Glen Chapman can call himself a third generation regenerative farmer, with his grandfather Harry sowing the seeds of the practice on his Central Tablelands' Angus stud. Glen's parents Wal and Lynne, Baldersleigh west of Guyra, adopted rotation grazing in the mid 1990s.
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These days Mr Chapman practices what he teaches, and is founding a new farm at Wollomombi where basalt country falls away to trapsoil.
For the past eight years rainfall east of Armidale, and west of Ebor, has recorded below average, with last year's drought particularly bitter. So when the rains returned after Christmas Mr Chapman intended to capitalise with a quick cover crop - using bird seed, or "finch mix" to be precise, which included French, Jap and Shirohie millets along with Panicums and canola spread by hand, at a rate of about 10 to 15 kilograms to the hectare.
The mix was not coated with fungicides or pesticides which allowed the seeds' own genetic potential the best chance of growing.
"A lot of fescues and oats are coated with a blue fungicide that can affect your soil biology," Mr Chapman explained. "When you are buying seed you can ask that it come untreated."
As you can see from the photograph, six weeks in the rain and sun does wonder for a short growing crop like millet, and this paddock could have been grazed much earlier, except that Mr Chapman intends to let it set seed for the next generation.
"This is all about building soil," he said. "But you need to be prepared."
The property was destocked of cattle 12 months ago in order to maintain ground cover. Lambs grazed until last June.
Now these same paddocks are making a rebound, with a mix of species waist high under a system of rotational grazing with a mob of Eaglehawk blood heifers moved to new grass every three days - a single strand electric fence keeping them contained.
As a result cocksfoot and clovers are returning of their own volition.
Mr Chapman's paddocks were dosed with a biodynamic solution, made with mostly manure and basalt powder with other ingredients like eggshells, nettles and bark, stored in a pit for half a year and mixed according to Steiner's principals of energy and spread out before the drought broke.
"We need to reconnect land with biology and prepare for when it rains," he said.
Of course the weeds got the jump first in uncultivated land, but Mr Chapman sees this diversity of biology not as a problem, but as an indicator of mineral imbalance.
"Weeds correct bare soil," he says. "Forbes, for instance, may have higher nutrition than some grasses."
He noted his lambs at the end of June preferred Fleabane to grass and now that it has rained his cattle devour fat hen before moving to Kikuyu.
"To decide to spray out a paddock you are potentially impacting its future potential. The seed bank is there for clovers, microlaena, setaria, cocksfoot and danthonia or wallabygrass.
A the moment yellow turnip is populous but while it may be competing with more palatable species, it is obviously playing a nutritional role.
A regenerative grazing field day held at Wilmot, Hernani, last Thursday attracted 360 people and heard from inspiring speakers, like Alec and Nick Anderson, Mullaley, who chose to plant a multi species cover crop and graze it, rather than shoot for a return from sorghum grain.
In their talk they calculated the cover crop would require just 50mm of rain, not the 125mm needed for grain, with the non-fallow break even requirement for grazing cattle a very risk-free 27kg liveweight/ha.
"And at the same time they were building their soil," said Mr Chapman.
