A DESIRE to retire on the land has led to the establishment of a paddock-to-plate beef enterprise at Bald Hills, near Yankalilla, for couple Philip Jacques and Penny Windler.
They moved to the small farm, nestled in rolling hills on the Fleurieu Peninsula, four years ago and after initially considering sheep and alpacas as a business venture they settled on Australian Lowline beef cattle.
A breed that was the result of a selective breeding experiment using Aberdeen Angus in NSW, the Lowlines are a perfect fit for the small Bald Hills property, according to Mr Jacques.
He said they were easy calvers, docile and good mothers.
Mr Jacques said customers of their Winbar 2 Lowlines meat brand have also been impressed with the flavour of the grass-fed steers, which were first processed and distributed last year.
"We'd only just started looking into Lowlines when a dispersal sale came up nearby," he said.
"We started out with eight heifers and two pregnant cows with calves at foot, and six of the heifers were also pregnant, so our numbers quickly grew."
The operation has two rounds of artificial insemination a year, sourcing top-quality Lowline genetics from National Herd Development at Murray Bridge.
"We have a spring and an autumn calving, so we have two processing runs and also have a Cold Cube (a mobile freezer storage unit) to allow us to store and distribute meat all year," Mr Jacques said.
The first steers were sent to Kangarilla for processing at 390 kilograms, then hung for 14 days, cut, packed and cryovaced by Indulgent Meats, Port Elliot.
The couple personally deliver to their customers, selling 10 kilogram and 15kg boxes, with products including all types of steak, roasts, diced beef, sausages and osso bucco.
Penny and Philip have a nose-to-tail philosophy, endeavouring to sell or give away bones to use in beef broth or as dog bones.
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The couple have received great feedback from customers and credit the beef's quality to being grassfed, as well as their strong focus on animal welfare through low-stress stock handling, rotational grazing and a regenerative ideology.
The farm has annual rainfall of 750 millimetres, with meadow hay cut, baled and stored to feed their herd in the event of a dry summer.
Mr Jacques said they often attended land management courses, field days, workshops and seminars to continually improve their farming practices.
NEW FENCING AIDS ROTATIONAL GRAZING SYSTEM
SPLITTING their property into six paddocks with new fencing, troughs and tanks has allowed Philip Jacques and Penny Windler to keep growth rates of their Australian Lowline beef cattle high, while also ensuring there is no over-grazing of their Bald Hills property.
The couple have spent the past three years making property improvements to support their paddock-to-plate beef enterprise.
"Having the six paddocks and laneways with troughs enables us to graze a paddock intensively to manage any weeds and then spell it for months," Mr Jacques said.
"We also oversowed the paddocks with Italian Ryegrass to increase the pasture and cut down weeds."
The couple also run sheep to clean up shorter feed after the cattle have been through.
While they still have to occasionally spray some problem weeds, they say they take a regenerative approach to the way they operate, with all the hay they cut remaining on their property as feed.
"We use minimal synthetic fertilisers and are looking at trialing liquid manure fertilisers and compost teas," Mr Jacques said.
"We bought hay in the first year and it was full of weeds, so now we cut and bale for ourselves and it all stays so none of the nutrients go off the farm.
"We don't bring any hay in anymore either because we don't want to introduce any foreign weeds."
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