Personal Experience: How They Built a Farm and Now Supply Restaurants with Harvest

The owners of this house, Jade and Charlie, met while at university. The couple bonded over their dream of a family and a cozy rural home surrounded by gardens, vegetable patches, and spaces for domestic animals and livestock. A passion for farming runs in their blood — both spent childhoods on farms.

Charlie and I met at university in Melbourne. Even back then, we knew that the city wasn't where we wanted to spend our lives.

But achieving their dream didn’t come easy. Due to Charlie's work (he works as a contracted environmental consultant and collaborates with many organizations across the country), the young couple had to move frequently.

Over the course of three years living in their new location, Jade, Charlie, their sons Harry and Bertie, and daughter Clementina turned eight hectares of wild fruit orchards into a permaculture farm called Black Barn Farm and a homestead where the key factor is eco-friendliness. Today, the farm includes a garden, a sheep paddock, and even an educational center where Charlie holds workshops and consultations on permaculture farming.

The children are also involved in the work: Harry and Bertie run their own mini-business, while Clementina is a regular customer of theirs.

Every time they moved, the couple had to re-setup their home. For this move, they planned to buy a fully ready-made cottage. But fate had other plans.

When the family first moved in, they had to live in tents: they literally set up camp on the farm, living in tents. They immediately started renovations. It took a full six weeks just to lay the utilities! But from there, things moved faster: the kids painted all the walls themselves and replaced the floors. Then they set up the kitchen and other rooms.

The kitchen project was Jade's idea. She divided it into two zones: one part housed appliances, work surfaces, and storage spaces, while the other contained a pantry where homemade jams, jellies, and preserved berries could be stored.

Natural materials dominate the kitchen interior, mostly wood. The chairs, table, and storage shelves are made from natural timber. The couple also bought an old wooden table at a local farmers' market.

The bedroom walls, like in the rest of the house, are painted white. This creates a perfect backdrop for colorful interior items and dark textiles. Large windows fill the bedroom with light and fresh air.

Once all the necessary work in the house was done, the couple focused on the farm. It is now bearing its first fruits. The orchard contains over 1,000 different kinds of trees, including cherries and 78 varieties of apples. The family also rented and thus saved a nearby apple orchard that the owners had planned to clear.

We plan for our orchard to yield a harvest year-round by 2021: berries and cherries in December, early pears in April, and apples and quinces in the spring.

Today, the homestead includes geese, a pond with fish, domestic birds, and sheep. Just three years after moving in, the couple is now supplying farm produce to local restaurants and small grocery stores.