The same soils that support native vegetation and rare wildlife also nurture our vines.
Working With Nature, Not Against It
So our approach is pretty straightforward. We closely follow the comings and goings in the vineyard to make sure everything is balanced and sustainable, intervening only when necessary with regenerative processes.
We haven’t touched pesticides since 2002, and that was only for a cut-worm infestation in the newly planted vines. Since then? We’ve learned the patterns and needs of the natural systems.
We let diverse vegetation self-seed between the vine rows. It blooms throughout the season, bringing in the good bugs like native predators that keep the pests in check without us having to lift a finger. In the cooler months, sheep graze amongst the vines, managing the undergrowth and keeping the soil and vines happy. Every so often we bring in organic local cow manure to provide a nutrient rich boost.
Another example is our biological pest control. In November we released 200,000 Trichogramma wasp eggs and 60,000 Green Lacewing eggs. These little native predators love to eat caterpillars and their eggs, so that the caterpillars never get a chance to gobble up the new vine growth. We’re letting nature run its course.
Our Yellow-bellied Gliders
Looking after the land doesn’t just ensure happier soils, natural yeasts and less intervention. It also helps ensure the health of the bush around the vineyard, which is home to some pretty special critters. Including a small and unusual population of Yellow-bellied Gliders who call the Tingha Plateau home.
Liz Blair and her team from Northern Tablelands Local Land Services, have been working to research the population, which is teaching us new things about conservation in the region.
The gliders move between private land and public reserves, which means properties like ours play a vital role in their survival. The gliders rely on nectar, sap and insects for protein, so ensuring we don’t use insecticide helps ensure there are enough bugs around for them to get stuck into. It also ensures that the bugs they eat aren’t poisonous to them in any way.
Life on the Land
The biodiversity surveys by Local Land Services showed the incredible cast of characters sharing this landscape with us: Yellow-bellied Gliders, Feathertail Gliders, Krefft’s Gliders, Squirrel Gliders. Microbats cutting through the twilight. Koalas and Ring-tailed Possums in the eucalypts. And bird species—almost too many to count—each doing their part in keeping everything balanced.
These aren’t just our neighbours. They’re indicators of how the whole system is functioning. Every choice we make in the vineyard ripples through this web of life. Choose to spray one pest? You risk harming the predator that eats it, then the glider that eats the predator, then the raptor that feeds on the glider. When you farm in isolation—focusing only on the vine and ignoring everything around it—the unintended consequences can cascade in ways you never see coming.
