WICC interviewed Pauline McHenry who is a local sheep farmer from Mt Lindesay. Pauline was one of the original members of WICC!
WICC: Can you give us a little history of your experience with WICC many years ago?
I was asked by a chap from the Ag Dept to be on the original WICC committee consisting of six women who were progressive farmers trying to improve our farms. This was in the 1980s and we were women farming in Narrikup, Young Siding, Hay River, Denbarker, near Forest Hill, and us at Mt Lindesay. We met monthly at everyone’s farm to share new ideas and skills, and were trying to promote what you could call now ‘agroecological principles’ to others. These included observing natural systems, and encouraging other farmers to plant more trees for stock and salinity, and fence out rivers from stock. WICC was off to a good start under Jean Webb from Narrikup as the Chair.
WICC: Can you give us a little bit of history about your farm?
From reading recorded history we think the land our farm is on was well known to Mokare, a Minang man from Albany who guided both Wilson’s and Barker’s 1829/30 expeditions naming Mt Barker, Mt Lindesay, and the Hay and Denmark rivers, and also Wilson Inlet. After European settlement, the farm was milled for timber in the early decades of the 1900s and made freehold land in the 1930s. It had many owners in that time. It was then resumed for a local water supply for a couple decades while being leased before it was made freehold again in the late 1970s. Michael and I were the fourth owner in around four years after the second time it was up for freehold.
WICC: When did you buy the farm?
We bought the farm in 1982 in a very dilapidated state with hardly any trees left standing in paddocks. Four months after purchase we learned the farm was under quarantine for Patterson’s Curse. It was also covered in rocks, roots, thistles, and many other weeds, and had hardly any stock watering points apart from the rivers. We saw the potential in all the water and rainfall coming from dryland farming in Moora, but soon recognised salty groundwater getting worse from overclearing in previous years.
WICC: So what did you do?
Well before terms like ‘regenerative’ or ‘sustainable’ became common, Michael and I used similar principles, but it was called ‘cell’ or ‘rotational’ farming then. Coming from Moora with flatter land, we saw how Denmark farms needed to be managed around water and rainfall, and that you have to work with the complexity and not against it. We had to look at where the water travels and how the land, forest vegetation, and soils changed. I was brought up on a pioneering farm and later worked in the Lands and Survey’s Dept, and Town Planning Depts in Perth, and then for Sir William Halcrow in London. So I used this previous experience to draw up a farm plan. We observed our farm and then fenced on the contour, soil tested, and started manually planting trees along fence lines for the goats, sheep, and cattle to keep dry, shaded, and comfortable. We pruned these trees for extra summer feed as we rotated the stock around in small paddocks. The soil tests showed the ‘older’ country had a good super bank, but the ‘new’ more recently cleared areas needed various elements not obvious to the eye. There was a lot of work to do weeding, fencing, cleaning paddocks of rocks and roots, etc. It took many years to address the groundwater salinity issues too.
WICC: How did you address the salinity issues?
It was fairly basic then. We were advised to drain the salty water to the river and that was a disaster. So much erosion in the 1988 winter. It was then we decided to fence a hundred metres in each direction from the salty area and revegetate it. I have since sampled every dam and waterway for TDS at least once each year. I now have over 30 years of salt records from each river and dam on the farm that we fenced out and revegetated and how each changed when we worked at it. Those that know me know I like to keep detailed records of everything!
WICC: What drew you to farming in Mt Lindesay and Denmark from Moora?
Returning to Moora to marry Michael we farmed in Dandaragan while we also worked in the Moora Hotel. Michael was the Licencee for his parents, but after a few years Michael’s health deteriorated and he followed doctors orders to leave the Pub. So we moved to Denmark as it was where we had our Honeymoon. Farming in Denmark was difficult with a sick husband and two young sons, but we set our sights on improving the health of our farm.
WICC: Coming to your farm, the number and diversity of trees is striking. Why did you plant them?
I selected the trees for many reasons, but I never planted a monoculture for timber. Yes, I planted good timber trees, but they were mostly planted along fence lines for erosion control, windbreaks, aesthetics, accessing deep minerals, food and fodder, and as wildlife corridors for the birds and bees to travel along. I wanted to connect the paddocks to the river and the surrounding forest. Growing up on the family farm in Moora taught me a lot about working with the land. I count myself lucky to travel to many places and learn alongside my Dad and Grandfather. My Dad, Maurice was a friendly and inventive man who was good with his hands. He used to say, “you always plant a tree for at least three reasons”. There are many things that came in handy from the experience of an intergenerational family farm, such as planting trees, and learning how to burn off to enhance the bush. My grandfather took up land in Moora in 1896 after landing in Albany in 1892, as he previously farmed in Northern Ireland. Planting trees was just normal as a child. All our family had a green thumb, as you needed to in those days. Mary, my Mother, spent her early childhood years in in Gwalia in the Goldfields and her Northern Italian Mother provided for her children by supplying staples of goats milk and cheese and vegetables grown in kerosene tins. They were very resourceful and well-educated people. I was one of five daughters, but we were brought up working with the men during school holidays when we were home from boarding at New Norcia.
WICC: Apart from hard work, what other things about farming did you learn from your family?
Like my sisters I used to drive the farm ute and truck from a young age. One thing we did was drive to the Cook family farm’s salt lake west of Moora. When soils were lacking in minerals in those days you needed to observe and work out what your animals needed. You couldn’t just buy things. You had to do it yourself. While too much salt in the groundwater is a problem, the animals need some in their diet for sodium. When we came to Denmark, I knew from my Dad that we didn’t need to drench as much if we ensured the stock had ad lib mineral lick and salt in each paddock. So I made a salt feeder from old drench drums and wired them to the fences to keep them in place.
WICC: You mentioned fencing off your rivers and dams for salinity. How do your stock access water?
We had troughs made in the paddocks and dug trenches for polypipes that followed the contours as much as possible. We pump from a gully dam up to a holding dam and have gravity pressure to every paddock for stock water and fire access points. We chose one solid concrete trough suitable for both cattle, sheep and goats that is easy to clean for good water for healthier and more productive animals. It also prevented a lot of erosion and was safer for them well away from the rivers. We agroploughed on the contour to prevent erosion to aerate any compacted soils, and we did a lot of work with seeding in the early days. We tried many clovers, ryes, fodder rape, kikuyu, and irrigated lucerne, plus various fodder crops for silage. We became good friends with Neil and Isabelle Everett and used ICI bags to make silage like they did. We put two round bales into one bag, and used our house vacuum cleaner to remove the air. It was quite new then, and very time-consuming, but the sheep and cattle loved it. We haven’t cut hay since, but making silage has come a long way with all the machinery.
WICC: Has all the trees changed the health of your farm?
Yes. The farm trees look beautiful and have many other benefits, but there were some unexpected ones. A surprise was that we haven’t needed to spray pesticides for over 30 years. We learned from a sample I sent to the Ag Dept that what I thought was a pest insect on a trough was a natural predator to the aphid we had on our lucerne. We realised spraying insecticides would upset our little ‘agroecosystem’ balance. Since the trees along fence lines have matured, they have connected as corridors to the native vegetation. We seem to not get the pest infestations we once did 40 years ago. And we do enjoy the numbers and variety of birds and bees the trees bring. It is now great that my son Mark and his wife Julia and young children have now improved on my original farm plan while following the family tradition of looking after the health of the land.
