livestock

We keep Dexter cattle and Jacob sheep. These animals are amazing, it’s them who are managing the ecosystem and I am merely the steward. The land evolved with animals and its a pleasure to watch them in harmony. They provide a whole range of ecosystem services and do it for free. There are no inputs with our grazing animals i.e. They only eat grass year round. Sun grows grass and the grass grows them. It’s sublime and simple system once managed correctly.

livestock for me is the real fun side of farming. These animals are part of the family and have such personalities. I move them everyday year round onto fresh grass, twice a day in the fast growing season.

We follow Holistic Planned Grazing to make sure the animals are in the right place at the right time throughout the year. It’s amazing to see how you can have fresh grass for your animals everyday with a bit of planning. These daily moves mean we have animals in small paddocks so that they have high impact on the pasture but only for a short period. This is the basic system of regenerative farming.

The by-product of these animals managing this land here is that we have first-class meat for our community. animals Raised on grass no inputs like wormers, antibiotics etc. This is as good as it gets!

I grow vegetables everyday in a regenerative way but it takes huge amounts of inputs of compost and huge amounts of labour. It’s funny how vegetables are perceived as “green” when that they require such a high energy input. whereas our livestock just eat grass with no inputs and very little labour.

it’s true that the industrial livestock system is full of inputs and I wont get into why it is that way but basically, it doesn’t need to be like this. Livestock managed well can have little to no inputs but more importantly they can build soil, increase biodiversity and store carbon.

‘It’s not the cow, it’s the how'