Our Story
Hi - we are the Byfields. Our farming journey began with the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 and the new experience of empty supermarket shelves. For the first time in our lifetime, we had to face the tenuous state of our food security, and we had all seen how quickly something like a new virus could bring it all crashing down.
We took a long, hard look at things, and decided we did not want to be reliant on a supermarket to feed our family. So we took the bull by the horns and decided to start growing our own food. There was just one problem. We lived in the middle of suburbia. Still, we started out with some backyard chooks (which we now know are the gateway drug to farming) and a small veggie patch. It didn't take long for us to start eying off bigger animals. Thankfully, we had access to 86 acres of family land up at Little Swanport.
It wasn’t exactly farm land – in fact, it had never been farmed. The only thing it seemed to grow well were the thousands of wallabies and kangaroos that flooded the paddocks each evening. But we figured we could use it to see if we actually liked farming .
Next up - figuring out what we wanted to farm, and how we wanted to farm. We didn't want to do what everyone else was doing. We had no desire to use a bunch of chemicals to grow animals that were little more than a commercial commodity. We wanted to march to the beat of our own drum. We wanted healthy, happy, free-range animals that lived great lives until the very end. We also wanted to close the gap between farmers and consumers.
Over the next few months, we watched hundreds of hours of YouTube videos on farming, and read everything we could get our hands on. But, in the end, it was the land that made the important decisions for us. We had poor land that needed to be regenerated, which naturally led us to regenerative farming. We didn't have lush green pastures so that limited our choice of animals. We needed hardy animals that could forage the native grasses and bushes, and that could survive the rocky landscape. We also didn't live onsite, which meant we needed animals that weren't high maintenance.
In the end, we settled on a combination of pigs and cattle. We discovered pigs are amazing at digging up rocks and turning the soil - like mini excavators. And, when properly managed, cattle can produce healthy top soil and restore the environment (so much for all those claims cows are killing the environment). We landed on heritage breeds for two reasons: first, because they are hardier than commercial breeds and better suited to poorer land, but second, because many heritage breeds are under threat of extinction and we wanted to do our bit for keeping these rarer breeds alive.
In November 2020, we bought our first pig – Nugget, a purebred Saddleback sow. And in January 2021, our first cows arrived on the property – 3 Belted Galloway heifers including one whose broken belt looked just like the map of Tasmania (so naturally, we named her Tassie).
With little grass on the ground, we had to seek out alternative food sources for our livestock. We bought in hay, rolling it out to add vital carbon into the soil and introduce pasture seed that would eventually grow into healthy, green grass for our animals. That kept our cows reasonably happy, but we found that our pigs had insatiable appetites. In short, they were little pigs who constantly wanted to eat. Sure, we could have bought livestock feed for them. But we knew there had to be a better way.
Knowing that around 50% of all food grown ends up in landfill, we wanted to figure out how we could help reduce food waste while solving our feed problem. We made some calls to other local businesses and discovered they were paying to dispose of their food waste at the tip. We offered to collect it for them and feed it to the animals, which was a win-win solution for us all - and perhaps even more importantly, a win for the environment.
Farming on the East Coast, while immensely beautiful, did have its downfalls. We were travelling several thousands of kilometres a month driving back and forwards from our home in the suburbs to our food suppliers, to the farm, and back again. All the positive steps we were making to the environment were being negated by the fossil fuels we were burning travelling back and forwards to the farm.
So in 2022, we sold our suburban home and bought a small farm in Forcett. Being closer, we have also been able to step up our food collection efforts, and all of our animals now enjoy a varied diet that includes grain mash and pot ale from a local distillery, liquid whey from a local cheesemaker, unwanted fruit and vegetables, unused bakery products, unused dairy products, and grape mark from several local vineyards.
We estimate that since 2020, we have diverted over 4 million kgs of food waste from landfill to our farm, where it has been gratefully received by the hungry mouths of our livestock. With so much food to go around, we have been able to grow our herd. We now have over 70 cows (and are a registered Belted Galloway breeder), and anywhere between 60 and 100 pigs, and big plans for future expansions.
And we have done it by farming sustainably and ethically with as small a carbon footprint as we can manage.