Published since 1986
OCTOBER, 2019
www.farmernews.com.au
Regional Shows and Festivals
Seeds, Fertilisers and Pasture
LIFT-OUT
PAGES 28-30
PAGES 34-35
Eggs from the embers
LIVING THE DREAM CORINNE Blacket runs a small goat dairy on the Bellarine Peninsula, milking just six goats at a time to create artisan cheese products. Read her story on pages eight and nine of this month’s Farmer.
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Free-range born from Black Saturday
By EMMA OLIVER ON the day of Black Saturday, Diego Tuyol chose to stay and defend, a decision he feels he should not have made in retrospect. Old Farm Happy Valley is located on the King Parrot Creek, 450 acres of farmland rising either side of the Whittlesea-Yea Road, just beyond the Hazeldene Store. The creek gurgles through the property, and the lush o HOGV TXLFNO\ UROO LQWR VWHHS bush covered hills. It is idyllic and beautiful, and a death trap. 2Q WKH GD\ RI WKH o UHV Diego attempted to bring his animals down from the hills to the home paddock, to his sheds and the old farmhouse. “There was no time for tears, no time to think, my animals were here and I didn’t want to lose them,� Diego said. %XW WKH p DPHV ZHUH PRY LQJ WRR TXLFNO\ DQG WKH KHDW so intense, that 48 cows and all his goats perished. Surrounded by carnage, Diego fought to save what he had left - the farm’s infrastructure.
Hours alone, he doused with water and tackled spot o UHV KLV ZRUOG EXUQLQJ around him. It would eventually pass and Diego would make his way to Yea, blackened and bleeding, dressed in only shorts and a singlet. He would be taken to hospital, and face a decade of health problems and issues from that catastrophic day. It is from these ruins and the ongoing repercussions of his decision that Old Farm Happy Valley was born. Having lost faith in everything and traumatised from battling to save his farm all by himself, chickens became his outlet. Before Black Saturday, Diego had never had chickens but with an incubator and 24 eggs he began his new enterprise - free-range eggs. Intent on keeping his mind occupied and unable to sleep DIWHU WKH o UH 'LHJR ZRXOG VLW up at night and research and design. “I wanted to come up with something special,� Diego said.
And that’s what he did. Shade cloths dot the lush green paddocks, strategically placed to allow chickens cover and security for their daily dust bath ablutions. Intricate sprinkler systems are positioned throughout the enclosure providing fresh drip water for the chickens, DQG ZHW UHOLHI DQG EXVKo UH protection during the hot summer months. A massive A-frame chicken tractor dominates the view, a work in progress as Diego has great plans for this chicken shelter. The fencing is all Diego’s handiwork and is a complex system allowing for an external pen that moats the HOHFWULo HG FKLFNHQ SDGGRFN Maremmas are kept in the external pen to discourage predators. And though wedgetails remain a problem, he has not experienced any of the losses he previously did to foxes. “Before I designed this enclosure I lost 800, 900 birds to foxes,� Diego said. “I lost a lot of money because I was learning.
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Continued page 3
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