the foreground where the sandy beach is. Beautiful having this on our back doorstep. Woohoo. Woohoo. It's so nice. Okay, just plug in field line for the cows and sheep. Lewis and I are moving them on. So we've been trying to back fence with wires. Sheep are not having that. One of them's on the outside. So we're back to nets and we don't really want the nut trees getting damaged. So we're just going with nets a bit more work. Because we're moving so fast around the farm, it means we have to do two moves a day with a lot of nets. It's a bit inefficient, but it's better for the ground, better for the animals. And that's priority number one here. So that's what we're doing. Nice bit of rain. We're gonna take a pig for my 40th birthday. Doing a whole roast young pig. Some friends coming and our crew here, that's what we're doing one handed. So I can show you what I'm doing at the same time. That doesn't work with one hand. I'm gonna come in there and sort this out. Thunderstorms coming. This is pretty gray, but we're getting there. So feast for my 40th birthday. Took the smallest of the forest piggies. And that should be plenty for those of us eating. Gonna barbecue it slowly for the day. Very nice. Oh, look at this.

Whoa.

It's birthday celebration day. Roasting Piggy Joe's just cleaning up the main frame. You're right. And we're gonna stick a wonderful forest raised piglet on there. Okay, so we've just secured this with concrete metal clips and we're gonna roast this for about 5 hours just with tallow and butter as a rub with salt. And then near the end we'll put honey and other yummy stuff and herbs on there just to finish it.

Whoever catches it gets Married next. Oh, my God. Draw it again.

You two got married?

Yeah, they do. They even have wedding.

Yay. Ooh. Rice cooked in chicken bone broth, pulled pork left over from the birthday feast with a nice broth, homemade garlic mayo, bit salsa. Lovely. Okay. Yeah. Number two, it's got to go up like a shot of this and a shot of the year. So you can see progress a little. We've got compost loo 1 and 2 teepees are all ready except one zip needs fixing that yurts up. This yurt's got to go up. Okay. Can't film this process easy because I'm focused, but got the first six poles up. Now the process is to count these out into the theoretically correct place. Because this is such a heavy weight to have up above your head, we just get six poles up to stabilize it. At this point, it's still wobbly, but it can't go anywhere. So now by counting the metal brackets that we bolt into, we can just make sure these are theoretically in the correct place on the wall. And that means that then we can just keep adding them in. It's good to add a few here, a few there, a few there to split, spread the tension around this band. This is a 5 ton wire because the ger is. This is technically a ger. It's got straight roof poles. It's putting the pressure out into the wall as opposed to a yurt, which has steam bent roof poles that put the weight down into the wall, which is incredibly strong. So got a little bit of time before I go to mot my truck. So just to see if we can get the roof up. So I made these guys about €4,000 each, mainly because I bought very nice oak lathes, pre cut and chamfered. I made these in the first couple of weeks I was in Sweden staying on another farm. These roof poles are pinned in just with a simple bolt on the washer to lock them onto that wire. And then I've got a work belt with bolts and wing nuts and that just pins them into there. We've been using metal brackets that you see here to secure roof poles to the tonneau, the central wheel, so that.

The whole structure can't twist.

Because ultimately you could take these, what called dragon posts away. But this structure wants to twist and drop down. So on a structure this size, with this much weight, we just keep the legs in. So finger numbing works. Just going round awkwardly getting the bolts in. New technique for getting cover on. I'm basically throwing a roll of string over and just tying it in with the bowline so we can have three pulling to evenly distribute the tension. One, just checking from the back that the covers going over. One in the middle, just stopping it, getting caught right in the center. Goes up quite nicely. Yet two is up in the nick of time. Thunder is around us. Very nice.

Okay, that's a wrap. Just an eclectic clip of all the things that have been going on the last two weeks. I haven't had time to sit down and make a video. I kind of underestimated what we'd be able to manage with 17 kids running around the farm. It's a lot and basically I see that my idea of a really relaxed, easeful summer is going to be a little bit challenged by the circumstance. I'm the owner and organizer and the one who knows where to get things, how to sort things out here in Sweden.

So it's.

It's been dawning on me the last couple of weeks that yeah, I'm going to be running around like a blue butterfly in similar ways than I have last year. But I'm really enjoying having other parents, families here. It's really sweet and there's so many joyful things about that and it's a really amazing opportunity to reconnect with my land and my farm in a different way. And yeah, I'm having a lot of fun. It brings up new challenges that are interesting just dealing with the needs of lots of kids here and certain projects like swimming pool behind me are falling behind as the spring rush gets going. We're meant to open the camping in 1st of June but it's a bit delayed and we've got gardens going on and things to sort out. So projects are sliding a little bit behind but we're trying to take time, have fun too. I've been having long days recently and I have not been looking at my computer for a couple of weeks so that's kind of nice for me. I much prefer to be outside doing summer jobs but it means I don't create so many videos as I would like to. But I hope you enjoyed a little update. It's been amazing to, yeah, celebrate my 40th birthday with some amazing people here and we had a really nice time and it's really nice just getting things in order. I've been doing a lot of maintenance around the farm and it's soon time to start painting the house and painting the barns and getting this place looking ship shape. I would like to say that, you know, it's a month till training start. The farm. The training for the Regenerative Ag Design course has got just a few spots left. We've got the market garden course four day no Dig intensive coming up in a month's time. There's spaces left on that if you want to set up no dig commercial market gardens and learn how to plan and run that as an enterprise. There's basis left on that. We're going to have amazing food from the farm and I'm looking forward to meeting a whole bunch of you here at the farm. So see the website in the links below if you want to join us. If not, check out our books. They're in the link below and we'll see you in the video soon. Bye for now.