GROUNDED Live - 2026: Corangamite CMA - Small Blocks Big Dreams

Welcome to a new season of GROUNDED Live. This season features presentations recorded at GROUNDED Festival 2026, held over two memorable days on Yan Yan Gurt West Farm in Victoria, Australia. Each episode captures the ideas, stories and practical knowledge shared by the farmers, researchers, chefs, practitioners and thinkers who came together to explore healthier landscapes, healthier food systems and healthier communities.

In this session, supported by Corangamite CMA, local landholders share the realities of turning big ambitions into thriving small farms. Through their experiences, they discuss the opportunities and challenges of farming on a smaller scale, offering practical lessons for anyone beginning their own journey on the land. 

GROUNDED Festival is a cross between a farming conference and a food festival, held on a different farm each year. Every festival is unique, celebrating the people, landscapes and food of its host region through an inspiring line-up of speakers, local producers and hands-on learning.

With multiple stages running concurrently, GROUNDED brings together science and technology, ancient wisdom and fresh thinking. It provides a respectful place for lively discussion, an audience as interesting as the speakers, and an excellent menu of local food, drinks and music, all on a beautiful, regeneratively managed farm.

Each year, we record many of the presentations and make them freely available as the GROUNDED Live podcast. We hope you enjoy the conversations.

Thanks for listening, and if you enjoy this episode, we'd love to welcome you to a future GROUNDED Festival.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

G'day there. I'm Matthew Evans, and I'm the founder and curator of the Grounded Festival. And what follows is the Grounded Podcast. Now, this is the audio that we capture from the speakers in the tent live on the day. It's unedited, and I hope you enjoy it. A few people, myself included, have big dreams when we move to the land, particularly if you haven't grown up on it. You don't really know what you're getting into. And so you might not buy a big block of land, but you've got uh big dreams. So the Keringamite CMA here, one of our um was our platinum sponsor uh for um for Grounded 2026. They've got this session which is Small Blocks Big Dreams and what that looks like for a couple of local farmers from the Keringamite catchment area.

SPEAKER_08 0:58

Um, my name is Kylie Woodham, and I feel really honoured this afternoon to be presenting this wonderful platform for these fabulous people who have developed an incredible program, um, which I think if it could be spread all over Australia would be such a gift to everybody. Um my background, I am a farmer, and uh I wholly believe in the concept of small farms, small blocks, big dreams. I farmed myself on 20 acres in Ireland, uh, a little bit mad and uh a lot of hope in my heart. Um, hope or maybe craziness, I'm not sure. But if I'd had a platform like this, I would have been very, very grateful. But we started with 20 acres and 10 hands, and we became the largest pasture range egg producer in Ireland. We won great taste awards, we won the Chef's Choice of the Irish Food Awards. I was named Farmer of the Year from 2020 and ended up exporting my products around the world. Um, so I 100% stand behind small blocks and sizes and everything when it comes to land, what you can do with your land. Um, so without further ado, I'm going to introduce you to Karen Akeith and Drea Montgomery. Actually, before I do that, there are phones and drink bottles that have been handed into the grounded tent, which is directly behind us, next to the pop-up tent with the blue lid. So if you've lost a phone or a drink bottle, that's where it's going to be. Um I'd also like to say a very special thank you to the Coronga Mite CMA who are a major sponsor of Grounded. So if it weren't for them, we probably wouldn't be standing in this tent. So big thank you. Okay, uh Karen Akeith is um going to be presenting today with Andrea Montgomery. Um, these are the wonderful women who created this platform. And uh then we're going to be hearing from three participants who are, or two participants and a um facilitator of the program, who are going to tell us a little bit how the program worked and how it worked for them. So without further ado, ladies, take it away. Thank you, Kylie.

SPEAKER_12 3:24

So, as Kylie's mentioned, my name's Karen O'Keefe. I'm the sustainable agriculture facilitator with the Krangamite CMA. And I'm pretty excited to be here today to talk about one of my favorite kind of maybe pet projects called Small Blocks Big Dreams. So I was fortunate to grow up on farms in the region, just um about half an hour north of here. I then went and studied environmental science at uni, and for the past 20 odd years, I've worked in different sustainable agriculture and land care facilitator and coordinator type roles, and also done a little bit of TAFE teaching in ag and conservation and land management as well. Also, for the past 20-odd years, I've been a small block owner myself. So it is really cool to be able to be part of designing and developing and delivering a project, and I can bring some of my own kind of personal experience in on that as well.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Thanks, Karen. My name's Andrea Montgomery, and I work for the Upper Barwon Main Care Network. Um, I've got a long history in main care facilitation as well, um over 25 years. It makes me feel a bit old, and um that's okay. But I'm also a farmer as well, so I've got a sheep farm here, but I grew up on a big farm and then managed a small block as well in northern Victoria for a number of years. So had the same background um as Karen, but I'm speaking to today on behalf of five or six other land care facilitators, I guess, who have delivered this with the CMA over our region over the last couple of years.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

So thank you.

SPEAKER_12 5:04

Okay, so before we start, we would like to acknowledge that we are on Gatabado Country here at Dean's Marsh. And it was really awesome. Like how awesome was Joey with the welcome and the smoking. So, yeah, thank you to uh Easton Ma for having Joey do that. And it's been really special as part of this project. We've had um two of the Trish and groups from the Kerangamite region participate in the project and also be involved in some of the um design as well as the delivery. So that's been something that we've been really proud of. And we'll um chat about that as part of the panel when we get going a bit later on as well. Um so the Karangamite region, uh, this is our region. We cover from Ballarat, Geelong, Great Ocean Road, the Ballerine Peninsula, and um back up. So very I can't stand near that. Okay. Very diverse region. We've got um cropping, broad active cropping and grazing in the middle, we've got some uh beef, sheep, we've got viticulture, we also have dairy industry as well. And with changing demographics, we have more and more small blocks, small blocks. We also have some pretty special, unique endangered species and vegetation uh types. Does anyone know who this little guy here is? I'm scared to go near the screen. Browning grass dog, yeah. So we have so we have lots of cool special endangered things, and we also have the awesome total fossils. Not that it's a competition between regions or anything, but you know, we think it's pretty good. So, what is small box big dream? So it's tailored for small properties. We don't have a particular size. You might have an acre, could be five, could be a hundred, could be three hundred. It's around increasing the skills, knowledge, and confidence of small property owners, and it's around learning together. That's been designed in partnership with Land Care, different agencies and working groups. It's led by the Kramer CMA. So the Krameites CMA received the funding, and then we've worked with Land Care to deliver through through that. It involves workshops and property visits, and there's a focus on land, water, and biodiversity management. So it is a land stewardship project. So when you hear the words land stewardship, what comes to mind for you? What have we got? Yellows and look out the soil, yeah, awesome. Planting some trees, yep. Water management, yes, so all of those things. And the types of activities that might involve some of those things. What will we do with our water, our soil? Planning, yes. Yep, planting things, fencing, protecting, yes. So this is the heart of what some of the actions are around this. So when we sat around and planned this, we thought, well, small block aren't owners, ain't just small block owners. There's specific land use. So we've tailored the project for we've got bushblocks. So we've got workshops and programs that are tailored for if you've got a small property and it's more around biodiversity conservation, that's your focus. So that's the bushblock stream. I was gonna say crazy horse, but for the horse people, I might be a horse person, so I might hope I'm glad to say that. We've got tailored horse property management program, and then we've got our small producers. So if you are the small producer producing food or fiber, then we've got a a theme that covers off on that and focuses on that. We produced learning outcomes. So having done a little bit of TAFE teaching, we thought, well, let's produce some think about what are the space level of learning on different themes that people will take away regardless of which theme you do. So that's something that we did as well.

SPEAKER_11 9:14

We thought, what do we actually want people to take take away from this?

SPEAKER_02 9:23

So as land care networks, um, it was I guess this idea was driven from a long, a long time ago with discussions in um maybe the Keringamite land care uh sorry, Kerangamite CMA office with some of the land care facilitators that were in there. Um we've done lots of projects over the years as land care networks um with property owners. Um one that we did in the Upper Bowen Land Care was what do I need to live here? Um, what do I need to know to live here? And that got a lot of interest. Um, and I know Andy had a whole lot of small property owners over his way, um, and there was always an a need and an interest for those landholders to do something. And so this idea was born over lots of discussions with CMA staff and land care staff, and that collaborative project design from the start of the whole process was really key to getting this project happening and successful. So we had an aim and a clear framework in place at the start of the project. Um, and that guided the delivery, but it wasn't really prescriptive on how the delivery happened in each of our land care network areas and and what each of the themed um workshops were. So they were really tailored to um the people that lived there, the people that were involved, and the landscapes that we were working in. So it was a really flexible delivery of the program, which worked well. Um and I guess one of the key things was a relationship that we had with CMA staff. So that helped um make sure that we uh the CMA obviously respected what land care could bring to the program, um, which was expertise, knowing their communities, the ability to deliver with local knowledge, um, and having that mutual respect was was also key. So, and one of the other things that we needed, or that was really um valuable for land care was that the CMA valued us in a monetary as a way as well. So we were remunerated the delivery of these projects of these workshops, which um was really key for us to keep to keep going, I guess. Um, and that the communication and administration support from the CMA staff was really useful because a lot of us are working on our own. We get a bit overwhelmed with all the work we have to do. So having someone in a bigger organization to help deliver those um administration and communication things was really helpful. Um, but the design process was collaborative from the start. Uh, Karen came and spoke to all our Lancare networks and got our committees on board, got facilitators on board before that project um was designed further.

SPEAKER_12 12:25

Okay, so why did we design SmallBlock Big Dreams? So the majority of our programs are tailored for bigger properties, larger farms with a focus on full-time farmers. However, we know that our region has a large number of smaller properties, and some of those have um people who are there who use their land for non-farming purposes, and some are farming as well. We know that looking at some research that we've done, that there is a trend for decreasing property size and a decrease in full-time farmers in the region. So we thought we need to tailor something for those smaller property owners. So this is what we refer to as the banana shape, which is the dodgiest banana I've ever seen. But the orange bits in here, we did some background mapping with our GIS to be like, where are the small properties in the region? So we're informed when we went to put in a funding submission. We have ended up delivering outside of that area, but for the funding, we needed to be like, where are the majority of these small properties? Uh so we've done some social research uh across the region that shows that most non-farmers in Karangamite occupy blocks less than 20 hectares. And there's a range of land use being some people it's for aesthetics, they've got a bush block, might be recreation, horses, um, and other livestock. And some of that survey also showed that the more you know about natural resource management, the more likely you are to implement best practice natural resource management, which kind of makes sense, but we have some information around that from surveys, from landholders to kind of show that. We've had really strong interest from the community in this, from land care. We had event feedback, people kept telling us we need things tailored for small property owners. Now I put that photo up there for a reason. Does anyone know what that moth is? Golden Sun Moth. So this is kind of a cool but embarrassing story of my own 15-acre property. Had lived there 10 years, and it wasn't until during COVID I was taking the dogs for a walk in the paddock at lunchtime. And if anyone knows much about golden sun moths, they are quite particular. Only fly between 10 and 2, and it's got to be 20 degrees and sunny and a bit of clouds. Anyway, it was a perfect day. And I thought, oh my gosh, what is that? You know, my time of being on farms, I've never seen a golden sun moth in real life. Been living on the property 10 years, our small property has a great population of golden sun moths. So I put that there as a reminder that every little bit counts. So even if we've got a small property, every little bit counts. And that's that's like something that I'd like everyone to take away because we can all contribute to biodiversity and food production with every little bit that we do. So another reason why we did this is because we know that intensive land use can lead to environmental degradation. We've all seen soil erosion, weeds, pest plants, and animals. And on the positive note, we know that if you're a small producer, if you can tell your land stewardship story and you are farming well, that that can form part of your brand. So it's another really positive um reason to really take on board land stewardship.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

So the um the format of the the program was that there was an introductory session which invited anyone um from the area to come along and just hear about the program, and then there was an expression of interest process from that. Um, and we were hoping to get around 20 landholders for each of the um workshops that we were holding, and they those people attended four sessions over um well, it was actually delivered differently in each region. One one of the regions did it as a four uh block and did four days in one week, and others did it over a number of weeks and or um yeah, and spread the program out a bit. So the participants who were part of the project got to um learn from expert speakers on different topics depending on what their um their theme was. So there's the bushblocks, the horses, and the small producers. So there's workshops, property tours, heaps of time to network with the other landholders in the group. Um they all got an aerial image of their property and an online mapping support tool, which they could go in and draw and sort of do some whole fund planning on their properties and work out what they wanted to do. So that was the My Property Action Plan that they developed. And then they got, after they finished all that and had their property plan, they got a property visit one-on-one with the land care facilitator and a CMA representative to talk about their issues, how they might address some of them, what they wanted to do with their property, and get some more information on that. Um, and then there was an incentive amount of money that um was available to each landholders depending on what they wanted to do on their plan. Um, there was a small incentive to get them started on doing some fencing, putting some trees in, um, yeah, a whole range of things. And then they also had lots of resources. So we've got this little book, The Small Blocks, Big Dreams Healthy Hectares Guide, which is available over at the CMA tender if anyone wants to go and grab one. Oh, there's one up the back. Um, Kristen's got there. So that was a ongo a resource that we've used since. Um, and then they've yeah, they've got contact ongoing support from there on. So lots of different topics were covered. We ensured that we had uh contemporary cultural awareness covered off in each of the um the workshops. Um Andy might talk a bit more to that about his because he did a more in-depth um program on landscape literacy, which was great when he's on the panel. There was landscape thinking, property planning, waterway management, native veg and biodiversity, soils, pastures, plastic plant and animals, biosecurity, and uh climate and fire.

SPEAKER_12 18:56

All right, so what just quickly, what have we achieved? Uh we've that number's gone up slightly. We've had 165 participants now over the past must be coming up five years. We've had 89 My Property Action Pans that cover over 5,000 hectares. So although it's small block big dreams, it's actually had quite an impact across the landscape. And we're going to hear from Becky a little bit later on. So the types of activities that people have done on their small blocks, we've had native vegetation enhancement, so that's around planting, weed control, um, yeah, specific weed control activities, waterway protection, fencing, farm dams. Um, people have implemented some rotational grazing, and it's been really, really cool to see people that haven't been involved in land care before be involved and then get involved in other projects as well, which is a really cool outcome for us because they're now connected and they can get support for other things that they want to do.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

One of the um other benefits we've had from in the land care space was we've got quite a few new land care members joining groups out of this program. So people who have just moved to the area or previously haven't been involved in land care are now really keen members, and even some of them have become executive committee members on some of the um the land care networks, which is exciting for succession. Um so do you want to talk to this one, Carolina?

SPEAKER_03 20:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_12 20:39

We're nearly there, everybody. Um, so what's next? We are planning a Ballarat area. That will be information around that will be released in the net in the coming weeks, and then we're hoping to um get some more another program around around the Geelong Surf Coast area. So we've been all around the catchment, and yeah, this is what's what's coming up for the next couple of years. So that concludes the presentation section of yeah, this session. So thank you very much for hanging in there, and now we get the fun bit of chatting to some of the participants. So thank you.

SPEAKER_08 21:24

Thank you so much, Karen Andrea. It's like so amazing to see the work that you have done. Um, the thing that really struck me was the collaborative approach between um, you know, like the different groups, because quite often you don't see that, and there are two government organizations or organizations that are running in silos and they're trying to do similar things. So to see you guys do that together is really incredible. While everyone gets settled up here, I just want to ask who is a smallholder? Are there smallholders? Yeah, great. Oh my gosh, you are gonna find this such a great resource. And then who is not a small holder but would love to be a small holder? Yay! Yes, you're in the right place. I love it. Um, one of the things that I um really took on board there was when you said every little bit helps, and then you said that you have worked on over 5,300 hectares. I mean, that is not a small sum of land. So to have done that work is incredible, and also the work that that does infiltrating out into the community. I mean, the benefits to the environment, but also people's health and um producing food and a varied amount of food. So, I mean, that's really incredible for keeping communities together and keeping them strong. Um also I am interested in how did you what info did you use to do the mapping? How did you find the small holders?

SPEAKER_12 23:12

Shout out to Dave Windle, our GIS person. I guess that's one of the advantages of like the catchment management authority, because we're really, really fortunate to have like an expert mapping person. And so, yeah, we've used that resource and we've sat down with him and gone, this is our project concept, this is what we'd love to love to do. Can you please help us? How do we we can see them in the landscape? Yeah, so he was able to look at parcel size size and then there's layers, which I think is like state government data of land use and use aerial image and stuff like that. So that was the GIS experts thing, which yeah. Yeah, Australian government data as well.

SPEAKER_04 24:15

So what we're looking at is of the people that own those land uh full-time versus uh that are weekenders.

SPEAKER_12 24:25

Um so every I think it's every six years, the this is I'll answer it generally, and then Andy, you might be able to answer it more specific for Tiss Matt. Is that yep? We have done a survey, so it goes out to, and I can't remember how many hundred people, farmers across the landscape, do the survey from our region, and that asks them a whole, it's quite detailed around their demographics and also their land use and also their practices, and we collect that information. Now we do that every six years, it's about due to be done, and I'm not sure if uh yeah, where that's uh, but that's where we got some of that data from. And for the actual and sorry, I'll let you answer Andy if you're all your pull.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

Sorry, it was a question around on-farm uh so on farm, full-time, full-time, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:15

So I think it it it sort of goes with the territory that most of the farms that we work with in our area are sort of agro-tourism properties that are higher value, and people are trying to pay mortgages and things like that on those because of the landscape location we're in in the Otways. Uh, being near the Great Ocean Road, it's quite an appealing place to live and farm. So I think I'd say most of the people on these programs were off-farm income earnests. Um, and something to go back a little bit for a second, one of the things Karen and I noticed about 10 years ago when the CMA did a demographic study of that survey you were just talking about, we noticed that landhold ownership or stewardship was going to turn over. Um, about 60% of the properties were going to turn over in ownership over the next 15 to 20 years. So we just saw a gap straight away and said, hang on, how are those new people going to know where to start with all of these things that we mentioned before? The resources, the water, the re-vegetation, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 26:14

Thank you. I should have introduced myself, but Mick Danaher from the Ballarine Land Care Committee. Um the people that went into the uh stewardership program, can you isolate those that are from the Ballerine? I'm just thinking of other programs we can collaborate with those people that are already connected.

SPEAKER_11 26:32

Sorry, logistically, we didn't.

SPEAKER_12 26:37

Yes, we there was a program delivered on the Ballerine in partnership with Ballerine Landcare Group, and we do have the properties mapped of you know where the participants came from. So we can definitely chat to you around that. Sophie Small, we've got Kate Lockhart here. Uh, we're involved in that local ballerine.

SPEAKER_08 26:58

I can feel like there's going to be a lot of collaboration happening after this and lots of people asking questions. Also, I wanted to just mention the land care increase in membership. I mean, that's amazing too. That's beautiful to see that happening. Um, without further ado, these two lovely humans up here have participated in the course and are going to tell us a little bit about their story. Um, first of all, we're going to hear from Andy Gray, who's going to um, he's actually gonna explain a little bit about facilitating and setting up the program. And then we're gonna hear from Sue and Becky, who participated in the program. And um, we'll have lots of time for questions afterwards. So if you feel like you would like to ask some questions, you can hang on and we'll we'll uh let the people speak first.

unknown 27:48

Thanks.

SPEAKER_08 27:49

Take it away.

SPEAKER_06 27:50

No worries. Um, just to go back for a little quick second, that you're asking about the mapping and how that happened. Each program that's been run in each land care area, they would have a launch and an expression of interest process. So we didn't necessarily go to a map and say, let's ask those people if they want to participate. We just and it so it just so happens that our launch of the one in the central lotways was launched by Matthew here. Matthew Evans came over and and launched that event in um Kawaran, I think, or somewhere like that. So yeah. So it wasn't just let's look at a map and ask those people to clear that.

SPEAKER_08 28:23

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_06 28:24

Um so yeah, my name's Andy Gray, and I I work with Central Lotway Land Care Network and have done for 13 years. Uh prior to that, I'm uh I I have a business in Anglesey, it's an environmental education business. So there are people that now work there and and I work as a full-time land care facilitator, which has um given me a bit of a background in, I guess, the conservation part of land management. But since working in land care, I've then um spent 13 years trying to understand the uh agronomy side or I've studied a bit of agroecology to try and catch up on what's happening in the paddock and combining those things. Uh the project in our area, like we mentioned before, came about because of those observations and seeing there were generics uh farm planning and property planning programs, but they weren't necessarily hitting smaller landholders who uh might be wanting to do a little uh flower farm or running some horses or something like that. Uh we could we had a lot of autonomy in in because of the way the CMA engaged the land care networks, they trusted us to do it in a way that would suit our landscape and our community that we work with. Um I personally wanted I I realized that um through my agroecology training that the person who taught me could could package this up a little bit in a um decision-making and a prioritizing course. So as opposed to doing the generic things around water and biodiversity, we included all of that in there, but we really focused on what does our landscape, what can it, what's its capacity? How do we do a desktop analysis of our property and what what it's capable of, as opposed to someone I quite often in landcape solutions and lots of other extension people would have this experience where you go on a property and a landholder would say, I want to have a hundred head of cattle on this property, and they'd explain that they've got that number in their head and that they're gonna make that happen. And I would always work backwards and say, Well, what's it capable of? Um so that that sort of really that was my the background of why I wanted to get involved in doing this. Um what else can I tell you about how it's where it's come from? Is that does that give a bit of a bit of perspective? In our area, we um we did the expression of interest and we had about 30 people come forward and say they'd like to participate in the program. Then when you announce the dates that you're running those events, that that reduces quite quickly because people are available because of their op arm work, etc. That that that shrinks the group. So we had about 16 people start participating, but a couple of those were couples, so they were taking in turns to participate. Um the first event we ran, I was pretty insistent on this because I think we were working backwards 10 years ago around um cultural involvement and and uh cultural engagement. We used to um have almost a um token component of a grant program that said you should engage with traditional owners and and aboriginal people in your area. We put that right at the front in this program and said if we understand the landscape literacy of the place that we live, that could shape or will shape how we treat the land that we're stewarding as as our landholders of farmers now. The thing out of our group that really helped me realize that that worked was that a quarter of the participants who did this course with us, so they did a one full day of landscape literacy with two traditional owner groups, or representing our two truce liner groups in this area. A quarter of them at the end of the program said they would open their land to cultural use of any sort to the truthliners. If we did that across those with 155 participants, that'd be a a lot of land that is then available for cultural practice. So that was a pretty amazing group. It happens that these two participants were were part of that quarter um in the Stony Rises area in the west of our land care area.

SPEAKER_10 32:34

So my name's Sue Pike and I'm from Stonyford in the Stony Rises, that's Mullingil Guddage Country, which is part of the Jargurang people. And um my family have been dairy farmers for quite a few generations. And um I was the youngest of four, none of us took on the dairy farm. And when the farm was sold, I bought just the farmhouse and um two and a half hectares. And what I did with that small, small block was um, luckily fortuitously, land care had been doing a um a big reef veg along a river in a very another very marginalized farming area called Pirinyallic, also in the Stony Rises, and they had some leftover trees. I kind of rang and it was fortuitous, and they came and sprayed, he's no longer with us, but he was the person who gave me faith in land care, and those trees are tall and glorious now. So when I had the opportunity to extend that land holding to um to 19 hectares, that was in 2021-22, uh, I thought it was going to be really easy because I had these big trees and I just had this dream that it would all happen. But 30 years ago in the Stony Rises, there weren't nearly as many deer. And there to see a kangaroo was really exciting. So it also changed because as the property um passed through three different farmers, it was rolled. So that was kind of a Stony Rises tragedy, where for a little while it was legal to smash that beautiful, fragile landscape down so it could be um more readily managed. But what that actually did was create um very arid areas and areas that would always be porous suddenly with flooding. So it was a different scenario, but I was still optimistic. And um I didn't know what I didn't know. And I just saw because I supported land care that this workshop was on, and I thought I could actually do that. And I think I applied like in the very last minute and was lucky enough to get in. And that first day when we had the um cultural literacy session with Ebony Hickey, and we went through the Eastern Mark country plan country plan, I just felt, yep, I'm in with the right people. This is just what I need to do. And he's actually still got the badge that we're all given on his hat. And so that was a beautiful way to start. And um the the sessions were um, I I'm not a horticulturalist, my I come from a dairy farm, but I'm not ever never thought of myself as a farmer. And I thought I'd be swamped, I thought I was surrounded by real farmers. I felt like an absolute imposter. But everything that was brought to us was brought to us with a take this from where you are, learn from what you want to learn. There was no judgment, no um, no expectations, and all of the participants were they're as different as we all are, but they were all so um committed to being there. So in the four years that's passed on since then, I've um had lots of failures. That's what Andy has taught me that it's okay to experiment and it's okay to do something that doesn't work. So I've learned a lot just through practical experience and it's looking better. It's looking a lot better. My my big dream was to have a trust for nature covenant put on that property. And so now, just this last week, um, eleven hectares are now under Trust for Nature um a covenant. And that's it's so lovely. I can't tell you how happy it made me. And and that was with the help of Bush Bank. So if it wasn't for the help from this program, I would not have had the confidence or the knowledge to approach Bushbank. And it if it wasn't for Bushbank, I would not have had the expertise or the vision or the knowledge to get that trust for nature covenant. And if it wasn't for the Trust for Nature Covenant, then the Eastern Ma healthy country living people would not have come onto my property and said, yeah, that's what you're doing. We appreciate that. And yeah, I could go on a lot, but I'm gonna give you to Becky.

SPEAKER_05 37:18

Thanks, Sue. Um, another thing that I think is worth noting too is that um the participants, some of the participants from this have gone on to form um Southwest Reconciliation as well, um, which which is um just such an important thing um in in our area. Um, and also um there's now talk about the um re reforming the Stony Rises Land Care Group. It's reformed. There you go. So so this is all sort of stemmed by people finding each other and being connected and then building it. So there's a lot of power in that. Um my name's Becky, uh Becky McCann. I grew up on a dairy farm um bit a bit further that way, about an hour or so, isn't that right? Um, it was a small family dairy farm. Um I would have loved to have taken it on, but I'm one of five and I'm female. So my dad was a traditionalist and I got overlooked. Um, but I went and studied uh forest science and botany and discovered ecology um at uni. Um, but my heart was always back in the land. Um, and I became a land care coordinator at Hatesbury Land Care. I thought I'd go off overseas, but instead I came back. Um absolutely loved it. Um and the time came for my my dad to sell the farm um because that's where his superannuation was, right? Like then the next step in his his plan. Um, but I was lucky enough that when he sold the dairy farm, he somehow managed to get through to subdivide off the house at eight and a half acres. And he wasn't quite sure what to do with that. And I was living over in South Australia at the time, and I was like, I'm coming back. So it's a bit of a renovator's delight. The the house was sawn from timber. Um, there was an old mill at the back in the back valley. Um, so it's full of old mess mate um that holds it up at the moment. Um and uh I got some sheep on there. I've got Wilter Pole, so just a small block, as you can imagine, on about, you know, a very small amount of land. Um, but I grew up eating ethical meat, um, or had a little beef herd as well. I didn't know it at the time, I didn't realize just how ethical things were, um, and milk out of the vat and all those illegal things. Um and um yeah, so I've got the sheep and I was like, well, this is great. We can fill the freezer and service our community, whatever that means. Um so when the small blocks um came up, I had started my family, and this was an incredible way for me to be to reconnect as well or stay connected to the bigger picture of things that were going on. Um I've I'm also involved with the Ottaway Agro Forestry Network. I'm on the board um with that, and it was great to be able to kind of connect these few things that I had going on in my head to bring it together. So you would think that being in land care for as over 20 years now, or as long as I had been, that I had been able to enact some change on my my family farm. Um, I did. I I got my dad across the line with doing fencing off the creek, but it was really funny when I asked him, I was like, So, so dad, he fenced off one side of the creek and it was like a meter, like it was just gonna fall in within a a couple of years kind of thing. I was like, Do you know you can get some support for that? And he was like, Oh, really? And talked to him about it. And then when I approached him to do the other side of the creek, I was so like, so where are you gonna put the fence? And he went out like 10 to 12 meters, which for a dairy farmer is like it's a lot. Um, and yeah, so it was amazing to see the growth. I'm like, oh, if I can make that change in my father, this is pretty incredible. Um, but other than that, I I hadn't progressed anything further. I I had a family, but I was also getting caught up in my head around what to do next. Um, and um doing the course was a way of being able to put things down in a way of being able to basically help give me the confidence to go, oh yeah, cool, I I can just get on and have a crack here. Which is the most important thing is is starting. So and starting in an informed way, like where you're comfortable at. So each of the small blocks, big dreams, and how they're rolled out in each area is different. And the way that Andy rolled it out, it was um using this planning tool that was developed by David Hardwick called Rural Landscape Logic. Um, and we we had a got a a workbook to work through and got a map, I'll pull it up in a second, um, of our property. Um, and I'd done a lot of planning and helped implement stuff with when I was a land care coordinator, um, a whole heap of different tools and stuff. This was by far the most accessible, um, incredible tool that I'd come across because it just didn't focus on one aspect of the of of um the landscape. It it took the it brought the ecology in into the farming landscape, which always seemed to be missing a bit. Um, and it also brought in the social um aspect as well. So, you know, things that make you think, it's like, well, how is your neighbor on your, you know, on your western side? Are they are they all right? You know, can you get along with them? And is it realistic to be able to implement what you want to do there? So it took in all of the factors that we actually need to to think about when we're making a decision. And I really valued that. And to be able to to write it down and then map it out, it finally, even though I've worked in this field my whole life, it gave me the ability just to go, oh, I can just get on with this. And since then I've I've um I've had a lot of things happen in in between, but um got some trees in the ground, got some forestry species in, um, some oaks from the old oak on the um the farm, um, and some spotted gum. Um, animal health came out as a high priority for me as well, given the landscape that I'm I'm in. It's got a perched water table, very clay clay underneath. Um, and so it gets really wet. And I wanted to think about well, how does that impact my animal, my my sheep? And their health, like their feet, their feet, and a whole heap of other things as well. So I got to think about all of that and also just even the state of my infrastructure or lack thereof, and prioritizing those just to make things more efficient. Um, and just working with the way the water moves through the landscape. So it it gives you, even though you I have observed my land my whole life in this case, because it's where I grew up, to be able to see it through this lens of having um a bit more knowledge around, like to really with a critical eye and going, oh, okay, that's what's actually going on. That made all the difference, um, at least for me. Um and yeah, like-minded people as well. That was that was it was incredible, like just the network that was created.

SPEAKER_10 44:50

The the idea of the patch was something that I found really valuable just because it can become overwhelming. So yeah, just that idea of what if you just do a patch there and see how it goes.

SPEAKER_08 45:04

Yeah, just start. Yeah, have a crack.

SPEAKER_06 45:07

Do something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 45:08

Yeah. Um, I want to thank you for your stories and for sharing them so openly and honestly with us because um I feel like the program hasn't just delivered economic results, but it's something that's so much deeper than that. Um, I love the idea of the reconciliation and I loved um understanding the literacy of the land. I mean, that just feels so beautiful in this environment at the moment. Um the delivery sounds incredible. I can't believe that it's so um suitable for whatever group you are presenting it to, the way that you've adapted that way. I mean, that sounds so incredibly unique. Um, something else that really really kind of hit me was like their serendipitous connections and like what a beautiful web it is of connecting one thing to another thing to another thing that led to something else beautiful that was unexpected. I mean, that's something I'm not sure you guys had any idea the impact that you would have as it went down the line, what you created. Um, but I'm sure that everyone has lots of questions for everyone here. So if you have a question, put your hand up and we'll bring a microphone over to you. And don't be shy. I'm sure you've got plenty of questions. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 46:38

I don't want to hog the question, so I'm happy to hang a bit microphone over. But um there's some great work being done. Uh Bo and Andrew's been across this with the sustainable farming practices. Um and what's emerging out of that is with a lot of small acreage landholders, you'd actually need to implement a lot of the ideas and practices. You need farm machinery. And an example of that was yesterday at the soil key demonstration, absolutely fantastic. And talking with I think it was Kevin over there, he's actually adapting that machine into a 1.8 meter-wide soil renovator, soil key renovated for small farms. But it's going to cost a lot. There's examples of fertilizer spreaders and others for small farms. Most small farmers that uh won't be able to afford that. Um, but I wonder, is there a chance through somewhere that there could be a collaboration, whether it's a CMA, they might purchase these resources and we can hire, or there could be a collaboration with groups. Uh, for example, when my past life up in the land care at um up in the Masson and Rangers, we got together with three or four neighbors just to buy a log splitter. And that was only a small outlay of four grand. But it made it possible for us. So uh how did we get access to small farm machinery?

SPEAKER_06 47:59

Yeah, I'll I all I'm visualizing when you say that is a giant toy library. That's all it is. Yeah, it's about collaboration and saying these exist, where do we keep them? Uh how do you pay for maintaining them? Who pays for that? Um, but that's just a group of people getting together and nutting it out.

SPEAKER_08 48:16

Is there something already like that? Like, do people have examples of that that's actually Yeah, I should say that.

SPEAKER_06 48:23

We've got a um a spray unit that is just anyone who participates in our activities can use that as long as they yeah, so that sits with us, but that sits in my front yard. Um, and so do three other land care trailers, so of different sorts. So you've got to work out a way to have a base to keep these things to.

SPEAKER_07 48:41

Um Heather Phillipson from Gunno Kurnai Country in Gippsland. The um McAllister Um Land Care Group and the Avon Land Care Group all have pulled their resources in all their trailers and their um uh augers and other equipment that they have, and they uh have got a use of a bit of um shy land that they keep them on.

SPEAKER_03 49:07

Um and how does that work then? Do you just pay the person who owns it or do they share it?

SPEAKER_07 49:12

No, they just share it. Yeah, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_03 49:15

And maintenance management appropriate.

SPEAKER_07 49:16

Uh there's somebody in the Avon Mancare group who was doing the maintenance for all because of McAllister One folded a bit. Yeah, but yeah.

unknown 49:26

Right.

SPEAKER_08 49:26

Yeah, nice to see council getting involved there as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:30

We have a free rental agreement, so it's a someone signs it, you you break it, you fix it, basically.

SPEAKER_09 49:36

Yeah. Yeah. Hi, uh, my name's Leslie. I'm from Small Holding at Maroon, just down the road. Uh, thanks very much for your uh presentation. Um I'm really impressed by what you said about First Nations engagement, because I haven't heard that in any session these last couple of days. Um maybe I've just been in the wrong sessions. But um, can you give us some examples of uh when you talked about people opening their their land well, their land in inverted commas to First Nations group for cultural practices? Is there any examples you can give us of um how that's played out?

SPEAKER_06 50:16

Probably the the first example was running that first day of of landscape literacy, and so we spent half of the day in Kolak in the gathering place, which is a um uh is it a women's venue? Oh, thanks, Kristen. Community services. Yeah, we spent the morning there, and then we went out to Tandy Warncourt out here on the highway. I think um Al and Tom Dennis are here today, who and Tom at first when I spoke to him, I said, I know this this property has a uh a long deep cultural history. There's a mission around the corner, um, and a property was a um a protectorate. Is that what it's called, Kristen? They had a protectorate where they would uh uh distribute blankets and things for Aboriginal people in the area at the time. And Tom ended up um finding an old journal of his great-grandfather's and sharing some entries of that journal to the group. And everyone in the group then went, Oh wow, my land, my the country I'm working on must have that history, I just don't know it. So I think that really triggered a bit for and for him to be able to openly share that, um, and he was quite hesitant, he was worried about what it would how it would reflect his ha his family. Um but once he shared it, he he he realised it was a really important story and he's told it several times since. So that's really great. Um but maybe you can both share what it meant for you. Is that okay, Sue?

SPEAKER_10 51:41

Um, you probably know how stretched the Eastern Ma are. They have very few people on the ground and everybody wants um wants them for everything. So I think what what we've learned as a community is just to wait, leave the gate open and be led when people have the time to think about that. At the moment, if when you read the country plan, they're very clear that it's just impossible to work with individual landholders. Um there are more of us than you would think that are really open to doing whatever is required. But at the moment there are bigger projects like when there's a for example, crown land that needs to be managed by community or large tracts of cultural burning that needs to be managed by community, that's always going to be a priority for the time being. So I think it's what we're finding, at least personally, but also with the Southwest reconciliation is to be our work is really to talk to non-MA people and and build support there. That's what uh the work for the um people like myself is, and and not overstretch or demand or expect um too much from the community that's got already so much that they're juggling. Yeah, great, thank you.

SPEAKER_05 53:14

I think C pretty much covered it all. Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

Yeah, Jeff Rollinson, Multiple Coscare Landcare Network, and like Becky, a former coordinator at Haysbury. Um so with with the David Hardwick holistic plan or whatever, which I'm I'm not familiar with it, but um there have been whole farm planning uh programs developed in the past like Derry Sat and Jeff McFarland's EBMP and I think Abe Victoria had uh farm plan 21. If you have any knowledge of those other um whole farm planning programs, how does the David Hardwick one stack up against them in terms of accessibility and relevance?

SPEAKER_05 54:01

That's a loaded question, because you know I No, it's not. No, I worked with Dairy Sat and EBMP when I was in in land care as well. And I think um the thing is with the the rural landscape logic that I really liked was that the way that it scaled as well, you didn't have to be like a a a producer, like a full-time farmer, um, whereas those other ones tended to be um more about the business as such. So the thing I liked about this model was that it was like you didn't have to be a full-time farmer for it to be really accessible. Um and also the way that it scaled, I it it it it would, even though this is about small blocks, I could see how this this could be scaled to to a um you know, like a a thousand hectare property, like yeah, I I could see that easily. All of the above. So the way that the framework to me, the way that it it was put together and the way that the questions are asked and the way it was delivered, and so so for participants, it means that you could have everyone in the room from people like myself on very small acreage to people with big, you know, big huge farms, and they would still come out with the outcome that they wanted from it. That to me was pretty incredible to be able to have that diversity. And even though we were doing it in small in terms of small acreage, I I could see that's and I was like, wow, this is a pretty powerful thing.

SPEAKER_10 55:43

Um yeah, yeah. So so Becky's gonna hold up the beautiful um map that we all got. And so we all had one of these, but they were all the same size, but the the properties were completely different. And there was something that just mashed down the hierarchy there. Like we all kind of worked through it. So and it's such a practical tool. Like I I use mine, like when the Eastern Maya representatives come out, I could pull that plan out and show them what was going on. When it's about Blackberry control, I can map where all the blackberries are when I need help to do that. Um, but but yeah, and we went on great site visits where we saw how different everyone's um like just in our small group, like someone just doing an incredible plant of um nut trees. And then we went on another site visit where someone had cattle and um forestry all in the one area, and it yeah, it's it everyone kind of worked on their own projects, but we would wander around and just chat to others, and somehow, even if I was talking to someone whose project was completely different to mine, like there's no uh farming on my property, and there might be a farmer here, but there would be something that we could kind of learn with. So yeah, but I think that's the flexibility of the program was kind of it, really.

SPEAKER_06 57:08

And Jeff, um I think David, if he was here, would say that it's not a planning tool. So it's a decision-making and prioritizing pathway, effectively, and it's a dynamic thing that you end up with with a bunch of actions which helps feed our outputs for the CMA and their funding, but it also helps the landholder have some things to aim for that are um they're scalable as well. They can be small, you know, the low-hanging fruit, and then they can be long-term things, but it's a dynamic um workbook as opposed to a static plan that they end up with. Um, yeah, David's let us use this process for other things. So we we've been using it in the Master Tree Grower course that's run around the region as a one-day this exists, and if you want to take it further, you can have the workbook and work through it if you'd like. And he's also given us permission to feed it into the project that we were launched over in the other tent earlier, uh, Christy's project, the Roots Framework, is to have a bit of that decision making and prioritizing embedded in there as well. So he's very good with um open source sharing his his things. Um soil, uh his soil hash, uh it's sort of a visual soil assessment he shares. His um biological fertilizer recipes are all open source.

SPEAKER_08 58:21

You can we run events where people can book home and is there somewhere where is there a resource where people can access that information? Is it a website?

SPEAKER_06 58:29

It's on his website, which is land and soil.

SPEAKER_08 58:32

Land and soil.

SPEAKER_06 58:32

Land and soil.com.

SPEAKER_08 58:34

Okay. I think everyone needs to write that down in their notebooks.

SPEAKER_06 58:37

Maybe we need David at the next um.

SPEAKER_08 58:39

Yes, we will put that in the notebook. Yeah, we've got time for one more question. Um and also small block?

SPEAKER_11 58:47

Oh yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_12 58:55

Um so if you would like to find out more about the project, just literally Google SmallBlocks Big Dreams, and our Keringamite CMA webpage has a lot of information there, videos of past participants. Uh, we will be updating very shortly information around the Ballarat one that's coming, and you can put in an expression of interest there and get on the mailing list to find out more. So it is happening again over the next couple of years. And yeah, thanks for the question. I've got a book there that's we've also got the small resource from it. The Healthy Hecares Guide that Kristen's got a box of them up the back, so please grab one of the Smallbox Big Dreams Healthy Hecares Guide when you leave.

SPEAKER_08 59:37

Yeah, that's that's fantastic. That sounds like such a great resource. We have one last question up the back. So the question I think is like is it better to have the four sessions and then the farm visit, or would it be better to have the farm visit first and then the four sessions?

SPEAKER_02 59:54

Um I think the way we did it was the right way. Uh I think the sessions give everyone a grounding and an understanding of what's going on, and they get to think about their property in terms of what they've learned at the workshop. And then the one-on-one session is a chance to have a chat about their main issues and and think about they've already got in their head then a a bit of a plan, and then they can discuss that with um whoever goes out and and does that site visit. So I think it's more valuable to do it that way.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:25

And I also think that like when we went through it, we went out like we we we obviously done the cultural session first, and then we got stuck into the planning stuff, which was, you know, it was a little bit overwhelming because you're like, ugh, and then having to put things on paper and you're like, I'm committing to something. And then you're like, no, this is just this is a process and it it evolves because how much of that have I actually implemented and how much do I want to implement now from when I first did it? Completely different. But the it's a it's such a I love it. I love that it's a tangible thing that you've got too that you can work on. Like you've got an actual map. And I loved it when Dave pulled out the transparency. So I was like, oh, here we go. Um, and just a note on that, that's really stuff is a bit hard to get. But if you go to Spotlight and get like the clear um tablecloth plastic, that's just as good.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:17

Yay, all the two that's a little equivalent to pull it up. But um, Becky, Sue, and Andy, thank you so much for sharing your insights. Um, I'm sure everyone got a lot. It was not what I was expecting, and it was such a great insight into what you're doing. And for you two, like, thank you so much. This feels like a blueprint for everywhere across Australia. So, can you join me in giving them a huge thank you?