28 The Reset Transition Part 2
In which Phil continues to learn new ways of working the land. He joins forces with some regeneratively-minded farmers and finds a new lease of life.
Rod and Katrina had been on what could be loosely called a regenerative path for over 20 years and were starting to look outside as the world started to warm up to the new agricultural ideas they had embraced. They determined to find a way to share what they had learned with people interested in connecting to the land in a different way. Plans had been slowly evolving for the creation of an education hub to be based on the farm. Biological soil farming, new stock handling and grazing techniques, Aboriginal and holistic management thinking created a rich and fertile brew of ideas to explore.
It soon became clear that having Phil on board was a game changer. They would be able to expand activities on the farm, allowing more experimentation for things like creating their own compost extract. Being able to share ideas was as important as the added physical labour, enabling them to leap ahead with strategies around how best to leverage what they had learned in the Regen zone. They started to see they were in a great position to use the farm as a demonstration site to help other farmers transition to more whole-of-landscape farming systems.
ONE MAN’S WEEDS ARE ANOTHER MAN’S CHEAP COVER CROP
Our conversation rolled on and Phil started talking about Gimlet Ridge Farm and the scope being on a farm advanced in regen practises, to feed his curiosity about where new land management ideas could take them.
He told me some of what could be seen as topsy-turvy aspects of Gimlet Ridge. Rod had been sourcing rubbish seed for a few seasons from other farmers. This is radish and oat seeds, resistant weeds, the plants that have outwitted every herbicide known to man.
Phil spelt it out: If you can’t kill the radish and the oats you can’t grow a crop. Conventional farming thinking is logical and linear, get rid of the unwanted plants and grow the wanted plants.
But for Rod’s purposes, coming from the angle that nature thrives on diversity and cooperation this seed is perfect. One man’s weeds are another man’s cheap cover crops and food for sheep.
For starters they’re bullet proof. These are seeds that are going to come up vigorously in tough soils and any conditions – that is working with these plants strengths. They will hold the earth together and join with all other resident seeds to be part of the plant diversity that will in turn encourage microbial diversity in the soil. And the sheep - don’t forget the sheep - get cheap and reliable nutrients.
EAT THE PROBLEM
Eat the problem. It’s basic good sense – even though it turns conventional farming practise on its head. And I would add my own thoughts. In the same way we could be eating the cats, the crickets, the roos and anything else we deem vigorous, unendingly abundant and thriving within the given conditions. How’s that for a reset? A re-framing. What is counter-intuitive here is being able to re-frame the ‘problem’ as a valuable resource.
LIME STORIES
Phil talked me through the 4-year process of little lightbulb moments that enabled him to see the use of lime on the land from another perspective. Spreading lime on cropping paddocks in the wheatbelt has been the proven way to bring up your ph. The problem being tackled is that chemical additives over the years has seen the soil become more acid, most cereal crops struggle at 5 ph and are more comfortable at 7, neutral, and lime is believed to fix acid soils.
Sometime into his 2015 trial Phil went out with a bunch of farmers and a HiTech Ag agronomist to a Department of Ag field demonstration looking at the efficacy of lime in changing ph. Soil wedges were dug up and indicator fluid showed that where the lime penetrated the ph was higher. The microbiologist in the audience, objected. That’s not true!
Imagine the scene – one lone voice– knowing he would be dismissed as a mad man. He pointed to the tracery of roots in the area being treated and suggested a different scenario: that the roots, fed by the calcium dust from the lime particles, stimulate microbe reactions that leads to a change in the ph level,’ it’s not the lime, it’s the roots’. Same picture – different story.
The Department of Ag man and a bus load of blokes dismissed his interpretation out of hand. They couldn’t see it.
LIME LESS
When Phil started working on the Butler property, Rod was getting good ph readings in parts of his farm – and this was in a district where Phil knew that a ph of 4.5 to 5.5 (at the acid end of the spectrum) would be the average. Yet Rod hadn’t added lime to much of his property for some years and had achieved this level of alkalinity naturally, by encouraging the development of a living eco-system. By boosting biodiversity, increasing the biological activity in his paddocks, reducing use of chemical additives and managing grazing of his sheep, Rod had helped foster a complex web of responses that led to a number of outcomes – one of which was more neutral ph reading.
This is a complex, many faceted problem – applying lime is a bit of a band-aid solution when we consider the variables involved including root-resistant compacted soil lying underneath surface cultivated areas and the capacity, or not, of the soil to support plants to take up the calcium and nitrogen they need to grow well.
At this point I’ll handball it all to Nicole Masters – biological ag scientist – who states that there isn’t a growing problem that can’t be solved by soil biology. Four years in and the penny dropped for Phil.
QUANTIFYING EXPANSION
This stuff is tough to quantify. How do you measure the difference between having 180 mm of rain in a season that just about crashes your farm business – or a 180 mm rainfall in a season that your soil and plants weather without too much pain because they have enough juice in the whole system to survive hard times.
You can learn a lot from a trial, but it is really brought home to farmers as a lived experience on familiar paddocks, working year after year with animals and soil and plants within the same paddocks of a farm and doing something different – then, down the track, sensing different patterns emerging and seeing unexpected changes in areas where you weren’t even looking.
ON GIMLET RIDGE
As I write this, Easter is over and Phil and Rod have put in an estimated 800ha crop. They engineered a pretty complicated seed coating regime – inoculating with fulvates, humates and microbial solutions all done with augurs and a fair bit of experimentation.
As Phil trundles Rod’s old tractor up and down the paddocks going about the business of seeding he is putting it all together in his mind. He is encouraged that a few curious locals are on board, asking questions and is working out ways to tell the story.
Improved root penetration
Phil knows he is noticing stuff that the Gimlet Ridge folk take for granted. The softness of the soil, the way it falls into little aggregates – he reckons Rod has left the hard-capped soils and dust scenarios behind and is so far into a new normal that he has forgotten the reality many farmers in the Wheatbelt are dealing with.
PHIL’S LEARNING
We started this story with Phil setting up a farm trial because he wanted to reduce his input costs, and keep his partner in life and the farm, happy. Farmers are pretty level headed - Phil only did the trial because he knew it wouldn’t cost him more. When it came to treating his whole property, he simply swapped out some of the cost of chemical fertiliser and replaced it with the microbial solution.
But learning about the role of microbes in plant growth has blasted him out of the accounting zone into a whole other universe where money has become only one aspect of a new way of farming. He knows that he has learnt more about soil and plants in the last 5 years than he has in the previous 35 years on the land and it just keeps getting more interesting.
THE RESET
What’s different about the Gimlet Ridge Farm business approach is its expansiveness, its multi-dimensionality. These farmers are actioning the hopes people are currently sharing on social media. You know all those videos that cycle beautiful natural scenes with speeded-up urban busystreetscenes and a soothing voice talk-over telling us that the pandemic is a chance for humanity to reset? Well, Gimlet Ridge Farm is well into Reset mode.
Set in harsh country, on the edge of the wheatbelt before it becomes the Rangelands, Gimlet Ridge country has some dramatically beautiful rock formations and sustains areas that were once important cultural places for generations of Aboriginal lives. They are working with this country so it can again become a centre for positive, creative change in the region.
Gimlet Ridge Farm
REGENERATIVE LAND CULTURE BUSINESS
Rod, Phil, Katrina and Clint Hansen were going full bore on a business plan for Gimlet Ridge before the virus ground aspects of their activity to a halt. But a few things have been set in motion and one is the registering of a new business name Regenerative Land Culture.
Rod has been working with Clint, a Minang and Balladong Ngoogar elder, for some years now. He credits a big part of the land and soul healing on Gimlet Ridge to Clint’s custodial approach. In the new business venture Aboriginal lore will join forces with the best practise of biological thinking of Western science. Rod figures we have a lot to learn from Aboriginal people about the land we are on – now the whitefellas are catching up in their thinking, the time is ripe for a true cross-cultural connection.
As for now, the crop’s in and there’s a great story developing in connection with a company called Carbon Neutral, some land that needs waking up, two Aboriginal shepherds and a mob of Gimlet Ridge sheep on a nearby property. This is a reset story, coming soon.
PHIL THE TRAINER
Phil’s on fire with this stuff. He has staked out a role for himself in the Regenerative Land Culture venture, part of which involves having a crack at getting info on the doings on the farm out via social media – starting with the seeding program. Phil and the partners are feeling the interest from other farmers and are keen to offer help for those wanting to step towards a whole-of-landscape farming system.
Time to look at finding money to get some of these ideas off the ground.
Phil’s in full transition. He’s on a mission,
