Our story

We didn't set out with a grand plan to become farmers. We got here one move at a time, from a suburban backyard to forty acres in the Brisbane Valley, and we're still working out what this place can be.

• 
  Anthony

  Plans the paddock moves and does the morning and evening rounds, around a full-time job.

• 
  Nat

  Shares the big decisions, stands up for the goats, and built the frog pond.

• Ian

  Does the mowing, slashing and chainsaw work, which on this place is a lot.

• 
  Marion

  Runs the kitchen and the garden.

How we got here

When COVID hit, we were gardening in a suburban backyard in the Redlands. The native bees started there.

Lockdown did something we weren’t expecting: it made the food system visible. The shelves had always simply been full. Suddenly we could see how much sits between a paddock and a dinner plate, and how little of it we understood.

A tree change had always been a someday plan, and it arrived early. We moved onto two and a half acres at Pine Mountain and called it our forever home. It lasted twelve months.

Ian and Marion had two and a half acres of their own not far away. We called the two places Farm A and Farm B and ran them as one: a garden between us, fruit trees, and whatever needed doing done by whoever could get to it. It worked well enough that we started wondering why we were doing it across two addresses.

So in September 2023 the four of us moved onto forty acres in the Brisbane Valley. At first it felt enormous. Most of it was forest and lantana, and for a long time we concentrated on the small part we understood.

We put in a vegetable garden and grew food for our own kitchen. Then sheep arrived, and we started moving them across the grass, giving each piece a rest before they came back.

Something shifted. We stopped thinking only about how to improve a garden bed and started asking how to improve the whole place. Most of what we do now comes back to one question:

Is the land getting better or worse because of the way we farm it?

We’re nowhere near done. The goats are still in a paddock that doesn’t suit them because the fencing isn’t finished. Most of the back half is still lantana. We’d love Dexter cattle one day, but not until there’s enough grazing to carry them properly.

The food forest is growing. Marion’s garden is producing. The sheep move across the paddocks, the chicken caravan takes the hens onto fresh pasture, and the pigs turn rough ground over when they’re here.

Sometimes what we try works, and sometimes it doesn’t. We’re seeing early signs that the place is heading in the right direction, but it’s much too soon for a victory lap.

For now, much of what we produce feeds the people who live here. We’d like the farm to produce more over time, and to meet the requirements that let us make more of that food available beyond our own gate. This site isn’t a shop, though. It’s simply where we tell the story of what we’re doing and what we’re learning.

We’ve put a lot into this place, and we mean to be here a long time: growing more of our own food, learning what this country can do, and watching the land get better.

And we’re planting wattles too. It seemed a shame to have the name and not the trees.

How we farm →