THE concept of low food miles is important for lamb producer Ali Pockley.
Basically, food miles is the distance food is transported from production to the consumer.
Ali and her husband Jack, of Indigo Valley in North East Victoria, base their branded lamb product around low food miles.
Their Dorper and Wiltshire Horn-cross lambs are slaughtered at Wangaratta, butchered at Beechworth and then personally delivered to customers across the North East.
This also enables the couple to keep a handle on quality control, from their paddock to the consumer's plate.
Ali and Jack quietly launched Indigo Valley lamb several years ago, in response to requests from friends. Based on pasture-fed and naturally raised lamb, the brand has quickly expanded market share.
The Pockleys have increased ewe numbers with the help of neighbour and agricultural consultant Cathy McGowan. Cathy, who previously ran Merino wethers, now allows the Pockleys' sheep to graze her hill country instead.
Ali and Jack originally farmed sheep, cattle and crops on 24ha in the English mid-west county of Shropshire. They ran North Country Mules, a cross between Scottish Blackface and Border Leicester sheep, joined to a Texel or Suffolk.
"They were good, big sturdy ewes and highly fertile," Ali said.
All stock were kept in barns over the winter, with the manure stockpiled and later used as fertiliser.
Tired of the subsidies and "farming paperwork", Jack and Ali decided to move to Australia.
They spent time on the West Australian goldfields, where Jack worked in the mining industry.
In 2000, the couple moved to the North East and found a picturesque 60ha grazing block in the Indigo Valley, near Wodonga.
They built a sustainable, solar passive home of rammed earth and corrugated iron, with views down the valley.
Jack now works full-time as a procurement manager for a sausage-casing plant in Wangaratta, while Ali is deputy mayor of Indigo Shire.
Their hilly block of gravelly red loam supports native grasses and some improved species of clover and ryegrass.
The couple subdivided the farm into seven paddocks, use rotational grazing and a natural prescription-blend fertiliser each spring.
They have sprayed out bracken and are planning ways to make their hill country more productive.
The couple started out with a handful of low-maintenance Wiltshire Horns, a breed they had never heard of in England.
"We found they made a magnificent hogget, but the lambs were slow to finish," Ali said.
"In 2007, we used our first Dorper ram and found we could turn off the crossbred lambs at four to five months.
"The Dorper-Wiltshire cross produces a quick-growing piebald lamb.
"We are not bothered by the colour of the ewes or lambs.
"We have kept some of these first-cross ewes to see if they cycle all year round."
The ewes are normally joined in February and lamb in August and September. A mobile shearing plant visits the farm to shear the first-cross sheep, but from the second cross onwards, shearing, crutching and mulesing are not needed.
Foxes have been on ongoing problem at lambing, so two guard alpaca wethers run alongside the flock.
Ewes receive a maize-based pellet ration at joining and are then pregnancy scanned, with the multiples preferentially fed.
The ewes are kept in sheds over the three-week lambing period, to avoid losses to foxes.
Lambs are processed at 25kg carcass weight.
"It is naturally pasture-fed, low-input lamb that tastes like lamb should," Ali said.
Customers receive either a whole or half carcass, at $10-$12/kg.
"When the lambs are ready, we market them, sending out emails to customers, with first in best dressed," Ali said.
"We hang the lambs for one to two weeks, to enhance tenderness and flavour.
"We deliver the lamb ourselves, to customers in Albury-Wodonga, Tawonga, Mt Beauty, Yackandandah, Stanley, Beechworth and Wangaratta.
"This allows us to lean on the gate and talk to people - otherwise farming can be rush, rush, rush."
Ali concedes marketing branded lamb can be time-consuming and the couple sell surplus stock over-the-hooks.
A plan to plant 1000 olive trees for oil was slashed by drought to 200 pendulina, picqual, frontio and kalamata trees.
The first real harvest last year yielded 160 litres of oil, which was pressed at Alpine Olives in Dederang.
Ali invited residents from a Yackandandah retirement village to help with the harvest.
"Many were ex-farmers and they absolutely loved it," she said.
"We put on morning tea for them and gave them some oil.
"I would do it again; it was a win-win for everybody.
"Farming is so mechanised these days that is easy to lose that connection with neighbours unless you make an effort."
As a member of the Wooragee Best Lamb Best Wool group, Ali is joining with two other farmers to provide lamb for the Beechworth Harvest Festival. Among the guests at the festival dinner on May 15 will be celebrity chef Stephanie Alexander.
Ali is also one of eight regional business women who have made an audio collection on the secrets of success.
- The Business Women's Secrets audio was launched on International Women's Day, on Monday. For details on the audio, phone project co-ordinator Karen Jones on 0438 261 596.
