How to transform your paddocks from barren to green year-round!

During our first four years on the farm we have learned so much! And we have made so many mistakes. As a couple from the mainland, who had lived in suburbia, we had very little idea of how to run a farm – in fact no idea, really. We'd watched James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small and seen the muddy side of farming as well as the difficulties with birthing lambs, but it was all still a fiction to us until we actually owned our own land with our own sheep. 

 

From the time we first saw the property to when we took possession it changed dramatically. It was a dry summer and below is what we faced when we pulled up that first morning:

I have to be honest and say that the first couple of years were extremely difficult. We had left behind decades of friendships and connections and moved to an island state where we knew nobody. There was no support structure down here, no friends, no family. We were very fortunate to have lovely neighbours, traditional farming people, who knew a lot about the history of this particular land as it had belonged to their family in the past. They told us that it had been a dairy, had grown potatoes and run sheep, so we knew that the farm was capable of supporting a diverse range of practices, but after twenty years of neglect it was a barren, desolate place and we felt ill prepared to regenerate it.

And so we did the traditional thing. We ploughed the paddocks, sending clouds of dust into the summer sky. We sprayed weeds with various toxic chemicals. We planted traditional rye grasses, smothered everything in superphosphate and NPK and were absolutely delighted when the grasses grew to over 6 feet tall. We then bailed the grass and prepared for another bumper crop.

But what followed was desolation. 

 

 

 

The land returned to its barren, dry state. We were devastated. It had seemed so simple and yet here again we were faced with the exact same conditions with no improvement to the soil whatsoever and also faced with the expense of having to go through the exact same process of seeding, fertilising and spraying all over again.

There had to be a better way.

On the mainland we were gardeners, award-winning gardeners, in fact. We knew how to grow plants and lawn. So we took that knowledge and applied it to our hundred acre farm – thinking of it as a 100 acre garden instead. Years ago we had witnessed in the south of Western Australia, a thriving farm, in one of the driest states of this dry continent. On that farm they raised sheep and had planted corridors of trees around each paddock to limit the impact of the wind and rain during the winter months. They also had forty-year-old horses roaming about and when we asked how this was possible, they told us this very simple principle which we have firmly held onto as our motto – 

Feed the land, to feed your stock.

So, our focus now became improving the soil and this required a lot of relearning, because in the past we had used chemical fertilisers and chemical sprays to control pests and weeds in our garden. The idea that plants could withstand pest and diseases ON THEIR OWN was outrageous! We had to learn a WHOLE NEW WAY. We needed to learn about soil ecology. 

 

At AgFest we came across the Nutrisoil people and this one product has revolutionised our farm as well as our focus. Then we became aware of another product called Calcipril, which has been instrumental in tackling the very high acidity of our soil. These two products are made from natural resources. Calcipril is a calcium product ground to a very fine particle which is more easily absorbed by plant roots. Nutrisoil is not a fertiliser, but rather a catalyst/bio activator based on worm castings. It encourages plants to utilise the nutrients which are already in the soil and to communicate with the fungal and bacterial presence around their roots. It is early days yet, but the results have been quite spectacular, in our opinion. We've been mentored by Natural Resource Management and are part of an ongoing study through them. We've also had excellent support and advice from Nutrisoil, who are all about soil ecology.

Macrocarpa paddock summer 2018

 

 Macrocarpa paddock summer 2022 after the sheep have hammered it for 3 days!

 

So what did we do exactly?

Our aim was to have lush, green paddocks all year round, without the need to irrigate. Sounds impossible, right? But we started to make it happen. By choosing seeds which mature at different times of the year we were able to keep the ecological cycle of the soil active all year round, thus reducing the need to reseed. Deep rooted plants allow water to penetrate deeper and further into the soil, reducing water loss and encouraging plants to firmly establish themselves.  Not using pesticides, fungicides or synthetic fertiliser also allowed the underground ecology to grow and work with the pasture. We researched Australian and European pasture varieties, including some very traditional English varieties such as Timothy and Cocksfoot. Below is a list of the seed varieties that we have used thus far on our farm. Some worked and some didn't:

1. Tillage Radish
2. Excelltas Coloured Brome
3. Wintas perennial Rye
4. Kidman AR1 Rye
5. Impact 2 Diploid and Tetraploid Rye
6. Barberia Rye
7. Winter Ry corn
8. Howlong Cocksfoot
9. Megatas Cocksfoot
10. Upland’s Cocksfoot
11. Safin Cox foot
12. Punter Chicory
13. Kahu Timothy
14. Hercules Plantain
15. Quantum 2 Fescue
16. Sardi 7 Lucerne
17. Summer Active Fescue
18. LawsPhalaris
19. Holdfast Phalaris
20. Arrowtas Arrow Leaf Clover
21. Rubytas Clover
22. New Zealand White Clover
23. Campeda Sub Clover
24. Storm White Clover
25. Weka White Clover
26. Taipan Balansa Superstrike Clover
27. Bounty White Clover
28. Vista Clover
29. Denmark Sub Clover
30. Artas Sub Clover

31. Palestine Clover

 

*some of these came as single seed varieties which were mixed with others. Other varieties came in commercial mixes.

*We seeded at least 12 varieties in each paddock, making up different mixes for different areas, depending on soil.

 

The paddocks were improved initially with seaweed, fish emulsion and Nutrisoil. Now just using Nutrisoil as it seems to be a one-shot product. Nutrisoil was used as a foliar spray at 5 L per hectare mixed with 100 L of water. This works out at $30 per hectare every six months. Applied in spring and after topping in autumn. Applied with a 200 L tank, 12 V pump and boomless nozzle on the back of a Polaris four-wheel-drive side by side vehicle. This vehicle has less impact on soil and less compaction, compared to using a tractor.

Calcipril was applied at 300 to 500 kg per hectare, using a small fertiliser spreader at approximately $200 to $300 dollars per hectare.

15 to 25 species of grasses and legumes were used in each paddock under restoration. Some grasses took more than two years to emerge, after the soil had improved. We tried to use as many deep rooted grasses as possible, with different seasons’ growth activity, to keep green growth on the ground all year round.  We have since learned that incorporating more families, 4 - 8, of plants in pasture improves the plant, bacteria, enzymes and fungi relationships.

We also planted hundreds of trees - as windbreaks, as bird habitat, as cover and to create a garden around the house. This has attracted so many birds! Which in turn eat the bugs. In the vegie patch I use no toxins at all, no pesticides or herbicides and no fertilisers, just Nutrisoil and Calcipril and the odd bit of snail pellets (the kind made of iron, not toxins).

The results speak for themselves

• 1.    There has been a big reduction in bracken, 'Buzzy' weeds, sorrel and other acid loving weeds in the treated areas.
  
• 2.    There was a noticeable difference in the rocky, steep areas that are usually difficult to treat, compared with untreated areas where there were more weeds and a lot more cricket, grasshopper and grub activity.
• 3.      Fungal attacks on grasses in the treated area has reduced or stopped completely.
• 4.      Grasses stayed green during the dry summer and suffered less frost damage issues in winter.
• 5.    There was a noticeable difference in water retention in the ground. This was especially important in areas where vehicles needed to be driven across, which would normally be too slippery or boggy for access.
• 6.      There has been a huge increase in worm and dung beetle activity in the soil.
• 7.      Sheep fertility and lamb survival has increased. Birth defects and issues have decreased. Lambing went from 120% to 180% in four years. Lamb mortality decreased from 17% in the first year down to 8% in the last year, which occurred mostly because a lot of lambs were born in a sudden snowstorm. Despite this, only one ewe with triplets needed assistance, whereas in previous years, there were numerous ewes with prolapses and great difficulty birthing. 

our driveway January 2018 the day we arrived

 

                                                               our driveway 2022

      We now are able to see such a difference in our land. It holds moisture, it feeds our sheep, it retains its lushness year-round. It's not perfect, there are still weeds, but it is well on its way. The pH is slowly shifting towards neutral, which in turn means some of the grasses sown years ago are now emerging, as the conditions are more to their liking. We are constantly learning and have become ambassadors for the soil. Lots of people are looking to improve their soils and their diets through the no toxins, no dig method and we find ourselves sharing what information we have. That's why I started this blog.  It's a revolution I hope will grow.