"Crooks of the worst description"

Kate McCarthy, who edits "Style" magazine, a central west publication, saked me to send her some quotes on off-farm income.

I blathered my way to the core of the story, from our experience:

"Off-farm income is becoming essential for three reasons: 1. Prices of commodities will always trend to the lower levels once buyers are consolidated into a few large players, like the Chinese wool buyers. 2. Climate change is going to affect the productivity on most Australian landholders as we have to cope with hotter, dryer conditions. 3. Most holdings are too small to take advantage of the benefits of scale that big growers enjoy. It's a rare family in our district that doesn't have some off farm income. I admire the ones who don't.

"As newcomers to the farming game - or blow-ins - we didn't know it was uncool to seek off-farm sources of funding in order to survive the drought. So when we put up a website and ran a PR campaign to adopt our flock for 100 days, we were unprepared for the response: we attracted 2500 adopters, mainly from the city, but from all over, and they paid enough to feed the flock for 100 days. We were humbled by the experience. But we were also unprepared for the bitter response of many country people, including neighbours and family. We were characterised as crooks of the worst description by some. We were stunned.

"It was curious. On the one hand we had thousands of messages from adopters saying 'what a brilliant idea' and 'thank you for giving us this opportunity to do something positive about the drought" and on the other we had people saying "how could you take people's money?" We now know who our friends are. And we understand the pride in country people that means they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to apply for drought relief. (We didn't apply for it either. They humilate you and you only qualify when you are on your knees.) But going to the wall for pride isn't brave. It's stupid.

"The lessons we learned were these: There's a lot of talk about bridging the city-country gap. We bridged that gap. It nearly killed us, responding to media 24 hours a day, producing all those personalised adoption certificates. We earned every cent we collected, and every cent went down the throats of our sheep. We don't care what people say, we're proud of what we achieved. Our flock (and our genetics) is intact. We consider ourselves to be part of "The New Bush" - making the necessary changes to adapt to the new conditions. All our adopters are now 'family' and can turn up whenever they like, camp or stay on the property, be shown around, help with jobs, etc. We love having them, although it can disrupt our plans at times. And they hear it straight about why we mules, cull and control roo numbers. I have had industry leaders say we can do more to change city people's minds about farming than they can. And they're right.

"There is a lot of unmet demand in the community for connection with the bush. It is not like taking charity to respond to this demand. We in the country have what they want and are prepared to pay for. If only the Chinese wool buyers felt the same way.

......

Carbon credits.

Ironically we started our voluntary, full-time 18 month campaign to provide landholders with an income stream from the carbon credit market because we were distressed at the breakdown of community infrastructure due to the loss of people because the money wasn't in agriculture. We formed the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming with the support of a group of leading 'carbon farming' growers and ran a campaign which has brought the issue to the attention of all levels of government and brought us to within a whisker of launching the market. In fact we have made our first trade.

The carbon market is tipped to be worth US$120bn by 2012. It will become the world's largest commodity market in history. A lot of people are going to get very rich from selling carbon. We ask: "Why shouldn't some of that money come to farmers instead of merchant bankers?"

"Carbon farming" is a collection of options that all go to increase soil carbon and fertility and, as a result, productivity. There are 5 basic 'rules': 1. No ploughing or burning because it bares the earth, releases CO2, and runs down carbon stocks. Zero-till or non-till instead. 2. 100% groundcover or as close to it as possible. 3. Native perennial grasses are the most efficient 'carbon makers'. Wherever possible, choose deep-rooted perennials for pasture. 4. Controlled traffic to reduce compaction. Reduce the footprint of heavy machinery to preserve carbon in the soil. 5. Biodiversity: as the microbial life multiplies in the humus zone of the soil, so the food chain increases on top of the soil and new species of plants, birds and animals appear. This strengthens the crops and pastures being grown.

These are small changes to farming practice. Already more than half the farmers in South Australia practice no-till cropping.

The National Party in NSW adopted our mission as part of their platform in the NSW elections just passed.

..............

No one is forcing any grower to take part. It's up to the individual. There's a lot of money sloshing around over the mountains, down in the city. An obscene amount of money... We've got to find a way to pipe some of it over the mountains. Adopting flocks or buying carbon credits... giving city people (who after all have to live in those city conditions) the chance to be part of what we do everyday, if only in their hearts and their imaginations, does them a lot of good. And and us too.

Bret and his tree planting bazooka

We were very fortunate in the horticulturalist engaged to help us to plant 2700 trees in the wildlife corridow. Bret Sanders stayed with us over Easter and turned out to be a fascinating individual. He comes from out near Coonabarabran. We spent many hours discussing carbon farming and the organics industry. We made another friend in the natural farming business. He worked like a trojan.

We spend Easter planting the wildlife corridor

I found this little fella (does anyone recognise it?) in the rip line we used to plant the eucalypts and acacias and currajongs in a 50 metre wide, 1.5km long wooded corridor that we hope will give the birds and small native mammals protection as they pass from remnant vegetation to remnant vegetation. This little lizard is our own DeGroot (the New Guard officer who slashed the ribbon when Jack Lang was to open the Harbour Bridge).
We are planting 3000 trees of various sizes to provide an understory as well as tall trees. We have our reasons: 1. Biodiversity is a charcteristic of a high soil carbon environment. This corridor will encourage biodiversity above and below the ground. 2. Trees in buffers and scattered across grassland are also good for carbon.Scientific papers have said soil carbon is higher in the vicinity of trees. 3. Soil carbon increases soil producivity.
These rocks dug up by the ripper as it prepared the planting line shows you what we are farming on in some paddocks.
Dan's friends Simon and Bethany came to help, watering thousands of seedlings.
(More to come)

24 hours after a soaking in sugar water

This looks like one sick Bathurst Burr we've got in our experimental plot just outside the back door. This photo was taken exactly (give or take) 24 hours after a solution of 4kgs sugar and 10lt water was applied.

On the other hand, our lambs are to be drenched with Kelp and minerals, Cod liver oil, and Apple cider vinegar and garlic. Sounds like a recipe for something...

No culls this year?

Normally we cull the worst 10% of our flock as a way of improving the genetics, ie. preventing the poorer animals breeding and adding to the gene pool. But this year we can't find even 100 sheep we can sell. Even the "Purple Taggers" (each generation of ewes has a coloured ear tag), who are 5+ years old, will be staying on. They have terrific wool and they are still physically sound (no broken mouths or distended udders, etc).

White sugar is poison to plants

We don't like spraying heavy duty chemicals on the soil or the vegetation because they kill the living things in on which we rely for productivity: microbes, insects, etc.


So we are always open to non-toxic alternatives. The chemicals for spraying on Bathurst burr (my greatest hate) are very toxic and dangerous for humans as well as bugs. So when we heard about sugar as a herbicide, we decided to attack the burr with it.


The amounts specified in the article we read are extreme: 1/2 kilo of sugar per square metre. Buying sugar at the supermarket could be prohibitive. We did it that way for our trial. Mixed up 4 kgs and sprayed a plot of burr 8 sq.m. in a spot that traditionally is our worst infestation. I also sprayed some individual plants in our back 'lawn' to have something I could watch daily. So far so good. The victims near the back door have started to get a droop which usually follows when chemical is applied.


The food nazis told us white sugar was poison back in the 1980s and campaigned against it like all good lifestyle nazis should. Little did we suspect that they were right on the money.

Pasture still thin on the ground

The green flush is all around, and it is so joyful to see the grasses return. Unfortunately it's a bit 'thin on the ground'. We need rain-and guess what!! The ants are back!!!! In their thousands - crawling all through the cupboards, testing every lid and package. They predicted the last rain, but they weren't very accurate about when.







Let's go and have a look at Middle Paddock. It looks good from the air and from outside the gate. But on closer inspection, it is a different story.






Windmill grass and couch grass indicate salination. There are patches of native perennials valiantly trying to re-establish.





But there are also many bare patches which will need more time to recover, and some special treatment. We had pasture cropped this paddock in 2004, which gave us an explosion of perennial grasses.






(Pasture cropping is the direct drilling on something like oats into a dormant pasture instead of ploughing and sowing conventionally.) Heaven knows what the paddock would look like had we not done that.




The sheep don't have a problem with the grass - they're just so happy to see it. They run from paddock to paddock when we are moving them. No need to push them. Just show them the gate.





The impression that we are drowning in feed that the aerial photo might give is wrong. More than half the property is still in drought. Only those areas we were able to take the sheep off, thanks to our supporters. We fed the sheep in 'sacrifice paddocks' which you can see here.One of the sacrifice paddocks was called The Lease.






It is still struggling to come back. ALthough those sections where we spread Nitrohumus a few years ago (treated human biosolids) reveal better results.This treatment aimed to increase biological activity in the soil and kick start the restoration program.







We took advantage of the rest House Paddock was given over the last 3 months to allow some river red gums establish themselves in a paddock in need of trees. There has been one brave little gum tree growing well. So we protected four more seedlings to sede if they would flourish.



(I believe it is best the let Mother Nature decide what to plant and where. The tree is morem likely to survive that way. And we have planted many trees unsuccessfully over the years.) Here is our little master. He'll soon no longer need the protector.





And here is one of the babies - see how he grows in a few months.