Country Today - October 9th

a go? Thanks Libby yeah it's been a great six years here at Chatsworth House so far only at the start of our journey.

We started getting interested in this way of farming back about 10 years ago when we were going through some gut health sort of issues with kids and myself, nothing too major, but it kind of led us down this gut health journey.

And at the same time, I was also starting to get really interested in soil health.

And the more I read and learned, the more I realized how interconnected they were.

And yeah, and then I was introduced to the, I'd sort of started our research and then was introduced to the term regenerative agriculture by a family friend who which led us on a journey of lots of YouTubing and looking at reading books and starting to attend conferences and gradually came to the conclusion that that was sort of the way we wanted to try and go to build our soil health and the natural capital on our farm sort of underpinning everything we do.

I think the take-home message from the conference, or at least one of them, was how inspired farmers are and how much enjoyment they're getting out of the camaraderie but the intellectual stimulation of learning so much every day.

Yeah, I think that's, yeah, a really great point.

I think being curious and learning is such a great way of being and always knowing that you can learn and do more is stimulating and exciting.

You know, you sort of sometimes come out of school and university and it's a young sort of person and think you know it all.

And then the more you learn, the more you realise you've still got to learn.

So, yeah, I think we'll be learning forever, which is a great thing.

You had some fabulous speakers, many of whom I've met before.

And every time I speak to them again, I learn some more.

Pity I'm not a farmer.

But the proof was really in the pudding yesterday with the soil pitch.

I think a lot of the people were staggered at the amount of progress you've made in just five or six years.

Yeah, it was really great to have the soil pit.

That's the first time we've done one on our farm.

I mean, we've taken a shovel out to the paddock plenty of times, but to see the full profile there was great.

And yeah, it has the top soil and where our roots are getting to, we think has nearly doubled in that particular area over the last year, five years.

And yeah, it can really mainly contribute that to sort of some, yeah, getting our grazing management under control, getting perennial, multi sort of species perennial pastures in there and and yeah addressing some soil constraints with lime and compost and a few other bits and pieces so yeah it's really satisfying and encouraging for what we can still achieve in the future

what sort of results are you getting with livestock you have angus cattle and sheep

Yeah, we've got maternal composite sheep for meat and, yeah, Angus cattle breeding herd and also a trading portion as well.

Yeah, the livestock, all solid results, nothing sort of too out of the park, but they're all healthy and I would say our animal health program has changed over the years and you know worms are not really an issue anymore with the rotational grazing and um yeah the animals are all in a really good condition we also focus heavily on low stress stock handling which has a big impact as well

and obviously this season is exceptional i don't think i've seen the country look that good for years but a lot of the surrounding farmers are now going into cropping you're not tempted