In the Barossa, SA, Michael Wohlstadt has won a coveted Producer of the Year award for his multi-use operation that includes dairy produce and milk-fed, free-range pigs.
Story + Photos Ken Eastwood
Beside endless rows of wine grapes and a lavender farm, among the luxuriant green hills of the Barossa, SA, free-range pigs and piglets cavort under giant eucalypts. Whether the sows are up to their necks in mud, lolling in the shade or running to get the buckets of farm-fresh milk produced by Jersey cows on the property, they seem happy and healthy, in the hands of the 2025 delicious Producer of the Year, Michael Wohlstadt.
Known as The Dairyman, Michael crams a lot into his 32ha mixed farming property. There are about 50 Jerseys dining on paddocks of chicory, clover and lucerne, the 20 milkers producing around 400L a day. Then there are around 80 free-range Hampshire, Tamworth and Berkshire cross pigs, growing out to six months of age. There are shipping containers full of oyster mushrooms, producing 40–50kg a week, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz grapes growing on vines that’ll go to Grant Burge, and two bed-and-breakfast accommodation options for rent. “We’re employing six people off 80 acres [32.4ha],” Michael says.
This story excerpt is from issue #164
Outback Magazine: Dec/Jan 2026
