Diary of a Carbon Farmer

Cornering the Minister and extracting a promise

2008-05-30T17:38:00.004+10:00

Michael Kiely, convenor, Carbon Coalition, gets his man! The Hon. Tony Burke was the guest of honour at the RIRDC Rural Woman of the Year event in Canberra. The Coalition had made an approach to see the Minister and received a curious letter from a senior public servant which said, in effect, that the Minister was too busy to see people from the country like me because he has to get around to see people from the country.the Minister immediately agreed to accept a proposal from the Coalition. He is a charming man who speaks well and said some touching things, like "It's such a privilege to be here with the people who provide the rest of us with food, clothing anf shelter."

Also at the event - and sitting on Louisa's table at the event - was the Hon. Mark Coulton, Member for Parkes (Michael stood against him in the election in November.) We agreed to help him with climate change information. Mark's probably too nice for politics and probably hates Canberra by now. (All politicians are charming and most National Party people are nice.) I also spoke with Wilson Tuckey who said he had a car engine that ran on air and the transmission comes from a Fisher and Pykel washing machine. He's a wild man

One Tree Hill: A Series

2008-05-25T00:51:00.000+10:00

I saw this tree through the window of the car while we were held up at roadworks on the road between Mudgee and Lithgow. I stared at it for a while, thinking it looked out-of-this-worldish. Just before the stop light changed, I grabbed the camera and got 4 or 5 shots, one of them was this.

Dang me if I didn't see something similar while driving between Wellington and "Uamby" by the front route (the highway) while flashing lights and waving cars down as Tim Woods drove his humungous sowing machine down the highway. I came back a few days later - late in the afternoon - and took this shot. Eerie.

Tim's big sowing machine comes to slice the pasture

2008-05-25T00:50:00.000+10:00

Tim Woods, one of our classmates from the first "Farming Systems Course" came out to help us do some pasture cropping. We used his 'no kill' direct drill rig which he built out of a second hand combine harvester. It has 16 double disk openers to slice open the soil to drop the seed in and seal it with the following rollers.

This causes minimum disturbance for the soil vegetation. It also means we don't have to use herbicide or fertilizer. We planted 30 acres of oats and 30 acres of cereal rye into perennial pastures for a trial. We had a bit of fun and games getting the rig out to Uamby as it is 20 feet wide and many double gates installed in years gone by are a little less than that. SO we had to cut he fence her and ther. thanks for your help, Dennis Woods. (No relation) On the return trip we lifted it onto a truck, but still there were some tighjt moments getting it back to Tim's place Mt Nanima near Wellington. We hope for rain (we sowed almost dry).

The double disks can slice through quite heavy vegetation. It will be interesting to see if the sun can get through to the seeds in Cemetery Paddock - which we cant have animals on at present because the river banks are too overgrown. Thanks to Tim and his super slicer.

Masters of the Skies

2008-05-25T00:48:00.000+10:00

We often see a wedgetail eagle calmly scouting out wht's below from on high and I rush for a camera. We even occasionally get three circling together. Well, I was up on the highest point on the south side of the property mustering on foot becuase I couldn't get the quad bike up there, when a wedgey rose up from the valley and soared across the ridge before I could get the camera out. Later I was photographing the Caliope trials when I looked up and there were three of them again. This time I didn't miss.

"Blue Poles" marks natural fertilizer trials

2008-05-25T00:47:00.000+10:00

We recently put a small amount (200kg) of "Caliope" out as a thumbnail trial on a hectare in a paddock close to the house (Stanley Paddock). We call it a thumbnail trial because we want to move to bigger trials but don't have the dollars. John Pashai has offered us an opportunity to help him promote his product. He is a passionate soil man, being a farmer and an engineer who bought a 'pelletising installation' which he uses to produce a horticultural product that sells its head off to Italian gardeners. They and some Greek gardeners as well say it is miraculous. It consists of lime, dolomite, humates, and trace elements and plants literally sing when they receive it. For us, as the Carbon Coalition, he formulated a special size pellet for broadacre farming. We distributed it by hand. John tells us about the scientists at University of Western Sydney who took some of his product to trial and put his in some "pots" in a greenhouse and over the weekend something went haywire with the heating and every plant in the greenhouse died except those with John's Caliope.
We hesitated to take John's product on because we're dedicated to the soil carbon trading objective. But things are moving faster than we anticipated and we may just be on the job sooner than we thought. The "Blue Poles" refers to the four star pickets we used to mark olut the hectare. We painted them blue. Caliope means song or singing. The song of life.

Xavier without trainer wheels

2008-05-22T21:24:00.008+10:00

FIRST ATTEMPT - CRASH!LAUNCHED BY NONI
ACTION CAMERAWORK BY PA...

THERE'S BEEN A FALL...

SECOND TRY - SUCCESS!

THE SMILE OF TRIUMPH...

BBC Radio 4 program on "Uamby:A Carbon Farm" webcast in May

2008-04-06T06:42:00.003+10:00

Today we received news abot the BBC # documentary episode featuring Uanby:

Producer Mukti 'Campion wrote:

Dear Michael and Louisa

The series is now ready for broadcast and you are in Episode 3 which will air in the UK on May 13th.

A SUNPARCHED COUNTRY

Caroline Holmes discovers how Australia is facing up to its worst drought on record and meets people at the vanguard of innovative adaptations to climate change.

First Broadcast in the UK on BBC Radio 4 92-95 FM & 198 LW Tuesdays 09.30am

22 April 2008 Episode 1: Water is Precious
06 May 2008 Episode 2: Farming Waterwise
13 May 2008 Episode 3: Save the Soil, Save the Planet
20 May 2008 Episode 4: Changing Gardens
27 May 2008 Episode 5: Green Buildings, Cool Cities

The programme will be available to listen again online for 7 days after broadcast at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 . To do this you will need to download (free) Realplayer software. You can do this by following the instructions at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/categories/plug/real/newreal.shtml?intro2

I do hope you will be able to listen to the programmes!

Kind regards,

Mukti

Mukti Jain Campion
Executive Producer

Will you still Need Me, will you still feed me, When I'm 64?

2008-03-31T21:08:00.007+11:00

My very good friend Mike Connor is 64 today. He is symbolic of all of us for lots of reasons. He's living his dream, sailing the northern waters with his wife Michelle, who he is damn lucky to have beside of him, as is anyone of his age and education and upbringing. Michelle and Mike are both beautiful people who don't hide their humanity and human frailty. Mike and I and all the men like us should get down on our knees and thank whoever runs the Universe for sending us the women we married. Because we are clots. We don't tell these amazing people how much we love them. We don't let them stay in bed while we bring them breakfast often enough. We don't listen to them. We don't. We hear them, but not because we are listening. Not that Mike doesn't listen to Michelle - I am sure he does. But he's a male, so there's every chance he doesn't "hear" what she's saying. So my wish for Mike on reaching 64 with the woman of his dreams (and all of us men who are married to wonderful but weary women ... "She may be weary, women do get weary...") is that we find the secret to letting them know how important they are to us. (Men have blissful lives when they discover this skill.)

Happy 64th Mike.

AMAZING FACTS ABOUT MIKE CONNOR:

He once played drums in the backing band for The Big Bopper (who died in the plane crash with Buddy Holly)
He drinks Gin neat.
He is a sailor from Boston Harbour (where the world's first giant tea bag set off the AMerican Revolution.)
His wife is part psychic, part energy healer, part sailor... and full of brilliance.

Wedding bells in Bowral for our Jessica

2008-03-28T21:16:00.008+11:00

These are the rosellas frolicking in the fountain outside our window at Milton Park, the Southern Highlands Stately Country House where daughter Jessica married Fred Schebesta on Easter Monday. All the official photos will be posted eventually.
Here we see Rachael and Brodie (baby grandson) with brother Stephen and sister-in-law Roxanne observing the ceremony. l
Jess and Fred really stretched their budget to pay for an amazing wedding.

Louisa said to Fred's father (Fred) "She looks like an Austrian princess!" Alfred said: "No, much more than that!"This pic shows Louisa and Fred's mother Kerrie (in stunning blue) greeting Jess and Fred after the ceremony. The boys wore tails and top hats. Very theatrical

Lighting a fire in WA

2008-03-19T08:10:00.005+11:00

SALT PANS SCATTERED ACROSS THE LANDSCAPE IN WA

Louisa and I flew to Western Australia to speak at the Western Australia No Till Farming Association conference at Perth (outside Perth at the Vines Resort). We flew over a drought ravaged land with thin ground cover or none. We landed to meet some of the most courageous people we have ever met. More than half the farmers in the West are facing the last throw of the dice in the coming season. Dr Tim Wiley of the Department of Agriculture said we lit a fire in WA about soil carbon. It is now top of the agenda for WANTFA. (Shades of NZ. BTW, we didn't light a fire with the Ministry of Ag in NZ re the tender. We missed out. Sadly, it appears the Kiwis have delivered the project to the scientists, which is the kiss of death for a market mechanism to emerge.)

With the mulesing issue burning hot after the latest blunder by the wool industry, we spent a day working on marketing strategies with the Multi Purpose Merino breeders group. These innovators have developed a wrinkle-free sheep that needs no mulesing. (We have bought 9 MPM rams to breed mulesing out of our flock.) One of those breeders is Bob McFarlane, the man behind CharleyCarp, the fertiliser made from the caro that are destroying our waterways. He is a man of ideas.

We were also honoured to address a gathering of progressive farmers at the Department of Agriculture in Geraldton, thanks to Jane Bradly. While there we saw a presentation by Bob Wilson of Evergreen Consulting on his experiments with perennial grasses and tagasaste.
The perennials scored 23 tonnes CO2e/Ha more than the annual pasture and the Tagasaste 67 tonnes CO2e. (Samples were taken from deep sands under an old annual pasture, a 3 ½ year old Rhodes grass stand and an 18 year old tagasaste stand in adjoining paddocks.) The hand emerging from the gloom is Bob's.

...a scene from the movie...

2008-03-08T12:31:00.002+11:00

This is a shot from "Healing the Land", the TV Documentary which is studying the alternative agriculture movement around the world. In this shot Louisa is mustering the ewes from Creek Paddock.

Media madness

2008-03-08T12:12:00.003+11:00

There's always a camera stuck in your face.
Here is Louisa being interviewed for Regional Television outside Hamilton NZ. Mandy, the journalist, is a shoestring budget operator who will one day control the Universe.

This film crew from New Mexico is making a documentary called "Healing the Earth" and they spent 2 days with usfilming. Here they are interviewing Ian Chapman down by the river. Ian is a TAFE Co-ordinator of courses such as woolclassing, shearing, etc. He shares many of our beliefs about weeds and pesticides, etc.

Christopher Schueler, who is making the documentary, is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he has had a long career in television and film. He brought Randy the cameraman with him and picked up david the soundman here in Australia.

The sheep will be complaining to their agents if we have too many more film crews arrive.

Tim Sheridan makes a visit, then flies...

2008-03-08T12:00:00.003+11:00

We got a surprise one morning a week or so ago when this tall,d ark and handsome man came to the back door. "SHerro!" It was Tim SHeridan, who we knew when at Bathurst (Mitchell College) in the early 1980s and who played drums in the Channel 9 Band (I played bass). He and I studied journalism at about the same time and he became a famous face on Channel 9 Sports. Tim' grew up on a farm that joined our first property in the district.
After he left I found this huge blow fly on the back step. They say there's no flies on SHerro, and now we know why. He leaves them behind.

No need for Mulesing at "Uamby"

2008-03-08T11:40:00.002+11:00

We have always hated mulesing but did it because 'they' said we should. But now we hope we don't have to do it ever again. We are replacing our rams gradually with Multi Purpose Merinos, the first 8 arrived a few weeks ago.
These noble beasts have few wrinkles and flaps and so they and their progeny don't need mulesing. Simple. Australian-grown solution. Louisa and I are meeting with the company whose growers produce the new bloodline to see if we can help them develop a 'carboncredited™' offering. The meeting will be a full day working with their growers in WA.

We only just got back from NZ (see carboncoalitionboz.blogspot.com) where we spent a week campaigning for climate change agriculture. We will be a week in WA, speaking to WANTFA (no till farmers), farmers from the Northern Catchment, and the MPM breeders.

Busy? Who, us?

2008-02-19T10:00:00.004+11:00

This is a photo of the audience at the Macquarie 2000 Landcare AGM 2 weeks ago. We spoke on the same program as Christine Jones who is a stunning educator. It was a pleasure to be working with her again. She has been our inspiration since 2005 when we attendd her Carbon Forum in Armidale - and where we met Col Seis, David Marsh, and Rick Maurice.

We are off the NZ at the end of the week to speak to farmers and scientists and government officials about soil carbon. An entrepreneur called Alan Mayne is paying us to do the trip. He was a delegate at the Carbon Farming Conference we organised last November. We are putting our slides in order for a Kiwi version of our presentation. (They have a problem with the official view of soils in NZ as well: the dominant paradigm says that NZ soils can't sequester much carb on because they're all full up! Paradigm Busters!)

At the same time I am negotiating with the publishers of Ethical Investor Magazine to speak at their conference in both Sydney and Melbourne in May on "Green Marketing". Unfortunately they don't want to pay my travel and accommodation (not to mention my speakers' fee) and we have to weigh up the value of the opportunity.

At the same time I have a presentation to do at ad agency WHYBIN to sell in our CarbonCredited™Brands solution for city based businesses.

At the same time we have to prepare for a week in WA speaking at Conferences and meeting farmers, in March.

At the same time we are working on a Voluntary Carbon Standard for soils, to submit to the global Voluntary Carbon Standard organisation.

At the same time we are working to codify our current 'proxy/indicator' model for selling 'sol credits' by April 4 when our 'sustainability coach' Michael Mobbs is in town.

Meanwhile we must soon have another meeting with our friends in the scisntific community to plan the 2008 Conference...

Soil-C-Central is going ahead, despite the fact that Louisa did not win the $10k bursary from the Rural Womens' Award, which was to be our down payment. Need a sponsor.

Meanwhile I am toying with a user pays information service for soil carbon....

Serenading the sheep

2008-02-19T09:46:00.003+11:00

Last week I sat for a few minutes singing and strumming some of my songs out front of the house while the ewes grazed in "House Paddock". A little audience gathered out of the road to listen, but did not stand there long enough for Louisa to get the photo. They didn't like it that much.

Our Rural Woman of the Year

2008-02-19T06:56:00.003+11:00

Louisa was runner-up in the NSW RIRDC Rural Women’s Award 2008. The winner was Tracey Knowland, a businesswoman from Brooklet near Byron Bay. Here's how the organisers presented he two finalists:

Tracey Knowland, a businesswoman from Brooklet
Tracey, along with her husband Stuart, owns and operates Bangalow Wholesale Nursery at Bangalow in the Byron Bay hinterland. Tracey’s business specialises in trialling and developing superior selections of small to medium Australian temperate/subtropical rainforest trees and coastal tolerant trees. Her target markets include the landscape and development industry. Tracey proposes to use the bursary to fund her participation in the 2008 National Nursery & Garden Industry Association National Conference in Adelaide in March, followed by a study tour of Victoria's largest wholesale production nurseries to look at sustainable growing methods. Tracey also hopes to build on a water recycling project as part of their nursery business, and share her experiences with other women in rural and urban-based businesses.

Louisa Kiely, Goolma

Louisa and her husband Michael own and operate a superfine wool enterprise at Goolma in central western NSW. Her focus for the past two years has been on climate change and sustainable farming. She has coordinated a number of workshops and summits, bringing together scientists and farmers to share information about carbon farming. Louisa’s award project involves building and launching SoilCCentral.com – a website devoted to research and knowledge of carbon soil sequestration, including ideas and farming techniques to increase carbon in soils. She hopes to use her project to highlight the benefits of increasing carbon in our agricultural soils to help save family farms and the environment at large.

And this is how ABC RADIO's Country Hour reported the event:

Last night at a gala ceremony in Sydney, Bangalow Nursery manager Tracey Knowland was named NSW rural woman of the year, by the Minister for Primary Industries Ian Macdonald.

"Tracey's business focuses on innovative advanced tree production and and is looking to develop a thriving export business as well as keeping a sense of the environmental issues involved with tree planting and production.

"The environment also plays a big part in the success of the runner up for the award Louisa Kiely from Goolma who is a strong advocate for carbon farming and the implications of climate change."

THIS WAS LOUISA'S APPLICATION:

Louisa Kiely

“Uamby” via Goolma NSW 2852
Convenor
Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming
Principal,
Carbon Farmers of Australia

[Mobilise the Soils, Save the Planet, Save the Family Farm]

DEMONSTRATED PERSONAL COMMITMENT*

February 2006 - Co-Founded the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming to lobby for the right of Australian landholders to trade on the emissions offset market the credits they can earn by sequestering carbon in their soils.
May, 2006 - Presentation at Manning Landcare event, Gloucester
2 June, 2006 - Brief NSW Farmers’ Association, Jock Laurie, Sydney NSW
14 July, 2006 – Presentation for CWCMA, Mudgee Small Farm Field Day
19 July, 2006 – Presentation to Baradine Landcare Group
July, 2006 - Presentation to Land Management Workshop, Cobar
18/19 September: Washington DC –2006 Global CO2 Cap-And-Trade Forum
21/22 September: Bozeman, Montana - Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership Phase 2 Project Management Plan Workshop
25 September: College Station, Texas - Professor Bruce McCarl, Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University
27 September: Albuquerque, New Mexico - Peter Holter, Holistic Management Int
28 September: Attended and addressed 2 day Phase 2 Workshop in Albuqurque,New Mexico of the Southwest Regional Partnership
29 September: Swanton, Vermont - Address Farmers’ gathering organised by Coalition member Abe Collins from Vermont.
1 October: Columbus, Ohio - Professor Rattan Lal, School of Natural Resources at Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio
3 October: Chicago, Illinois – Mike Walsh, SVP, Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX)
Secured first order for 25,000 acres Australian soil from CCX.
23 October, 2006 – Presentation to Kingaroy Carbon Forum, Kingaroy
Coordinated 8-farm application for CWCMA funding for soil trials.
13 November, 2006 – meet with NSW President Soil Science Society re data for CCX and Summit of scientists and Practitioners
25 November, 2006 – Make presentation to Cobar/Nyngan Landcare
22/23 November, 2006 - Speak at National Carbon Forum Canberra
19 December, 2006 - Briefed NSW Farmers’ Asociation’s Jock Laurie.
9 February, 2007 - Address SA No Till Farmers’ Association, Tanunda, SA
5 March, 2007 - Address CWA Agriculture & Environment Seminar, CWA House
7 March, 2007 - Conduct 4 hour workshop on carbon trading for RCS, Yeppoon
8 March, 2007 - Address soils gathering, CWCMA Dubbo, NSW
10 March, 2007 - Address landholders’ gathering at Collarenabri, NSW  
12 March, 2007 - Address Landcare meeting, Mudgee NSW*
1 April, 2007 - Launch Carbon Farmers of Australia – trading arm of Carbon Coalition. Make first sales of Australian farm Soil Credits.
22 March, 2007 Organised Summit between Scientists and Farmers, Dubbo NSW  
29/30 March, 2007 - Address Landcare Farming Forum, Grafton
25-27 April - Address Southern Rivers CMA/Landcare Forum, Merimbula /Eden 
3 May, 2007 - Attend “Green Dollar” Conference, Canberra ACT
15 May, 2007 - Brief Judi Earl, Holistic Management International, Goolma
14 June, 2007 - Organised 2nd Summit between scientists and farmers, Orange
21 June, 2007 – Attend and address DPI landholders’ meeting at Junee Reef.
4 July, 2007 – Address Ebor Beef Group, Armidale NSW
14-15 July, 2007 – Address NSW Women In Agriculture Conference, Forbes
19 JULY, 2007 – Address Biodynamic Farmers, Melbourne Victoria

*My husband Michael is Co-Convenor. He does all the website communications and public relations. We often share the podium or present alone. Michael’s solo lobbying or presentation work is not listed here.

THE SOIL CARBON OPPORTUNITY

• Restore Australia’s heavily depleted agricultural soils to health and productivity.
• Restore the financial security of farm families by giving them access to what will soon be the largest commodity market in the world.
• Restore local economies and rural communities.
• Restore the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere and help avert the worst effects of Climate Change.

A PERSONAL MISSION: My specific focus for the past 2 years has been Climate Change and Sustainable Farming. When I entered agriculture as a woolgrower 10 years ago, I studied sustainable farming practices as part of the Advanced Diploma of Farm Management at the University of Sydney (Orange) and my husband and son joined me in learning the Holistic Management approach to grazing management. I experimented with various techniques of rebuilding the depleted soils on our ‘renovator’s dream’ property “Uamby”, which has been farmed hard for 182 years.

To get litter on the ground and encourage soil biological processes that make healthy soil, we tired mulching bare earth, mulching rank grass and thistles, spreading manure, spreading treated human biosolids, spreading worm juice, spreading seaweed, and other experiments. We proved that you can grow new topsoil quickly with effort.

But the breakthrough for me was attending one of the first Carbon Forum staged by Dr Christine Jones in Armidale. We were selected as among the 10 most innovative farm families in the Catchment by the Central West Catchment Management Authority, and trained for 20 days in a range of skills to do with innovative farm planning. We that soil carbon was the key performance indicator of progress towards soil health, reduced salination, water management, biodiversity, reduced erosion… and climate change mitigation. In fact, we concluded that the world’s agricultural soils could be the only solution to the Global Warming Crisis.

The UN, NASA, and our own Australian Greenhouse Office agree: there is already enough CO2 in the atmosphere to push the globe through the 2°C increase that will cause climate chaos. The only way to remove it is Photosynthesis. Plants and Trees. No other popular solution can do it – clean coal, nuclear power, solar and wind power, these can only avoid future emissions. And Forests, even if we planted enough today, cannot reach critical mass in less than 15-20 years. The Stern Report said we have 10 years in which to act, and NASA agrees. The only solution is agricultural soils. They already have critical mass and can start sequestering carbon instantly on a large scale.

A slight increase in soil carbon across Australia’s agricultural regions can sequester more than half our greenhouse gas emissions.

EVIDENCE: A 0.1% increase in organic carbon across only 10% of Australia’s agricultural lands would sequester 387 million tonnes CO2. Australia’s emissions are projected to reach 603 million tonnes annually over 2008–12. (Soil C in the top 20 cm of soil with a bulk density of 1.2 g/cm3 represents a 2.4 t/ha increase in soil OC which equates to 8.8 t/ha of CO2 sequestered. - Dr Christine Jones)

CASE STUDY: Pasture cropping/time controlled grazing combination in Central West NSW recorded increase in soil carbon from 2% to 4% over 10 years (0.2%C/yr) (CSIRO)

OPPORTUNITY: Soil carbon credits could underwrite the income of many farm families and enable them to offset their emissions from methane and other greenhouse gases. Australia’s soils are badly in need of restoration. We have lost 50% of our topsoil in 200 years and 80% of the soil organic carbon. There is great potential for reversing these trends.

CALCULATIONS: The Department of Environment and Climate Change, and the Central West Catchment Management Authority estimated that the soils in the Catchment can capture 183 million tonnes of Carbon by 2020 if farmers switch to “advanced farming practices”. The shift would result in a doubling of the soil carbon contained in paddocks.

183 million tonnes of Carbon = 671 million tonnes CO2e (Carbon tonne x 3.67 = Carbon Dioxide tonne)
At $25/tonne = $16.75 billion dollars. At only $5/tonne = $3.35 billion dollars
$3.35 billion dollars ÷ 5500 farms* = $609,440 per farm
$600,000 ÷ 15 years** = $40,000/year (At $5/tonne, the low point.)

*In the Central West Catchment (ABS)
**2005-2020 – the average period for soils to saturate with carbon.

POTENTIAL: The Carbon Coalition has been the only organization to focus consistently on promoting this opportunity. It has lobbied all levels of government and raised awareness of the opportunity with government officials and scientists. The Commonwealth Government has the power to allow landholders access to the carbon market on equal terms.

Through our lobbying efforts, the NFF, NSW Farmers, the NSW National Party and the ALP (Federal Opposition) have endorsed the soil carbon trading concept. Others we have influenced include Australian of the Year, Dr Tim Flannery, NSW Commissioner for Natural Resources Dr John Williams, and Professor Rattan Lal, the world’s foremost soil scientist and leader of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change soils delegation from the USA to the UN.

LATEST PROJECT: We are organizing the world’s first CARBON FARMING EXPO & CONFERENCE on 16th-17th November, 2007 in Mudgee NSW. Professor Lal described it as “an historical event of international importance.” The Kiely family is underwriting the conference.

HOW $10,000 WOULD BE INVESTED:
We hope to launch “SoilCCentral.com”, website devoted to all known research and knowledge of Soil Carbon sequestration, including ideas and farming techniques to increase Carbon in soils. It will have links to every resource available online and be useful for scientists, primary producers, and policy makers. Once we have achieved our objective, it would be transformed into a resource to support farmers trading soil and other forms of carbon.

Budget:

Research (time and subscriptions) $5000
Website development $3500
Publicity $1500

LEADERSHIP AND SKILLS SHARING

This role has given me for, the first time in my career, the authority to shape policy and direction. The Coalition is a leadership body – leading the campaign for property rights to the carbon a farmer grows in their soil.

The tool we have at our disposal are basically two:

1. knowledge
2. communications technology

Soil C Central will provide us with both, but at a higher level than to date.

The website by its nature will be a vehicle for sharing knowledge and opportunities.

This knowledge will also be delivered through my public speaking activities.

A PERSONAL STATEMENT

As a landholder and woolgrower, I am concerned about the health of the land I have in my care.

As a grandmother and mother, I am concerned about the world I will leave to my children and their children.

As a human being, I am afraid for the future of our community and nation as we enter a new era of uncertainty and insecurity.

The 2008 RIRDC Rural Women’s Award would be a significant contribution to our morale and resources. But the recognition alone would be worth more than the money in helping to promote our work and the outcomes we seek.

Together, we can achieve good things for the environment, good things for farm families and our communities, and good things for those who will otherwise be severely effected by extreme climate events.

Louisa Kiely

?????

ALIENS? CROP CIRCLES AT UAMBY?

2008-02-06T07:30:00.000+11:00

No, not crop circles but "Pasture Squares". It is an experiment to see if we can freshen the pasture and give the sheep access to the longer grasses mixed up among the thistles, by carving corridors out of the thicket using a mulcher attachment on the tractor. Naturally the shearers who are here think we are nuts. The neighbours think we are nuts. But when grass grows rank and long - and worst still, when thistles are as thick as they are - you lose the value of the growth. Looking back at what we have done, we realised we have two advantages operating for us: 1. we did not completely disrupt theinsect and spider communities that had quickly populated the tall grasses. They had somewhere to go. 2. We benefit from 'the edge effect' which means this: agricultural scientists have noted that, when you plant or grow things in rows beside each other, the edge closest to the next row grows fastest and best. Now this works for different crops, like corn, etc. But will it work for grasses?

ALready the juicy grasses have emerged - less than a week since we mulched.

BBC Radio 4 wants to know about Carbon Farming

2008-02-06T07:21:00.000+11:00

All the way from Britain, Mukti Campion and Caroline Holmes (a distant relative of SHerlock, the famous detective) came out this week to find out about Carbon Farming. They spent around 4 hours with us, tramping around in the thistle and summer grasses. Caroline is a "Garden Historian". They will alert us to when the broadcast goes to air and we can catch it on the web. Many people in Europe are interested in Australia - more than we can imagine - because we are a frontier land facing Climate Change sooner than other places. (Although the poor Chinese are being belted by crazy weather, too.)

Old and new friends come to visit

2008-02-05T21:40:00.000+11:00

Tom Nicholson from Queensland, who we first met at Christine Jones's first Carbon Forum at Armidale, came by on his way to WA. He is writing a book about Carbon Farming He intends to interview many practitioners and experts.

He is to be assisted in his work by our old friend Judy Cooper who is acting as secretary and scribe, because Tom says he is deficient in this regard. Good luck, Tom. Good luck, Judy.

We welcomed John Pashai (L) and John Muller to "Uamby" recently. John P. is an inventor and manufacturer of a pelletised fertiliser called Caliope which we will be trialling in Middle Paddock (one of our worst) to test its application in pastures. John has a farm outside of Gulgong and has dedicated his time to creating this product which has been chosen by the University of Western Sydney as a joint venture development. (Middle Paddock was where we trialled pasture cropping. It has a long history of being cropped which has reduced its soil organic carbon to dramatically low levels.) John Muller is a friend from Collarenabri who represents a group of large landholders interested in selling the soil carbon they are accumulating in their soils due to a change in management (till to no till.)

To the passing motorist there may appear to be feed in this paddock. But looks can be deceptive.
There is a great deal of bare earth that needs to be colonised by weeds which will, in turn, be out competed by grasses. (The process is callled "Sucession". It was described by grassland expert and pioneer Allan Savory. It goes like this: bare earth is usually first colonised by lichens or mosses, then low lying weeds, then deep-rooted weeds, then thistles and burrs, and finally pasture grasses. This is a natural process and can be assisted by the use of animals in concentrated numbers grazing evenly across the space, disturbing and dunging on it, then leaving it to recover. In this way - via a symbiotic relationship between grass and grazing animal - are we ale to restore the health of degraded soils.

The Birds of Summer

2007-12-21T10:33:00.000+11:00

"Uamby" has a range of seasonal visitors during spring and summer. The fruit ad blossoms on the trees bring them. The loudest and most unruly are the Friar Birds who squabble and fight with each other and other birds to get the sweet nectar from blossoms on the Silky Oak tree that towers over the house in the back yard. We weren't surprised to find it s a subspecies of the Friar Bird, called the "Noisy" Friar Bird.

These visitors are much further south than they should be. They are Little Wood Swallows, normally coming down only as far as northern NSW. This pair (they travel in pairs or groups) perched high in a river gum. It is their breeding season, and they must have wanted some privacy from their fellow, so they came this far south.Or could it be CLimate Change?

Birds are one of the key indicators of biodiversity because they thrive on insects and insects have a direct line of impact from soil biology. There are also direct lines of impact from our pear and crab apple trees. Hence the annual pilgrimage of a family of king parrots. This year we have eight of them, led by this male.

Another annual visitor is the Dollar Bird, who comes to fly his monotonous pattern - like a swooping triangle - always returning to the same high perch on a dead branch. This year the Dollar Bird, who comes down from New Guinea, has changed his routine, perching not outside the house but down by the river. He seems to be training an understudy. It could be his son (or daughter). The Dollar Birds have a white spot underneath their wing (shaped like a silver dollar which is a clue about when it was named.) The Dollar Bird is classified as a 'bee eater'.
Another bee eater that travels north to New Guinea during the colder months is the beautiful Rainbow Bird. It has two distinctive spine-like tail feathers, longer in the male than the female. It's splendid colours aren't shown in this photo (taken from the ground, with the birds on the top of a river gum). It is bright green, golden crown, bright blue cheek, blck and gold throat, bright sky-blue rump, black stripe through the eye. Sounds like a great costume for the Gay Mardi Gras.

This little fellow is also out of his patch. The Forest Kingfisher is not normally this far south. But he has been here for as long as we can remember. SO tiny and blue. He lives down along he river, but he came up to the house area on the day this photo was taken, when a wild storm was brewing.

The Blue-Faced Honeyeater is a permanent resident, regularly taking on the Noisy Miners for access to the blossoms on the native shrubs. In this photo the Honeyeater is feeding in the blossoms of the Silky Oak in the backyard, where it competes with visiting Friar Birds.
The hardest birds to capture on camera as the small wrens and silver eyes, etc. that flit from bush to bush, never standing still for long enough to focus on them. This is the Superb Fairy Wren male, in his mating finery. He had a gaggle of females buzzing around him on the day this photo was taken.The wrens are around all year.

These are called Apostle Birds. They travel in packs of around 12, though plus or minus 2 or 3. The swagger around, sqwarking to each other and sticking their beaks into everything.

The same can be said for the White-winged Chough, which have also invaded the gardens, ignoring the Apostles and digging up the leaf litter and mulch. They have a white patch under the wing which you can see in flight like the Dollar Bird.

There are many more birds: cockatoos, galahs, pidgeons, eastern and crimson rosellas, swallows, ducks, cormorants, etc... They are just the tip of the iceberg.

The colour of Climate Change

2007-12-10T13:02:00.000+11:00

In the wake of a major thunderstorm that hit Port Stephens while I was there to help some friends with a marketing challenge.

The rain was still belting down, but the thunder and lightening had abated when we arrived at Salamander Bay. For a few moments there was this eerie light washing over this picture post card scene.

The talented "kids" who own, run and are employed by MercerBell have worked out a way to run successful direct response campaigns while building brand values (traditionally something that direct marketers could not do.) They are fine tuning their messages and I am a message fine tuner.

David, The Bell of MercerBell, was the first art director when I started in the ad business at Ogilvy & Mather. He says nice things about me when introducing me to audiences.

"Animals taste good" is a wonderful T-shirt slogan. I also believe it. I wrote a song called "Eating Animals Is Cool". The last verse goes:

'Vegetarians are insane if they think plants don't feel pain.
They enjoy being killed as much as ducks and pigs and such.
Don't look down your noses at the carnivores.
At least they're honest about all the death they cause."

Vegetarians should read The Secret Life of Plants.

Fred and Jessica (and other people with email addresses) go to Bondi for a Party

2007-12-10T10:05:00.000+11:00

Jessica and Fred, to be married in March. It is a beautiful thing... and Fred has my book on how to be a perfect husband. Unfortunately it doesn't teach readers how to cook. Louisa and I had dinner with the happy couple to celebrate their engagement. We ate at the "Excellent Chinese Seafood Restaurant" in Carlingford Court. Not a very auspicious name, but the food is above average to good.

THis is our prospective son-in-law Fred (Rico to his underworld mates, shhhh). He is demonstrating the rhumba with a football. His friends are awe-struck. Fred is an overactive young man. He insists on punctuating his week with bouts of frenzied physical activity, with no fear of the damage he can do himself. Tennis is one of his compulsive activities.

These over-active people refused to heed my warning about too much sport. Why only this morning the radio announced a young sportsman from Bathurst collapsed and died after going for a ride on Sunday.

Fred is in love with life. Here he invites the whole world around for a group hug. He doesn't care if you got body odour or bad breath, either. That's the kind of guy he is.

Fred is an active young man - here he receives the ball on Bondi Beach - a mecca for young AUssies and a death trap for unsuspecting tourists who cannot swim. ("We lose a couple a week," he says. "Dunno where they get to. Must be sharks...)

No, not a mermaid frolicking in the shallows on Bondi Beach, but Louisa who cannot resist immersion in salty water, even though it makes your skin crawl as it dries on you. (It could be the salt, it could be the urine.)

Fred about to test his betrothed's love for him by challenging her to endure a hug from a sea-salty-urine/water encrusted fiance. (Think about it. No one I know gets out to urinate. That's why the sea is green up close. It starts out blue, but all the urine turns it green. True.)

More hugs for the world. Fred is open to the infinite.

The merry band of pranksters... I can say all their names, but I can't type them because it's the sabbath. Only kidding. I can't remember them except Louisa, and Jessica and Fred and Frank. The other guys are my new buddies.

WE LOSE a member of the family - Chenjerai

2007-11-30T23:46:00.000+11:00

Hi all. For those that don't yet know, Chenj, our family dog of 13 or 15 years went for her last visit to the vet today.

she was having trouble even walking. She was in pain. Dan and I agreed today that it was only the human emotions that remained.

Still, when I got to the vet it seemed like the wrong thing to do. Now she is having the long sleep. And I'm sad.

I've put other animals to sleep before, but this seems different. As Dan and I said, at precisely the same time, like some sort of
siamese twins "She's been a good dog".

She was my body guard on many occasions. When I first came to the country, it was impressive to have such a big dog
by my side. No one would question her loyalty. Or test it. She made me safe.

Even two days ago, when Howard Gorrie came to get his sheep, she made sure that she was on the job - belatedly of course
because she couldn't hear or see too well. So now she only gave her warning when Howard was upon her - it still scared the fuck out of him.

I remember other things - when we first picked her, and then went and picked her up. She was already so big that she took up the whole laps of my half-grown kids.

Dan putting her on his bed, and she went down the end of the sleeping bag. She felt safe with us then, and with Dan.

Walking her as a pup, but she wanted to be carried and then would put her head on your shoulder in appreciation if you picked her up.
She never understood that she got so heavy that we couldn't do that.

What about when Dad really didn't understand about having a non-toilet trained puppy in the house, and getting up and stepping in the worst puppy shit/vomit ever created. She nearly didn't stay that time!!!

Then, when I bought her to our first property she had no idea about sheep and she and I had some really hard times as I tried to 'persuade ' her that sheep were not to be chased. My big toe was very sore from kicking her, I can assure you. The worst of it was when she chased a young sheep into the biggest dam (that we had just built at huge cost) and they both swam the whole length, first the sheep in danger of drowning with the weight of its wool and Chenj in pursuit, with me yelling myself hoarse on the side-line.

And then the time she helped with the orphan lambs (years later) - we couldn't round them up, but Chenj went in, and 'adopted' them.
We got them back to the yards with her in the lead and the lambs following her.

What about the milk man that made the mistake of coming into our yard at Pennant Hills???? For some reason I woke up at the precise time he came into the yard
to deliver the milk. Chenj (who used to sleep inside the house in the city) felt my fear at seeing him come into the yard and 'attacked' . Oh my God, you have never seen anyone move as fast as that guy did!!!! The fastest 'backwards' ever. We should have an Olympic 'running backwards' race, and he would have won.

She had a huge 'hound' bark, - very scary. She was huge herself. So huge that she never had to worry about who would win any encounter.

What about (Dan) when she took on Camerons' dogs - or any other dogs. It took only a short amount of time, and maybe a 'toothy grin' and a show of strength via a very big front paw to convince other dogs just who was boss. She used her size to great advantage, rarely having to do much except 'remind' others of her size. She was always the boss with other dogs - or am I dreaming Dan?

Any other stories?

Chenj, rest in peace, and may your energy and wonderful presence move on to higher things.

Louisa Kiely
Finalist 2008 RIRDC NSW
Rural Women's Award
louisa@michaelkielymarketing.com.au

Over the moon?

2007-11-28T09:56:00.000+11:00

This is what I saw in the sky yesterday morning. The Moon. How do you get over the Moon?

LOUISA SELCTED AS FINALIST IN RURAL WOMAN OF THE YEAR AWARD

2007-11-28T09:24:00.000+11:00

LOUISA was notified yesterday that she has been selected as a finalist in the RIRDC NSW Rural Woman of the Year Award. She is being recognised for her work with the Carbon Coalition, the climate change campaign to win the right for farmers here in Australia and around the world, to be free to trade the credits arising from the carbon they can grow in their soils. MICHAEL nominated her, and her application is being supported by Patrice Newell, beef grower and author, and Judy Earl, ceo of Holistic Management International Australia.

Here is the last section of her entry for the Award:

A PERSONAL STATEMENT

As a landholder and woolgrower, I am concerned about the health of the land I have in my care.

As a grandmother and mother, I am concerned about the world I will leave to my children and their children.

As a human being, I am afraid for the future of our community and nation as we enter a new era of uncertainty and insecurity.

The 2008 RIRDC Rural Women’s Award would be a significant contribution to our morale and resources. But the recognition alone would be worth more than the money in helping to promote our work and the outcomes we seek.

Together, we can achieve good things for the environment, good things for farm families and our communities, and good things for those who will otherwise be severely affected by extreme climate events.

The Climate was the winner last night.

2007-11-25T13:13:00.000+11:00

"I'm astounded!" said the Climate Change Coalition candidate for the electorate of Parkes in western and far western New South Wales, Michael Kiely on seeing the results on Saturday night. Mr Kiely attracted 660+ votes (with 72% of the vote counted). Nationally the Climate Change Coalition's 7 House of Representatives candidates attracted a total of 7,358 votes (or an average of 1,000 each). When asked about the worse than average performance of his campaign in Parkes, the Candidate pointed to the intense conservatism of the electorate and the high concentration of climate sceptics in the bush. "Just to introduce yourself as from a party with the word 'climate' in its name is to invite derision," he said.

"Don't underestimate our contribution: we made sure climate change was on the agenda for all parties - we made sure the ALP and the Greens stayed on message, for fear of giving us any oxygen. It was almost impossible to get media interest for the CCC. And this is, perversely, a measure of our success."

[Nicki Schmidt worked tirelessly all Election Day, swimming against the Ruddslide Tsunami.]

"I am proud to have contributed to a swing of 15% against the National Party because it has served the people of this electorate so poorly, despite their loyalty," said the Candidate. Thanking his booth workers in Mudgee, Dubbo, Coonabarabran, Moree, Parkes and Gunnedah, he said: "We were swept way by the Ruddslide. It was clear when only around 1 in 10 voters took a How To Vote flyer. They charged into those polling booths and they knew who they were after."

The Climate was the winner last night.

"Australia will now ratify the Protocol. It will no longer give President Bush moral coverage for his immoral actions on Climate Change," he said. "We can get up off our knees and face the world with pride now that the Axis of Evil between Australia and the United States is over."

The Candidate - who spent the first 5 weeks of the 6 week campaign organising the recent Carbon Farming Expo & Conference in Mudgee last week - shot an email off to Peter Garrett as the Government crashed. It said: "Congratulations! Now to work.... I believe we have a solution to gaining the cooperation of farmers to transform agriculture to regenerate the farmland ecology. It is enclosed: Carbon Farming. Change without conflict. When can we make a presentation to you?"

The Candidate with Spicers Creek grazier and carbon farmer Tom Green, who also did a full day on his feet for the cause.

"There are 660 good souls (and more) in the Parkes Electorate who care about climate change. If I could build an ark I would make room for all of them. God bless you."

We helped push the Nats to the brink: our preferences flowed to Labor and the Greens.

Vote for the "Good Looking" Ticket.

The Friday before the election we were in the local press in three separate publications. Blanket coverage! No wonder people were looking at me funny while I was in the supermarket."

This political action vehicle contains quotations from the Coalition, including "Where will the Polar Bears live?" It was parked in a prime spot outside the polling station at Mudgee High School.

Dr Karl is quoted on the "Environment Cab" which is a Mudgee feature.

Rain returns like an old friend

2007-11-23T05:36:00.000+11:00

A HORSE SHOE WET WITH RAIN. Now that's good luck!
REAL RAIN: We received around 25mls in two fals, after days of dry electrical storms. One thing about electrical storms: they are actually a source of natural fertiliser! They produce a lot of nitrogen which finds its way into te roots of the plants, probably as naughty nitrous oxide. I'll look it up and tell you.
Here it is. I lifted something from a conventional ag science site (The National Science-Technology Roadshow Trust NZ):

"Nitrogen is found in abundance in the air. In fact over 78% of the air is nitrogen, the rest is mainly oxygen. But before nitrogen can get into the soil, and be used by plants to make proteins and enzymes, it must be first turned into water soluble nitrates. Converting nitrogen gas to nitrates takes a lot of energy. There are four main ways of doing this:
1. The decomposition of dead plants and animal material 2. Lightning: the high energy in lightning mixes the oxygen and nitrogen in the air to form nitrates. These dissolve in rain. 3. Industrial processes: need great pressures and high temperatures to make nitrogen fertiliser 4. Legumes (peas, beans, clover). At the end of plant's root, there are swelling or lumps where friendly bacteria change atmospheric nitrogen into soil nitrates.

"Applying nitrogen fertiliser is a large cost for farmers, but it is a lot faster in restoring the soil's nutrients than the other three methods mentioned above."

It is also damaging to the environment, the soil microbial community, and the climate.Here's extracts from an article entitled "Human Alteration of the Global Nitrogen Cycle: Causes and Consequences" by Peter M. Vitousek, Chair, John Aber, Robert W. Howarth, Gene E. Likens, Pamela A. Matson, David W. Schindler, William H. Schlesinger, and G. David Tilman

" Human activities are greatly increasing the amount of nitrogen cycling between the living world and the soil, water, and atmosphere. In fact, humans have already doubled the rate of nitrogen entering the land-based nitrogen cycle, and that rate is continuing to climb. This human-driven global change is having serious impacts on ecosystems around the world because nitrogen is essential to living organisms and its availability plays a crucial role in the organization and functioning of the world’s ecosystems. In many ecosystems on land and sea, the supply of nitrogen is a key factor controlling the nature and diversity of plant life, the population dynamics of both grazing animals and their predators, and vital ecological processes such as plant productivity and the cycling of carbon and soil minerals. .... Excessive nitrogen additions can pollute ecosystems and alter both their ecological functioning and the living communities they support."

Human activities that increase global nitrogen include the production and use of nitrogen fertilizers and the burning of fossil fuels. "The impacts of human domination of the nitrogen cycle that we have identified with certainty include:
• Increased global concentrations of nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere ...
• Losses of soil nutrients such as calcium and potassium that are essential for long-term soil fertility
• Substantial acidification of soils and of the waters of streams and lakes
• Greatly increased transport of nitrogen by rivers into estuaries and coastal waters where it is a major pollutant.
• Accelerated losses of biological diversity, especially among plants adapted to low-nitrogen soils, and subsequently, the animals and microbes that depend on these plants
• Changes in the plant and animal life and ecological processes of estuarine and nearshore ecosystems, and contributed to long-term declines in coastal marine fisheries."
These experts conclude: "National and international policies should attempt to reduce these impacts through the development and widespread dissemination of more efficient fossil fuel combustion technologies and farm management practices that reduce the burgeoning demand for and release of nitrogenous fertilizers."

Artificial fertilisers are not good for the soil or the things (bugs and plants) thta live in it.

DRAMA IN THE TREES

2007-11-23T04:55:00.000+11:00

Our backyard is aswarm with birdlife just now. The annual invasion of the Friar birds frolicking and fighting amind the silky oak blossoms, way up high. They are challenged evey few minutes by the Noisy Miners (the cockroach of the skies). But their beautiful brocken cackle that can transform into melodic song is so loud, we forget he Miners are there. FRIAR BIRD IN SILKY OAK BLOSSOMS
BLUE CHEEKED HONEYEATER INTHE SILKY OAK
KING PARROT IN THE PEAR TREEEASTERN ROSELLA JOINS IN THE FEEDING FRENZY

Our Carbon Farming Conference is a Stunning Success

2007-11-22T19:28:00.000+11:00

Brian Marshall, a Holistic Management trainer, sent us this wonderful email after our recent Carbon Farming Expo & Conference: "Just wanting to record my thanks for a super conference that has really given the Carbon 'snowball' a big push.
Much enjoyed watching you as a family, both on & off the stage, make the event happen with real passion and personality." It was a family affair and I was proud of our family. Jessica left her busy corporate youth training business in Sydney and worked like a navvy. Having her organisational skills on the team as a helper is an unreal experience. Daniel operates the second camera unit for the DVD of proceedings so we can spread the word far and wide and the people who couldn't be there because of harvest can attend after the fact. Young film maker Aaron Scheibner managed camera it 1 with supreme discipline.
Louisa did an amazing, life-transforming job first of all selling the whole show to sponsors, then to attendees, and in building the team to deliver the event. Catering, exhibition space, parking, registration, sponsors, everything.
(She is seen here at the sponsors' and speakers' dinner with Peter Andrews, Mr Natural Sequence Farming.)

I had three presentations to prepare and hers, that's four.

We also had the help of Judy Cooper - an Adoptasheep 'parent' - who proved a tower of power with the time keeping and support for Louisa. And Tom Nicholas came down from Queensland to lend a hand. These amazing people gave us a taste of the enthusiasm that emerged during the two days.

Rain - our lambs have never seen it before

2007-10-28T08:19:00.000+11:00

After 65 days without rain, the rain came - in spurts.

When the whole state was expecting good rains, we were hopeful of some. But the first rain band left us with just a few spits. Very disappointing.

And then, as it disappeared over the horizon, it dropped 3 mls - depressing when other districts were recording 30mls.

But the skies finally got serious, putting on a show (it always does that) but delivering on the promise this time.)

It all came in a storm burst... and we gratefully received 14mls. TOTAL: 17mls. (Less than others in the district, but blessed rain none the less.)

This rose had never seen rain before - just like the lambs.

Down by the river

2007-10-26T03:32:00.000+10:00

This is the Cudgegong River. It looks serene, but it is sick. It has dwindled to a trickle of its former self. We have real fears for the polatypus family that lives around the bend. The only flourishing life form is the european carp that infest the waters like lice, eating everything. But this is our river. And it has been depleted by our wasteful ways with water... We need to learn respect for the blessing that a river is.
A Kookaburra looking stately on a post from the old tennis court. Sometimes they gather in a group of 5 or 6 and have a corroborie or singalong. Most of the time they simply hunt alone or in pairs.
The Grey Shrike Thrush has a wonderfully melodic song which it repeats in various combinations. It is very loud and you expect to see a big, multicoloured bird when you follow the call. This one was down by the river. They rarely come up to the house.
This is the first time I have seen a Rainbow Bird here. It is migratory from Northern Australia and New Guinea. What an exotic tail for a bush setting.

The Cockatoos always come and swoop down to inspect what we are doing whenever we are down by the river. They screech and generally act like boofheads.
Other wildlife found in the river include 5 year old boys who say when we get back from a couple of hours by the river, "What are we going to do today, Non?"
Try photographing a dragonfly. I could not capture them through the viewfinder. SO I resorted to shooting without viewing - ie. pointing the camera where I thought it might be next and shooting, taking pot luck.

<

AS you can see, in 100 shots you can get one or two.

Finally this is a view of the old windmill down by the river, seen from the road up to the shearing shed. I like its painterly style and its composition. It works.

Lots of new friends at "Uamby"

2007-10-18T07:16:00.000+10:00

UAMBY NEWS 16 October 2007 BBQ for our "Family"

Lynette from Grays Point summed up the reaction of our guests who came to Uamby for a BBQ on 13th October: "Alana and I had the most wonderful afternoon. We discussed the day's event all the way home. Thank you so much for inviting us to join your family. My husband now wishes he had gone along with us. It probably meant more to us than it did to you but it showed us the face and generosity of country people. We also enjoyed the opportunity to meet some of the other people who also really care about our farm friends and our photos turned out so well."

It meant as much to us if not more than it meant to you, Lynette. You and our wonderful 'friends of Uamby' saved our life here on Uamby and make it possible to keep going towards our vision of a place we can grow superfine wool, native grasses, and relationships with lovely people like you.

We had a spit roast pork/beef/chicken lunch (no lamb!) cooked by Col the Shearer. Sitting under the trees, we were spared the attention of the flies because of a slight breeze. It was perfect.

There were two main events of the day: a visit to the new lambs before lunch and a shearing exhibition afterwards. The ewes and lambs we have been handfeeding are fairly tame and came rushing down to greet the rather large audience. Then, just as fast, they turned around and ran back up to shelter under the trees. We laid out some grain and lupins, so a few of the braver ones came down. (They were the ewes without lambs, at first. Later ewes with lambs ventured down.)

There were many day-old lambs and just borns. Daniel - like the Pied Piper - led the children around behind the camp and get close to the new lambs. The enthusiasts (Miro and Tony) crept up alongside the feeding ewes to get better photos. The sheep were camping in the shade during the heat and were reluctant to leave their lambs. Even so, their taste for oats overcame their reluctance.

Coming back from the lambing fields, we had a tray load of sheep lovers. Others chose to walk the short distance. It was a fantastic day to be outdoors.

Later, in the shearing shed, Dan gave a masterful exhibition of shearing while explaining the process and the danger points. The display took 15 minutes and the ewe (who would, normally be held there for only 3 minutes) was very patient. Col also shore a sheep (5 who had escaped shearing last August were cut out from the lambing ewe flock.) He displayed how to pick up the fleece and throw it onto the 'skirting' table where all the dark discoloured bits are pulled off.

Carson volunteered to 'throw" the fleece and Col gave her a lesson, and she threw it like a real bush rousabout. Not an easy task.

Young ones got a hands-on feel for the wonderful world of wool.

Miro and Judy Cooper - our Kiwi mates - have taken home some Uamby quartz to place in their garden, as a connection device.

UAMBY NEWS 12 October 2007

The hot summer wind came blasting across the western horizon, shrivelling up the cape weed and drying off the lush green. The temperatures hit the 30s on some days, boding ill for Summer. We will have to hand feed or sell off the flock again. So we are gearing up - designing t-shirts and producing a DVD of shearing to add to our offering of adoptions of the new lambs. Here is a range of T-shirt images:

The new lambs are arriving in great numbers - our best lambing yet. Few losses because our ewes are so fit - well-fed, thanks to you and everyone else who sponsored them. I followed them up a rocky section of the hill paddock, as they moved to high ground to make camp for the night.

We have about 50 ewes lambing in a paddock close by and we hand feed them to keep them tame and comfortable with out presence. The other ewes are quite skittish and we stay away from them during lambing.

Meanwhile we are getting ready for the ADOPTASHEEP BBQ this weekend - Saturday 12.30pm at Uamby. Gardens have to be weeded, lawns mowed. Daniel and Xavier fixed one of our water tanks on which we rely for water to the house.

Last weekend we hosted "Mr Sustainable Housing" Michael Mobbs and Helena and Wendy and Julian, his son, and introduced them to "Carbon Farming" pioneer Col Sies. Michael is a famous designer of low energy/high efficiency dwellings and commercial buildings - fit for the era of Climate Change.

We also had a visit from Ciaran and Lenka, from Balmain, who are adopters. They were able to photograph the new lambs.

Spring sprong sprung sprang ...

2007-09-05T23:45:00.000+10:00

Spring is belting out its overture and the soil is resounding to the rhythm of life. While the APEC circus is in Sydney and the city of my birth has been 'locked down' by the trappings of an Orwellian police state - steel barricades in the streets and police snipers on the rooftops and demonstrations banned (this must make the Communist Chinese leaders feel at home)... out here at Uamby the real stuff of life is taking place.
DOUBLE JONQUILL
Flowers are growing, birds are building nests, insects are flying, Mother Earth is ignoring these "powerful men" having their talkfest in a faraway city. The paddocks are covered with green stuff - not all of it, not half of it edible. Much of it is capeweed - commonly called "daisies". It is a broadleaf plant, not very digestable. Pretty, though. It is a wonderful sight to wake up to a paddock sprinkled with daisies.
DAISY

There are giant thistles everywhere, not very tasty but important in the 'succession' between bare earth and native pastures. They cover the ground, encourage microbes to colonise the soil and make organic matter by living and dying. These thistles stablise the surface of the ground and protect it from erosion.
Former owner of Uamby Mary Bird planted so many bulbs. The pop up through the lawn. Mary's garden was legendary. Her son David tells me that it took 2 tanks of water a week (pumped from the river) to keep it looking beautiful. Marriage parties held their photo sessions in Mary's garden.
JONQUILLA

These 'bells' emerged in the garden for the first time this season. The flowers here at Uamby are nothing compared to the masses of wattle in the countryside. What a gardener God is!
BELLS

The birds are flocking in vast numbers. Galahs and cockatoos have such harsh voices. They stretch their vowels like true Aussies. Perhaps that's where our accent came from. I crept up to get a good shot of them bursting into the sky. But the shot didn't work. (My little Canon Ixus400 is not up to it. So I have a new camera. A Panasonic DMC FZ50 with x12 zoom and image stabilisation - which means I don't have to creep up so close and my shakey hands will be compensated for by the camera.)
GALAH FLOCK

We have a resident family of swallows, who we have tried to evict several times because they build mud nests in every crevice. They fly around the back verandar, depositing dung on the windowsills and walls. It's like Painting the Harbour Bridge - the cleaning job never stops. Occasionally one will find their way inside, flies around 'painting the walls' and has to be captured and evicted.

SWALLOW INSIDE
They are "Welcome Swallows", so I guess we shouldn't be kicking them out. But they have 2 broods of young each year. They breed like.... can't say "Catholics" anymore, expecially when I'm a Catholic.
SWALLOW ON LIGHT
I will be using my new camera to get some beautiful shots of the new lambs. You see, we can't go too close to the new mothers. They can easily get spooked and abandon their lambs. Itb is a sensitive time. So I can't rush around. It takes a lot of patience to sit still while the flock slowly grazes up the hill towards you, hoping they'll keep coming even after they have seen you. Bruce Christie from the Catchment Management Authority also teaches Stress-Free Stock Handling (which training Louisa and Daniel have done) told me never to circle around sheep because that is the action of a predator. Instead you walk in straight lines and invade their personal space by small increments.
LAMBS AND EWE
This little fellow is a good example of how a blundering photographer can endanger lambs. He/she was just born and I moved into the area without noticing until I had practically stepped on it. It's mother had moved off with the flock. She camed back and the little one got up and ran off with her.
RECENTLY BORN LAMB:

The whole countryside around Goolma is dotted with new lambs. It is a carnival of woolly wonders. Soon they will form little gangs and race madly together across the paddocks, leaping for joy. The joy of being alive. They are the spirit of Spring.
NEW BABY LAMB

Finally, meet Joe. The Father of both Ravi and Kodie. He's Col's working dog. He is normally muzzled. (Bites sheep.) He's an intelligent dog, but he can sometimes appear to be hard of hearing. Ravi is the Brad Pitt of kelpies and Kodie is the Big Bear (his Mother's name is Bear).
THIS IS JOE.

Kodie is our new Kelpie - didn't need her but Daniel came home with her after a night drinking around a campfire with Col. Many truths were told that night. Kodie is a willing worker - loves chasing after sheep. Still, as a puppy, she is stealing our shoes from the back door and hiding them. The Joy of Childhood. Life. Spring.
KODIE

A Double Header

2007-08-21T20:34:00.001+10:00

This is Chapter 2 of a long catchup blog.

Louisa's brother Chris and his wife Kerry (our photographer) came up for the first 4 days of shearing to shoot a DVD of shearing... Here they are shooting a few seconds of footage in the shed the night before it all began. (Col can be seen ducking out of the way.)

This is the first wool ever sent to market under the label Carbon Credited. We are launching this brand to signify that we have entered into a program to reduce our emissions and to sequester carbon by our land management techniques. We used an old Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) calculator to discover what out emissions are: mainly methane from the sheeps' rumens. And we have applied to join the AGO's Greenhouse Challenge to join more than 700 other Australian companies who have embarked on the journey towards "neutral".

This is a photo of Brodie taken by Xavier. He borrows the camera and I find photos of the floor and the walls and people without heads... Such joyfull photos. I should do an album for him.

Like this shot of the window. Nothing less that capturing the artistic beauty of the mundane.

Spring means jonquills (spelling?) popping up around the garden. Mary Bird, who lived here for many years, had the most spectacular garden. And we have the remnants of it. We'd love to have the time to recreate it.x

No it's not a new dance. Louisa is demonstrating to the film crew and director of our shearing at Uamby DVD what will happen once the day starts and the wool starts flying. (She'll kill me for this. But I've got some other photos I could have used.) Daniel has a new dog - Kodie. I'll photograph her tomorrow.

Spring means shearing

2007-08-21T18:30:00.000+10:00

Here's the littlest Uambyite Brodie with his Mum Rachael, my daughter. Brodie started crawling a few weeks ago, and has discovered the ground, dirt, stones, dogs that lick his face.
He had a 'coming out". Like the Balinese who wont let a child touch the ground until it is a full 12 months old. Well Brodie is nine months - close enough. He took to the ground like a puppy dog.

This curious little ewe lamb wandered over to aks me if I had any more hay after we had fed out to welcome the lambs to "Shearing 2007" - their first experience of getting their woollen jackets off. The chilly winds will be gone by tomorrow when they start losing their pure new wool underwear.

Xavier just loves tractors. He won't be hard to recruit as free labour in a few years... He and his mom and little brother Brodie are up from Sydney for 10 days to help with shearing. It was a brave call by Louisa to have them up during shearing, because the stress of shearing is added to by the stress of having an active 5 year old (X-man) who wants his Nonnie's attention all the time. But he was a good boy and amused himself playing outside the shearing shed.

Here are some of the rams looking longingly towards the ewes who are by now heartily sick of them, with the first lambs already having arrived. The rest look ready to lamb.

Father John Frawley is our Parish Priest. We celebrated his 25 years as a priest last Sunday with an "RSL" meal at the RSL. John was made a Monsenior (spelling looks wrong) by the Pope recently for his long and distinguished service. He became a priest after a long time as a Christian Brother, the teaching order established by Irish businessman Edmund Rice. I was taught by the Brothers and they were not ones to spare the rod (or the strap). I got my share of "Six of the best" - which, in Tamworth on a cold winter's morning, could make your hands throb for hours. That was then. This is now. John Frawley is the best churchman I have known in my sporadic relationship with the Church. He works hard each week on his homily (sermon) which he delivers to on average 15 people at Goolma. He comes out to us from Gulgong where the parish is a difficult one for a man of John's age. I'll tell you why later.

Louisa and Lucy the cross kelpie/collie that we bred have become a good team. Lucy would have got a bullet on most other places. But this dysfunctional dog is finally starting to understand. She's got a criminal mindset. Always leading the other dogs astray.

After a hard day's shearing - Louisa is wool classing - we have a couple of drinks with the crew. He we see Col and Louisa chilling out. Col is a brilliant giant of a man. I should be his PR agent.

Len Cooney is roustabouting for us. Daniel is working outside the shed, mustering and feeding out. Len gave me the words to a song - well the first verse - and said 'you can finish it...' What?

Those black caterpillars are back

2007-08-07T19:07:00.000+10:00

We are having our annual emergence of Pasture Day Moth caterpillar. They come up from under the soil and head off into the pasture to eat broadleaf plants. (Such as capeweed, sometimes called daisies.) We get a lot of these caterpillars emerging from the soil around the hay shed.
WA Agriculture tells us the caterpillar is the lava of the moth and is called Apina callisto. "The caterpillar is a visually striking insect especially when fully grown to 60 mm long. It is dark brown to black with two yellow spots near the posterior end. Large numbers of these caterpillars may be seen on the surface of pasture where they remain and feed until fully grown."
The moth is brown with yellow markings on the wings and orange rings around the body. "Eggs are laid in pasture and hatch at about the onset of rains. When the larvae are fully grown they may be seen burrowing in the soil before becoming pupae," says WA Agriculture. They aren't a real pest. They need autumn rains to emerge and they only become a problem in very bad years.So now we know... Why are they important? Because they are part of the biodiversity - the network of organisms that support each other in ways we don't understand but if we deny or disrupt it, we play dice with the force of nature.

Red Rumped Parrots, our constant companions

2007-08-04T12:26:00.000+10:00

We have large flocks of red-rumped parrots who live in the trees and among the grasses. They flock like budgerigars, but not in the same numbers. They also live on grass seeds that grow in abundance in native pastures. If your pastures are all introduced species, you are not being hospitable towards the local wildlife.
They were perching in the tree outside my window this morning, most of the time with their heads tucked under against the wind. Then, when the sun comes out, they flit to the ground to feed on seed.
My poor little Canon Digital IXUS400 does a good job considering it has a very inaccurate x11 digital telescopic facility which my shaky hands renders blurry, and a slightly more accurate physical x3 telescopic capacity. Otherwise you have got to be like an Indian scout, creeping up on the wildlife to get within range. They have promised me a real telescopic lens, but I don't believe the finances will bear the pressure.

When the ibis return

2007-08-04T10:49:00.000+10:00

We have a flock of Straw-Necked Ibis visiting the farm in the aftermath of the soaking rains. They are feeding on the caterpillars and other crawling bugs emerging from the soil. This is a good example of how increasing soil carbon in the humus zone promoted biodiversity. The food chain begins in the humus line. Microbes feed bugs. Bugs feed birds. Birds feed... etc.

They have visited before, about the same time of year. They stay for a week or so, then go off elsewhere. They are commonly found across all AUstralia, according to SLater's Field Guide to Australian Birds. My little Canon Digital Camera isn't up to wildlife photography. But I caught a large wallaby watching the Ibis. It was raining at the time.

Louisa saw this post and comments: "You could have also explained that messy is the new neat, and all those standing dry grasses are habitat for lots of little 'things' and have given that kangaroo enough confidence to come down and be there."

Jessica to be married to Fred

2007-08-03T10:13:00.000+10:00

Louisa and I were driving back from addressing the Waste Management Association/Compost Australia in Canberra last week when Jessica called us from the business class section of a Qantas jet about to take off for Paris to tell us Fred Schebesta (her boyfriend) proposed to her and she accepted! Fred was taking her to Paris for her birthday.

Fred is ceo of Freestyle Media, 26 years old (J. is 31), has just sold his first business. He is an Internet guru and Young Direct Marketer of the Year. (I was a judge.) We have known him for 4 years.They met at a young entrepreneurs networking function that Jess ran. Fred shared office space with Louisa and I for several years. Fred became a family friend and a mate of mine long before Jess decided he was the one.
It stunned us when she announced that they were 'going out together', then they moved in together... It has all happened fast. Jess just bought out her partner in her training business.

(Jessica when she appeared in BRW Magazine last year)

(Fred clearing the vegetation from the cemetery in 2005. He has been a frequent guest at "Uamby".)

Der Speigel comes asking questions

2007-07-10T11:46:00.001+10:00

Talking to the world's most powerful magazine on a bad hair day.

Klaus Brinkbaumer called from Sydney to ask could he visit. He has come out from Germany to cover the story of Australia's water crisis for Der Speigel. Wikipedia says Der Spiegel (The Mirror) is Europe's biggest and Germany's most influential weekly magazine, published in Hamburg, with a circulation of around one million per week.

We were interesting because of the images of drought that accompanied our 'adoptasheep' appeal. He arrived mid-afternoon on a Saturday with photographer Tasso Taraboulsi. Far from drought, what we had was water water everywhere. (Our hydrology is very constirpated.) Klaus is a seriously charming man who is dedicated to his work. He travelled for 3 months with African refugees as they made their way across the Sudan and on into Europe seeking refuge and a better life in Germany. He is an admirable journalist, the closest thing to George Orwell I'll ever meet. (Orwell joined the hordes of the poor tramping across England seeking work and handouts during the Depression.)Klaus's book won an important award.

We talked mainly about the Carbon Coalition's work and the power of soils to sequester. He is personally pessimistic about the future, having seen the worst cities in the world as they sink under their own refuse. We told him we are optimistic because we have the solution to the world's problems: laughter (and soil carbon).

Tasso is a brilliant Australian freelance photographer who operates out of New York. He took some twilight shots you will see in later posts.

Economic irrationalists and dodgy bookkeepers

2007-07-10T11:09:00.000+10:00

This letter to the editor of Australian FArm Journal in response to comments by the high profile farm economics consultant Phil Holmes of Holmes & Sackett. He described those of us engaged in regenerative farming as 'wild eyed zealots' who are afflicted by some pagan religious frenzy.

Dear Patrick,

Phil Holmes is right to say that a primary producer must know their profit drivers. He is not right to describe 'the basic outcome in your farm business' as short term profit. The single-minded drive for financial results for more than 200 years has driven the progressive degradation of the basic plant and equipment of all agricultural enterprises: the natural resource base. This cost to business has never been included in the P&L. Scientists estimate that conventional land management techniques have cost the nation 50% the topsoil and 70% of the soil carbon. Soil degradation reduces productivity and increases costs as fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides are needed to deal with the consequences of 'profit-only driven' management. As the global community is waking up to a massive bill for cleaning up the mess we made of the atmosphere by using it as a free garbage disposal system, it's clear that the traditional bookkeeping for agriculture has had a column missing: a cost of production that is still unrecorded. It's like having two sets of books. Either you assign all the costs of production to the enterprise in a disciplined, economic rationalist way. Or you wallow in the mediocrity of capitalising the profits and socialising the losses. Commonsense demands a clean set of books. Best practice in business today is the triple bottom line: balancing financial performance against social and environmental outcomes. Why do Microsoft, Toyota, and IBM report on their triple bottom lines? It is because, as Phil Holmes remarked in his article, financial success cannot make up for losing your health and your loved ones. Corporations know they can't make money if the environment and society are crook. Regenerating the natural resource base, which is the source of wealth in agriculture, is the only sustainable way forward. The alternative - 'mining' the soil and our waterways while not paying the full costs of production - can have only one outcome. The Cree Indians"Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that you cannot eat money."

Michael Kiely
"Uamby"
Goolma

Bogged! (Trying to Feed the Ewes)

2007-06-19T08:19:00.000+10:00

So much rain. While Newcastle was being pounded by vicious storms, we were happy to receive 85 precious mls of rain. Filling the dams. Soaking the rootmass of the pastures. In fact, we have a hydrology problem because low lying areas saturate and become waterlogged (which indicates that we need more deep rooted plants 'ploughing' our soils, making them more sponge-like and capable of holding water).
We have got a lot to learn about Uamby's behaviour under water (not had much experience of too much water in 7 years of drought). We now know not to try taking 1 tonne of feed grain on a 1 tonne truck down to feed ewes on the flatland after rain. WE bogged the Red Landcruiser, Dan's Landcruiser, a quad bike and finally the tractor... each one bogged while trying to pull the other out. (We eventually had to dig the Red Landcruiser out.)

The Cudgegong River did not break its banks, welcoming the flushing out as it had become stagnant and fetid. I hope the platypus family were snug in their home in the river bank. Molly's Creek cut the road for a short while. "What's this stuff?" asked Ravi, the Red Kelpie. "Water," I told him. "What's it doing in the creek?" he asked. "Just reliving old times," I said. He gave me a quizical (?) look.

"Uamby" helps the Holistic Management movement raise money

2007-06-04T07:00:00.000+10:00

More than 30 million acres are being managed holistically worldwide. ANd holistic management is a climate change solution. So support Holistic Management International, says the flyer. This has been distributed throughout parts of the United States.

And Uamby is featured prominantly on the flyer: as "The green land" which is managed holistically.

We have been managing holistically for 10 years, now.

Peter Holter, the PR wizard with HMI, visted with us several months ago... with HMI's Australian anchor Judy Earl.

We were hosted for part of our visit to New Mexico by Peter, when we were in ALberqurque visiting with the Southwestern Partnership (one of President Bush's groups of universities and scientific institutions working on geosequestration and soil carbon sequestration.)

We were flattered to receive Peter's request to use our photograph - taken from a light aircraft 2 weeks after we received 75mls in 35 minutes. It has browned off considerably since then.

THE BALLAD OF HAROLD THE BOLD

2007-05-26T09:53:00.000+10:00

Louisa is afraid my cameos of life in Goolma, captured in song, are inappropriate. And so they are. But people love them. Even those the songs are about. Billy Moore is clever enough to see the comedic exaggeration in my ballad in praise of his bovine bovver boys. Harold certainly enjoyed hearing his special song. It is the story about New Year's celebrations from 2 years ago when Harold starred in a dramatic incident when midnight tolled. A very "Goolma" moment.

THE BALLAD OF HAROLD THE BOLD

There’s a story of old about Harold the Bold
Whose pub is of legendary fame
I’ll tell you a story so ghastly and gory
How Harold the Bold got his name

When it comes to carousal and sexual arousal
Harold’s pub’ not the ideal
But if it’s hard drinking and sin without shrinking
His venue has quite the right feel

So it came to pass in that palace of glasses
That Xmas had come and had gone
The regulars had hardly shifted their arses
Before the New Year had been born.

Inspired by grog and how much he could flog
Bold Harold was flushed with good cheer
He decided he’d shout all the drinkers about
To keep them as patrons all year.

But try as he may with something to say
He just couldn’t make himself heard
So he jumped on the bar and held up his arm
To give his good patrons the word.

No sooner had Bold Harold stood in his place
Than he was struck down by a blow
A treacherous ceiling fan launched him in space
And hurtled him deep down below.

To the floor of the bar where the sharp objects are
Fell the soft head of our host
He bled from a cut on his arm they said, but
It was his soft head that bled most.

Unseen by the mob which was sodden with grog
Poor Harold lay injured and bleeding
Only one person was sober for certain
And saw what poor Harold was needing.

She bandaged his arm and raised the alarm
By making an ambulance call
Ands one to the priest just in case he deceased
If the ambulance made it at all.

It is said that the party was jolly and hearty
With many a thought for Bold Harold
Who was sent to hospital not by his fall
But his stop when he dropped like a barrel.

His generous attempt to shout us prevented
By ceiling fan already mentioned
History would have been made, he intended
But for divine intervention.

Where the strong beer is sold the legend is told
How Harold the Bold was sent reeling
And they gather each night in the hope that he might
Fight round two with that fan on the ceiling.

©Michael Kiely 2007

the sky was blue and high above

2007-05-25T22:44:00.000+10:00

This momentous sky...
you can't hide from the skies out here.
They're in your face.
You turn around and ... wow!

I saw this while patching the fence around the hay shed which had been invaded by sheep and given a bit of an upside down haircut...

They look like they need to break in to the food store, don't they...

We meet Con the Fruiterer at a Sustainability Conference

2007-05-13T17:15:00.000+10:00

What a surprise to get an email from Mark Mitchell, aka Con The Fruiterer, at the Business Council for Sustainable Energy conference last week. He didn't know we'd be there. We didn't know he'd be there. Mark has been part of our Inspired Circle
of Friends ssince he got in touch with us about Adoptasheep several months ago and we discovered that he is a gifted inventor/engineer in the sustainable energy space.

Con had a lot of very serious points to make about climate change and global warming, hidden in the humour that had the room rocking for an hour. The best line of the night was his exhortation to politicians and public servants to keep producing millions of tonnes of paper reports each year and storing them in filing cabinets as they are sequestering CO2 that way.

My version of that concept is that we should be encouraging people to get fat, obese even, because they store carbon.The world should be pigging out as fast as it can.

Jessica gets some media

2007-05-10T21:27:00.000+10:00

This article appeared in the Daily Telegraph this week:

-------
JESSICA Kiely runs the FRANK team, which does career and entrepreneurship training for young people at schools, universities, colleges and councils.

Describe your business?

It involves holding workshops and programs for young people on how to start their careers and how to start their own businesses.

It began about six years ago in 2001. There was nothing like this when we were at school, which is why we're doing it.

How long ago was that?

Well I'm 30 now. This was the second business I've started up. My first business was tutoring.

We've found that not many people who should be in a position to help are very friendly and helpful when you're young. They tend to be patronising and not take you seriously.

But there is a real need to inspire young people, to help them if they want to run their own businesses. We've moved into the career areas as well now, because the schools are demanding it.

There are some key skills that young people need these days. They no longer get a job for life, they need to be in control of their work and they need to build the skills to give them that control. The new rule is that they have to be skilled up and ready for that reality.

We've also ended up in front of parents and teachers. They need to understand what their children are doing too.

How do you make money?

We get paid for our presentations by the schools, universities or corporations.

How long did it take before you made a profit?

We started in 2001 and we were probably making a profit after six months. There weren't a lot of set-up costs as we were running the business from home where we had no overheads. We've now leased an office for the first time.

For the first four years I did all the paperwork, but we've now got a book-keeper and an accountant to take care of that. And we have project managers who managing the bookings.

How many people are involved in the business?

There are five people in the Sydney headquarters, including me and my business partner. Then we have 27 facilitators around Australia.

They are independent contractors and we pay them per booking, so they can run their own businesses as well. The FRANK team has now worked with thousands of people in every state of Australia, as well as some overseas countries.

Did you ever think you would get this big?

The idea in the first place was that it would have an impact on young people. It was always about doing it well and then getting other people to do it.

What sort of qualifications do you need?

I did economics and social science at Sydney University and majored in eduction and psychology. I've trained up on other things too. I love those courses that you can do in one day.

How is your business different from your competitors?

When we first started there wasn't much difference. Now there is, mostly because schools and the Government see that education needs to change and the information kids get access to also needs to change to deal with the reality.

All our facilitators are amazing young people - they are role models, they are all young, under the age of 32.

Also we go to the schools, they don't have to come to us. We offer the complete program, with the facilitator, activities and a comprehensive customer service program.

What has been your biggest challenge along the way?

The biggest challenge is our growth. Previously it's been organic, but now we're expanding quickly so managing that growth and cashflow and staff is the toughest thing at the moment.

We need to put systems in place so we can cope better. At the moment our strategy is writing our systems manual. It's very boring. It's like putting together a franchise manual.

Where will your business be in five years' time?

We've got global aspirations. Singapore, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, potentially Japan. We can get over the cultural differences by recruiting local people.

What has been your biggest stroke of luck or piece of good planning?

The biggest thing we did really well is our website. We put a lot of work into it. We did a program last year in Bahrain because they found us on the internet.

How did you get your name?

Originally we were called Youth 2 Youth, and we worked with mainly young people aged 15 to 35.

But then a lot of older people wanted to be part of our workshops so we decided we'd get a new name.

In 2003 we'd started a magazine for girls that we called Frank, because the content of the magazine was up front, and also it was different to call a girls' magazine a boy's name. So we decided to re-use that name.

Any advice for budding entrepreneurs?

Give it a go. Don't take too much time planning as that can stop you. The best way to learn is to do it.

What's your web address?

www.frankteam.com.au

SNAKE!

2007-05-07T19:28:00.000+10:00

In less than a week we had a black snake (red belly) and a brown snake come to visit. What am I saying - they live with us! The black snake first appeared in the tool room next to the shed. The next time it appeared in amazing circumstances: we were sitting on the front verandah at dusk talking about snakes with a person who was a bit psychic. And I mentioned the local furphy that there were bluebellied blacksnakes down by the river and wondered out loud if they were a totem for the original owners of the land when a black 'shadow' seemed to run along the top of the fence in front of us, and at the same instant I looked down and at my feet (I was sitting on the steps) a black snake was trying to force its way into a small crevice between the stpes and the house. We all jumped up and ran inside, but our visitor's black labrador was attacking the snake, so I ran out and grabbed the dog and pulled it away. But by this time the snake was gone, presumably under the house. Did we see it? What did it mean? Daniel tells me he confronted it coming upthe footpath leading to the house one night. SO the latest sighting is a couple of weeks ago, in the above photo. It made its lesiurely way out fromunder Daniel's cottage, out under his car and into the grass beside the stables.

Then within days we have a visit from the big brown snake that also inhabits where we inhabit. The first time I heard of him/her/it, our manager said he had seen a "king brown" in the shearing shed and he wasn't going in there again. ("Anything to get out of work," I thought. But then I saw the snake's slide marks in the sand leading down towards the stables. On another occasion - during one of our droughts - I came across it crossing the road going towards the river. ANd the last time I saw it, I was reaching down to pick up some star pickets from in the grass and through the fence I saw in a small window between the grass a snake's skin pattern moving slowly along. It was brown. The latest visit came when we were out in the vege garden, digging out the weeds. It was detected by your Connor Grealish who drove over it on a quad bik and raised the alarm. Daniel coaxed it out of the grass and chased it up to the stables. (Ironically Daniel had a statement of the incidence of the high percentage of people who had died from snake bite whwile trying to kill the snake.)
I ran in to get the camera but it was all over. However I found it had shed part of its skin while escaping. It was two and a half meters long. Snake Info: Brown snakes are deadly. Aggressive. Territorial. Black snakes are less aggressive and are said to keep brown snakes away. Ours is a lazy bludger in that regard. Never try to kill a snake. If you find yourslef close to on, stop dead still. They are blind and rely on movement to target their prey. Stand still unless you can levitate at the speed of sound. Like I do. By the way, snakes have a job to do in the natural world. Don't kill them. Just be careful. Real careful.

"Crooks of the worst description"

2007-04-16T23:31:00.000+10:00

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

2007-04-08T20:33:00.001+10:00

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

2007-04-08T20:33:00.000+10:00

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

2007-04-03T17:15:00.000+10:00

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?

2007-04-03T13:05:00.000+10:00

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

2007-04-03T12:35:00.000+10:00

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

2007-04-03T12:31:00.000+10:00

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.

Ah! Democracy... Election Day, NSW 2007

2007-03-23T20:48:00.000+11:00

This is Erin Brockovich. She came all the way from America to help Patrice Newell attract media attention to the CLIMATE CHANGE COALITION - which is agroup of independents standing for the House of Lords... er, the Legislative Council, which is a direct descendent from the house of lords as it was originally made up of grandees and squatters and bunyip aristocrats - privilege and position and inbreeding don't make for a very good political system.

My contribution for the advertising was the following:

"FFFFFFFFFF" (CO2 ESCAPING)

VOTE 1 GROUP F TO STOP IT

You won't see it tomorrow or anytime.

Here is the official blurb:

CCC is not a political party. It is a group of 21 independents ensuring climate change is a primary consideration in all government business. CCC will work with any political group, community organization or individual taking positive action against climate change. Once elected CCC members will be free to vote on other issues according to their own conscience, but will take a combined stand on any issue impacting on climate change. The Coalition is united on all climate change policies and will assess all government proposals, including those for education, health etc for their impact on climate change. We will ask key questions about each piece of legislation that comes into the New South Wales Parliament. Does the proposed law address climate change? How can it be amended to make it better? See our policies at www.climatechangecoalition.com.au By scrutinising every piece of government legislation for impact on climate change, CCC will be able to lobby for changes to address the climate change problem. We will actively promote zero energy growth by 2010, ensure best practice standards are incorporated in all NSW standards for buildings and equipment, push for a moratorium on new coal-fired power stations and for a government commitment to a 25% renewal energy target by 2020. See our policies.

And this is my inspiration. When the future of the planet is in the hands of such an individual, everyone must answer the call. Mother Nature needs a hand.

Do you support the Carbon Coalition?

2007-03-20T11:43:00.000+11:00

The work of the Carbon Coalition has been entirely voluntary for the past year. (SEE http://carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com for out 12 month activity report.)

The Convenors have funded:

• lobbying,
• outreach,
• speaking engagements,
• website activity,
• blogging,
• research,
• overseas study tour,
• attending conferences to make contacts,
• appearing before official enquiries…

Please see the attached activity sheet. The time involved has grown to consume time previously devoted to income-producing activity. We can't go on this way. We need to professionalise the operation. Get serious or get out.

We believe the mission of the Coalition is too important to wind down at this important point.

We are on the point of creating the soil carbon market in Australia, We are enrolling landholders for trading. But the challenges we have coming up include:

1. Being fobbed off with Federal Government Stewardship Payments instead of carbon credits. These are a poor substitute for three reasons: i. it puts you in the hands of the public servants; ii. They could never be as lucrative; iii. They represent handouts, not payments for produce. We believe the Howard Government is implacably opposed to soil carbon credits. (Leopards don’t change their spots.)
2. Missing out on offsets when on-farm emissions are measured/estimated and landholders are required to buy credits to offset CO2, methane, nitrous oxide etc.
3. Put an end to the myth about Australian soils and carbon.
4. Force the hand of the regulators (IPART) by forming markets.
5. Promote the notion of Carbon Farming among business as usual growers.
6. Maintain pressure for Australia to join Kyoto.
7. Protect landholders from exploitation by unsympathetic middlemen and opportunists.
8. Teaching landholders about the carbon trading markets.

We need your help…

We need your help to achieve the goals of the Coalition:

• Making the family farm more economically viable
• Strengthening rural communities
• Restoring the ecological health of farmland
• Reducing the extremes of Climate Change

What we need resources for…

• Website development
• Membership database system
• Publicity
• Management
• Lobbying
• Research
• Conferences
• Subscriptions
• Travel/Acc

There is so much more we can do… getting Members involved in our activities is FIRST AND FOREMOST… but it takes time and time is always short when you’re short of money.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

There are many ways you can help:

• You can send a cheque to the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming C/- MB & AL Kiely, “Uamby”, Uamby Road, GOOLMA NSW 2852

• You will find a “Donate” button on the website (www.carboncoalition.com.au) and on the blogsites.

• You can buy Australian Farm Soil Credits from http://carbonfarmers.blogspot.com

• You can engage CarbonCreditedBrands by visiting http://carboncreditedhowto.blogspot.com

Your contribution is an investment in the greatest opportunity to solve the problems of declining land health, declining economic health, and declining personal health in agriculture.

Thank you for being part of this historic moment.

Michael, Louisa & Daniel Kiely
Convenors

PS. Please pass this email letter on to others you may know who would be interested.

NB. YOUR TAX DEDUCTION: While we cannot offer tax deductibility as a CHARITY, we can arrange a deduction for you by the following means: 1. You make your contribution. 2. The Coalition invoices you for CARBON ADVISORY SERVICES (which is a legitimate part of our activities) and your receipt can be used for deduction.

"Stands out like a beacon!"

2007-03-17T08:52:00.000+11:00

When Holistic Resource Management International's Peter Holter and Judy Earl visited "Uamby" a month ago, Judy said it 'stood out like a beacon' because of the way we had conserved the vegetation and protected the soil. Now we know why she said it.

Daniel flew the light aircraft while the pilot took these photographs. This shows what our soil has done with the rain compared to the neighbours' (and compared to the 'sacrifice paddocks we used to hand feed our flock).

Amazing!

Look at the difference on the river banks - the erosion and damage on the bare side versus the vegetation on the green side. Stunning! Thank God for all our Adopting "parents" who enabled us to take the flock off most of the paddocks.

Obviously we were able to make full use of the rain. (Their animals keep breaking through our fences.)

Holistic Resource Management is the system of decision making we use to manage our farming enterprise. It was developed by Allan Savory and is practiced around the world by conservation-minded landholders because it gets results like these.

78MLS IN 30 MINUTES!

2007-03-02T08:03:00.001+11:00

This is Daniel paddling in our sheep yards during a massive dump of water that almost washed us away! Luckily the lambs and the two new rams had been moved to the shearing shed the day before or we would have lost large numbers drowned in the flood. This was the rain we have been waiting for for 12 months. Now we will see the benefit of retaining grass groundcover in the way the grass will regrow. Also we have not lost the tonnes of topsoil that would have been washed into the river had we eaten out the pastures. Now we need a 10ml-20ml follow up fall in a week or so and in a few months the pasture will be reestablished. It's too early to put the stock onto the grass. (We have 3 weeks' hay and grain left in our reserves.) To all of you who have renewed your adoption for another 100 days, THANK YOU. Thank you, everyone. We are truly blessed.

Speaking to Carbon Farmers in South Aussie

2007-02-17T17:18:00.000+11:00

Last week Louisa and I travelled to Tanunda SA to speak at the South Australian No Till Farmers Association. No till farming is a conservation approach to cropping which avoids the damage ploughing can dol to soils tructure and soil carbon (it releases large amounts of CO2). South Australia has many no till farmers because they generally have very low rainfall and no till retains mositure in the soil. I can confidently predict that the future belongs to no till.

A hard day with the conservation farmers

2007-02-15T20:36:00.000+11:00

One year ago to the day we launched the Carbon Coalition at the Central West Conservation Farmers Association Conference. We've battled to get any attention from the media. Pictured interviewing me is ABC Rural Radio's Bruce Reynolds, who still thinks we're crooks. You can see it in his body language. Getting the indea of climate change across has been a very difficult task.

Lightning is good for Uamby

2007-02-15T19:57:00.000+11:00

Did you know that lightning is good for growing plants? It creates nitrogen in the air which settles on the plants and helps them grow. The high energy in lightning mixes the oxygen and nitrogen in the air to form nitrates. These dissolve in rain and falls to the ground.. we've noticed the effect...

Garden gone...

2007-02-15T19:42:00.000+11:00

This was our lush vegetable garden. Organic. Terrific. established with the guidance of Laurie Thomson who teaches organic gardening at the Canberra Institute of Important Things (or somesuch name). The important thing is that Laurie taught us out of the goodness of his heart.
This is our pile of sheep manure, 'mined' from under the shearing shead by various visitors and guests, notably my good friend and mentor Constant Berhends.

It's crutching time again....

2007-02-15T19:01:00.000+11:00

Yes, folks, it's that time again. Crutching!! This is the time when our shearers Steve Minnett and Col Doherty trim the wool from the faces of our adult sheep (to keep them from going wool blind.) They also trim the wool from around their butts to stop "daggs" building up (accretions of excreta) dollops of dung, hanging off the back, making them uncomfortable (becuase, unlike you and me, sheep can't get around to wipe their behinds. (Heaven knows how they got on before man with shears arrived on earth.
Steve and Col are our shearers - "our" shearers - because they care about doing the best job. Perfectionists. And nice blokes, too. We use them as often as we can get them. They are part of the family. It's an amazing relationship when you really get to know the inner life of afellow human being. And shearers are fearless about expressing themselves and revealing their feelings (after 20 million beers).
They are very professional, work very hard, in conditions most city people would reject. They make it 'a good shed' - a shearing shead is a very tense place at times, with so many sheep being processed. A good sense of humour is essential.

The rhythm of the seasons beats loudly like a drum on Uamby. EAch month has its events and episodes.

'Seeing' the future

2007-01-31T09:24:00.000+11:00

Diana, one of our 'adopting parents' and a medium, sent us the following email:

Hi Michael
When I was reading your newsletter, I got the 'idea' that you could expand or sell your concept to a cover more than just farmers and their stock - it could reach a wider audience - there is a niche group 'out there' for your (selling) concept. Without knowing you, your full concept (whether it is user friendly and can be adapted) I am relying on my mediumship to fill in the blanks.
Roughly I 'see' changes being made to your plan. Next I feel you will meet with an entrepreneurial type man from the X generation. Months pass before the plan becomes the final concept. Marketing will be easy. Finding the right person (male with NLP training) to travel miles demonstrating and selling your concept will be like finding a needle in the haystack but perseverance will pay off. I feel your original plan to save the sheep will then succeed for many years to come.
I feel you should take time out of your busy days to read over this email over and over until you 'see' the 'message'.
I wish you good luck if you take on this extra work (I am rarely wrong when I get 'ideas' concerning businesses) and remember to document the journey to fruition.
I should add that my adopting a sheep caused many of my friends and fellow exercisers to laugh - with words like 'trust you to find a way to help a animal at Christmas time'. Then they slowly realised that it was far better to do one little thing to help a farmer than just sit and watch the affects of the draught - feeling totally overwhelmed.
God bless
Diana

My reply outlines our plans to date:

Thank you Diana.

We have a business concept which we are 'conceiving'. It started with the desire to get a fair price for our wool, commensurate to the quality of the product we grow and the effort we put in. We intend to process and manufacture products for sale to consumers. The adoption scheme gave us the start of the process of identifying likely customers. (Unintentionally.) We will sell fleeces to spinners and craftswomen. We will spin the wool into yarn and sell it to knitters. And we will offer customers the opportunity to select and pattern or submit their won, and we will make up a garment, using a local knitter. I was blocked trying to think of how we could locate customers, but Adopt a Sheep opened the door. Our "Parents" might respond to the opportunity to purchase the fleece from their sheep, or the yarn, or a garment. On top of that we are exploring the opportunity of selling products with 'their sheep's' image on, such as t-shirts, coffee mugs, cushions, mouse pads, key rings, etc. These ideas are based on the belief that some (not all) of our "Parents" would like to deepen their relationship with their sheep and with Uamby. We also expect to have members of our new family come to stay and help with the sheep. Other products we could produce include postcards, childrens' books, photograph books, a book on The New Australian Farmer, a book on the ethics of agriculture (my field of study), a DVD on adapting to climate change. Further, we are deeply engaged in the climate change issue and will have 'soil carbon credits' for purchase soon, based on carbon sequestered in our soils and those of conservationist farmers from across Australia. We want to roll the whole concept out - already I have one young lady selling photos of their farm on Ebay to raise money for feed. I have helped her with publicity and website construction. Louisa and I are starting a series of seminars across the State to teach other farmers how to do it. We see this as part of our Mission to bridge the city-country gap. We then see opportunities for us as the retail shopfront provider for farmers who want to engage their 'new families' in the way we have outlined above - ie. we provide them with the infrastructure and management. We could also provide a farm stay booking service for farmers. All of this is driven by one thought: save the family farm, as an economic unit and as a sustainable environmental unit. Give farmers access to new revenue streams and incentives to conserve the environment by bringing city people and their needs and expectations into the equation. (Ie. an adoption scheme requires that the farmer be 'green' and ethical in their treatment of animals; growing soil carbon requires 'green' land management techniques.

We will read your message several times until we 'see' the opportunity. I welcome it. "ONWARDS!" is our motto.

Thank you for your guidance.

Michael

We stand for Parliament for our grandchildren's future

2007-01-22T10:41:00.000+11:00

The Carbon Coalition has been invited to provide a candidate to stand as part of the Climate Change Coalition (CCC) in the next election for the NSW Legislative Council. Convenor Michael Kiely says he agreed to stand in the coalition of independents solely to give soil carbon credits a platform for greater awareness in the community and in government circles. For instance, in its press release headed "10 things the NSW Government can do now", number 10 is "Promote the sequestering of carbon in soil and foster a start up industry for the rural sector"

Soil carbon credits are the only viable solution to climate change in the short term.

The CCC is fielding a full ticket, headed by Patrice Newell, prominent Hunter Valley grazier and olive industry figure.

YOU CAN HELP:
Members of the Carbon Coalition can help us by registering to hand out 'how to vote' forms at their local polling booth for part of the day on 24th March, the election day.

The following is an introduction to the CCC:

We've formed the Climate Change Coalition to accelerate action by politicians from all parties on the most urgent and important issue in human history.

While the Coalition is not itself a political party it supports many Independent candidates who are committed to its platform.

Climate change is no abstract scientific or environmental issue. It impacts on every part of our daily lives. It is personal, local, national and global.

The time for denial is over. The political posturing and games must end. We must unite to ensure urgent action so that our children and grandchildren can have a sustainable future.

While we might be divided by ideology, religion, geography, history, class or self interest, we must come together to ensure the survival of our planet.

It is vital that the Climate Change Coalition’s values be represented in the New South Wales Parliament. All legislation needs to be assessed and scrutinized to evaluate its impact on climate change.

Members of Parliament who support the Climate Change Coalition are committed to asking two key questions about each piece of legislation that comes into the New South Wales Parliament. Does the proposed law address climate change? How can it be amended to make it better?

We recognise that there are MP's on all sides of NSW's politics intent on doing the right thing. They are often prevented from speaking out by party policy or pressure groups. We will work with them to get a freer debate - to produce the dynamics of the "conscience vote" across the legislative spectrum.

Further, the Climate Change Coalition will work with any group, organization, or individual to form alliances and encourage political creativity. There is no guide book to what must be done. There is no precendent for this crisis. It requires entirely new scientific, communal and political approaches.

Whatever our differences on other issues, whether we're left wing or right wing or middle of the road, is irrelevent. We must work together. Now.

Patrice Newell

Flogging a dead horse called "Rainfall"

2007-01-20T18:04:00.000+11:00

This is conventional drought management in Australia. This is what is called 'flogging the land'.

If there was an RSPCA for soils, this farmer would be prosecuted for cruelty. Cruelty to the biological communities that live in it. Cruelty to the poor plants that try to grow to feed his sheep. Cruelty to his sheep for depriving them of nutritious pasture. Crulety to his financial position. And cruelty to the public image of farming.When you hear the words 'sustainable' used in agriculture, know that what you see here is unsustainable because there is only one place this operation is headed: down the chute.

Many farmers hang on to their stock for as long as they can... until their soil is bare and even the roots of the plants have been consumed by starving stock... until their stock are so weakened they can barely walk onto the truck to go to market... where their presence under the public eye is an embarrassment to those concerned with the industry's image. Why do they do it? These words came out of the mouth of one of our neighbours last week: "You try to hold on to your stock as long as possible because if it rains that's when you can make some money."*

Farming is an extreme sport. You drag yourself back from the brink as each drought breaks. You consume your asset value until your ship comes in. In every decade there are several dry years, several ordinary years, and - if you're lucky - a couple of boom years. It depends on where you are and what you're in.

Australian farmers have come to accept that the way to survive in the driest continent with the most fragile soil structure is to overstock, to flog the land. "It comes back," is a common statement. But in 200 years we have lost 50% of our topsoil and in the past 30 years we have lost 50% of our soil carbon. This can't go on.

These are the bare hills on the Sofala Road to Bathurst. Flogged bare. The day before, during a heavy rainstorm, we saw whole hillsides of powdered topsoil slipping in sheets down towards the gullies where it will be carried away.

Farmers are the biggest gamblers in the world. They bet on the weather. In Australia. They 'bet the farm' on 'an Autumn break' to get a crop or to give them some fodder to go into the Winter non-growing season. They have heard about 'risk management' - some of them have been to government-funded 2-day seminars. Our neighbour said the government had offered them $3000 to learn about farming. "But what could they teach me?" our neighbour said, without a hint of irony.. Nothing to learn. Been doing it so long... the same way. Flogging out the land during the regular droughts.

I am in awe of the knowledge of many conventional farmers. They can tell when it's going to rain. They can turn a piece of wire into any impliment they need. They can work like navvies. And they listen to new information and take it or leave it. They husband the land, looking after it as best they can. They also husband their animals, looking after them. I can think of 5 or 6 farmers in our district who fit this description. Then there are the others. Greenpeace uses them as targets to damage the entire industry. Some industry politicians will openly support these people while privately they bemoan the damage they do.

I can feel a song coming on. (Orchestra rises in background...

It's what their fathers' taught them.
It's what their neighbours do.
They wont read what you send them.
They don't want nothin' new.
Not from wankers like you.

You grow more grass than they can
They blame in on the rain
F'you ran the stock that they ran
You're understocked, it's plain
N' you're new to the farmin' game

*Just a glimpse of country life: We were speaking to this neighbour because their cattle were coming onto our place and eating our pastures because they'd eaten out their owner's place and even eaten out the next door neighbour's place (it is currently not being used by its owners). Now they were coming across the river and eating our paddocks out. "Well, if they're coming across the river there's not much we can do," said our neighbour. Uamby has traditionally been used as a 'Common' by neighbours who can't understand why time controlled graziers like us go ballistic if we move our sheep into the next paddock in the cell only to find it full of cow shit and empty of feed. They get a look of 'whaddaya complaining about?' when we see them about it. This photo shows how 30 cattle cleared out a small paddock in less than a day before moving on to attack other paddocks. Here in the country, it's not cool to complain about the theft of your pasture in a drought. It reinforces the old saying: "Good fences do good neighbours make."

Aussie Soil Carbon Credits for sale!

2007-01-17T15:48:00.000+11:00

Buy Soil Carbon Credits from Carbon•Farmers™

We have dived right in the deep end and are offering soil carbon credits to the consumer market (see http://buycarboncredits.blogspot.com), targetting baby boomer grandparents concerned about climate change and the way the world will be when they aren't there to look after their grandchildren.

Why did we do it?
To raise funds for the Carbon Coalition and enable our work to continue.
To raise awareness of the opportunity soils offer in the climate change crisis.
And to break the cycle of fiddling while Rome burns favoured by bureaucrats and scientists.

Politicians and scientists want to argue about the precise dimensions of the lifeboats on the Titanic - subjecting soil carbon to 4 years of trialling before giving it the go ahead, when Stern and others give us only 10 years to make a dent in the legacy load of CO2 in the atmosphere and soil is the only solution with the existing capacity to sequester legacy load in the time we have left. Forests will cost too much to plant on the scale required, take too long to plant, and too long to sequester. Every other solution is aimed at preventing new emissions, not dealing with legacy load. We have got to get cash flowing into the pockets of land managers who to encourage changes in soil management to sequester more carbon. If we managed to increase soil C by 1% in 10% of Australia's agricultural soils, we estimate we could sequester 10 years worth of our emissions. Can you sense the urgency? We are also - concurrently - seeking funding for trials of 'carbon farming techniques' and seeking to build bridges with scientists, trying to find one or two willing to operate in the real world and not this absurd Alice In Wonderland world where you can measure everything but you can't do anything. Given the extraordinary degree of estimation and averaging in calculating C sequestered in trees and C released by power stations, the death of a thousand core samples inflicted on soil carbon amounts - in context of climate change chaos - either to conspiracy to prevent farmers access to the carbon market, or criminal negligence on the part of those who would rather find reasons why it can't happen than look for ways of making it happen. We live by the words, "Lead, follow or get out of the way." We may fail, but it won't be for want of trying.

DAN'S DROUGHT DIARY

2007-01-05T15:39:00.000+11:00

Weaning the lambs from the ewes. By this stage the mothers are sick of them, and most of them have lost their milk. So to give the lambs a better chance a getting a feed (instead of competing with the ewes) and to free the ewes to graze unhindered, we have weaned the lambs.

A half grown lamb butting your udder 60 times a day is no life for a ewe.

The rain immediately set loose the worms. So we had to drench the sheep. We lost only three in this worm attack, a record low - because they are fitter thanks to you.

This is the view of the homestead from high on the hill behind the house.

Dan enjoys a short break.

We are restoring the pioneer cemetery down by the river.

No matter how dry it gets, the galahs always seem cheerful

WHAT'S ALL THAT BARKING DOWN BY THE RIVER?

2006-12-28T18:15:00.000+11:00

Ravi (the red kelpie) bailed up this big old man kangaroo, so he went for a swim. Roos can be deadly to dogs in a river. The roo's longer legs allow him to get a grip and drown the dog.

A lot of people this of kangaroos as gentle animals. And they are. But they can also be fierce fighters, especially the big males. They fight each other for possession of a mob of breeding does (as in "doe, a deer, a female deer...")

This big male roo simply waited Ravi out, took a b ath, then hopped out and went on his way. The drought has brought many roos in from the west. We'd have several hundred on Uamby now.

Adoption scheme creates chaos (good chaos)

2006-12-26T18:27:00.001+11:00

When we launched "Adopt A Sheep" three weeks ago we had no inkling of what would happen. We have been inundated with city people (mainly) wanting to help out. We have had more than 20,000 people visit our blogsite (http://adoptasheep.blogspot.com) and more than 1500 sheep in our flock have been 'adopted'. Every adopting 'parent' receives a certificate with a photograph, and generating these while managing a rickety order processing system has been a nightmare.(THIS IS US AS WE APPEARED IN THE MUDGEE GUARDIAN'S WEEKLY EDITION)
(THIS IS DANIEL CATCHING A MEAL ON THE RUN DURING OUR MARATHON CERTIFICATE-A-THON)

We can now afford to feed our flock for two more months - 2/3rds of our target commitment of 100 days. Meanwhile the rain has come - nearly 45mls in the past 3 days. We'd forgotten what it looks like. It looks like this: ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP))))((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP))))((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP))))((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP))))((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP)))) ((((RAINDROP))))
We need that much every week for the next 6 months to fill the dams and soak the soil down deep to reignite the cation exchange process (the electrical process that soils use to transfer nutrients to roots).

The soil is waiting for rain. If we 'eat out' the paddocks, there will be nothing to hold the soil together. It will be bared to bake in the sun (and release large amounts of the greenhouse gas CO2). There will be only a hard surface to greet the rain, which will run off into the dams and waterways, carrying our most precious resources - topsoil. By retaining groundcover, we not only protect the soil, we prepare the ground to recieve the water and draw it down into the rootmass which will be the engineroom of growth for the new vegetation. There is a world of bugs and microbes and fungi and microfauna down there, dormant and just hanging on for the rain. They spring to action when rain arrives. But there's a more important reason to give paddocks a good rest from grazing - it's that the grasses will grow even when there's no rain. ALl they need is time.

This is bare earth.
(THIS IS BARE EARTH. WHICH IS BAD. IT BREAKS DOWN UNDER THE HEAT AND BLOWS AWAY. OR IT PRESENTS A HARD SURFACE TO THE RAIN WHICH MAKES IT HARD TO SOAK IN.)
This is a little ground cover. Probably not enough, but it protects the communities living just beneath the surface of the soil.
(THIS IS SOME GROUNDCOVER, ENOUGH TO HOLD THE TOPSOIL TOGETHER AND STOP WATER JUST RUNNING OFF AND NOT SOAKING IN.)
(THIS IS BETTER GROUNDCOVER DURING DROUGHT BECAUSE IT PROTECTS THE SOIL FROM THE WORST OF THE HEAT AND THE ROOTMASS IS LARGER AND READY TO SOAK UP THE RAIN)

This rain is a blessing. Now we need time for the grasses to respond. And they a responding. Within 24 hours of the first fall the green started to appear. This is becuase we have some rootmass retained because we took the animals off the paddocks before theyw ere bared out. The paddocks that are eaten down to billiard table smoothness will take far longer to respond, the grasses will be sparcer, and will have far more weed infestation. (Weeds love bare earth.)

Why do weeds love bare earth? Because they thrive when they have no competition from sturdy grasses and shrubs. You see, grass and weeds don't just grow in any place at any time. When you know the lifecycle behaviour of plants you can read a patch of ground like a book... A heavy infestation of weeds is not necessarily a bad thing because weeds have a role to play and a time to play it. Weeds are opportunistic - they take hold whenever they get a chance. We'll talk about weeds later.

This was our Adopt A Sheep PR release

2006-12-06T09:05:00.000+11:00

Adopt An Australian Sheep?

“Adopt A Sheep” is an online appeal launched by an Australian farm family to raise the money they need to fee their flock through the worst drought in 1000 years.

The appeal is being launched on a blogsite – http://adoptasheep.blogspot.com .

The flock of 3000 mothers and lambs are being hand fed on a woolgrowing farm called “Uamby” in a valley 300 miles north west of Sydney, Australia in a historic district first settled in 1822. The Kiely family sent 1000 wethers to market as the long dry got longer, but they stand to lose nearly a decade of breeding for superfine fleece if they are forced to send their lambs and ewes to the slaughterhouse.

Adopting “parents” pay $35, the amount it will cost to feed a single sheep for 100 days. In return they can choose to adopt a lamb, a ewe or a ram and give it a name. They get a photograph of ‘their sheep’ and a certificate of adoption. As well they will receive frequent reports on how their sheep is going. And the Kielys invite adopting parents to visit with their sheep out on the farm.

Michael and Louisa Kiely left the big city several years ago and ‘went bush’ to join the farming families fighting to make their dreams come true in the Australian outback. “We walked away from a marketing business that was very successful, but was tearing us apart as a couple,” says Michael Kiely. “It was always Louisa’s dream to go farming, and it was always my dream to stay married to her. So here we are.”

Australia is in the grip of the worst drought in living memory, with waterways drying up and dams at historic lows. The Kiely’s have battled drought for most of their farming career. They use special farming techniques to protect the environment from degradation and make the most of what rain falls. They were recognised in 2005 by being selected as among the 10 most innovative farm families in the Central West. They use greenhouse-friendly no-till farming and humane stock-handling techniques.

The Kiely’s were able to graze their flock on green pastures long after many neighbouring farms had started hand feeding, thanks to a system called time controlled grazing which allows the grasses time to recover and encourages ‘biological diversity’. They also keep a mob of kangaroos and wallabies on their farm.

“The ‘roos deserve a place to live, too. Unfortunately they get to the best grasses before the sheep do, but we’ve learned to live with that.”

The Kiely family has also made their own private reconciliation with the original native (indigenous) inhabitants of the land. Wiradjuri elders conducted a ‘welcome to country’ smoking ceremony during which the Kiely’s read a declaration of commitment to protect the land. (See http://envirofarming.blogspot.com)

They are woolgrowers for ethical reasons: “Our sheep are precious to us and we'd hate to lose any more. We grow sheep for wool because it's not the same as growing animals up to slaughter them. We make sure they have enough shade and water and we use the most humane handling techniques. And we're always looking to improve. Because we believe contented sheep produce better wool, and better karma for everyone.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Michael Kiely (612) 6374 0329
Michael@newhorizon.au.com
http://envirofarming.blogspot.com

‘Uamby’
RMB 384 Uamby Road
GOOLMA NSW 2852

2006-12-06T08:39:00.000+11:00

Hi,

It's amazing what you can do with the Internet. We launched a blogsite (costs nothing) called "Adopt A Sheep" 3 days ago, asking visitors to donate $35 to pay for the emergency feed for a single sheep through the next 100 days on our drought-affected property. (http://adoptasheep.blogspot.com) The bank tried to put us through the hoops to register as a credit card merchant, so we simply plugged in PayPal (costs nothing). I mentioned it in an email to one or two people and we had our first adoption order for 5 lambs yesterday. Sent a press release to a few newspapers around the world and here at home, and got a story in the Daily Telegraph this morning - and woke to the telephone ringing... A Sydney radio station wants an interview, a television network is flying a crew up by chopper to film a segment... (Nothing's guaranteed with PR until it appears in the media.) I got the idea from World Vision's tv campaign: adopt a child for Christmas. It's one thing to have the idea - it's another to be empowered to execute it. The Net makes it all possible. Low budget... No, No Budget Marketing.

Cheers!

Michael

One hurdle left!

2006-11-12T21:42:00.000+11:00

Visitors who have been following the Carbon Coalition's campaign to have soil carbon traded on world greenhouse emissions markets. We faced two hurdles: Hurdle 1 - getting access to global carbon markets (joining Kyoto). Hurdle 2 - finding a way to develop a soil carbon currency. Hurdle 1 is now behind us. The Federal Government buckled today on ABC TV. Hurdle 2 we are addressing tomorrow in our first meeting with scientific advisors.

In the words of Abe of Vermont: "Onwards!"

We launch a new carbon business

2006-11-07T22:56:00.000+11:00

PRESS RELEASE
7 NOVEMBER 2006

Carbon Credited brands will lead

A new consultancy has been launched to help marketers grasp the opportunities in Climate Change. The "Carbon Credited"™ Brands program is an advisory service that can help brand owners respond to the Greenhouse challenge and gain an early mover advantage.

“The time to start thinking about Global Warming is now, when your can gain maximum leverage and lead your category,” says Australia’s first Climate Change Marketing Consultant Michael Kiely. “You don’t have to spend $3 billion like Virgin to position your brand for a climate-changed world. In fact it’s better of you don’t because there are more enduring results to be had from a grassroots strategy that engages all stakeholders,” he says.

The "Carbon Credited"™ Brands program involves mapping an organisation's ‘carbon footprint’, developing options for becoming a 'carbon neutral' brand, developing opportunities for engaging a brand's stakeholders and helping them learn to manage Climate Change in their own lives. Companies engaged in the process of becoming carbon neutral can display the "Carbon Credited"™ stamp of approval.

Michael Kiely recently returned from a 3 week study tour of the USA meeting with the leading scientists working on the US Government’s Greenhouse solutions, meeting leading US and European carbon market authorities, and signing a deal with the Chicago Climate Exchange to trade in carbon credits from Australian producers. This visit caps off a year-long involvement with the issue at a grassroots level as Convenor of the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming, a Greenhouse lobbying and trading operation.

“Both Australia and the US are close to introducing ‘cap and trade’ systems, despite their federal governments’ refusal,” says Michael Kiely. “The States in both countries are setting up mandatory ‘pollution tax’ systems that will have the same effect. Soon all companies will be forced to address their greenhouse emissions. Then the rush will be on.”

Companies that move early will stand out as being visionary and proactive.
Every brand should be thinking of its response to their customers' question: "What are you doing to save the world?" News Ltd, Ford, Dupont, and Virgin are among the leaders in this issue. They are going 'carbon neutral' - reducing their emissions or paying others to 'sequester' or lock up carbon dioxide in amounts equivalent to their emissions. BP, Westpac, Origin Energy, Visy and IAG are taking a leadership role.

The front-foot approach involves the following: 1. Engage your CEO and Board. (McKinsey says: "The way a company manages its carbon exposure could create or destroy shareholder value." Goldman Sachs says, "Climate change is a topic that should be on the agenda of every Board of Directors.") 2. Audit your emissions. 3. Assess your potential for reductions by operational changes. 4. Estimate the offsets you will need to purchase to bring your "carbon footprint" down. 5. Engage your stakeholders - staff, suppliers, customers, shareholders - in the process.

There are pitfalls to avoid: 1. As with any new market, there are many opportunists selling snake oil. 2. Some 'abatement offsets' being sold are 'junk', ie, not fit for the purpose for which they are offered for sale. 3. Some could damage brands choosing them when green groups reveal what is going on behind them. 4. Companies that indulge in "greenwashing" (making a token effort, hoping to spin it out into an acceptable image of action) will be unmasked, and their deception will do them damage.

“There’s no time to lose. This issue is getting hotter,” says Michael Kiely.

ABOUT MICHAEL KIELY

Michael Kiely is principal of Michael Kiely Marketing. He served until 2006 as a national director of the Australian Direct Marketing Association and was inducted into the Australian Direct Marketing Hall of Fame in 2001. He is former Chairman of Boomerang Integrated Marketing & Advertising.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Call 0417 280 540. Or email me at Michael@michaelkielymarketing.com.au.

A Day In This Life

2006-11-05T22:46:00.000+11:00

THE WALK
It was a day like any other day. I started out last Saturday at 5.15pm sending press releases to the media about our "Farmers Fighting Greenhouse" banner in the Walk Against Warming later that day. Then there was meeting up with the people who made the banner for me (because I didn't want to leave my daughter Rachel at home alone on the first day with her new baby Brodie (Lousia on the farm keeping lambing ewes alive, Daniel somewhere climbing rocks to forget, Jessica somewhere else aattending to her growing business empire). Kevin and Leisel and Marc. And then the walk (see http://carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com). Then rush home to blog the photos of the march, then rush off to the wedding of my friends Simon and Linda, who had a terrific ceremony and great speeches, especially by Billy and his other son (sorry, I forgot his name, but he's a great writer).

THE NEW GRANDSON
MARC POP in PARADE GEAR
LEISEL

SIMON AND LINDA

Alternative agriculture must unite

2006-10-30T18:37:00.000+11:00

Australian agriculture is in crisis. So since when has it not been in crisis? The first colonial farmers nearly starved to death and had to be fed by government handouts. Aborigines, rabbits, drought, wheat rust… always something.

But this latest crisis is different, because the foundations of our agricultural system have been eroded and weakened. This has made us vulnerable to shocks from outside – such as Climate Change.

The foundations of agriculture are the ecosystem, the natural resource base. This is made up of the soil and all the living and dead things it depends upon and that depend upon it, including water, vegetation, microbes, insects and on up the food chain. It’s not being overdramatic to say that the system that sustains the production of food and fibre in this country are breaking down.

Most people don’t know this, even those living and working on the land. But those that do, when they turn to alternative agriculture, find a bewildering array of options. As things get worse, more solutions emerge. There is Holistic Resource Management, Natural Sequence Farming, Biological Farming, Biodynamics, Keyline Farming, Pasture Cropping, Permaculture, Composting, and on it goes. None of them contradicts any other. They are broadly based on the same principle in that they seek to mimic Nature’s processes.

No one of them has risen to sweep all before it and solve all the problems of agriculture. Nor is one of them likely to become the dominant new paradigm, replacing the old system. There are three reasons for this:

1. It takes time for new ideas to become popular. Usually more than a generation. Newton’s physics dominated modern science for 300+ years before Einstein. Old ideas live on long after they’ve lost their relevance.
2. All these alternatives offer a diversity of solutions to he same problem. This diversity divides the already small market into even smaller segments.
3. The market is also diverse. Different styles of regenerative farming will appeal to different types of farmers.

The reality of the marketplace for alternative agriculture is divided in another way: by the users themselves. The tend to mix and match from the selection available, The proponents of these alternatives in many cases either ignore or disparage the others. But they can’t ignore the fact that customers (farmers) will drive the market and the result will be combinations of techniques, each as different as each farm and each farmer.

Here lies the opportunity for alternative agriculture to respond to the marketplace by presenting itself as a whole solution with many parts.

As a collective, the marketplace presence of the whole would far outperform that of the parts. In the same way, the political presence of a body representing the growing ranks of ‘natural’ farmers would tell a different story about agriculture to the government and the community, a story that challenges the stereotype of the farmer as environmental vandal. Instead of a random series of individual events to promote each separate discipline, a jointly-funded ‘trade show’ that visits every farming district and uses effective promotion would give each of the alternatives more exposure to the market than any other option.

Future Shock has arrived

2006-10-28T22:58:00.000+10:00

It’s rarely that a professional cynic, which is what a journalist is, loses their cool and explodes all over the page of a quality newspaper like the Sydney Morning Herald. Paul Sheehan did just that this week. His irritation? The disaster unfolding on farms across Australia and the federal government’s wilful refusal to acknowledge climate change as the underlying cause. (http://www.smh.com.au/news/scorchedearth/we-fiddle-as-the-continent-turns-to-dust/2006/10/22/1161455605817.html)

The canary in the coal mine is “a highly innovative grazing enterprise” called Coombing Park, near Orange. George King “inherited a badly eroded property and turned it into a showpiece, using holistic landcare techniques that are absent from most rural businesses.” But this drought forced him to reduce his stocking rate to 40 per cent of peak capacity. That was last year. This year they are destocking to 20%. That’s below the cost of production. He’s going broke.

“Even the best farmers are suffering now. The bush is dying. The towns, the landscape, the rivers are being killed by this climate change."

City commentators usually chorus, at these times: “Get the old-fashioned cockies off the land.” The assumption is that good management will solve the recurring crises in rural areas will be solved. But now the peak performance farmer is being crushed. And Australian farmers are the best in the world. Their European and American counterparts are payed to get out of bed by their governments.

George King believes this is no ordinary drought. He sees an unusual “compounding effect." It is the Climate Change effect: "As more country is stripped bare and dried out we expose more soil. This is releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. Organic carbon levels are falling, and the soil is losing its colour. There are more fires than ever because the dry summers are adding enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and creating more bare ground.” So when it does eventually rain the topsoil will be washed down the gullies, creeks and rivers.

If George King is in trouble, you can bet everyone else is worse off. Because George uses holistic land management practices that give the soil and grasses the best chance to recover between grazings. But the carbon imbalance is turning grasslands into deserts, he says. "Pretty soon we will be able to see the great deserts from the Great Dividing Range."

Apologists for the Government’s constirpated response to the environemental crisis are still brazenly trotting out their pseudo-scientific explanations and spin. The Institute of Public Affairs’ Jennifer Marohasy is content to say Climate Change can’t be responsible for the drought because some institute on Colorado announced that things should be getting wetter, not drier as the globe warms. (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5076) But even a schoolchild knows that the world’s scientists agree on the following: some parts will get wetter, some will get drier.

Yet her website proclaims: “Concerned that public policy on environmental issues is increasingly driven by moral crusading, rather than objective science or need, Jennifer works to provide an important counterpoint in public debate and discussion.” The morality of continuing to push the “Climate Denial” line of conservative propaganda is breathtakingly bleak. Albert Einstein said repeating the same action over and over while expecting a different result was a definition of insanity. Sheehan explains that these lunatics have been allowed to flourish and peddle their witchcraft because of a failure of political will on the Opposition benches.

Where does that leave us? Stuck with a Prime Minister who will put ideology before the public good? Who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to admit warming is real? Whose government gagged CSIRO scientists when they spoke out about the danger? Whose Government allows the coal mining and power generation industry to write policy for ministers? Who’s government robbed the Australian Greenhouse Office of its independence and brought it in under the Minister of Natural Resources? The same Greenhouse Office which now parrots the Government’s propaganda line: “We are meeting the greenhouse challenge?”

Something has got to give. Refusing to ratify Kyoto is like arguing about he price of lifeboats on the Titanic. The Federal Government must immediately introduce a cap and trade scheme and the markets must immediately settle on an averaging regime for trading soil carbon credits. Because the soil is the only sink which can start sequestering carbon now, which is available in large amounts, and which is inexpensive to use for sequestering.

Route 66: from Chicago to LA

2006-10-28T04:48:00.000+10:00

(For those just joining: You are entering Part 3 of the story of an epic journey in search of the Philosopher's Stone, aka. carbon. We are the founders of the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming, seeking to have the carbon farmers can lock up in soils accepted for carbon credits. We have come to America to discover what measurement methodology the US is likely to run with once it joins the global market so we can start using the same approach. The scientists and experts we met on the study tour are introduced via that link.)

WE ARE LINCOLNED
On to Ohio State University where we stayed in a hotel named after a professor of marketing named Blackwell whose books were on display in the foyer. This was the best hotel experience we had duing our epic journey. The Concierge drove me twice to a camera shop to have my digital download card reader fixed and then replaced. He waited around while I was sold stuff I didn't need, then drove me back, in the hotel's Lincoln Continental. Would not take a tip. And was an interesting man to boot. He and his wife had run an elegant corporate mansion on an estate for 15 years before retiring and travelling for a year. They loved Australia. I invited them to Uamby should they ever reach our shores again. He is an intelligent gent.
In the constant battle to eat American food, I asked one night would the chef accept a challenge - to make a desert out of brie, stewed fruit and pastry. He did it, and it was magnificent. We called it Heckerburn Brie Carbonara. Most of the staff in the hotel were students at OSU, which was refreshing. On the first night, we had a drinks waiter who asked "How are you tonight?" To which I answered "Stuffed. How are you?" He immediately got down on his haunches so we were at face level and repeated, "I'm stuffed, too." He can't have known what 'stuffed' meant, but as a major in Russian Literature and World Politics he had the nouse to figure it out from the context. getting down to our level was a master stroke of service. We were sick of "servile service" by this timeand someone treating us as an equal was just what the Aussies wanted. He is destined to a career in international politics, and he has the first ingredient: the human touch. The hotel was impressive, but inexpensive (thanks Expedia). Professor Lal seemed to think we were living it up staying there. It was part of the Fisher Business School which took the rather unusual position in its marketing of proclaiming that it was ranked 13th in the world by Business Week magazine. Now 13th is not a good look.
Why not choose to frame the ranking around American business schools? They’d at least be top 10. And who ranks Business Week? Fortune would have been better, or the Wall Street Journal. Strange, such clumsy marketing in a hotel named for a marketing ‘guru’. Here at OHU we met Professor Lal, the big kahuna of soil carbon scientists. He was the man we came to see. He gave us 2 books, 1 hour and a half, a lot of help and the thrill of hearing ourselves referred to as 'colleagues' when he was telephoning the CEO of the Chicago Climate Exchange to tee up and appointment for us.
Next stop Chicago, where we stayed in a business hotel out in the boonies, closer to the airport than to town. We encountered no one of enduring interest except Michelle from the japanese Tepenyaki who was one of those Americans who love Australians and gave Louisa a hug and gave us a couple of seats in a crowded restaurant. We also met Mike Walsh (SVP CCX) who offered us a deal on 25,000 acres of no-til soil and an unnamed trade official from an unnamed country who gave us advice as to how to do business in Al Capone's city. He has to be unnamed and unknown because by this time an unnamed government was trying to discourage us from pursuing carbon credits trading in deifiance of its official policy against what it calls 'carbon taxes'.

While in Chicago we ate at a very nice Chinese restaurant across the road from a blues club called the something “mines” where we heard some solo artist playing to an empty room, then two bands in different rooms, laying it down like funkytown. Louisa decided to have a dance, I had my computer in my knapsack and wasn’t inclined to leave it. So she grabbed the nearest guy and danced with him. He was from Baltimore and probably thought his ship had come in. I was able to observe, at dinner, an elderly couple who were having relationship difficulties. They looked cultivated. She had a sweet face and he was bitter about life and his physical infirmities, which meant she had to help him with certain things. He spat at her, without spitting. At one stage she got up to walk out and he said, in a voice like a little boy, "Please don't go." Foolish man.
Finally we flew to San Diego where we had 3 massage treatments at the Chopra Centre in La Costa (a resort) while staying at the Four Seasons Resort. I hated it. Pimp rich. Trump trash. While Mexican maids 'manned' a picket line, hiding their faces and copping abuse from cabbies - for asking for a few bucks an hour or for being Mexican. They did have the foresight to warn us by signs that the place was toxic.
The resort’s haute couture boutique was irreverently called “Peaches En Regalia” which would have Zappa spinning in 10/8 time in his grave. The irony. Has his wife licenced this outrage?
God's contempt for money is evident by the people he gives it to. We enjoyed one trip with a mandolin playing cabbie. But California looks like a movie lot - all those houses clambering over the ridgelines waiting to be shaken off when the fault line tears again. (Long overdure, it will be a big one.)

20 flights in 20 days... whew! America is the most highly evolved material culture in the history of humanity. Some of its people are also highly evolved. Some are not.
Like the guy overheard me criticising the level of moral corruption in the US government system (the streets of Washington are slippery with sleaze) and started taking photos of me with his cell phone (presumably to report me as a terrorist suspect)> I took photos of him to return the favour and he ducked down behind his seat each time.

Final ray of hope for American civilisation. This sweet young girl personing the Kinky Friedman For Governor booth at Texas A&M. She was sitting in the sun, no hat or water. But so sweet, and her boyfriend looked sweet too. After she got through personing, they went off holding hands. Everyone on that campus looked sweet, like they were all in the military. There were 3 normal looking kids there. We got lost walking across campus. Lost in the sweetness of American life and light. Lost in a wilderness of white people being white and black people being black and other people being other colours. We saw no poverty but poverty of spirit. We saw no crime but the crime of neglect. We saw no violence but the violence we do to each other thoughtlessly when we fail to love wholly. We saw no hope but the hope of mankind. We saw no salvation but the salvation of the damned. We saw no end but the ending of all beginnings and the beginning of the end.

God, Please Bless America and all those people we met. Thank you for letting us see a little of your world.

From LA to DC and back again, Part 2

2006-10-14T12:03:00.000+10:00

We flew from College Station to Dallas, Texas and then to Albuqurque, New Mexico to attend the Southwest Sequestration Partnership workshop. We booked in a Marriott Courtyard hotel which managed to lose our laundry and return it item by item. But they had a cook cooking fresh omlettes in the breakfast room - yum! Food was a problem in the US - we couldn't eat a lot of it. But at this hotel we had two good meals: the breakfast omlettes and the Duck Rolls. I asked to see the chef and congratulate him. He was chuffed. We ordered another round of the Chinese delight.

Sitting nearby was a young woman reading a magazine and talking to her friend, one of the waitresses. She called out some facts about Global Warming, and our ears pricked up. It turns out she is reading the recent edition of The Economist we had been searching in all the newsagencies for since we were referred to it by Sue Capalbo, the team leader at the Big Sky Partnership, at Montana State U. She gave it to us. More coincidences, more spooky stuff. We gave her a kangaroo pin. She seemed impressed. Her name was Jessica and she is a prodigious reader.

While in Albuqurque we spent a day with Peter Holter, the director of marketing with Holistic Management International, the organisation set up to promote the decision-making model invented by Allan Savory. It launched rotational grazing into popular consciousness. Peter took us in hand and showed us Old Town in Albuqurque and the rest of the city, especially the domestic building styles. The range towering over the city reminds me of Alice Springs. Peter is a fascinating fellow-refugee from the advertising business. We briefed Peter on the Carbon Coalition because Holistic Management is a basic carbon farming methodology, and we agreed to work together to creat opportunities for HM.
We then took a 5 hour flight via Dallas and Philadelphia to Burlington, Vermont. Hired a car, and drove for an hour north to join Abe Collins and his friends to launch the first overseas chapter of the Carbon Coalition. This was the most personally rewarding part of the journey.
Abe was the first overseas member - he is a share farmer (dairy) at Swanton, Vermont. I will blog the farm on the We loved the energy and passion of Abe and the grounded dynamism of his amazing partner Kailia. She is an artist. They have a We ate real food - fresh organic vegetables and home grown meat, all wonderfully prepared in stock that didn't come from a supermarket. Abe has the fire in the belly. He is widely-read and he has a head full of ideas. He exasperates his wife because he can become so engrossed in his ideas that he forgets her. Ie. he is a normal male. I left a copy of my book lying around and I think he had a look at it... Kailia is a youthful, unflappable, intense person. She could have been one of Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon, without the cliche West Coast cliches. Her achievements are all around her: Abe, daughter Margo, cat Apple, dog Cider.

Margo is amazingly articulate - she speaks at an adult level. Her genetic pool was a rich one. The do not have television. They read books. They make cider. The live a real life.

We caught a glimpse of Vermont suburban culture when we attended a housewarming cocktail party at Kailia's parents' new home in Swanton. We met real estate agents and doctors and distribution agents and women who home school their children. Kailia's Father is a retired stockbroker. Her Mother is a beautiful woman.
They love Opera and classical music. They have a wonderful view of Lake Champain where the American Navy defeated a British invasion force.

American plans for the War of 1812 included gaining control of Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes. Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough commanded the U.S. naval fleet on Lake Champlain. The two fleets finally met on September 11, 1814. (9/11) Macdonough positioned his fleet in a line with an anchoring system rigged with spring lines that allowed the vessels to be turned end-to-end to bring fresh guns on the opposite side of the ship to bear on the enemy should the guns on the original side become disabled. The two fleets were nearly matched in size and firepower. The battle raged for two and-a-half hours and many died. Thanks to their spring lines the American fleet ultimately defeated the Royal Navy, and the British army returned to Canada.

More to come....

We meet the sweetest people in the USA

2006-10-13T14:22:00.000+10:00

We were feeling blocked with the soil carbon campaign. We needed more information, we were getting nowhere. We needed to know the real story. No amount of web surfing was going to tell us what we needed to know. But we can't afford to spend $25,000 on a study tour of the US... I kept putting off contacting the people we wanted to visit until it was too late... and then we went anyway. We were accompanied by Archangel Michael who cleared the path and opened doors for us. We got to meet every expert I had on the list! I report on the experts on the Carbon Coalition blogsite. But we also met some wonderful people who changed our opinion of America. We started in Washington DC where the Concierge had a Marty Feldman eye and John Cleese manner (a la faulty towers) and the most interesting person we met was a squirrel who lived in the oak tree outside our expensive B&B. Then there was Rob from the Bison Farm selling buffalo jerky and steaks and sausages at the farmers' market at Dupont Circuit in Washington (more about his operation in a later post). Rob and his family run - on 200 acres, 100 of it wilderness, a herd of bison, plus goats, pigs, turkeys, chickens, and they slaughter and sell ther meat. They sell on contract to food outlets, by mail order to consumers, and at farmers' markets. This model is tipped to become more popular as agriculture polarises between the 'get big or get out' and "get small and hip". There will be some lovely photos of Rob's operations on the post. After attending a conference in a hotel for 2 days - a gabfest about carbon markets where we met the country's leading movers and shakers, including California Governor Scwarzenegger's environment guy and the senior vp of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
We next flew to Bozeman, Montana to join the Big Sky Sequestration Partnership while they reviewed the last 2 years of operations and planned for the next two years.
At the airport we caught a glimpse of the monstrous trucks the Montanans use to consume more than their share of the world's energy resources and to emit more than their fair share of emissions.
More than half the vehicles on the road were "SUVs" - sports utility vehicles. American-made vehicles do not meet the consumption and emission standards demanded of automotive makers by the Australian Government.
At Boezman we met Jack Morris, a dying breed. He is an agricultural technician or a hired hand. He told us that the good farm land thereabouts was being sold off to lifestyle buyers because the farmers can't make ends meet. He knows 50 farmers, and he's know cases of suicide, marriage breakdown. When we started our conversation he was very negative about carbon credits and climate change. But once he heard about the carbon in agricultural soils, he was converted immediately to our cause. Jack Morris of Boezman, Montana is starting a chapter of the Coalition! (I spilled soup on my shirt at lunch. But we weren't drinking. Just happy.)
Next we went to Texas, to College Station, a town completely dominated by Texas A&M University. There we ate a meal at Applebee's family diner and bar. We drank Maragrita's made for us by Lauren who is a vet science student and is married, though she's only 23 years old. She told us her degree will cost her $60,000 to $80,000. Students have to go far into debt to get an education.
Texas A&M was originally Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College. There were so many people in military uniforms on campus, that it felt like Fort Custer. There were nothing but clean cut kids, happy to be known as "Aggies", and everyone wore the University Tshirts identifying them as either an Aggie or an Aggie Mom, Dad, Sister, Husband, Wife (there was a Tshirt for the entire clan). It was home game Friday when we arrived and town was full of parents come to see their expensive children.
We met up with Robert in Sarge's Army/Navy Surplus across the road from the campus. He knew about rotational grazing, "That's where you move them after 25 days," he said. "I know about that." Not quite, but he was full bottle on perennials and grazing management. He sold me some bootpolish and a brush because my "instant shine" dispenser was confiscated while getting on a plane - in case I blew them up with it. We had lunch at the Kyoto Japanese restaurant, next door. (Spooky.)
Robert wanted to talk, so much so he left his customers standing there with their military haircuts and their Army/Navy Surplus purchases for what seemed like ages while we tried to escape. He was such a nice fella, but we felt kind of bad for his customers. They were all nice people, too. Everyone's nice in America, except the people who criticise the Government. The lady serving in the Italian fast food outlet came around from behind the counter to hug Louisa. "I just love you people," she said. I guess when you go to war with people they feel grateful. I didn't mention that we were against the war, to anyone. In fact we were careful what we said in public because this guy sitting behind me in one of the airports started taking photos of me with his phone after I made remarks about the trouble the Gov ernment was in over a few things... (The newspapers say they are protecting a pedophile Congressman, selling chairmanships of Congressional Committees and allowing judges to take campaign contributions from parties to litigation for whom they were invariably finding. And the media - even Fox News - say the Government tells lies and debauches public institutions. The President's now got the lowest approval rating in history, lower than Richard Nixon, and they are calling him "The Worst President In History". If this is so, he sure has stuffed things up for all these nice people. They won't get out of Iraq without a Viet Nam-sized humiliation. And that's bad for Democracy and Freedom and the American Constitution.) I like President Bush. He may not be too smart. But he's not dumb like everyone says. He's just a Texan. T for Texan, T for Tough, T for T-bone.
T for Trouble. T for Tuxedo.
Look this is taking a whole lot longer than I thought it would and I gotta do some work. We'll pick up at Albuqurque, New Mexico next time. Meanwhile I'll leave you with this view from the window of our hotel in San Diego, of the moon coming up full and bright on another balmy California night.

Did Man or Climate kill off the Megafauna?

2006-10-12T08:03:00.000+10:00

Tim Flannery's revelation that aboriginal peoples drove the megafauna to extinction has been challenged in a book called The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilisation, by Brian Fagan.

"Within five centuries [of 11,000BC], the last of the Ice Age megafauna had vanished, killed off by rapidly soaring temperatures and aridity in previously well-watered environments. Although the paleo-Indians may have accelerated the die-out of slow-breeding animals, human predation was at most a secondary cause of extinction."

At the same time, Fagan agrees with Flannery about the impact of man on the landscape: "The firestick was a powerful instrument of environmental change."

Sexy Spring is Sprung

2006-09-15T11:07:00.000+10:00

I saw a bee raping a blossom last week. It was systematically prising open the buds, inserting its probiscus in between the gentle folds and into the pollen. The flower protested not. The bee, like the King of Siam, flew from flower to flower, having its way with them.

Daffodils and bulbs are sprouting out of the lawns. Wildflowers are creeping out from between the rocks.

The wattle has finally come out - full 3 weeks later than in the township 30 km away. Winter didn't want to leave Uamby.

The cockatoos have returned, screeching their greeting and fighting with the galahs for nesting holes in the dead trees.

Apostle birds have taken to squabbling in the tall silky oak in the backyard. They steal the chook's feed.

The chook has taken ownership of the place, sleeping on top of a refrigerator on the back verandah and keeping us company whenever we are pottering in the garden

And up above kites, falcons and eagles patrol the skies... the skies from which no rain falls, only evening.

CLick go the shears, boys!

2006-08-29T20:33:00.000+10:00

DAN SHEARING: A PROFESSIONAL JOB FOR A BEGINNER

Shearing this year was an explosive two and one half weeks, culminating in one marriage suffering extreme pressure and another falling apart completely. (I won't tell you whose marriage fell apart - it was someone who we have come to think of as family. But the marriage under pressure was mine.) Daniel has all sorts of issues with his employer (his mother) and doesn't hold back in telling her about them. I am proud of both of them, seeing them operate a shed. Daniel shore his largest number of sheep in a single run - 54. Altogether we shore 2500 sheep, 55 bales, average 4.5kg per adult sheep. Remember, we had not set foot on a farm (with serious intent) until 7 years ago.
THROWING THE FLEECE: THERE'S A KNACK TO IT
My wife and son have done an amazing job learning this business. We had the expert support of our regular shearers Col Doherty and Steve Minnett and as roustabout Len Cooney. Louisa's brother Breck baled up for a week, and his lovely girlfriend Robey was 'shearers' cook' (fantastic food). My friend and client Kevin James and the quite incredible Liesel, his wife, and two beautiful daughters visited. And my daughter Rachael and grandson Xavier were here for a week as well. And my best man's wife arrived to stay overnight, bringing the news that their marriage was collapsing. (Something in the stars?) All the while, the shearers kept clicking those shears. It was a glorious carnival of people, the place was buzzing. The most exciting time of the year. The crucible of human emotion.LOUISA SKIRTING THE FLEECE: TRIMMING OFF THE POOR QUALITY WOOL

The Manifesto of the Natural Farmer

2006-08-13T12:28:00.000+10:00

Here's a stunner: "There is little scientific evidence to suggest that organic matter has any unique properties that cannot be done without." This is how Charman and Roper open their chapter of Soil Organic Matter in my new text book SOILS by Charman and Murphy. This statement perfectly encapsulates the "Soil as Mere Medium" ideology. It holds to the belief that soil provides nothing apart from the ability to receive chemicals, hold and release them to plants or pests. The giant petrochemical and fertiliser companies and the giant farm equipment companies won the ideological war in the 1930s and the science naturally favoured Scientific Farming (vs Natural Farming). Their legacy: depleted soils, poisoned waterways and greenhouse skies.
Far from being objective, scientific enquiry is directed by a set of beliefs about the nature of matter that determine the outcomes of enquiry, according to scientist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn in his book 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'. These are called Paradigms. Students are taught them; academics write papers whose findings support them because their peers exercise a form of group-think by refusing to approve for publication work that is not conventional, ie. that does not perpetrate the Paradigm. If you don't believe me, look at the way mankind's knowledge of the nature of matter has evolved from Aristotelian "solid objects" to Newtonian "particles" and atoms, to Einstein and quantum mechanical packets of light energy that sometimes act like waves and sometimes act like particles... As each Paradigm fell, some people lost position, preferment, and power. Other people gained these things. This is why the battle is political, not scientific.
The existence of a ruling paradigm which overturned a previous paradigm tells us one important thing: there's another paradigm a'coming! And the 'revolution' which must take place to overturn the current paradigm started long ago. The new paradigm is based on the theory that there lies hidden away from dominant paradigm scientists an entire universe of natural systems and forces that can be used to support the production of agricultural goods. This universe includes natural processes, networks and interactions, transmissions of energy in various forms, and patterns of potential that can operate only when acknowledged and sought. Much of it is dismissed as quackery, and much of it might be. But one fact stands like a beacon in the darkness: there is a new paradigm coming. Question: Is it better to be searching for the new vision than defending the old?
The reason why now is the right time for serious consideration of many ancient and not so ancient natural farming practices is because the natural resource base of the nation and the world is in crisis. Australia has lost 50% of its topsoil in 200 years and 50% of its soil organic matter in 20 years of scientific farming. The economics of agriculture is also in crisis. The falling line charting prices is meeting the rising line charting input costs. The scientific farming model is entering a period of challenge. Soil as mere medium is no longer Gospel. The popularity of controlled grazing, minimum tillage, pasture cropping, biological farming and Natural Sequence Farming, plus the growing demand for organic products, coincides with the greatest environmental challenge since the last Ice Age.
The time could be coming for those who believe a new paradigm is inevitable to form a self-supporting community, similar to the one that supporters of the old paradigm have formed. Not an association or a federation, but a Movement - and Action movement that has a limited number of clearly defined goals that, once achieved, will see the Movement shut down. (Too many organisaitons past their use-by date refuse to fall on their swords.) Membership of the Natural Farmers' Movement could be open to all landholders who use techniques that mimic Nature or which seek to harmonise with Nature's processes.
There's strength and confidence in numbers. Instead of feeling like a misfit, members of such a large body will feel proud.

Beware the Community Structure of Science

2006-08-13T07:53:00.000+10:00

"A paradigm is what the members of a scientific community share, and, conversely, a scientific community consists of men* who share a paradigm," according to scientist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn in his book 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'.

"A scientific community consists of the practitioners of a scientific speciality. To an extent unparalleled in most other fields, they have undergone similar educations and professional initiations; in the process they have absorbed the same technical literature and drawn many of the same lessons from it... The members of a scientific community see themselves and are seen by others as the men* uniquely responsible for the pursuit of a set of shared goals, including the training of their successors. Within such groups communication is relatively full and professional judgements relatively unanimous."

"The study of paradigms... is what mainly prepares the student for membership in the particular scientific community with which he will later practice. Because he there joins men* who learned the bases of their field from the same concrete models, his subsequent practice will seldom evoke overt disagreement over fundamentals. Men* whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are the prerequisites for normal science, ie. for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition."

The shared values and norms of the scientific community form a barrier to out-of-paradigm phenomena and concepts. Kuhn says normal science aims to 'force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all.'

All this suggests that Carbon Farming will meet staunch resistance from the scientific establishment because it is out-of-paradigm. In the face of this resistance we should be 'unreasonable'. In the words of George Bernard Shaw,
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

*Kuhn's paradigm of the gender structure of science is a reflection of the date at which he was writing.

A student of the soil

2006-08-13T07:37:00.000+10:00

I have decided to become a student of soil. I bought a thick text book – SOILS: Their Properties & Management. It has 448 pages, and articles by people I know, like John Lawrie (“Truck”) and Andrew Wooldridge (“Woolly”) and people I’d like to know, like Brian Murphy. It tells me that drainage and the amount of time soil is saturated is important. Well-drained soilsjhave red tp reddish brown colours. Poorly drained soils (that remain wet for weeks or all winter) have dull yellow and grey colours. Very poorly drained soils are wet most of the time and are usually very pale grey, bluish or olive green (“gley” colours). In these cases iron has been leached from the soil. From what I have seen, we have grey coloured soils that remain wet for weeks. From this photo – taken in an erosion site down by the river, in Cemetery Paddock, you can see the colours tend to grey-ish.
We hope to improve the drainage of our soils by encouraging the growth of deep-rooted perennial pasture grasses which help to grown soil organic matter and CARBON.

A sign of tough times

2006-08-06T07:45:00.000+10:00

Not everyone struck it rich during the Gold Rushes in Australia. In fact, the majority found little or no gold, arriving too late as each new field opened up. Men carried their 'swags' (or bedding rolled up like a fat cigar) along the dusty roads, usually flat broke and looking for a handout. After the last gold rushes in the 1860s and 1870s, we drifted into the long drought of the 1880s and a slump in wool prices, followed by a damaging shearers' strike (the woolgrowers tried to cut their rates) which led to the formation of the Australian Labor Party. (We can thank woolgrowers for the ALP.) By the early 1890s the colonies were in the grip of a long depression, and 40 years later came the Great Depression of the 1930s. A lot of people went 'on the wallaby track' (hit the road in search of work or a handout). Australia has long had a tradition os the 'swagman', an itinerant worker/drifter who lived rough and entered the mythology of the nation in the 1890s when bush poet Banjo Paterson wrote "Walzing Matilda" (now the country's unofficial anthem).These people of the road had their own language and signs to indicate to each other what conditions were like at the next farm house. They would scratch symbols in the dust of the road or lay twigs out on the ground. A number of these symbols have been reproduced in the pavements in the streets of historic Gulgong, our nearest township. This idea was Chester Nealie's; he's a local potter, who conducted research at Sydney University. It's a great way to keep the past alive. A nation that forgets its past has no future, I say. (I studied Australian history at the University of New England in Armidale and taught it at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.)
TWO DOTS OR SMALL CIRCLES meant "Tell a pathetic story and you'll get a handout."
JAGGED LINES meant "Angry dogs"
TRIDENT meant "You have to work before you eat"
THREE DOTS OR SMALL CIRCLES MEANT "Money usually given here."

"On The Gulgong"

2006-08-06T06:52:00.000+10:00

Our nearest town is called Gulgong, an old gold rush town that in the 1860s held hundreds of thousands of 'diggers'. The shopping centre still has the main street winding through town, a legacy of the fact that gold rush towns were built before government surveyors could get to them and lay out the city centre in military base squares. (Look at the street maps of Bathurst and Tamworth. They were pegged out by military men and have the geometry of an army camp - all squares and right angles.) Many of the original buildings still stand, which gives Gulgong a the feel of a set for a movie. At its height, the Gulgong rush was the biggest in Australia and every language on earth could be heard on the street corners. It had its own Opera House - named after the Prince of Wales. Many men ran away from their jobs in Sydney and Melbourne to make their fortune "on the Gulgong." This was the last of the gold rushes for the small operator. When the huge wave of humanity swept on to the next "strike", what was left was the township of Gulgong, today home to 2000 souls.

Reasons to be cheerful 1 - 2 - 3

2006-07-15T15:17:00.000+10:00

I speak to the first session of the Direct and Digital Creative School each year, a rambling dissertation about life as a creative communications professional. I received this email from one of the class the next day. The questions it posed deserve blogging:

Hi Michael,
I just wanted to thank you last night for talking to us/me, I found it really interesting and inspiring. Honestly.
It was some good advice and for me it was some good solid ground to know that you can pursue the career without loosing your soul and spirit - I think that you may have alleviated me of the only doubt that I think that I held (that I would have to be a mindless and ruthless show pony and suck-up).
From one Aries (dreamer) to another ... I wanted to have a chat with you last night about some crazy ideas that I have had for years ... in short (you will probably think that I am stupid now but you seem like a good person to talk to about this) ... For ages I have thought that the middle of Australia is a wasteland with not much happening ... is this true ? Is the soil just sand with nothing happening beneath the surface ?
Years ago I had an idea that the best thing that Australia could do (apart from adopting different farming techniques, especially by getting rid of the hooved animals that we have brought here as they destroy our soil and there are no native animals with hooves ... coincidently I am of the generation that saw aerial photographs of the Eastern Seaboard which showed the vegetation band running down the entire length when I was about 8 or so and I distinctly remember being about 15 and seeing more recent aerial photos that showed a HUGE decrease in vegetation !!! ... I digress, but I am just saying that I see the problems and I know that its the high yield crop rotation stuff that is doing it along with hooved animals and a transposition of European farming onto our country and maybe a general lack of understanding for our land and environment) .... but the idea that I had ages ago wasn't so much to do with this ... the idea that I had was that a channel should be dug from the base of Australia right up to the centre to fill up our inland sea ... with time (evaporation and precipitation along with life (and death/decomposition)) would this promote environmental growth and eventually would soil replace the sand ??
Quite an abstract email I know, but as I say ... you seem to be a good person to ask. Sorry if I ramble.
Thanks,
Chris

MY REPLY:

Chris,
There are many misconceptions about Australia’s soils and many misguided theories held by many people. There is a superstition that if we returned the landscape back to the way it was before 1770, it would be OK. But read the Future Eaters by Tim Flannery. There was a time before the Aboriginal people arrived when the fossil record tells us the vegetation was very different to what it was when Captain Cook and botanist Joseph Banks arrived. The Aborigines brought with them ‘firestick farming’, controlled burning to make green shoots appear in grassland to attract kangaroos for hunting. Fire was also used to hunt small marsupials. This constant burning led to the extinction of plant and tree species that couldn’t handle the heat, which also led to the extinction of a collection of plant eating animals. As well, like the Maoris in NZ, the Aborigines hunted the giant (megafauna) roos, wombats, emus, etc. to extinction. Firestick farming led to the dominance of acacias and gum trees which need periodic burning to flourish. They used fire to keep gum trees from choking their grassy woodlands that they used for grazing their roos. White man also changed the land management regime and caused extinctions and changes in plant species.
Which “original condition of Nature” should we return to? Pre 1770? Or Pre 40,000 years ago? Or should we ‘listen’ to mother nature and seek to work with her? Natural Agriculture seeks to mimic mother nature. But it’s still agriculture.
Some people believe we can do without agriculture. Read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. Societies that distanced themselves from their soils tend to disintegrate.
Your inland sea idea was a good one half a million years ago.
It’s hard not to feel distressed about the environment. But you need to be sure you know enough about it so that you are being stressed about real things and not fantasms. For instance, I believe droughts are the land’s way of having a holiday every 7 or so years. The rest of us get a break. Why shouldn’t the land? Australia was deep in a drought cycle when white man arrived. So we didn’t cause them.
Ignorance led to 200 years of unsympathetic land management. But now there is a new generation of farmers who feel like they are stewards of the soil. They read Wendell Berry and Aldo Leopold and Allan Savory. It’s the dawn of a new age of humanity’s relationship with earth. There are reasons to be cheerful!!

Thanks for your email.

Michael

Boys will be boys

2006-07-13T15:22:00.000+10:00

These are our boys who have been keeping our ewes company in recent days and we have - we hope - 1000 babies due in September. These magnificent men in their woolly jackets are our genetic "lever" which we use to increase the body frame size or the fineness of t he wool (micron level). We don't change them all at once. We cull a third of them every year or two.
Cruel really.

Early signs that we were on the right track

2006-07-12T13:08:00.000+10:00

This photo comes from our first attempt at rotational grazing - in the late 90s at "The Springs", our first 1000 acre block. All the farmers around us thought we were mad combining our mobs, and we did make a lot of mistakes. But we started to see results, even with only 6 paddocks (one of them 600 acres). The crappy side is our neighbour's, naturally.

Bad luck comes in threes! Off to the pub!

2006-07-12T12:33:00.000+10:00

[THE COW BELL ON THE BAR TO SUMMONS HELP WHEN YOU'RE DYING OF THIRST]

A couple of weeks ago we lost an important person from our Carbon Coalition team in an incident that made me so depressed I nearly threw in the towel*. Then we found out we were unsuccessful with the CMA Farming Systems 'talent quest' and couldn't understand where we were deficient (so you imagine everything you did was wrong). And then we lost Daniel's dog Jackson under the wheels of the ute.We emerged from 2 days of mourning and took ourselves off to town for a long lunch and home via the pub. Guess who we found there?[LOUISA & STEVE MINNETT, OUR GUN SHEARER]
Our shearing team, just the men we wanted to see. "We haven 't received our invitations to shear at your place," said Col Doherty. "They're in the mail," said Louisa. "Like the cheques." We have the best time with these guys in August. While other 'squatters' begrudge them a few beers at 'cut out' (end of shearing), we have beeers every night after a day's shearing - sitting around a fire, yarning. Steve Minnett is our gun shearer,
[LEN COONEY AND COL DOHERTY, OUR MENTORS] Col works like a Doherty, and Len Cooney is a fantastic roustabout/presser/general expert. Daniel 'runs' the shed. These guys recognised that we were enthusiastic amarteurs and undertook to educate us in the fine art of farming, especially shearing management, etc. We have become close friends.
]

[THE PUBLICANS HAROLD & BETTY, ALWAYS GOOD COMPANY]

Dan Gorrie is our next door neightbour. He and his brother and mother have around 2000 acres, a lot of it arable (cropping) but much of it rough country, with quartz outcrops and thin topsoil. His Dad, Viv, who died not so long ago, ran his sheep hard and not too much grass got a full set of rootmass, so their carbon lebvels will be delicously low. I made an offer to buy that day. Dan said "No Deal"....

[OUR NEIGHBOUR DAN GORRIE, MAKING A POINT]

[I WON 10 BUX ON THE POKIES]

[THESE THINGS ARE LIKE A CANCER IN COUNTRY PUBS]

*An old saying I live by: If you want to know how badly you'll be missed if you leave a situation, put your arm into a bucket of water. Then pull it out. The hole you leave is the gap your leaving will create. (Someone or something will always fill the void. This image keeps me from taking myself too seriously (mostly).

We start feeding two months later, thanks to controlled grazing

2006-07-12T12:27:00.000+10:00

Jesus said: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep" - but he didn't say "Right away." We saved 2 months worth of hand feeding by conserving pasture and giving it ma chance to grow thanks to time controlled grazing. Louisa has done an amazing job with only 20-odd paddocks in the rotation. Now we have 50 odd thanks to the CMA and Daniel and the fencing contractors (I''ll blog our electirc fence system soon.) Here is Louisa loading hay for feeding the lambs.

Cold! Colder! Coldest!

2006-07-12T12:08:00.000+10:00

Armidale was reported to have had minus 11°C the other night. I lived in Armidale 10 years and thought it was cold. But Uamby taught me what cold means. I found the poor chook pecking at the water bucket trying to get a drink through the ice yesterday. We have had monster fogs that hang around til mid morning, and super frosts (too cold to go out and photograph). But no rain - aprt from a squirt last week and a squirt the week before. Funny thing - we have had only half the rainfall we usually get in the first 6 months of the year, and no electrical storms, where they used to come every few weeks. The weather pattern's gone mad. Global Warming? No. It couldn't be...

Jessica in the press

2006-06-17T13:54:00.000+10:00

Our eldest daughter Jessica was featured recently in Business Review Weekly as a young female entrepreneur facing the challenges of the corporate world. Louisa and I are proud of our children - Jess the business woman, Daniel the extreme sports farm manager, and Rachael the mother of our grandchildren. In the BRW story Jess said she looked around at the males who started businesses at the same time as she did and they were further ahead, and she realised it was because they we risk takers and bullshitters. We males talk a big game while the girls don't like telling lies (or bullshitting). Fake it til you make it, as the saiyng goes. People don't want to hear the truth - they want dreams that you can fulfill. Jess's business - the Frank Team (formerly Youth-to-Youth),a youth training company, runs workshops all over Australia, teaching young people how to start and run their own businesses. Jessica started her first business - a home tutoring business - when she was still at university. She grew up in a household where her parents ran several business from home and one in the city. We weren't corporate hot shots, but we made a living. Jessica was a finalist in last year's Telstra Young Businesswoman of the Year Award and was the female leader of the Australian contingent of 12 on the multinational Ship of Peace, an oceanliner sponsored by the Japanese Government to carry several hundred young adults from all over the world as they visit nations on the Asia-Pacific Rim and discuss issues of world peace and environmental solutions. She has applied to lead the Australian delegation on the next cruise.

We lose a member of the family

2006-06-17T10:56:00.000+10:00

Tragedy struck yesterday as Louisa and I were heading out to handfeed the lambs. One of the puppies - Jackson - went under the wheels of the Landcruiser and was crushed. We rushed him to the vet in Mudgee, but he didn't make it. He was bleeding from the mouth, had crushed ribs and massive internal bleeding. Louisa was driving and all the dogs were running alongside the truck, when we felt a 'bump' and heard a yowl. Jackson was bred by Daniel, using Patch the Border Collie bitch and Ravi the Kelpie we got from Col Seis. On the phone to Col about Coalition business last night, he said puppies often get killed and having 2 puppies together is dangerous because they distract each other and don't pay attention to what their elders are doing (which is how they learn to avoid falling under the wheels of farm vehicles.) Lucy was due to go to a good home, but I guess we'll be keeping her now though she's not much good with sheep at present. Daniel was devastated and so was Louisa. We had a sad night.
Strangely enough, my Mother ran over my dog Skipper while driving along the road and Louisa's Mother also ran over her dog.
These are the last shots we have of Jackson. On Dan’s lap while we burn off a pile of old tennis court poles and Bathurst Burr and dead trees, on the evening after the Gulgong Cup. Here’s a shot that’s a couple of months old of Lucy and Jackson (on the right). He was a sharp dog, with great instinct for sheep work. He wasn’t destined to reach full doghood. The vet wrapped him for us and we brought him home. Daniel, who was down at the smow whenw e called him yesterday, drove back overnight and buried his favourite dog this morning.
The shock and sorrow in our home is like we lost a member of the family - because we have.

The Gulgong Community Singers and the Ruffled Grouse

2006-06-17T09:08:00.000+10:00

I guess it was inevitable. My Mother was a choir mistress when I was at school. I was in her choirs. And now I have a choir of my own. The Gulgong Community Singers is a group of mature age singers who meet every Friday at the Gulgong Sports & Golf Club at 10.30am til 12.00pm to enjoy the fun of singing together. We're not as tight and professional as a slick vocal group, but it is about taking part and including everyone. We sign at nursing homes and retirement villages and appear at community events such as Anzac Day services in the Memorial Park or Xmas in July at the Sports Club. It's a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the company of these interestinjg people. There is an amazing diversity of personalities and the characteristic tolerance country people have for each other. (Gulgong, 30kms from "Uamby", has a population of just 2000 - as many as you'd see in a shopping mall in Sydney.) The better singers have to tolerate graciously the less than naturally talented singers - and, though I see some funny faces pulled at times, they keep the peace. we sing songs from the old traditionals like Amazing Grace, songs of the '30s and '40s like Memories, School Days, and I Don't Want To Play In Your Yard, and songs from the 60's like Morning Town Ride, Idlewiess, and Que Sera Sera. WE do a wonderful version of Harry Belafonte's Yellow Bird. At our rehearsal yesterday I introduced two new songs for them to learn - California Dreaming by the Mama's and the Papas and The Rhythm of Life (with 3 separate parts being sung simultaneously) from Sweet Charity. (This last song will take 6 months to get to performance level.) While performing last Wednesday at the Moran Nursing Home in Mudgee, I asked one of the wonderful carers there to take a few shots of us in action. And here they are. If you want to join the group, we'll see you at 10.30am on Friday at the Club.

(How did I get involved? I heard the choir singing at the rededication of the Gulgong Memorial Hall and spoke to Marlene O'Brien who I know from Church at Goolma. SHe told me the group was going to fold because the choir leader was leaving town, her husband having just retired from the local mill. I could see how important such a voluntary group was to the social infrastructure of the community. The silencing of the choir would be the same as the disappearance of a song bird from the local environment. As explained in Aldo Leopold's A Sand County ALmanac*, such a loss impoverishes us all. I thought "It can't be that hard to run a choir. You just wave your arms about..." I said I would only be temporary while they found another leader. I told them I couln't always be in Gulgong for rehearsal, having clients in Sydney who need me (thank God). ANd I told them i would be devolving responsibility onto them. And they have responded magnificently. Marlene has taken over the administration. Merlene Laing, the vicar's wife, plays piano and takes them through their vocal exercises. Effie Plummer introduced theatrical props for our "School Days" performance at the Gulgong Primary School in Seniors Week.

**”The physics of beauty is one department of natural science still in the Dark Ages. Not even the manipulators of bent space have tried to solve its equations. Everyone knows, for example, that the autumn landscape in the north woods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a ruffled grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead. An enormous amount of some kind of motive power has been lost.
"It is easy to say that the loss is all in our mind's eye, but is there any sober ecologist who will agree? He knows full well that there has been an ecological death, the significance of which is inexpressible in terms of contemporary science. A philosopher has called this imponderable essence the numenon of material things. It stands in contradisiinction to phenomenon, which is ponderable and predictable, even to the tossings and turnings of the remotest star." (A Sand County ALmanac, Aldo Leopold, 1949) (RUFFLED GROUSE. PIC: Saskatchewan Environment)