Unlike most cattleman, I’m a Tree lover, I get teased and jostled about them, but my passion for Trees has served me well.
            I have been leaving corridors of Trees and strips of brigalow at Huntly ever since doing a permaculture course with the late Bill Mollison in the late 1980s. 
His idea of keeping rows of legumes on the contours around the property allowed a sustainable nitrogen and organic intake into the soil that filtered down the slope. I left rows of Trees everywhere; some were along the contours, some perpendicular to the prevailing westerlies, wider ones along the gullies and very wide corridors for wildlife along the northern and southern boundaries.
 I attended a PMAV workshops in the nineties, with my coloured pencils and asked if I could add more colour to my Regional Eco Map. I wanted to secure the Trees. The presenters looked at me as though I was mad. No landholder in their right mind, wanted more colour on their map. I did! Too many times I had seen carefully planned shade lines on properties get flattened when they were sold. I wanted to protect my Trees.

​The benefit of trees are huge

     Trees are nutrient pumps that bring trace elements and minerals up from the subsoils and disperse them through the leaf litter to decompose into rich, fertile soils.
Trees keep the ground and understory cool enough to support lots of plants and animals, biodiversity is biosecurity!
Trees are 50% moisture. They keep the landscape cool and moist and recycle that moisture moving it inland. Weather patterns are dependent on the Trees to keep that moisture in the landscape. These are all proven facts that you will find on my website on Trees, www.anenchantedforest.org.                                                                                             
            In 2009 we suffered the worst drought in my memory. The landscapes that have been totally cleared were baking. There is no organic matter returning into the soil, no nutrients pumped from below and the soil becomes so hard and hot that moisture could not infiltrate easily. When I look at a treeless paddock now I see the shimmering heat hovering over a barren landscape. Below is a picture of the once 'fertile Arcadia Valley', cleared and dying.
Picture

              When our grass reserves were low I watched my cows thrive on the Sally wattle (Acacia salicina), dead finish (Archtdendropsis basaltic) and the holly bush, (Electron diversifolius). My breeders held up amazingly well over that dry period with that extra protein and fibre. No extra feeding was necessary. The high calving rates were the proof that the cows remained in good condition.
Below is the Sally Wattle country, notice how the grass is looking longer, stronger under the trees.

The Trees turned a plague of locusts into a fertilised field!

            The lines of Trees stopped a locust plague one year. The local DNR came out to inspect the swarms of hoppers when they had just hatched and decided to return in a couple of days to spray them and 'nip them in the bud'! When the spray rigs returned there were no swarms to be seen. The sticky webs of the Golden Orb spiders between the Trees had acted as a net and caught the majority of the hoppers. The birds were having a feast! We could not believe our eyes! Imagine all of the guano, the phosphorus, that went back into the soil. Those Trees turned a plague of locusts into a fertilised field!
            We do not realise just how out of whack the systems get when we start to clear the Trees. They are such an essential part of keeping our ecosystem healthy and sustainable. Deserts have been created by previous civilizations before and in nearly every single case, it has been because the Trees have been removed from the landscape. "Collapse" by Jared Diamond is an enlightening read explain his comprehensive theory into the collapse of civilisations. Yet we keep falling for the same trap.
Having given up 20% of my land to grow a forest has not reduced my stocking rates nor diminished my pasture. It has instead enhanced and fertilised what I have already.