How we farm…
Regenerative Farming
On McIvor Farm, we use a farming method called ‘Regenerative Farming’ which means we are focused on restoring the landscape’s function as a healthy ecosystem that results in sustainable production for animals and plants as well as an improved natural resource base that has a healthy lifecycle with increased biodiversity and greater resilience.
This video gives you a little sneak peek into how our animals live, out on pasture with huts that provide them shelter. The animals are rotated on a weekly basis in a planned grazing system.
How did we come to farm in this way?
We started our lifelong careers in Agriculture, in industrial agriculture, high input, high output and the focus on profit at all costs. After a family health issue and the passing of a close family member in a short amount of time, we began to question many aspects of lifestyle, food and industrialised systems. Along with the cost to the environment and animals.
It was to be a pivotal point in our lives and became a catalyst for lifestyle, values and career changes. This is where the story of McIvor Farm Foods began.
We wanted to change the status quo in agriculture and take the general public along with us. We wanted people to have a choice and a say in what they put in their bodies. To be part of a natural farming system that does care and produce great tasting, better quality, nutrient dense food. Our hopes were simple; farm free-range pigs, make great tasting pork and sell direct to the public. Educate people on what they put in their bodies and where that food comes from all the while giving the animals the best possible living conditions.
Since then, we have opened a farm gate shop, built on-farm butchery, employed local people, developed 500 acres under regenerative farming principles and diversified our animals. But we’re not done yet, our farm is ever evolving along with our business.
Our farming practices are both simple and complex. The simple answer is soil, we work from the ground up! The long answer is working on complex biological, symbiotic relationships between soil, environment, animal and people.
Our herd of mostly Berkshire pigs, which are an old breed of pig, who act like natural-four legged ploughs to turn the soil and add nutrients back into the paddocks they live in. We plant seasonal crops like daikon radishes, grasses and grains that carry water down into the soil to create the ideal conditions for bugs, worms and critters to grow. The pigs are moved into these plant filled paddocks to dig up and eat these plants for nourishment and fun. As a result they turn the soil for us and add organic matter back into the soil for the next crop to grow.
Life On A Regenerative Farm
All of our pigs live out in the paddock. They have strawed huts that provide them with shelter and warmth if they want to get out of the weather.
No sheds, concrete floors or heat lamps!
What we feed our pigs
Pigs are omnivores, like you and me, so they need a balanced diet to give them the best life of growing, breeding and living to a ripe-old-age.
Our pigs consume roughly 50% pasture/forage and a 50% mash diet (grains/proteins/amino acids) that we feed out every day. If a pig was just to be “grass fed” you would end up with an inferior product with a small eye muscle and a very heavy fat coverage. Pigs are not ruminants like cattle and sheep hence needing grains in their diet.
As Belinda is an experienced animal nutritionist, with approximately 20 years of working with feed-mills and consultants for the Australian pig industry she has much experience and insight to what is the ‘norm’ in pig diets. This has lead McIvor Farm to being very particular to what ingredients are used in making their custom diet for their pigs.
One other important factor in our farming system is…
Our farm wouldn’t be what it is without you, our customers. It only works because we have your support!
Whether you are a Pork Club member, a market attendee, a farm gate shop visitor, an online shopper or someone who delights in our ham at Christmas time, you are what makes our farm possible.
THANK YOU for being a part of our farm!
Are you interested in learning more about regenerative farming, natural sequence farming or keyline? Book a one on one consult with Jason Hagan hosted here at McIvor Farm Foods.
More resources…
Regenerative agriculture is a wide wonderful world of farming both simple and complex. Below we have listed a few resources that we have found helpful over our farming journey.
Learn
Tarwyn Park Training - Natural Sequence Farming
Tarwyn Park Training: The Home of Natural Sequence Farming
Regrarians - All your land needs
Read
Call of the reed warbler by Charles Massy
Dirt to soil by Gabe Brown
Organic manifesto by Maria Rodale
What your food ate by David R. Montgomery & Anne Bikle`
Soil by Matthew Evans
For the love of soil by Nicole Masters
Watch
Smartsoil Media