Last Friday a group of enthusiastic Snowy Monaro locals braved the wet & windy weather to attend an educational Understanding Soils event hosted by leading agroecologist, David Hardwick in partnership with SMRC, Upper Snowy Landcare & Hazeldean Litchfield
Hardwick is a soils expert from Soil Land Food and has worked in community development and horticulture before completing a dairy traineeship on an organic dairy in NSW.
He has had a wide-ranging career working in both management and technical roles. These include Landcare extension, agronomy, soils, agribusiness, biofertiliser R&D and manufacturing, organics, training, and consulting positions. His support as host on the day was invaluable.
While the sold-out event had a few late scratchings due to the weather wreaking havoc, the 45 attendees that made it were treated to a hands-on interactive workshop introducing and going into detail on soils and soil health.
The program on the day covered the biological, physical and chemical aspects of soils. Participants got their hands dirty on a range of practical activities with a range of soil samples from across the Hazeldean property.
The session covered several key topics:
• How soils work
• Soil health
• Soil fertility
• The seven essential steps to managing soils well
• The 10 principles of regenerative soil management
This event is a part of the Council’s ongoing commitment to supporting our local community, farmers and businesses. Despite all the challenges of the last two years, by working together and supporting one another our region will come back stronger than ever before. Building community-led resilient communities are key to our region’s future strength.
