WHAT IS REGENERATIVE FARMING?
Regenerative farming is a conservation and environmental approach to farming, looking after the soil and biodiversity of the environment and working the business enterprises in with nature, not against it, so the next generations to come can survive here too. We do not use any chemicals or work the soil and every decision we make considers the environment and soil first, which always benefits the animals and plants that live here. This produces great nutritious food that's good for us and the planet.
We are Lauren and Lachlan Mathers and our family is regeneratively farming heritage breed Berkshire pigs, Sommerlad and Bresse chickens, eggs and beef cattle at Barham on the Murray River on two small holdings of 200 acres in total, and processing our animals ourselves at our butchery.
Our farming practice is focused on building our soils and biodiversity as we are in a pretty brittle environment with extreme temperatures, low rainfall and no irrigation. We do this through capturing carbon in the soil using cover crops and pastures which are managed through rotational grazing and resting, planting trees and shrubs, co-grazing different species of animals (eg. chickens and cows), applying biological soil innoculants that we make at the farm, biofertilisers using waste from the butchery and egg processing and direct drilling very diverse cover crops in between pasture peaks. We have been directly supplying our customers for 13 years, and work closely with several other local farmers with their butchering, smallgoods and distribution needs so that we can all benefit from sharing our infrastructure and supply chains.
It's so important to us to do our own butchering and production to ensure quality and transparency. We handcraft our own smallgoods and charcuterie and send all our orders from here and via our shopfront for our community. Our butchery is in the Barham township 10km from the farm, and fully powered by solar. We are also co-founders and shareholders in the Barham micro-abattoir, and members of the Murray Plains Meat Cooperative who will own and run the micro-abattoir from sometime in 2024. Between the two facilities we can work with farmers and consumers directly to process all sorts of livestock for our local community, and it's 100% owned by farmers.
We wholesale our products directly, so there's no middle man. This is vital for our businesses because you deal directly with the farmer and butcher, it's transparent and arrives fresh. Our butchery packs whole primals, whole pigs, chickens, grass fed beef, unsliced smallgoods and charcuterie for kitchen service, retail packs of smallgoods, charcuterie and fresh cuts for customers who share our values of agroecology and community. We have specialised dry aging rooms for pork and beef primals. Get in touch with us to get connected with Fresho for pricing and ordering, we'd love to work with you.
You can see us in person at the Castlemaine Farmers' Market in Victoria on the first Sunday of every month and every other Wednesday (stay up to date via our socials).
