Holistic Pastoral
“Holistic regenerative farming systems that grow clean ethical, pastured meat”.
Who we are:
We are a small, local farming family. We live in the township of Alexandra, along the beautiful and fertile Goulburn River valley just north of Melbourne. The river here, is known as Warring to the local Tungurrang people and we pay respect to the elders of the past, those of the present and the future.
A few years ago, we decided to pack up our lives and quit our jobs in Sydney. Daniel and Aldona moved with their two young sons, Jarra and Marley, to rural Victoria for a simpler and slower paced life. Joining us from NSW is Daniel’s horticulturalist brother, James. Together we are working towards growing the cleanest and most ethical food we can.
What we grow:
We primarily grow free range, chemical free chickens and lamb. Our breed selections have been very important to our systems, and we proudly grow Wiltipoll, Dorper and Meatmaster sheep. Our chickens are Cornish Cross, Ross and Cobb varieties which are amazingly efficient feed converters. We have bee hives too, and although the bees keep themselves, we sell their honey from time to time. (We are also growing a small herd of cattle at the moment, but they are not fully integrated into our farming systems as yet).
How we farm:
Our farming system is a little unique, in that everything on our farm is intentionally connected to each other (including us). Our Holistic farming system is based upon permaculture and regenerative farming practices already used in Australia and around the world, by many enlightened farmers.
Simply put; we mob graze our animals, and they follow each other around the land in a rotational grazing pattern.
Everyday our animals get moved to a fresh patch of pasture that has been rested for up to 12 months. This means the land gets very long periods of rest between intensive and short grazing periods. In turn, this means that our pastures bank more carbon, are ever increasing in organic matter, biodiversity and water storage capabilities.
We use electric fences to mob graze our animals, and each animal in our systems has a special role to fill. Our sheep’s job in the system is to mulch the old grass, and to prune the new shoots off the grass, to stimulate more growth (it’s a bit like mowing the lawn). Following behind the sheep we rotate our industrious Cobb and Ross variety of meat chickens. They walk the lengths of the fields scratching and spreading manure, eating insects and grass shoots, and being free like chicken should be! Our bees pollinate the pastures and trees around us, ensuring that both plant and animal diversity is vibrant. Although mother earth has the final say on what happens to the land, our role in the whole system is to steer the animals around the landscape and to ensure that it stay as balanced as possible
We use organic principles and it should go without saying that we don’t use fertilisers for our pasture, we don’t use chemicals or antibiotics on our animals, (unless it’s absolutely necessary), we use GMO free feed as much as possible, we don’t own or use heavy machinery and we don’t even own the lands that we farm (we borrow, trade and lease all our farm land).
All our animals are raised to live and feed from our pastures, but pasture alone (especially from old, archaic farming practices) is sometimes not enough for certain animals to thrive on. Therefore, we carefully select our supplement feeds for our animals. We supplement feed our chickens with the best and most ethically sourced feed we can, and although we have not yet reached totally organic grains and meat meals, we are working towards this as a matter of priority. Our sheep are sometimes supplement fed Lucerne hay, although this is often dependent on the condition of the pastures, and our years goal is always to reduce our feed inputs to 0.
How to buy our produce:
Our next batch of chickens will be available on Wednesday the 3rd October.
We are currently selling chickens via a monthly pre-order email system.
Customers reply to our monthly updates via email, how many chickens that want for the month ahead and we invoice them using PayPal.
Once customers’ orders are secured with payment we deliver our chickens both locally (around Alexandra and to the Melbourne suburb of Coburg) in the first week of every month.
Our chickens are sold whole, and are huge, weighing on average 2.5kg. This is enough to feed a large family of 4-6 in one meal, or a smaller family for many meals (don’t forget to keep the bones for making stock!!).
Lamb will be available from December 2018 onwards.
More information:
For more information about our farm, our animals and us, you can find us on the web and Facebook at:
www.holisticpastoral.com.au &
www.facebook.com/holistic.pastoral
Feel free to email us at: holistic.pastoral@gmail.com or even give us call for a yarn about farming and good food, on 0438 799 105.
Cheers,
The Holistic Pastoral team
Aldona, James and Daniel.
