nothing quite like going after the back pasture to think remarkable sort of
especially in the winter the stillness and quiet this place possesses well
there's so much life and it's almost overwhelming but how green it is and how
much activity buzzes around me when I'm out here in the summer when you're out
here in the winter there's something much more reflective and quiet and
thoughtful right now I'm trying to think more time to just think and plan and
reflect on what I want to do here on the farm in 2019 or what goals do I want to
have what sort of grand things do I want to create you know I've talked a good
game about all the different things I want to do whether it's trying to
rotationally graze geese like they were cattle or digging a pond or maybe even
trying to grow hemp out back here in this back pasture and I'm not quite sure
what I ultimately want to do you know sometimes I can get down on myself
because I'm not moving quick enough or I'm disorganized or I'm just not as
efficient as I could be or made a mistake and I didn't have enough
knowledge or experience and I did something stupid and and I'm really
trying to now not beat myself up so much about that sort of stuff and and really
just sort of take it easy and take it with and sort of take it all within
stride I mean like if you think about it right my vision is to be here for years
and years to come the number of mistakes I'm gonna make is gonna be innumerable
but the lessons learned that come from those mistakes is going to be even
greater and I shouldn't get so down if I make one of those mistakes and so you
know I'm gonna continue to try to keep focus here and try to keep patient and
try to be thoughtful about what I do and where I go with things
yeah that's just sort of a lesson so in my last video which was that tour of the
the permaculture orchard I mentioned to you guys that the biggest failure of
2018 was what we're doing with the hazelnut Grove and so I figured it'd be
a good time to take you guys out here and show you what's happening so here it
is doesn't look like much now and you can't really tell what's going on but
you can see some of the flags poking out here each one of these flags like this
one right here is a hazelnut shrub yeah
now I had a pattern of about 50 shrubs that were all planted through here and I
really wanted this to work as like a standalone operation but uh I don't know
doesn't look like it's doing too well my experiment was working I would have a
lot more plants that look like this popping up all around here like you'd
see probably about 50 of them by my count there's like two or three so
that's not a good sign I mean what didn't work with the
hazelnuts was I think a lot of neglect on my part I I set it up in a way where
it was gonna be really hard to mow and again I didn't think about the mowing
aspect of it and so for those of you guys who are out there watching my
videos wondering what's an important consideration for planting any sort of
orchard or perennial shrub or tree crop operation think about your mowing mowing
is like one of if not the most important maintenance things that you can do keep
the rodent populations down it keeps the weed pressure down gives your trees and
shrubs the opportunity to thrive and I was pretty neglectful so my strategy was
to protect things from the deer I set up a very very cheap simple deer fencing
system that consisted mostly of garden stakes and Mason's twine I made a couple
of gates like you can see right here but for the
most part is just garden stakes and Masons twine all the way around and then
I set up a second fence and you can see that structure sort of sits outside here
right so this was the second layer so there was two layers of it the thinking
being that deer wouldn't want to try to traverse the two layers and actually
that strategy worked pretty well where I fell down was my maintenance of it it
was very hard to try to get the mower in here when I did get the mower in here it
was very hard to figure out where the shrubs were and what was grass and so it
was really hard to mow I often found I had to use the scythe or like a hand
sickle and or weed whacker and and all that got very very labor-intensive it's
unfortunate and so at a certain point this past summer I just got frustrated
and fed up with it and kind of gave up I let it go wild so the failure of this
place is very much on me but there was a lesson that was to be learned in the
whole thing - the lesson being that I'm gonna make this orchard situation work
I'm gonna need to think more in systems and I'm gonna need to think of ways to
make sure that I can maintain it in a way that's efficient I can't waste all
my time trying to hand mow and hack my way around complicated planting schemes
so I guess if I'm thinking about the lessons yeah there's the don't be so
hard on yourself and believe me you know I'm critiquing myself right now but I'm
completely at peace with it and I'm totally ready to start again in 2019
once the snow melts with with trying to establish this situation here so don't
think I'm so hard on myself but at the same time I think there's a lesson an
important one and then I need to keep it simple I need to keep it simple in a way
that makes it easy to maintain and easy to manage and so as you guys are out
there making your own garden and homestead and farm plans I'd push you to
also think about keeping it simple so Natalie over at hey it's a good life
challenge me and when I her videos to answer the question of what was the
biggest lesson you had in 2018 and I think that the biggest lesson for me in
2018 was to keep it simple um so often I can overthink things and I
can try to get too fancy and too clever with how I design things here at the
farm and how I build things here at the farm and most of the time especially
throughout 2018 it's sort of backfired and you know as I think about it and as
a look at 2019 and the things I want to do that biggest lesson of keeping it
simple is going to be an important one that I follow through with it's keeping
it simple - in a number of ways it's keeping it simple and how I design
things keeping it simple in terms of the systems I'm gonna need to maintain
things it's keeping it simple in terms of the lifestyle I lead and you know
what I aspire to and what I hope to do so if you think about like a graph right
and you have on the x-axis talking about the simplicity of your plans and you
think about the y-axis and your happiness what I found is been that the
higher the simplicity the higher the happiness and so as I'm thinking about
things in 2019 I'm gonna be really trying to keep them simple now there's a
lot of things that I want to do this year but I'm also gonna work to make
sure that they're not too complicated and I'm gonna try to really push myself
to keep it simple so that's it that's all I've got just a couple of quick
thoughts here as I reflect out in the remains of the hazelnut Grove and dream
about what 2019 is gonna hold I'm really curious to hear what you guys think
how is simplicity playing a role in your farms and homesteads let me know down in
the comments and I will keep you updated with what our plan looks like very soon
I'm gonna be releasing a video that I try to lay up a whole game plan and
picture but I'm honestly still working on that one right now so I will talk to
you guys real soon Thanks