What the heck is going on?

What the heck is going on?

And also my life story.

SOIL SISTER - KYLIE WOODHAM

MAY 17, 2025

Hello dear readers and thanks for hanging in there while I get my life in order.

I am still in Australia.

For the third time in seven months, we have moved house.

Have you moved house?

Then you know what I’m talking about when I say, It’s A LOT.

I feel that this is our keeper for the next few years and for that I am eternally grateful.

We are renting a gorgeous cottage in the Middlebrook Valley, just outside Scone NSW.

Sat atop a hill, we wake to an incredible chorus of Australian birds.

Each morning and evening we have uninterrupted views of the most magnificent sunrises and sunsets which we can view from our front verandah.

There is space for a garden and the serenity is something to behold.

In the meantime, I went back to full time work. A few jobs in sectors I never dreamed I would work in, but incredibly valuable knowledge gained and of course handy for the bank account. [More on that in future issues!].

Recently I was asked to speak at the Scone branch of ADFAS(Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies).

I’m often asked how I merged in to regenerative farming from a career in media in the bloodstock industry.

If you’re interested in my story - take a read of the speech I gave.

It’s about where I came from, what I do and why I do it.

Here it is…

I’m Kylie Woodham, a mum to four amazing humans, a regenerative farmer, thinker, writer, gardener.

I absolutely love the idea of agriculture as a form of art.

Thank you for making the connection.

When we sign up to be farmers, we are given our very own living pallet to work with.

A piece of living ground and all the ecology that goes with that.

Mother nature to work with.

We can either beat her into submission or weave magic alongside her.

——

What is regenerative agriculture?

Regenerative Farming isn’t some new fan dangled buzzword.

It has it’s origins in how we used to grow food.

Less interventions - more nurturing.

Did you know that in every teaspoon of healthy living soil, there are more living microorganisms than there are people on earth?

If that’s not awe inspiring, I don't know what is.

Regenerative farming is about restoring the soil’s creative potential. Collaborating and not interfering.

Regeneration isn’t just for the farmer. It’s for:

• The gardener, who chooses compost over chemicals.

• The consumer, who supports local food.

• The artist, who interprets these ideas through paint, poetry, pottery.

When we garden, cook, plant a tree, or compost, we’re participating in a generational conversation.

We are literally and metaphorically returning life to the earth.

And what could be more artistic than that?

Why Regenerative Farming?

For millennia, humans have been intervening in the landscape, re-imagining it, turning it into a softer, easier place, one with more food.

But human’s intervention in the landscape has had the intent of benefiting one species: us.

This impact on other species and the environment ramped up dramatically in the 19th century with steam power and mechanisation, then took a huge leap in the late 20th century with the advent of new genomics, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and mechanisation on an industrial scale.

It was called the ‘green revolution’ and had massive benefits for humankind in the form of food production.

The green revolution saved millions from starvation and lifted millions out of poverty.

Regenerative farming is cog in a big wheel that is trying to turn away from production – ‘landscape change’ – that benefits only humans, to a model that includes all life; a model that increases biodiversity, stabilises and improves the natural capital, and makes all life healthier.

There is a direct connection to the microbes we encourage in the soil we grow our food in to the the microbiome in our gut that affects our own physical and mental health.

Isn’t that fascinating?

So that’s the what, why and how of regenerative farming.

And now you might be asking how did I connect with regenerative farming…

My journey that starts in a little village in Central West NSW and continues up on the edge of Europe via Asia and the Middle East.

Whilst I now call Scone home, I haven’t always lived here.

For the best part of the last fifteen years, I’ve been living in Ireland where we transformed a run-down plot of land into an internationally award-winning farm using the very practices I’ve spoken to you about today.

But first, let me take you to Cumnock, where I was born and spent my childhood. My parents had a mixed farm there, “Locksley”. It was how Barbara and Keith Woodham, my parents, made their livelihood.

I was the last of three children and child care back then often meant mustering on the pommel of a saddle in front of my mum as a toddler, where I would quite often take my afternoon nap.

It meant being propped up on a pillow on the front seat of a ute so I could see over the dashboard and steer while my dad fed out grain to cattle and sheep from the back of the ute.

Sometimes it was sat on the arch of a tractor wheel for hours while dad ploughed and sowed future crops.

My mum and dad both come from long lines of farmers, ten generations if we’re counting, so I guess farming is in my DNA.

Before my dad returned to the family farm, he went to school at Yanco and studied agriculture at Hawkesbury before working in Yass for the Soil Conservation Service.

He took that knowledge and built dams across the farm with an intricate network of contour banks. Patching up years of soil erosion.

Maybe that is where my fascination for landform and soil comes from.

Because it’s embedded in my heart.

It wasn’t always rosy.

In 1982 NSW suffered one of the worst droughts of the 20th century. Dad took all the stock off the farm and headed out west, droving them along stock routes and TSR’s along with his neighbour’s stock.

At the beginning of the droving, I remember being sat at the tail of the mob on my buckskin pony Dancie. A bottle of cordial and a few lamb sandwiches on white bread to sustain me for the day.

Later, out past Dunnedoo, we spent an Easter in the caravan with dad, our chocolate eggs melting in the heat.

In 1984, after one of the worst droughts in the 20th century and a two year long battle with cancer, our farm was sold and my dad died. I was 12.

My god I missed my funny, caring, kind dad.

And the farm.

We moved to town and became “townies”. A label that would irk me for the rest of my life.

One school holiday, at 14, my mum sent me to stay with my cousin Sam who farmed with her husband in Braidwood NSW.

My cousin took me to visit some friends of hers nearby.

That introduction changed my life forever.

Sam introduced me to a man called Neale Lavis and his beautiful wife Velma and their four children.

Together they ran a thoroughbred and cattle stud, Strathallan. They stood a son of Nijinsky, Whiskey Road, sire of Group One winners Strawberry Road, Just a Dash.

But that wasn’t all, Neale was an Olympic event rider who had won a gold and silver at the Rome Olympics.

Neale and Velma are the kindest, most genuine people I’ve ever met.

They gave me the confidence to follow my heart and my dreams. They taught me conviction and determination. Most of all, they believed in me.

I was hooked for life. It opened up my eyes as a horse mad teenager. A person who saw me as a rider and an industry you could do for “real” - make a living out of horses… Who knew?

I would ride my own horse before work, then spend the day mucking out boxes, walking and working with yearlings, riding racehorses, mustering cattle and then having riding lessons under lights with Neale before dinner.

This association opened doors for me.

It sent me to Japan riding racehorses for 8 months near Tokyo. And another six months riding eventers and show jumpers professionally for the Japanese Crane Olympic Park

It was my stepping stone into working for William Inglis in Sydney as a pedigree consultant and bid sales spotter.

It was the in road to Racetrack Magazine as an advertising co-ordinator.

And from there an opportunity to go to Ireland to get a job in Coolmore, the best thoroughbred breeding and racing operation in the world.

I didn't mean to stay longer than six months, something to bump up my resume.

But as things happen, my time there was extended, I was offered a promotion as account manager for Coolmore Australia, which then developed into Media Director for Coolmore America and Ireland.

So for a 27-year-old kid from the bush this was just like an Oscar for me, attending race meetings at Royal Ascot and the Derby at Epsom, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Kentucky USA.

Travelling to Manchester United to interview Alex Ferguson for the yearly Coolmore video. Having breakfast with Ronaldo and David Beckham too if you don’t mind.

Hosting open days with the world’s best racing media personalities at Ballydoyle with the world’s greatest trainer Aidan O’Brien.

It was a dream come true.

And then, of course, in the stereotypical Irish scenario, the pub, McCarthy's, a lovely Irish fella, and pretty soon I was engaged and then married and despite my suggestion that I would never have children, “I was a career woman”, four children followed.

Well my life changed from that moment on.

And I harked back to my own childhood.

[the next slide is the travel map…]

After eight years, another stint in Australia with my Irish-born children and my Irish husband, we returned back to Ireland and my aim was to show my children how living on the land sustains us, binds us together as a community.

But what I wasn't expecting was the regenerative transformation that happened to me, my land, my values, and my family.

We began farming in 2017 on a tiny block of land that Billy and I had bought years before and were paying off ourselves by leasing it out to horse breeders.

And after very careful investigation of such reliable sources as YouTube and Instagram, I discovered a theory of regenerative farming, how, by applying five simple principles, you could transform the land. five simple principles that when applied to any situation, wet, dry, snowy, arid, they all have one result, which changes everything.

We hadn’t long moved back to Ireland and were sitting around our tiny kitchen table in our tiny cottage and I pipe up and say, I'm going to be pastured egg farmer.

I tried to sound as though I knew what I was talking about. In the back of my mind, it was just an idea. So what started out as a hobby of ten hens became became 100 hens, became 150 hens, became 300 hens, became 500 hens became a thousand hens, and before we knew it, we were the largest pasture range egg business in Ireland.

For a while there, we were the only pasture range egg business in Ireland. And again, times were tough. We had to make this business work. We started off with zero investment. We built the mobile hen houses ourselves during lockdown.

My background in marketing definitely helped as we began to weave a story about why Magner farm's eggs were different to everybody else's.

One of my best friends in Ireland used to say, “Ah, here she is, the girl who invented eggs…”

The thing about marketing is you're trying to sell the sizzle, not the sausage. So the story of why we farmed the way we did was one of the keys to our success.

When I say success, in 2020, I was awarded the newbie farmer, for Ireland, an EU wide competition, which meant that my story, our story, our farm was used as a model for other farms across Europe. I was asked to travel to other countries to talk about our farm and our methods.

We were on national television for our regenerative practices.

We were on the front page of the UK based Sunday Times newspaper.

Meanwhile there were parts of the egg business that we just didn't even realise existed, that after 12 months, our lovely hens are spent, which means retirement, which means being shoved into crates and shipped to the UK to be used for pet food.

None of that really sat well with me, the circular bio-economy - trying to close the loop. I wanted to be able to do something for those hens that recognised the work they had done for us. So we set about finding ways we could use those hens. The first thing we did was extend their life to two to three years. because they weren't in intensive situations, they laid a little less, but for longer.

And when it when their final day had come, we realised that these hens had the nutritional density that was off the charts in comparison to intensively farmed animals.

We made a product that I cooked from the kitchen of our tiny cottage in Moyglass that won the coveted chef's choice award at the Irish Food Awards, Blas na hEireann.

And as I sat in the theatre that day when they presented those awards, I sat next to my son who travelled with me.

The announcer called out during the judging, “there was a particular product that made all of the judges sit up and take notice. Every single one of the judges who tasted this product said, what is this? Where did it come from and who made it?”

I nudged my son and said, “oh, my gosh, imagine that. Imagine them saying that about your product, shaking our head in disbelief.”

Then a few minutes later, they called out Magners Farm chicken bone broth as the recipient of this award.

I just want to point out I'm not a chef. I don't have any formal training. but when you take a hen that has been nurtured and cared for and nourished on a multi species grass full of bugs and beetles and cooked with care, it transforms into something quite extraordinary.

I'm talking about a business made from the waste product of an egg industry and selling it at a higher price per litre than some of the best French wines in Europe.

So when Hilary very kindly asked if I would be interested in presenting to you tonight - I'd never thought of growing food as an art form, but in its purest form, in its purest regenerative existence, the way we craft our land and pour our hearts and souls into the full circle of the product and are able to see our product on the tables of Michelin Star restaurants being exported to Dubai from Ireland.

I'm talking about eggs being exported to Dubai isn't that an art form in itself?

Isn't that something so beautiful that it's almost impossible to comprehend.

But that's not the most, but that's not the greatest, that's only half of the story because when we began to farm regenerative like this, it opened up the most amazing community of people who also shared our ideas and also shared our passion around food.

It taught our children frugality, humility, communications skills, accounting.

Days of attending freezing cold farmers markets, standing alongside me, talking the talk, walking the walk, packing eggs our way through COVID while others were burdened with lockdown breakdowns.

Here's the thing - chickens don't understand lockdowns. You can’t ask hens to stop laying eggs.

Those girls are popping out eggs every day. We had to move those eggs.

Our family created an online farmer’s market, a conglomeration of all of the producers from our local farmer's market. We created a drive-through experience, which further engaged us with our local community.

It wasn’t just for us, it was a welcome break for the 40 or so customers we had each week. It was a way of moving products for the cheese, milk, fish, chicken, pork, fruit, juices and vegetables for our farmer friends.

Regenerative farming is about farming the microbes in your soil and everything else flows from that. So how do we go about that?

I sat in a conference in Ireland listening to Gabe Brown speak once and someone stood up halfway through the conference and said, sure that's not going to work here. It's too wet. It's too wet in Ireland.

Another farmer who knew of our story at Magners Farm stood up and they said, see that girl over there? Ask her. She's doing it. She's engaging all of the principles of regenerative agriculture on her farm.

So then the guy up the back says, sure, where are your farming? And I said, Tipperary. And he said, well of course it's working. You're in some of the most productive land in Ireland. And I said, we've done it on two farms. We've done it on a farm that has been used by agisting horses for the last 15 years.

Anyone here know what horses do to pastures?

If it's not managed correctly and then you throw in the fact that someone was leasing the land, it going to push that thing as hard as they can to support as many horses as they can. That was farm number one.

And farm number two was a farm that we bought in the middle of a bog and had been used for growing oats for the three previous seasons. It wasn’t prime perfect agricultural country.

Gabe Brown invited me to lunch later, he said “Thank you for showing them that it can be done. Thank you for applying the five principles and watching the magic happen”.

The more I listened, the more I read, the more people I followed and engaged with, following the five principles of regenerative agriculture turned us into soil farmers, micro farmers, not eggs, not the pigs that we ran, not the cast off Friesian steers that I bought because I couldn't afford to buy anything else.

That's what changed it. Listening to the land, using our gut, using our intuition. not listening to an agronomist who told us to measure this and apply that and buy this and get one of those.

We didn't have the money for that. But in five years of our business, turnover each year increased by 60%. We starting making a profit from year one because we had such low inputs.

We added pork, we added beef, we added lamb, and then our grass grew so much that we had to start selling hay because we couldn't keep up with it.

We implemented holistic grazing management, made famous by Alan Savory following the principles set by the millions of bison that used to roam the American landscape.

Because I’ll tell you something: watching a nutrient starved paddock spring back to life…

Watching insects return, birds nest, and grass wave in the breeze…

That’s art. That’s theatre. That’s poetry in motion.

So growing food, what's so important about that apart from it being an art form? And how does everyone get involved?

Well, the thing is, so many people say, sure I don't have a farm or I don't really have the space to grow my own vegetables. I can't really see myself getting some cattle or changing my programs.

And to that I say every single person that eats has the ability to make a difference to choose regenerative.

You go to the shops, what you spend your money on makes a difference.

There are farmers all over this beautiful country, pouring their hearts into not using chemicals on their farm. They're having their animals processed in tiny abattoirs to ensure that the chain isn't broken between them and their consumer.

There are farmers' markets all where you can meet and engage with other farmers and producers. You can even buy online and have your regenerative produce shipped to your door.

There are seed swaps. There are crop swaps.

To those people who make that effort, I applaud you. I applaud every single one of you because it's easy to say - I'm too tiny to make a difference. I'm too small. What impact could I possibly have on this planet with all the destruction and all the chaos that's going on around us.

And the thing is, you can have an impact. You can make changes. You don’t need to have it all worked out.

You can grow a basil plant on your window sill.

You can grow a tomato plant on your balcony.

The biggest obstacle to farming regeneratively is between our ears. Changing a mindset. What we’ve always been led to believe.

A few years ago, I was asked to speak at a food conference in Dubai. After the conference, we were brought out to the middle of the desert, an hour away over sand dunes to Emirates Bio Farm, an organic farm literally in the middle of the desert. They are supplying organic fruit, vegetables and eggs to all the major supermarkets in Dubai. The farm is in a desert.

The best piece of advice I’ve heard?

Stop, shut your mouth, listen.

And rethink when you think, “that couldn’t work here…” it’s too wet, dry, small, large… insert your own dilemma…

I know some of you might be farmers, “you’ve always done things like this, that tidy paddocks are productive, chemicals are progress”.

The biggest obstacle to farming regeneratively is between our ears. Changing a mindset.

It can seem overwhelming.

It can seem to be so big, but we can make a difference and it's up to us.

And isn't that beautiful - weaving, that story, that connection to land, that reimagining ourselves as part of the landscape.

That’s hope.

That’s art.

Whew, that was a long one so thanks for reading to the end!

I’ve just done a couple of workshops where I was presenting to schoolchildren in the Tamworth area thanks to Carbon8 and Tamworth Regional Landcare.

A full day engaging with years 3-6 on the importance of soil health, biodiversity and food choices. AMAZING!

Let me know if you have a group or organisation and would like me to present, you can email me here…

Until next time, [which hopefully will be a little shorter than last time], thanks for reading,

Kylie x

PS: You can purchase your own copy of Soil Sister, Farming for Our Future here…