As I write this week's newsletter I’m sitting on a small hill which overlooks our largest dam. The sun has just ducked down behind the tallest tallowoods and a rather large camphor laurel tree. I’m sitting here waiting for the last crop of winter vegetables to be irrigated. We don’t yet have an automatic timer so it’s a good excuse to sit in the field and just admire all that is going on. Our calendar is still telling us it’s winter, but as I rest on a soft patch of clover, I am witnessing what seems to look and feel a lot more like Spring...

I would like to deepen our connection. This is not just about food, farming and our planet, these things have become so fixated in our collective minds that we have forgotten why we care about these issues in the first place. We don't care about living longer so we can be the only ones alive, we don't care about saving the planet so we can sit around the campfire by ourselves. What meaning does any of this stuff actually have without each other?

It’s a wet old week here on the farm and despite the rain I can feel the subtle changes in heat and humidity when working in the field. Whilst out in the fields I witnessed the first of the White Cabbage Moth appear after it’s winter hiatus, she fluttered from one plant to the next fastidiously placing a single tiny cream coloured egg on the underside of each leaf. In four days time each of her eggs will hatch out a single little hungry green caterpillar. These voracious eaters know it is their time to shine and unless we keep their numbers under control, they will devastate our crops before summer is bearing down upon us.

Aussie farmers are just barely surviving by the skin of their teeth. Since the year 2000 over 39,000 farms have disappeared. That’s roughly a third of all farms in Australia and that number continues to decline today. I fear with the climate becoming more unpredictable, the droughts lasting longer and the floods more intense and frequent, may spell the end for many farmers already struggling to survive...

Sometimes you feel like farming is a battle with nature, but this mentality doesn't bode well in the long run. Treating it like a battle only leaves you exhausted and frustrated. Nature is never exhausted, she never gets frustrated, no matter what we throw at her, she just carries on about her business in the most peaceful of ways. Never have I seen nature in a rush, but like a recovering forest after a bushfire, suddenly she is everywhere. I prefer to think about farming as a dance with nature, it works better for my mental state. If I try to beat her through sheer force of will, I fear I will become bitter and resentful...

It's Tuesday afternoon at 3pm, I have sat down to write this newsletter with the beautiful warm afternoon sun soaking my back. It feels delightful after such a frosty finger numbing morning harvesting your veggies. Prior to sitting down, I was at the pack shed with Dad and Lochie getting things ready for our early start tomorrow at 3:30am. We have come up with a new system to pack your orders...

I'm going to have a rant this week! So here I am driving around the mid north coast delivering your fruit and veg boxes while listening to the ABC radio. The radio host announces a report by chief vet, Alex Brittan, allegeing Greyhound Racing NSW was underreporting dog deaths and overlooking animal welfare violations. It was another scathing report into greyhound racing in New South Wales which has prompted the peak body’s CEO to resign and forced the state government to open an inquiry and threaten to sack the board.

The cold wet winter ground takes so long to dry out and all you need is a brief shower to restart the drying process all over again. Often this means cultivating and planting in wet soil which is quite damaging to the soils ecosystem. As oxygen is introduced to the soil through cultivation, the abundant moisture combines to set the biological house on fire (microbes need oxygen, moisture and food to explode their population beyond our comprehension) which leads quickly to the devouring of organic matter in the soil...

A nomadic tribe seeing nature as their mother that provides all they need to live life, so long as they respect the balance of intricately linked and complex webs of life vs a farmer and eventually emperor who believes they have conquered nature and can bend her to suit their own demands. A nomad that believes nature's bounty cannot be owned because it cannot be stored so it must be shared, to the modern human belief that everything must be divided by ownership. How it is divided is still the cause of most wars and is a problem yet to be solved...

A few years ago now, we had a serious disease problem with our lettuce crops, they just kept dying all of a sudden, right before harvest. We ended up getting samples sent off to get tested but were told it was a virus in the soil. An old farmer then told me that whenever the soil becomes diseased, you should grow root crops to change the diversity of microbes and bring back the balance of the good guys. We did this and it worked immediately...

Growing food organically means to grow food truthfully, to grow food with love. Farming has shown me that if we can find love for our food and the soil that nurtured it, we will find love in ourselves and for each other. It is our character that will determine our future, not economists, scientists, billionaires, technology or politicians and our character is a reflection of our values, the things we love most...

Winter has officially arrived on the farm, temperatures are getting down towards 4 degrees in the early hours just before sunrise, although we are yet to see our first frost. The winter veg is looking great considering the amount of rainfall it has endured, but our successional crop of winter veg has come under attack by the growing number of Bower Birds that seem to find our farm one of the nicer places to live within the Lorne Valley...