This Heritage Beef article featured in the April/May 2007 issue of Highlife magazine.

Best quality.    Best price.    Best for your health.    Best for our animals.    Best for the environment.

When Bruce and Susan Stannard settled in the Southern Highlands nearly 20 years ago they ran their beef cattle property like everyone else in those days. Half-grown steers were trucked off to the dusty anonymity of distant feedlots where they were finished on the grains and synthetic growth-hormones that are still an accepted part of the shrink-wrapped processed food chain. Now, in the vanguard of the burgeoning Slow Food movement, their property, Honeywood, in the beautiful Belmore Falls Valley, south of Robertson, produces some of the best quality beef in Australia - entirely grass-fed, locally butchered and sold direct to individual customers. Donald Cameron reports on the home-grown success that is Highland Heritage Beef.  

Honeywood nestles high in the folded hills that rise and fall along the western edge of the lovely Belmore Falls Valley . The spectacular outlook from the homestead’s eastern verandah embraces a glorious 180-degree sweep of the valley, a green and golden patchwork of fields lined with majestic cedars, gnarled old pines and dark, lichen-covered drystone walls. It’s a view that took me back to my distant childhood in the Highlands of Scotland; so much so, that I had to pinch myself as the Scotch mist parted to reveal a lanky figure in a deerstalker hat, battered tweed jacket and dark green cords striding over the dewy grass in his gumboots. It was as if I’d time-travelled back to rural Perthshire. The tweedy apparition turned out to be my host.

As a writer, Bruce Stannard does in fact spend part of every year in Scotland where he travels throughout the country gathering material for SCOTS, the quarterly magazine he publishes. However, at home his time is devoted almost entirely to looking after his prized herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle. In an extraordinary way these two quite separate strands of his life have now become very closely intertwined.

When I asked to meet him he suggested that we start with his early morning round, an invitation that saw me rising bleary-eyed before dawn. “Absolutely the best time of the day”, he said blithely. “You’ll see the world in a whole new light”.  He was right. The sun’s first rays exploded over the eastern horizon, probing the valley’s mist like brilliant spotlights in a vast natural theatre. A tribe of currawongs began their chortling dawn chorus and when Kookaburras chimed in, I actually laughed out loud with them. “A very good morning to you, Mr Cameron,” he said. After we exchanged a handshake he paused just long enough to admonish me to “come along now and keep your eyes open. You’re bound to see something wonderful”.

I’ve been privileged to see a lot of beautiful properties throughout the Southern Highlands over the years, but I’ve never seen anything to rival the spectacular, unspoiled beauty of this valley, tucked away to the south of the village of Robertson . While much of the surrounding districts lie scorched and bare in the worst drought in our history, this part of the Highlands, blessed with its own little micro-climate, remains knee-deep in lush green grass. Last year the Honeywood rain gauge recorded a life-saving 54 inches. The major dam, directly below the homestead, was full to its reed-fringed brim and there, wood ducks, dusky moorhens and a pair of black swans were dabbling in the clear, clean water. The spring-fed Honeywood creek tumbles down through the remnants of what was once a great temperate rain forest, the Yarrawa Brush. Shy grey wallabies concealed themselves in the shadows of tree ferns as they drank. Platypus share the creek with speckled brown trout and yabbies and their mortal enemies, long-legged herons.

When the Stannards came here nearly 20 years ago, Honeywood was an entirely different place. The homestead hadn’t been lived in for three years and there were lizards and spiders and rats in the empty, cobweb-draped rooms. The garden had been abandoned to weeds and snakes while in the paddocks, the red basalt soil had been badly depleted after years of potato growing and over-grazing. There were no stockyards, no watering system and the fencing was about the fall down. “We had the magnificent outlook,” Bruce said, “but that was about all. We started from scratch and in many ways that’s been a blessing because we were able to take our time and do things properly. It’s involved many years of hard work, but now we feel we’re in pretty good shape”. They are indeed. As we walked up the race, lined on either side with magnificent black pines, I was struck by the richness of the pasture, a phenomenon Bruce says is very largely due to a combination of the organic fertiliser with which he enriches the soil, the top quality grass seed he sows and all the benefits that go hand-in-hand with his particular hobby-horse - cell-grazing.

He explained that cell-grazing involves moving his cattle to fresh pasture twice a day, once in the early morning and once in the early evening, so that they always have the benefit of the most nutritious grasses. The cells, essentially long narrow strips, are created by suspending white metal-impregnated tape through a series of tread-in steel stakes with white plastic insulators at various heights. All the perimeter fences around the Honeywood paddock are electrified so that once the cells are established, a pulse of power, between seven and eight thousand volts, passes constantly through the tape. Once the cattle learn not to touch the tape, they graze up to but not beyond it. The grass they consume is therefore always at its nutritional peak.

Although cell-grazing is labour-intensive, Bruce also points to the improvements the nutrient-laden cattle dung and urine have made to his pastures. Busy little dung beetles bury the fresh droppings turning them into rich organic matter. “When we first came to the Highlands ,” he said, “we had only the vaguest idea about cattle, so we followed the example of others who were simply raising animals for the feedlots. In that process, cattle were treated, well, like cattle, that is to say, not very well. Over the years we’ve come to realise that yip-yip-yahooing at cattle is totally counterproductive. We looked at the way things were being done and decided there had to be a better way. We started from the basic premise that all animals deserve respect and understanding, which is why cattle in our care are never yelled at, never stressed. I speak to them quietly and the result is that they are completely docile. If I’m calm, then so are they. Less stress, I believe, helps make better quality beef.”

To prove his point Bruce showed me how the cattle move toward him, not away at his approach. He walked among them like a politician canvassing for votes, tickling their ears, patting their necks, running his hands over their broad black backsides, and all the while cajoling them in a soft and reassuring voice. Honeywood’s cattle are marketed as Highland Heritage Beef and are essentially bespoke carcases tailor-made for individual private clients. Processed at the local Wollondilly abattoir, the carcases are sent on to Bob Williams, the master butcher in Mittagong where the meat is hung for two weeks in his cool room before the various cuts are prepared to order for individual clients.

Increasingly, research indicates that grass-fed beef is infinitely superior to grain-fed meat, containing less fat and higher levels of Omega-3 fatty acids.  “Our farming practices are not only better for our cattle, but also better for the environment and better for the health of our clients”, Bruce said.

Highland Heritage clients receive a side of beef at a time, at around half the cost they would pay at a retail butcher.  Highland Heritage Beef was initially available only to those who subscribed to their magazine, SCOTS, but now that the business has grown in leaps and bounds, the Stannards are able to also offer HighLife readers the same opportunity. For further details contact Bruce Stannard on 02 488 51553, or email enquiries@highlandheritage.com.au, or visit the Highland Heritage website, www.highlandheritage.com.au   

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