We bought a farm

I often wonder how to tell people stuff about your life and dreams. How much of your life you should share. And most importantly, when to share.  Do you tell people from the start of your dream, and take them on a journey through the trials and struggles, and then, when you reach your goal you can all celebrate in the triumph.

Or do you get stuck in behind the scenes, keep the challenges to yourself until the big reveal..." Ta - Da here's this thing we did! Twas nothing!"

That's how I feel about telling people we bought farm. It's not actually a farm yet truth be told, but a 35 acre parcel of land, with paddocks, a woodland and a river bank. It has magnificent views of the glorious Huon Valley to the east and of the wild snowy mountains to the west.

There's some ramshackle fences, a few flogged paddocks and a pile of stones, and best of all there's a forest that runs along the banks of the Huon River, filled with tall eucalyptus, devils dens and wombat burrows. Plus then theres a sandy riverbank, where you can swim and kayak and fish. It's dreamy and it's ours, and we fancy calling ourselves farmers one day.

For many years, we had a dream to buy an old farmhouse on lots of land, do it up, start a family business and create a place where people could come and learn, connect and unwind. But despite our earnest looking, for years, nothing seemed right, or we couldn't afford it, or someone else bought it before we did.

Then as things often happen, this parcel of land appeared, the land was perfect, the zoning and facilities or lack there of, not so perfect. It wasn't what we were looking for, the lawyers said don't buy it, the conveyancer told us we were mad, but we bought it anyway.  A whopping big parcel of land in the Huon Valley without any infrastructure, tricky zoning,  but hey, it has a river bank and forest!

That's what's been keeping us busy these last 18 months, planning a farm.  We've been in lots of meetings; meetings with council, with architects, grazing consultants, weed management consultants, town planners, bushfire risk planners, markets gardeners, landscapers and Resource Management bureaucrats.

We've also done workshops on fencing, farm planning, weed management, wildlife monitoring, stock grazing and irrigation.  We've dived head first into learning about regenerative farming through soil health and pasture regeneration. Studied cattle grazing, sheep grazing, cell grazing, egg production, and pig rearing.  We've applied for funding for weed management, tree replanting and scholarships for farm mentoring. We've crunched numbers, created dozens of spreadsheets with different scenarios, explored many business models. It's been a huge learning curve, and an expensive one.

And I can't help feel frustrated at how slow the process is. How expensive the process is, even through we haven't built a fence, bought a chicken or even begun to build a foundation. It's still a long journey ahead despite how much work we've done so far.

But what we have done is dreamed.

We've sat in the paddocks and listened to the wind rustle through the long grass and imagined where our house would sit, we've mapped out where the new fencing be installed, hammered in stakes where the orchard will go, the vegetable garden will be sowed, the wind break native trees, grasses and shrubs will be planted. We've swum in the river, kayaked along the rapids, picnicked on the river banks.   We've camped in the paddocks, cooked dinner on the fire, looked up at the big sky, taken big breaths and dreamed.

A few weeks ago we submitted a huge whopping proposal to council, putting all our knowledge that we'd learnt during the past 18 months, into a business plan that we hope ticks every box, so that we can get the go ahead to proceed with our dream.  To create a farm, a Good And Proper Farm.

I feel now is the time to tell you, and if you like, you can come along for the journey. The exhilarating, funny, frustrating, scary and expensive journey of starting a farm.

I mean, how hard can it be?

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