The Regenerators: Cultivating Land, Sea & Soul
Whether it’s nurturing the environment, the body or the mind, regeneration is a process of net improvement, and that’s something worth celebrating.
By Carolyn Beasley
For many of us, work is like a whirlwind, wearing us down as it sweeps us through the daily grind of routine. But for others, their work is to cultivate. To work with the land, the sea or the soul to make something better, create something deeper, or restore something lost. These are the regenerators, the people who toil with the seasons, embracing the flow of nature’s rhythms, rather than battling against them. Their work is a dance, a slow process of patience and understanding. And although they work through very different elements and mediums, they each strive to leave a positive impact in their wake. Here, we tip our hat to some of Salty’s favourite Regenerators.
Farming for the future
For dairy farmers Mahlah and Kel Grey, their journey to regenerative farming was not born of idealistic green notions, but rather an economic imperative.
Tucked into the bucolic Kiama hills, the farm was founded in 1854. Taking over in 2008, the couple were confronted with an evolving and less profitable dairy industry.
“We weren't in a position where land acquisition or intensifying was an attractive or viable option for us,” Mahlah explains. Instead, the couple sought to reduce their input costs, starting with the grain-based feed. But how would the cows get enough nutrients from a pasture-based system?
“It led us down that rabbit hole of ‘We need to improve our pasture, we need more biodiversity, we need better management in the grazing systems,’” Mahlah says. Mahlah and Kel soon switched to a cross-breed animal that would perform better on this non-grain diet, yielding a higher fat and protein milk, albeit it at lower volumes. This would play into their new ambitions to create higher value products, like cheese and gelato.
“We were putting out fires as we went, that's probably why we didn't realise we were going down a regenerative path,” Mahlah laughs. Eventually, the couple paused, considering their farm on a whole-system level.
What followed included cell-based paddock rotation, where cows graze each paddock for only 12-hours, before being moved to the next. Each paddock is usually rested for 60 days between grazing. Soil and pasture are chemical-free, nurtured with the farm’s compost and biodynamic preparations involving cow horns and silica. In winter, a diverse cover crop is added.
“We put on a lot of nitrogen fixing peas this year, which came out as really pretty purple flowers in the paddock,” Mahlah explains.
Intertwined with the science, is a desire to work gently; an understanding of the power of rest, for pasture, for cattle, and also themselves.
“We’ve stopped milking the cows year-round,” Mahlah says. “We now calve them all down in spring and milk them for a season, and then we dry them off coming into winter, and they get a rest, and we get a rest, and then we start the process again.”
Mahalah and Kel sell their regeneratively farmed products in their store, The Pines Panty in Kiama. They also hold farm ‘pop-up’ events, where the public can meet animals and experience farm life. For Mahlah, it’s gratifying to see people, especially the younger generation, forming connections with nature.
“I know from having my own kids here, they have a whole different understanding and ability to be present in a landscape,” Mahlah says. “My youngest, she'll catch any bug. And I had to pull her up and be like, ‘Babe, we have to talk about the type of spiders you're handling.’”
Unlike kids, adults often hold tightly to traditional ways. But for Mahlah, it’s important to let go.
“I know for us, the majority of the changes we made only came through a mindset shift first, Mahalah says. “And that's my biggest takeaway. In any space that you are working in, if you have very set paradigms around that, it's really, really hard to create that change.”
Saltwater inspiration
Cultivating food with care and patience is not restricted to the land, and for James Wheeler, his farming takes place in the saltwater of Merimbula Lake. James is a second-generation oyster farmer, continuing a legacy that he doesn’t take for granted.
“Hopefully when my kids are at that age, they have the opportunity to take it on if they want, too,” James says.
For James, the lifestyle is part of the draw. Saltwater and sunshine are his daily tonic.
“I grew up surfing, so I've always been in and around the ocean,” James says. “I really appreciate being able to go out on the lake, especially on still mornings.”
With each oyster taking around three-and-a-half or four years to reach market size, it’s definitely a slow food. Oyster farming is inextricably linked to nature’s rhythms; the seasons, the tides and the daily whims of south coast weather.
“It’s an early start, about seven,” James says. “We usually try to go out in the morning when the wind's not up, because the wind just makes the easiest jobs hard.”
James says that if he’s harvesting oysters, he’ll zip down to his lease area near the entrance of Merimbula Lake. But the main job of oyster farming is thinning out the oysters in the mesh bags, using a size grading machine.
“If the oysters are too dense in the bag, it stunts the growth,” James explains. “So, our job is to try and keep the oysters as comfortable as possible.”
Then there’s the repetitive job of flipping bags of oysters, exposing the oysters to air for up to a week at a time to remove marine fouling organisms. It can be hard work, especially if conditions are less than ideal.
“One of the good things about technology is we can sort of predict the weather, and if it’s looking terrible, we’ll try and do what we need to the day before,
But some days, you just have to go out there and just grit your teeth. Put the rain jacket on and just try and stay warm.”
Nature hurls other challenges at oyster farmers, too. In recent years, south coast farmers have dealt with damaging ash from bushfires, heavy rainfall and oyster diseases such as Vibrio, a naturally occurring bacteria that can reach dangerous levels during prolonged underwater heatwaves. These events can all trigger health regulations and a temporary ban on harvesting oysters, sometimes for weeks at a time.
Oyster farmers need a thick skin and stoic resilience to combat these stressful and unpredictable events.
“It's like for any farmer, if their animals get sick, it's devastating,” James says “I think with farming in general, you don't know what's going to be around the corner. You’ve just got to try and plan ahead as much as you can.
Perhaps one of the best ways to plan ahead is to diversify the business, and this spring, James is launching oyster tours on Merimbula Lake.
“I'll be pointing out different techniques of oyster farming and the history,” James says. “And as we scoot across the water, there's a white table cloth set up on a table, with Champagne and lemons.”
Standing in the water with the guests, James will lead an oyster shucking master class, sharing decades of cumulative experience. By putting his own stamp on the family business, James hopes to be ensuring its sustainability for future generations.
Soulful stirring
From her home in the Shoalhaven, in the shadow of the Illawarra escarpment, artist Anna Glynn has fostered a deep connection to nature that manifests in her creative works. While she is known to document nature’s regeneration, the beauty in her art works also benefits the viewer, perhaps regenerating souls.
“I have a kind of dual layer in my works, whether they be video or sound or paintings or drawings, and so there's a deeper meaning,” Anna says. Sometimes Anna’s works contains sadness about the way humans are impacting nature, but first, people will be attracted to the beauty, and that can be spiritually regenerative.
Anna says her natural inspiration is often found in her forest home.
“We're surrounded by wallabies and wombats and lyrebirds, so it's just lovely to be somewhere where you're just part of nature with the other creatures,” she says.
With a backyard full of habitat, Anna has the chance to observe or record these animals at close range.
“I've got a low timber coffee table on the deck,” Anna explains. “The baby wombat went under it one night, and I didn't know, and I just heard this sort of horrible scraping, and I went out, and the whole table was just moving around!”
Then there’s the elderly wallaby that Anna has been filming, with his penchant for citrus fruits.
“I've got lovely footage of him from last week eating a whole orange, and then the juice was dripping down his hands, so he licks all the juice off,” Anna laughs. “This is my life, kind of sharing the space with nature.”
Over the course of her career, Anna’s work has touched on regeneration in literal sense, particularly after the 2019-2020 black summer bushfires. Anna’s home was in the path of the fires, and she was forced to evacuate. In a stroke of luck for Anna and heartbreaking misfortune for others, the winds changed. While Anna’s property was spared, many in Kangaroo Valley were not so lucky.
“I spent about four or five months recording, and I set up time lapse cameras at different people's properties and filmed all the lovely new growth and did sound recordings,” Anna says. “One of the most traumatic things was the lack of sound. It took six weeks before I heard an insect.”
This moving-image art work, called ‘Love kindness…walk humbly’ is part of the Australian Parliament House and National Museum collection.
“It's just been showing on a loop in Parliament House for months and months,” Anna says. “So, I like the idea that the parliamentarians can see it, just to acknowledge that's what the communities are living with.”
All along the nature-rich South Coast, we live immersed in the environment. And those that nurture the land, gently cultivate the sea, and nudge our consciousness through art provide us with the threads that tie us back to nature. Sometimes they’re obvious and often they’re hiding in our midst; these are the regenerators.
