S4 ● E17 A little pre- season update

I'd hope to be putting out a lot more videos recently, but the reality is I much prefer farm work than sitting behind a computer. And it's lambing season. We've got deep litters to dig out, we've got big staircases to build and all kinds of other jobs to do before the season really begins. We've got three weeks or so before the team assemble and we really get going. But here's a little update from the last couple of days. It's beautiful spring day and we've been in T shirts all day and covering some of the beds. And Matt's come from Canada and this is his third season here in Richter.

Yeah, super excited. Good. Doing well.

Yeah.

Taking these covers off. They've been protecting the soil from the elements all winter.

And he just arrived last night. We told him to take some rest. But look, in true style he's just got on it. The soil looks great in the beds we've uncovered. Really nice. There's very little weeds to. To deal with. Really nice condition. Back at Ridgedale.

Back at Ridgedale. Third time here. First did the internship for 10 weeks. Garden manager apprentice for about six months last year. Inaugural year of the Ridgerdale Market Gardens.

Very nice.

And now with 110 more beds, expanding the market garden. And back to rock it again.

Yeah, We've got some nice overwintered corn salads and spring onions. Lettuces. Spinach is coming up Nice. Matsuna is coming up nice. And we're just seeding now. Salad mixes. This will be mostly to serve us food before we get the tomatoes and cucumbers in here for the veg boxes. This time last year, this place was just totally full of chickens. So we got a good head start to the season with this. Looks great. In here.

We have a mix of some oak leaf lettuce and romaine lettuce.

So that's 12 rows of baby salad in.

12 rows of baby salad in about 20 seconds.

Nice. What is Matt putting in there, Gracie?

Garlic.

Normally we plant the garlic in winter, don't we? Yeah, like in the autumn. But we forgot to do some. So you're helping put them in there?

Yeah.

Are you selecting the good ones?

No, I'm selecting the bad ones.

Aha. You're selecting the bad ones Out. So we went out to collect all the materials for the first segment of the pig fence. We're just going to install the first bit of the pig fence so that we can get the pigs out of their winter barn. And they have a little outdoor enclosure there to get them onto the ground that they first went onto when they arrived to the farm, and then we'll build all the rest of the fencing later. A lot of people seem to come back to Richdale multiple times. We've had a few people that come back to prolong their stay. What do you think it is about the place that draws people back again?

Well, that's a good question. I think people have an interest in seeing multiple different farm enterprises rise up at the same time. For people that are into being farm managers and taking care of the animals, I think they're aware that there's so much more going on to the farm and there's an attraction to being part of a team that's working on the whole system as opposed to just one thing. I mean, that's what attracted me to the farm and it's a great place to be.

We have a lot of fun.

Yeah, we have. Exactly. We have a lot of fun. You get to meet people from all over the world. It's a great thing.

Yeah, we've had some rhino characters and we have a great team this year, no?

Yeah, it looks like it. I'm excited to meet everybody. Robin and Astrid coming back. Looking forward. It's always good to see familiar faces. And actually, even the first year, every year I've been here, seen familiar faces. Right. So that's been really nice. And yeah, it's very special to have a. To be able to have a home away from home and to never feel like you're. To never feel like you're away from home. You know, you just kind of go.

From one to the next and you. I guess you'll have been here more than anyone except Nicholas by the end of the year.

Yeah, I think so.

How do you think we'll do without Nicholas?

It's a good question. You know, it's enough to think about. It's enough to think. I wonder how we're going to do without Nicholas.

I don't know if he can bear being away all summer.

I'm sure we'll see him.

We're waiting for the first buds to break. We've still got a little bit of time to take currant cuttings. We're thinking of putting currant bushes all the way around these fences of the market gardens just to get some additional cropping in this space. But we're going to get all these covers off in the next few days and add some compost and we're doing maybe 200 liters additional on the beds that we've already made. Aren't we? And 400 liters on the new beds. That's right. And that's the last big application of compost now, I think, isn't it? We'll be down to like 100 liters maintenance a year, which we might be able to start making on farm.

Yeah, well, we're certainly gonna make some.

We're gonna make some. Maybe not enough to start with. I'm excited to trial mycorrhizal inoculants for vegetables this year. I think we're going to do some comparative studies and do some side by side trials. And we've done a lot of research at the farm with like the past year and the animals, but we didn't really keep the best records last year with the gardens, did we? It was kind of a. Everything was rolling so fast. This year I think we keep really tight records that we can share with you about very precise crop data and yields and value of crops. And then we could do some side by side trials with broad forking, not broad forking, with mycorrhizal fungi, with compost teas, etc. And get into that. And we've also been seeding a few other crops. We've put in more lettuces today, but this little space is working very well for us. But it's getting quite full up now and so we're going to do a quick reskinning of a polytunnel just to give us a transition space to harden things off, but also to grow things on that don't need so much light because we've got about enough space for three quarters of our starts in here. And it's keeping good temperature. Actually it's keeping about 18 degrees, which is ideal for germination, but we need a bit of additional space and a crossover space. What's up, Raggy? You want to come help in the greenhouse? Is it exciting down here? All our kohlrabis and kales and some micros coming on. All our leeks and spinaches.

I want to hold one of them.

We let them be with their mamas a bit.

Why?

Just because they've just been born today. And so it's nice that they just.

Look at that cute one.

Have time with Mama. Look.

That looks a bit like a little boy.

This is Kung Fu Panda.

Is it a long time since you had babies?

Well, it's been a year. What's Gracie doing? Some pictures for the film?

No, I'm making a maze. But this is a fairy and it wants to go back to its home. And there's places that you can go off.

And who came to visit end who came to visit gratie. Hello. A hint. Sitting at the table. A very long way to visit.

Yeah.

So I'm out with the Mavic, our new drone, to check out the extra lamb we're grazing from the neighbor. We have about six hectares of extra grazing just over the tree line here, so we're going to take a look from above, see how it looks. Quite a lot of changes with the grazing this year with this extra land, which we'll make a video about soon. So this is a deep litter that the cows have been on. We just let the cows out, so we've got about 80 centimeters to dig out. How are you feeling about digging out the deep bedding mat?

I'm feeling pretty good about it.

It's 10 tons in there, I reckon. Yeah.

It's not that daunting a task, you know, it's quite easy. You just grab a pitchfork and keep putting, you know, all this bedding into the wheelbarrows until there's none left smart enough.

And then we're going to clean it up for the boilers. There's going to be a thousand chicks in here in three weeks time.

Yeah, clean it up very nice for them. They're going to love it in here, as they always do.

It's a lot of work digging all this out. There's a good 10 tons in here. It doesn't look like a lot on the camera perhaps, but it's heavy material. This manure plays a large part in our nutrient cycling at the farm and it'll be put on as mulch for the tree lanes as well as making our own compost for the market gardens. It's time for sauna. I haven't shown you the sauna. Oh, it's really nice and toasty in here. We've had a couple of test saunas, actually. It heats up in here about half an hour or so. It's really nice. The heat really distributes well. How is it?

It's amazing. I'm very happy. Now about this new sauna. Beautiful.

Thanks for watching our videos. We're excited to share the season with you in as much detail as we can. Really looking forward to the new team coming and be sure to subscribe to keep up to date with the farm. And you can read more about the farm in our book, Making Small Farms Work. It's available as a PDF or as a hardcover book. People say it's good. We've been getting a lot of great feedback from around the world. So thanks for that. We love to hear from people. See you next time.