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Quality food, grown locally

Rosalba and Mark came from careers in IT, but the pull of a different life proved too strong. We bought our property in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland in 2005 and built our home here in 2009. Over the years we have tried many things — goats for fleece, donkeys, and for over a decade a large flock of chickens. Today we focus on what the land does best for us: fruit and vegetables.

Why organic?

We believe that what we eat largely determines our health. The more we learn about the herbicides and pesticides used in conventional farming, the more determined we are to stay well away from them. Certified organic growing is the natural conclusion of that thinking. Certification matters to us because it shows we are serious — we welcome independent, third-party reviews of our practices.

How we farm

We try to work with the land rather than against it. We don't plow or till. Much of our land is sloped, so we have built swales along the contours to capture water and create growing beds. Weeding is done by hand. For the areas around our growing beds we use an all-electric mower, whipper snipper, and brush cutter, all powered by our solar system. We plant seasonally, following the natural rhythms of the climate, and all our irrigation runs through a drip feed system to deliver water directly to the roots and minimise evaporation. We are a small farm on purpose — we believe large monoculture operations are a food security risk, vulnerable to seemingly unconnected events like financial crises or fuel supply disruptions.

We are also completely off the grid. Our water comes from rainwater collection, our power from solar panels and battery banks, and we charge our electric vehicle directly from our solar system.

What we grow

Our orchard includes pomegranates, figs, dragon fruit, oranges, lemons, mandarins, olives, and mulberries (which the birds enjoy as much as we do). This season we have had a good harvest of pomegranates and of dragon fruit. Our fig trees produced their first reasonable crop. We don't grow in monocultures — we use companion planting throughout and intersperse different fruit tree varieties across the property.

We also keep around 40% of our land as registered Land for Wildlife habitat.

Where to find us

Our produce is available at the Maple Street Co-op.