Hello, I'm Liz Zorab and this is Byther Farm and this is Huw!
I'm here! He's here! It's a bit surreal actually. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah it was strange, just
coming through the gates and after seeing all your videos, to just be finally
here, so thanks for the invite. You're very, very welcome. So Hugh has an amazing gardening
channel called HuwsNursery. If you're not familiar with his channel, why not?
But if you're not, I leave a link up there. And so I've invited Huw down and we
tried to arrange this a couple of times, I'm very I couldn't do it, Huw couldn't do it,
but we've finally got our act together and it's been great. Huw's had a look
around, he's done a bit of filming, and then
later on today we're heading out for a trip, a day trip. Because why not? It's a beautiful
day as well. So Huw would you like to tell everybody about
your channel? Yeah, so I started my channel when I was 12. I was really bored
basically and it was summer holidays and when you live far away from any of your
friends, there's nothing really you can do. So I thought I'd go out into the
garden because I grew up with it. And since then I've probably made about 350
videos just teaching people how they can grow their own food at home organically.
And since then I just passed 90,000 subscribers
and turning 20 in January, but I've decided it's not go to uni and to pursue
the joys of being out in the garden. Brilliant brilliant! And Huw was telling
me earlier on he took a permaculture design certificate. When did you take
that? I did that in November of last year. Brilliant and who was that with? That was
with Aranya, and it was just really good. And what what amazed me about the
permaculture design course is that it teaches you all about the principles of
permaculture and how you can use thinking and observation to make your
garden just be a lot more efficient. But the thing about using things, like swales
and berms, is that you're just learning how
nutrients and water moves through the garden and how you can minimize the
amount of effort you need to put in and then hopefully, at the end of the day,
you're growing better produce. Yeah, so I was talking to you about in the duck
area, where we've got a pond at the moment that we made.
I spent the last year or so watching how the water flows down the land and
we've now started making a hunt which is called a berm, but
basically a hump on the ground and we're just dumping lots and lots of weeds
there, are things that we're happy to rot down, And we'll then dig out a pond,
put it up on the hump, so as the water comes down the hill (it's very gentle slope)
it'll land in the pond. And then we're going to be able to grow things on that
raised bits on the berm. We're going to put in fruit trees and fruit bushes and
just hope that ducks don't have an all-you-can-eat buffet every single day!
So one of the basic things that you first learn about permaculture is the
idea of observing. So you've had the pond for about a year and a half and in that
time it's given you a perfect opportunity to look at how water systems
flow. And I think one of the bright sides, the benefits of having this extreme
weathers of winds, storms and droughts as you get a much better sense about how
your area, how your zones, cope with the different kind of extreme weathers. And
then, with that, through design, you can design a system which then works in
favor of these extreme elements. Which means that you then build a resilience
to it. And it's that idea of building resilience which is going to help you
for the long term. So it's really spending a bit of time and being patient
to observe things, but then you have a much better understanding, so you're far
less likely to end up 2 or 3 years down the road after, maybe, doing a lot of
earthworks and thinking 'ah this isn't in the optimal place'. Yes, much better to watch first and do all that
work only once. Shall we go and see what they're talking about? Yes.
Both Huw and I grow all our food in raised beds and there's a really good
reason for that, isn't there? Yeah, we basically don't have
a very good depth of topsoil. Mine is probably about that deep and when you see people like
Tony from UK Here We Grow with a very, I'm just so envious,
Because when he was planting your white currants it was just amazing. And that's why
we have to do raised beds because we've got to build an actual soil level if
there isn't one there. So the farmer is out cutting the fields again, so you'll have
to just excuse the the noise that appears every now and then, but I'm
really pleased that he's being able to get another cutting of that grass! So
when we moved here and I started trying to dig down into the ground, well, I broke
a spade or two trying to get down. We've got a very thin layer of clay followed
by quite a lot of, what is effectively, just a beach, with a vast number of
stones and pebbles in it. So the water pools on the top of a clay, but when it
does get through, it then drains away really quickly and to be able to grow
all the food that want to grow, the best thing to do was to put it in raised beds.
which is what you've done. What do you fill your raised beds with?
Well, we get a almost endless supply of mole hills, so we think 'hey we didn't
have to dig up any of the soil' so the mole hills do all of the hard work for
us, because it's just such a pain trying to get any of it. So you know, there are
some stones in it, it's not going to be perfect, it never is but we'll do a
load of soil and then we'll put on a load of compost. And we used to have cows but,
because of things like TB testing, it just didn't make sense for a family to
keep two or three cows so we decided unfortunately.
It isn't as easy for us to get something to fill our raised beds, but
fortunately we do know some farmers around us and can get some cow manure
and do it that way. But if you see some of my videos, you'll see that quite a few of
our raised beds do have a lot of stones in them, but that really doesn't affect
the growing, maybe if you have a massive brick or something in it! So
don't worry about having this perfect looking soil because plants really
aren't that fussed. Well you know what I do - sometimes the farm, the field next
door which isn't ours, suddenly has about one or two hundred molehills,
so I'll just casually take a wheelbarrow, over, fill it up, walk back, 'Oh look Dad, I found some soil!'
Huw has really kindly offered to move as many with chips as I would like.
I think that was a bit of a rash, a rash offer, but he's going to bring them and
dump them in the area behind me here, so as I create more the food forest
going further back there, I've got the wood chips just here ready to use.
Round one!
What more could you want?
So while Huw is here I'm also going to ask him to harvest a couple of
the squashes.
It's not bad Liz - pretty good!
Well that's it for me today, Huw and I are heading out for our day trip. And so,
wherever you are in the world and whatever you've got planned for today, I
hope it's good one and I also hope you'll join me again tomorrow.
See you! Bye.
Take 12!