Glen Greenock Farm: Natural farming and boxed lamb create a successful business

GLEN Greenock’s Suffolk lamb is catching attention, proving the leap into boxed lamb was a smart move for Ross Davey and Marcia Lazarus.

Heads or tails: A Suffolk lamb on Ross Davey and Marcia Lazarus’ Glen Greenock Farm at Dunach.

THIS lamb improves with age.

And so does Glen Greenock Farm, the 60-hectare property at Dunach where Ross Davey and Marcia Lazarus raise their Suffolk sheep.

It’s a pretty place dotted with olive trees between hills and a creek 50km north of Ballarat, putting it firmly in sheep country.

Advice comes cheap, but, as Ross says, it’s not easy to sell lamb to a community of lamb farmers.

So he puts a lot of thought into how things are done at Glen Greenock to maximise the land’s capacity and the value of his produce.

“It’s a slow process,” Ross says, “You can’t do everything at the same time. And then you make mistakes.

“I always say I’m too old to farm because every mistake doesn’t show up for 12 months and you have to correct it the next time. I haven’t got many 12 months left.”

The sprightly 60-somethings have spent the past eight years devoted to a “natural farming” approach producing richer soil, healthier pasture and a thriving boxed lamb business.

Their Suffolks produce melt-in-the-mouth meat at about seven months of age.

However, Ross says their meat can become more flavourful when grown out to 12-18 months, if it’s cooked long and slow.

Glen Greenock Farm

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ROSS, a retired medical software executive, and Marcia, who works part-time as a nurse, bought the Dunach farm 15 years ago to pursue Ross’ retirement dream to farm.

The couple experimented with breeds for a few years and finally settled on the black-faced, white-fleeced Suffolk for its tendency to carry twins, easy birthing and reputation for producing prime cuts.

They started their flock seven years ago with 20 ewes. Now the flock has 90 ewes with another 70 due to start producing lambs this year.

For six years Ross sold lambs through the Ballarat saleyards, but each year became more disappointed with the return he was receiving for his animals.

Finally, last year he quit selling through the yards and launched a boxed lamb business. Glen Greenock now sells directly to customers, butchering and delivering once a month.

“It’s strictly to order,” Ross says. Customers place orders online for a half or full lamb. Quarter boxes are available as a taster for new customers.

“We have a website, but as far as connecting with people, Facebook has been the primary channel and it has worked,” he says.

Ross organised a blind taste-test to help reassure him Suffolk was a good choice for quality meat. A local chef prepared Corriedale, Merino-cross and Glen Greenock’s Suffolk three ways. Taste-testers voted for their favourite, and the Suffolk came out top.

GLEN Greenock’s true niche is in Ross’ approach, which he calls “natural farming”.

“The whole belief in natural farming is everything emanates from the quality of the soil,” Ross says. “If you have bad soil, it has been water-logged or has been planted with a monoculture (a single crop for a long period of time), the common wisdom is to put on super-phosphate. But people are finding they have to use more and more to get the same result.”

Ross says treating the soil with natural additives instead of artificial fertilisers encourages mineral balance, healthy microorganisms and greater long-term benefits.

“It has only been in more recent industrial times that artificial fertilisers have been used,” Ross says. “Prior to that, all farmers used manures, composts and green manures, encouraging the animal life from worms down through microorganisms, rather than hitting them with herbicides or insecticides because these don’t discriminate between the good stuff and the bad stuff.

“The real point-of-light moment was when a friend, an old farmer, dropped in a book called Malabar Farm by Louis Bromfield.” Bromfield was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of the 1930s. The World War I veteran was also a conservationist and farmer who spent the final 20 years of his life, to his death in 1956, developing organic agriculture techniques on Malabar Farm. The 400-hectare property in Ohio is still held as a model of sustainable farming.

“Even back then America was using monocultures,” Ross says. “Bromfield introduced all the old methods he’d learned from farmers while he was in Europe.

“Using green manures and compost he recreated topsoil in a matter of three or four years. He showed diverse species of plants creates a lot more nutrition for animals and they survive better. I thought, ‘This is revolutionary and it’s not new’.”

Ross designed his soil and pasture improvement plan based on Bromfield’s.

Weather beaters: Ross and Marcia on their 60-hectare property.

Regular soil tests guide him in applications of compost, a microbial mix and soft rock phosphate, which he says is gentler than superphosphate as a source of phosphorous.

Ross also uses poultry, pig and bat manure, called guano, and sows pasture with added fungus because he says it can help plants convert nutrients and draw up water from soil.

“The future is to work in concert with nature, not to compete against it,” he says.

ROSS’ methods extend to his animals.

“When I first started, I’d run around like a mad thing and push the sheep hard and be noisy in the yards,” Ross says.

“I’ve become a lot more gentle.

“All we feed them is from here. It is either the pastures or hay I have taken off the previous year. Even though I have a silo of oats there, I’ve never used it.”

Lambing starts in September with weaning at three months. Lambs are sold at about five months or 40kg. Lambs are processed at Koallah Farm abattoir and dry hung for a week. Then they are butchered and cryo-packed

to order and Ross delivers to customers with a mobile coolroom.

Glen Greenock’s box sales have been steady and Ross retains older lambs, branding them as two tooth instead of the less savoury-sounding hogget, to sell them as a premium product at about 12-18 months.

“Hogget doesn’t sound all that good,” Ross says, “and mutton sounds worse. But if you treat them right, the flavour can be fantastic. I was worried about Suffolks getting too old, but, in fact, there is a big market for them.”

As Ross thinks about potential expansion he is guided by his past experience in the software industry. “Always move your systems to become simpler so it doesn’t become overwhelming,” he says. “Spread the load, spread the joy.”

With this in mind he is co-operating with “like-minded” pig farmers to sell pork in his boxed deliveries and hopes to find a beef partner soon.

But at home on Glen Greenock the focus will remain firmly on the soil, pasture and the Suffolks.

“I love farming,” Ross says. “I may not make a fortune out of this place, but I want to leave it better than I found it.”