Farming Farmers, Enterprise planning, Pastured poultry training and epic storms...

So we've just been through the first day of the pasture poultry training. Looking at laying hens today in detail and then tomorrow getting into meat birds, turkeys and pastured boilers. Looking at different people's contexts. We've got people from Australia, all around Europe and from Mexico and a couple have come all the way from Angola to be here. So we've been getting deep into that and there's a bunch of clips from previous days and things going on at the farm in the last week or so. Counting chickens. There's been some escapees and possible swap overs. So we want to ensure the food is correct. So every now and again we count hands, 10, counting them out in tens to someone recording. That's the easiest way we found. And then we can balance the eggman, make sure the feed is correct. Feed is so important to high performance. We had 97% laying yesterday. That means 97 out of 100 birds laying. In fact there was 97. 3% were salable egg. And then we can eat the other eggs. Whoa.

Not enjoying this.

We're in a little trout lake.

Can you help me?

Grace has got a bit stuck in.

The reeds and caught a fish at the same time.

Yeah, I'll keep the pressure on. Just cook caught. But we want to try and get. Oh, it's a trout, Gracie. Wow.

I actually caught.

Keep the pressure on.

I'm trying.

Good. I think you're a bit stuck in the reeds, but don't go too tight. Let it swim. Okay. I know.

Don't want to pull it too much.

Racy.

Oh, yeah, look at that.

Gracie. That's a beautiful rainbow trout. Don't want to get caught in the hook. We can take that one for the.

Eating, but me gonna eat it. You can you make fillets for.

Gracie? That is a wonderful rainbow trout. You got one before I did. Okay, broiler's on the move. We are putting in some of the old roller pans for the last week or two so the interns get an experience with that. It's a high risk strategy that I don't recommend people starting with. It's why I've always been reluctant to do it from the beginning. But the birds are quite big now. See, they're enjoying their little freedom at last. So we're going to shoo them through and we've got passive poultry training next weekend. So it's good for people to see these models and really talk about pros and cons. Honeyberry red currants, turkeys. Wow. Today we are eating Grace's Rainbow trout. That's the best fish you've ever caught, Grace.

Tastes a bit like salmon.

Yeah, they're salmon family, aren't they? Veg chickens. Good job, guys. You going to eat all that?

Yeah.

They're swimming. We're having dinner. Freaking strand at the very end of the big lake. So our other egg mobile is up in nutfield again. We're done with chores so we're picking strawberries out these lanes. Harvest day for vegetables again today. This is one of nine rows, about 70 meters long. Got young chestnuts coming up, walnuts and strawberry in between. We just weed through at the beginning of the year. You can see it's a bit weedy. That's all the maintenance we really do. Well, after the rainy start, this stream is dry again. We were finding dead brown trout in here last year in the drought, which you may remember, but it should still be flowing at the arm here. But interestingly, I've seen no trout rising in the mill pond in the village, which is normally full of brown trout. And I think there must have been a problem with breeding last year. Maybe the drought affected insects. This arm of the stream is flown this arm. But yeah, interesting. I'm definitely noticing a lack of fish compared to previous years and I'm guessing it's something to do with last year. We're also noticing a lot more flea beetle pressure than normal. We've had most of our kales destroyed and kale is never normally a problem for us at all. Never had holy kale. And it might be something to do with management, but I think there is a heavier insect pest problem this year and I don't know if that's to do with the drought. We had the pollen, you might remember in previous videos that was causing allergic reactions in me and many others and I don't normally have any problem with that. So it's interesting. I'm not sure if that's conclusive, but it's certainly my observation this year. Busy days coming up to bedtime. But it's craft project make a raft week, isn't it, Grace?

Two hours.

Two hours to build it. That's Miguel. Well, we'll see. We're going for a simple triangle of blue barrels. Gracie had two different designs to weigh up, but this seems to be. If we put them in a triangle, it should be the most stable. So we're marking holes to drill on these rims. These are sealed barrels, which makes them very useful. And we can drill into this rim without making any holes. So we can use the barrels for other Things in the future. And We've got Japanese 1 meter square pallets that would hopefully make a nice top. So that's the project for now. Perfect.

You hold it strong.

Okay. So wired them in. We think the wire will be strongest in the center, but it doesn't take so much rubbing. So we're going to use parachute cord to tie above and below and that should stop it rotating on itself. And then we just got to burn the end of this to harden it off so it will go through the holes like so. So got some knots to learn to t. Okay. Final design idea is using Japanese pallet made some more holes under here. We're going to tie down this pallet on the top in this formation. And I think that should be quite stable in the water. That will stop the barrels revolving. And in theory it shouldn't tip over very easily. It's going to be very high on the water and we haven't got a name yet. It might be called Tomfoolery the mini. That's a beautiful knot, love.

We're never gonna be able to do.

It again, so can't replicate it. I think that's pretty sturdy. See if we can pick it up together. See that? I'll pick it up. We've integrated these as handles so that three people would surely be able to pick it up. But probably we can pick it up two people. So we were discussing building an oar but we remembered that I have a spare electric fishing motor. And we just tested it and it works. And we thought, well, that is actually a way more fun way to have a raft. Have a little motor on it. So options are mount it on the back. Or Grace had a great idea. Cut a hole in the middle here, mount it in the middle so you can just sit comfortably riding in the middle. But you know, it might work well on the end, Grace in that you could sit in the middle then most stable because you have to have it behind you a bit because it's quite long, isn't it?

I can just like sit like this.

One thing we must agree on. No, because this runs on the car battery. So we need to know it's stable and floats on the water reliably before we put any battery on. Because if we drop that in the lake, it'd be hard to recover it. And we don't want to put batteries in water. It'll be really polluting. Chickens moving themselves. Anything that's got its own legs and wings should do its own work. So tree lanes here is the first year we've got hazel on our hazels which is pretty interesting. It's been a weird year and the weird last year being so dry. Only small little nuts at the moment, but that's pretty cool. First year we've had hazel bushes. Now we've got some coming along here too. But some of these got suffered by drought and some by voles. I'm considering replacing some of these with aronia just because erroneous. Such a high yielding crop in this climate zone. Broiler's coming on nicely. We've got the roller pins out, but the first slaughter is happening on Sunday in our passive poultry course to get people used to the whole process of running this enterprise. And then we'll be doing a bigger batch in the week with the intense to get people up to speed. So we are in enterprise week looking at different farms, thinking about scales of business, types of enterprises, time involved, lots of details. Ed, what are you working on? I'm just trying to find the abattoirs and butchers and freezer shops that are going to do my direct marketed grass fed beef enterprise. Gracie's been out all around the lakeshore. Now she's going upstream. This is an awesome raft and it's called what Gracie named Tom Riddle. Tony is making. What are you making, Tony?

Veal calculation.

Organic grass fed veal taking unwanted dairy calves.

Exactly.

So you've taken a German study of looking at weights of different age calves. They need milk feeding to a certain age and then they're raised on grass till the end of that season. So looking at an enterprise that doesn't require winter feed.

Exactly.

And so what is your.

In the study they tested four different weaning ages and looked at the live weight gain at five different stages of growth. And this is the data put in a graph. And based on that data we calculated the milk consumption of the cows and how much it would cost to wean them. Six weeks, nine weeks, 12 or 15.

And you would have to raise them on actual milk, not powdered milk.

You can raise them on powdered milk. But the study was based on actual milk.

Weren't you saying that it had to be milk to meet organic standards?

In Germany it does.

In Germany it does, yeah.

And then based on that information, I calculated the live weight gain.

Weaned at different age groups.

Weaned at different age groups. Exactly. And accumulated live weight at the end of the 26 weeks. And then I calculated the profit at different points of slaughter. So if the calf is weaned six weeks and slaughtered after six months, which would be week 23. The yield would be like the live weight is 175 kilos. The meat yield after slaughter is 78 kilos and with cost subtracted. So the. The profit would currently be at 1245 kilo euros per calf. That's pretty high, which seems a bit high. So we should look at the costs.

Based on kind of 40% meat yield.

The yields are. Where do I have. I think it's the slaughter weight is 60% of the live weight and the meat yield is 75% of the slaughter.

Weight and that's about 40% of the live weight. That looks awesome. But the costs aren't fully in yet and they would be very circumstantial.

Basically the cost of the calf which is around €80 in Germany, then the cost of, of starter and processing at €190. That's what Tim's step mother in law told us.

Okay.

And then the milk cost per calf.

So then it's assuming you have the setup. Like, like Tim has a barn with infrastructure. Infrastructure is all there. They have fencing, etc. And they have space. Yeah, it looks very lucrative. And you've done a very nice job with your spreadsheets.

Thank you.

Looks very nice.

And the same like this is that they did the study for two years in a row. That's the data on in 1965. And the most profitable point to slaughter would be after eight months weaned for nine weeks. And then the second year, the most profitable point is after six weeks. Weeks like weaned for six weeks, slaughtered at eight months. So yeah, that's a bit.

So just to clarify, the slaughter costs €190 is just for quartered dead inspected animals. But to have that package down. We've been talking a lot about selling whole animals. So 10, 20, 30 kilo boxes that are suitable for domestic consumers, but in relative proportions of the animal. So 60% meat, 40% sort of lower grade cuts, 10% higher grade cuts. To be able to always sell proportionally off an animal which makes sense for a small producer. But to get the details butchered and packed is going to be more like double that cost. So that changes the numbers a little bit. But it still looks very good. A thousand euros an animal essentially for running it across the summer and making something out of what would be a waste from the industry to some farmer's eyes. But do you spend half your week in like harvest and post harvest? Harvest.

Post harvest is two days. Yeah, we got pretty efficient at that. Like we're harvesting for 50 boxes I can do in a day.

What's your boxes? You do, you do quite big boxes, don't you?

I've got two sizes. Small box, big box. Small box is €15. Big box, 25.

Great. So I'm really happy to be sitting here with you today because it's the first time it's raining after maybe what, three, four weeks of draft. Just since not everyone's familiar, I'll give you a little bit of what Tena is about and the history and then we just go into a discussion and questions and answers. That way we can kind of tailor it more to what you're specifically interested in and what you might be looking at at this point.

I mean, it's something of a reality check. Right. And that's something that we talk about a lot here. And like, you know, are you up for it? It's obviously a high workload. You've taken lots of risk, taking lots of money that you've put into it. And what's your, what's your reflection of like starting out and managing your own business and doing all that stuff? Like, what's. What would you say to someone starting similar to you who hasn't started yet?

That would be, are you in love with it or are you in love with the. I think you. This takes a lot of will and belief in yourself.

What's your learning curve been in that? Like, like, did you have experience running the business, doing accounting before? And like, how's that been? No.

Yeah, that's. That's the mental part around it. It's a mental part about being a farmer.

Right. Because.

I'm skilled with many things, I can do a lot of different things. And that's probably also why I like to be a farmer, because I get to do a lot of different things. Things, but then also wanting to do everything yourself. Suddenly I had to, you know, learn accounting and tax rules and shit. You know, boring shit.

Okay. It's pastel poultry training and we're on first egg collection. So gang, coming up, we've got people all the way from Angola and our team of interns and people from other parts of Europe and Australia, and we're getting into how to run these pasture based enterprises. So, exciting weekend ahead. There's another section where you can see the pump that I just talked about that filters the rainwater. It tells you in real estate how it is. Rainhouse off. The water tank is empty. Now the light. So we have some, you can set up some lights indoor for the system and you have the timer that you can Set as well from the computer. I'll show you in a minute. Well, we've just finished the day of fast food poultry training and in perfect timing, we've been looking at layers all day, packing eggs, how to do that efficiently. But you can see it's raining hard. They're saying 8, 9 mil in the next hour. There's a torrent running down the road. Not sure the campers are going to be happy, but we'll sort them out. But we need this water. The stream has dried up and we need to fill the pond back up. And this is going to give everything a real good soaking. But I don't know if this can pick it up. But you can see, you can't even see the tree lane in the distance because of the amount of rain coming down right now. It's pretty torrential. So that one little rain event made a pretty big blow. This is gravel from the road washed into our field. See, we're gonna go down and look at the bottom of the road here and really see the, how the road is in the wrong place. So this is a gravel road that they remake several times a year. And this is why it's in the wrong place in the landscape. This is 1/2 hour rain event and you can see it's dug a trench like several inches deep that I'm walking and spilled out here. Now I'm happy for the rain and I'm especially happy because our pond is low and we need to fill it back up because we're pumping a lot. It's been very hot and dry and there's been very little stream flow. And our pond is down by about, well, 23 centimeters. So we're hoping we'll start to see an increased trickle on the inflow. Now my AE lock is on and I can't turn it off. There we go. You can see the pond is down quite low. The flow is increasing, but this sort of rain will give a flash flood off flow that will start flowing, filling the pond back up, which is great for us. We're just going to check the chickens. Now that sort of rain event is the sort of thing that makes most people go indoors and hide from the rain. That's the time I put my waterproofs on and I come and check the birds because a rainstorm like that can really cause problems. The birds are older now. We're starting slaughtering tomorrow. So it's day two of the Parsu poultry training focus on meat beds and we will be showing everyone how to operate the slaughtery and how we do each of those roles systematically. But I want to know the birds are in prime condition. Heavy rain like that can scare birds in a Saladin style pen and leave them stranded outside under the quadrant that isn't covered. And we'll see. We're getting up to the birds now and so we'll have a look how they're doing. Well, everything seems fine. The birds are happy and they're under shelter. Some are out and about pecking away, but they seem happy and content. They've been under the shelter. I see the birds, the odd one looks a little damp, but they're big enough to cope with that. I'm just concerned of any standing water on the pasture because it was such a dry spell followed by a lot of water that can leave standing water. And we want to make sure that they're okay. There's a bit of a hole here that's full of water, but the main thing is they've got dry space to get up. There is standing water in the middle here. So I'm coming to inspect to determine whether I need to put any straw down or anything to get them up off the ground. They're actually enjoying the water and they're just feeding at the moment, so things are okay. But that was pretty intense. I don't know if the camera picked that up, but it was definitely a much welcome and needed rainstorm. I think there's a little clip, but I've just said on the video here, it's the first year now and we've got hazels on the hazels in the tree lanes here. And that could be just the age they're getting to, like four or five years. That's when I would expect them to start having nuts. But interesting things have happened with the drought. The oak trees under the big oak trees outside the house, the acorns have germinated for the first time ever. And we saw all the pollen in spring that made me react, even though I don't typically react to things like that. And we also have seen no trout in the stream. So all these things and insects like seeing a lot of pests, insects in the garden that we don't typically have. I don't know how much of that is correlated to the drought last year, but it doesn't surprise me if any of it or all of it is. That's how it goes. You might just make out a rainbow ending at the boiler fence. That's a good omen. So here in the gardens, we're on the second turnover. It Might be a bit fuzzy because the lens is all wet. But we're on the second turnover of major crops now. Things are looking okay in here. So we're replacing beets and chards. We've taken turnips and radish out and things are picking up in here. It's going good. We've been taking out many, many, many kilos of peas on a regular basis. These need harvesting again already some beautiful crops coming out. We've been under sowing these flowers here, marigold and beans and we're doing lettuce underneath them. We just thinned out some leeks, got some deep planted leeks in here. Loads more peas, but beets coming on. We've had some really great beets, some great carrots coming along under here. They'll be going in the harvest now. And still a lot of onions. But after a rain like that you really see here standing water that's going to get soaked up by this wood chip. And all of these north beds behind that caterpillar tunnel to would be standing water without the wood chips. So they really help in soaking up that excess moisture. But we'll go for a little walk around the gardens and just see what we see. Most covers off now except for direct seeded stuff in the heat and insect nets on things like brassicas. But we are pumping out zucchinis at a rapid rate now. So it's looking great in here. And chard at different stages of development. Caterpillar tunnels really helping to accelerate growth this year. And just spinning you around. We're going to see what's going on in the new north. We've got the first fennels and we're a bit low and fennel this year, but slow. See more standing water over here, but lots of onions and more brassicas under cover there. Lettuces coming through, more peas. So we really went to town with peas this year and that seems to be okay. We're going to have a look in the 40 meter caterpillar tunnel and have a look what's going on in there. But you see just a massive amount of water coming off these tunnels. That was really heavy rain and we needed it. It's good. Lettuces, onions. Got a bird in here. A lot more birds in the garden this year and I think it's because of caterpillars on things like the kale. Some really beautiful kale coming up. More beets and even more zucchinis. And we've got another younger succession coming on there. Fennel's doing all Right, got more squash that needs to be uncovered here. New brassicas, new seedlings of carrots coming up under here as well as new radish and turnip turnovers. So still some thunder in the background. We're going to expect a bit more rain like that now. Got a lot more micros. We've gone on to just seeding one lot of micros a week now. So this is a weekly sowing of pea and radish and sunflower. Bit of watering to do in here. We've been letting the micros really dry up and then bottom watering them to reduce moisture content. They pick up again straight away. Got more hakari and things like that to go out as well as some crops in our 64s. More brassicas and a lot of micros coming up here. Here's the mushrooms. Someone wanted an update. We found the shiitake. This one molded out on the straw, but we had it outside for a while. And the shiitake on alde wood chip seems to be doing great. Now. These are the oysters that we've been focused on. We've just got them under the bench in the greenhouse. This is Indian oyster ripping through, but zero.