WE have exciting news, from the next issue (September 2009) NZ Lifestyle Farmer will be incorporating its sister publication Horticulture News into the magazine.
Horticulture News will no longer be published as an individual magazine and NZ Lifestyle Farmer content will not be compromised.
Instead we will be adding more pages to incorporate the Horticulture News content, bringing you much more information and value for your money.
The September issue of NZ Lifestyle Farmer will be celebrating the 10th year of being published. So, along with Horticulture News, which has been published since 1980, our staff and contributors will continue to bring you well researched, accurate information from people passionate about their industry.
My social outing for winter was the usual: Mystery Creek Fieldays. It was there and while at work through the greater Waikato and Taranaki regions that I spoke to many lifestyle farmers.
The people that came to speak to us at the stand at Fieldays were full of aspirations, from retired couples glad to have moved out of the city and successfully running a floriculture business to young newly weds about to move onto their 1.6ha block, wanting to research every aspect of lifestyle farming before deciding on the course they will take with their land.
It is such a pleasure having the time at these events to meet you all and hear your stories. With much more horticulture and floriculture content coming to you from next month’s issue we will be addressing many of the topics you told us you’d like to see more of.
We have recently been speaking with a Fonterra representative and have discussed some of the processes of becoming organic. This isn’t something that we are jumping into, but we would like to begin using some organic methods.
A lot of what the Fonterra rep mentioned goes back to the way the land was farmed by our parents and grandparents. Shelterbelts are key and using oils for bloat remedies and parasitic control. However until we find what works for us we want to be able to have other treatments as back up. The fact that you can’t use tanalised posts horrified my husband, the alternative – concrete posts – saw him lose his fingerprints!
On our farm over the past couple of months we have thinned out bamboo and flax shelter belts and dropped what plants we took out in a sack in our drains to take root. We are now planting these out and establishing new shelterbelts throughout the farm.
It is a good time to do this during the wet weather so that the flax and bamboo can become established before the dry summer months.
Flax is an excellent shelterbelt for protection from prevailing winds. This is handy on our flat dairying land which sees westerly gusts that would horrify Dorothy and Toto hurtling through our farm.
We are going to also plant native trees among the flax for shade and to ensure a home for wildlife. Flax is a natural medicinal plant for cattle and can help with their worm burden.
I would love to hear from anybody who has converted to organic dairying and whether you struggled with any of the processes.
It all looked quite straightforward to us – but like I said, we don’t want to rush into it and have it be detrimental to stock in any way, so baby steps for now.
Steph
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