Heartwood Podcast

About Heartwood Podcast

Welcome to our new Podcast series. I'll be sharing my 40 years experience in growing trees on farms for both conservation and profit with stories from our own farm and interviews with some of the many farmers I have worked with around Australia. Key words: Forestry, Farm Forest, Forester, Trees, Agroforestry, Regenerative Agriculture, Landcare, Timber, Lumber, Sawmilling, Bushfood, Carbon, Biodiversity, Soil Conservation, Farming, Environment, Plantation I'm open to suggestions for content and am happy to takes questions. Hope you like it. Rowan I'm a forest scientist (B.For.Sci. & M.For.Sci.), author, educator and a tree grower with a family farm in the Otway Ranges of southern Victoria, Australia. We call it the Bambra Agroforestry Farm and grow more than 70 different species for conservation and profit. After almost 40 years we're now harvesting and milling our own trees, building a house from the timber and selling tree products. I was also a co-founder of one of Australia’s most successful Landcare groups, the Otway Agroforestry Network and the originator of the Australian Master TreeGrower program. I have worked with farmers in many countries including the USA, UK, Europe, Uganda, Kenya, Indonesia, Vanuatu and Timor Leste. I have written many books about tree growing: the latest is "Heartwood - the art and science of growing trees for conservation and profit". WWW: www.agroforestry.net.au (http://www.agroforestry.net.au) EMAIL: rowan.reid@agroforestry.net.au (mailto:rowan.reid@agroforestry.net.au) FACEBOOK: @bambraagroforestry (https://www.facebook.com/bambraagroforestry/) LINKED IN: Rowan Reid (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowan-reid-5bb3aa30/) INSTAGRAM: bambra_agroforestry_farm (https://www.instagram.com/bambra_agroforestry_farm/) YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@bambraagroforestryfarm4008 (https://www.youtube.com/@bambraagroforestryfarm4008) And, thanks to Mountain Grey for our theme music. They are a local Otway band. Check out their music at: https://www.reverbnation.com/mountaingrey #Trees #Timber #agroforestry #farmforestry #sawmilling #lumber #forestry

Publisher

Rowan Reid

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

24 Sept 2024

Latest episode

22 Feb 2026

Latest episodes

6 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   22 Feb 2026

   #6 Thinning to grow fat trees fast

   Thinning may be the most controversial and poorly understood aspect of growing trees. Whether for conservation, timber or both, competition between trees may be slowing their growth and reducing the quality of your forest. In this podcast Rowan explains how managing the 'personal space' around each tree can help create a more valuable forest. He also touches on the fallacy of the promise of a commercial thinning and why the expectation of a market for small diameter trees has unde...

2. 

   10 Oct 2025

   #5 Building our Home-Grown Home from Farm-Grown Timber

   We've spent 5 years building our new farmhouse. Almost all the timber (or lumber) came from trees we planted, pruned, harvested and milled on the farm. You could say it took us 38 years to grow our homegrown home! In this podcast I talk about growing and building the timber framing, boardroom concrete fireplace, stairs, lining, cabinets and flooring using a range of species we've grown on our own farm including Radiata Pine, Eucalypts, Redwood, Oak and Blackwood. To achieve the lo...

3. 

   26 Apr 2025

   #4 Changing forestry so it works for farmers

   Send us a text Can we change forestry to make it attractive to family farmers? In this episode Rowan Reid reflects on the history of forestry on farms in Australia and his involvement over the last 40 years. It's clear that forestry is not working for farmers and we need to change the way we talk about and support forestry in the family farming landscape. Support the show

4. 

   9 Dec 2024

   #3 Pruning Works - for high quality timber

   Professional Arborist Josquin Tibbits shares expert pruning techniques for maximizing high-quality timber recovery, revealing how to confine branch knots and optimize log yields.

5. 

   25 Oct 2024

   The Farmer and the Forester

   Send us a textAndrew Stewart is a multi-award winning farmer in the Otways in southern Victoria, Australia. I'm a forest scientist with a small tree farm in the next valley. For more than 35 years we have shared a passion for making multipurpose tree growing attractive to family farmers in our region. With others, we set up the Otway Agroforestry Network in 1993; ran the first Australian Master TreeGrower course in 1996; and, developed a unique Peer Group Mentoring program to support farmers ...

6. 

   24 Sept 2024

   #1: Portable sawmills for farmers

   Send us a textDavid Jenkins grows eucalypt sawlogs and has a 10 inch Lucas Mill on his beef farm near Bridgetwon in Western Australia. I have a Hardwood Mills GT40 Horizontal Bandsaw on our Bambra Agroforestry Farm in Victoria. We caught up in David's mill shed to discuss how these two Australian made mills perform and the advantages of each. Watch a video of me using our Hardwood Mills GT40 Bandsaw to quartersaw a large eucalypt at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LFBxq2btE Hardwood ...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.5 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 3 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

5

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0