The Hagan's at McIvor Farm Foods

NSF Champion #7: Jason & Belinda Hagan - Building Water Holding Capacity on McIvor Farm

Our seventh Natural Sequence Farming Champion story takes us to central Victoria, to a place where two farmers looked at dry country and saw something others missed: potential.

McIvor Farm in Tooborac doesn't look like a typical NSF transformation story. It's not a massive property on remote tablelands. It's not a coastal regeneration project. It's a working farm where Jason and Belinda Hagan raise Berkshire pigs, beef, and sheep, and where, in 2019, one decision changed everything.

The Course That Changed Everything

Jason Hagan arrived at Stuart Andrews' Tarwyn Park Training course in 2019 with an open mind and a landscape in need of help. What he learned wasn't complicated. It was elegant. It was about understanding how water moves through a landscape, how soil holds capacity, and how the right decisions compound over time.

All the way home from that course, Jason was thinking one question: how can I implement these techniques on my own farm?

By the time the dry season came, he had the answer.

Building Water Holding Capacity

McIvor Farm was already built on keyline principles, a strong foundation for landscape management. But that foundation became something more powerful when Jason overlaid NSF thinking onto what they'd established.

The farm now has leaky weirs installed in the creek. There are contours carved across the hilltop that work in concert with their existing keyline design. And there's a farming system, pigs, beef, sheep, that works with these landscape features, not against them.

Adrian Drew, an NSF practitioner and Tarwyn Park Training trainer, was brought in to overlay the current farm plan, developed on keyline principles, with NSF principles. The work is built on Australian landscape science, understanding how landscape function actually works, not how we've been taught to manage it.

When that first rain falls, instead of running off, the water sits on the surface with manure and plant debris. On the first flush, that fertility diffuses into the subsoil, where it's available for plants to grow. That's not an accident. That's design layered upon design.

Rain Ready

Stuart Andrews visits McIvor Farm and sees something clear: this place is extremely rain-ready.

It might look dry at the moment. But the soils are in a condition to receive rainfall. Rather than be lost when it falls, the water will be soaked into the ground. Anything that moves, if it's a larger event, is managed by the contour system so that water doesn't wash completely off the farm.

And here's what makes this story unique: the animals themselves are part of the solution. Berkshire pigs and chickens aren't just production tools. They're primary colonisers, doing what primary colonising plants need to do. They're part of a system that builds, rather than degrades.

The Customer Conversation

But Jason and Belinda's message goes beyond their own paddocks.

"I think people really need to understand that customers are part of our journey," they say. "We need the loyalty of people supporting these systems to actually make it viable for us to make a living."

This is the part of the story that matters most. It's not just about what happens on the farm. It's about what happens in the minds of the people who eat the food grown there.

Your dollar is a vote for what Australian agriculture looks like. When you support a local farm doing this work, you're not just buying pork or beef. You're voting for soil health, water retention, landscape resilience, and a future where farming works with nature instead of against it.

"Support your local farms," Jason and Belinda say. "Find them that are doing amazing concepts through Natural Sequence Farming because those farmers that have got those concepts will make a better environment for everyone in the future."

The Chain That Matters

Healthy food starts with healthy animals. Healthy animals start with healthy plants. Healthy plants start with healthy soil.

It's a simple chain. But it's the chain everything depends on.

Jason and Belinda understand it. They've built it into their landscape. And now they're asking the rest of us to understand it too, one purchase at a time.

In a dry season in central Victoria, McIvor Farm is proving that when you build water holding capacity and work with the landscape, you're not just farming better. You're building a different future.

👉 Watch Jason and Belinda's full story here: https://youtu.be/GOap_WoYyPY

Peter Andrews OAM spent his life showing people that there's a better way to work with the landscape. This story continues that mission, proof that the work is happening right now on farms right across Australia.

Let's Rehydrate Australia - together.

We'd love to hear your thoughts after you watch Jason and Belinda's story. Comment below and let us know what resonates with you.

P.S. If you buy food from local farms, or if you know someone who does, share this story. Every customer who understands that their dollar is a vote makes a real difference.

🔗 Subscribe to the channel: https://youtube.com/@tarwynparktraining

🌏 Learn more: https://www.rehydrateaustralia.com

⛰️ Take the next steps to restore your landscape with our on-ground Learn Natural Sequence Farming course, or add your name to the waitlist for our upcoming online course at https://www.tarwynparktraining.com.au/courses

This is the seventh story in our Rehydrate Australia series, sharing the journeys of farmers and land managers implementing Natural Sequence Farming across Australia.