Quitting Your Job To Farm on a Quarter Acre In Your Backyard?

what's up guys hey guys I'm here with Steven Cornett we are at the future and the present of nature's always right that's right nature is always right why did you name it that by the way um because it's philosophy I believe in I believe that when it comes to your health making decisions about land or almost any decision in life if we go with the natural answer of the natural solution the solution that follows the natural pattern of nature we're gonna have the best results yeah yeah I mean like scientists study insects to understand how their skin works and then use that in some application yes sort of makes sense right absolutely a biomimicry yeah totally that's the word yeah anyways we're getting off topic we are here at nature's always right farm which is a new budding market garden style farm very similar to like the Curtis Stone model right that's the look heavily inspired but maybe potentially at this scale maybe slightly improved yeah with my influence yeah it's different certainly seems like it anyways we're gonna get into it we're doing this can be a long video it's a little different than the ones I've done in the past it's just a super deep dive into how this farm works and he's at the point right now where you're about to start selling Sunday I'll be at my first market officially yeah with my producer certificate and I mean look like this looks like a farm that's been going for a while so it's gonna be cool he's got it he's got a YouTube channel of his own it's nature's always right I'll put it in the video description he's just launched it but he's got like a year of past footage so you be able to see the whole progress of the thing growing and like detailed stuff on how these beds are set up how the chicken coop is set up their stuff even back there that we haven't even looked at and how that set up so hit him up and subscribe to him as well and then let's go ahead and like take a tour of the farm sounds good let's go check it out yeah I'll be fun hey guys my name's Steven Cornett looking at 13 beds here these are all two and a half feet and the walkways are 10 inches wide it's a very tight hard to working space but this is how I'm able to produce a lot of vegetables on a small piece of land I've taken a lot of these techniques from a guy named Curtis Stone and I highly recommend checking out this channel as well if you want to learn how to do stuff like this I mean this is straight out of the playbook right pretty close to it absolutely yeah john martine does a lot of the marketing gardeners they they love the to nap of bed and one of the reason why is because i can do this right you can plant from this position i can get on the side here it's designed for a human being and not a machine right I like that it's kind of comfortable that's better than the kneeling over the top for the back home that's better on your back yeah yep it's crazy to think it's like the hundreds of thousands of repetitions you would do that movement over actually makes a big difference on the body absolutely yeah and yeah it's doing this over time like you're just you're back it's just it's gonna get wrecked yeah so yeah right here this is a bed of arugula and I've planted nine rows and that is a lot of rows and that's because I'm going to harvest this for solid greens and I even have a special tool that I use for that called the farmers friend dreams harvester and that's a tool that you just run over the top and it's a it's a spinning wheel of rope and it has a blade and it cuts and puts it in a bag for you so a lot of my production is going to be using that tool because I plan on growing lots of salad mixes I want crops that turn over quickly and crops that are high in value high in fafa margin because I'm growing on such a small space about a quarter yeah yeah that's you know you have to have high production value if you want to make this a profitable business and you've been here for how long you're telling me you didn't do too much well you kind of did something different when you when you actually prepared the soil right different than I guess the stone model right slightly definitely so I didn't bring in that at any cost inputs here so what I did in this whole area I did what's called a sheet mulch and a sheet mulch is when you bring in a large carbon layer of either cardboard or straw wood chips those are the most common yeah and you layer that out and you let it break down so what I did is for my sheet mulch I got some free cardboard from a glass business down the street and they gave me this incredible 60 foot long cardboard that was completely free of tape and everything I laid that out across this entire thing at this tire 2,500 square foot area then I added about an inch of potting soil to the top of that whole area that was the only soil input that I bought wow I got that locally from guys I'm making soil and Ramona for like 50 years okay amazing so yeah and and you cover crop did too right yeah on top of that so then I broadcasted three different types of clover wild flowers you know yarrow borage wheat fetch so lots of different things that are nitrogen Builders different items that help to build the soil life nitrogen levels and at the end of the life so I let all of that grow I had a field out here about this tall holy moly yeah I've got pictures and videos of that cool and and so how do you do what do you do with that once you're done you just chop it down and turn it under yeah exactly once I was done I came in with this little mini tractor plowed it all down turned it over and it eventually ends up looking like this yeah and that was like you said it like a six-month process right to get that done when I started the property it's been how long since that six months was has elapsed let's say another eight months I've been on this property like a year and two months basically and I'm finally at the point actually where I'm able to sell right and iego County inspector came today but I'm supposed to go pick up my certificate tomorrow so now I'm certified yeah farmers market so it's really exciting it's off to the races now man yeah I know I'm loved so I'm finally ready to launch my farm and do this thing that's really exciting and I'm excited to share what I'm doing with everybody and you have a channel right you've got a channel it's called nature's always right nature's always right which will also be in the description on the video and we're gonna probably I mean I don't know about you but I want to know what these chickens that I'm seeing in the background so let's go ahead and talk about those guys go check out the chickens it's kind of their outer run this is a run I open up whenever I'm home we don't have any dogs or anything like that but we get raccoons possums skunks there's a lot of things that you could lose a chicken if you weren't watching right yeah so this is the main house where they live and inside of this enclosure they have 15 square feet per bird and I designed it that way because that is like the quote free-range that's the minimum free range and that's that's 15 square feet that they need to be allowed to run around right to move around they need that pervert so that's like that it was kind of a tall coop isn't it yeah it is I the the reason I ended up going that big is because I wanted this this top piece here to not touch my head cuz I'd be working in here and then like the roof line of this it just ended up I wanted to have the roof on be angled yeah so that I could catch the water and then the angle that I needed it just worked out that I built it really tall so it's a little overkill so this thing's built from about 50 percent recycled wood and the rest is just stuff that I bought and so they they've roost up on these two by fours here and so you can use two by fours some people use oak rounded dowels but from the research I've read about this is actually the best Jurgen AMA Klee for their feed bit more stable right than the circular Dallas yeah they're if you love dowels like a lot of people think that chickens need those because of other birds like cockatiels they like lock their knees on them but chickens can't they don't have that function where they lock their knee like that that's it's not useful and I'm hurting their heels I read in this one racer so anyways they seem to like it but I'm folktales where - I have an automatic door set up here oh and it runs on a piston and a timer and it's charged by a solar panel on the top right okay so you're basically trying to take out from what I'm looking at with this coop and really I guess the whole farm is you're trying to take out as much effort as you can right absolutely because like I mean why I open the door when it solar panel can take care of it for you right well I should why should I make different 6 a.m. got a little friend popping in amen tell me more about it you've got some other stuff going on it's that's pretty unique right yeah so like the way I designed this coop is to do the least amount of work for these chickens as humanly possible and I've been fairly successful I've hardly come out here to deal with them other than just enjoy them and watch them one of the features right here you'll notice that the coop is elevated off of the ground it is actually three feet okay because you'll know I built it for me because that's where my waist is okay and it's ergonomic for me to scoop out all their waste so I wheelbarrow here and I think my rake and I scoop and you come straight out so yeah about 60 seconds I've cleaned out their coop which normally takes someone who knows ya much longer than that yeah and then you've sped up your your feeding and watering systems a bit right rather than doing it manually or so a lot of people they just use little feeders like this yeah and they work well yeah if you have more than three chickens I mean you're filling this thing up every day so that gets very time-consuming yeah spending five minutes a day filling up the water filling up the food it's creating a lot of effort for you it's annoying and it's not really a value-added activity right I mean you're just repeating the same process over and over again yeah in the in essence it's wasted time but you still have one of these I do have one of these and I supplement their diet with oyster shell there's this is a I get this from a local pet store and they have charcoal what else is in it charcoal is good for getting rid of parasites helps it's it's cleansing to them okay the oyster shells for added calcium so to make sure they almost like a little vitamin mineral mix type of thing okay exactly you know there's also many rocks and they need these little small rocks they swallow those because that goes into a organ that they have called the gizzard right and the gizzard is an organ that basically grinds up really hard food and allows them to absorb those nutrients so got it yeah like grass or seeds things like that they're feeding systems right here I still feed them grain my goal eventually is to have them living completely off of you know compost plants vegetables that I grow brewery grains mmm I also working on creating insect systems like yeah mealworms and soldier or look at those in a second huh and so these are systems I'm still learning how to build and use and it's a whole other species of animals that yeah so it's a big learning curve um so these yeah let's take a look in the more Ganic green and i just use these tubes so every you know every 20 days or so I add a 50-pound bag to the tubes if I wanted I get a little higher but uh so instead of up I don't know five to ten minute process a day it's a one time a month process right yeah so it's 20 times more efficient the watering system you can kind of see the back you're good I have a 55-gallon drum and the roof can actually collect rainwater oh nice I love that yeah look at that that's rad and this roof I actually took from an old shed that was in the backyard here we ripped it off okay and we just built the support structure and then bolted it at the top and it worked that's amazing it doesn't leak it works perfect here basically anything you can do to either reduce your time cost or your cost cost your actual monetary cost you're doing yeah exactly it could have built the roof yep that would cost in time and it would have cost me and money so you use double headed savings right there so as much as possible especially when you're working with what a quarter acre took max this is all your what you saw you got right now you got to max it out I have to so the water 55 down you'll see that the PVC connected to it and they connected to this PVC I've tapped in what's called poultry nipples and poultry nipples are used commercially to raise chickens in those gigantic disgusting farms that you've probably seen on the Internet yep but here they have plenty of access to all hundred they don't the fight for that and they just tap the nipple and the water comes out okay and this is it depends on the time of year but you know in the summer they can go about two months maybe something like that you want you water quote-unquote your chickens yes I do six times a year yes yeah that's why have to do yeah and one of the things that sucks about the water when you have to refill it with one of those bucket system removes sanitary and you have to keep it off the ground a lot of times they'll poop into it or they'll get dirt or some other gross stuff and then you got like a disease vector yeah it is a disease vector yeah this eliminates that and saves you time if you live in a place like California you can get a rebate on that it's free oh so yeah just some things to think about my fertility area and where I make a lot of the compost and other fertilizers that I use in the farm so about every three months I'm able to clean up my chicken coop so I take all the bedding out and then I add so most of that bedding is a cardboard straw and I actually so all my toilet paper rolls paper towel rolls boxes from Amazon or something I've had shipped to me I save all of that I take it the tape off and then I shred it up and I put it and so the chickens work on it they're good yeah the chickens go to work they poop on it it helps absorb the smell it helps the soil break down and so basically I take all that that's my carbon and there's a little bit of green from the chicken manure but a lot of that has either composted or dried up by the time it gets here so I've gotta add a lot of greens and the Greens are coming probably from your non edible parts of your farm right yeah like carrot tops or whatever yes carrot tops old dead plants that I have to go what about like let's say you got like a squash with like some powdery mildew on it or whatever will it get hot enough to destroy that you know in my opinion if you can take your compost pile beyond 140 up to 150 you're fine I think you're totally yeah do it and it won't be an itch seems like that's like the consensus right now it's like all the things they say don't put in well if it gets to a certain heat you're probably fine right you know citrus orange peels and onions they say don't put in I don't generally put them in they attract mold and fungal growth we're really looking for bacterial growth and compost if you have a little bit it's all good the bacteria is gonna wipe it out but don't be putting tons like that yeah it's like an off-post meat or dairy I actually do what Kashi composting for that yep I've done the same thing works really well for that oh gosh she's amazing I just learned how to do it a couple months ago from a local guy so this is about I think we're like six or seven weeks in on this compost it's looking good I brought it up to like 150 and I held it I held it above 140 for at least 15 days and that's like the to be certified organic soil o to be held what they have to do is hardcore if you're doing a big windrow one of those giant windrows I think they have to do 15 consecutive days above 140 and they have to turn the pile five times so there's regulations on something as granular as that yes regulations on how how you make soil it has to be sterile because that you know it could be Listeria or sure manure borne pathogens so I'll be adding that six crops soon that goes out into the field then this is a this is an experiment that I haven't finished it I'm gonna be posting a video about this one successful but this is kind of my own design it's a combination of different soldier fly larvae design box this is my own box which black soldier fly just so everyone else it's just the classic house fly right no I it's it's different oh okay it's it's a little bit longer and bigger you usually don't see them that often around it they're kind of stealthy they won't go after your food okay house flight does it doesn't like they're not popping on your steak when you're outside yeah you know fresh like they like more fresh vegetation so what's so amazing about the black soldier fly larvae is that they can eat anything but they like to really feed on fresh stuff like veggies or feet nice squash a nice squash actual fresh meat not yeah sort of rotting on yeah I don't want rotten stuff okay yeah it's nice a fresh yeah fresh meat truly fresh meat yeah yeah they can even eat manure and it's I know there's some different like pig farmers that have experimented where they feed the pig manure to the soldier fly the soldier if I processed it for them then they do somehow do something with that and so then yeah what in product what does the manure at that point become like a finished compost style many were at that point er I wonder it would be and some people do use the black soldier fly liquid and the black soldier fly leftover compost but it's almost like a worm farm type idea yes but it's people don't use this on they're like never on salad crops maybe for fruit trees because you are incorporated you're putting the new or maybe you're putting down it'll be terrible to use that on style crop you're eating the vegetation yeah you dangerous yeah possibly very dangerous so but these these soldier fire are very interesting there's so many applications that can be used or they can feed fish they can feed chickens now they can feed pigs I think humans too even yeah if we could get over here about that we could get over eating bugs we probably could eat summer yeah so this is a future project I hope to display and show people how to do and show it how to set this up easily for me this is a fascinating system it's a way we can take inputs from restaurants or leftover vegetables from grocery stores sure toss it in here converted into protein that's then fed to chickens or pigs or fish right because we need to talk about that that the point really for you and this is the fact that like eventually we'll have some sort of tube coming out of here and the larvae will basically suicide themselves into the coop right yes yeah thank you they're they're like lemmings yeah there's the other livings and they just drop off and get munched on I'm imagining the chickens are just gonna be hanging out all over Liam yeah just waiting please please yeah like from the gods from above basically yeah we'll show an update on that okay yeah hit that channel definitely subscribe because he will have basically probably multiple videos on all these little systems we're walking around and looking at yeah I videos about how I felt all of these things some of them might not be uploaded yet but stay tuned I want to I want to tell you guys how it's been well he's been busy actually farming can that making videos so they'll come out but just over time alright so worm composting right yeah this these are vermicompost or worm compost bins and this is not a this is definitely not a commercial setup this is a large home gardener set up let's say mm-hmm so if I dig down here you'll see some of the worms this is actually a new bin I started recently easy you're not gonna see that many worms here because most of them are still they're still making their way from the bottom right yeah so there's still some material most of this is cast hell yeah there we go there we go they don't seem a heck of a lot in here yeah this is pretty well finished isn't it this is yeah this is like beautiful yeah I could use this now but I need to wait a little bit longer so they go up into this new bin right I just reset these last week because effectively the the way that works is they run themselves out of food in the bottom and then for survivals purpose they climb upwards towards the next yeah right yeah you got it yeah that's the beauty of the three tote system yeah but does it which is like what is this like a twenty dollar setup it's not even yeah if you just wanted to build this bike so a normal home set up at your house you would have one more toe that I collect the juice yes yeah yeah you do something little different aren't you yes for me I came up with this design to save cost because this is my third tote and it runs across yeah yeah these drain into this bottom container here yeah a little trough and then it drops down into this bucket here right yep so I can collect it here yeah I'm create tees from it I could put it directly on my crops if it's fresh sure and then you went with why how come you went with multiple totes then so the reason I wanted to do this is because you're gonna do a lot of work lifting it and moving it yeah and if it's too big I have actually made other worm systems and I used the larger like are they 25 or 30 gallons or the really egg toast air light totes yeah they're like it's you know you're gonna hurt your back it's like six looks like an ergonomics reason yeah yeah and then when I'm finished I can do what I can do is I have my worm castings and it's ready to go yeah this is you know this is like oh yeah pounds easy to move and I can fit and I can just put it on the ground next my plant and fertilize and just go yeah so this is kind of like a middle range it's any one of these is a home gardener system chain them together and throw a trough under for all the leachate right yes and then you're good to go exactly cool alright guys so um check out this carrot bed yeah I just want to show you some technique that could help you in your garden or your farm so you'll notice if you know what carrots look like these are them right here and these are rainbow carrots they're purple I'll just come up as as a bunch of a caller what's your different cows and so I didn't get perfect germination here which is notorious character notorious for being hard to germinate right I think I was I just listened I think a couple days ago to a Curtis Stone like lecture about carrots having problems this year he was having problems and eight years of farming he's having brought it's crazy it's hard yeah yeah yeah don't give up if you're growing carrots don't give up you can do it they just might the secret is they can never dry out if a.charat c dries out it's all over yeah he was saying he did something where he covers them with like burlap burlap or a mesh or or even a shade cloth he's a shaker and then he'll I used yeah burlap okay yeah let's keep going this I I did trick cover this with burlap and I still didn't get it perfect germination but that's all good it's already darn good though I mean it's not that bad in the spots here where I where I missed so look at this huge spot right here yep this is parsley yeah and so parsley is in the same family as carrots the app' I can never pronounce them dude no one knows how to premium have no way okay whatever the heck it is yeah so and they even kind of look simpler right yeah you can tell that that sort of angular leaf yes these are like all separated in same pattern yeah you're right actually I never I know I put that together yeah it's the same it just this has less plant matter yeah there's yeah holidays yeah so I put a parsley here and then further on mixed in here there's also cilantro and cilantro is the same family this is cilantro there you go yeah so let's real parsley look really some very very close really free hard to tell apart but cilantro is a bit more freely I've noticed on a leaf yeah yeah yeah yeah leaves it's like very very frilly and then the parsley is only slightly less so right here so yeah like you know I could have just let these carrots grow yeah but then I'd be wasting space right space here that's not making everything right here's money it's nothing right yes about this is a market garden yes in a home garden so take this concept to your home garden because you want to grow as much food as you possibly can in a garden box and your raised bed or where I mean even at home it's like if you're trying to grow to eat and you have you have way less this is not a lot of space for Market Garden and you have way less space in a home garden yeah why not get some parsley in the spot that was supposed to be a carrot when you've got maybe a hundred square feet to growing right yeah might as well yeah filling all that extra space with something yeah and I've done that over here as well so you're just like spot transplanting in when you see that yeah so like these two rows I I tried to sprout them in August which is one of the hottest months in San Diego yep as we talked about it's really hard to germinate them and that's yeah if you're gonna keep them wet good luck in August right just costly water so it's not very efficient but to the spot where I missed some of my beets I threw some lettuce in there there it is yep and it's growing decently it's not getting very much Sun so you can see the leaves are a little bit stretchy a little bit they're reaching yeah and they want some light on they want that Sun so it's once I take out the squash and then a couple weeks they'll fill it a little bit sure yeah it will be the prettiest but I'll get a little bit of it's it's it's better than zero yeah that's the way to think about it right yeah otherwise that's barren ground that's actually fertile that's producing nothing right yeah and you do the same thing with these carrots here I did so there's deal so deal is also the same family I didn't deal and cilantro okay and I just intermixed yeah it's hard to see if mostly on the side yeah I just did it in places where I thought I could get enough light it would that be a problem when it comes to like let's say you you're harvesting this bed of carrots and you kind of have to like manually separate out the different crops that your inter planted in between or is it worth that effort once when I'm ready to crop this bed out like take everything out yeah I'll probably just harvest everything in one go yeah okay you plant then you're fine that's like good separation yes yeah okay so that's what Curtis Stone does yeah most of the time he calls it cropping out of bed see of you instead of carving this harvesting over this a really long period of time if most of the carrots are around the same size pull them all out and then replant immediately yeah your productions going again don't try to like favor the few and yes and disregarding the many or how everyone think about that yeah yeah that extra 20 bucks you're gonna get from saving that little patch of carrots yeah just so they could grow a little more you're losing a week of time that you're putting out yeah a whole nother bed of carrots which will make you hundreds of dollars right yeah exactly got it guys this is my post processing center and this is kind of the last stage of my farm that I'm building so you'll see I've got a table here this is kind of where I bag everything and all right now I'm storing some fertilizer and my this is gonna be the blower blower pump for my greens bubbler okay I learned how to do that once again from Curtis Stone the godfather and she'd start calling him the Godfather thanks Curtis by the way yeah and so the green bubbler is an agitator and what it does it's pumping in a ton of air and bubbles and pulls it pulling off all the dirt which leaves your greens perfectly clean and it does it very quickly and painlessly just yet another thing where you're adding efficiency with zero effort on your part rat yeah it's cheap I got that yeah and then the totes are what ten bucks each some pretty cheap [Music] then this is a drying table and what this does is after you've cleaned all your greens either by rinsing them off or by using them in the bubbler you just spread them out here and I turn on these two fans and blow air on top yep and then when they're dry just then I can take them to the bag and put them in a bag and they're ready to go and they're yeah they're done and how long does it take to dry like a bed of greens on this thing no more than five minutes Wow that's actually really quick yeah it's quicker than I thought I'm gonna spin them in my salad spinner first my salad spinner is a washing machine yet another stone idea right yes so yeah it's credit stone and there's this the guys name it's on curtis stone's videos if you go to his washing machine video mm-hmm this one guy figured out how to modify them and he even has a course like 30 or 40 bucks if it gives you all the plans and the instructions of how to modify it how to wire it up where you can possibly get the parts and everything and it's really cool because otherwise you're trying to I mean you're either making like a hand spinner or you're not spinning it and then you're losing so much time to drawing right yeah and the quick the longer like a green stays wet on the surface of it the lower the shelf life of the green at least from the microgreens world I know that's true microgreens and the yeah you want to try yeah like don't ya bone-dry yeah cool and then yeah so then back here I just have a simple wash table and this is for like root crops and stuff like that yeah yeah absolutely root crop parents anything big you can just slap on top of here and spray off got it and I have this tarp because I plan on collecting all the water that I'm using back here for that bubbler and also from the table here I'm gonna have it all drain into a central bin yeah and then I'll pump that water out with a fish bone and I'll drain that into my shrubs here yeah maybe to the trees back there so the whole spread is just like how much can you reuse how many inputs can you delete how much time can you delete everything in a month like there's no other way to do it if you're a market farm on this scale right you have to just go as efficient effective as you can right that's what I believe yeah lovely was the case Brad from seeing a lot of different farms reading a lot about a different farms yeah if you want to learn about another not another a very efficient farm never sink farms he searched them they're doing they're out in New York right yeah yeah honor Creek Korres name yeah I think I just watched the video yeah credible go watch that guy's video yep like you make it 350 grand gross on an acre and a half yeah he he's doing crazy efficient stuff really smart from what I read I saw his video he was like a systems engineer building are like building like email spamming tools and like and then and like financial tools or something like that so like his level of understanding scale I think is what's helping them with that which is like fascinating but anyways yeah I never seen farm so I'll just put all this stuff in the video description yeah cool all right so yeah it's still in process but once it's built it'll be like a well-oiled machine yeah piss wash spin dry bag bag and then you're good to go yeah I'm off to the market right cool ok that was it that's good fun did you like you know I had so much fun I learned so much good all these tiny little it's cuz I mean I'm a hydroponics guy I'm a like I'm just a home gardener right and like I just love gardening houseplants echoes whatever and this is something that hopefully in the near future will see me doing something similar to this maybe not at this scale just you know just making that I want to have the epic gardening test garden that's kind of what I want to do but if it looks like this I'm not gonna be upset yeah anyways Stephens got his own channel if you like this video which hopefully you're still watching I know it's as longer than my normal ones drop some comments he'll be in the comments answering them and I'll be in the comments answering them and then of course just go over to his channel it's nature's always right it's gonna be cool like I'm gonna I'll probably be the first driver it's gonna stick to see the journey of how you make something like this work because this is I mean look at this lifestyle you're hanging out here this is your office this is your office right you live right there and you're gonna sell to places around here yep you know and and that's what miles and that's what it is so yeah I love to show you guys more mayo means heaven are so passionate about giving you guys really good information and trying to inspire you guys yeah yes I mean all this stuff is gonna be useful if you're a home gardener too so yeah absolutely stay tuned I mean this is like some next-level stuff to be honest so anyways thanks for watching guys stay tuned and keep gardening keep growing good luck in the garden see you guys later [Music]

Channel: Epic Gardening

Views: 2,638,344

Keywords: epic gardening, hydroponics, urban farming, urban gardening, aquaponics, nature's always right, farming in your backyard, farming in backyard, backyard market garden, market garden in backyard, farming on a quarter acre, backyard farming, quitting your job to farm, 1/4 acre garden, quit job to farm

Id: SJx1SPClg6A

Length: 33min 14sec (1994 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 16 2017