In my last post I informed you that I had some exciting news. I was invited to join a group of local land owners (custodians) who, like me, are interested in regenerative agriculture. The aim of the group is to share knowledge and experience whilst also joining a community of people who have a desire to improve their land. None of us are full time farmers, which frees us from the constraint of having to make a living from our land, however does limit the time we can put into repairing the soils of our properties. The group was established by Cate, and our first gathering was generously hosted by Marty on his nearby property.

Marty brought his knowledge of natural sequence farming and showed us how he had been changing the hydrology of his property. At the highest points of his block, Marty had built shallow ponds, which he filled using water from a large dam lower in the property. The ponds allowed water to enter the soil and hydrate the land, with a solar pump and float switches keeping the ponds filled. As we walked downhill, we crossed swales that Marty had built along contours, slowing surface water and allowing it to enter the soil. Beside these Marty had planted banks of trees. At the bottom of the hill in old gullies, Marty had built leaky weirs, which slowed the water and again hydrated the landscape. Gorgeous Belted Galloway cattle grazed the paddocks in a rotational program. It was a wonderful afternoon and I look forward to sharing more ideas with the group into the future.

In such a wet year, the impact of our changes to the landscape are hard to tell. It is easy to convince ourselves that the fantastic condition of the landscape is the result of good management, allowing us to make the most of every drop of rain. It is really hard to know, with over 900mm falling on our farm this year (our average rainfall is closer to 650mm), the property looks fantastic. As we approached New Years Eve, the dryer weather has seen the grass turn to its typical golden summer hues, but it remains plentiful.

Over the past few years when the property was in drought, I spent several hours on the tractor putting rip lines in our paddocks along contours to assist in allowing rainfall to penetrate the subsoil. Once the soil settled, the rip lines could be easily seen as lines of green across the hills (see link: https://rockfarming.com/2019/11/02/update-on-trees-and-rip-lines/). This year, the whole hillsides are a mass of grass, and the rip lines have all but disappeared from view.

The quantity of grass is amazing, and the cattle have been unable to keep up with the growth. After the cattle have rotated out of the paddocks on our flats, I have slashed them to knock down any thistles. This also assists in breaking down the phalaris stalks (like a mulch). The paddocks have quickly recovered with the grass regrowing quickly.

The school holidays have also allowed me to make the most of some cheap available labour! Regular readers might recall in August we planted around eighty trees in an erosion gully (https://rockfarming.com/2021/08/31/more-trees-for-the-rock-farm/). A few weeks later, we planted another fifty or so in the same area. These school holidays we plan to fence around 1 hectare in this 5.5 hectare paddock to create a native vegetation habitat zone. This paddock has been off-limits to the cattle since we planted the trees, but I am fast approaching the time I need to rotate the cattle through here. With a bit of help from our neighbour’s augur, we soon had the seven strainer posts set in the ground. We will bang in the star pickets and run the wire in the next few weeks, allowing us to re-use the “tank paddock” again.

The cattle are in good condition – and revelling in the fact we are enjoying a “Green Christmas”. Our leased bull has returned to his home – after a brief excursion through two fences to our neighbour’s. That is a whole other story, along the lines of “little farms doesn’t always mean little problems”.

It has been a remarkable and challenging year for many of our friends. We consider ourselves so fortunate to live on our little hobby farm / sanctuary. Whilst it hasn’t all been easy on the Rock Farm, and at times it the list of projects feels a bit overwhelming, we do love it out here.

Sapphire and I would love to wish all of our readers best wishes for the New Year. We hope that 2022 is the year we can open up the Rock Farm to share it with you all.

This cool wet summer is glorious. The grass continues to grow, the cattle are fat and rainy days mean inside jobs are slowly being worked through. The rain also means we are able to continue to grow and develop the Rock Farm with a couple of little projects.

I was really excited to get going on our first project – having placed an order almost 18 months ago. With such a magnificent body of water in our dam, it seemed like a good idea to stock our dam with some fish. Last week we took delivery of 500 Silver Perch (bidyanus bidyanus) fingerlings from Alan at Jamberoo Aquaculture (http://www.silverperch.com.au).

The silver perch is a medium sized native fish found in the Murray Darling Basin. This means that should our dam overflow and fish escape, they will enter their natural habitat. Sadly today the silver perch are functionally extinct in the Murrumbidgee river system, which our local creek eventually joins. Indeed in the last 40 years wild silver perch populations have collapsed, with only a small pocket surviving in the mid reaches of the Murray River. The fish do not breed in dams or other impounded water supplies.

The fish arrived in great shape, and quite a lot larger than we expected. In a couple of years they should be plate size – if the cormorant who has taken to camping on the dam wall doesn’t get them first. To give the fish half a chance, I put some old pipes in the dam to give the fish some shelter should they want it.

In another part of the farm, we have been watching oaks come out of the ground. We planted a range of acorns last May and around 70% have sprouted and are doing well (https://rockfarming.com/2021/05/16/more-trees-planted-on-the-rock-farm/). I was sharing my progress with a colleague at work, when he invited me to collect a number of oak seedlings that had come up under some oaks growing at his place to fill in my gaps. There were hundreds of little oaks all competing for lights, and I quickly filled all the punnets I had brought. What I didn’t expect was some much taller saplings also looking for a new home. I harvested three buckets of tall saplings and hurried home.

I soon had the new seedlings and taller saplings in the ground. Hopefully they make the most of the rain forecast this week.

I spent an hour or so weeding around the seedlings, and mulched around these young trees. This really is the most ideal season to get them established. Knowing how many oak seedlings I left behind, I will be going back to get some more soon.

A shout out to CK for the beautiful trees and Alan and Jamberoo Aquaculture for the beautiful fish! It sure makes the sunset photos even more special overlooking the dam with it’s new inhabitants and sharp eyes may spot the oak saplings in the tree guards on the right behind the dam.

My next post has some exciting news – and I can’t wait to share it with you. There are some wonderful people in our local region doing some exceptional things on their farms, and I had the privilege to join some of them to hear their stories and how they are also pursuing the goals of healing their land.