Heritage Tomato Sauce Recipe

Wonderful with Highland sausages, pies, sausage rolls and pasties

INGREDIENTS

• 2.5kg ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
• 2 large onions, coarsely chopped
• 10 whole cloves
• 10 whole allspice berries
• 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
• 1 clove garlic, sliced
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 cups (clear) white malt vinegar

• Place tomato, onion, cloves, berries, paprika, garlic, cinnamon and salt in a large saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the boil. Simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour or until the tomato breaks down.

• Add the sugar and vinegar. Simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for a further hour and 15 minutes or until mixture reduces, thickens and is of a saucy consistency. Adjust seasoning.

• Stain mixture through a coarse sieve into a large bowl, in batches, pressing down strongly to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard solids. Pour hot mixture into sterilised bottles. Seal. Store in a cool, dark place until ready to use. Once opened, store in the fridge.

Enjoy! 

Highland steak and ale pie

Steak and ale pie is one of the most comforting dishes you can make for a cold winters night.  Packed with tender highland beef, rich gravy and plenty of vegetables, this one is a family favourite served with mashed potato and green beans.

Ingredients

• 900g stewing steak such as chuck, brisket or skirt, chopped to a 2cm medium dice

• 25g flour, plus extra for dusting

• 100g butter

• 2 onions roughly chopped

• 2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

• 2 medium carrots, roughly chopped

• 150g button mushrooms

• 2 sprigs fresh thyme

• 400ml good-quality ale (we use local Loch Brewery and Distillery County Ale)

• 500ml beef stock

• Salt and pepper

• 1 egg, beaten for glazing

• 300g ready-made rolled puff pastry

Method

1. Pour flour into a bowl and season well. Coat the meat with the seasoned flour.

2. Place half the butter in a heated pan and add the meat to sear. Sear all over until golden brown. Don’t overcrowd the pan.

3. Add the vegetables, herbs, ale and stock. Bring to a simmer, then cover with a lid and gently simmer for 1 hr. When cooked, season, add the remaining butter and pour into an ovenproof serving dish.

4. When you are ready to make the pie preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C for fan forced) and brush the edge of the dish with the beaten egg. Roll out the pastry using as little flour as possible and place over the dish. Pinch the edges of the dish so that the pastry will stick to it and trim off any remaining pieces of pastry from around the edge. Brush the pastry top thoroughly with the remaining beaten egg pierce the top and place on a baking tray.

5. Bake in the oven for 20-30 mins until the pastry is golden brown on top.

You can just complete up to end of step 3 and refrigerate mix for use later in the week if preferred.

Enjoy!

A good quality traditional ale works best, this one has chilli seasoning

Serve with fresh garden veggies

Shawn the sheep getting shorn (along with his mates Sox and Rip van Wrinkle)

In a modern world it is hard to be truly self sufficient, but we try and various times of the year come close in a food sense. As well as our veggie garden and our cattle, we have a very productive orchard that we planted some 10 years ago with apples, pears, citrus, olives, figs and stonefruit trees.  until last year this needed regular mowing the keep it under control and reduce the numbers of - in Aussie rhyming slang - Joe Blake numbers down.

Last October we had a 9 hour road trip each way for a birthday party and to pick up three babydoll Southdown sheep to do the mowing for us. Against my expectations, these guys: Shawn, Sox and Rip van Wrinkle are lovely little fellas with individual personalities. Names obviously mean that they are not destined for the oven.

This month the local footy club held one of their annual fundraisers, a sheep shearing day. Getting a shearer to come and shear 3 sheep is nigh on impossible, so the Poowong footy club brings in three shearer’s from bigger sheep areas for the day and all the local (pet) sheep come in for a haircut to raise money for the club. A social as well as practical occasion, we caught up with many friends and neighbours. Community. The sheep are now tidy and svelte and have a few months to grow back their fleece for Winter, while minimising the risk of fleecerot and fly strike in our wet but still warm Autumn.  

Sue’s next project is, needless to say, wool spinning and felting... watch this space. 

Sweeping up the wool skirtings (the dirty trim fro the edge of the fleece)

Back home, a few kg lighter

Homemade roasted heritage tomato and garlic soup

As I said in our last post we have a lovely abundance of veggies from the garden at this time of the year. Tomatoes are my number 1 favourite. We eat a lot fresh in salads or just sliced with a bit of salt and pepper. We are getting ready for our annual tomato bottling drive too. Today though, I decided to make a great roast tomato and garlic soup with thyme that could double as a gazpacho and also be reduced down to a pasata. Roasting the tomatoes adds extra sweetness and flavour to this wholesome soup. Here it is!

Ingredients

1kg of heritage tomatoes, halved

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 sprigs fresh thyme

1 medium brown onion, chopped

2 fresh garlic cloves, crushed

200g starchy potato, peeled, chopped

 2 tablespoons tomato paste

 2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 cups  vegetable stock

Method

Preheat oven to 220C/200C fan-forced. Place tomatoes on a baking tray. Drizzle tomato with half the oil and top with thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes or until tender.

Heat oil in a saucepan. Add onion, garlic and potato. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Add tomato paste and sugar. Stir in stock and 1 cup cold water. Cover. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low. Simmer, for 15 minutes or until potato is just tender.

Add roasted heritage tomatoes to the pot. Add 2-3 pinches of good quality sea salt. Simmer for another 15 minutes. Carefully blend soup with a stick mixer until smooth.

Sprinkle with thyme. Serve soup with crusty bread.

Abundance from the garden, orchard and paddocks (And how to make jam, it’s very easy)

Mid Summer is here with our usual Gippsland weather swings from sweltering 40C temps to low teens with the fire on and some decent rains thrown in for good measure. This is a very productive time in the veggie garden and one of the times of the year when we are completely self sufficient. All our own beef, veggies, fruit, home made breads. In fact we usually have too much produce and this year is no exception, with an abundance of tomatoes, lettuces, chillies, zucchini’s, summer squash, beans, cucumbers, kale, broccoli, cauliflowers, figs, stone fruit, raspberries and the apples just starting to come through. We have about 35 tomatoes in this year with 12 different varieties from sweet yellow wapsipinicon peac, tigerella, tommy toe, green zebra and pink bumble bee to big meaty lobular tomatoes like the beefsteak, costoluto genovese, and mortgage saver. The zucchini’s have included green, yellow and pale striped green ones and the beans have been purple, yellow and green. Great for colourful salads. Also lots of fresh herbs with an abundance of mint, parsley and basil. So we use as much as we can, give lots away to friends and family and preserve the rest. Jams, pickles, chutneys, sauces, Varcola  jars of preserved  fruit and veggies, and some dried chilli and herbs. It all comes from hard work in the garden, a great climate with plenty of water and attention to selecting lovely heirloom seeds. We have had lots and lots of visitors since new year and it’s been lovely to feed almost exclusively from our gardens, paddocks and orchard.

Jam Recipe 

Makes approx 16 jars 

2kg ripe fruit (peeled and de-stoned as necessary)

1.7kg sugar

Juice of 1 lemons

1. Prepare the fruit. If making a preserve rather than a jam, set aside some fruit in larger chucks for adding later. Preparation will vary, strawberries just need hulling and putting in the pot. At the other end of the spectrum, boil small stone fruit like damsons whole, allow to cool and remove skins and stones by passing through a colander. Mash up the fruit into a rough pulp . Put fruit pulp into a wide, thick-bottomed pan, add the sugar and the lemon juice, and bring to the boil. Add the remaining larger fruit chunks to the pan, and put a saucer in the freezer.

2. Boil the jam for about 15 minutes, stirring regularly checking the setting point every minute or so during the last 5 minutes. To do this, take the cold saucer out of the freezer, put a little jam on it, and put it back in to cool for a minute. If it wrinkles when you push it with your finger, then it's done. Some jams like strawberry jam is unlikely to set very solid though, so don't expect the same results as you would with a marmalade or a stone fruit. If a firm jams is desired with these fruits adding pectin setting agent like jamsetta.

3. Take off the heat and skim off the fruit scum. Pour into jars sterilised in the oven at 110C for 15 min and cover with a disc of waxed paper or screw-on pop lid, seal and store.

Recipe: the perfect reverse seared steak

What’s the ultimate way to cook a perfect medium-rare steak every time? The Reverse Sear. It’s easy to learn how to cook this method, and master steakhouse quality cooking at home.

Traditionally, a restaurant method of cooking steak involved searing over incredibly high heat, then transferring to an oven on the same pan to finish on a more gentle heat until done. The reverse sear method reverses the order, and involves first cooking the meat on a very low heat before searing the outside on a super hot surface.

The basic idea is that with reverse sear, you have greater control over the Maillard Reaction (that magical process that turns the cooked edges of meats yummy and brown), because you’re making sure the high heat only comes into play right at the end and that the steak inside will be perfect. So, instead of internal rings of different “doneness” in the steak your steak will be perfectly medium (or the cooking level you want) all the way through, save for the very outside.

Truth be told, we love our steaks rare, so a standard pan sear works for us, but there’s no denying this is the ultimate cook method to achieve a perfect medium/medium-rare throughout. If you want to get super meat-nerd about it, consider removing the steak about 5 degrees before it reaches doneness, as it will continue to cook slightly from residual heat during resting.

You will definitely need a good meat thermometer to do this correctly – the finger poke test is not going be up to the task here! We used to use a cheapie stick-thermometer, until we noticed inconsistencies increasing over time and realised it wasn’t calibrated, and when there’s just a few degrees difference between rare and medium, you need to get this stuff right! These days, I prefer to use a device like a Thermapen which has an instant read and takes the temp off the very thin tip of the probe. That means less heat loss if I’m opening the oven to check something, and no huge probe holes to let moisture leak away. Put it this way, investing a little in perfectly cooked meat is cheaper than ruining your nice quality steaks!

Though it usually takes longer to cook with reverse sear than other methods, it’s ready to eat immediately because you’ve rested the steak prior to the sear – so you can eat it straight off the pan! We use a heavy cast iron pan to reverse sear, but you can definitely experiment with a smoking/grilling combination as well. If you’re looking for an extra secret weapon to help you achieve an incredible crust and appearance on the sear, you wanna check out this Hardcore Carnivore rub or another flavour adding rub using Australian botanicals

INGREDIENTS 

• One hugely thick steak (ribeye on the bone is perfect, but any thick cut postural cut with good marbling will work!). It's going to need to be at least 3cm thick if not more. The thicker, the better.

• Salt & pepper to taste
• BBQ rub of your choice if that’s your thing

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 135c

2. Place well seasoned steaks on a rack over a baking tray or create a trivet inside the tray with a large very coarsely chopped onion (cover the tray with foil to save yourself a clean up). This keeps the meat above the bottom of the tray and allow heat to circulate evenly on both sides. The aim is a slow even cook through the meat, keeping in all the moisture.

3. Put in oven and cook til an internal temp of about 60c depending on your preference of "doneness". Usually takes around 45-60 minutes.

   INTERNAL TEMPERATURE GUIDE:

   • Rare: 50c
   • Medium Rare: 55c
   • Medium: 60c
   • Well done: 65c+ (if you’re cooking to this degree of doneness you’re going to make us very upset…)

4. Remove when at temp and rest for 10-15 minutes under foil

5. Preheat a skillet or heavy based pan to a searingly hot temperature (use high smoke point oil like grape seed or canola).

6. Sear steaks for one minute each side or until you get a good crust.

7. Serve immediately (no need to rest again as this has already been done).

Slow Cooked Beef Brisket Recipe: Using the less common cuts by slow cooking

Slow-cooked beef brisket

The brisket is found under the chest area, below the ribs. Brisket is best braised with added salt, spices and stock vegetables or even beer (same as silverside), and can then be oven or bbq roasted to finish off with that bit of crispyness. Cooked like this, it is great served pulled with creamy mashed potato and steamed seasonal vegetables, or with coleslaw on a freshly baked roll.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1.5kg beef brisket, trimmed and cut into 4 pieces+
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 cup (250ml) red wine
• 2 cups (500ml) beef stock
• 2 cups (500ml) water
• 3 cups (750ml) tomato puree (passata)
• 6 bay leaves
• sea salt and cracked black pepper

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
2. Heat half the oil in a large ovenproof heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Add the beef and cook for 4–5 minutes each side or until browned. Remove from the pan and set aside.
3. Add the remaining oil, the onion and garlic to the pan and cook, stirring, for 4–5 minutes or until softened.
4. Add the wine and cook for 3–4 minutes  or until reduced by half. Add the stock, water,  puree, bay leaves, salt and pepper and stir to  combine. Return the beef to the pan, with any juices, and bring to a simmer.
5. Cover with a tight-fitting lid, transfer to the oven and cook, turning the beef halfway through cooking time++, for 3 hours or until very tender.
6. Remove the beef from the sauce and place on a tray. Using 2 forks, shred the meat. Return the beef to the sauce and stir to combine. Remove and discard the bay leaves to serve. SERVES 4–6

+ By cutting the beef into 4 pieces before you begin, you reduce the time it takes to cook.

++ For beautifully tender beef that’s evenly cooked, ensure you turn it over halfway through the cooking time.

TIP

This slow-cooked brisket can be made 2–3 days in advance. It freezes well, too – simply thaw and reheat to serve.

Smiling Southdown lambs

Southdown sheep are the oldest breed of heritage sheep in the UK. They are a dual purpose meat wool breed. Babydoll Southdowns have been naturally bred small to eat the grass down in vineyards but not the vines. We did a 1500km plus road trip to bring three of these little guys back to our Avoch orchard. They will graze our orchard but not damage the trees. I had already built a house for them, and they have settled in well, adjusting from their nsw tableland conditions to our lush South Gippsland pasture.

Win win win all round, we mow less, the boys get our lush grass and we play our part in preserving a rare heritage breed. 

They are quite inquisitive little guys, watching my comings and goings as I ride up and down the main lane beside the orchard, managing the cattle. 

New recipe: Boerewors sausages with Highland Heritage beef and chilli dark ale

It’s always nice to find or invent new ways to use the higher collagen cuts. One fantastic way is gourmet sausages. The ones we made this weekend were a new twist on an old recipe using our fantastic grass-fed Heritage Beef and a wonderful real ale chilli dark ale from our friends #lochbrewery in Loch. This is traditionally a baked sausage so needs a little more fat to keep it moist during its cooking. Boerewors is a traditional sausage from South Africa and is a tasty, mildly spiced sausage with aromatics.

950g premium medium fat Highland single grind beef

80g hard fat (pork back fat in this case) 

1 cup, 200mL Loch Brewery and Distillery Chilli Dark Ale (https://www.lochbrewery.com.au/drink/chilli-dark-ale)

2m natural pork sausage casings, soaked and rinsed

2 tbsp/9g finely chopped parsley  

2 tbsp/7g fine sea salt

2 tbsp/8g coarsely ground black pepper

1 tsp/2g finely chopped purple thyme leaves

1 tsp/2g finely chopped oregano

1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp brown sugar

Rolled oats to desired texture, start with 1/2 cup and add slowly as it absorbs fluid and firms mixture.

———- ——

Combine beer, herbs, spices, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl.

Add the rolled oats and also to stand for 30min in the refrigerator

Add the ground beef

Mix well with hands avoiding working the meat too much

Allow to stand covered for 30min in the refrigerator  

Set up your filling machine

Remove meat mix from the refrigerator - it should be moist but dry enough to be formed into a stable ball in the bowl

Add the cold, ground back fat and gently mix with the meat and flavours, avoiding getting it too warm or smearing the fat

Fill the casings in one continuous long fill

Massage meat evenly along the casing and roll into the traditional spiral

Refrigerate in layers separated by baking paper for 24 hours

Eat within 4 days or freeze

—————— 

 To Barbecue - cook on low heat for approx 20 minutes, 10 minutes per side. Turn with tongs and do not pierce with fork during cooking as this releases much of the moisture in the sausage.

To Pan Fry – Place 1 tablespoon of olive oil in skillet and put on low heat, place sausage in skillet and cook for approx 10 minutes each side, add more olive oil as needed.

To Roast in Oven – Turn on oven and heat to 160C/325F. Place sausage in heatproof dish that allows the sausage room to expand during cooking so all the coils cook evenly and drizzle 1 tbsp olive oil over sausage. Do not cover. Put in oven. Turn sausage over after 10 minutes. Continue cooking for another 10 minutes. Check for doneness until internal temp is 70C/160F. Cook for additional 10 minutes if necessary.

 Serving - serve with home made coleslaw, roasted butternut pumpkin/squash and a chunky tomato relish

Cooking Tips: Cooking too long causes the sausage to be dry. Turn with tongs and do not pierce with fork during cooking as this releases much of the moisture in the sausage Do not boil.

The finished meat mix without the fat added ready to go in the fridge

Filling the completed mix into the natural casings

Making link sausages with the shorter end-fill

1kg premium highland heritage beef turned into two Boerewors and some link sausages

Yum

Be sure to drink the rest of the fabulous Loch ale with your meal

Spring calving prep

Spring is our busy time of year, as it is on most farms. Grass starts growing and we go from worrying about not having enough feed to worrying about how we will keep the grass down. Weeds weeds weeds too, although our Highlands help with this as they eat anything (except dock), so our paddocks are remarkably clean of weeds. The other objective is to get our Spring calving herd back off our steps or flooding river flats to our preferred calving paddocks. Given we are right now short of grass and ing hay, and so are moving mobs frequently, getting our Sping calving girls where want them to be is very like the sliding tile puzzles we all used play as kids. it would be good to move them from A to K, but other mobs are in the ways and need to move through their rotation, so how do we move all 4 mobs around each other in a way that gets the Springs where we need them to be a week before calving starts. It’s not 3D chess, but it does mean that we need to plan the movement of all mobs three moves ahead.

Ready to have their calves

Our Spring paddock puzzle

Waiting for Spring

Calendar Spring starts September first, but of course celestial or real Spring, the Vernal Equinox, is more like the 20th. It's been a brutal end to Winter and start to Spring here, with constant rain, low temperatures and very high winds. Our cattle, our veggie gardens, our orchard and we are hanging out for a change in the weather; warmer days, our seasonal grass flush to start packing weight onto the cattle and a change in the veggie patch. The dams are now full but the ground will dry out, grass will really take off and the veggie gardens will shift from brassicas - brussel sprouts, cauliflowers, kale and cabbages - to peas, spinach, fennel carrot, and squashes. The fruit trees have set blossom and will start to grow fruit, the stone fruit first.

We are however still feeding the cattle as we wait for the seasonal pasture flush, and the sound of the tractor and my c'mon c'mon brings everyone running. We are looking forward to the warm, the growth and our beautiful Gippsland green. 

Growers in Driveway Paddock, they chewed through this in double quick time with the cold rainy weather

Last cabbages of Winter

Rainbow beet

Garlic, with artichoke in the background

Peas, just setting flower for the Spring

Bella the bulldog supervising

Cattle handling with high animal welfare objectives

We are almost completed the re-build of our yards and our stock handling area. This project is really important to us as yard design can dramatically reduce stress on our cows and calves if done well. We have incrementally improved some traditional dairy yards but now we are moving to a modern yard design, informed by both Temple Grandin and Bud William's designs. Better yards mean much lower stress, happier cattle and better welfare outcomes. Modern yards, happy cows, beautiful produce.
http://www.grandin.com/  
http://stockmanship.com/

Vet's crush: soft catch, racthetless headbails; parallel side squeeze; chin cup; great control and safety for cow and operator.

Tasty and healthy gourmet sausages recipe from beautiful Highland beef

Today we created two new recipes using our Highland beef, beautifully flavoured with farm grown or very locally sourced ingredients. 

The first is a sausage flavoured with a Chilli Dark Ale from our friends Mel and Craig at Loch Brewery & Distillery, 3km away.  A fantastic traditional dark ale, cask brewed using estate grown hops and aged to perfection. To this we added farm grown herbs to make an outstanding beef sausage. We hope to make this available to our friends in the future.

Recipe:

1kg medium fat beef single minced

1 cup Loch Brewery & Distillery, Chilli Dark Ale (https://www.lochbrewery.com.au/drink/chilli-dark-ale/)

65g hard fat

1/2 cup rolled oats

7g fine sea salt

8g coarsely ground black pepper

9g finely chopped fresh parsley

2g finely chopped fresh thyme

2g finely chopped fresh oregano

Natural sausage casings

Grind beef and hard fat once and place on baking paper on a baking tray. Transfer to freezer and chill until crunchy on the exterior but not frozen solid.

In a small bowl, combine the beer, oats, herbs, salt and pepper.

Bring the meat out and combine with the flavour mix. Add oats or not until the mix is just sticky.

Cook small pattie in a hot pan with a neutral oil and adjust seasoning as necessary.

Stuff sausages into natural casings and twist into small links (about 10cm long.

Refrigerate to allow to set and combine flavours for 48 hours

Panfry on low heat until internal temperature reaches 63degC

Enjoy, and beef and horseradish recipe next week!

The core product

The trial scale process

Our friend's key flavour for this wonderful product

The final product. Gorgeous. 

"So why have you got those black and white cattle"?

Grass, grass, grass. I guess we bang on about it a bit but I am a grass farmer as much as I am a cattle farmer. We have a distinctly seasonal distribution of our 1500mm rainfall and also a a variable but decreasing number of months where the average temperature falls below the magical 15degC average for grass growth. 

This means we need flexibility, headcount flexibility. To do this we maintain a cross-bred dairy-beef steer herd that lets us balance pasture availability with cattle numbers - on our small beef farm that is critical. Highlands are lovely, produce fantastic, high quality, grass feed Heritage Beef, but numbers are not easily adjusted.

We can sell our fattened or forward store cross-bred cattle twice a week to saleyards within half an hour of us, adjusting our cattle numbers to feed availability. Highlands however, being a specialist rare breed are harder to adjust in numbers quickly. 

Highlands are our core beef for our farm customers and the cross-breds always go to the saleyards. As an aside, our cross-breds are usually bucket raised and are very quiet. I love them and they love me, following me around like puppies from paddock to paddock. As with all our stock, they have a happy and respectful life munching grass at 'Gowan Brae'.

Here they are on their paddock move today. 

Beautiful view through to our reserved native vegetation  

Nigel, the token Highland in our steer group

Sunsets

Short one this week. Late Autumn early Winter we have massive storms come through that deliver a big chunk of our annual rain. We have just gone through a major storm cell that gave us hours upon hours of horizontal rain, backing from a Westerly to a Southerly as the storm front passed. Cattle sought shelter wherever they could get a lee from the wind. Calm now in the wake and a pretty gloaming and sunset.

Fruit. Veggies. Meat. Sustainability.

It's not just meat that we are looking at providing to ourselves and our friends, we also aim at being sustainable ourselves in fruit and vegetables. When we moved to Gowan Brae a decade ago and started raising our sustainable grass fed beef, we also set the foundations for fruit and veggies that would meet our needs year round. In our veggie gardens we grow seasonal veg that we either eat or bottle, and a variety of berries. In addition to the 120msq of raised veggie gardens that we established, we planted out a orchard with lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit, figs, various apple varieties, peaches, apricots, plums and pears. We are also self sufficient in olives, with a variety of types that we brine and preserve. Most nights we eat food that we have produced at home.

Being in Gippsland in the Southern Hemisphere, means we are into pruning week for the orchard. We have had a couple of lean years rainfall wise so we pruned lightly to reduces stress on our trees. This year with better Autumn and early Winter rains we enbarked on a stronger prune, taking off some subtantial wood; as a result of this yeras's prune we will get better and healthier fruit that we can eat fresh, bottle, or use in our charcuterie.

Hamish the farm dog was in attendence and provided moral support by keeping our yearlings at bay across the fence and doing the important duty of sleeping in the sun. 

The aim is a wine glass tree shape for maximum fruit and easy picking 

None shall pass  (because there's and electric fence and I'll soon retreat when there are too many of you)

Exhausted after my important duties

Prep for Gippsland Spring calving

Well we've done for Autumn obviously, but with the bull in the Spring group, we need to start the 3D jigsaw puzzle that gets our Spring calving group back to a birth-friendly paddock by late September. This may sounds simple, but in a dry year as we have now, it is like one of those 8 tile in a 9 tile frame games to get everyone where they need to be at the right time for calving. Supplementary feed hay helps of course. 

Cows and calves through late summer. 

Fleur with boots, now 12 months later has a calf

This, leads to this, leads to that

So our Puggsley boy is a happy chappy! He's doing what he wants to do and what come's naturally. In with our Autumn calving cows he's doing his Barry White thang and getting his girls pregnant. In cow/bull terms this involves much urine sniffing and tasting (where are the hormones at?), a few test mounts (is she willing, will she stand still?), and a big hearty Flehman response when the worlds align (a big upper lip curl and successful mount). Happy, hard working bull, hoping for a full 100% roster for next year's Autumn calves as he did this year.

grass

growing

mating

calves

Puggsley and Canach

Fleur and Grinnear

Mixed sward, Perrenial rye grass and subterranean clover dominant. Our fuel. 

Moving the babies: weekly routines, seasonal adaptations

Sometimes bribery and corruption is needed. Our recently weaned babies and growers haven't had a lot of experience with concrete. To get them to move from their current Blackwood Dam Paddock to the lush grass of Driveway Paddock took a hay trail from their gate to the new paddock. Some rushed across, some took some time to learn about hard surfaces. Most of our major internal roads are concreted, so this is a great learning for them.

One of the constants in Southern Australian beef production is that you are unlikely to be set stocking. The Northern Territory where I worked as a flying veterinarian on millions of acres properties can't and don't rotate stock. After annual mustering, branding, marking and weaning in groups of many thousands of head, they go back out into vast unfenced landscapes. 

We on the other hand on our 160 acres move our stock very regularly. With our 16 paddocks and (currently) 4 stock groups we are constantly moving everyone to try to ensure that individual grass swards are grazed only once each rotation and the grass production and so cattle production is optimised.

So we are usually moving mobs every one to three weeks depending upon season, mob size and climatic variations.  This takes the form then of a short term routine within longer term uncertainty.

The world turns, we do what we do, we try to make our lives and our community a better place. 

Everyone moved and happy in their new paddock

NT reality: huge mobs, huge spaces and road trains. I had a blast up there flying my Cessna 182 around from property to property. 

Priseile and one of our steers in lush Winter ryegrass  

We are grass farmers  

Jack Frost and the babies

So this morning we got down to minus 4degC. Nothing compared to N Minnesota Winters in the area I visited last week, but cold enough. Our two cow groups come from quite different climates, with our original Autumn calving group coming from the rural areas around Melbourne, but our Spring calving group originating in the Australian Alps where they lived through deep snowfall each Winter. 

Nevertheless the Highland is a hardy, hairy animal with a thick double Winter coat and they are all built to meet the season. For the calves (and our baby bully dog Bella) though this is their first Winter. We time our Autumn calving to ensure that by the time the really cold and wet weather comes they have had plenty of colostrum and rich fatty early milk to layer them up to stay warm.

The frost this morning was epic, widespread and deep through the valley. On a walk through the paddocks this afternoon with visitors there was still ice and frost on the ground at 5 o'clock.

A busy day through all of this. We arose early and moved a couple of tonnes of soil, four or five tonnes of firewood, re-strung a fence that one of the cows 're-modelled' and fed out to our three Highland herds.

The happiest little man on the property though is Puggsley our bull. Back in with his favourite cow group. Much urine sniffing, Flehman lip curling and exploratory mounting. He is never happier.

Winter. Our preferred season. The setup for the madness of Spring.

crunchy grass

Puggsley and Cailleach, king and queen of the paddock

A tad brisk

We're mountain cattle, we are tough and used to this...