How did we get here?
Happily Darling!
I accidentally read a book and bought a farm
Somewhere around late 2019 Rabbits borrowed a bunch of books from the library for her summer holiday reading. One of them was titled “Call of the Reed Warbler.” I casually picked it up one day and was stuck by lightning (metaphorically)! In it I learned about regenerative grazing and that if cattle are used in certain ways they become an incredibly powerful tool for environmental repair and good!
I was hooked. I had been forever heartsore about the woes of the environment and to learn that you can use cattle to sequester carbon on a very large scale just made sense to me.
“We had to get a farm…….”
Only problem was - I had never had that sentence enter my head in 43 years.
And so 5 years of obsessive research, day dreaming and rabbit hole exploring later, we made the leap.
So here we are. Two kids in their late 40’s, doing everything for the first time and just besotted with the magic you can see and feel when you work with nature. Not against it.
Everything you have heard about farming is right and wrong……..
Except for that hard work bit - that is correct
Regenerative Beef Farming in a Nutshell - We’re soil microbe Farmers
There should be more microbes in a healthy cup of soil than people on the planet. Microbes love healthy growing plants, as it is the plant roots that exude sugars (carbon) into the soil that feed the microbes. Happily fed microbes and fungi swap minerals with the plants for the sugars. The plants in these happy soils have more nutrition in them (thanks to the happy microbes) and are happier themselves as a result. The cattle that get to eat nutrient dense, happy plants end up being………..happy and nutrient dense too! Guess what happens when you eat them?
Farms using rotational grazing sequester soil based carbon! It’s not the cow, it’s the how!
It is simple… We use electric fences to keep our cattle in small areas and then rotate them on to the next small area every second day. They are not allowed to return to the original spot for 30-90 days depending on the season. 95% of the farm is under rest at anyone time. This makes the soil microbes and plants very happy. Heavy impact for a few days and then long recovery (the impact part is very important - they need that to come back even stronger next time) and then the time required to recover.
You actually end up growing more grass and the stocking capacity of regenerative farms tends to go up over time! The cattle build the fertility. You need herbivores for healthy landscapes!
All we have to do is use our little electric fence reel to move them onto the fresh stuff all the time. Nature does the rest and the cattle know the drill very well…. Oh and not use any chemicals…….Chemicals kill microbes- which would kill our system.
We do not use chemicals on our soils!
This little video shows you a typical move on a lovely winters afternoon. Just wind in the fence reel and they move themselves to the next paddock. It is magical to behold every time.
SO If you live Between The Coffs Coast and The gold Coast we’d love to be your Farmers
Once a month we do our “FARM GATE ON THE GO'“ tour. From South to North we drive up the coast and stop at our collection points as we go. SHAKE THE HAND OF THE FARMERS WHO RAISED YOUR FOOD - at the agreed spots and times we meet our valued customers and hand over their bulk beef boxes. Thanking them for being a part of our dream. We get to feel the satisfaction of meeting and feeding our customers with real food. Knowing that is is the best product we can make. Good for you and the environment