The question is how do we want to farm?
The property is set up to run cattle, so that’s what we will continue to do, as we don’t want the place to get overgrown and turn into a fire hazard.
Using the Keyline Scale of Permanence (and Darren Doherty’s extensions to this), the most important thing directly under our control is water. Basically, get the water right and everything else will follow.
The main things we want to be able to achieve with the water plan is to be able to water stock (and eventually, new plantings and the like) anywhere on the property, with clean water.
We also want to be able to keep the stock out of the various dams on the property, as having them drink out of the toilet is bad for their health. Doing this should reduce their parasite load and drastically reduce the cost to us in managing same (not to mention reducing chemical usage and consequent harm to dung beetles and other critters).
The layout of water looks like this:
The idea is that we pump water up from the big dam in the gully on the left to the tank at the top of the hill and reticulate through buried poly pipes from there. The pipes run down the centre of all the ridges, so all parts of the property are reached.
The pipes have water take off points every 50 metres, so portable troughs can be plugged in anywhere on the property, which simplifies the organisation of cell grazing on the property.
Thanks to Darren Doherty for the consulting that put this together for us newbies.
