Hemp, machinery and highland cattle a feature of the 2021 Seymour Expo
From learning about the use of industrial hemp to getting up close and personal with Highland cattle, there will be plenty to attract the masses to this year’s Seymour Expo.
INDUSTRIAL hemp’s many uses will be in the spotlight at Seymour again this year, with specialist building company Southern Hemp running lectures about the crop and demonstrations of how to build with it.
Southern Hemp owner and hemp-farming consultant David Brian said demand for hempcrete houses had been strong in the past year.
“Last year I did five hemp houses throughout Victoria,” he said, explaining excellent thermal properties and fire resistance were some of the benefits of hempcrete – which is a mix of woody hemp fibre from the plant’s stalks and lime, used to create internal and external walls.
“It is fire resistant, mould resistant, rodent resistant. And with increasing energy costs, we are getting a lot more interest in hemp as a sustainable building material.”
With demand for hempcrete on the up, David hopes to encourage more growers to plant test crops in Victoria.
He said this past growing season farmers planted 243ha to industrial hemp across Victoria, while Tasmanian growers sowed more than 1000ha last year.
Growing licences are necessary to plant industrial hemp, which is a variety of cannabis sativa that has low levels of the psychoactive ingredient THC.
The crop is one of the fastest growing plants on Earth, and is harvested for seed, which is edible and can also be pressed for oil. Its fibrous stalks can be used to produce paper, rope, textiles, insulation, animal feed and building materials.
Homeowner Shane Hogarth is a fan of hemp as construction material, and is just weeks away from moving into his recently completed hemp home at Chiltern, in northern Victoria west of Wodonga.
He and his partner, Gianna Kalc, started building a strawbale and rammed-earth home on their 40ha bush block back in 2015.
“We’d had it two-thirds built, had the roof on, and it got destroyed in bushfire, totally destroyed,” Shane said. “I thought hempcrete would be a good solution for us to build it again, because it was stud walls.”
Shane said they chose hemp for the rebuild, which started last year, because the cost of hemp was similar to using strawbales and render, but had the added benefit of fire-resistance and easy installation.
“It meets all those criteria – but it is a bit easier to build from a construction point of view,” Shane said.
“It is not difficult at all, the way David sets up – it is one bag of hemp and one of lime binder, and the appropriate amount of water. You just fill up these buckets, and just chuck it in.”
He said the material was simple to tamp down, required no additional rendering and offered impressive thermal properties.
“Me and my partner did the wall ourselves, and the weekend we did that was the most recent long weekend that was really hot. It was 42-44C outside, and we had thermometers with us inside, and it was 25C in the house.”
He said they planned to install roof-mounted sprinklers for ember protection, then he and Gianna would be confident their new home was as prepared for bushfire as possible.
Expo visitors can see David Brian’s hemp building demos daily at 10.30am and 2pm on the Southern Hemp site T47.
His lecture about growing hemp and building with hemp will take place in the Small Farms Learning Hub at noon on Friday and Saturday, and 1pm on Sunday.
MACHINERY DRIVING CONNECTION
TRACTORS, machinery and ag equipment will once again be on show at Seymour, with local dealerships welcoming the chance to reconnect with farmers and customers at a community event.
Goulburn Valley Ag principal Christian Barnett said he would have mid-range Deutz-Fahr and Kioti tractors on display, plus cultivation and seeding equipment for small to mid-range applications.
“We’re excited because it is the first (field days) back,” Mr Barnett said. “From our point of view, we have had a beautiful rain, 50-70mm widespread across northern Victoria. With the commodities quite solid, good early growth and a good early start to autumn, it is another optimistic season ahead.”
Mr Barnett said his Shepparton dealership, like many across Australia, had experienced a few delays in shipping of some machine models. But, he stressed he had a good deal of stock available for sale.
“We have had one or two issues with shipping, which has been a little bit frustrating,” he said. “But actually the product landing has been pretty accurate.
“We have been pretty lucky and been able to get stock relatively quickly.
“Our tractors will be (at Seymour) and the majority will be for sale.”
Other machinery dealers that attended Farm World in Gippsland last month told more extreme stories of spikes in demand and difficulty sourcing parts and machines in the past year, causing wait times for new stock arrivals to stretch from six to 10 months or more.
Mr Barnett said his supply was arriving more quickly, and hoped to be able to serve local customers who were planning ahead.
He recommended customers talk to him at the Expo to find out more about specific machines’ availability and estimated delivery times.
“My advice as a dealer principal would be to investigate, look early, make decisions in advance and maybe pre-purchase or order,” he said.
“There are a couple of model mixes that have challenges behind it and delays. But if they come and see us we can guide them through that and what’s available.”
In addition to tractors, Goulburn Valley Ag will have Atchison seed drills and Maschio Gaspardo cultivators with 2.5m to 3m working widths on its site at the Expo.
HIGHLAND CATTLE ON SHOW
THIS will be the sixth year Julia Webster will charm Seymour visitors with her poll Highland cattle.
“I always get very excited about the Seymour Expo because I can talk about cows all day and bore people to sobs,” said Julia, who runs Mayfield Poll Highland Cattle stud and is the president of the Poll Highland Cattle society.
“It is a great day and exposure for the breed.”
Julia and her husband, Kerry, started breeding Highlands 31 years ago. She said it was Kerry who first fell for the breed – “my husband like them because they were fluffy” – then they branched into poll Highlands 14 years ago, starting the society in 2014.
The Websters raise the long-haired gentle Scottish giants on 36ha at Bungaree, near Ballarat.
Julia said demand for the Highlands bred to be hornless was stronger now than it ever had been.
“There are just not enough poll cows available,” she said. “It is a health and safety thing.
A lot of people love Highlands, but they are a bit nervous of the horns. That is one of the reasons people go into them (polls).”
She said breeding Highlands without horns had been a stop-start process over the past several decades, because people didn’t truly understand the genetic trait.
But now tests were available to identify double and single poll genes, Highland owners could breed polls with confidence.
Julia will give a lecture about the development of the poll Highland breed in Australia on Saturday at 11.30am.
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