Richard Perkins walks through winter farm routines: managing livestock, planning beef butchering, and bale grazing. He's bought 2.5 hectares to build a camping enterprise with yurts and teepees, and is hiring for core and volunteer roles through November. An eight-week Regenerative Agriculture Masterclass starts soon with past students as mentors.
Questions this video answers
Two and a half hectares.
Two 13-meter-diameter stratas, two yurts, and three 6-meter teepees.
Eight weeks (intensive, run over two months).
Open only until the end of November.
richterdalepermaculture.com
Chapters
Welcome back to another episode, folks. It's that time of year where without the hens this year, our chores are down to just 10, 20 minutes a day. And it's a fantastic time for planning as well as taking on a whole bunch of other projects. Well, with all this beef aging behind me, you can imagine we're eating beef every day. Some people have been asking how long we're going to cure this for. We haven't decided yet. It's obviously a factor of temperature and time, but we're going to. It's quite a big job to turn all this into usable cuts for the freezer. So we're going to start that next weekend and we'll take it in stages. I'll make videos and update you as we go. But we haven't decided yet on full details. But we've been enjoying some amazing beef. Going up to move the sheep. We haven't decided what we're doing with the sheep yet, but they're out on the grass. We've just put the ram back in. We've got two rams still. We decided to put them in together with the sheep. Winston is obviously the dominant male. So what we decided we'll do is put them in together, let them graze a bit for the next week or two, and then we haven't decided where they'll go after that. Maybe we'll put them in with the cows, or maybe we'll keep them separated to give them more space at the feeding bales as we do. Bale grazing cows are enjoying the sun down there, and they have bales up at that end. But we've still got a little bit of grass left to work with, so we'll just. Cows are protesting there, wishing they could be out on the grass. Too few lanes of grass here that we may as well use. And the sheep are on a funny grazing pattern because they've been behind and in front. So I'm gonna actually make a paddock. Rather than joining onto this one. I'm gonna make a totally new paddock, I think. So I think I'll start a corner here and just open it up and stand here to stop them going out that way. And I think because there's so much new grass here, they'll be totally down with that. Now, they have already grazed here up to about this line, and they've already grazed around the back. So I need to make a new paddock totally. So let's go with that, Sam. Okay, you lot. So if I just open that one and open this one. Pretty confident. They're just gonna go where I want them to go. But we'll see. This way. There you go. Perfect. So that went well. They don't drink much water, but we'll leave some water left for them. I'll just close this up. I always like to do these opposite when I clip them opposite ways. That's important. We'll put the energizer back on. So Sweden's just actually had a record again for the temperatures. They were just showing on the news that it's the warmest. I think they were showing the last three years. And this time of the year it's the warmest it's been on record. So that extreme weather situation that we get every year is continuing. And who knows where things are going with that. Let's get this other fence down. Well, that is the extent of the farm chores this year for winter. For the next summer, six months. Every four days or so we take a bale for the cows. And when the sheep come off the grass and go into a barn setting, you can see they've got grass all the way down here. But we'll have to deal with bales and water for them. Cows actually have their own access to water down the bottom. Pretty useful. Six months of our lives looked like this. Which is why we can take on other projects, take some downtime. It's all part of the calculated design of the lifestyle that we're wanting to live here. Bagmobiles resting up for the winter. Who knows about the new build? I'm waiting to find some trailer bases before we get started and tell you more about that. Last of the broccoli. Been sitting here for some weeks. Then they all read. Oxtail soup from Skansen. Slow cooking four hours lunch. And my friend Robin brought Ragnar cheese. Sewing curtains. The great thing about having loads of time in the winter is it enables us to make detailed plans and put in all the financial planning and detailed phase planning throughout the season because we get so much done in our short seasons. But this winter we're excited to announce that we'll be buying this two and a half hectares of land that the north beds are located on, but also the forestry behind me. And we'll be putting the yurts and teepees that I've bought into the forest for opening up a camping enterprise at the farm for people that want to come and visit and see what goes on here. And I'm going to be making the bases for these as well as the big stratus teepees that we've purchased from the local tent teepee company that will make up the new classroom and dining area at the farm. And so I've got a lot of timber work to do. I've just been at the timber yard ordering timber, two 13 meter diameter stratas, tent teepee tents, two yurts that we already have, but these will be going in the forest and three 6 meter teepees that will be going in the forest. So I've been calculating the underfloor and the decking. Now I'm going to talk about the wood order that will hopefully come in the next weeks. And I'll be doing a lot of work up there which I can take you on a journey through when we get to that point. I'm really excited to show you folks into the forest here because it's somewhere I've spent a lot of time looking around and it's really nice to add that back into the farm. And I'll update you folks as we go along with this because it's going to be a big project to turn it into a space that's got multiple functions and integrate it into the farm in a more complete way. But the dumplings, I'm feeling really energized in a way that I haven't done for the last couple of years now. And I've really got some energy, boyish youthful energy back that I had in the beginning of starting the farm. And it's so much exciting stuff to tell you about in the coming weeks. I've got some big news to announce later this week, but I wanted to tell you that the core team positions for employed and volunteer positions next year are open only till the end of November. We've had a lot of great applications already, but we're keeping those open until the end of the month. So don't forget to check on the website richterdalepermaculture.com if you want to be in to join us for the team next year. We're also gearing up now to run the Regenerative Agriculture Masterclass, our signature online training that we run in the new year. But we're opening up bookings for that very shortly. And that's the widest, broadest regenerative agricultural design training that you'll find anywhere on the web. We're excited to bring some of our past students on as mentors who will help help answer questions with me over the two month period. It's going to be a very, very intense training over eight weeks and that's something we plan to run every winter when we've got this extra time that we can help other people get started with their land and business plans. So really excited for that to be coming out. We've got a free mini series and all the details to stay up to date with that you can find below. If you're new to the site or regular subscriber, do check the notes and links in the description below, because I update those over time with places where you can get free free further information. Or if you want to order our book or join any of our online training offerings, we've got several now up on the platform, so see the details below. I look forward to seeing you folks in a video soon. Bye for now.
