Ash Gristede hasn’t gone from milking 75 to 700 cows by sitting on his hands.
Over the past 25 years, Ash and wife Michelle have proactively bought and leased land, twice updated their dairy and embraced new technologies.
That trend is continuing with their Port Campbell farm becoming one of the first in the district to adopt Green Lightning and Halter virtual collars.
It’s a long way from their humble beginnings, starting in 2000 with the home farm at just 52 hectares to now owning 248ha in four separate lots, along with 240 leased hectares, a 28ha leased block for beef and a 121ha out block.
Ash grew up on a sheep-beef farm at Peterborough, but family friend and grandfather-like figure, Rowley Umbers, introduced him to dairying.
“We used to help him milk on weekends and after school,” Ash said.
“When I was 15, 16, I’d get off the school bus and go and milk and then I’d do the four milkings on the weekend, milking 75 cows in a six-bale walk-through.”
While his older brother took over the home farm, Ash left school at 16 and started sharefarming with Rowley, initially on a quarter share, but by the time he was 18, it was 50-50.
Ash and Michelle married in 1999 and purchased Rowley’s farm and about 100 cows in 2000, later updating to a 30-a-side herringbone and then a more central 60-unit rotary to reduce wear and tear on the cows and better cope with the expanding land and herd.
While always treating leased land like they own it, they also say it’s nice to have their own property.
“When I started, I had the bold idea that I’d like to own the whole block from the Great Ocean Road,” Ash said.
“Instead of that, we jumped the road and came this way. You make a bit of a rough plan in your head and you wing it as you go. You don’t want to regret passing up opportunities.”
Apart from buying about 50 heifers with one of the blocks, the Holstein herd is mostly home-grown.
With the growth has come an expanding workforce.
Son Mitch came back to the farm about five years ago, while younger son Bob is doing a diesel mechanics apprenticeship and daughter Shelby is a chiropractor.
A retired farmer works six-days-a-week on the mixer wagon, there is another full-timer and two casual milkers.
The mixer wagon was introduced about nine years ago.
“One drought year, we couldn’t get feed so we bought some pit silage, but didn’t have a machine to feed it into the feed pad,” Ash said.
“We bought a feed-out cart, but it was time-consuming. I was against mixer wagons because of wear and tear and extra fuel, but we were stuffing around too much and we’re now onto our fifth now over the past nine years.
“It gives you options. These last few years they have been helpful.
“You can add cotton seeds, almond hulls, potatoes, or average hay or straw for a bit of bulk filler.
“Another reason we went to the mixer wagon was because we started growing corn again, and we were either feeding not enough or too much.
“It’s really good feed, and we thought we could spread the corn for eight months instead of four.”
Typically, the farm has good summer crops and that has continued this year, with 6000 bales of silage and 1600 bales of hay, with baling continuing to a record January 20.
They’re also expecting 14-15 tonne per hectare of corn despite only receiving about 44mm since planting.
“We sprayed out early, conserved moisture and we don’t get quite as hot as further inland,” Ash said.
“If you can conserve the moisture in the heavier clay soils, it’s amazing how much it grows.”
With bumper corn crops in early March, Ash is looking at new options with the introduction of Green Lightning, designed to pull atmospheric nitrogen from the air and create liquid fertiliser.
They started with one six-head unit in mid-2025 and expanded to a second to get enough production.
“We’re fairly happy with the results so far,” Ash said.
“It creates a plasma electric reaction, similar to a thunderstorm, that extracts nitrogen from the air and puts it in the water.
“It makes about 380 litres per day per six-head unit, and we pump that into sealed 22,500 litre rainwater tanks and pump it into the tow and fert to spray on the paddocks.
“It reduces our urea usage, and the cost of that is going to go through the roof.”
The cost of producing 1000 litres of the liquid is $25-30. About 200l of Green Lightning liquid is replacing about 100kg of urea per hectare.
They are also doing a trial on the corn crops with half the paddocks receiving Green Lightning liquid when planted.
Halter collars will arrive in March and Ash is expecting operational and lifestyle benefits.
“They can cut out a lot of motorbike use, save running electric fences at night, save time feeding out.
“Because we have the cows on the feed pad a lot, and they get fairly full, you have to follow them down to the paddock to keep them moving, but the collars will do that too.
“Mitch was pushing it to get me home a bit earlier at night.”
They have purchased 700 collars to cover the milking herd and will gradually introduce the collars to the heifers.
The farm runs two herds, typically a fresh herd and a stale herd, and has been calving five-times-a-year with a three-day mating program.
However, conception rates dropped below 50 per cent over the past year.
“We’re going with the collars and will join one round with sexed semen, a round of normal semen, and if they’re up to their third or fourth joining, we might switch them to beef,” Ash said.
“We give them four to five chances to get in calf.
“There are plenty of replacements coming in and we’re rearing a few beef calves as well.”
They previously exported up to 100 heifers, but don’t think the market is worth chasing at the moment.
“We keep turning cows over. There are 250 heifers to come in for the year, and we don’t really want to get to 800 cows.”
The farm has also expanded with a calf shed, calving shed and machinery shed added in recent times to avoid the wet winters.