S4 ● E109 A little farm update

I haven't made a video for a while. I've been super busy. So here's a quick update from today. We think she got man from the front. One of the neighbors shot a fox that had zero hair left. And yeah, Misa has been itching and developing scabs for the last couple of days, but it's getting quite bad around on her side. And, yeah, Tunnel's getting emptied and we've got a few hundred kilos of green tomatoes for chutney as well as the same for fresh tomatoes. But we're going to get a new crop in the ground here to grow into the season. So what's happening? Boxes. Rico was good. Rico went well. You met the mayor? Sort of met the mayor. Everyone was giving products to the mayor for. There's a bit of a publicity thing at the Rico and still walking them leagues. Yes. It was funny to see everyone put their best footage forward. You know, Rico's always displaying your products and you want people to see you and order from you next week. But when the word went around that the politicians were coming. Yeah. Did you put a nice smart, clean pair of clothes on that? I wore a bib, yeah. Did you come your bib? I put it in a ponytail, in a little tail, actually. A little elastic band like Captain Lou Albano. Nice. Yeah, nice touch. This is the last of the sign books going out around the world and there's been a few big loads that are coming out to you, to most of America, Canada, Australia, and they are on their way into the station. Some people have mentioned that the book's expensive, especially Americans. But something you got to remember is the book is 350 crowns. That's 35 Euros and the postage is 20 Euros. So, you know, for people used to Amazon and all these things that have externalized costs, you know, it might seem expensive, but that shipping cost is high. That reflects the high cost of living here in Sweden. And to be honest, I'm not that excited about the service that the post office give for that money. You know, a lot of books have gone missing. Some people have had other books turn up in their packages, obviously where they've mishandled them and then replaced it with something else that's fallen off on the line. But I just wanted to point it out because I think, you know, €35, it's a very competitively priced book here. And to be honest, in the permaculture literature, I think it's really good value myself. There's a lot of information distilled in there. And you know, if you're going to be setting up a small farm, you're going to be investing tens of thousands of euros. It's very small cost in. In my mind. And yeah, I say that really genuinely because I feel like it's. Yeah, there's a lot in that book for the money. It's. You can't get that much information in one place any other way I know of. So thanks for supporting us. Great to have all the sign books done now. It's been a lot of work and hope they get to you soon. So I just came out of the Syrian hairdressers. This is what they've done with me. Doesn't matter what you ask for at the Syrian hairdresser, it will always look like this. So tunnel builds have been on a bit of a halt because we've been dealing with other things. But today we're taking down the yurt. So it's really a bit of a preemptive move. And we're moving into the old intern wagon where it's heated and we've got light, but it's dry for the last few days and it's not going to be dry for the rest of the season. So we thought we'll get that done now and then get on this tunnel. And birds are out there in the field. They've gone through most of the tree lanes. They've done a really good job with that. But I want to get them inside here so we can keep this grass for the animals. Yeah. So AMD's both of them coming down today, which marks the end of our season mostly, but it's not the end of the year. We still got some weeks to go and still got a load of jobs to do. But we're moving into the warm because it's getting pretty cold in the mornings. We pretty dark in the mornings and evenings now. Really love these yurts. I've posted before, but if you want to make a yurt or gyr, this is a girt. It has straight roof poles or teepee or dome. The best website out there is simply differently.org. it's got all the instructions you need. I learned to make these just by observing other ones. And then when I made these big ones, I'd found that calculator and it tells you exactly how many bits of wood to cut, where to drill them, tells you how many roof poles to put on. You can see everything visually. It tells you how to sew the canvas. I always sew these on old Singer sort of hand sewing machines. I've got an electric sail making sewing machine now, so I do it on that. But we had these out in the UK. This is 12 ounce canvas from MITCO. So if you're in Europe, Mitco and Glasgow are the best supplier of canvas. It's fireproof, rock proof, waterproof. It's been treated, but it doesn't really come out of the fabric. So we've had this in the UK up continuously under trees for 10 years, which is pretty amazing. You're not really meant to have them under trees because of the sappy, like sticky bits that fall off the tree. But pretty impressive out of cloth. And I really love these structures. It's wonderful to have a circular space for meeting with large groups, but it's just been a really cheap way. You can build these for a couple of thousand euros and you can seat 50 people suddenly. And if you buy something this big, there's only two European suppliers, about 15 or €20,000. And we don't need planning permission for them. We've got some kind of basic authority. Okay. Because we've got these big platforms that they stand on. But they gave us permission for that. No problem at all. So we had our last lunch outside, probably because it's getting so cold and taking the frame down. So it's a simple process. It's kind of the exact opposite of putting the yurt up. We take the canvas off, then I go around this yurt so big, it's got about 500 kilos of roof above your head. So we bolted it on and we bolt some of the anchor plates across to the toner, the middle circle. Because what a yurt wants to do is sort of. Well, a G wants to twist. That's why we leave these dragon posts in. Because if it twists, it will fall with such amount of weight and high winds that we get here. You need that this year. You might remember some of the earlier videos, we had a little nest up here. And so I imagine next year they'll come again. And we've got even more returning swallows this year than any other year. Quite nice view. It's gonna be very different when the yurt's down. It's a really like. Marks the end of the year, really. Ragnar's back from Paris. How did it go, Ragnar? Pretty good. We got ham, eggs and chips. British chefs, British people. We're British majority. And we've moved into Eaton Wagon. Two and a half. Yeah, Like a Russian Siberian mining operation hq. Good night, chickens. Putting hot tape on soon. Done. Gotta get the COVID on and get some peat moss down, get the chickens in. So picking up sheep from the slaughtering and the pigs will be coming here too in not so long. Probably in two weeks from now. This is where we're heading. Okay. In the bottom. Put them around a little. So Johanna was saying that maybe you had separated some. Did she ask for you to have some separated from the others? No, but I have the numbers. This numbers, see. Yeah. So these are the ones you see. Yeah, these are the ones that we need to know first and the rest we can just pack in the van. Yeah, just check the numbers when you get them. Ah, they're on the outside of the box. Yes, they are. Okay, so the first ones, you're giving the first here. This is minced meat and. Yeah, it's minced meat. All this, the sheep. Okay, so this is all minced meat. Yes. Okay. It says here lots of sheep going to customers. So we've come to our local farm slaughtering to do bigger animals. You have to have vets president to store the bigger animals and they've done a really nice job. So we've got lots and lots of boxes to pick up. Let's turn up in here. So logistics. We're going to drop off some of this to customers in Karsten and we're dropping some of it off to customers that are picking up on the farm, some to Sune. Summer's going all three. But they've done a very nice job with all of the packaging. We're going to transfer some of these into these kangar boxes for delivery later on. But that's a lot of high quality grass fed meat. Very nice. Ready to go to the customers. Yeah, these are the. Are we all organized, Matt? Yeah, this is where we rent the freezer space and we've got customers meeting us here shortly. So we're going to pack things that aren't yet pre sold into the freezer and then meet customers, then head off back to the farm. He thinks he's found reishi on spruce. Yeah, old spruce stump. So we were going to put some reishi in as a medicinal crop. But if it's growing naturally, we're going to culture this one. We're just finding out. Ben Spice is asking some of his expert friends and if it is reishi, we'll propagate it. Very cool. I'm up in the high hills. Live forever and live forever. Yeah, we always will. See you in thousand years, man. We can harvest some chestnuts. Last of the turkeys being processed today and then we postponed our Last slaughter session until next week to give time for the birds to grow out a little bit more based on the weight. So penultimate slaughter day at the farm today. Mito, you're getting better, aren't you? Mito's had scabies. There's been a bear fox running around that the neighbours shot because it had no hair. It was looking really bad. But Miso contracted scabies. So we've treated her and she's less itchy than she was and she's doing good. She's curious about the turkeys too. Last turkeys. Nicholas is back in his stolen position and we let these turkeys get a little bit bigger. They're not too big and we're hoping they come out about 8 kilos to us to be nice. We're only able to pluck one at a time. To me, Not taking off the. No, I can do that. Beautiful birds. No, we think this is maybe about 8 kilos. So in Swedish prices that's about €120 bird. Big Bird. Birds coming out fluffy. Good. What temperature are we at? 63.63for about a minute. They're coming out good. We're just doing one bird at a time. They're coming out very clean. We like them a lot. They're not lining. So we've been processing some more of the pigs for home consumption and 12 of them are off to the bottom butchery. We've been working with some gating to be able to herd the pigs in to get them in the trailer. Much harder to herd pigs than it is other animals like sheep or cows. But we managed to do okay so far. So I've been working a lot on the online training and I've built a lot of the new platform now. It's a really cool platform and I'm working currently on the main full course and there's going to be a self LED course alongside that which is the same content but no contact time with me. And so the aim of the full course is really to put people in the driving seat to really take charge of their own design and enterprise design, all the spreadsheets and planning and have my support over about three months. I think it's going to be a 14 week course and it's going to be different to anything out there. There's really nothing like it out there. Like coming from a small farm, using models that are detailed and. And showing you all the business sheets and you can download those sheets and use them as templates if you're running the same enterprises. But showing you A detailed look at all the working systems at the farm, as well as lectures from our educational work. I think the real strength of what we can offer is that not only are we farming very profitably and intensively in a small space and challenging climate, but we also have a vast experience with design and education. So it's going to be a higher priced course than some out there, the one that has a lot of contact time with me, but it's going to be very cheap compared to our consulting fees and it's going to be really participatory. So I'm going to do webinars for every section of the training, which is based around the chapters of our book. Answering your questions directly as well as giving feedback on the tasks associated with each layer of design. So each week there will be new content released and there's hundreds of hours of footage, both lecture based and looking around the farm. But then there's tasks that need to be completed as well as a lot of spreadsheets and planning stuff. So you're going through design in a step by step way and I'm there to feed back with you as well as you get peer support from other people on the training. My aim right now, I booked a holiday with Matt, so we're going back to some of my old jaunts in Southeast Asia. I lived in Southeast Asia for several years and I love it there and there's nothing I can think of that will be more relaxing after what's been a really tough year for me. Actually. It's, you know, it's been very intense, energy wise and this is our fourth season, so each year I get progressively more tired and it's really a celebration of all we've achieved, but then also taking time out and resting and really making plans for next season as we change the whole thing up. It's really exciting time. So we're taking a holiday end of November. So my aim is to get all this out by mid November and we'll start the course in mid January. And those people that want to do a self led course, all the same information is there, you just won't get feedback on them or any peer support. It's really exciting. It's a very new chapter for us and it's, you know, something that I'm not totally clear the best ways forward with. It's a new sort of thing. But I see that I can benefit a lot more people by working with them longer term. And I also think it's really empowering for someone to take the reins and really understand why and how they're doing what they're doing. And it's something we've done in the past with our consulting work is turned it into educational events to spread cost, but also to make sure the people involved really know about all the things we're dealing with. I'm not interested in designing properties for people who don't really want to take the reins because ultimately they will fail. I think in my experience that's what I've seen anyway. So this is a way to meet all those needs. And yeah, I'm excited. I can see the end of the tunnel, as it were. I think we can get it out and we're also going to then have a load of online materials that are much more accessible price wise for people that just want the information and they're not looking necessarily to, you know, go through a deep process of designing business and land, you know, so it's, it's really going to be suited for people who are at the point where they know what they're going for, they have a property and they want assistance. Every step of the design process, it's going to be streamed and there's going to be a lot of content to download and it will have a certain access time, it's going to run in the winter times and it's going to be where I funnel all my consulting work, basically because I don't have time to go out and do that anymore. And so that's what I'll offer people. It's like, hey, you do the design work and I'll support you every way and then you'll know what you're doing and know why you're placing things where you are and how you planned your spreadsheets, etc. So I think it's an all round winner and I'm excited for it. It's a lot of work still to go, but I've done a lot of work in these last couple of weeks, so I'm seeing it's shaping together. And it's a really cool online course format where you can really see all the things you're going to do and you can track what you've done, I can see what you've done. And everyone's tasks are uploaded in the same space. It's all happening in one place. All the webinars will happen and they're scheduled live. All the webinars are scheduled as well as the content release. So everything follows a nice clean packaged order. And all tasks, you know, you can upload videos or files or pictures or documents. So everyone's responses to the tasks will be put in one place for each task for each chapter of the course, which means everyone can follow each other and offer peer support along the way, which is going to be really cool and really exciting. Part of the course.