I’m just a boring accountant that’s returned to the farm in a more permanent way in the last 12 months. Mum and Dad have both reached 80 and decided to hang up their gumboots, and they wanted to know what we wanted to do with the farm. The easy answer was to sell it, but after the four of us had a think about it, the answer was simple, no. We grew up here, we love the farm, we love the peace, the quiet of it, but we need to diversify a little bit more. We need to produce a bit more income. As Richard said, he’s bloody underpaid for the hours he does. Seven days a week, like all of you.
We started to think of ways of how we could increase our income without affecting our environmental and sustainability principles and goals in our environment management plan. What we decided was we wanted to increase the number of income streams from the ‘Bimbadeen’ property. More importantly, that was not only from the actual produce but also from non-produce income.
We’ve decided to start farm tours in a different way to what’s been done before. I know Mum and Dad have hosted a number of events here over the years, and you’ve probably been here before, a lot of you. But what we wanted to do with our farm tours was open it up to the wider community, to the tourist/consumer market. I mean, they’re the same, but we just wanted to increase our exposure that way and bring in more people to find out about our farm and what we’re doing and that.
The farm tours were one thing that we started in December. Just beyond those trees, we’re putting the finishing touches to three farm retreats
This is a clip from “Walk the Talk” with Steve Davie: Resilience Through Diversity filming available for Farming Secrets Members.
