Hello, I'm Liz Zorab and welcome to Byther Farm.
No, really not Huw! We're not at Byther Farm at all, we're at Huw's homestead in
Mid Wales.
Well it's actually my parents homestead, just so we get this right.
Absolutely! Justt in case they happen to see this video. Really sorry to Huw's parents.
It's absolutely beautiful here and Huw has very kindly said I can show you one or corners.
Yeah, it's a bit of a sneak peak because I haven't really put it up on YouTube
because it's not really to do with the garden. Yeah so I thought I'd show you
some of the other bits.
Well because Liz is also really nosy and as soon as she was
here she was like looking behind everything, so I kind of saw this coming!
Okay, let's go and have a look.
So these small holding or homestead is around 11 acres in size
and this is where you find most of the 11 acres. This is actually a wildflower
hay meadow and we've had some earthworks being done so it's not in pristine condition
but hopefully you can get a sense of kind of the space here and what
we've done. And you can probably hear some pheasants as well, we have loads of
pheasants around at the moment. What we've done is just, originally this was
just kind of rye grass when we came here, and we're really keen about trying to
bring it back to nature and that's also quite a trendy topic as well with
gardening now. But yeah it's just about being, kind of thinking about
conservation. And what's great is down in the far corner, when they come out,
we actually have some common spotted orchids which is amazing. We have
bluebells here and the white flowers you can see are pig nuts which were actually
these flowers with edible nuts in the soil. So it's quite amazing to be out in
this open area and it's kind of south-facing as well. So behind you is a
seating area and that's where we like to have our barbecues.
So here's a picture
of the house. A lot of people think it's quite big, but in reality it's actually
quite small inside and the reason why is because it's a very
traditional Welsh farmhouse and the walls are about that thick, you know they're
really thick stone walls. And it's about 300 years old and we're in Ceredigion
which is a county in Midwest Wales. We get around about two meters of rain.
And when we came here I was a baby and the house was actually complete
ruin, there was a stream running through it, there was a tree growing out of
the roof of the barn so we had to reroof the barn, there were owls nesting in the
top, there were sheep running through where the kitchen is now. It was a complete ruin.
And what my parents did was gradually as weekend's went
by, they'd come down and do bits of work to it. And then what we've done, it was
quite traditional to put a lime wash over the stone to help protect it from
the elements, so last year we then gave it a lime wash. So that's the house.
Our orchard consists of about 30 different apple varieties and most of
those are Welsh apples. And we think, you know, if you have breeds and
varieties from your own area, it's already used to your soil and your
climate, so hopefully we're going to get better crops and that also ties into the
resilience. And if you've saved your apple pips you can now plant these in
individual pots either on your windowsill or in the greenhouse and
hopefully you might have your own good eating apple variety.
Lots of people say
that, you know, there's so much lichen about. I really don't know much about
lichen we once went on a course and we kind of left because it was so
technical. But the main thing you need to know about lichen is when
there's an abundance of it usually is a very common signal or sign of fresh air.
Yeah! And we're in a very, very rural place, my nearest neighbor is over half
mile away so, you know, you're completely at peace here.
What is really nice
here is to have that fresh air and one of the things that my parents
did when we first came here was to replant all the hedgerows, because a lot
of hedgerows get completely over grazed, and people don't really see
the benefit of that. But there's a lot of trees about and there's a lot of old
hedgerows as well. Some of the oldest hedgerows in Wales are here and
they've managed to work that out just by the huge diversity of species here.
I saw something once that said if you take, I think it was like, a 10-foot
measurement of hedgerow, for every different type of species that you find
you're probably looking at something like a decade of growth. Yeah!
So you can you can estimate, you know, if you've got 15 different plants in your
hedgerow in your 10-foot space that's going to be 150 years old.
Yeah and just on the tail end of it but usually kind of around May
time, because we're just into early June now, in May all of the hedgerows and
verges of the roads... it's just a fly. Everything is so scary here, it's a very
different part of Wales, a dark different part of Wales.
We are really close to lots of bees. We are!
Its a very rural area,
the nearest kind of town of about a thousand people is three miles
away and stuff and and the nearest main road, main 'A' road, is well over a mile,
a mile and a half away. Quite a long way! So nice and peaceful.
So here's the HuwsNursery garden.
And it's beginning to fill up a lot. I can't wait to get this
bed filled because this is where all the leek seedlings here are gonna end up.
And also something that I really want to do more of this year is seed saving.
So we've got some leeks in the back which are just about to flower so we're
going to try and save some leek seeds. And this is also some Swiss chard as
well and we should hopefully get loads of seeds from here. And I think you know
seed savings's a very exciting thing.
But lots happening!
This year I put on loads of compost
I actually bought in 10 tons of compost, not just for this garden,
also for the other garden. But the reason why is because it's trying to increase
the organic matter and everything so far that I've planted is doing really well.
The only thing which I am not so happy with is, I'm not sure even though the
brassicas did well in the seed bed, they don't quite look 100% right so I've just
got to keep an eye and try and adjust things as necessary.
And that's
one of the things about growing your own food as you know there are so many
variables that you're having to play with, but the most important thing is to just have
a bit of a walk around your garden a few times a week, just having the close eye
on things, just to see if there's anything you can do to make it better.
Huw, thank you so much for today, thank you for showing, well allowing me to show everyone else around.
That's fine! Hopefully you'll be able to come back as well.
Yes! And we'll get you wheelbarrowing woodchip!