Regenerative cattle grazing, market gardening and fruit tree pruning: Canberra Field Day at Gollion Farm

On a cool and crisp day just outside of Canberra, the sun (thankfully) came out for another great YFC Field Day, this time at Gollion Farm. Sam Vincent (owner of Gollion Farm) and Sophie Mico (Tender Ground Garden) gave us an excellent tour of their mixed-enterprise farm!

With a group of about a dozen, we began with introductions by everyone which was shortly followed by a visit to fruit orchard.  To keep the grass low and fertilised Sam keeps sheep in these orchards. Next, we trekked through the fields to Sophie’s bee hives and to find some of Sam’s very friendly Angus cows. Upon return we heard about Sophie’s market gardening journey and her new patch on the property.

After enjoying a yummy lunch provided by local business Scrumpers, we were treated to an excellent fruit tree pruning by Sophie. This highly practical workshop took us through identifying how to prune apple and other pome fruit trees in the winter to maximise their success in the fruiting seasons. We applied these lessons to the farm’s orchard into the evening!

Thanks so much to Sam and Sophie for sharing their highly practical knowledge and experiences of regenerative cattle grazing, fruit tree pruning and market gardening. A big thanks as well to Lucy Ridge for leading the organisation and coordination of this event.

This event was held on Ngunnawal & Ngambri Country and made possible thanks to Small Grant funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s Climate Smart Agriculture Program.