August at Pig and Earth feels like a bit of a fairytale at the moment. There’s piglets gamboling about everywhere we look, belly deep in the best mud a pig could dream of. Sunshine has been gleaming off gushing streams and babbling brooks all over the farm the last few days, as the skies finally start to clear after one of the wettest months on record. Cows are kicking up their heels in fresh green grass that you can almost see growing if you stand still long enough. It’s a good time to be a farmer.
This month we’ll be processing one of our cows for sale at markets and to our CSA members, so we thought we’d take the time to explain the origins of our beef. It’s a pretty special arrangement we have going with our good friend Tess who runs Sellar Dairy, operating out of the Harcourt Organic Farming Co-op. This is no ordinary dairy - Tess runs a one-of-a-kind boutique operation where the wellbeing of her herd and the ongoing improvement of the land are the primary goals. It’s a small dairy consisting of 10 milking cows. Tess and her partner Oli have built a completely mobile milking parlour on a trailer that allows them to milk each morning out in the paddock, rather than bringing the cows into a milking shed. This arrangement means the cows are at their most relaxed during milking, and it also allows Tess to run a very dedicated rotational grazing system to maximise soil health and pasture improvement.
The other incredible part about her operation is how Tess manages her calves. Dairies require milking cows to give birth to calves in order to start lactating, and in standard Australian dairies those calves are removed from their mothers within 24 hours of birth. Some of the female calves are raised on a bottle to become future milkers themselves, while the remaining female calves and all the male calves are generally immediately killed on the premises and disposed of, or sent to an abattoir at 5 days old to be processed into pet food.
Sellar Dairy, on the other hand, is a calf-at-foot enterprise. That means Tess keeps the calves with their mothers to feed naturally and get established on milk from their mothers. Once they’re old enough to be eating some solid food and drinking water, the calves are put in their own pen within the same paddock as their mothers overnight. Their mums can still see, smell and visit them, but the calves take a break from drinking milk for a few hours and feed on grain and water instead. After Tess finishes milking in the morning, the calves are released to run with their mothers and drink milk all day. This arrangement continues until the calves are old enough to be weaned.
This is the part where Pig and Earth comes in. At weaning, Tess transports the male calves to us so we can grow them out for beef. Tess runs heritage “dual purpose” breeds of cows, meaning they have great qualities for both milk production and for meat. We raise the steers for another 15-18 months, slaughter and butcher them at the Jonai on-farm micro abattoir and butcher shop around the corner, and then sell the beef at markets including the Castlemaine Farmers Market where we have a stall right next to Tess! It’s a pretty fantastic example of a closed-loop, low-milage food system, the kind that is only possible through real community and hands-on farming practices that prioritise ethics over convenience. It also makes for some truly delicious beef from heritage breeds that are hard to find anywhere else in the country.
If you’d like to get your hands on some beef this month, come and visit us at one of our regular markets. CSA members also get first access to 5kg and 10kg mixed boxes of our beef, so sign up for a monthly pork or lamb share and you’ll also be first in line for beef when it arrives.