Wellstead farmers Sylvia Leighton and Peter McKenzie in line for national Landcare farming award

Wellstead’s Sylvia Leighton and Peter Mckenzie will represent WA as finalists in the Australian Government Landcare Farming Award later this month. The pair have been working to regenerate their sheep grazing property, Wilyun Pools Farm, since taking over as managers in 2014. Ms Leighton said 120ha of the 1214ha property had been revegetated as wildlife corridors which also act as shelter belts for the property’s paddocks. She said having “live soils” was a focus of the regenerative farming philosophy. “Everything we do is trying to retain carbon in the soil and we use mineral fertilisers which are very gentle on the microbes in the soil as well,” she said. “We revegetated 120ha of wildlife corridors because we really believe having lots of birds and wildlife just enhances it — it doesn’t devalue it, it doesn’t reduce your productivity and the animals do lots of insect control. “It makes it a much more healthy and interesting place to live.” For Ms Leighton, the aspiration to regenerate the property is personal as it was her family which cleared much of the native bushland in the 1960s. She said the land in the area was released for agricultural use in 1963 and that her childhood was “sadly, clearing lots and lots of bush”. “As a very rough calculation I worked out how many plants we would have killed just on our one farm — it was about 55 million plants,” she said. “At that time six million hectares across the south coast region got cleared. If one farm knocked out 55 million plants, just imagine the huge impact of clearing all of that.” They earned the right to represent WA after winning the State category of the award last year. Eight finalists, one from each State and Territory, will vie for the award which will be handed out on August 24 at the National Landcare Awards. Landcare farming project manager Angela Hammond said she was thrilled to see such a variety of projects reflecting the growth of Australia’s landcare-led agricultural movement. “Australian farmers and graziers are enthusiastic landcarers, and the diverse range of finalists for this year’s Australian Government Landcare Farming Award showcases the incredible breadth of work happening in the agricultural industry,” she said. “Innovative Landcare-led agricultural practices are paving the way for Australia’s sustainable farming future. “Many of this year’s finalists have made a lifelong commitment to transforming their properties into the land management success stories they are today.” Ms Leighton said she was looking forward to meeting the other finalists and sharing ideas with them. “Hopefully there might be some invitations to go look at some of the other landcare farmers’ properties,” she said. “We’ll pick up ideas and just network. It’s good to know that there is a whole a base of people in the farming arena that are looking at changing what we do.” She said the farming philosophy she shared with Mr McKenzie was to leave the land better than they found it. “We always say we don’t believe we own it, we are just custodians of the land for the moment and one of our jobs is to look after it,” she said. “We really do believe in trying to find that balance between being a commercial agricultural property — so that we’ve got income to do all the interesting things you want to do — and balancing that with looking after the landscape and its long-term health.”