25/11/2025
Insight #1: Curiosity becomes a management strategy.
Ecological farmers treat the land like a conversation, observing, experimenting, and adjusting as they learn. đ± Sometimes the biggest shift comes not from doing more, but from stepping back and letting nature lead.
David Marsh, a farmer in Boorowa, followed his curiosity and paused certain long-held practices to help reverse soil damage from intensive farming. That single questionââWhat if I stop?ââsparked a transformation. He discovered that sometimes itâs what you stop doing that allows the land to repair.
Again and again, weâve seen that the farmers who keep asking questions are the ones who keep evolving. Most see blackberries as a problem⊠but others, like Bruce Davison, noticed they could actually help build soil fertility and suppress Serrated Tussock. On the Soils for Life podcast episode âWeeds Are Telling Us Something,â he shared his experience. Some farmers leaned in with curiosityââHow does that work?ââwhile others quickly dismissed it with âYou canât do that.â
At the heart of it all, our observations point to one truth: curiosity drives transformation. đ.