Agriculture & Horticulture

The Year 9 elective, A Sense of Humus, recently visited Monica Sutherland’s regeneratively-operated mixed farming enterprise at Cosgrove. Students saw the organic olive grove being harvested with an overhead machine, the native tree nursery, shrubs producing native cut flowers, bees, the Hereford herd, complete with cows, calves and a bull, sheep, multi-species clover crops being used to repair the top soil and a crop consisting of oats and two types of clovers. 

An interesting feature of the property are the swales that have been carved into the hillside along the contours to stop erosion and capture all available rainfall into the soil.

Beside the oat crop is a conventionally grown canola crop. Monica uses this crop as a comparison against the regeneratively grown crops and pastures, to measure differences in soil qualities and plant qualities.

Charlotte Drinnan

Agriculture & Horticulture