How A Humble Dairy Farm in The Southern Highlands Became An Organic Success Story

The paddocks at Highland Organics, tucked away on the outskirts of Moss Vale, are dotted with happy and full heifers, loaded up on oaten hay, milked for the day sitting in the sunshine, completely unaware of their good fortune and good life being a direct result of the farmer that wanders through the paddocks and calls them by name.

“This is Ginger here,” Bill Smillie wanders over to a beautiful polled jersey cow who happily gives him a nudge with her nose.

“She’s the calmest, quietest heifer I’ve ever seen on the farm.”

He gives her a gentle pat and tells us she’ll probably calve this weekend, before taking us over to meet a 3-day-old calf that has us wondering if we could fit her in the back of our car to take her home!

Bill Smillie is a local, organic dairy farmer who walks his talk – Highland Organics has been built on the pillars of organic farming, animal welfare, sustainability and regenerative agriculture.

“I’ve seen the other end of the spectrum and it’s not pleasant,” he says.

“All our cows at Highland Organics have all the forage they can eat, they graze, they’re never inside, they’re well-looked after, they’re not over-milked and live a long and happy life.”

Bill points to three cows across the paddock.

“Those three cows are 15-years-old and sisters, and they’re still producing milk because of how we treat them and how healthy they are.”

Oh, and before we continue, we reckon you need a cute 3-day old calf pic to light up your day…….those eyesssssss. 

Okay back to it! So, let’s start at the beginning. You grew up on this farm, didn’t you?

I was actually born here. My Dad emigrated to Australia from Scotland in 1960. He moved to the Highlands in 1965 when he was offered a job managing this same farm, which was owned by a butcher in Sydney.

He bought the farm in 1971 and I grew up on the dairy with my two brothers and one sister.

Actually, one side of my Dad’s family in Scotland have been dairy farmers since 1620 and the other side of his family sold their dairy farm in 1820 but had been there for 16 generations before that.

So I guess you could say dairy farming is in my blood.

That’s some pedigree!

Sure is, but it’s not just our family that has the history.

This land was originally part of Browley, which was John Waite’s land granted to him by Charles Throsby in 1825.

Throsby set him up as a dairy farm, so this land has been used for dairy farming for nearly 200 years which is pretty amazing really.

How did you end up running the farm?

I did a few things when I left school, worked at Blue Circle for a while, worked on a couple of other farms and saved enough money to go overseas and travel.

I still have family in Scotland so worked on the harvest over there with one of my uncles.

I came back home for a while and then took off back to Europe and ended up working on an estate near Stirling in Scotland, owned by the actress Diana Rigg and her husband.

There were two dairies on the property, and I ended up managing one. That’s where I met my lovely wife, Jacqui – she worked in the office – she’s now a theatre nurse at Southern Highlands Private Hospital.

We came back to Australia and Dad moved to Nowra to run another dairy down there, so Jacqui and I took over the lease here in 1993 and have been here ever since.

Why the switch to organic dairy farming?

Well, that’s how we’d always done it anyway.

It was pretty clear we weren’t going to make enough money out of conventional dairy farming.

The dairy industry was heavily regulated back then.

When I was travelling in Europe and the UK back in the 80’s and 90’s, organic farming was starting to take off over there.

And I thought to myself at the time, well, that’s how we already farm.

We don’t use chemical fertilisers, never went down the path of using urea or sprays or routine antibiotics, our cows lived outdoors and were free to roam around the paddocks.

So, it wasn’t much of a switch to organic.

More of an extension of what we already did but just going through the process to be certified organic.

Was that difficult?

The farming was the easy part! It was the processing side of things that was challenging to start with.

It took five years to get one litre of milk processed as organic.

So, we decided to bring the processing side of things in-house which allowed us to control the process more and meant our organic certification wasn’t at risk.

We built a factory on Lackey Road in Moss Vale and now Tony and Gail, a husband-and-wife team do all the processing and packaging, and Garth, our driver, puts it in his truck and delivers our products to Sydney, Canberra and across the Highlands.

So, the cows are milked here at the dairy, and the milk is sent across to Lackey Road to be processed and packaged up. You can’t get much more local than that.

Absolutely. And it’s all locals we’re employing too.

That’s so awesome. So tell us about the products.

We have organic milk, organic cheese and organic yoghurt.

And it was the organic yoghurt that won the Delicious Produce Award in 2021?

That’s right. Renee and Glenn at Birch nominated us. They’re customers of ours and sell our products at their store.

It was really nice of them to do that, but that’s the sort of people they are. Big supporters of local produce.

Anyway, we received word that our Highland Organics natural yoghurt was named as a 2021 State Winner, followed by a National Gold Medal, which was great!

And it’s a reflection of the quality of our products.

The yoghurt is really really good.

So, you distribute to Canberra and Sydney, but Highlanders can buy your products locally too.

For sure. We deliver to independent supermarkets and Supabarns in Canberra and Sydney, and since 2015, we’ve had a co-branding agreement with Harris Farm to supply all the Harris Farm organic cheeses, milk and yoghurts through us.

If you’re local, you can head into…

• Ashcrofts Supa IGA, Moss Vale
• Robertson Cheese Factory
• Anchors Fruit + Veg, Bowral
• Highlands Fresh, Mittagong
• Birch Store, Moss Vale
• The Organic Wholefood Store, Bowral
• The Corner Store, Bowral
• Robertson Supermarket
• The Village Grocer, Bundanoon
• IGA, Marulan
• Osborn House, Bundanoon
• Raw and Wild, Bowral
• Harris Farm, Bowral

….to stock up and support a local farm.

Is this a 24/7 job for you?

I work seven days a week, but I choose my own hours now and make it work around the business and my family.

Jacqui and I have five kids and most of them are grown-up and are doing their own thing, but we have a son who is doing his HSC this year.

What time is milking time?

It depends on what football is on the night before!

So, no 4am alarm?

Nah, I’m too old for that now.

I get up to the dairy about 630am-7am and spend some time up here before I take my son to school.

Then I’m back here fixing fences, doing up the yards, setting up for spring silage…. I usually get to milking about 5pm.

Bill points to another group of cows as we wander back across the paddock towards the dairy.

“We have families of cows here that have been here for generations,” he says.

“When Dad came here in 1965, there were records back to the mid 50’sand this farm was a dairy long before that, so we’ve got a lot of their descendants still here.”

So, let’s get break this down, people!

Cows born and raised here, milked by a 10th generation (at least!) dairy farmer, also born and raised here, providing milk for delicious local organic milk, yoghurt and cheeses being processed and packaged by more locals in a factory less than 2 kilometres away from the farm, ending up on a shelf in a local supermarket or store for us Highlanders to buy.

And NOTHING has left the Highlands.

Now THAT’S a pretty awesome local success story, right?

Head to those local stockists we mentioned before, give Highland Organics some love by buying their award-winning products and helping this local business grow.

And head here for more info about Highland Organics and their delicious products.

Love it!

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