In early 2017, Dustin and his wife, Bonnie, started farming a small portion of their family farm in Toodyay, how they had always wanted to. We began by adding diversity to our pastures by planting many subtropical C4 perennial grasses in between our existing paddocks of tagasaste, reducing pesticides and fungicides on our grain crops, and running our cattle according to Allan Savory's Holistic Management. We now run the whole farm with our natural philosophy cropping 1,800 acres and have a self-replacing herd of cattle of around 400 breeders on dedicated perennial pastures.
We believe this diverse diet contributes to the health of our cattle, where we have nearly eliminated pink eye, which can be a major problem in our area. Cattle are not given any growth hormones, antibiotics or chemical dewormers, ever. As a result, we are seeing a return in dung beetle activity, even during dry summer months. Cattle are never fed grain or feed pellets, meaning they are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. We give them a natural sea salt (SEA-90) which is very high in trace minerals and apply dolomite to our pastures, as a good source of calcium and magnesium.
This year we have begun grazing our cereal crops throughout the growing season as well. We then harvest that paddock and send the barley away to be malted and turned into beer at Funk Brewing Co in the Swan Valley. This is full circle regenerative, to us: "the-beef-that-grazed-the-barley-that-was-made-into-the-beer" also ends up in the restaurant.
We take a natural approach to cropping, where we are reducing chemical use wherever possible. We have almost completely eliminated fungicides and insecticides; we are phasing out pre-emergents and are using less glyphosate. We don’t spray our pastures. Instead of fungicides, we use high quality worm leachate and that also acts as a plant stimulant and soil inoculant. Last year we coated over 65 tonnes of seed across 632 hectares!
Personally, we are influenced by the Weston A Price Foundation. We milk our own Jersey cow each morning, try to make bread out of our own farm-grown wheat, and we slaughter and butcher our own beef, lamb and pork. We are passionate about constantly improving the vitality of our farm for our children to enjoy in the future and we hope to share the benefits of this with you.
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