Caring for Communities, Gardens and Country, S26 Ep29

Yeah, well, when we came to Clearwind, it's 40 acres and it's in Glenhope, which is an area that has no pub, no school, no... centre of community or anything.

It's just rural farms and small holdings.

So we always knew that we were going to keep horses.

So the 40 acres, the grazing was very important to us.

And there were some big old trees.

The reason that we were able to put a Trust for Nature covenant on it was because there were more than 10 big old yellow box and as you probably know most yellow box have been felled because they tend to grow on the better soils so trust for nature were very happy to covenant our property which means that nobody can alter once we sell the property nobody can alter the way the land has been managed that's wonderful It is wonderful, except that, you know, humans, you'd think that that would safeguard those trees.

But of course, what happened in 2009 was that Black Saturday came along and all bar one of those trees has died now from being burned.

And the reason they didn't survive was because they were already really old trees.

And then if you remember, we had 10 years of the millennial drought, and then the bushfire coming right at the end of it was more than those trees could manage.

But, of course, where every one of those trees disappeared from, there's millions of seedlings coming up, which means that we really need to find the energy to thin them.

Because that would have happened originally with Aboriginal gentle burning.

But nowadays that we don't have fire, except for big fires, in the landscape, it means that those trees go on and they achieve canopy closure, which means that they, instead of having one big old tree, you've got a hundred all at the same height, all vying for water and nutrients.

And those trees don't flower as well.

They don't produce, they obviously don't have hollows.

So they're not anything like the ecological value that one big old tree would be.

So what was I talking

about? About clear wind and your vision

there.

And so we have built windbreaks around each of our paddocks.

So it's like patchwork paddocks.

where you've got green in the middle which is the pasture and around each of them there's the dark green of the windbreak which is full of all sorts of species where we've collected the seed ourselves so we know where it comes from and it's all local to the area.

And the bird life has just blossomed incredibly.

It's so exciting, even though we're a little island of indigenous vegetation in the middle of a sea of agricultural land.

But just this morning, now today's the 11th of August, isn't it? So it's very early.

Wynne heard the first pallid cuckoo today.

Yeah, well, when we came to Clearwind, it's 40 acres and it's in Glenhope, which is an area that has no pub, no school, no... centre of community or anything.

It's just rural farms and small holdings.

So we always knew that we were going to keep horses.

So the 40 acres, the grazing was very important to us.

And there were some big old trees.

The reason that we were able to put a Trust for Nature covenant on it was because there were more than 10 big old yellow box and as you probably know most yellow box have been felled because they tend to grow on the better soils so trust for nature were very happy to covenant our property which means that nobody can alter once we sell the property nobody can alter the way the land has been managed that's wonderful It is wonderful, except that, you know, humans, you'd think that that would safeguard those trees.

But of course, what happened in 2009 was that Black Saturday came along and all bar one of those trees has died now from being burned.

And the reason they didn't survive was because they were already really old trees.

And then if you remember, we had 10 years of the millennial drought, and then the bushfire coming right at the end of it was more than those trees could manage.

But, of course, where every one of those trees disappeared from, there's millions of seedlings coming up, which means that we really need to find the energy to thin them.

Because that would have happened originally with Aboriginal gentle burning.

But nowadays that we don't have fire, except for big fires, in the landscape, it means that those trees go on and they achieve canopy closure, which means that they, instead of having one big old tree, you've got a hundred all at the same height, all vying for water and nutrients.

And those trees don't flower as well.

They don't produce, they obviously don't have hollows.

So they're not anything like the ecological value that one big old tree would be.

So what was I talking

about? About clear wind and your vision

there.

And so we have built windbreaks around each of our paddocks.

So it's like patchwork paddocks.

where you've got green in the middle which is the pasture and around each of them there's the dark green of the windbreak which is full of all sorts of species where we've collected the seed ourselves so we know where it comes from and it's all local to the area.

And the bird life has just blossomed incredibly.

It's so exciting, even though we're a little island of indigenous vegetation in the middle of a sea of agricultural land.

But just this morning, now today's the 11th of August, isn't it? So it's very early.

Wynne heard the first pallid cuckoo today.