Taranaki Farm Tour

On Sunday T and I went to the lovely Taranaki Farm, which is a stones throw from Woodend.

I joined just a few other people...

Farm tour snakes towards the diary

Approximately 400 people (but  I find it hard to count crowds so it might have been more) came to see this farm on Sunday, they were mostly in their 30's to middle aged, with lots of children in tow.
One of the draw cards was Joel Salatin, a man famous for his enthusiasm for regenerative, sustainable agriculture that I think does a reasonable job of not making the lives of the animals that we eat an absolute misery.

Joel Salatin in fine form

Ben Falloon and his partner and staff, love their land obviously and they have invested a lot of money to create infrastructure and design elements that maximise the sustainability of their farm.

They bring the dairy 'parlour' to the cows. They have a small herd of 7 and have beautiful lush pasture with not an inkling of being over grazed. The practice of overgrazing on 'conventional' farms is a problem that drives me crazy. It does nothing good for the grazing animals, plants, soil or farmer profits.

Mobile dairy

Moving livestock from small field/enclosure to new ground regularly is an important element for not trashing the landscape that provides food for their chickens, pigs and cows. Joel stated that these pigs below, would get 20% of their calories from the animals and plants in the soil in this area, but I find that hard to believe unless I am totally underestimating the insect life present.

Berkshire pigs amongst the Eucalyptus trees

Joel Salatin made the mobile hen house famous and their are now many versions of this structure.The house is out in an open field. They keep the chooks safe with a mereema, and Joel advised that the healthy ecosystem down at the ephemeral creek provided animals that the foxes took first!

People loved the 'egg mobile'

It was a great day, an inspiring farm and a beautiful environment on a glorious sunny day. The $10 entrance for the walk, talk and sensational lunch was a bargain!!

The true value of oil

Kirstin Kimball runs an amazing farm  in the US, where they use draught horses to do the work of ploughing, harvesting etc. Have a look at her blog to see how this farm feeds her community. 

Kirsten and her partner are considering reducing their 'horse power' for more conventional fossil fuel power.

They are struggling with the costs of employing staff to manage the amazingly beautiful animal work force amongst other pressures.

They quote Bill McKibben's statistic that one barrel of oil contains the same amount of energy as TEN years of manual labour.One barell costs approx $100 and 10 years labour $250K - $1 million. 

As peak oil approaches the restructuring means lots of shocks and adjustments are to be expected.

Machine at work

Cup Moth Caterpillars

These glorious creatures are every where at the moment, an indication of the abundance of leaf matter for these creatures to eat.

Look out for more information about these flambouyant looking creatures in an upcoming edition of Tanya Loos nature notes in the local Advocate newspaper.

Cup moth caterpillar approx 2cm long