With a wetter than usual start to winter predicted by meteorologists, livestock producers need to have a plan to thrive, not just survive present day markets.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
East of Dorrigo, the country is so wet at this time of year that cattle graze - and flourish - on the basalt ridges, content to feed on high-protein kikuyu without sinking to their hocks in soft soil.
The North Coast this autumn hasn't seen a flood but daily showers have brought the water table to the surface and weaner producers are offloading stock, unable to provide sufficient winter pasture. At the saleyards they become price takers, not makers.
On the Moran family's mixed enterprise at Lowanna and Brooklana, a body of feed awaits the first winter frost, grand enough in bulk to protect the understorey of emerging red clover, chicory, turnips, rye and plantain.
The fattening paddocks are at Brooklana on red soil while Angus cross raise their calves on the blacksoil country at Lowanna, sharing the property with wet schlerophyll hardwood timber and a four-man sawmill.
"I'd like the pastures to look like a stud but it all takes time," says Andrew Moran, who farms with his wife Jayne and their children Lochlann, with his partner Mali, and Ashleigh.
Mr Moran started in the timber game, on this family property, as a 19 year old with a Hagen mill and a second-hand saw bench.
He broke big logs down with the swing saw, a brave man's tool, and processed the lengths into all manner of product from structural beams to tomato stakes.
"Nothing is wasted," he says.
Uses for durable hardwood go beyond mere structure, with industrial wire rope polished on silica-dense brushbox while hardwood burnt in a river of slag will keep the flow running.
Figuring out how to make a timber enterprise work requires an engineer's thinking, even if it is of the bushmen's kind.
Cattle came later and were subjected to the same kind of treatment - building better, lately using Franklin and Tyler bulls.
"We fit in cattle work on the fine days, in between mill jobs," he says.
Throughout the district burnt brown whiskey grass, or broom sedge, has gone to seed, choking out some paddocks, but the remedy lies in application of phosphorous to bring soil level back to normal, along with NPK.
"It's easy to get rid of," Mr Moran says, pointing out a newly acquired paddock covered in Andropogon virginicus.
"We apply chook manure directly to our paddocks. We trade it for sawdust from the mill," he says, noting that ash from the waste fire is also used, full of carbon, calcium and potassium.
"If you don't fertilise in this high-rainfall country you don't put weight on. The nutrients will leach down into the soil."
Winter forage seed is spread behind an aerator, not a plough, with the thousands of punched holes ripe for holding seed.
"I try not to work the paddock up," Mr Moran says. "Otherwise we lose too much soil."
Kikuyu grazed below the four and a half leaf stage maintains optimum production for cattle without putting energy into a stem. However, at Lowanna autumn growth is allowed to flourish without grazing it down.
"I find the frost sucks moisture out of the ground but if you keep a bulk of grass over it that helps keep the moisture in," says Mr Moran. The canopy also protects young winter fodder.
At nearly 500 metres above the Coffs coast winters are cool and there is no growth until the second week of August when the rye returns.
"As a result the big body of summer kikuyu is there to protect the grasses underneath. This is our winter preparation.
"When the winter feed dies off in spring there come the summer grasses."
