THE DREAM

Farming is a new career for us. It all began when the family 'epicentre' moved to near the beach at Noosa to a delightful house on the hill. However, when grandchildren came along, we realised how 'child-unfriendly' the house really was!. 'Let's build a family home in the Hinterland,' we said.

So we started our dream – a sustainable commercial farm with conservation projects alongside a wonderful family home.

Over 18 months from September 2007, we put together three parcels of adjacent land over two titles at Ridgewood near Cooroy with the help of Murray Brown of Hinternoosa. This includes our ideal house site and some 570 acres of land – 400 acres of hill pastures and 170 acres of river flats – and contains some exciting conservation opportunities. We want the farm to be economically viable. A sound farming base would allow us to undertake the desired environmental work. The farm operations also had to cover the costs of a professional farm manager who we would work closely with. However, this is very much a "hands on" physical activity for us personally.

My wife, Kim, is an environmental education academic and I have experience in finance, planning, and managing large projects, but we had little direct knowledge of farming! You could say we were a bit naïve at first in our dreaming. Certainly there were a few who told us so! To offset this a bit, we hired an agricultural consultant, Barry McNamara, to review our strategy and help us head in the right direction. We have utilised many local contractors to help us put the strategy together and, with Barry's assistance, we recruited our Farm Manager, Peter Dare and his wife, Fayleen. All these people and their families, along with Kim's parents (who have a farming background) have helped us immensely and are now very much part of the team and the dream.

THE FIRST PRIORITY – AN OPERATIONAL FARM

An area of this size does not just look after itself so a priority was to get the farm operational as soon as practical. I spent the first six months before Peter joined mulching to get paddocks back in shape, repairing dams, and putting in fencing and water pipe. Then in January 2008 heavy rains washed away most of the roadways. We slid around in the mud a great deal before we were able to repair the roads and crossings. By that time, we had so much grass growing in the restored paddocks that we were desperate for some cattle.

We started with a commercial herd of 100 Droughtmaster cows with a Charolais bull. We then added a Droughtmaster stud and purchased 85 cows and two bulls from top breeders. We have now built the numbers up to 300 breeding cows – 200 commercial 100 stud. We believe these numbers will meet our financial objectives and we have proved this carrying capacity in practice as we have grown the numbers. We use the flatter areas for winter forage oats and summer sorghum as well as a means of putting the land back into shape. As insurance, we have invested in baling equipment and hay shed to ensure a good food supply plus some basic irrigation equipment to ensure we can get crops going when a dry spell arrives at the wrong moment. These proved very useful in the very dry spring last year.

After three years, the farm is beginning to work well and is up to capacity. You can see lots of calves in the paddocks and we have some stud bulls and heifers coming to maturity. We are beginning to get significant sales. We have even established an annual school group visit organised through Noosa Landcare. We really do feel we have a working farm on our hands and a sound base for the future.

SUSTAINABLE FARMING

Alongside this, we have put a lot of effort into conservation which we believe goes hand in hand with sustainable commercial farming. What does sustainable farming really mean?

Previously the land had been farmed in traditional ways – large paddocks with cattle watering directly off the creeks and crossing wherever they felt like. This has many farming and environmental downsides including poor water quality, erosion, spreading weeds, destroying habitat etc, etc and is not sustainable anymore. We have fenced off the creeks and gullies from the cattle, repaired the many dams, constructed proper crossings, and installed off-stream cattle watering through pumps, pipes, tanks, and troughs. With regular mulching and by reducing the size of the paddocks, we have been able to utilise rotational grazing techniques to improve the pastures.

We have used forage cropping to both provide food and as a way of preparing poor paddocks. We have just reached the stage of putting five of these back to improved pasture which is another milestone.

We have carefully introduced forest grazing into some of our wooded areas which seem to be a win all round.

We agonised for some time about organic farming but we feel we still need to spray the weeds and treat the cattle for ticks and parasites, at least at this stage.

Animal welfare is a key concern for us and we believe our pasture approach and "rain fed" not "grain fed" is the way for us. We believe you will see a lot of contented animals as you go through our farm.

CONSERVATION

The gullies on the property feed two branches of Blackfellow Creek which then links into the Mary River system. These creeks are classified as Regional Ecosystem 12.3.1 – 'endangered Gallery rainforest (notophyll vine forest)'. They are very beautiful and we are excited to have them. So far we have seen tortoises, fish, platypus, water dragons, many birds and many frogs. We undertook a water quality survey on one of the major gullies to start a 'before and after' case study and were very encouraged by the macro-invertebrates there. A friend, Greg Hunt, did an initial survey of the bird species on the property and found over 30. It will be good to measure progress on many such aspects over the coming years.

So far we estimate 'the team' has rebuilt 2 kilometres of roadways; repaired 8 crossings and 12 dams; installed 11 kilometres of fencing, 2 kilometres of water pipe, 15 troughs, 6 tanks and 4 pumps; and planted 5000 trees.

These projects have been partly funded by grants and with assistance from Noosa and District Landcare Group (who planted the trees), MRCCC (who helped fund revegetation), and BMRG (who helped finance fencing, revegetation, and a major creek crossing). We are very grateful for this help which has enabled us to keep up the pace of the projects. We have received especially useful advice and support from Paul Sprecher and Phil Moran of Noosa & District Landcare Group and they have linked us to other experts as needed. By this time, of course, 'the team' includes a growing list of advisors, neighbours, and contractors who we now regard as friends.

The property started as a project and not as a running farm. A lot of infrastructure needed to be put in place first both for farming and conservation. As the farm becomes fully operational there is less and less of our physical resources available for projects. However, there is much left to do on the conservation side.

We have now virtually finished all the fencing but we have learnt that revegetation is very time consuming and expensive to do properly. The initial planting is probably less than half of the total cost and effort of getting the trees to maturity. Our priority has been to revegetate with native species within the fences we have established along the creeks and gullies given their environmental importance. There is approximately 15 hectares to do. We realised that it would take us many, many years if ever to complete this with our own finances and energy.

We are delighted that, through the vehicle of a Nature Refuge, the Ecofund, BMRG, and Sunshine Coast Council are helping us put this revegetation in place. This will be a magnificent environmental contribution and a significant sequestration of carbon to offset the annual emissions of around 2000 cars. It will also be a very beautiful place to visit full of many interesting species of flora and fauna.

We still have about 70 acres of remnant forest, some of which is beautiful rainforest down by the main creek. So far we have only done limited maintenance in these areas. We are now turning our attention to how best to can manage this.

THE DREAM HOME

We feel we have achieved a great deal in our three years of ownership. However, and somewhat ironically, we have only just finished the dream home which, after all, is where the dream all started.

As you would expect, we have tried to make this blend in with the environment and build on sustainability principals.

Throughout the time, Dick has worked on the farm most days but it is now wonderful to live on site permanently.

IN CONCLUSION

A number of challenges remain.

We are now farming at our planned levels and we should now start getting the financial returns we envisaged. We have learnt that there are significant economies of scale in farming and we would make better returns by being somewhat larger. However, the land here is very expensive. We have just started an initiative to rent spare land locally that we can use to improve our economics. This gives land owners some income and leaves them free to enjoy their property without the hassle of maintaining or farming it.

We still have to work out how best to manage the remnant forest we own and we still have to find funding to complete some of the under story planting not covered by the carbon planting. However that is now business as usual!

In fact, our main lesson has been to prioritise and be realistic about what we can achieve. Thankfully we have found there are many sources of good advice readily available. We have learnt to get over feeling like an idiot and to ask the question anyway!

Given Dicks' background, an outline management plan proved very useful in helping set the priorities and review progress. However, you do need to be prepared to change this as experience with the property grows.

We have come a long way with our dream. The great deal of hard work is really beginning to pay off in family enjoyment. We feel we have done something constructive for the area, the environment, and ourselves.

Ridgewood is a lovely area and the community has welcomed us warmly. There is a monthly bring your own BBQ which is a great way to meet people and is a lot of fun.

We look forward to enjoying things here even more and working with other landholders on sustaining farming in the beautiful Mary Valley.