There’s a quote I like: “Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a 6-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.” Paul Harvey said that.
No matter how advanced we become, everything comes back to the land.
I came back this weekend to find that the cows had gone rogue – they broke through the electric fence, decimated my paddocks and stripped all the trees bare while I was away. And then they collectively stare back at me, like I owe them rent. Absolute vandals. The disrespect.
But they’re exactly what I needed.
For years, I’ve paid my neighbor to slash down the grass across this property. It’s costly and consumes a lot of diesel. I could bale hay and sell it for a tidy little profit, but I opt not to each year – as the intent is regeneration. Slashing returns organic matter to the soil – feeding the land rather than depleting it. The paddocks here had been unmanaged for years before I took over – I’ve been working towards rebuilding and improving the soil.
I was busy at work last November, that I missed the window to slash for the first time in years. By the time I got around to it, it’s fire season, the grass had grown too tall and dangerous to cut. Enter the cows.
The cows have done an outstanding job. In regenerative farming, grazing animals aren’t just takers – they give back. As they move through the land, they clear the paddocks. They fertilize the soil. The tall grass they don’t eat, they trample down – creating organic matter that feeds back into the soil and builds carbon.
My neighbor, the cattle farmer, jokingly calls me the professor. I call him the professor of farming – he’s an expert in land stewardship. These cows belong to him. In exchange for agisting them here, he’s clearing acres of highly invasive Gorse weed, which had infested the property for over two decades. Clearing it will allow me to restore the land with native trees. It’s a slow process, but that’s land management – playing the long game.
I often get asked how I manage all the animals on my farm – once the infrastructure is set up, it doesn’t make much difference whether you have five cows or twenty five. As long as you don’t overstock and deplete the land’s resources, the system takes care of itself.
I’m no farmer and I don’t pretend to be one. Something about the ecosystem, the balance and the long-term thinking draws me in. Regenerative Futures is one of RMIT University’s key agendas – while I see it through my work in Digital Design, I also see it here on the farm. Both are about sustainability, resilience and working with natural systems rather than against them – creating conditions for long-term renewal.
Yes, all good in theory – but the cows remain unconvinced. The plan for the coming months is to build proper fencing for…… crowd control.
