WHEN Derek and Kirrily Blomfield’s customers tuck into their grassfed beef they’re not just thinking about how good it tastes.
How it’s grown is just as important, and when eating The Conscious Farmer beef, they know where and how it was produced.
The Blomfields market their beef direct to customers who want a premium grass-fed product – the latest addition to the enterprise at “Colorado”, Caroona.
A few years ago the family, along with Derek’s father Sandy, completely changed their business.
“Dad and I attended a holistic management course 13 years ago and started to make some changes,” Mr Blomfield said.
“Then Kirrily and I revisited this seven years ago and continued the changes to be all grazing on perennial pastures.”
The 980-hectare property on the Liverpool Plains was home to a mixed cattle and grain enterprise.
Now there’s no grain, but a mix of sub-tropical and temperate pastures and native grasses.
They are using rotational planned grazing to maximise pasture use, and Mr Blomfield said he’d seen a huge improvement in soil health.
“We’ve increased biodiversity in the paddocks and built up ground cover and soil capacity,” he said.
The property has been subdivided into 68 paddocks and stock is shifted according to pasture growth rates.
“Our system means the animals are always coming on to recovered pasture,” Mr Blomfield said.
“As soon as the pasture’s recovered again we want them back there to get the best animal performance.”
Achieving environmental outcomes is also a focus, stocking conservatively and according to season.
“The carrying capacity varies but we think our maximum is about 400 breeding cows with progeny,” Mr Blomfield said.
“We’re now realising over summer after good growth we could have 800 animals on board.
“As the grass-fed business builds we want to have our nucleus breeding herd, but be flexible with surplus good young cattle.”
Through the new business, which began at the start of this year, the couple has found a new market of people who are conscious about their health and how the animals are treated.
“We even have a customer from Canberra who’s vegan but she wanted beef for her children, so she tried ours and she was really happy with it,” Mr Blomfield said.
“To be able to sell beef to a vegan says a lot about the product.”
The new venture started small with just two animals butchered, packed and sent to six customers.
In just a few months, it’s grown to more than 90 customers in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra and the State’s North West.
“The number of customers at Canberra has grown. There’s a real awareness down there of people chasing grass-fed beef for the healthy Omega-3s and people who are conscious of their health and fitness,” Mr Blomfield.
Marketing through social media on Facebook has created a following for the brand.
“We’re finding that the clients we’re picking up want to know the source of products,” Mr Blomfield said.
“Consumers are becoming disillusioned with beef from supermarket shelf. They’re buying meat without knowing its history.”
And its not just grass-fed beef being produced at “Colorado”, but also The Conscious Farmer blog.
The weekly blog, launched last month, draws on the experiences of farmers and their on-farm practices.
Written by Mrs Blomfield, it shares regenerative, practical and profitable information to farmers and producers.
“The main thing I want to do is share practical information that growers and producers can take away and see how they might apply it to their farming situation,” Mrs Blomfield said.
“I encourage farmers to bring their experiences to me, that I can share through my blog so we can all raise our level of understanding and profitability.”
