WHEN land next door to their Mount Compass dairyfarm became available for sale, Nick Brokenshire and his parents Robert and Mandy jumped at the chance to expand their holdings.
But the land had been planted to blue gums and their first focus was turning it into productive agricultural land.
The Brokenshires recently harvested the first crop of wheat to be planted at their Pages Flat block.
In the high-rainfall zone of the Fleurieu Peninsula, land in the area is more traditionally used for dairying or grazing.
"It was a neighbouring dairyfarm when it was sold to Adelaide Blue Gums five or six years ago," Nick said.
"It was planted to blue gums and then we bought it in September 2010 and had the trees mulched, with the idea of getting it back to pasture.
"We want to get it back into agricultural production."
At the time of purchase, the block had eight-metre to 10m trees with trunks 15.24 centimetre to 20.32cm wide. These were planted to a density of 800 trees a hectare.
"There was a lot of nitrogen tied up in the soil (because of the trees), similar to a heavy stubble crop," Nick said.
The soil type varies widely across the block because of the varying geometry.
"It's fairly sandy," Nick said.
"We're trying to build up the soil by applying organic and chemical fertilisers, such as pig manure."
The land was worked up before a crop of Brennan wheat - Nick calls it a "grazing grain" variety of wheat - was planted last year.
"With this wheat, it is possible to graze it once and then let it grow back and go to grain," Nick said.
"We didn't graze it although it had that potential."
The Brennan wheat yielded 3.3 tonnes/ha.
"While this is obviously not a huge harvest for a high-rainfall area, we were happy with yields, considering there were blue gums there only 12 months before that," Nick said.
"We'll crop it again this year with canola."
Nick said it would take three to four years of cropping before they could consider the land rehabilitated.
"This land has a long-term, 889-millimetre rainfall but in recent years this has dropped to 813mm," he said.
"In high-rainfall and high-yielding areas of the Yorke Peninsula, wheat crops can get up to 6t/ha or more and we expect to eventually be able to grow similar amounts here.
"Once the land is rehabilitated we may go back to pasture or may continue to crop it."
Nick said it was the first time they had attempted to rehabilitate land previously used by forestry and had to seek the advice of their local agronomist, FP Ag's Julien Pearce.
They had also spoken to people in Victoria who had bought land planted to blue gums.
Similar to the property they also crop at Finniss, Nick said contractors were used to do most of the work.
"Using contractors lowers our investment in machinery," he said.
"Otherwise, we would need a much larger area than we currently crop to be able to offset the price of machinery."
*Full report in Stock Journal, February 9 issue, 2012.
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