Sunday, February 21, 2010

Alternative Farming Expo

When you hear the phrase Alternative Farming, what springs to mind? For me, certainly not the Seymour Alternative Farming Expo!

I won a family pass, yay me :), to go to the expo on Saturday so we packed a picnic lunch and took the 2 hour drive across to Seymour. We didn't have high expectations, well, i didn't think we did, but we hoping we would come away with some ideas that were different from the usual farming practices.

Now, for me, normal farming is dairy/beef, sheep, grain cropping, chickens, hay making lol Where were the Snail farmers, Bees, rabbits, flowers, fish farmers, cheese and wine makers?? I could go on ;)

There was the odd stall selling lavendar products, emu oil products, eco friendly building materials (does polystyrene fall into that catagory?), solar power and water, clothing made from alpaca fleece. Most of the other exhibits were tractors, water tanks, fencing equipment and all those 'must have' items you see on TVSN lol. All these are sights you would expect to see at a normal farming field day. There were animals in amongst everything else, but nothing different and exciting.





I will admit the 'normal' farmers did have ideas on how to improve on what you have and get the most out of your products, and some of these ideas were good for the dry. arid country we live in. I did like the Smart Fodder Solutions. It's something we already knew about and having researched it we were able to create our own take on it and it worked marvelously! This is their set up.




So overall, i don't think the expo did the term 'alternative' justice but it was a nice day out and hubby came away with a few quotes on items on his wishlist ;)

Until next time
-x-

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