00:20Hey Luke here from Golden Hill Farm. Just thought to do a bit of a brief
00:24reintroduction and some people might know what what we're about, who we are. So we
00:31are Luke D, Coa and Finn. We've had Golden Hill Farm for four years now. We're
00:41practicing so-called regenerative farming or conscious agriculture which I like
00:47to call it as well. When we arrived it was practically a bare-bones farm. We had
00:54practically zero fencing and we didn't really know what we wanted to do.
01:00We had a brief idea about how we wanted to farm. We wanted to farm with the
01:06environment not against it. So practically meaning we didn't want to use chemicals.
01:11We wanted to graze our animals and grow food in a way that was productive and
01:18work with the ecosystem and even like what the true would be what we want to
01:24really do is rebuild the ecosystem while growing really good food for our
01:29customers. Here on Golden Hill Farm we're a first-generation farm which if you don't
01:35know what that means if you're new to the farming. We didn't have family that farmed
01:42before us or in the last generation. I myself had a very tiny little bit of
01:50exposure to farming when I was really young in country Victoria and probably
01:55that's where a bit of drive and passion came from to get back and buy our own
02:01farm. We have a multi-species operation so mixed farming. We run about 20 to 40 head of
02:11cattle at any one time. At the moment we do have some sheep here as well but we
02:15think that's gonna be we're gonna phase that out for a little while just till we
02:20get a bit more fencing underway. We grow pasture raised pigs which go really good
02:25they're a great animal for the environment but they can do a lot of
02:30damage if not managed correctly. With our pigs we grow like heritage breed pigs so we
02:39don't focus on fast-growing pink pigs which you'll commercially get in the
02:45supermarket or anything like that. Most of our pigs are a duroc, a saddleback or a
02:51berkshire or a large black type cross. We believe these pigs do a lot
03:00better in the way we want to farm which is in the paddock. So the pigs live in the
03:04paddock their whole life. They're not in styes and they're a lot slower growing but
03:09the flavor is tenfold hundred times better. And with our cows we're running an
03:16Inguni cross mix and putting some other breed bulls across these cattle. So we're
03:23using Inguni for tick resilience. They do well in this environment. It's a hot
03:28environment. We have a dry winter so we can have big dry spells and the feed can be quite
03:36poor for certain times of year. So these cattle are an African breed and they do
03:41really well in this environment. And the big plus for us is the parasite
03:47resistance because we're not using chemical on the farm. We're finding this
03:51breed is doing wonders for that and making our life easier. So with our cattle we are so
03:57rotating or time controlled grazing some may use the term. So we're moving the
04:03cattle around the property they'll depending on paddock size and numbers at the
04:08time well that will determine how long they are in each paddock or how often
04:13they get moved and also cattle numbers what we how many we have. So throughout
04:18summer we could be moving the cows twice a day and they could be in only half an
04:24acre but at the moment it's winter it's a little bit dry. We've got a few things
04:28happening that does allow us flexibility to go into a ten acre paddock and leave
04:34them in there for the week. One of our main focuses at Golden Hill Farm which Dee and I
04:40both wanted to do is grow food and have a direct connection to the customer. So that
04:45is why we've chosen the direct market for this business because we've found selling
04:50to the customer it's definitely rewarding seeing where your food goes and there is
04:56a better margin and a little bit better I know not profitability but it just works
05:03better for small-scale farming. If we were to just send our cattle to the meat
05:08works or to the sale for the size of our farm it would never create or generate
05:13enough income for us both to work on the farm full-time which is our goal. The
05:18benefits of having the on-farm butcher when we do have this facility up and
05:23running will be we have a lot more control of the products we're producing
05:29and the end product especially. It will give us a little bit more leeway give us
05:35more time on the farm and reduce costs like off-site processing costs which will
05:41be a really good thing which will eventually allow us to get full-time on the
05:48farm quicker and even one of the big things we want to do is be able to
05:52employ people in our region. Also at Golden Hill Farm we raise pasture raised
05:59eggs so this is laying hens. Our laying hens are out in the paddock because they're
06:04out in the paddock they actually get to live the life of a real chook. They actually
06:08can scratch, dust bath, they get green grass, access to bugs and insects because
06:15they're obviously an omnivore they don't need just grain. The eggs are amazing and we
06:23rotate the chickens throughout the paddocks so once a week or every ten days
06:27we move the whole chicken pen and internally in that week or ten days we'll
06:32move the actual just the caravan three times or four times depending. If you
06:37leave your chickens on the in the same section of land for too long or the same
06:42part of the paddock can be very detrimental but if you move them and you
06:45get your timing right it can be amazingly beneficial what the chickens can do for
06:51your paddock. So we notice especially in January like our growing season throughout
06:57summer where we've ran our chickens to where we haven't ran our chickens is just
07:03what looks like two different paddocks but you can draw a line straight down the
07:06middle. It's amazing what they actually do if you get it right which is our goal all the time.
07:11And with our eggs so we have our egg certification now so we are a certified
07:17egg producer here in Queensland so you can find our eggs at Hovey Bay 1770 and in
07:26Bundaberg. So recently we've installed about 4.8 kilometers of
07:31internal fencing and 1.5 kilometers of water lines which has made our farming
07:37journey or our daily operations and daily moves for the cattle so much easier. So
07:43we have been working in partnership with Burnett Mary Regional Group. We're in their
07:49Climate Smart Ag program and also their Empowering Adaptive Graziers program and
07:55part of them programs were helping us with some funding to do a lot of this fencing and we chose
08:03electric fencing. It's just economical, simple to install but without this fencing we could not farm the way we
08:13want to or the way we are and it's made our lives a hundred times easier. We really
08:18appreciate BMRG for getting on board and seeing what we actually want to do and believing in us.
08:26But yeah the fencing is just like a game changer and water so every paddock now has two or three
08:34water points and we can move cattle. They've got access to water everywhere on the farm. This has
08:39just been amazing. Previously we're cutting up to 1,000 liters, 1,500 liters of water per day in summer
08:46and it
08:47just wasn't, oh we just couldn't keep doing it. It was not a viable option. One of the main things
08:53as
08:53well with the butcher room and possibly in the future a poultry abattoir would be our dream.
08:58What we really want to do is rebuild the food system or the local food system. It's been one of
09:03our
09:03things or our mantras or what we've really wanted to do from the beginning is have local food available
09:11in our region. So we live in a highly productive, a highly, well a big food going region and local
09:21food
09:22is just not that easily accessible especially proteins like chicken, beef, pork and lamb. It is
09:29becoming a little bit easier but it's just not readily available so if we can get the butcher shop
09:34up and running then we can possibly bring prices down which will make it a lot more accessible for the
09:43regular, regular person.
09:49Just had a new calf two days ago. It was actually the morning of our dinner event. The mother is
09:56this
09:56one over here. She's actually a first calf heifer so she's not a big frame cow. She's quite small
10:03but one of the reasons we did choose the Ingunis is the ability to calf with ease and produce a
10:10small calf and
10:12so it was quite really good that she carved without any drama because we were so busy on the day
10:19anyway
10:19and really didn't have a chance to keep an eye on it but she had no dramas at all and
10:25so we're pretty
10:25happy with that and the calf is absolutely tiny. Beautiful little first cross Inguni Red Angus
10:31Droughtmaster. Little steer. Very quiet. And mum's pretty good too.
