At Lyttleton, we are fortunate to work with a range of fabulous local producers and suppliers that help keep our shelves full. These people are more than just a name, a phone number or email address, these are people who have stories and put their heart and soul into creating quality produce and wares.

That’s why we think it’s important to bridge that gap and get to know your locals a bit better.

This week we had the pleasure of chatting with one of our trusted suppliers of fresh meat cuts, Nic from Southleigh Farms, located at the foot of the mountain in Hartley. Nic’s use of regenerative farming practices and focus on improving farming for the future is inspiring to say the least.

How long have you been working with Lyttleton for?

About a year and a half

What are some of the ways that you practice regenerative farming principles at Southleigh?

Regenerative farming is becoming such a hot phrase these days, which is wonderful as agriculture has been a very extractive industry for so long. It can be a pretty broad term so for us the core principle is respecting the land we have the privilege of managing.

For us that means respecting the full range of functions of the farm, it's our home yes, but it's a precious headwaters of a catchment and a habitat for wild things. It’s an important cultural land both with its more recent post colonial history and as a meeting place and home to Wirradjurri and Darug people for at least tens of thousands of years. It's our business too.

How important a role does soil play at Southleigh?

Healthy country starts in the soil. We manage soil health with careful grazing, using organic fertilisers and mostly compost both brought in from off farm and made onsite.

As a soil input, compost is king and good quality biologically diverse compost is about the finest thing, period. We're always on the lookout for clean sources of organic matter to use and see a massive role for farmers to play in utilising these materials to benefit our soils, human health and productivity.

If there are any arborists reading this that want to talk please- we need wood chip... more than you have. We're currently recycling more than 400 tonnes of organic material per year and would be very happy to increase that if we could find it. As long as it's clean.

While our soils are not terribly suitable to traditional food cropping we have a pretty diverse fruit orchard, mostly pears but also stone fruit and a fig or two.

How important are regenerative approaches and principles to the future of farming in Australia?

From my perspective, unless we are prepared to become termite people living in climate controlled biodomes, I think becoming regenerative across the vast majority of agricultural production is the only way humanity has a future. In Australia this is doubly true as we are major food producers to the world, working with ancient and fragile soils on the driest populated continent.

As the inevitable end of fossil fuels approaches, clean and nutrient dense foods are also our greatest export commodity, so it's the wealth and future of our country too. We've pushed many of these natural systems to breaking point so everyone needs to do ‘what they can where they can’.

What are some of the challenges modern farming faces?

Having worked as a waste and eco efficiency consultant for years I understand the huge challenges of good management of organic 'waste' for modern society. As a farmer, I see the massive gap we've created by not returning these things to the natural system in a beneficial way. Instead we flush and we throw 'away' wherever that is.

Modern agriculture plugs these gaps with energy intensive and ultimately polluting fertilizers that are not only damaging our soils in the long run but damaging our climate and sending plenty of farmers broke. I remember the chem set approach to fertilization we were taught at school with horror these days. Particularly nitrogen which was really a repurposing of the industrial war complex's explosives manufacturing.

How do you manage the balance between cattle farming and keeping the land sustainable?

Cattle are glorious, burping farting mulchers [no offense intended girls], so we're always working hard to minimise our negative climate impacts through diet management and avoiding non organic nitrogen inputs. By the same token, managed right they can be tremendously carbon accumulative for soils through the same actions with a few cms of topsoil able to hold more stable carbon than the forests that grow on them. Carbon is fertility too.

We use a management intensive grazing system that's pretty much a fancy way of saying we keep our stock in a fairly tightly controlled herd. They move across the farm, allowing long recovery periods so as to use the natural disturbance of grazing, trampling defecation and urination to enhance nutrient cycling, reduce selective browsing of vulnerable plants and stimulate deep rooted perennial pastures.

What ways have you worked the farm to help restore its natural beauty?

When we first got the farm some 35 odd years ago, there were very few trees.One of the first things Mum and Dad did was scrape together their spare coins to buy our first couple of hundred trees and started planting tree lines. These beauties are all well established now and we've got plenty more tree lines and shelterbelts to fill out with diverse species.

The resilience of natural systems is pretty awesome to observe too as many areas are steadily restoring themselves given a break from constant grazing and clearing of the last 150 odd years. It’s wonderful to see the creeklines and backcountry slowly reclaim its role as grassy woodlands. Sometimes we just need to get out of the way and accept that natural sequences have solutions we don't even know the question for yet.

What are some examples of how you have incorporated other producers in the community with your farming?

We've got a great partnership with Mountain Culture Brewery in Katoomba. We recycle their spent brewers wastes for feed and fertilizer, allowing us to provide excellent quality protein to supplement our herd.

This means we can utilise really advanced maturity forages. Resulting in excellent animal health and performance on far more mature grasses that allows rapid accumulation of soil carbon without sacrificing animal performance.

All the while recycling large quantities of otherwise highly polluting waste streams that line up chemically with our most deficient soil elements phosphorus and sulphur. They also make the best beer we've ever drunk.

What is one of the biggest rewards of being able to connect with your community through farming?

We are passionate about bringing our product to our local community even though it's a lot more work than traditional meat supply chains. There's few things more essential than the food that sustains us. To taste is one of the key ways we engage with the world. Its cultural too. To know that every day were bringing food to our community. Covid might have been something of a wake up call that our systems are only so resilient and local food production is key.

Nic would also like to thank his neighbouring fellow farmer friend Greg Mortimer, who he works closely with for the lamb that Southleigh also provides. Greg also echoes the same values and ethos as the farm when it comes to a sustainable approach to the land.

If you would like to find out more about the produce available from Southleigh, please contact the store via phone or email to confirm stock availability and delivery dates.

INTERVIEW: Southleigh Farm