“So we’re basically looking after the soil,” says Victorian regenerative farmer Natalie Hardy of Brooklands Free Range. “So, if we’re looking after all the microbes and the bugs and the diversity within the soil, that looks after the plant health, and it looks after the feed for the animals, and looks after the animals.”

Hardy and her partner Jono Hurst, raise rare breed livestock, running British White cattle and Berkshire pigs for meat, and Finn sheep which aren’t for meat but shorn annually for their wool. While the preservation of rare breeds is one driving factor at Brooklands, another is the suitability of the breeds to their regenerative farming direction. “Every animal has a purpose on the property,” says Hardy. “So for example, I guess the pigs are really good at getting rid of weeds around the property and also fertilising.”

Many of Hardy’s customers are local, in and around Daylesford, or at various Melbourne farmers markets. Longstanding delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards judge, Alla Wolf-Tasker (pictured above), a co-owner and Culinary Director of Lake House says, “they have one of those amazing farms where they actually do move the cattle around so that they don’t completely eat the pasture down.” 

Using both the British White beef and Berkshire pork at Lake House, Wolf-Tasker is in no doubt that the product excels on its regenerative approach, and when it comes to the pork, a not-so-secret ingredient. “Why is it particularly good?” she says. “Because they use the whey from the local cheesemaker at Goldfields Farmhouse Cheese, and we’ve got a cidery nearby, so all the windfall apples go to the pigs as well, and that very rich pasture to start off with.”

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Hardy elaborates on their pasture saying they sow multi species grazing pasture, or what they call their “salad bar grazing,” containing close to twenty varieties of brassicas, wheats, and barleys, with sunflowers grown in summer. “Each plant has a purpose in helping build the soil and that microbe activity within the soil, and of course bringing in all the pollinators in the summer,” says Hardy. “It feeds the pigs and it’s like this wonderful cycle as we rotate the animals around the property and help keep our soil healthy.”

The efforts of Hardy and Hurst have a wider ecological impact, bringing back native perennial plants like kangaroo grasses, and in carbon sequestration. They’ve carried out deep core carbon tests says Hardy, as an ongoing programme of study. “So, carbon is sitting at 4.8% at the moment and you might be lucky on a regular sort of chemical usage farm to maybe see 0.5%,”  she says.

On just 148-acres Hardy says, “it’s amazing what you can do on a small bit of land. It supplies us with a wage, keeps us alive, runs the farm, sends my daughter off to school. We don’t want to be rich, we just want to care for the land and have a good life.”