Young Family s 5 Year Homesteading Journey

It's a wet rainy winter day here in Wales and it's the kind of day where you just want to stay indoors, hunker down keeping warm by the fire. But at the same time there is this bubbling feeling of excitement inside for spring to come. Soon we'll be in the thick of sowing seeds and harvesting the year's produce. There are already some seeds that I've sown, more on that later and there are signs of spring appearing so the work must be done. Today Tegan and I are outside planting some trees, nut trees. We've got some native varieties of walnuts and hazelnuts, also known as cob nuts here in Wales. This is something we should have done when we first moved into the property. Luckily cob nuts grow wild in the hedgerows and woodlands all around the UK and they're a nut that's sustained the people of these lands for generations. Plus they're also super delicious. After mapping out where we're going to plant the trees, Tegan is getting digging holes. She's digging the holes around a foot deep and a foot wide so there's plenty of space for the roots of these three-year-old trees to find nutrients in the compost that we add. At the same time I'm actually creating a new growing space. We found a relatively flat part of our garden so I'm using my hoe to prepare a five meter by five meter patch where we're going to grow a load of staple crops. More than likely potatoes up first, then I'll plant some squash and maybe rye for bread. You can see why horses came along. Is this deep enough? Gosh we don't need to go to the gym do we? No. Um you could go a little bit wider, a little bit deeper. Wider? Yeah. Keep it square as well because. That is square now. Yeah that's perfect because then the roots, if it was round they'll just stay contained apparently. That looks almost there. Brilliant. Right you can test one out. Which one do you want? Do you want a cob nut or walnut? There. Cob please. Okay so we'll just test that fit Perfect so now we just need to get some compost. To help give the trees all the nutrients they need we've got to head over to our compost corner to see if we've managed to create any beautiful compost this year. Do you remember when we saw the snakes in here in the summer? Oh my gosh yeah. I'm scared to go in there now. I haven't seen you scream so loudly. It should be good compost. Surely not in this weather. No. Snake, snake. That's some good compost there though. Creating compost is one of the most amazing journeys I've been on. It's taught me so much about what's important in this ward. I don't know about you but I'm proud. It's all our, this is all our kitchen scraps. I know I'm proud as well. Turned into some nutritious soil that the trees will thrive upon. You have to say shout out to the chickens as well because lots of their poop and their bedding has gone into this. Essentially all this compost is is my kitchen scraps. Peelings, trimmings from fruits and vegetables, coffee grounds. I even add some coffee grounds from a local cafe that I pick up whenever I'm passing. I also add things like grass clippings from the garden, bedding from the chicken coop, dry leaves, cardboard, any organic matter basically. I'm not very sciency about it either. I just let it all pile up and leave it for about six months and then you get left with something like this. Dark, rich, amazing nutritious compost. This is something that is free to make and it produces something that I think is real richness. Having compost, homemade compost that you can use to grow nutritious food in, that is well and it's made from things that otherwise would just be waste. Well done, number one in. Becoming a new dad has changed my whole rhythm and with everything feeling a little bit chaotic, keeping my body and my mind strong has become very important especially through winter. Strength training has always been my anchor at this time of year but the truth is you don't always see the results of your hard work when you look in the mirror or step on a traditional scale that just measures your body weight. That's why I've been using the body pod. It's like having an in-body scan at home, a proper portable body analyzer that measures my whole body with medical grade accuracy. After a few days of weighing, seeing my data in the Hume Health app has been so motivating. The humanoid diagram shows muscle in my arms, legs and torso and watching my muscle mass increase week by week even if my weight isn't changing is a boost. The app also gives these calm thoughtful AI insights based on my sleep, nutrition and activity which has helped me keep a stronger routine without adding any stress. If you want something that genuinely helps you stay connected to your progress, my discount code stacks on Hume's current sale so you can save up to 50% off for the next seven days and in the US it's HSA, FSA eligible so insurance might even cover it. Click the link beneath this video to find out more and thanks Hume for sponsoring today's video. Now I need to talk to you about the incredible nut that is cob nut. These are basically hazelnuts and I spent the majority of my life disconnected from nature. I didn't even think about native or local nuts being available to me. I just went for the usual supermarket finds cashews, pistachios, brazil nuts, walnuts. I never thought about getting my nuts locally which is such a shame but I was truly disconnected. To be connected to your food means knowing where exactly where it comes from. That's the bare minimum and I can't believe that I grew up for so long not knowing where my food was from but I'm trying to change all that and hopefully influence you guys to eat more locally too. I have to show you this recipe that I've made using these cob nuts to make a total local nut butter. It's absolutely delicious and so much better than any of the plastic package stuff you can find at the supermarket. The first step in making the nut butter and this is optional but I like to do it, is to toast the nuts. The roasted flavor adds another level of deliciousness but it also helps to remove the tough skins. I just roast them on a baking tray for around eight to ten minutes paying very close attention because they do burn quickly. So they don't take long to roast nuts do they? You have to keep your eye on them and after roasting like all hazelnuts the skins should just pop off but for the stubborn skins I'll get the nuts into my kitchen towel and just rub them and the skin should just fall off. The next step is the most exciting part. I recently made a apple syrup to replace my need for maple syrup which is very expensive and not at all local. I'm going to get the syrup into my saucepan and reduce it down to a real caramel before getting in these toasted nuts making sure every one has a lovely glaze on it and that's going to be almost like my praline caramel-esque flavor that I'm going to create with local ingredients. Look at that caramelly goodness! That is just pure natural sugars from my apples turn into like a toffee caramel now. Wow these are incredible. I am absolutely amazed at this caramel made from apples. The next step is to get these into my blender. You want a powerful blender really and you want to blend it very slow and you're going to often scrape down the sides as it blends. I'm going to add a touch of sea salt and if I want to alter the consistency and make it slightly looser and more drizzle drizzleable drizzleable drizzleable you know what I mean. I'll add a touch of oil and I've got actually hazelnut oil which just complements this it's local as well. It's so caramelly they do not want to go in the blender. There we go. Now if you've ever made your own nut butter before you will know that it does take some time. You'll think it's never going to turn into a paste but eventually the oils are produced the more it's blended and it turns into that nut butter consistency. Just give it some time and scrape down the sides of the blender cup every now and then. There we go that is a beautiful consistency. This nut butter is absolutely gourmet in flavour. It's absolutely delicious and it's so satisfying knowing that it's made with just local ingredients. I know exactly where every ingredient has come from and there it is my local hazelnut butter and it's absolutely delicious to spread on some sourdough or on your porridge in the morning. Despite it being such a rainy windy day it was joyful to be outside working the land connecting to it and investing in our future. Since having a baby Tegan and I haven't spent as much time out in the garden together. There's always so much to do but today luckily grandma was down helping out so we managed to have our hour together planting these trees and creating the new bed. We don't really know how long we're going to stay at this property. Our minds constantly wander and get excited about eventually having a farm where we can host retreats for you guys and hold dinners and teach there but also rewild the land and live 100% off it. We want to create a haven for nature for the animals and insects and the plants to thrive as well as us and our baby. That's the dream anyway but there's an old saying the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is now. So if we don't stay on this land the future owners will benefit from us planting these trees. And we need some volunteers. Yeah we do. We need to have more babies. I know. I need like 10 kids like the Victorians did. I can all help out on the land. My plan here now I know it looks messy but I'm turning over the soil and the idea is with hoeing is that you create a medium in which you can sow seeds into or plant into. It's going to take some time and apparently it takes many many hoes over the course of a few weeks. The next step after hoeing out this area is to cover it in a thick layer of mulch. I'm going to go and get some straw or some hay and cover over the top. That grass then breaks down and adds nutrients to the soil stops any weeds coming up and then you pull it back when you come to sow your seeds or plant whatever into it. So it's a new technique I'm trialing. It's just hard work but it's it's fun and it feels like I'm doing something. This is how you get warm on a winter's day. Yeah is it tea break time yet? Oh we should have had about 10 tea breaks by now. Tea do you wanna have a go at hoeing? Yeah sure. All right come and have a go. So the idea is and what I was doing wrong I was going in too deep and then it gets stuck. You just want to skim the surface really and break away the top layer of those the grasses and the weeds and whatnot. Okay. And the idea is you bring it above your head and bring back just lightly hit the ground to remove the the top layer of plants. Okay I've got any strength left. Nice. Nice. Five more reps. One, two, three, four, one more. Yes. I'm tired now. I've seen how strong you are in childbirth you've got nothing to prove. Shall we call it a day for today? I think we should. Head back in let's have a lie down first. Yes. Oh wow this is relaxing. Yeah look at the trees. It doesn't look like much now but this will be nice. Well done Tee you've really impressed me. It's gonna look great. We'll come together. I recently picked up some willow which I'm going to weave as a border around the Talking of willow this is what we planted a few weeks ago on a sunny winter day. The first thing we did was to prepare the area where we were planting the willow, clearing away anything we didn't want there. Then we rolled out some material to suppress the weeds so nothing competes with the willow shoots. It's really important that the material overlaps so there's no gaps for grasses or weeds to come through. We got a load of willow cuttings to plant from a local grower. Many different varieties and colours so this is going to result in beautiful willow and eventually beautiful willow baskets when it comes to harvesting and making them. Apparently willow is incredibly easy to grow. All you need to do is stick the cutting into the ground and it bursts into life. Midwinter is the perfect time to plant So we've got 60 willow cuttings, a few different varieties, different colours which will make our future baskets look really beautiful. We're planting them about a foot apart roughly through hessian because this is going to stop any weeds competing with this willow and it's a bit more eco-friendly in comparison to the plastic that you usually see people using when they're planting willow. So we're making sure the buds are pointing up and we're just putting them in a few inches into the ground. Willow is an amazing plant that I wish I discovered sooner. Before plastic we would have all known how to weave a simple basket from this material that grows so abundantly. If it's looked after and coppiced properly each year you get new shoots and more material to create new things. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. I guess this is a lot for me to learn all these new skills since moving out here since reconnecting with nature but I guess this is now here for the future owners of this land. They'll be able to make baskets and useful things with willow for many years to come thanks to just an hour spent here today planting this willow. We've recently been learning how to weave baskets using willow we forage from a local river but the willow we're planting in the garden will hopefully give us or the future owners of this land a long-term supply. There's nothing better than weaving and making a basket sat in front of the fire on a cold winter evening. Making these baskets really resonates with me and Teagan and I've always been quite creative and loved making things in art in school and of course cooking is very creative. I felt like I've wasted so much time sat in front of the TV watching Netflix or on my phone when I could have been creating things like this. This really scratches the creative itch. I'm trying to stay away from plastics as much as I can and I'm secretly hoping that the new trend for 2026 is the old way of carrying things in willow baskets. Traditions like this are so worth keeping alive so to warm up Teagan and I sat in front of the fire. I finished off the basket and Teagan was nursing the baby. For so long I ran away from winter but embracing the dark along the nights and doing tasks like this is very peaceful. I did mention earlier that there are some seeds that I'm sowing at this time of year. I start off some crops in January and February using heat mats inside my house for a little bit of extra warmth and when they start sprouting I use grow lights to give them the extra light that they need. One of the most important things we grow are scotch bonnets, the flavour of the Caribbean. Teagan and I love Jamaican cuisine and with Teagan being of Caribbean heritage we can't live without these in our kitchen. The scotch bonnet seeds are actually seeds that I saved from last year's scotch bonnets that I grew and the original seed we brought back from Jamaica so they have a real authentic flavour. I simply sow them in module trays with moist compost one or two seeds per module and lightly cover them with soil. At this time of year we also sow aubergines and other chilies like cayenne, rainbow chilies and sweet peppers. As the days get longer and March comes closer we'll be sowing more and more seeds out in the greenhouse. I am so excited for spring to come. So it's actually been quite a few weeks since that very wet and rainy day out in the garden and I'm back out here now with Teagan. We're actually redoing all the pathways today because we finally had a break in the rain. We're putting down the wood chip which is going to transform the space and make it really ready for the season of growing to come and I wanted to take a little moment to talk to you about some of the most exciting and scary news that I think I've ever shared. Yes, it's not just a message from me. Teagan's behind the camera. It's a joint message to say that we are actually opening a store, a shop. We've taken over a local store in the nearby town of Abergavenny in Wales which is a beautiful historic market town with so many amazing things to see and do and this opportunity came up to take over this old store and despite just having a baby, both of us have always wanted a shop individually and we just said yes and I can't quite believe we said yes to it now because it seems so overwhelming but I'm just thinking and we're both just imagining all of the joy and the excitement and love that we're going to get from interacting with you guys, our local community and being able to offer some of the things that we love. So the store is called T-Firm which is farmhouse in Welsh. It's spelt t-y-f-f-e-r-m and we're going to be open a few times a week. It's almost like a pop-up store because it's going to be open on special days and we're going to be stocking all the things that you see us use in my videos from kitchenware to gardenware to beautiful old ceramics, antiques, plates and bowls and art and then lovely tea blends that we're going to make and produce from our garden and nearby farms, herbalism things like balms and moisturisers and herbs. It's going to be a space that is basically an extension of our homestead. It's very scary, it's very daunting but we're full of excitement and I hope that we give something to the community and the people that come in, something special because I feel like the soul of the high street is sort of declining particularly in the UK because it's, you know, it's hard, it's hard to run a business and, you know, often now you see on the high street big business or close-up shops or vape stores or you know just phone shops everywhere. It's just like the same thing wherever you go and the good thing about Abergavenny is there's lots of independent businesses that you can come and see whilst you come down to see our store too so please follow along on the journey. There'll be more videos to come on the shop but follow us over on Instagram for our opening days, come down see us and whilst you're there you can meet me and Tegan and grab something beautiful. We're also going to be doing workshops and serving lovely tasty treats so it's going to be a place where I hope you'll love. So please subscribe to the channel for more updates and more videos, more recipes to come, more beautiful content and we are so happy that spring is coming and we're going to burst into life and just put so much goodness out into the world we hope to inspire you to connect just like we have. Thank you for watching, see you soon and I'll see you at the shop.