I'm Leaving...
#FamilyFarm, #FarmLife, #SustainableFarming, #OrganicFarm, #FarmFresh, #HomesteadLife, #RuralLiving, #FarmFamily, #SmallFarm, #CountryLife, #BackyardFarm, #FarmToTable, #FarmAnimals, #SelfSufficientLiving, #FamilyHomestead
G'day, I'm Mark from Self Sufficient Me and I'm leaving. Let's get into it.
Okay, gee I tell you what, I'm sweating a river here, but I suppose you could say that, oh Mark,
you know the title and your intro is a little bit alarmist, even clickbaity, but I've got some
important information that I want to share with you guys about the future of Self Sufficient Me,
what's going to be happening and just an update on me and the channel overall.
For a start, it's true, I am leaving. I'm leaving on holidays tonight. We're going to go over to
the UK and Europe for a break and when I say break, you know how you get some of these YouTube
videos and I'm not poo-pooing on those guys who say they're burnt out from YouTube, they've been
doing it for a decade and it's hard and it's time to leave, go and do something else. That's not one
of these videos. I love YouTube. I don't get burnt out. I was in the military for 21 years before
this job and this is by far the easiest thing that I've ever done because I'm talking to you
guys. The gardening community on YouTube is just fantastic. You're so generous with your eyeballs
and your time and your money as well. I have to say we now run a family business off YouTube,
so I'm not burnt out. We're just going on a holiday. It kind of is a bit of a working holiday.
I'm going to drop in and hopefully see a few YouTubers in the UK. Liz Zorab is one of them.
We're going on a holiday because we're going to enjoy ourselves. I'm a big foodie as you know
and a lot of this holiday is going to be sampling the different foods in Spain and Portugal and of
course the UK as well. We're actually going to be going to Tomatina in Spain, tomato throwing
festival. I'm sure that's going to be very interesting. We've even got t-shirts made up
for the special occasion. Hopefully no one gets hurt. The future of Self-Sufficient Me,
I don't see me going anywhere, but I have felt like I've been a bit slack in this last 12 months
or so about delivering some of the videos that I've said I was going to deliver. Things like the
pantry renovation. Now I haven't dropped that yet because there's a few things I need to piece
together before I can put that video out and a lot of you have been asking and then eventually
it all just fell off. People just got fed up. Mark's not going to do it. It's not like that.
I wanted to live our renovation for a bit so that it wasn't like a big hype of oh look at
this beautiful new pantry. I wanted to show you the faults as well and you only find that out
when you do live it and do it every day and then you can see well I really do like our reno's but
boy by jingoes we could have done this better and that's the type of videos that as you know
I always like doing. I like to show you my success but I like to show you some of the failings too
so that maybe you can not make those mistakes. I mean it's just simple isn't it? So there's that
video, there's a few chicken videos that I want to do. I want to clear up, you probably haven't
seen anything to do with quail lately and a lot of you guys follow me on just for the quail videos
right in the beginning. I want to clear that up too. There's some important information about quail
that I want to bring to you and I'll have to do all that in the last quarter of the year
after September so we get back mid-September probably have three or four days to relax
and then I'll get straight back into this and we've got to
because we've had some extra rain through this winter so I haven't been able to get into
knocking two-thirds of this orchard down either which I want to do and that's going to be a big
chipping job and there's some really big news about chippers and the chipping job and all that
as well that I want to bring you. It's going to get late we're going to be in spring by the time
I start knocking these down so it's going to be interesting to see how these trees are going to
recover because I want to do it. I wanted to do it winter never got the chance so there's that's
another thing that I want to get done but I think it will be interesting to see how they do go
being chopped as they're starting to flower especially the mangoes and some of those
subtropical fruits and tropical fruits is it going to hurt them or not we'll see and while I'm away
I'll still be uploading videos so don't think it'll be a month without any videos whatsoever
we still have some in the pipeline and I'm sure that you're going to enjoy them so keep an eye
out for those. Now the reason why this shot is out of sequence and kind of sudden is because I
just wanted to have a quick look at the tunnel trellis and make sure the tomatoes and plants
are growing well before I leave. No not really I forgot to say three really important things
and I'll say them quickly. First one is Patreon thanks for all your support on Patreon you might
have noticed on Patreon we're starting to get a lot more active because we're not doing live
streams on there but we're doing a lot more on the spur behind the scenes videos and you've been
enjoying them there and I've been liking the feedback and I think we're on the right track
there so what we're going to do is we're also going to start up YouTube memberships most channels
these days have YouTube memberships I never did because we had Patreon and I thought that was a
bit unfair on the Patreon crowd if I had a membership on my YouTube channel but we're going
what we're going to do is we're going to obviously keep the Patreon thing going and I'm going to
transport those videos that people see on Patreon will be what the members see in on our membership
channel now this isn't we haven't got this going yet we haven't got members going quite yet on
but I'll be starting members when I get back from holiday so I just wanted to give a bit of
notice there in case anyone was interested and memberships will be started up before the end
of the year on YouTube it won't take anything away from Patreon the memberships of the YouTube
channel will see what the Patreons see exclusively on Patreon and the extra thing we're going to be
doing on YouTube for the YouTube members is live streams once a month we're going to do a live
stream where you guys can ask me anything I'll be sitting down and I'll be actually interacting
directly with you guys and then what we're going to do is we're going to link to that live stream
and we're going to link that live stream on Patreon so that the guys on Patreon are able to
see that as well so there's going to be that crossover so that hopefully it's fair for everyone
and the final thing I want to talk about is a book I'm writing a book at the moment and it'll
probably be coming out at the end of the year so I'm quite excited about it I've had
I've been wanting to write a book for a very very long time ever since I really started
Self Sufficient Me but just never quite had the means and way to do it but now it's nearly
finished and hopefully we can get that done by the end of the year the other thing I wanted to
talk about is our website if you look at our website now it looks like some old Pinterest
thing it's awful we're getting that redone and it's close to getting finished it's been
I don't know if you guys have been watching me for a while you know I've been talking about
customized merchandise for a really long time like these shirts and that are okay
they're kind of fast food shirts hello here's Bella how you going yes yes daddy's here
yeah she's gonna miss us when we go poor thing she's quite anxious because she can
see that we're packing and stuff she's terrible even if we just leave the house
you know and go shopping or something and leave her here so imagine what she's going to be like
for a month but we've got the boys here that are going to be holding up the fort keeping the garden
running keeping the weeding going and the watering not that we need it over this last month but
they'll be making sure everything is running okay but yeah so like yeah these shirts are fine and
and I wear them and that you get them from Spreadshirt and Teespring
those types of stores that I'm a member of but I really wanted to design our own shirts
and have them made with a sustainable material but not but make sure that they're really high
quality too so I think we've got that worked out you might have seen over this last 18 months me
wearing the Technicoloured Yarn shirt I call it Technicoloured Yarn for those who don't know is
Australian slang for vomit spew and I didn't think anyone would really want to buy that shirt
but it seems like a lot of people are interested in it but they did make and design that shirt
and get it manufactured so that we could sell them you'll see that it's got Scooter on the
back our old dog so it's a kind of a bit of a legacy shirt I suppose maybe it's a collector's
item I don't know but they're very good quality they're 50 SPF sun safe they're breathable they're
sweat wicking and they're also made out of recycled materials they're made out of recycled plastic
bottles I know that might sound like I'm wearing a plastic bottle but it's not like that you know
it's the polyester nylon type material but is like a fishing shirt and I've designed them with
long sleeves and they're meant to be a gardening shirt and we're going to create a range of them
and so that's what we've been working hard doing so once our website is up and running
and we've got the store up and running we'll be able to sell those shirts at the
the last 18 months I've just been giving them away at presentations or functions or if I go
and do an event I'll give away a t-shirt or two you know that type of thing but yeah I do want to
get it get our online store up and running and it's so close to getting done and you'll see
the website probably in early October you'll see the transformation it's going to look really good
and it's going to be much easier to navigate and easier for people to find information on
anyway I think that's about it I hope you didn't think that this was too clickbaity but it was
some important information that I wanted to share with you and let you know how things are going so
it's all going good and you know why it's going all so good it's because of you primarily your
generous eyeballs and your your generous time that you give my videos so thanks a lot and
if you like this video make sure you give it a big thumbs up share it around and subscribe if
you haven't already thanks a lot for watching bye for now cheers