Hi All

I guess you could ask what is a Green Cocky?

I didn’t factor in the idea that some folks wouldn’t know of the term cocky as a farmer. It has been a slang term in Australia for a long time that a farmer was identified as a cocky. A cow cocky was generally a dairy farmer, or a beef cattle farmer. A grain cocky was a cropping farmer. Well I am a green cocky, referring to the notion that I am an environmentally conscious farmer. We grow mostly Angus cross beef cattle on our farm, but we also have sheep and some geese and turkeys, and 3 Houdini goats, and a big pink pig, and some Silver Apple Yard ducks, and kelpie dogs, and chooks.

I love the lifestyle that living in the country on our small farm provides for us. We grow a fair amount of our own food, including our vegetables. The chooks give us our eggs, as will the ducks. We supply our own meat from our livestock, and we have a house cow that provides us with milk for some of the year.

This lifestyle comes with a responsibility though, that we take very seriously. We are stewards of our land and view taking care of that land as the priority of our operations here. Soil is such an undervalued asset of our world, and a resource that cannot be replaced in our lifetime should it be degraded. It can take up to 1000 years to build a centimetre of topsoil. We must treat it with great care if it is to continue to be an asset for future generations.

All of the farming practices we use on our farm are aimed at regenerating the land we call our home. My particular passion is about soil health as this is where all other things we value in our lifestyle come from. The soil is a beautiful and delicate eco-system, with so many intricate members, but to so many is invisible.

Much of what I will write about on this blog will be focused around soil health, generally in relation to how we farm to foster soil health and landscape regeneration.

I hope you will come back to review some of what I write here, as this is one way I can help make the invisible world of the soil eco-system visible to more people.

Kind regards

The Green Cocky

My mission: To leave the earth where I have been a better place.