Gleneden is situated on Githabul Country. After the First Nations people were displaced, the land was used for grazing and later converted to a dairy farm with intensive use of the more productive alluvial flats. Following significant erosion events on the very dispersive black soils in the 1970s, the government subsidised the construction of contours, to hold the soil following ploughing. Unfortunately, this ‘European method was not congruent with the context of this landscape’, effectively draining the water off the landscape and causing severe gully erosion at the end of each ‘contour’. The dairy farm was then converted to a cattle stud and hay/fodder production farm. A lot of ‘extraction was happening, the biomass was taken, and not much was put back, aside from fertiliser.’

When the Morrises bought the farm, there were signs of landscape degradation. The pastures, though green from recent applications of nitrogen, were compacted and roughly a metre of topsoil loss on the slopes was visible on the edges of the cropping paddocks. The creek was eroded, and the paddocks overgrazed as the cattle freely roamed the lower flats.

One of their primary goals was to operate an organic farm, so Fiona and Rohan had to prove that the soil was free from heavy metals and organic phosphates. Having studied soil science, Fiona was interested in about the soil testing process and wanted to know the overall quality of the soil they had to work with. With limited funds, she selected three locations of surface soil (zero to 10cm) on the more intensely used paddocks and took representative samples, ‘as you walk, you take several soil samples from the top 10cm and mix them together in a bucket, then take out a handful to test. This gives you a general sense of the paddock you took that sample from.’

The fourth test was a ‘control’ test in the natural remnant woodland, a subject close to Fiona’s heart. Fiona had observed how typically, a control is conducted in ‘a paddock next to experiments’ to show the changes in ‘the context of the farming area’. But Fiona ‘really wanted to know the carbon levels in the forest’ because ‘if you want to get as close to mimicking natural processes as possible, what better information than what is in the natural process?’ She took representative samples about 100 metres into the foothills of the woodland (in order to avoid an ‘edge effect’).[1]

The results from the three paddock tests, though limited, indicated that there were no chemicals and heavy metals in the soil, ‘which was great’. The control test of the forested areas showed 6% carbon, which is higher than most agricultural areas, but not as high as Fiona expected. The samples also provided an indication of total available nutrients so the Morrises could determine a baseline and find out what the soils were deficient in.

[1] In ecology, ‘edge effects’ are changes in population or community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats.

A ‘driving force’ for Gleneden Family Farm was to have quality produce for ‘our family and community, and therefore we needed diversity in what we produced’. This worked well in their holistic farming plan as they recognize that ‘diversity (of species) is also the key in nature; different animals eat differently and use their landscape differently.’ As such, Fiona and Rohan brought their ‘menagerie’ with them to the new farm – their breeding pigs, chickens, goats, ducks and cows. Developing a flexible approach for intensive, multispecies, rotational grazing – to mimic the animal diversity in a natural ecosystem – was important to them.

The first action Rohan undertook was to ‘walk up and down the creek and through all the paddocks to shut the gates’ to protect the water ways and manage their animals in a rotational grazing system. In addition to the existing permanent fences, Rohan set up a flexible and responsive system of fencing and waterpoints to managing their intensive, rotational grazing (Table 1).

Table 1. Fencing types and their purpose in enabling intensive, multi-species cell grazing on Gleneden.

As the majority of the fencing system is non-permanent, and the animals are moved often, a flexible water system was required. The Morrises run polypipe from three permanent tanks across their property. Portable water troughs, which are moved with each herd (or flock) are then connected to the nearest tap in the polypipe. The tanks are supplied from a bore and creek water using a solar pump (electric backup). This approach of flexible watering points is distinct from approaches that install permanent water troughs. While more time intensive, this approach allows for greater flexibility with their paddock placement and reduces the traditional compaction around water points.

Using this fencing and watering system, Rohan and Fiona were able to implement their intensive grazing plan. The herd movements and durations respond to the seasons, weather, and needs of the landscapes and animals. On average, Rohan moves the cattle and sheep every one to three days, and the chickens and pigs every one to two weeks.

Their holistic approach is about ‘being flexible to conditions’ and ‘moving the animals before they over impact the landscape depending on the outcome you want to achieve’. Instead of using a ‘recipe of X many days, X many head, moved here, here, here and here’ it is an active process of always questioning ‘Why am I moving? What am I trying to achieve?’ based on the unique conditions. For example:

“In spring we will have larger paddocks for the cattle to move through quicky. We just want them to tip the pasture because everything’s trying to grow. If we go in there and intensively hit everything, you are jolting the system when it’s just starting to pick up. So, we open up the paddocks a bit bigger. As a season goes, we might start making them smaller and smaller to allow the paddocks you are not using to regenerate. The key here is that your fencing and water is movable.”

In transitioning to the new farm, the Morrises’ goal was to start selling their organic produce as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, during the move they had to sell their steers because crossing jurisdictions meant they had to dip their cattle and the steers would no longer be ‘organic’. The cows’ progeny born on the new farm, however, could be classified organic but this would take time. For immediate cash flow, they set up the breeding pigs and sheep, and purchased local organic cattle. They also agisted cattle which they quarantined then managed organically.

Even though Fiona and Rohan previously had a chance to experiment with sales on the family farm, in this first year, they had a steep learning curve about the financial realities of (re)starting a business:

“Yes, you’re managing a farm regeneratively, organically, or holistically, but you’re still running a business. And you’re going to fail running that business if the business is not financially viable, and that’s just the way it is. Understanding marketing and your customer’s wants and needs is vital. And I didn’t know much about that when I started the business. I had no idea. I was thinking, “I’m going to be such a good farmer. Everyone’s going to love the food.” It doesn’t work that way.”

Setting up the meat sales was ‘really hard’ initially, as most people in their local farming community thought organic meat was ‘a luxury’, and yet ‘people will go into the supermarket and pay $30 per kilo for steak, but do not want to pay a local organic farmer $25 per kilo’. Learning how to market their produce and sell directly was a challenge.

Initially, Fiona and Rohan started developing a small customer base selling meat boxes and cuts at the local markets but visiting the markets once a week was ‘draining and wasn’t earning enough.’ They then began on-farm sales to visitors and campers. In fact, most of their first customers were campers. Once people ‘came to the farm and said “wow, those animals look happy”, they’d buy the product, taste the difference, and keep asking for more’.

In addition to the benefits of sales, Fiona feels an open farm keeps them honest and ‘on their toes’. People can drop in on the farm at any moment, but they find the visitors very useful. It keeps them asking ‘Would I be happy for anyone to see this right now? And if the answer is no, we fix it. It doesn’t mean that things don’t go wrong, it is a farm, they always go wrong, but it’s about maintaining a high standard and being honest with people’ about the realities of farming.

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A quick drought responsive action was to destock and get rid of the agisted cattle. This response essentially halved their stock, but also impacted their cash flow. They then planned their grazing using holistic management principles and, in the end, like many, also had to sell most of their own cattle, meaning they had less products to sell, which impacted their cash flow.

Rohan undertook a very precise rotation with the remaining cattle and sheep in increasingly smaller and smaller patches to allow the remainder of the landscape time to regenerate.  He had to calculate how much the animals would need and how much the paddocks could afford to give up for the shortfall.

Fiona was surprised to see that ‘even if you take the cattle off, the heat and the dryness and the brittleness of the landscape is so intense that after a certain amount of years, the pasture actually dissolved and disappeared. It’s not that it’s over-grazed, it didn’t even have animals on it, it just turned to dust.’ Over time with worsening conditions, the paddocks got to the point where ‘there’s nothing there’.

They were fortunately able to source vegetable scraps from a local organic packing company for the sheep, but Rohan and Fiona struggled to find and pay for organic feed for their pigs as national grain supplies dwindled. In 2018, they did their own research on other ways to feed pigs organically, and devised plans to reduce the pigs’ feed requirements by increasing the availability of forage over time  . They gathered advice from regenerative agroecologists about multispecies plant mixes for pig and soil health. After the pigs grazed a paddock, the Morrises would cast the seed mixes and put on sprinklers. Eventually, when the rain returned, they were able to reduce pig feed by half, improving their cash flow.

In the last three months of the drought, the Morrises ran out of pasture and water, with a significant impact on business cash flow. They decided to reach out for help to both sink another bore and to remain committed to their organic goals by buying organic hay. With the help of family, customers, friends and government assistance they were able to water their remaining stock and ‘feed’ out hay to their remaining animals. ‘It’s truly humbling to have to ask for help, but the response was amazing, and we are forever grateful’, says Fiona.

Rohan and Fiona decided to ‘feed out’ the hay to the cattle and sheep in small ‘sacrifice’ paddocks. This was a technique suggested by Dick Richardson, a hoslistic grazing consultant. The idea being to minimize impact on the rest of the landscape. It also meant that the animals concentrated their urine and excrement in this area and that mixed with the wasted hay underfoot, feeding the soil.

But as ‘horrible’ as the drought was, Fiona tried to keep positive, telling herself, ‘This is the worst it’s ever going to be for a long time, I hope.’ And looking back, the drought provided them with ‘a really good understanding of the carrying capacity in extreme times and the need to rehydrate the landscape.’

During the drought, Fiona and Rohan, were extremely busy feeding stock, and they knew they had to:

“Find a better way of marketing that didn’t involve us going to a market once a week or putting brochures around which didn’t work. And newspaper marketing didn’t work. All those traditional marketing concepts don’t work for a small farm on a small budget.”

Fiona and Rohan had been speaking with Tammi Jonas, president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, about the CSA concept, and with motivation from their farming support network, the Morrises began offering CSA subscriptions of a mixed box of beef, pork, and lamb. Being self-described as ‘less gregarious’, Fiona believes the CSA model and the one-on-one relationships it affords with their customers, also suits them better than the crowd-heavy farmers market model.

The CSA subscriptions grew very quickly, through word of mouth and from campers visiting the farm. The Morrises also started offering free camping and farm tours to the CSA members, which their members love: ‘they start to feel like it’s their farm.’ Fiona attributes the success of the CSA approach to the ‘personal relationship’:

“When you’re looking someone in the eye, they can see that you’re telling the truth and they can see the evidence right in front of them, and they’ve tasted that evidence. And also, you need to offer your product in a way that’s convenient for them. Once they see how the farm is run and how content the animals are they say, “Great, if you’re going to deliver me this amazing meat and I know exactly where it comes from, and I know what’s not in it, sign me up!” People buy our produce because they like us and what we do, and obviously, they like the meat.”

Since transitioning to the CSA model, they have been ‘pretty much sold out ever since and don’t have to actively advertise anymore, which means all of the energy we would have put into marketing or going to the markets, we can put into being better farmers.’ They also continued to diversify their enterprises and income streams by offering camping, educational farm tours and heritage shows with their bullock team:

“Diversifying our income is really important because when you are changing or starting a farming enterprise not only do you have to suddenly be a business management pro, an amazing farmer, you need enough money coming in to pay a significant mortgage due to high land prices, which is really expensive for people newly entering the market. It’s very hard to do that just on a farmer’s wage, which is one of the reasons people don’t just start farming.”

The CSA also helped build resilience on the farm in other ways. During the drought, the time came when there was no water in the creek or the bore. And Rohan said to Fiona, ‘we’re done, if we can’t get water for the stock to drink’. Not wanting to give up on their dream, Fiona suggested they put out a call to their CSA members and local community for funds for hay and a new bore in exchange for camping and tour vouchers. They raised $15,000, and the government subsidised the other half. Fiona reflected, ‘we were too shy to ask unless we were absolutely desperate! So having a community that were connected to the farm and cared about it (and us) was hugely important.’

The drought was very difficult for the business and their earnings suffered, but ultimately their responses to the drought helped the Morrises’ business survive. And, looking ahead, they also wanted to ensure their landscape was more resilient in the face of the next drought.

During the drought, their local Condamine Headwaters Landcare group secured funding to run a Tarwyn Park Training Natural Sequence Farming workshop, followed by on ground financial assistance to local farmers who attended the workshop training. The Morrises hosted the training workshop which was presented by Peter and Stuart Andrews and their team and later applied for funding to do several Natural Sequence Farming projects.

One of the rehydration improvements for the Gleneden Farm was to block the drainage of the roughly 15 pre-existing contours constructed in the 1970s. During the workshop, Peter Andrews explained how the ‘old fashioned contour drains’ on slopes had been designed to trap sediment and water washing down the slope from ploughing. However, these ‘contour drains’ ended up concentrating water from the landscape and created large erosion washouts where the water flowed into the gullies. Peter demonstrated a low cost, easy method of repurposing these old contour drains into water retaining dams so water could infiltrate into the landscape and reduce further erosion.

During the workshop, they also learned about the Natural Sequence Farming strategy of installing swales along the contour to distribute, not concentrate, flows over the landscape.  Ideally these swales are constructed at the highest level of the property that is practical. While initially hesitant about adding more manmade changes to the environment, Fiona was ‘impressed that you don’t need to create much disturbance to make a difference.’ The contour bank is, only one foot high in some places which is ‘just enough to slow and distribute the flow.’

To create a swale, the Andrews and Morrises chose a location near the highest accessible point of their property. This happened to be on the same level as a small existing dam. The 10m wide dam had been constructed in a gully, and never actually held water very well.  As part of the Natural Sequence Farming measures, swales were built that extended from the dam on either side, creating a level bank as wide as practical. Now, as water flows downs the gully ‘the water is gently spread and dispersed across a much greater distance along this swale, rather than being forced into a small catching area, where the energy pressure of water during a rain event could blow it out’.

Another Natural Sequence Farming technique used by the Morrises is to build ‘leaky weirs’ along their creek. Before clearing and overgrazing on the creek, a storm would cause trees and shrubs to fall into the creek and ‘catch sediment and debris’. However, since settlement, ‘we’ve changed the riverbanks by taking away the vegetation, so this natural process doesn’t happen; nothing now stops the flow, and the energy just keeps scouring the riverbank.’ The Morrises built their leaky weirs, using rocks and water plants, in strategic locations along the creek as they were shown during the workshop. Again, this did not require much intervention. In some cases, the rocks are only a foot high and water can still flow though and over them. It has made a difference though, slowing the flow, encouraging more water plants to grow and holding the water longer. Rohan and Fiona have fenced off the creek from the cattle (sheep and pigs) and only graze when the weed load is high. This has allowed the creekbanks to regenerate, naturally holding the banks, and the water.

The Morrises are active members of the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group, and have helped run and hosted workshops. Their Landcare group has recently received funding to hold regenerative farming workshops to connect local regenerative farmers and visit farms so they can see and discuss practical questions, such as ‘how’ to regenerate the landscape: ‘What seeds do we plant? Where do we get the seeds from? How do we build the fences? Where do we get the equipment from? How is it going to impact on our bottom line? Can we make no till farming work if I can’t afford a slasher?’ Fiona says:

“I’m really proud of our local Landcare group. They help fill the gap that extension services used to provide. They offer workshops, field days and have even considered things like purchasing equipment that people can use to improve their management. They have just purchased a laser level that people can use to make contours as part of the Natural Sequence Farming projects. That’s really helpful because smaller farmers especially, can’t afford to buy all these bits of equipment when they only use them occasionally. I know that I might need to go out and mulch my paddocks, but I can’t afford a $40,000 mulcher. So, this sharing of equipment could be a really powerful idea.”

The Landcare group is also building a connection with the local Githabul people. Through mentoring with Victor Steffensen, co-founder of Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation, the Githabul  have been offering cultural burning techniques to landholders in the region for several years. For the workshops the Githabul people, trained by Victor, go to a range of local properties and show the landholders the benefits in their techniques for cool burns, which are gentle on the soil, reducing the weeds and stimulating native regeneration. Fiona and Rohan held a workshop on their property, and found it to be a powerful experience:

“We had one of the Fire workshops on our place and it was really humbling and beautiful the way that the Githabul people understood the landscape and were so connected to it, and caring about it, and willing to share their knowledge. They just honestly wanted to say, “Look, we’re happy with you managing it, but you need to do a better job.” My son who was eight at the time, also came along to the workshop and it was amazing how quickly he picked up the teaching (law), sometimes kids are more open to new ideas and he was just so excited to be included. The Githabul people were so patient with him, quietly teaching him about respecting the landscape.”

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