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Good day everyone.
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I'm Kate Field and I am from
Tasmania, a little town called
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Copping Tasmania is part of Australia.
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It's the little island off
the Bo Southeast of Australia.
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Wonderful.
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I am very excited to be here today
with you too, because we all have
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regenerative farming in common.
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I'd love to know your backgrounds
in regenerative farming.
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We can start with you, Kate.
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So my husband and I, uh, came
to farming in:
2012
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only been farmers for 10 years.
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He started out as an ecologist,
so he was a scientist.
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He was working for Macquarie
University in Sydney at that
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time, and he was specifically
looking at the ecology of marine
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vertebrates in the Anta and sub anta.
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So pretty different from what he's
doing now in one sense, but very
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similar in that it's all about.
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Ecology ecosystems and how
everything interacts with each
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other in a natural setting.
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Uh, we were living in Sydney,
so that was living with, uh, 20%
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of Australia's population, and
it's not a town that's set up for
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transport and ease of transportation.
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We weren't really enjoying living
in Sydney, and we'd always dreamed
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one day that we'd have our own farm,
but we were also dreaming about
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having a commercial cheese operation.
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And, uh, it got to 2011 and we were at a
turning point in our, our lives and our
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careers, and we decided that we would
become commercial cheese manufacturers.
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And of course, to make
cheese, you need to have milk.
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And so we made a decision that
we wanted to ensure quality
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milk and to have quality milk.
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We felt that we needed to guarantee the
health and the happiness of the animals,
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which meant that we needed to buy a farm.
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So we looked in a various few
places around Australia as to
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where we wanted to purchase a farm,
and we settled back to Tasmania.
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We'd both been to university here
in Tasmania and decided to return.
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His parents had migrated from the UK
to live in Tassie, and so we were,
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felt like we were returning home.
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We found a fabulous patch of land
that fulfilled our needs in terms of
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proximity to the hospital because I
also work as an emergency doctor and
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proximity to the airport in case I
couldn't get a job back in Hobart and
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needed to fly in and out for work.
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And we looked at the landscape and
decided, uh, that the best mammal to have
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for milk production was gonna be goats.
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So we actually chose our livestock
for our landscape rather than
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buying a bit of land and forcing
it to do what we wanted it to do.
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Our value system, our um, ethos is
to work with nature and to utilize
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nature to be able to produce
really good high quality food.
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So that's kind of how we
got into it, through cheese.
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Wonderful.
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Thank you Brian.
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I'd love to hear about your.
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Farm story.
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How did you get into
regenerative agriculture?
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Sure.
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Well, so I grew up on a farm or,
uh, as we call it, uh, where I grew
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up in, in Oregon, on the west coast
of the United States, uh, ranching.
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And, uh, we raised cattle originally.
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Um, but then at one point, uh, we made the
decision, I don't, I can't say that it,
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it was quite as thoroughly thought out,
uh, as Kate and Ian's very methodical,
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uh, means of going through a, an analysis.
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But we did, we, we made a decision shift
away from cattle and move into goats.
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We have, uh, approximately 250
acres out in Oregon, my family farm.
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And, uh, it's, which is about the same
size as Kate's farm down in Tasmania.
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And we've got a herd of just
shy of a hundred cashmere goats.
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So they're not focused on dairy
production or meat production, but
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rather fiber production for the same
thing that you go buy in the stores,
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the cashmere that we, we all wear.
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Um, so that was, uh, Uh,
just about 10 years ago.
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So, Kate, I, I feel like we made the,
the dive into the world of goats and
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ruminants in that sense at the same time.
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Um, and it's been a fun journey for us.
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They are so much entertainment
and joy, um, while still doing
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great things on the landscape.
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Um, and sort of, which I think
we're gonna dive into and sort of
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talk about all the great things.
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And Katherine, you know, we, when we
all gathered together, I don't, I don't
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know that we all realized you also
have a history, uh, with, with goats.
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Tell us a little bit about that.
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Yes.
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So we had a, uh, regenerative herb
farm, uh, for about five years.
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Unfortunately, our lease was not renewed,
so we couldn't keep the farm land here is
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outrageously expensive and even to leases
beyond the capabilities of most farmers.
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But for those wonderful five
years, we had a, a regenerative
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herb farm and our goats were.
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Or they were rescues.
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So they were mostly pets, but they were
also fantastic fertilizer providers.
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They were our lawnmowers, they
were our blackberry control.
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They, they did all these wonderful
things for us that, uh, helped
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make our farm run smoothly.
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Honestly, don't think I could
have done it without our goats.
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So we've got three corners
of the globe covered here.
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We've got, you know, the, the east coast
of the United States and North America.
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We've got the west coast of North America.
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We've got Tasmania down near Australia.
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What a good collection of people.
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But I wanna come back and, and maybe
ask a little defining question.
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Let's talk about the word regenerative.
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What is, what does that really mean, Kate?
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I might hand it over to you.
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I think regenerative means different
things to different people, but
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for me, regenerative really means
that you are regenerating the
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soil more than anything else.
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So, different people might talk
about regenerating a landscape.
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I think of regenerative farming in
particular as regenerating soil.
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So every time you grow something in
soil, you're removing nutrition from the
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soil, whether that's to grow a carrot
or to grow garlic or to grow grass.
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And regenerative farming, for me is a
way of farming in which you're putting
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nutrition, specifically carbon, um, and
improving organic soil carbon through your
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methodology that you utilize on your farm.
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And so this can be applied to all
different farming enterprises.
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So could you tell us more about how you
improve your soil on your farm, Kate?
