We've got a BIG announcement to make...

hi everybody and welcome back to another episode here at mapperton as you can see it's a little bit different today because i've got i've got somebody next to me my guest today on this episode which is so nice um many of you before he gives his introduction you might recognize him from behind the scenes because he helps me a lot with the technology i do give him credit when uh credit is due and also you've been able to answer a lot of the questions that many of you have asked about the history here at mapperton and things that i definitely don't know and i'm still learning that's right i need to have a little earpiece in your ear so that i can prompt you exactly when you get stuck anyway i'm luke everybody i'm julie's husband um you haven't seen me much in front of the camera but i have been behind the camera quite a lot and i've also been trying to make sure that the show stays on the road because it's not always smooth i mean we do have the old mishap for example the wi-fi sometimes falls out the batteries run out the memory card is gone i'm in a frantic state saying i need to go live right now and we're running around the house trying to find a good connection we are yeah but we've got some exciting news that's why luke is with me today because you're going to be seeing a lot more of him not just behind the scenes through the chat but unseen as well or in scene unseen so what have you told everybody well okay first before we give the big news i just want to say that many of you have have seen on my social media that american aristocrat is in turn around that's my new favorite term that everybody's been telling me that i should use so which and and which i am going to use moving forward so um so you mean they haven't pulled the plug right so american aristocrat and smithsonian channel have decided to part ways but that has nothing to do with the ratings the ratings uh were the highest uh t it was the highest tv series uh in two years rated in two years on smithsonian channel uh we took the lead in show which is i learned this is new sort of tv speak the show before mine is called the lead in show and every weekend and we got we would triple the lead in so that means we tripled the amount of viewers so everything's positive we have five star reviews on amazon so what we're doing now is we are in the process of looking for a new network so we're in what's called turn around and we have uh it's very very exciting because we well i don't want to say too much but it's we're very optimistic let's just put it that way so i i'm i've every uh i guess hope and um and and of course every ounce of optimism in me uh that we will be filming uh a second series so but in the meantime and even beyond the meantime what are what are we doing which we you've been preparing i think the key thing is that whatever happens with your channel you are a star well that's very kind i'm sure that all the people watching think that as well and you've done just such a brilliant job and i've got so much to learn as a presenter from julie so um can you can you teach me some tips by the way what would you what's what's good presenting style well you know i mean i was gonna say try to sound like me but that's going to be impossible considering that he has a british accent that's going to be hard and i'm male 1 last time i checked yeah so your voice is a little bit lower anyway we'll work on it but i think today we wanted to give you all well first of all i want to say thank you so much for all of your support those of you are on my patreon and we have been teasing i've been teasing that we are moving in a different direction and that direction is going to involve more of the estate more of members of the family and more of you indeed deep breath yeah um gosh we've got a lot going on so we are launching something called mappington live and mapping live is a new youtube channel and subscription service on patreon where many of you are now it's going to be well taking over is the wrong word because american aristocrat on patreon isn't really in turn around so we're augmenting that's the word we're adding to what you are already doing so you're still going to have julie's episodes yep but we're also going to start to have episodes on all kinds of other things that are happening at mappiton so for example we've just been filming with our son nesta who you all know and you've seen him in episodes and nesta is an absolutely determined naturalist so he's showing us all of the wildlife here at mappington as well as one or two creepy crawlies of his own yeah yeah and i learned so much from master he has i mean yeah he's his i mean his knowledge on the natural world is like so don't worry i'll still be asking all the questions that i know that you want me to ask but i would ask anyway and um because again i'm still i learned so much from him but i also learn so much from you and from you know your family now my family um and and just being on the estate yeah so we've got um so we've got episodes on wildlife that's going to be the series is going to be called mappington safari we've also got episodes in the garden with my mother so my mother will be taking us on a tour of the garden through the seasons with the head gardener steve lennon that's going to be called mafian gardens through the seasons you're going to get all of that um and then i've got a really exciting project that i've been spending a lot of time on which is looking at one of the farms that we've got here and deciding how we want to manage the land over the next 10 years or so i'm going to do things completely differently we're going to take the farm back and we're going to allow nature to restore itself we're going to allow the countryside to essentially encroach upon all the areas that we've been trying to farm it's not a very productive farm we've got some wonderful tenant farmers who live next door who are going to help us with this project and the great excitement of it is we're going to be bringing back some tremendous animals starting with white park cattle white park cattle look a bit like texas longhorn they've got these extraordinary preposterous horns that head out either side of their head they look rather scary but i'm told they're very docile yep and and as many of you know we will be looking to reintroduce no we're not going to get on to that in a second oh um finishing with the rewiring okay i'll just drink my with teeth drink my field of tea we are hoping to bring in some pigs we're hoping to bring in some ex more ponies some wild ponies so this is a story that you're going to be able to follow as we look to restore nature on this farm over the next few years and alongside that we're putting in a glamping business so people will be able to come and stay um bring their own tent or stay in one of ours and enjoy this kind of wild landscape and watch it as as it uh and it blossoms over the next and we'll be featuring um tom and sophie uh people know about thomas yeah of course they know about tom and sophia exactly american aristocrat so when you saw the uh christmas at mapperton episode tom and sophie i was milking the cow remember what happened there so those well they're actually in the very first episode which we've just been filming so yeah so you're going to see them again um and then i think yeah you haven't got to that yet because there's just so much stuff um so so in addition um matson has started a project to look at bringing back beavers beavers used to be indigenous they used to live in this landscape they were hunted to extinction about 400 years ago and we are leading a project to try and bring them back into our catchment that means the area around the local river um where we have the headwaters up at mapping states that's another thing we did a little update on that we did with nestor naster talked us through that i learned too much no i i didn't say too much but we did i just learned so much from nestor on that one why beavers are good so i didn't say too much about the beavers i just good good good because i didn't know that much quite early the beaver project is still quite early days yeah um but then the other aspect to mapping live will be to have all these stories that we'll be telling we'll be following people who work on the estate um we'll be looking at all the different aspects of community life here um as well as bits of our own lives little bits behind the scenes um but on top of that we're going to have more live tours so some of you may have seen the tours that we did last summer with my parents we're doing new live tours we've got tours welcoming people to the house obviously to the church but also a dedicated tour for each of the first earl and the fourth earl of sandwich they're the really important ones particularly the last guy because he invented the snack but the first guy he invented chocolate ice cream so um major contributions to british cultural life um and he's the first one is where you got the name sandwich from and that's also true um and um and so there'll be more of those sorts of tours and then we will also have something that you're doing maybe you don't even know this yet um which are called maverson live experiences and mapping live experiences you are going to be able to she doesn't know this you're going to be able to join julie live for cooking and well-being experiences okay why don't you just yeah you might do no okay i'm excited about that i'm glad you're telling me this now while we're recording exactly perfect because then he puts you on the spot you can't go to it but now what sort of thing do you think so no we're going to look we're going to look at remember my medler tart that i made one of my favorite things it wasn't very good yes it was you liked it okay said i didn't like it i said this at the time it was very there's a lot of medley there's a lot of medley down there that's nasty rather moldy no nestor said it was excellent the meddler tart but i want to make medler jam so i want to use more of what's on the estate like the nettles which are everywhere nettle soup i want to make nettle pesto i'm going to make nettle nettle little pesto nettle soup but also the rose hips and the hawthorns and the pears obviously my big apple project i'm going to take this over now the big apple project we're going to be looking at at creating we're hiding from the camera the whole orchard the apple juice is going to go into like a proper business yeah well i'm excited about that you're going a bit off piece here because what we were talking about was mappington live experiences and so far you've talked about meddlers and nettles which are okay but they're not that exciting um so let's talk about let's talk about some of the other things that you're going to do like yoga oh yeah yeah yeah meditation classes yeah forest bathing yup cold water immersion dips but you're going to have people doing that with you lying they sure can the point about an experience is that people are doing it at the same time okay maybe not maybe not the cold water immersion we can't do that live um and um and other other sort of bits of cooking in the kitchen here that um yeah with thiaga which i'm obviously obsessed with so have we covered everything imagine live now i think we have well i i just want to the one thing you haven't mentioned is is your father he will be leading the live tours well if i didn't if i didn't say that um it's because i'm i'm new to this yeah i keep forgetting stuff i need prompts yeah um so the key thing about the tools of course is that i think i did say this no i'm better than you think no um the tours will be led by my parents so they are doing the presenting for that and they're very good they're excellent and if you haven't a lot to learn if you haven't seen them live and in action please do look at the mapperton youtube channel and you can you can catch up there yeah so so if i was watching this the next question that i would have is when is this happening oh yeah don't you think yeah i i don't know that and the truth is i don't think we know that arnold okay so soon so i suspect in about two weeks three weeks okay something like that soon that's good i mean you know we don't have we don't give or take a week it'll be something like that okay and everything will just sort of roll over but we can say in the spring in the spring new beginnings new beginnings in the spring in the spring yeah lovely fantastic wonderful yeah so yeah actually it's feeling quite spring-like here focuses are out the daffodils are out the slow drops while they're drooping a bit you know which means they're on the way out we've we'll get some pictures i didn't know i did some video of the snow drops so that's all and then i can't wait for the blue bells to come out which will be about april wisteria will start to appear yeah so it's um it's exciting yeah exciting and it's all you this has been all your ideas so it has been all my ideas yeah so so kudos to you as i would say yeah i know absolutely yeah i mean you know i'm just sort of just a small piece in this huge puzzle i told everybody at the beginning you you are still the star julie is still fronting all of this stuff i am you know to one side no no no anyway anyway um well we're really excited uh to obviously bring this to you uh we're nearly there launching in the spring and we t t yeah because you've called this well your youtube channel has the word tea in it so you tell people what your drinking well today i'm drinking feel new because i because because also by by paca i like pakka a lot but also feel new spring new beginnings new everything right so starting afresh that's why i'm having my feel new tea maybe we should wrap this up before we get too carried away but yeah cheers cheers everybody you

Channel: American Viscountess

Views: 125,901

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Id: bzRDIUxLtb8

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 08 2021