Ecological Land Management Practices

Empty cattle yards – another rare sight in this region, but a decision that Gillian says she is happy with.

I took the high prices and got out of breeding stock.

Now I’ll put my money into making grass, then I’ll be early back into the market and, probably for the next year or so, until the property builds up again, I’ll buy in a few of the weaners and fatten them up – in at 350 kilograms and I will get them up to 450 kilograms – and sell them off.

Ground cover is supreme. The property still has really good cover on it. I could have kept grazing – I had the month in front of me, until the end of May [2016]. But once you get rain it still takes time to grow grass. I felt that after that, when it got cold in June, it would be too slow a recovery. I value my ground cover, so I made the decision.

As we stand, it looks good. It should recover quickly once we get some warmth and rain.

Gillian made the decision to stop grazing, to allow her grass to recover.

Even though I was not brought up on the land, I always had an affinity with it. As soon as I left school I became a jillaroo. In the early 1970s, I was the only jillaroo in the Riverina.

Before we bought Bibbaringa, we owned and operated Pooginook Merino stud in the Riverina region.

In 1992, we started managing Pooginook holistically. We started in a drought and continued to refine the process of holistic management.

When you’re on the land you become very attuned with nature. You notice when birds are coming and going, what the insects are doing and how it all relates to impending weather. Your projections aren’t always right, but they often give you a good head start to make management changes.

So we’ve just built on what our forefathers have taught us, and the knowledge that we’ve accumulated over the years. We try to be seen as leaders in land management in whatever climatic conditions we are in.

Watch: Building a ground cover blanket for resilience

Sharing farming practices with researchers and fellow farm and land managers.

1. Cause and effect: Does this action address the root cause of the problem, or merely a symptom?
2. Sustainability: If you take this action, will it lead toward or away from the future resource base described in your holistic goal?
3. Weak link:

• • Social: If you take this action, will you encounter or create a blockage to progress?
  • Biological: Does this action address the weakest point in the life cycle of the organism you’re trying to control or promote?
  • Financial: Does this action strengthen the weakest link in the chain of production?

4. Energy/money source & use: Is the energy or money to be used in this action derived from the most appropriate source in terms of your holistic goal? Will the way in which energy or money is to be used lead toward your holistic goal?
5. Society & culture: How do you feel about this action now? Will it lead to the quality of life you desire? Will it adversely affect the lives of others?
6. Marginal reaction: Is there another action that could provide greater return, in terms of your holistic goal, for the time and money spent?
7. Gross profit analysis: Which enterprise contributes more to covering the overheads of the business? (Use this test when comparing two or more enterprises.)

Source: managingwholes.com

A rare mist hung heavily on the day of the visit to Gillian’s farm, ‘Bibbaringa’.

I’ve got 60 paddocks now, having started with just 24.

I have all my cattle on one paddock at a time. Sometimes it is two days in one paddock, five in the next, depending on the size of the paddock. It’s all calculated – I do my DSEs (dry sheep equivalent), or animal grazing days per hectare. I then record it all on a grazing sheet for the historical record.

Certainly the temperatures appear to be getting higher.

The temperatures in the winter have been higher. Spring rains have been non-existent – very much hit and miss. There was low rainfall over last spring (2015), so we didn’t get the bulk of feed over spring.

This year we had some rainfall in January, but it was really just enough to get some hairy panic grass to come up, where normally with the summer rain you get some really good growth from the summer perennials. But that didn’t really happen this year [2016], because there wasn’t much moisture in the soil profile from the spring, and because of the temperatures.

There weren’t the high forties temperatures this year, but there were consistent over-thirty degree days.

It’s so easy to get locked into the old English way of farming. But we have so little moisture in our soil profile, and the temperatures are only getting higher.

I’m not even convinced this property is made for breeding stock 24/7. I think in this high rainfall area of southern New South Wales, with climate change, there’s definitely not the predictability in the seasons there used to be, and that means you have to change your management practice.

My major priority is not production at all costs. But I do want to run a profitable farming operation. My major priority is getting the soil and the land into a good, healthy condition. I feel if I can do this then everything else will take care of itself and, in turn, accommodate for the varying climate.

When we first started planting trees on this property, we focused on restoring fragile gully areas to help with erosion. During high rainfall events, rainfall was just gushing down the hills, taking a lot of dirt and rock with it. This was because there was little ground cover to slow down the water or hold the soil in place.
To keep water on the property, the idea is to slow the flow of the water through the landscape. By having the ground cover, the trees and the fencing, we’ve been able to do that.

I’ve been doing on-ground works for three years: putting dams in, rerouting overflows and creating contours, so you get this natural irrigation process happening throughout the landscape.

That’s based on natural sequence farming principles by Peter Andrews. And I’m just about to start some more work on that now.
I’ve also been practising what he says on this property anyway. Nature does a lot of healing by itself if you allow it to.

Creating contours slows the flow of water through the property, making for a natural irrigation process.