Our Farm Philosophy at Highfield Farm and Woodland

In an earlier blog post we outlined some of our Guiding Principles. While that is a very helpful document, we decided we needed to go further and outline a set of Acknowledgements and Farm Rules – our Farm Philosophy if you like – the principles we could always come back to and check our activity against. At the time of posting these were our farm acknowledgements and ‘rules’. Some of them overlap, we are ok with that.

We acknowledge:

that Highfield is on unceded Wiradjuri Land.
that we must perceive Highfield as a deeply complex ecology. Solutions to problems are therefore not easily or productively reducible to focussing on soil or grass or any other aspect of the ecology having primacy.
the science of climate change and the extinction crisis realising that, as landholders, we have a responsibility to do the best we can.
that every action taken by us to manage this land has consequences for the systems and organisms that rely on this ecosystem.

Our rules

Make no distinction between the ‘farmland’ and ‘conservation area’. Manage the entire property for biodiversity enhancement and landscape health.
Manage to ensure increasing biodiversity (soil microbes, grass diversity, plant species, farm animals, wildlife).
All decisions to be made jointly to ensure maximum involvement of both of us and maximum commitment to implementation.
Observe actively. Reflect. Question. Try. Repeat if successful, if not, observe, think, change.
Learn more about the Indigenous Heritage of the property to ensure it is protected. Engage with the local Indigenous Community whose land we are current custodians of.
Learn more about Cultural Burning / Cool Burning; do it in accordance with what our land is telling us. Aim to include Wiradjuri knowledge holders. Learn to burn, burn to learn.
Realise that you can only do so much and that all land has a legacy of past practices.
Doing nothing is sometimes doing. Don’t do something just for the sake of ‘doing’. There are many things you could do and usually only a few things you should.
Realise that managing Highfield isn’t about us and our egos. It’s not about what we do or how we recover land. It is about facilitating the ecology to heal itself. In some cases we should do nothing, in other cases we should do nothing more than ‘nudge’ Highfield and let nature do the rest.
Manage Highfield to ensure maximum ground cover to protect our soils and soil biology and to prevent erosion.
Minimise food miles. Feed local people. Play an active role in developing a local food economy. There is no point in adding carbon to your soil if you use more carbon than you store to package and transport and sell your produce.
Ensure that workloads are sustainable to maximise enjoyment of the property. Take time to observe and enjoy Highfield.
Continue to learn.
Create an environment that people, farm animals and wildlife can enjoy and thrive in.
Don’t forget beauty. We don’t want to live on a farm that looks like a production site.
Ensure ethical treatment of animals by considering the 5 freedoms. Enable animals to express their full range of behaviours.
Our animals are not just ‘stock’ or ‘assets’ or ‘tools’. We are in an intimate relationship.
Use biological energy (eg. ecological succession, biocontrols) rather than industrial energy (eg herbicides) wherever possible.
Maximise use of renewable energy sources.
Maximise rainwater collection from building rooves. Maximise the water holding capacity of soils. Minimise run off. Encourage infiltration.
Manage Highfield to ensure that Box Gum Grassy Woodland and Temperate Native Grasslands and their dependent species survive the Anthropocene.

We may alter our rules from time to time, to account for new things we’ve learned, new observations, new research and new ideas. But our headline acknowledgements should keep us on track to ensure our rules do not get watered down.

We’d love to hear your opinion – what have we forgotten? What would you add? Do you have a Farm Philosophy? What keeps you on track?

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