A year or so ago, we celebrated the first phase of fencing on the farm: defining our ‘wilderness zones’ by carving out seven-ish hectares of erosion gully, remnant vegetation and waterlogging for regeneration. We commented at the time at how much a few posts and wire redefines a sense of space. Now we’ve almost completed all of the major fencing for the property. What began as essentially one vast, 20-odd hectare paddock, has now been reshaped into 8 smaller paddocks, together with 3 revegetation zones/habitat corridors.

We’ve again used the fencing structure of 3 barbed and 5 plain wires to allow the safe passage of kangaroos while restricting the movement of stock. While the kangaroos have been a bit peeved about a few more fences in their way, they still move through them pretty briskly.

The establishment of multiple paddocks now allows us to begin rotational grazing, allowing us to experiment with less selective, focussed grazing by the sheep to manage pasture and weeds, while also allowing us to rest areas for periods for pasture regrowth and parasite management.

With further fencing, we’re able to further define the zones radiating out from our proposed house site. Starting next winter, we’ll start extending windbreaks around the paddocks, laying out woodlots and planting habitat corridors to connect the blocks together.