Hi, I'm Pip.
Hi, I'm Justin.
And we co-own and operate See Saw Wines.
So See Saw Wines is located in the most beautiful
mountainous region of NSW.
and it's beautiful red basalt soils.
We have vineyards at 700 metres, 800 metres and 900 metres above sea level
and depending on the elevation we grow different varieties.
Our grazing operation occurs across all three farms and we run 1200 dorper ewes
and graze those sheep in the vineyard
from harvest through to bud birst.
Justin and I moved here in 1992. We bought our first farm.
In the early days, I guess, was what we considered to be our more normal seasons
because they were relatively the same year in year out.
Droughts seem to have become more commonplace
or more frequent, and so have the much wetter periods.
The things that climate change are affecting vineyards,
are a change in rainfall due to climate change, we’ve got a change in temperature.
We actually have an increase in wind.
And wind is a major problem for grapes for flowering.
When you grow grapes, the temperature, the accumulation of temperature
during the growing season is when you get to harvest.
So that is if it's two degrees warmer, you're going to accumulate that quicker
and you end up with early harvest.
Harvest would start mid to late February.
Now it's beginning of February, even end of January in the drought seasons.
Not only to harvest early, but it's compressed.
This year our whole harvest was done in six weeks.
That used to be an 8 to 10 week period, but the whole thing was done in six weeks.
The 2019/20 period
where that drought was severe, it was short but very sharp.
It's been so tough.
And just to look out the window and just to see the landscape,
it's dead and it's brown and it's lifeless.
When you sit down and look at 25 years of farming,
you think about the change in seasons, the changing climate.
The worst thing you can do is do nothing
because therefore you're gonna end up in the same spot each time.
As a family, we sat down and said well,
this is the third time we've run out of water in 30 years.
It's the third time we've had reasonable crop losses.
So we've made some pretty big decisions in the last few years
about what we’re going to do.
We've really looked at the varieties where we grow them and how we grow them.
We've removed 30 hectares of vineyard,
and that's actually to take the pressure off the water supply.
From the millennium drought onwards, we were very much concentrating on,
how do we reduce our water need?
One of the ways, the main way we can do it
because we don't live on a river or we don't have an irrigation system,
just got to rely on hillside dams
is to increase your soil carbon.
So in 2009 we actually mapped the whole farm,
the soil carbon levels and then we sat down and worked out
a program of what we can do to improve that carbon.
If your organic matter goes to less than 1 or 2%,
you will not make profits in the long term.
So what creates organic matter?
So then it's grazing that stimulates root growth from sheep. It's compost,
it's removing the use of man-made chemicals, fertilisers,
and then looking at multi species in your row.
Most of the species that we have are grasses and herbs and things
that will grow through winter into spring.
When I look at this area in here, we've got some
beautiful clover, plantain. Nice broad leaf here.
You've got some what looks like to be ryegrass.
It provides a layer that protects the ground from the heat.
So it means cooler temperatures under the vines in the soil.
And it also helps to trap all the water that comes from the sky under the ground.
So what we've done is said every time we think about an operation,
does that increase soil carbon?
We felt we were on a really great path. So by 2018,
our soil carbon levels were quite high.
2019/20 drought hit and we just did a few blocks
to see how it was going and we saw a massive collapse in soil carbon,
but and we were going, Oh my God, we've done all this work
for a very poor result.
But what we realised is that’s your bank account.
It does give you a sense of security, knowing that what we're doing
is leading to being more resilient to get through the next droughts.
We now have drones that fly the vineyard in the middle of the season
and do a vigour map.
And that vigour map then is put into the GPS.
And Brenden, our son, has built a variable speed compost spreader.
We try to put around 10 to 12 tonne per hectare out every year.
We've put worm castings out.
We've used worm wizz. We've got a worm farm ourselves
and we think in the end that'll be the major nutrient supply.
Half an egg carton of worm castings in with your plantings,
the research shows it almost doubles it’s growth rate compare to not doing it.
Climate change is, it’s a multi-layered thing.
It affects wind, it affects temperature, it affects rainfall
and it all depends on where you are.
You just know things are changing
and going to be different and you have to work with it.
We will over the next ten years go to carbon positive.
We're not going to carbon neutral.
Carbon positive
means that we are actually going to put more back in than we take out.
We would hope at some point in time all our electricity is generated on farm,
all our inputs are generated on farm, all our tractors are driven
by a hydrogen or electrical system which is generated on farm.
It's not just the climate thing.
It's actually being really positive about business strategy as well.
And that whole, being able to control your own destiny,
which obviously in farming we can't because nature comes along
and gives you a smack in the ear. But, let's control the things that we can.