“Science takes things apart to see how they work.
Religion puts things together to see what they mean.”
J. Sachs
Wherever in the world you may be, dear Friends, we hope this finds you safe!
20mm of rain on the night of the 23rd October was a great relief in an otherwise hot and dry month on Kachana. The fire danger persists and our hearts go out to those in other parts of the country doing it really tough.
Temperatures tended to be above 30 degrees for more than 13 hours most days, dropping to the low twenties during the early morning hours. Hibernation thus ended for the cold-blooded members of the team. Pythons Sylvia and Scar-Tail are back in action, but we’ve been able to keep the chickens safe for the time being. Cappuccino, too has returned to his summer residence in the kitchen. Middle level management continue to work well. In a season like this we do the paddock-shifts in the evenings so they do not need to be moving around in the heat of the day.
October marked the official “sale” of our second Kachana Eco-Bullock. ‘Stephen’ now belongs to an environmentally proactive company in Switzerland. (more on that below)
Wishing everybody a productive month as we send you warm greetings from Kachana.
Photos of the Month
News & Views
Kachana Eco-Bullocks: The purchase of an eco-bullock allows him to spend the rest of his life in a working herd providing the sort of environmental services that his wild ancestors would have performed prior to their domestication. I.e. mulching, evenly spreading fertilizer and pruning vegetation.
Why do we need Eco-Herds? - Our reasoning is simple:
- It has taken generations for us to act our way into the current ecological predicaments we now find ourselves in. We are not going to be able to legislate or even discuss our way out; we need to act our way out.
- Historic human impacts may have been local, but flow-on effects are now global; regions and communities can no longer be viewed in isolation; people and communities need to coordinate effective action.
- Past impacts have promoted life-endangering behaviour; future actions and impacts must promote life-enhancing behaviour.
- To be effective, we need the assistance of biology. (This is not the place to dwell on the irony that probably our most valuable earthly ally is the one we have punished the most: biodiversity!)
- Rather than capitalising on what we can extract from nature, we treat nature as our capital and use processes (already proven by nature) to rebuild that capital.
- People have successfully been using managed herds to heal the land in commercial settings for decades; We now also need to do this in areas and regions where industry has failed.
- Eco-Herds allow a great degree of collaboration and participation from the public.
- In harsh degraded environments it makes sense to use locally adapted bullocks to do the hard work and not the “working mums” and young animals.
Two eco-bullocks do not make an eco-herd. But it is a start!
The first foreign-owned Kachana Eco-Bullock belongs to Fritz and Annette in Switzerland. Both have been loyal supporters of Kachana for many years. Thank you so much, Fritz and Anette for believing in us at a time when many others did not!
RvR CFC (Switzerland) now too own an Eco-Bullock. This company is proactively paving the way for conducting business in a manner that leaves a positive ecological foot-print. Until recently that positive foot-print has been placed in landscapes where people live. The support of an Eco-Herd enables us to tackle ecological decline in areas where people no longer live and do business.
In seasonally humid parts of the planet ‘tree-planting’ is a valuable as well as feasible approach. Unfortunately, there are many regions where this approach is neither cost-effective nor ecologically in tune with successional processes. It is in such areas where it often makes sense to apply Regenerative Pastoral Practices. With great pleasure we therefore accepted an offer for mutual project-enrichment. We (Kachana Pastoral Company and RvR CFC) see such individual project-partnerships to pave the way for greater regional and social partnerships. Thank you, Armand and Team, for taking this first step with us!
Paving the way for greater community collaboration. “Do what you believe in, believe in what you do!” C.D.
Link of the Month
“Freedom” is a topic that is dear to my heart. Listen to ‘Conversations with John Anderson’:
Featuring Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Religious Leader, Philosopher and Author