Two years on …

 

August sunrise

 This weekend marks exactly two years since we made the Huon Valley our permanent home. It really doesn’t feel like it has been that long. It certainly doesn’t feel like four years have elapsed since our six-month sojourn here in the second half of 2020. How are things going you may ask? Well, I guess the first thing to say is that our experience of farming is somewhat different to the description offered by the author Stef Penny in her novel “The Tenderness of Wolves”:

“As many men have found, farming is a slow, sure way to lose your fortune, destroy your health, and break your spirit.”  

To be fair, the life of a hobby farmer is completely different to that of an actual farmer where livelihood depends on the fickleness of soil and weather. To answer the frequent question as to what type of farm we have, Cath has come up with a great answer – the type that takes rather than makes money!

It is hard now to imagine what the property looked like when we started out here and photos seem unable to do justice to the transformation. The area in front of the cottage which we are slowly turning into a garden, was an overgrazed horse paddock with deep fissures in the ground where the topsoil had been washed away. The track down to the bottom paddocks was impassable due to encroaching brush.  The paddocks themselves, where the sheep now graze, were overrun with blackberries. The hill paddocks where our goats hang out were no-go areas overpopulated with silver wattle and with dense scrub underneath. The area we call the arboretum was a brown wasteland of thistles.

 

 

Entrance to the arboretum in spring

What seems more fruitful than trying to remember how the farm has changed is to enjoy the little jolts of adrenaline you get when

    -       you crack a bottle of apple cider knowing that not only did you make it from scratch, but you actually planted the tree that produced the apples;

    -       you munch a heirloom tomato for lunch which was grown in a greenhouse that you built;

    -       you dig up fresh potatoes for dinner from raised garden beds constructed from off-cut timber sourced from the local mill;

    -       you eat ice-cream or a baked Basque cheese cake made using free-range eggs provided hens that were hatched in an incubator in your living room.

Sure, until the set-up costs are fully amortized, these apples, tomatoes, potatoes and eggs are probably a lot more expensive than their supermarket counterparts, but then that’s the beauty of a farm that takes your money!

 

Now they are giving us free range eggs daily

Very organised or driven people sometimes ask about the "five-year plan" or "ultimate objective" for Cracroft Farm. We have no answer to these imponderables but think instead of relaxing into the rhythm of the seasons; the short, dark, cold and often wet days of winter; the warmer days of spring when every hour seems to be spent cutting grass (until you despair of ever doing anything else); the lovely long summer days where a leisurely start is of no consequence because the evenings seem to linger forever; and the decadent days of autumn where everything glows and fresh produce is in abundance. There are also the dreams to hold on to; a newly renovated and extended house with plenty of space for guests; fresh stone fruit when the lower orchard matures; a garden established enough to provide interest in all seasons and with the promise of becoming spectacular; and (if we can ever face it) fresh lamb born and raised in our paddocks.

So, after two years, all is well on Cracroft Farm where two want-to-be farmers, a crazy, Collie, a goofy white Maremma and an aging but always dignified cat are still in the business of turning their dreams into reality …

 

 

 

 

 It's tough but someone has to do it