04/06/2026
Well it sure has been awhile …. Things have been a little hectic 🤪
So it’s June, which means time for the cows to come home before calving.
But this time it’s with mixed feelings. Because this will be for the last time.😢
For the reason of, the forestry grazing will be taken up by the GKNP……….
And so ends lots of tradition and heritage plus also cattleman / bush skills that are getting lost. We have been only been doing such traditions relatively short compared with generations of family’s who have been doing this for decades.
We put our cows out into the bush each for the 3 months of autumn and then they return before calving. Depending on season, depends of which bush we use. Not every bush section gets used every year.
These girls are our 6, 7 and 8 year old cows starting to come home. This allows us to manage and maintain our feed budget, rest periods and ground cover in our rotational grazing system plus also use this to manage the fuel load in the forestry plus our own freehold bush sections.
This decision has caused major stress to family’s plus huge impact on farms and business.
So now the focus shifts to management of these areas. We have managed and maintained all at our costs - non native w**ds, no native pests, fencing, fire trails , tracks and fire fuel loads. This also protects and benefits our neighbours and our communities.
Our knowledge and maintenance of these areas proved to be extremely valuable during the 2019 bush fires 🔥. Fire trails were clean, tracks opened, knowledge of water points and wet gullies, all providing a huge help to our firefighters plus making sure they were as save as possible.
So where to from here…… 🤷♂️ funding, management, fuel loads, labour, equipment, w**d management, pest management, fire management, fire trails, tracks, fencing…………
Well all i can say is this
good luck 🤞 everyone - see you all on the other side 😜