Autumn 2022
We had an overwhelming response to our Summer blog, where we detailed the challenges of the wettest Summer, with the highest rainfall on record for the last 15 years! It was a strange feeling for us to have that response - sharing the ins and outs of our lives and challenges that just seemed like reality. We both reread the Summer blog post, worried that we had been too negative! But we were SO grateful for the messages of support and encouragement; it was a breath of fresh air. It really felt like we were farming in community. Thank you for reaching out to us, for encouraging us, for sending good vibes, and everything in between! I write this next blog post with trepidation, to avoid sounding negative, but still to share our reality. This blog has become my cathartic release during a tough season!
In just a matter of weeks, we’ve gone from green, shiny, sunny days to crisp, cool, leafy days. Our baby has blossomed into a little boy right before our eyes. Now at 19 months, he is eager to help, to explore, unpack, dismantle, and less content to wait while we complete a task! The days are full and busy. He adores his farm days, the highlight of the day being the morning rounds with his Dad! This kid could crow like a rooster before he could speak!!! These are the moments that keep us going!
The highlight of this season was a very welcome week-long break, spent with family from overseas.
PHOTOS: exploring the garden, herbs and flowers; helping with farm planning; learning to move the chicken tractor; snacking on a carrot, fresh from the garden, while sitting on the bench built by the Chantunya Family in lockdown; riding his new bike - now he is a real boy!
The extreme wetness of Summer created tough conditions for outdoor animal operations, and day to day management. Grass grew by the second when the sun was shining, but veggies grew slowly without much heat, illness and parasites dominated. It felt like a losing battle for most of Summer and into early Autumn.
Then suddenly the weather changed, the calmness of Autumn appeared with golden leaves and sunshine, cloudless skies and although the days were crisply cooler, it felt warmer by having sunshine. The mud started to dry out and everyone had a spring in their step. As we turned the corner into the dry season, we breathed a sigh of relief. The pastures that were waterlogged began to dry out and the seeds began to germinate. We could actually begin working on the roads. We hired a TLB for two days, at great expense, to repair the roads and lay water pipes under the road now that we are aware of where the water moves during heavy rain and waterlogged conditions. Having seen what the wettest looks like, we could plan accordingly, reinforcing shelters, planning rotations etc. We began repairing the damages of summer and preparing for winter.
Then, just before Easter, a freezing cold snap bit us, hard! Unprepared, we had a high mortality rate, especially in our young pigs. We had planned that our pigs would be old enough to cope with the cold by winter, but this early cold was too much for them.
The jackal again took advantage of the still wet ground and began attacking our broilers nightly, digging in the soft ground to get under the shelters. Rex and the goats needed to be in the stables closer to the house as we enter kidding season. Rex will not leave his goats for anything so we couldn’t bring him down to protect the broilers. Instead, we have to have an electro-net around the broiler pens which adds to the time required to move the shelters every.single.day!
One of several unusual cloud formations this year
And then last weekend happened. The warnings of a cold front had us skipping all week to break out the frost cloth, seal up the tunnel, secure the shelters, lay bedding for all the animals, stock up, and hunker down. The forecast showed heavy wind but steady light rain for the next two days. Animals can usually cope with wet or windy but not wet and windy. We wind-protected all the shelters. Unusual to get rain in late May, we didn’t expect to get 170mm in 24 hours! For perspective, in all of our rain records here at Bramleigh, we have never had so much rain in such a short time. Our animals were all warm and dry in their shelters and coping. Except for our broilers. The water rose from the ground and flooded their houses. The water table was still so high that there was nowhere for the water to drain. It was an utter disaster site by daybreak, with a 14% mortality rate. As farmers trying to raise animals ethically, seeing something like this is soul-crushing. And all we can do is lick our wounds and brace for the rest of the weekend ahead.
Months of this destruction and heartache takes its toll. Walking on the farm the next morning, the ice cold wind biting at our cheeks, I had a picture of a tired boxer, leaning against the ropes, head spinning, ears ringing, eyes blinded, then plunging his aching body back into the ring, aimless in the darkness, in the general direction of the opponent, hoping by chance to get a lucky strike.
And each time we feel as though we are falling, a new opportunity comes along, and there is hope. That is the thrill of farming; there is always some reason to have hope. Hope for better weather, hope for better conditions, hope for better results, hope for better sales, hope for different results.
So here is what has has been happening in between these weather events as we plan forward -
There is a tiredness in the air in Autumn, but a flurry of activity as Nature prepares for Winter. We have spent a lot of time analysing our last few years of projects and plans, enterprises and energies, to determine our way forward. We have learnt in this hard season the value, but also the detriment, of diversity - when one enterprise is down, there are others to carry it, but when conditions are not ideal, each presents its own challenges and we find ourselves putting out fires more often than necessary. Dealing with multiple feed sources, abattoirs, butchers, suppliers, rotation times, grazing needs, foraging needs, feeding schedules etc has driven us to distraction and so we have been working on how to streamline our farm.
It is hard to farm and live in the present moment because one is always planning for the next season, looming Winter, and even in Winter, planning for how to do things better next Winter! We began our planting of Winter cover crops, cutting firewood and planning rotations early in the season, although there were numerous set backs with the weather resulting in us being unable to bale any grass and planting pretty late. With borrowed equipment form our neighbours, we planted out mixed cover crop as a store of nutritious grazing, especially for the cattle, at the end of Winter. Hopefully there are enough warm Autumn days ahead to allow the seeds to still germinate and grow sufficiently before the first frost!
In March, we had a volunteer, Brendan, join us for what was supposed to be one month but turned into three. Brendan’s optimism and enthusiasm, energy and excitement towards regenerative agriculture has been a breath of fresh air in the midst of a challenging time. Brendan has spent many hours alongside Andre on deliveries, alongside our guys on morning feeding and moving rounds, as well as helping us with various projects. One of these was to DIY a small growing tunnel to extend our growing season and protect sensitive crops from frost. It was great fun! Thomas oversaw all operations, inspecting the mud and ensuring all tools were operating. It is interesting looking back on these photos, it took us three months to finish the tunnel, in between other projects. But the weather progression can be clearly seen with the firs few days bundled in rain coats and gum boots, then in time he shorts and shirts came out, with Thomas waddling around in a nappy, and by completion, we are back to cold weather gear!
The next project has been an expansion on our laying hens. We built and installed new roll away nesting boxes in our bigger egg mobile.
PASTURE RAISED EGGS
Many of our regular customers will have suffered through our Great Egg Crisis of 2022 as we struggled to get new laying hens in before our older ladies began to retire themselves. As I write this, Andre is covered from head to toe in “man glitter” (wood shavings) as he constructs a new egg mobile for our new layers arriving soon!
We started with 100 new layers early in May. They have taken a while to adjust, especially to an outdoor operation at this time of year where the temperature fluctuations are quite vast. They are just starting to come into lay to help us catch up. In the beginning of June, our new big flock will arrive - chickens for days! Yay!
PHOTOS: New layers settling into Egg Mobile 1; a fun public holiday afternoon was spent catching & tagging layers to define age groups; the new roll away nest boxes in progress; building the new hoop style egg mobiles
PASTURE RAISED CHICKEN
Despite the jackal attacks and flooding, the chickens have done surprisingly well! A new configuration of the shelters has kept the wind and cold out. The chicks have grown well from Day-Olds and put on weight nicely with our new custom feed. They have been much more healthy and stronger, despite the challenges. Probably down to the new feed, but also to the daily inspections from one small person, who crows at them in encouragement :)
PHOTOS: Broiler shelters resting while we scrambled to finish the planting & allow the mixed cover crop to germinate before starting the broilers over it; setting up the shelters for the Autumn chooks to move in; Thomas checking on the suitability of the accommodation for his chickens.
Our forest raised pigs have had a tough season with a high mortality rate which is extremely unusual for pigs! A pig expert and vet are stumped so we keep trying our best to care for them as best as we can. We have been experimenting since Summer with feeding a commercial grain based feed as opposed to our usual excess milk from the neighbour’s dairy. It seems that the conclusion is that the pigs grow much better, and are much healthier on the milk. So we have gone back to fetching milk daily, washing buckets, and planning trips back and forth from the dairy. While this is more time consuming, we are very lucky to have this resource available to us, and it only costs us the fuel back and forth!
GRASS FED & GRASS FINISHED BEEF
The cattle plod along happily. End of Feb/early March Andre began planting a mixed species pasture for the cattle as their sweeties at the end of Winter when grass is dry and lack nutrition. This will be our first season overwintering cattle so we proceed with extreme caution, but extreme gratitude to Peter Ardington, our investor in the cattle, and advisor.
In April, Peter had 2 oxen that he wanted to sell and offered them to us to test the water for future beef sales, with a generous repayment agreement. It was another steep learning curve to process beef animals but the response has been very positive and encouraging! Grass fed beef seems easier to come by, but true grass fed, grass finished beef where the animals have not been given grain to fatten them in the final months, is rare. Grass fed is another example of misleading advertising! Grass fed and grass finished is what you want for deep red, robust beef flavour with lean yellow fat.
GOATS
The highlight of the year is the goat kidding season. Man oh man it is a lot of work, but the rewards of these gorgeous little babies is just incomparable! Everyone loves the goat babies! We had 3 mamas kid in quick succession producing 4 beautiful little kids. Their timing was good in that the kids are now old enough to manage in the cold as we hit the first frost zone. However, there are still many more pregnant does who will hopefully kid before the end of the month, while they can still have some grass to keep up their condition in the early days of feeding babies and recovering.
PHOTOS: Thomas instinctively crawled up to a new baby and ever so gently began stroking it with tenderness we had not seen before! He usually LOVES to rough-house with our dogs!
- Brendan getting his first baby goat cuddle
- Cheeky Girl - a big strong girly
FARM TOURS
We managed to get it together to host only 1 kiddies farm tour this season! Always such fun to show the kids around the farm, learn about the animals and how to food we eat is produced, as well as raising conscious consumers.
A recent Regenerative Agriculture Day was held nearby with interesting speakers and a pasture walk. We then enjoyed a day showing Andrew Ardington of RegenAg SA around our farm, and visiting a local regenerative dairy farmer, James Kean, who dug up part of his pasture to show the depth of roots, soil layers and soil life. It was a welcome inspiration to see all of these developments in the area!
James Kean runs a very intense internship programme with great success. It is so encouraging to hear of such opportunities! We have received numerous applications for volunteers and interns recently that have been an encouragement to know there is movement and interest growing from young aspiring farmers to farm regeneratively. While we feel ill-equipped to teach much right now, and still pay daily school fees for inexperience, it shows that there is hope. There is always hope!
