S4 ● E52 A peacock dinner for my 35th birthday and a farm update

Well it's my birthday. 454 full moons completed and 35 trips around the sun. What better way to celebrate than to have 50 people here arriving tomorrow. Coming from all over the world. Australia, north and South America and all over Europe to start our 10 day regenerative agriculture training. Super exciting. A quick update from the farm today. We had a really nice weekend down at the lake for barbecue to make flutes out of rowan branches with our neighbor who used to be a cow farmer in the village. Really lovely man who taught everyone how to make their own whistles and dancing and barbecuing and relaxing. After Gracie's goodbye party. Grace my daughter Michelle mother are moving back to the UK and they've been living with us since last like summer basically. And it's been amazing. Grace has learned Swedish very quickly and integrated really nicely into the community here. So they had a few people from the village over and we had a really nice time there. Stick. And our neighbour who used to have a cow farm has come to show us how to make flutes out of Rowan Mountain ash. I've got the pink now cuz Gracie's been having a goodbye party. Rowan Mountain.

I have. Let's movement rock near first.

Just make. Any eyes so you can pull this piece off. So you just cut around at this point so you can remove the bat. That's why you want the SAP very much easier to peel.

But it's not that. It might be a little bit hard now because it's the right time.

Well.

If you take it at the right time you don't need.

We can take. Yes demo mented. First in the manta bot then. So.

So when you separated them you put that hard back. I'm just watching the trout. There's brown trout in our pond and the insects are out now and they're hunting. Strawberries are doing great. You're looking at $800 of free strawberries. Team are working out how to optimize setting up the sprinklers. Ducks in the paddies. This last week has seen a lot of growth. The oak tree is just blooming with leaves. Summer is really here. The rhubarb suddenly started growing this last week. Things are really looking beautiful around here. This is the Mark 1 prototype mobile rabbit pen nesting box. What do you call it? Well it's the rabbit pen 1.0. We'll be rolling out on the fields today. Batch two of the broilers are out on the fields now up in front field and both eggmobiles are out now up in Nutfield. These birds are 21 days. That's our normal time for getting them out. Grass has grown up a lot since the first batch came out and they had to go through some, you know, negative degrees in snow. Whereas now it really feels like summer's here. Trees are all in leaf and bloom and grass has really put on a lot of growth in the last couple of weeks. Just to illustrate how much growth has kicked in, this land has already had 800 laying hens on it for two days. Boilies are just coming through now, but recovery is very fast. If we look at the lane here that's had broilers sitting on it not very long ago, layers have also been over there two days in each spot, so recovery time very fast at this time of year. We came out and weighed all these birds yesterday to get an average and it's day 42, which is when we have records from the previous batches. If you watched old videos, you'll remember I was explaining about how we anticipate the final weight of these birds. Some birds are very big. There's a cockreal here that's probably about 2.7 kilos already. And there's some little birds, maybe the one in front of it, that maybe weigh one and a half kilos. But the average came out yesterday at 2.77 when we were hoping for 2.75. So the birds are just slightly above what they should be at this time. So perfect result, beautiful weather now. So the new birds coming out over in front field are arriving to much nicer conditions than these birds. I'm at my chiropractors again today because I've got one of them in L6 somewhere down here and I had a big problem over the winter and Daniel's been awesome helping me out. So I had a little episode last week and I feel great now actually, but I gonna have a little readjustment. So just coming out from the Kairos and I feel really good. It's an old problem I've had since I was a teenager and I learnt backwards into a crab without warming up. I was a, you know, high performance athlete at that time, quite flexible and yeah, my back went and it's been a problem that's happened every six months. My back will go and I'll be in bed for three or four days, paralyzed pretty much. And then I had an amazing treatment in Thailand from a kung fu trainer who did a tendon massage across my whole body and reset my body, as it were. But these last couple of years it came back. Since we Started the farm, and I'm doing a lot of heavy lifting and work. So Daniel's been a great resource for me and has helped me get really mobile again. I feel really good actually, coming out of there today, and I'm trying out a new pillow, an orthopedic kind of pillow. And I don't know if I believe in these kind of things, but I thought it's cheaper than a new back. Farming is obviously, you know, a job where you can easily maintain injuries. You know, wrist injuries, knee injuries, back injuries. These are things that are hard to shift in occupations such as this. So I've been doing a lot of stretches and doing a lot of work to strengthen my back muscles, but it's an old problem, and it's something that I'll have the rest of my life. Surgery for me, is a very last resort, really. I don't think, you know, it's reversible, so it's not something I would do unless I physically couldn't move anymore. But, yeah, it's something you got to deal with and be more situationally aware, and I'm okay working with that. And I love this work too much to be put off for it for long. I'm just coming to check out the piggies. I haven't been up here for a few days, so I'm curious what effect they've been having on the land. Come across this. Hello, Sal. Hi, mama. You look like you've been having a lovely bath on a hot day. Sounds perfect. And I hear some of the piglets coming. Hey, piglets. What a wonderful place for pigs to grow on. I mean, this is the habitat for pigs. They look very happy. Heaping. Pigs seem really happy. They've definitely done some quick work in here. There's a couple of these young spruce trees over. They're generally not taking out many trees, but they've definitely taken out a few of the young spruce here. Crazy.

What?

Is this okay for you for my birthday?

Yeah, it's an Italian. Italian meringue. It's like you. You make a meringue, but you put actually syrup in it so that it's. Meanwhile, you're making it that it's getting.

You're cooking the egg white with hot sugar syrup.

Yeah.

And then it's homemade ice cream. Black c. Ice cream, double cake. Yay.

We should have your birthday more often.

And there's like, ice cream with rhubarb and. Oh, my God, there's little bits, too. Oh, no. Oh, triple cakes. Gracie, you get three birthdays. I only have One, but I get three cakes. We're so blessed with the chefs this year. We're just, you know, exceptional food. They're all really interested in Sally Fallon's work and things like this and fermenting and pickling, and they're really just amazing. Just working together beautifully and producing really amazing, nutritious food. Everyone here is feeling so honored to be able to eat their food and more and more fresh food coming from the farm. There's already meat and eggs and a lot of vegetables already, and it's just going to increase. Now we're out fishing again. Matt's on his fifth fish. I'm on my ninth, I think, and I'm going for a big one today. Oh, he's a nice fish. All right. It's fighting now. Strong. Look at them. Oh, nice fish. That's a big one. Yeah. First day fishing. That's the beauty. Good condition, too. That'll feed the gang. All right, first fish of the day. More fishing.

The rootsdale pea hand peacock pie that we created, it's obviously with peacock, and we.

Yeah, it's the peahens, but how did you find them? They bit like chicken.

They're a bit like turkey. Like, the legs are more of a gamey structure where the breasts is more of a chicken turkey structure, I would say. So it's mixed up with bacon, onions, garlic, mushrooms in a red wine creamy sauce.

Amazing.

With juniper berries, pepper, salt, and the crust.

Voila. Anyone ever eaten peacock before?

No.

Wow, look at that. It's a proper pie.

Get some of the crust.

Wow. I bet not many people have eaten peacock pie, but living on the farm, cooking the way we do, we get to eat extremely good food. And peacocks were eaten in history a lot with, you know, for the landed gentry and royals for special feasts and just a large game bird, like a pheasant, essentially. But we had too many female peahens, and the neighbors were getting a bit upset because they were eating their flowers and generally hanging out at their place and making a mess. So, you know, to be respectful, we decided to. We tried to sell them, but not many people were interested. So we decided we would make a special feast. And why not? You know? Can't say I've eaten peacock before and probably won't eat peacock very often in the future either. It's amazing to have such a feast today and just to share my life and work with all these beautiful people from around the world. What better way to celebrate life than to be welcoming 50amazing people from all over the world? Every corner of the globe tomorrow as we kick off the educational trainings at the Farm. I feel full of gratitude today and had a lovely day. Thanks for watching our videos. Don't forget to share them. Click subscribe if you want to keep up to date with the Farm, can find out more in our book. And there's also a link to a podcast I did in the winter with Diego Futter of Permaculture Voices, so you can hear about the Farm in a different context there. Thanks for watching. See you next time.