Of Cloven hooves... A new bull and sheep at the farm

Well, today's video is a little update. We've got sheep and a bull and turkeys on the farm. Now the interns are coming back today after a few days in Glasgow and a big nature reserve, just to get to know each other a bit different context from the farm scale permaculture course. And now we're jumping into the internship program with the holistic management training with Anders from Norway happening this weekend. So I've been a bit absent from YouTube because I'm pretty much full time on the slog on the farm and it's hard to catch. But there's some little clips will give you an insight into what's going on and rearrangements at the farm. Excited to have sheep again. Okay, who've we got here? Ragnar, who's in this box? Turkeys. First turkeys of the year and they are hot and sweaty. We've had all day drive and we also came back via some sheep. Look out he goes. Really excited to come out of that box and maybe scared. And we also visited some sheep. So we're going to go now and pick up some Suffolk Texel sheep. We've turned up at this beautiful little farm on lake. Look at sheep. So they have. We're having a Suffolk male, the ram here. And then the ewes. We have a few ewes for the Suffolk Texel cross with a bit of hair sheep. He's a thoroughbred. And we're not having sheep for commercial reasons anymore. We're just having them for ourselves. Suffolk's have a long tail, so you have to be careful because they can get mucky and they can have problems. So we're gonna have sheep on the farm again for home purpose. Just to have our own supply. Exciting. Magna. No, that's one gonna have a mummy. It's gonna have a few mummies. We've got five mummies coming. This family's from Russia and they have a small holding with goats and sheep and chickens. And Ragnar wanted to come along. So today we got turkeys, sheeps and tomorrow a bull is coming also. So many animals. No, it's electric fence. What a beautiful spot. They've got their own boatyard. This would be a dream to be able to go fishing right on your back porch. What you think, Ragnar? That's one of the. Okay, Raggy. Last one. This is the last one. Coming through. It. Hello, Clover, May. Hello, cows. Guess who we've got in the trailer. We got some new friends. I think you're gonna love them. Who is this? Cows. Who is that, wow, exciting. Look. These are your new silver pasture lane buddies. Here comes some more. One of them went the wrong way. That's going to be stressful. They hightailed it out there. Oh, look, that one went straight over. So we just got to hope that they can't jump electric fence. They've been used to these nets, but we'll see. I think she, she will be stressed enough that she'll go over a fence that she won't go over later. We'll see. Well, that was exciting for these girls. Poor sheep, they've had a long journey. Look at all these strawberries coming up. So the grass is up over my knee at this point. A lot of strawberry and flower, which always makes silver pasture moves a joy. So we thinned these out earlier in the spring. We've got a thousand rooted cuttings that have all survived. So that's awesome. So 10 o' clock at night, cows have relaxed. They've just been in 20 minutes. And we have the ram on the other side in the old pig paddock. But there's only one energizer on four sheep nets and the grass is long, so we don't know. We've seen them jump right over the fence already. But they were in a heightened state of stress. They're eating now, so hopefully can be a risk keeping the rams so close that they want to get out and get together in the night time. But I'm tempted to leave them like this now and just let them settle in for the night and then introduce the cows with them tomorrow and we'll see how that goes. We're also picking up a bull tomorrow, so that makes the mix even more interesting. But that ram is going to have to be kept separate. They've been lambing these at February, I think to have the lambs weaning as they come out on grass, which is something we might do. We tend to have lambs coming out on grass, But weaned lambs coming out on grass might be a good idea. And she said, the Russian girl said she's had better results, better weight gain and health doing that. But Mr. Ram will be a little bit lonely, but maybe he will. He could run with the cows separately, but keeping them too close together will always create temptation. Okay, so it's day 17 in the Buddha. As you can see, the birds are growing very well. We've had low losses and they will be ready to go out in just a few days time. So right now you can see on their feed sheet, they are on day 17. So they are on start mixed with grain in the relative proportions. So we use that to weigh out the feed. Depending on if we've lost a bird in one pen, it allows us to quickly calculate the maths. So you see all the lights are off in here and we are monitoring air and ground temperature in here and trying to get it down to ambient temperature in the next four days. Temperature's been fluctuating wildly this year, from really hot sunny days to very cold, very wet days. We've been having a lot of rain, but these birds are going to be good. They're going to go out in six pens and we decided originally I was going to put them out in front field, but I'm going to put them up in top field where it's a lot drier because we've had so much rain. Such a contrast to last year. It's too wet in a way, so we're gonna have them out. But they've been doing a great job in the brooder. We're pretty much adding a good layer of bedding every day at this point when the birds are getting big and shedding a lot and they're feathering out, they're in their ugly teenage sort of stays, growing out through feathers. And we get them out pretty early, so it's important they have grit and little turfs of graft at this point to get used to stepping on them. So they've come in here, but nice brooding round. Everything's gone really well. Harvest day. Gordon's packing salads and things coming out. They can be sooner, So things are bushing here. Got the first tomato flowers coming. It's time to get in here and do some stringing. Lots of lettuce coming up, so we're going to have ample lettuce for the boxes. Some really nice spring onions in here and lots of Mizuna and Red Russian still. So tomatoes having to fight it out in the middle. But they want to monthly fertilization cycle at the moment. This is really beautiful. Broccoli stems for stir fries that will be going out in the boxes today. But things looking good in here. Very nice. First mushrooms coming out the King's Triferia patch. So a few hot days now, up to 25, 26. Hopefully we'll be getting the gardens uncovered soon. That we can see what's going on underneath all these row covers. So these girls and boys are just in here for watching for a couple of days, just to check everything's good before they'll go out. And they gobbledygo and we're waiting for the interns to come back. They've been away at the national park having a bit of time for team bonding. But they're looking good. So just a small group this year. We've got two groups, one later in the year. I love doing turkeys. They're so full of character. But there's not such a big market for turkey as you have in some parts of Europe. It's not a traditional Christmas meal, for example, where we have pork typically here in Sweden. But I love raising turkeys. They're so fun. But we're just doing a small batch now, small batch later. And that's what's easeful to sell without any stress this year, which is good. Yeah, they look good in here. Gonna keep them in probably a day or two. And then we'll put them out into funfield this year. So we'll go up and see the cows and sheep, maybe put them together now. Good morning. So I'm letting the cows in with the sheep. My concern is the young girls. This one and this one, because I think they are going to want to play games with the sheep. And those sheep can jump. They were brought up in these same sort of nets, so it should be fine. But it's a new encounter, so we'll see how it goes. Well, that didn't go so well. Sheep hightailed it out there. This is what we're looking for, though. We're looking for laying down the grass and some pretty even manure distribution to put that armoring back on the soil. Different grass composition up here. Lots of meadow grass, orchard grass, and not sure I've penned the sheep up in the corner here, but I've got to go and pick up the bull. So I think we're gonna have to give him a big pen when we get back. So Rob and I are just pulling into this little farm about an hour and half away from our farm, and we are picking up a famous bull who used to live at Skansen, which is this sort of tourist attraction in. It's like an open air museum of different age buildings around Sweden and different animals from around Sweden. And so he's a very gentle fjelku bull I see in that trailer up here. And we're gonna see if we can easily load him next to our trailer here. Exciting. Oh, what do you think about that, mister? Straight into another one. You get to go. Perfect. That's smooth. We'll see if it goes smooth the other way. Okay. We picked up Skansen. He weighs about 700 kilos. So he's nearly double the size of the smaller cows. And when he turns around in the box, it throws that box around. He thinks it'll be fine driving. He's been driving it around with his Caddy. But to be honest, I am a little bit nervous. But really nice gentleman. He's retired and his daughter owns the farm, but basically she works in town and he runs the farm, which doesn't sound like much of a retirement, but I guess that's kind of normal. But we are going to hit the road, put the video down, and we'll see at the other end how it goes. Letting him out onto pasture with the girls. Scanson the mighty. This is going to be interesting. So we just got back. Sheep are still up there lying down, but they're here. Now, the cows are going to be very curious, and we're gonna have to be careful because he's gonna provoke some interest, no doubt. We're basically just gonna open this up, see what happens. Because he's gonna be eager to get out of here, and these girls are gonna be very curious. It's gonna be interesting to see how they react. And we gotta not let him out this way. Oh, hang on to first. Let this one. Now we're gonna not let them out this way. Yeah. Okay. Here's the big boy. He's a big fellow. Well, he said he was a ladies man. He certainly seems at home with them. He's a very gentle bull. Curious introductions. Okay, so we're letting them settle in later. I want to introduce the sheep with them as well, but we'll let them settle down together to see how they get on. It's a bit of a big move for him. Salad bags going out. Yeah. So still lots of salads. Next week we should be on target. So next week, spinach is in there. But next week is when we would officially start the veg box deliveries, which will be having spring onions and lettuces and more things like that. But for now, we've got to clean up this cow trailer, get that back, and get back to pick up Ragnar from daycare and get some bits for pee posts and lots of other organizational things. So busy day on the road, getting things ready for getting the birds out on pasture. So we'll have some videos of that. So not so many updates, but big busy days. Something that's very exciting, that I'll make a video about soon is with the interns. We're doing a big trial with same crops in same beds, but with mycorrhizal fungi, compost, teas, bioferts, composts, etc. And looking at how they affect plant growth. So I'll keep you tuned about that as we get started with that. So these guys seem to have settled down nicely. They're doing a lot of trampling. I guess they're moving around a lot today. That's what we want. Multi species trampling, putting down a layer of armor on the ground. Can be said that every species of livestock you bring onto a farm supports seven or eight more species to live in that habitat. So now we're rolling again with layers, broilers, turkeys, cows, sheep. No pigs this year, but nice to have so many animals back on the ground and we don't have, we're not fully stocked with herbivores. So it's partly why I wanted sheep again just to have as a homestead flock for supplying us with meat. I really enjoy eating grass fed sheep. Leia's doing good and we're on about 300 eggs. They're hiding from the sun today because it's actually a very hot afternoon. Mr. P is in the fence but they've been doing really good. They have started laying first eggs like maybe 10 days ago, but they're hiding away under there. But they're laying good now that we're going to have full production in maybe a week's time. So it's all go lots of animals on the ground. Grass is growing well and it's exciting times to really move into a summer feeling with an abundance of forage and abundance of animals and birds on the ground again, which is really nice. It's so refreshing after the long winter to just see this landscape really come alive. Well, the sheep are relaxing in the sun, they're a little flighty. These are ewes, they're Suffolk crossed with a bit of Texel and a bit of wool sheep. But they're really flighty and I think they're enjoying having a ram close by here. But how to bond them together is going to be a difficult thing. It might be that we put them back in here. We're going to have to change our grazing plan. But I want them to get comfortable running with the cows and just to have an easeful flow. And it's nice to have all animals on the same ground at once so we're not over grazing, which you run the risk of in the leader follower system where we basically don't want to stay anywhere longer than three days and we don't want to come back till the grass is recovered. And so we tend to like to run them together. But it's getting the cows used to sheepen and getting the sheep used to the cows. So we'll see. I haven't decided fully what we're going to do. I'm just watching them. I'm keeping them up separate at the moment and just watching how they're doing and. And we'll be probably either trying to join them this evening or we will come up in the morning and see how that goes. But they're a little flighty and they're good at jumping is what we've seen. But I'm really happy with the sheep. It's really nice to. To have sheep here again and just have a small flock this time that we can manage for our own meat supply. And we'll be selling a bit of beef off the farm. We'll probably end up selling sheep. I mean, they mold a pie quite quickly. And that's one of the nice thing about sheep is you typically get two lambs. So they're multiplying much faster than something like a cow. And at the end of, you know, a springboard lamb will start lambing or she'll get pregnant at the end of that season if you want them to. Certainly not all of them will get pregnant at that age, but a lot quicker return with sheep, which is nice, but excited to have all these animals on the land again. And it's lower stocking density than we've had in the past. Lower stocking rate. It's also a lower stocking density right now because they're not all in one paddock. But that's fine. We're managing microbes and the grass is doing great after the drought last year. And it's important to remember there's more mass of microbes under the ground than there are above the ground by a long shot. So we are essentially managing microbes through these ruminants whilst also cutting the grass for our layers. And boilers will come up here. So this is where the boilers will come up. Now it looks like we got a long dry spell and we'll see how that goes with managing the grass and the chickens. Okay, that's it for today, folks. Just a quick update in very busy times. Getting things rolling with the internship and making dinner for people and Ragnar and just getting things up and rolling as we really enter the season. Now, as summer kicks in, we're looking forward to glorious days. 27 degrees tomorrow and hopefully some rain peppered in between there to keep things green. I hope your growing season's going great. Don't forget to click subscribe if you haven't already and like and share the videos as you like and look forward to seeing you in another video soon.