Hello hello! After a couple of days of bad weather because we've had windy, gray, rainy weather we're back to planting. There's like nettle everywhere, it's got up my ass. I don't know, I don't know, why do we plant? You think it'll be okay here? You are anal for the sake of being anal. Actually I'm looking forward to it. Because the weather looks like it's going to be better from now onwards we're going to finally plant the fruit trees. We have nine fruit trees and six berry plants to put in the ground as well as a lot of extra work that we've created for ourselves. Because you know we're learning, we're new at this, that means that sometimes you make mistakes. Thank you to everyone that commented on our last video with support of course, we always love the support. But also with advice a couple of people pointed out that the new bamboo shoots we had put in the ground to hold the little chicken wire fences around the trees and bushes that we planted for the wind barrier. You pointed out that because it was fresh bamboo that we had just cut it could root and it's true we didn't know that we didn't think of it even. And of course we don't want to put bamboo all over our property so we also have to do the work of taking the bamboo rods out and putting alternative branches in. We already started yesterday but there's a lot more to go. And finally I also want to make a map of all the trees and plants we've planted but also I want to identify plants that are already here because now that it's spring we finally have leaves in a lot of these trees that we can you know use an app to try identify. This is a pear tree! Yay! I want to mark all the spots in our map of what we have where. And I know that sounds a bit anal, a bit extra perhaps, but I think it will help us first learn what does well here and also perhaps learn something from the placement of the plants. And I know that for sure if we don't write it down we're gonna forget. So I went ahead yesterday and wrote down all the autochthonous plants and bushes the 50 plants that we planted last week. And then I also want to take you with me to try identify what plants are already here with our app and see we have some cool ones because I think there's more fruit trees on the property they're just in very random spots so that's the plan. Planting, fixing mistakes, more planting and identifying what we have. Let's get to it! It seems like it's gonna start raining so I don't think we're gonna get too much today but at least we'll start prepping the holes for the trees. Let's see if we can do a little bit at least. Okay we're choosing the placement of the tree. We're leaving around five meters between each tree. I know that's a lot but we have the space so it's cold. The trees have been sitting on our porch now for a couple of weeks and I can already tell you the lemon hates it here. It's lost like half its leaves which is so sad. All these spots that you see that are balding used to have leaves and they've all fallen off. I feel so guilty. Like we're gonna be terrible lemon parents but the Pomegranate and the mulberry tree seem to be doing fine and all the berry trees seem to be doing fine so that's a good thing. But the lemon tree? I don't know. I don't know if we're gonna manage. The thing is the only experience we had with lemon is last year we bought a little lemon tree and planted it in our land and it seemed to be doing fine and our land is at the same altitude but we did buy it in June so perhaps that made the difference that it was in a warmer time. I don't know but this one he's not happy. I know that the lemon tree needs a lot of sun it needs to be protected from the wind and yeah it just needs as much heat as possible. So originally when we told everything about our conditions and we asked the fruit tree expert where to put it she was like south next to the house but then we explained that the south direction is where the wind comes from and then she was like okay never mind then east but protected from the wind. So I'm thinking that perhaps here we have this random shed that we don't use because our neighbors use it to store their grass and it used to be a horse shed I think. We have this little shed here with this this pointing in the camera is weird. These bushes that protect from the wind and this is all east facing and it gets a lot of sun. Yeah, decided? They're gonna be there. Lemon here Pomegranate more down? Yeah and if the lemon tree and the pomegranate work we'll just put another one where I'm standing so there are two too. Okay because that is good protection for it. For sure. Okay, decided. I guess you let us know if we made a huge mistake in the comments. I hope that placement will be the best. The mulberry tree I think here because we're not going to plant any more fruit trees here for a while so I think it can grow really big and put fruit everywhere and it won't matter. I think the mystery trees I'm gonna call them mystery trees. We're gonna plant in plot number one bottom part. I think I don't know exactly where here so berries in option number two or land number two. Most fruit trees in land number one. Lemon and pomegranate in between and then we leave land number three for when we have a huge veggie garden in the future. Today we're finally gonna plant the fruit trees. It has been a while the last couple of days we have been doing a lot of other things. Ale has taken out a lot of zarzas on our field, thorn bushes, so that has been going very well. We haven't shown you much because two days ago I accidentally left this camera outside for the whole night whilst it was raining. So we had a bit of a scare waking up in the morning not knowing where the camera was and then I realized that it was still outside. It was wet, soaking wet so we put it in a rice bag and then put a lot of silica gel around it after and luckily this morning it turned on again. So we can show you what we're gonna do today. First we're gonna plant all the apple and pear trees that we got from Mutti. Ale is also marking up all the spots for all the other trees and then we'll just keep on digging and we'll just see how far we get. Now the graft is outside. We learned that. Tree one, done and it's an apple. Four trees in and we have the placement of the other three. Three, sorry I cannot say three, three trees and we're gonna have some lunch now. Ale is gonna make some temporary fences for the fruit trees we're planting now and then after lunch we'll plant the other three trees, make the temporary fences and then I think that's the rest of the day. Here she comes with the Mulberry tree. Look at those muscles, huh? Power woman. You think it'll be okay here? Let's find out. Good girl! A lot of noises Ale. A lot of noises. Sorry, I'm struggling. Mulberry, yeah!! Lemon tree done, looks good. It looks like such a big tree and then you put it in the ground and it's so tiny! It's good though, good job. Good job! High five! Temporary! Temporary! Tired! That was it for today. We accomplished a lot. We managed to get seven trees into the ground. I had expected we would be able to do more, but I think that's just my weird calculation of time. This took us all day to get these seven trees in. I made the last two holes as well for the next trees that are coming in, and then we still have the six berry bushes to go. But that's for tomorrow or the day after, it's quite late. I think it's like 8.30 already, so it's good time to stop. So I see you tomorrow. What a beautiful day! What a beautiful day! Really the weather yesterday and today is just glorious. I don't think I can do it here. I don't see anything. Let me see. Okay, I moved to the shade because the light was a bit too bright. Good morning everyone. What a beautiful day. Also working outside, being on our land. It's really helping me with my mental health at the moment. The plan for today is the following. Warner and his mom are out and in case you didn't know, Warner's mom is visiting. Her name is Mutti and she's being so helpful in the garden. Oh my god. She saved us so many hours of work. So today Warner's out. With his mom, they went to run some errands, maybe pick up a couple of extra fruit trees and just go on a little loop. And I've stayed behind to just keep going with the work because we're a bit behind and we cannot afford any more delays. What I'm going to focus on primarily is making a catalog of all the plants we have, all the plants we've planted. But also going around trying to get rid of some of the thorn bushes and just clear up some areas. I've realized we have more trees and plants than we thought we did. Spring of course is useful because suddenly the leaves are out and plants are much more easy to identify. But I think we have fruit trees in very random spots as well as perhaps some berry bushes. I don't know, we'll see. So I want to use a plant identifying app to help me catalog as many of the fruit trees and plants we might have here as possible. And I want to put them all into our maps so we have a very clear idea of what we have and what plants we might want to supplement in the future. But before I get to that, I wanted to talk about something that I think is very important and especially timely now for citizens of the EU. And that is the elections. So if you're an EU citizen, you should know that in June, from the 6th to the 9th of June, are the European elections. As EU citizens, we get to vote for the Euro parliamentarians that will be advocating for the causes we care about the coming four years. Maybe it seems unnecessary to talk about the importance of voting, but I don't think so. If you're anything like me, living through the times we're living can be really dis-encouraging. And seeing the institutions and our systems of power basically stand by, support and fund all the horrible acts that are being committed around the world can be so infuriating and disheartening. We're witnessing a gen##ide, the demise of our planet, humans and animals suffering everywhere. And then we're also witnessing institutions that claim to care about democracy and human rights actually support all the cruelty that's being undertaken. Therefore, I can totally understand kind of wanting to give up on our political systems and not knowing who to vote for, if even voting matters at all. But I think it's important to remember that not voting is not the solution. If our political systems do not serve us or are not enough, what we have to do is become more active, vote and then find other ways to make our voice heard. In case you don't know, my background is in public international law with a specialization in peace, justice and development. And I've worked many years on gender, human rights and animal welfare. And I've witnessed from the inside as well how difficult it can be to get any positive progress happening. But I'm going to give you the same pep talk I give myself. Giving up is never the right way forward. And no matter what happens, no matter how difficult, I at least want to know that I'm trying absolutely everything I can to change the tide, to change things around, to advocate for a more caring, more loving, more compassionate, more kind world. So how does this relate to the European elections? The European elections are notorious for having really low turnout. And I know they are complex for people to understand the EU system is complex. And I know that a lot of people feel like it's too far away, too disconnected from their everyday life to actually have an impact. But that's not true. It's super important that we make our voice heard in every platform possible. And the EU elections are an excellent way to try advocate for causes you care about. I've spent the morning researching the different candidates that I can vote for as a Spanish citizen and also sending emails, asking them to pledge to causes that I think are important. The reason I think pledges are important is because afterwards, NGOs and citizens can hold them accountable for the things they have committed to and will inevitably perhaps not stand by, depending on interest that may come up. So if you're an EU citizen, I encourage that you first sign up to vote, start looking at what candidates are there for your country, start looking at what they stand for and also encourage them to pledge to causes that are super important. I will leave some in the description that I think are important, like animal welfare, stopping the gen##ide and any other environmental and human rights pledges that I may be able to find. And hopefully you can also do your own research and try get the right people in power. I hope I express myself correctly. It's difficult to talk about the subject sometime in a way that sounds eloquent and encouraging. But anyway, now that I'm done with that, let's get to cataloging all the plants on our property or some of the plants, most of the plants, whatever we can get to. Let's see, can I walk and talk? Maybe not. OK, to catalog all the trees, I'm first going to write them all in a notebook and then I'll transfer them to the map I drew out on the iPad. I'm going to start by the perimeter of the house and right here next to the path that leads to the entrance of our house, I think there's two trees that are fruit trees. So let's just check. If I'm not mistaken, I think they're apples, but I'm not very good at this. By the way, the app that I'm using is called Seek, and I don't know if it's the best one out there, but it's the one I have. So this is not a good start because it doesn't really know. It's not very accurate. I might have to try another app. The closest thing it seems to get all the time is that it's plums, cherries and allies. So no idea. I'm going to take some clips of the leaves and maybe you can help us. Now, here, very encrouched on by another tree that we'll have to cut back is what I think is an apple tree. And this is in the backside of the house. Yeah, apple. Yay. OK, that's an apple. And here, hidden between all the bamboo and the hydrangea is what I'm almost 100 percent certain is a currant plant, which I'm so excited about. But we're going to have to clear a lot of the space for it to be able to live. You can see it already has berries on it and it's just it's all overgrown around it. It's so exciting. Behind it as well is a hazelnut tree. We have lots of those around. I don't know if to catalog those as well or not. But yeah, that's hazel. OK, now in field one, but the bottom part next to what we call our little forest, I'm sure we have quite a few fruit trees that we hadn't identified previously. So I'm super excited to catalog them. Let's see what we discover. This first one here, I'm so excited for. I'm not even going to pretend I'm discovering it now because I figured it out the other day. I came up to it. I was looking at it with the app. The app was having a hard time identifying exactly what fruit species it was until I realized there's freaking cherries on it. It's a cherry tree. There's no doubt about it. Look at the little berries. Ah, we have a cherry tree. I'm so excited. So excited. This next one, no idea what it is. Let's see. Thing is, when you don't know much, they all kind of look the same. Pears. This is a pear tree. Yeah. OK, the camera is overheating. It's a bit of an issue, but let's try to get through this. The pair and the cherry tree are pretty well located they're next to the forest, but up in the field, so I think they're going to be fine there. They look like they're thriving. However, in the forest, we have a couple more trees which are too shaded. They don't seem to be doing well. They're also falling over. So I don't know if these fruit trees are actually going to survive, but perhaps we can graft from them next year to have fruit trees from our own. Fruit trees that clearly survive here just are not in the right spot. This first one is almost fallen over, but it's an apple tree. OK, cool. And the other one back here is also an apple tree. So two apple trees in the forest that we can perhaps propagate from in the future or graft. I don't know how you call it officially when pruning fruit trees. OK, further deep in the forest, I think we have another apple tree, if I'm not mistaken. Let's just confirm. Because I cannot trust myself. Apple tree. Yeah, exactly. And it has a branch here that's actually weighing it down. We did a lot of clearing of this forest in autumn, but it still needs a lot of work. But you see, yeah, this little baby is in the shade. I don't think it's going to thrive here, but we can perhaps use it in the future. I don't know if there's fruit trees more in this way. Let's see. Let's investigate together. Plumps, cherries and allies. OK, so don't know what this is. That's a mystery. I'm going to take a video so you can help us out. The leaves are quite small. This one, it cannot identify at all. Also, I have to look up what c means, because it says dicots about everything. The first answer, and then it specifies a bit more. OK, this one, complete mystery. I hope someone knows because the app has no idea. And I have a couple of these. OK, two mystery trees and this one, it probably won't know. Either because I think it's the same as the mystery tree, at least the leaves are very small. Again, dicots, whatever that means. Perhaps apples. It's not very sure, but the leaves are so small. I doubt that is an apple. I don't know if that's right. OK, apple, question mark. And maybe you have a better answer. Could this be an apple tree? It has lots of branches coming up. The leaves are quite small. It flowered pretty early in the season. I don't think this is an apple. I don't know why the app thinks it's an apple tree. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. What is this? Is this something as well? I'm starting to think every tree can be something. Then there's this cute little tree, which I think will be easier to identify, because it has more distinctive leaves. Let's see. Callery pear. I don't know what that means, but I'm just going to put pear. That's good. After a lot of unknowns, we finally have something more clear. I think those are all the fruit trees in the forest, if I'm not mistaken, because the rest are nut trees, which we are not going to write down. Never mind, I actually found another apple tree back there, but I've written it down. Now for an easier task, I'm going to catalog the trees we've planted, which we know what they are. No need for the app to get them right. I'm going to sit down and try catalog everything as accurately. Oh, cookie is coming, wait. I see a little baby. Hi, my love. Hi. Oh, you're so cute. You're so cute. Let's give you food. OK, wait, let me mix it first, OK? One second, one second. One second, dude. You're inpatient. Here you go. You can eat in peace. Dude, you have to slow down. He always eats like there's 100 dogs coming to take his food. Bye, cookie. He always goes to pee. Yeah, mark those bamboo again. And bye-bye. I don't know what I was saying. I think I was saying that I finished cataloging all the trees I can identify for now and that I'm going to now draw them with our iPad in the map so that we can always have it ready to check up on and also to add any future trees we might plant in the future or we might find as well. Apart from the 60 native plants that we planted, and of course, the native plants that we already have here, I've cataloged the fruit trees and the berries. And right now, planted and identified, we have nine apple trees, three pear, one cherry, one peach, one mulberry, one lemon, one pomegranate, two current plants and one raspberry. And then we have a few more berry bushes and two feijoa trees, which is like a pineapple guava, I think it's called, that we still need to plant, plus whatever Warner brings. So that's a lot of variety. So far, 10 species of fruit-bearing trees and bushes that we've planted or we have here. I'm pretty happy with that. That's really exciting. And the map looks cool, I think it looks cool. And it will help us keep track of everything really easily. So success! As for the unidentified trees, please, if you know, let us know in the comments. Maybe I'll download another app that identifies plants if you know any really good apps. Also, let us know. And any guesses you have, put them in the comments by number. We will have numbered every tree that I had no idea what they were. And if you know anything, let us know and I'll add it to the map. If not, once we don't know, they're just going to remain as a question mark. Warner's back and he comes bearing gifts. Oh, my goodness, that's so many plants. What did you get? Three kiwis, one male, two female and a nectarine. Wow, amazing. That is it. Let's stop buying now. Warner has also brought back some packages and I'm really excited for this one. This. It's from one of you guys. Sweetest, sweetest person has sent us seeds from Portugal. It took a bit longer than expected to get it because the place where we get our packages, they didn't know it was for us, but I'm so, so excited. Let's see what's inside. Woo. We have to be careful. They're overflowing. Oh, my goodness. There's so many seeds. So cute. I have some chamomile. Oh, this is great. That's for the moisture. This is so well packed. I guess this is clover. Oh, my God, there's so much clover. This is amazing. We have a whole bag to plant. And here's the chamomile. We, of course, don't expect any packages from you guys or anything. But this is the first one we've gotten and it's so cute. So thank you so much, Elli, for sending the seeds. We appreciate it. From the bottom of our heart, sending you so much love to Portugal. Are you ready? Plan? Planting. Planting. So I already made two holes for the guava trees. No, feijoa It's a pineapple guava. We were recommended by the fruit person to plant that here. She said that it would work well. And then I'm going to make the holes for the berry trees whilst you are going to plant all the other trees. Oh, first, let's position where we want to have what? Yeah, I don't know anymore. I don't know. I don't know. Where do we plant? OK, we're debating heavily where to plant, but I think we've come to a conclusion. Let me show you along this wall. We're thinking of putting all the berry bushes and then fencing them all off to make sure they're protected. And then here, the kiwi plants, because if we want to make a big trellis system there, they would look pretty nice, I think. And they're protected from the wind with these bushes that are already existing. So if we would ever change this structure, we still have the views. Those trees are not in the way. This would be a really nice area to sit. And then the kiwi plants here would look cool with a nice trellis. I think it's a good idea. The kiwis cover you there. Those berry bushes are not in the way. And then in the future, we'll build something here as well. Maybe more kiwis. We have five berry bushes because we're going to plant one on the field. Number one. So I put one more here. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, there is fine. OK, let's do some digging no?. Now that we know where everything is, I'm going to go do some planting. This took only two hours. well, choosing where you put your plants is so important. With this heat, I notice myself getting faint really easily today. So I'm going to get some water and put a hat on to hopefully prevent the fatigue. The camera keeps on blanking out of me and deleting all the footage. So I planted one tree almost, almost finished, but I had had recorded it all. But eh.. Oooh, it's only two trees, we have so many more to go. Now I'm going to plant the tree Warner got today and I'm putting you really far away from me because you need to be in the shade if not the camera overheats. So sorry you can't be closer. Bye! Okay, I just finished planting the nectarine. It's a nectarine, I just checked. And now we're gonna plant a honeyberry which is this little plant here. You see the name? I think you're supposed to have more than one for it to flourish because it is partly self-pollinating but not fully. We only have one for now because Mutti got this for us from the Netherlands. But yeah let's just plant it and we'will see if in the future maybe we'll get more or we'll try to get more. I'm tired. I need to get more fit or this is making me more fit. But oh my back! Let's do this. Everything's so heavy. That's all I'm gonna plant for today because we still need to make the fences for the plants I did plant, protect them for tonight even though many of them are just temporary. We're trying to do that every night before we go in. We still have the kiwis and the berry bushes and the wildflowers. This is exhausting. It's fun but it takes a while. Also as you can see we're taking much longer with the fruit trees than with the auchtoctones, indigenous, whatever plants because we need to make much bigger holes for them. And they look like big craters. It doesn't look very nice around the trees for now but we're gonna put lots of flowers and thyme and you know good species around. So imagine this full of chamomile and thyme and other nice flowers. It's gonna look beautiful. You have a good company? I love cows so I love cows so much. They're so sweet. They're such curious animals. When you have them as neighbors they come and check in on you. If you're working nearby they'll always stand near you. They're just the sweetest. The only thing heartbreaking of having cows as neighbors is that you of course see them being taken away or for example this one here. She's a new mama and we didn't know this the other day she was just crying and crying and crying. We're like what is going on? Why is she crying so much? And then the farmer came and it turned out that she had given birth and the baby was locked up inside the cabaña de hut in there and she was on the outside and he only lets her in in the evening. So she was just upset because she wanted to be with her baby. Yeah she was not happy about being locked out. So yeah that's the tough thing of living next to cows. They're amazing beautiful creatures but we get attached to them and then we really struggle when we see them suffer and we can't really do much about it. Anyway we're gonna befriend these ones. They're already much less scared of us the first day when we went nearby they run away and now they come towards the stone fence because they know that we cut some fresh grass from our land and give it to them and they like it so. Hola quapa (hey beautiful). Hi oh you're so pretty. Oh you're coming. Hi. I'll give you some grass. I'll give you some grass I promise. They're such cute babies. I wish we could just make a huge cow sanctuary of this whole area and just keep them love them and take care of them and spoil them because they deserve it. They're so cute and they followed me as I was talking and now they're there the other side of the stone wall just looking. Anyway I'm gonna pick up the tools and get to fence making. You have the same issue I do that your face and your hands are way darker than the rest of your body. Your legs are so pasty white. Okay what are we doing? We're gonna replace the fencing already which we did yesterday. Of the lemon tree. Yeah that was temporary because it left it very vulnerable still and we're gonna try the new technique. The final technique. Yeah to see if it works and if so how many materials we need to buy. Let's try this Using the furniture staple. Does it work? It works perfectly. Yeah That's good. That's gonna simplify life. It's a lot of money in fencing. Like we're spending more on fencing than we are in the trees. By a lot kind of sad. Math baby you can do it. I'm here for emotional support and recording and recording and recording. It doesn't have to be perfect. But then this is in the middle of the tree. Like if you want four sides like you need to have it on the side side. The math is not mathing. Seven and a half years of university, technical university and he calculates wrong Maybe let's try it because.. - You don't trust me. - No I don't trust you. Ahhhh! Perfection! Okay cool. And we need another stick. Yeah. Yeah. I like it a lot. It looks cool. This is the design of our fencing. Four poles, one extra one so that we can open and close it depending if we need to access the tree. Yeah that's about it. It's stapled on chicken wire so it doesn't allow hares through or any bigger animals. I think this looks good. Okay so what are the problem issues with this prototype? We'll need another stick here, another stick there, another stick there, another stick there. No we cannot afford nine sticks for a tree. No we'll get those sticks from the land. Another issue is that a cow can come and just chomp chomp chomp from the top. We never have cows. But the cows don't come on our land. No but. Unless I accidentally leave the gate open. Shit shit shit shit shit. There's a ton of cows on our property. But we're not gonna do that again. So this is goat proof unless they jump over like push it over. We should get a goat and see what it does. No no okay so not cow proof kind of goat proof. Let the youtube gods just respond how we can do this better. Yeah this is a prototype. Let us know how we can improve it. Yeah we're total morons as well. We'll do it for next time. Moving on to the next. These days are so long. I always want to finish like a couple of hours earlier but no it'll be 9 30 or 10 by the time we get in the house. Aya aya aya I knew that the mask ear holder thingies of the COVID pandemic were gonna come in handy someday. So we've saved so many of these and we're gonna use them to tie the support for the plants. We are in the 'we can't be bothered stage'. We really tried with the last one. I think we really did a masterpiece. We fenced every single tree except the last one. We can't do it. We're too tired so hopefully it will survive. Just putting enough netting around. It's so embarrassing. This is the end of this video. We'll continue working and filming but it will be the next video. I really thought we would be able to get all the fruit trees into the ground. It's a lot of work. Yeah surprising. Yeah thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you for all the advice on whatever you leave in the comments. And please let us know if we screw it up again. See you next week. Although it takes us half the week to fix that again. Yeah bye.
