Getting Temma back to its best
ARMED with his trusty bulldozer and a team of great people, Jamie Oliver is gradually transforming Temma Farm into a highly productive beef operation.
It has been Mr Oliver’s long-time dream to one day own the iconic West Coast property — a dream that finally came true in 2012.
At the time, the farm was a tree plantation and despite the amount of work to make it once again productive, Mr Oliver was not daunted.
“I was just so excited,” he said. “I wanted Temma for such a long time, but we couldn’t afford it. There’s just something about this place, it’s very special.”
Mr Oliver began Temma’s transformation by tackling the property’s front section where rows of plantation trees had been planted but not grown.
Now those areas are some of the farm’s most productive and work is ongoing to develop the back of the farm.
Mr Oliver said trees planted at the rear of the property had fared better and even though not fully mature they were gradually being harvested and the land converted back to pasture as quickly as possible.
Mr Oliver and his team go in and scatter seed and fertiliser between every third row of stumps once the trees are removed, to get the paddocks into production quickly.
“Some agronomists would probably think we’re crazy but we’ve found that’s the best way to do it,” Mr Oliver said.
“It’s amazing how much feed it will grow and it means we’re getting production off it straight away. The stumps are there, but it doesn’t worry the cows.”
With an annual rainfall of about 1200mm a year, water is abundant. Throughout the farm there are also strips of native bush bordering pastures.
“That’s one of the things I really like,” Mr Oliver said.
“It’s so good for the stock, it gives them a lot of shelter and you need that here because it can get so windy and pretty rough at times.”
Once all the tree plantations have been harvested, there will be about 1300ha of pasture on Temma and Mr Oliver said the plan was to be able to run about 3000 cattle on the farm.