¶ Preview & Introduction
Okay , so keep in mind That that slurp was loud in my ears .
Actually , in Coffs , just out of Coffs Harbour , there's a Just recently formed , within the last year or two is the Myanmar agricultural cooperative , which are Burmese refugees that have come over and They wanted to get back on the land .
So they've found some land and they're I think there's about 10 families that are Farming together on this land and they came out here . We invited them out when I heard what was going on and apparently , on the car ride out , they all came in a little minivan .
Some of them were like crying and saying , oh , this is just like home and it's really emotional for them . So they're just sort of getting up and going . But you know , hopefully we see more of that because there is so much skill and knowledge there .
G'day, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, back in Derby , in the spectacular Kimberley region in the far northwest of WA .
It's been 18 months since we were last here and within just a few days We're being blown away all over again by some of the extraordinary stuff happening here , along with the at times hard to believe threats that are also stepping up , as they're doing almost everywhere , of course .
But for more charting ways for the sorts of places more of us actually want to live in , stay tuned for more from the Kimberley next month . For the rest of June , though , it's back east for a series of episodes I've been holding back till now .
That's because the first Australian feature film on regenerative agriculture and , as always , all other related systems , is Premiering in Sydney this week , having already premiered , to a claim , in Santa Barbara , california . Rachel's farm is made by none other than Rachel Ward , the famed actress , filmmaker and now grandmother .
It's about her deeply felt , unexpected and incredibly uplifting journey to becoming a regenerative farmer . Rachel will be on the podcast next week , coinciding with the announcement of her touring the film throughout July , but today features a brilliant young couple who appear in the film - Kaycee Simuong , who you heard at the top , and Tom Macindoe .
I just think it's , it's sort of just intrinsic to To who we are . We're not really looking at it from a Monetary perspective .
Tom and Kaycee are descendants , respectively of Scottish Highlanders and Lao rice farmers and somewhat accidental refugees , and , as it happens , Kaycee spent some formative time in the Kimberley at Mornington when she was 19 . Now she's with Tom running Mandarin Bend Farm in the beautiful Nambucca Valley , Gambaynggirr country , on the mid-north coast of New South Wales .
But not only that . With a bunch of neighbouring producers , they've gone on to start the North Arms Farms Co-op , a unique food to market setup with deep community roots , stewardship ethos and Enterprise model that sends a hundred percent of what we spend on our food directly to the farmers .
I Recently visited them at the farm 400 acres of forest and grassland regeneration and extraordinary market garden and I followed the delivery van on distribution day too - a Van carrying the slogan farm like the world depends on it .
Before we start , great Thanks to Samuel Johnson this week for your generous donation and to this week's guests , Tom and Kaycee , for being amongst the very first supporters of the podcast back in 2020 . It's the way this ad-free , listener supported podcast happens .
So if you're also finding value in this , please consider joining Samuel , Tom and Kaycee and a great community of supporting listeners With as little as three dollars a month or whatever amount you can and want to contribute .
You can enjoy a variety of benefits , including early news of events , some behind-the-scenes stuff from me And , of course , you'll continue to receive the podcast every week , even a little more often than that in coming weeks . Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration . com forward slash support and Thanks again .
Okay , let's take a seat with Kaycee and Tom on the balcony at their place . Kaycee and Tom , thanks for having me at your place . It is unbelievable really to be here , considering you've been a supporter of the podcast for a couple of years . We've been in touch in that time and I've heard about this place .
I haven't actually spent much time around this region probably not many Australians have to tell the truth So to come out here and be just blown away on ar rival's been really something , thanks for having us .
Thanks for having you out here , AJ . That's been a long time coming . I've been very excited .
Yeah , welcome .
¶ Finding Home in a Healing Space
Thanks . So let's bring listeners in to what I've been fortunate enough to rock up to today . On the one hand , sure , geographical and what we're sitting amongst , but on the other hand , how it strikes you .
Yeah , it's , it's a pretty powerful place up here We're . We're in the the headwaters of the Nambucca River , which is on the Mid-North Coast of New South Wales , about an hour and a bit south of Coffs Harbour .
And , yeah , this place is nestled , nestled within the North Arm of the Nambaka Valley , and The river runs through the middle of the farm here and , and it's just a really special place where we have the New England World World Heritage Wilderness area to the west of us and , yeah , the coast to the east , and where we've got the best of both worlds .
We put , you are tucked right up in the valley . Sure , yeah , yeah .
Yeah , we're 30 , 30 K's inland of Bowraville , so it's sort of a one-way Road which becomes unsealed , so it's a narrow , windy , dirt road and you're kind of meandering through the valley and there's just beautiful , luscious green river flats and then forest either side of the road and where we're deep in the womb , as I often call it .
It's like where we drive further and further into this tight , narrow valley and it's just this real place of this really fertile , nurturing , beautiful , beautiful place that we are lucky to call home .
Yeah , you feel lucky being hugged by it up here .
It's really special and beautiful metaphors in there . Yeah the obvious question away How did you come to be here ?
Yeah , so We've got family ties , dad's side of the family . Traditionally they came from the Dorigo district , which is to the north of us here , and Yeah , we were sort of toying about trying to find a farm together for many years . I grew up in Newcastle and Case grew up down in Aubrey , so yeah , we're not we're both first generation to this valley .
But yeah , dad and I were sort of looking around this district and I'd come into this valley on a random motorbike ride actually one day with my family and and just was blown away by how spectacular this , this North arm , is .
And yeah , we we actually Couple of years ago , five years ago , we were sort of looking for property And this was actually the first place that we came on to and it was like you know , there's just something .
Was it really ? Yeah , so this is so interesting .
Need no more yeah .
I don't know . I wonder if you felt it like . Yeah , I even took note where we've just been . We're both where we met in fact Yeah , yeah that Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown's place , because we were there because of the upcoming film release Rachel's farm that you're in .
As it happens , my first sighter of you aside from your website , of course was in this film , and then we come together there and here We are now . It's not far away , but that farm , for them , was also the first one they visited . Yeah , and I hear enough , are you're enough of this to not take it for granted that ? I mean , how does that happen ?
How does it repeatedly ? Yeah , be the first thing that you ? yeah , and so was our home , even back west , for that matter , as I think about it , yeah , the first place we saw when we dedicated our minds to it , yeah , but how , for you case , you know , i guess , did you feel anything in that in particular ? or you didn't give pay that much mind ?
It was like , whatever It's , it's about the place . That's what's really turning me on here .
Well , I moved up about six months after Tom . We weren't really together at that point really met through farming . I was living down near Port Macquarie Farming on my own little market garden there on this guy's property .
And .
Tom's parents lived up the road , yeah .
so I actually met Tom at the Port Macquarie farmers market Selling veggies and he was on another stall selling veggies and then we kind of were seeing each other a bit , kind of you know , on and off , and and then he moved up here , um , and then the first time I came to visit him and I saw it I was like , yeah , wow , this is , this is really it , i
think I'll , i'll move up . and yeah , it was kind of we were , i just sort of moved up to farm With him , because I was slogging away by myself farming and he was up here by himself farming and so it just sort of seemed like The next logical step would be to farm together .
Yeah , so I I moved up necessarily thinking the the package deal At that time .
No , no , it was pretty weird because it was Yeah , it was , it was it's .
You know , it's intense Having a business with someone yet alone , a farming business yet alone , living with them in a semi-rural area , and we'd only sort of known each other for six or eight months , so it was kind of like let's just farm together , you know , and then we've just fallen into our beautiful relationship .
No , i hear that that intensity and when you are .
What you love about being removed a bit , and there's not really a passes by Being up here , yeah , and you love that , but it but it leaves you . Obviously there's a community . We'll get to some of that too as we talk . Yeah , but still yeah , And I appreciate that . So it's interesting that that's it sort of crept up on you in .
Yeah yeah , and to add another layer to that Um , just after I decided to move up here Before I'd actually moved up , i think , but within a week or two beforehand , yeah , i found out that I had thyroid cancer . Yeah , 27 years of age .
But I'd visited Tom , maybe a month or two beforehand up here , and , weirdly , i had this thought come into my head that was like if I was , if I had cancer , this is where I would want to be . And I was like , whoa , why did that come from .
That was before you knew before I knew yeah .
Yeah and then I know that was maybe my body or something trying to tell me like this is where you need to be , this is what's coming , or whatever that is . Yeah , and I've always thought of it as a really healing space and it really did become my healing space .
Really , how are you ?
Great . Yeah it's been five years , um , and I ended up getting half of my thyroid removed . I sighed on it for a while and I tried to do everything alternative that I could , and I ended up deciding to get half of my thyroid removed , against the surgeon's recommendation , which was to take it all out and bomb yourself with radioactive iodine .
I refused that and now I've got half of thyroid doing the work of the whole thing and I don't have to take any artificial replacement hormones .
So get out . I'm good Really . Yeah , wow , that's actually really something . Yeah , the body's adaptive capacity continues to blow me away .
Yeah .
Really Yeah , but geez , the strength of your conviction , though , to do that at such a young age . where'd that come from ?
You question ?
I question everything and I've always had a distrust in empire and authority and really yeah , and I just came home as soon as I found out , came home and did all my research and , yeah , you know , and it's funny , i see cancer as it's a wake up call . It's not a death threat . Unless you want you know , unless that's you're that way inclined and it's .
I think it's actually a gift for some of us to you know , take that journey , because it is a real journey .
Oh dear .
And yeah , i guess I've just always , i've always backed myself really , so no surgeon could tell me what I should do with my body Bang .
So , all right , let's keep going . Where did that come from , in all seriousness ? is it something in your like , i think , is it your mother like , or is there somewhere you can trace that you saw that to just have it become you , or was it later ?
My mom's a very gentle , follow the rules kind of lady , so I don't think it's my mom , and maybe my dad is in a way . He was a refugee after the Vietnam War and came over here and a really interesting story which I won't go on about , but he sort of just ended up here at 16 by accident .
Can you tell us a little bit ?
Yeah , so he was 16 , living on the border of Laos and Thailand , and his older brother , my uncle Sam , we call him , he came back , which is ironic , it's not his real name Given the war .
Yeah , anyway , go ahead .
Yeah , so he had he'd met a partner and had been living in Thailand . He came back to Laos to visit the family and then I think they sort of said we're going back to Thailand to go to a refugee camp , or I'm not sure if they they wanted to go there or they just sort of ended up there . But dad was like , oh , can I come with ?
Wow , i'd never think about that much .
Yeah , and dad just like went along for the ride .
So they stole a buffalo , tied their belongings in a plastic bag and tied it to the buffalo and then swam across the Mekong River at night with the buffalo , got to Thailand , ended up in a refugee camp and then , because they entered as a unit , they were sort of listed on , documented as a family together .
So while they're in there they met this other guy who I call my uncle , but he's not really uncle Pat , we'll call him and he got sort of sponsored to go out to Australia and so he and this is you know all been told from various people apparently Sam and my dad gave him whatever they had and said you know , good luck , see you later .
And then he , he ended up , you know all three , of all places . And then I think he lied and said that my dad and my , my uncle were his brothers and so they then got sponsored to come out .
But my dad didn't really want to come but because they were on the documentation as a unit , they had to go as a unit or fake my dad's death so he could go back home , and so he just sort of came along for the ride and ended up , ended up in Aubrey where there's quite a loud community there that is amazing , yeah , so I wouldn't say he's like a fighter ,
or something but I guess that you know resourceful to do that .
There's something there . There is something there , yeah , fascinating . And so you're in Aubrey , new South Wales , on the border of Victoria . You grow up just outside of that , and we talked a bit about this , not before us , wasn't it that while there's a little loud community there , otherwise it's pretty isolated in terms of culture .
It's pretty white yeah , where I grew up , which is half out , half an hour outside Aubrey in how long is very white . I think it was just me and my sister and an indigenous family who are our good friends who were the only like non-white people at school , um , but Aubrey . Aubrey wasn't too bad . It became a bit of a resettlement area .
So there's quite a few Lao and Tai like quite a big population of Lao and Tai people there . But where I grew up is up until 12 , it was , yeah , very , very rural and a bit isolating . So yeah , it was interesting growing up . Trying to .
My parents ended up splitting when I was about four and I'd spend every second weekend at my dad's house and he it was full Lao culture . Like women were inside playing cards , the guys are outside on the barbecue drinking whiskey , singing Lao songs and so I had this reel .
You know I was playing netball in the for the how long country , you know league one weekend and the next I'm in this really you know crazy Lao party run around with all the kids . So that was kind of my two worlds growing up it sounds good in a way like that there was that blend .
Is that how you feel about it ?
yeah , it was definitely hard , because I feel like I never really fit in with Australian culture because I'm not white , even though I was born here . But I never really fit in with the Lao culture either , because I wasn't fully Lao . So I think there's a lot of people in my boat that kind of grow up not fitting in is there what ?
yeah , we of course spoke about my wife as a case in point , but all the more in farming , then . This is something that you're experiencing is true of farming , too yeah , yeah , we , we did joke about this too .
It's a pretty white industry in Australia , i guess , and yeah , certainly not many female , i guess I'm coloured . It's kind of like what am I ? what label do you fit ?
today , in our best attempts to not just be white . Um , yeah , so this is true , even , even you know , in broadly regenerative circles . But are you experiencing a change ? is it less so ? is it shifting ?
hmm , not really like . Well , maybe just not in our circles .
Like we went to a conference in December for a region ag conference and it was all pretty much all middle-aged to late sort of white males , there's a handful of females but like they're changing the face of farming publication there's you know there's so many case studies in that yeah , lots of , definitely lots more females coming coming through in our style of
farming , the small-scale market gardening , i'd say that's becoming quite female dominated totally , which is awesome yes , yeah , rachel , i talk about this .
Actually . It's probably not a coincidence either . There's probably layers to that , but
¶ Farming, Expertise, and Food Insecurity
it's also . It strikes me , as I already get away , but also just part of our lost opportunity at the moment , that I think of all the people from your ancestral background who were fathers . This is like thousands of years of expertise , and sure not all of them were want to , but you can't be the only one , surely . But how do you feel about that ?
Like , is there something in that community with all that expertise ? Is it another case of a community with unrecognised expertise that could be invited in , welcomed in , assisted in to these spaces ?
Yeah , well , actually in just Out of Koff's Harbour there's a just recently formed , within the last year or two , some Myanmar agricultural cooperative , which are Burmese refugees that have come over and they wanted to get back on the land .
So they've found some land and there I think there's about 10 families that are farming together on this land and they came out here . We invited them out when I heard what was going on And apparently on the car ride out they all came in a little minivan .
Some of them were like crying and saying , oh , this is just like home and it's really emotional for them And yeah , so they're just sort of getting up and going . But you know , hopefully we see more of that because there is so much skill and knowledge there . You know , it's off , some of it's transferable , some of it's not .
You know it's a totally different country , different soil and everything like that . But I think so much passion and a love for land there .
And it's in the .
DNA .
And in that way there's some parallels to First Nations folk here .
It's different and an incredibly long duration here in this place , and that the parallels are there on a few fronts , including that I hear from them a lot too that it's so different now because of what we've been doing And in that sense , you know , white Settler Australia has never really come to know it yet in that process too .
So in a sense we're all in that boat of it's not the places we know or we knew . How do we go ?
from here . If anything , the Burmese or the Myanmar people would be , you know , more familiar with a climate like this . We're in the subtropics here , so you know their farming systems would probably transfer . It'll be interesting to see .
Much more streamlined , you'd think , than something that's traditionally European that we've struggled with to integrate into this country and have failed at .
You guys are cases in point two , being first arrivals to this valley and having to find your way . So how's that been ?
Wow , jeez , we've seen everything . Hey , like it's been . We've only been here six years And we've seen the full spectrum of conditions to farm within .
We're still here at the end of the day , which is pretty cool , but , yeah , you know , not too far after moving here into 2017 , you know , the East Coast went into record drought and that followed with catastrophic fire , which we were , you know , we were very lucky to be within a stone stroller that managed to escape it here in the North Arm , and you know .
And then we've had successions of LaNina years and some record flooding .
So , yeah , so it's been quite an interesting roller coaster Which is sort of like the lane from here .
That's it And that's sort of reflectivity in our farming style . We're trying to adapt to that and to ensure ourselves a harvest moving forward into the future through .
Are there key ways that ?
Yeah , definitely , definitely . And you know small scale market farming is really adaptive to , you know , the kidney conditions at hand , right , but you know we're not throwing big volumes of capital into planting a crop And you know we can sort of be nimble and flexible .
You know , if we get wiped out by a hail storm , which you know we're relatively Dodged a bullet a couple of times now . But yeah , you know , it's only a matter of time I guess .
But you know , the way we farm is that we can be sort of back and getting produce to people within , you know , only a couple of weeks , Really , You know , and yeah , I think that's .
It'd be eight weeks to where it pretty much in full production again , but after four we could be putting stuff on the table which is pretty cool .
That's amazing . To me it sounds amazing .
Yeah , totally , and you know , last year taught us a total lesson in , you know , in the importance of covering crops during those really wet periods . We're sort of investing in tunnels to , you know , ensure a harvest .
you know , in future wet years and various things like you know , we've had , you know , baubert infestations come in and take crop and , you know , just trying to make the garden more resilient , investing in sort of certain covers and various tunnels to be able to protect that .
Started doing sprouts which are done in a seedling house So that you know we can produce those regardless of what the climate is outside . Yes , and there are sort of seven to ten day turnaround . So just yeah , looking at those little things that we can do to keep producing in tougher conditions .
Yeah , it's such a big point , isn't it ?
Yeah .
There's so much . We've . A lot of us have learned in recent years the vulnerabilities there . For sure , and strangely , in a way , in places like this , west Duff is grown , yeah , but you were saying before , yeah , the food insecurity and the food quality around here , and they're related obviously is not good Totally .
I think you'd find that in the regions everywhere . Yeah , pretty much I see that You know there are pockets that are , you know that are pockets that are against that grain , but generally , generally right across the place it's , yeah , you know , the Nambuckas an example of that .
We've we've been a region that's produced a lot of diverse vegetable and fruit crops in the past and still do today . but you know , the bulk of that's exported out of the region And what we're left with is usually the stuff that comes on the back of trucks from all corners of the country .
that's , you know that's , yeah , generally really poor quality And there's not really the option , you know you can't really go down to the local organic wholesale .
Yeah , there's not really anyone . Any shops in the whole valley that have fresh local produce . I think one does a tiny bit , but it's really just . You know a couple . You know food works more words .
Yeah , and the usual suspects There's . There's been a , you know , a bit of a culture of farm roadside farmstalls that have been in the area , but you know , again it's hitting this . So so , yeah , that's where .
Northam Farms Yeah , that's it Yeah , yeah .
Let's get to that in a moment . But yeah , have you sought to be in these shops with what you're producing ?
We given the scale that we farm at exactly No .
No , it's pretty well . Definitely not a desire , Yeah .
No , the largely . the reason is people are with that , with the lower quality produce . Obviously the price is often reflective of that too .
So you know we're so accustomed in this country to be paying not often what a farmer should be getting at the farm gate right , so you know , like even cost in a way like that's it not even the operations are largely not even viable on there .
Yeah . Which is just extraordinary to think that's how we operate our food system , which I guess is your , a stronger version that you had just expressed .
¶ Creating a Sustainable Farming Lifestyle
Casey to that , it's like you'd be trying to plug into a system that just doesn't fit .
Yeah , no , no , totally not . Not on our scale , that's for sure .
Yeah , our scale relies on getting 100% of that dollar And as soon as you start playing with those supermarkets , you're only going to be getting 50% . If you're lucky , if you're lucky , so it just wouldn't work for us . Anyway , we'd have to be bigger , which we won't don't want to be , because then you're just farming more to make the same amount of money .
It doesn't really stack up And yeah , and feeding into that broken system . So , we created our own .
All right , let's back up and trace over something we left off before we come back , and that is you coming out here by yourself then . So , just run us by So you're fed . You saw this property on the market . Yeah , yep , and you're like this has to be yeah , dad actually spotted it on the market .
He was sort of looking around , i was , i was between , um I'd come back from traveling and and was sort of a little bit , um , not , i wasn't lost . I was very sort of . I was very focused on , on more or less the permaculture dream or the . you know , yeah , the , the , the sort of farming lifestyle How long had that been As a new castle urban .
Oh God , skater's Certificate dude , he was always in his blood .
Yeah , totally Cause you know my dad's side of the family were were generational dairy farmers at Dorrigo and dad's father , my grandfather , was . he was a really progressive dairy farmer . In fact he was an upfield scholar , um . so he sort of traveled the world and , uh , you know and implemented .
he actually brought a lot of first practices back to Australia , like one of the first people to bring in electric fencing and silage production And so he was seen as a really progressive um dairy farmer , certainly not an organic one . He was riding on the coattails of um of , you know , post-second world war , um , you know , green revolution style farming , right .
So it certainly wasn't , um wasn't the style of farming that we're into and practicing these days . But I had a lot of respect for , for my grandfather And yeah , i guess we always associated ourselves with um , with Dorrigo , growing up and and had connections .
We still have family up there And um , we sort of set , seeked , seeked , saw refuge in in that country . Every school holidays would go and spend time on the family farm and got to know and love it .
As I sort of entered my younger teenage years and um , i guess as that evolved we you know my brother and I particularly sort of started putting little seeds in my mum and stepdad's mind about um potentially trying to find some , some country .
We'd go out on the weekends to um , to the bush , around Newcastle , out into the Hunter Valley and up the North Coast and sort of start , you know , we were starting to form those foundations of trying to look for a bit of a bush block , a bit of rural land , and so , yeah , so um , during my sort of high school years , my folks ended up selling their
little house in inner city Newcastle in a pretty scabby suburb at the time , but it's really gentrified now , funnily enough . But um , yeah , they found a little bush block completely .
The only thing that was on it was a level pad and um , and a sort of a rough , very rough boundary fence And um , we spent , uh , every weekend as teenagers going through high school getting up to the bush and just just getting getting our hands dirty on that little piece of land .
And and , funnily enough , when I was sort of in the later years of my high school high schooling in Newcastle I'd learned about , um , this incredibly inspiring project called Currigan City Farm on Ash Island , which is just on the northern outskirts of Newcastle , and um , it was a sort of a collaboration between the old catchment management networks and land care and
and several other organizations , and they were actually pretty early practitioners of holistic grazing management really and sort of rehabilitating a wetland , a ram-sile listed wetland , that was heavily degraded during the DHP years .
Um , and uh , it was set , stocked and and sort of , yeah , just a really degraded piece of land , and they , they opened this place up to the public once , once the grazing um systems were put in place and the the rainforest corridors were planted and there was all these interpretive signs and and walks through the farm , and that was just like .
That was just like a dream for me . I was like , how good is you know ?
how good is this . How old were you then ?
Um , i was probably 15 or something and um , ended up , you know , spending every moment I could I'd go fishing over there and just hanging out . I'd just go over there on my own and just sit out on the wharf and and go and watch the cattle in the paddock , crazily , And you know . And so , yeah , that was a really like crux moment for me .
I um , you know , that really sort of cemented some , some modalities in my mind And , um , and yeah , when we , we got the farm , i started sort of buying and selling cattle and you know , and that was the first thing you did , yeah , i bought my first cow and calf at 18 and and um , we , uh , we sort of , yeah , i just set to setting the farm up and
you know , and planting veggies and getting fruit trees in .
There you go .
It was . It was awesome And that sort of like . Both case and I have environmental science backgrounds .
We went and studied , you know , studied those things , and I went and did a catchment management specialization and and , um , yeah , moved into that , that field and and then went traveling and wolfing and anyway , honing , honing , honing all the way , Yeah , all exactly So it's been like for me it's been I don't know now it's it's over half my lifetime that I've
been , sort of even though I grew up in in a city near castle . it's sort of been , yeah , it's been such a strong foundation for me And , um , yeah and yeah it's .
it just made sense to you know , for me , wolfing really actually was like that , that just meeting all those different people around the world and seeing so many different farming systems is just the inspiration and and all that that came from that .
Um , that was like , yeah , got to do it with all the problems in the world as well as well , giving you know , traveling through those countries and seeing you know where I could fit into all this bigger picture stuff .
Yeah , there it was There .
it is farming . I've got to be , i've got to be
¶ Finding Country on to Market Gardening
doing that .
So so you found this place .
Yeah .
Had you worked up enough capital in your influence ? Yeah So no , so how'd you do that ?
Yeah , so dad , dad owns the property and we lease it from him Yeah .
Okay .
So we're super lucky from that perspective . Um , dad had always had the idea of , you know , having some country um which you know we my brother and I , and you know family could return to um if . If we could never get country on Dorogo , um , then hopefully it would be close enough by to still have that connection with that country .
So this is , this was the next sort of best option . The Nambuco was was calling and and um , yeah , we , we , we worked out an arrangement where , you know , i do a lot of the farm improvements . So this place had some infrastructure on it , but a lot of it was run down and there was a lot that needed to be done .
So so , yeah , we set about doing , doing that and um case and I , once we got together market farming , like everything just came together and you know , we've just , yeah , we've built this place into , you know , a viable business .
But originally I came here with the intention of growing more long-term subtropical crops and still maintaining a job , potentially in land care or with the local land services or something in NRM , but farming on the side just to keep some capital coming in .
Right , so yeah so when case and I met , and case was , i really hadn't been exposed to like small scale , bio-intensive market gardening type um production before , even even when I was woofing .
So this was Casey coming in .
Yeah , totally . So I was sort of dabbling in lots of stuff and just fumbling my way through in many ways And and then I saw what case was doing and I was like God , that's , that's , that's awesome . Um , i need to know more about that .
So , yeah , and this place , this place lent itself to that , even though we are isolated in terms of distances from town and you know we don't have a large city at our back door to tap into the land up here . You know it's , it's it's incredibly fertile , it's got beautiful water and it's it's as pristine as a farm could be .
If that was ever a word , right ? So to take a snapshot then of what you're talking about . So it's 400 acres in size .
Yeah , there's 160 hectares , 400 acres , um . so it's a really . it's well and truly overkill for a market garden Like we we only intensively farm about an acre of that , so the rest of its um forested country . we've got some incredible rainforest gullies on this property and having been cut to a large degree , so it's being regenerated . Totally . So it was .
It's had a logging history and and , um , you know it's . It just feels really good , having our environmental backgrounds , You know , being able to farm um on this property and also have that balance of conservation . Yeah , Um , it feels so good .
Yeah , Totally , And like we've yeah , So we've got , you know , we've got 58 acres of river flight country which we grazed um as well , But , yeah , the majority of it is a conservation property . So , as much as it's only a tiny portion that we derive an income from to be surrounded by this , Yeah , Yeah , And being custodians of it .
It's like yeah , totally , and there's such value in that , which , of course , is where markets fall down as well . We might hear a lot more about that , for sure . For sure Case to your , to the expertise you brought to the table . Then the market garden out the back that now you've both got pumping and looks an absolute treat .
We'll , of course , have pictures that go out with this on the website , but tell us a bit about it , like what grows there and what was the path I guess of of going about setting up the business that you've made viable It's it's , it's your thing and how that did lead to the formation of the collective that you refer to .
Yeah , So this is my kind of my I guess fourth market garden that I was doubling in . I did a three month internship down in Victoria at Transition Farm , who was a biodynamic small scale market garden , And then I moved up to Port to kind of purple quarry . Yeah , in learn of port to take over this farm , market Garden Farm . but that didn't really work out .
So then I started my own Somewhere else in port on another guy's land , which is where I met Tom .
And just on that was that conflicted ? did it feel tough , putting your heart and soul into something that perhaps didn't feel It was yours to tend for any duration of time ?
Yeah , looking back on it , i'm like what the hell is I doing ?
Anyway , back on to the , to where you've ended up .
Yeah , but you know , it all happens for a reason , and that's where I met Tom . There you go was down the road from Tom's parents and Could show him what I was doing and stuff .
So , yeah , when I moved up here , i guess I'd had , you know , actually only maybe Under two years experience , maybe a year and a half or something of experience , so you're still pretty fresh .
But We just started , tom had had ginger , tumeric beds Started down where the garden is now , so they were growing , and then we just sort of started adding Beds on to the end , just sort of growing whatever we could , trialing everything really , because you know that's how you learn .
Between the two gardens case was still farming down in port For quite a fair bit of that and and I was sort of starting to dabble in a few veggies as well , and then We'd come together and sell up at Bellengine case a drive all the way up from Bellengine in the dark , and you know So yeah yeah , we were sort of doing Markets together for a while , like
in Kempsey and Port .
Stab Pete is all .
Yeah , so yeah , we just started started adding beds and growing and Kind of was pretty easy at the start , wasn't it really was fresh , Yeah so it had never been intensively farmed before , it was just a Cowpatic . So yeah , so the soil was good . It's on the river .
It's beautiful alluvial soil , so yeah , so it was once we we turn the ground and started putting crops in , so it got quite big . Really .
Tiny , it's only it the main growing space . I think he's only a third of an acre .
Yeah , that's interesting , because when I say big , i was thinking about the amount you were and the diversity of what you're producing . Yeah , that got more than what you , what you're doing now ?
It's heavily in , it's very intense . Yeah , we do things very .
We push that , that garden very hard , but we , you know , we give back . Yeah you know , equally as much , if not more . So , yeah , we look after it and it looks after us . But it's about 50 beds that are about a meter wide , a bit less , and Sorry , there's cows that are having a really good . Yeah , 50 beds that are about 25 meters long .
And , yeah , we grow a lot of quick turnover crops now . So the evolution we , we grow everything and anything and everything we could and sort of realize that that was a bit of a nightmare and now over the years we've really honed it down to .
You know , there's probably 10 crops that are our bread and butter and that's a lot of really high value quick turnover stuff . So lettuces and coriander and radishes and Packed choy and salad mix , the kind of our main things , but we do . There's always at least 10 to 15 sort of things growing .
Yeah , and then It came to the point , so it's working quite well . You even said it was a bit easy .
Wow , oh , producing . Yeah , well it was .
There we go actually We've got water security here .
It's amazingly Part of the farm . The attraction of the farm was that there was an irrigation license . That we inherited with the river ? Yeah , so when you can just add water to cross ?
Pulling it away . Managing the flood .
Yeah , yeah so the dry . when I'm saying easy , i'm sort of referring to the Yeah , Yeah we just that was all we knew , like I'd only grown veggies really in drought conditions . So as long as you can add water , it's cool . And the thing is , you know , we all eat Essentially mostly European vegetables In Australia , growing in a subtropical climate .
So you know that doesn't make sense , but that's what people want , that's what we are all used to . So keeping those dry is actually really . So we were just kind of thinking on yeah , this is cool , this is easy working , yeah , and then we hit two years of rain . Yeah which was a different story .
So when and why did you broach joining forces with neighbors ?
Yeah , cool , yeah . So Part of the reason is again , it comes back to Being in a region with a small populace . But we are in , we call it sort of it's a food drought area as well . So we , we saw we .
So we were all essentially the three other , three other farms , we're all market base , so we all attend a local farmers market and you know , we'd all turn up to those farmers markets with very similar , somewhat similar crop list . Yeah , and We are , as I was saying , being in a small population area .
There's only so much you can , you know you can , you can get out there .
So as a combination of things . It was like we were doing veggie boxes on our own and we were sort of doing 20 to 30 boxes a week and to have the diversity you need to keep customers happy and excited , you had to grow a lot of different things to have , you know , different things in their box each week .
So we're growing a lot of , a lot of different things on a really small scale to keep the boxes going . And then we were also doing farmers markets and , you know , having some of the same crops that other farms did , and at the same time we were developing relationships with those farms , two of which were actually good friends of mine from a while back .
So there was all these sort of things happening and it just sort of seemed seemed like the most logical thing to do would be to to combine with other farms so we could grow less stuff ourselves but keep like less varieties but have that diversity really good , yeah and not the overlap .
So it's just yeah , win-win , yeah yeah and so there were a lot of talks between us initially and , i guess , kind of pitched on how it could look if we all joined forces and kept the boxes going and we also started doing a market together as well as the cooperative . But now we're just back to doing the boxes together with our collective .
We do about a hundred boxes a week in our valley , which is awesome and then you maintain the markets , but just on your own terms , yeah the boxes together which you're gathering to do tomorrow like today was harvest day , and yeah , we are .
We still do collaborate at the markets , like , for example , our neighbor who's the mushroom producer for the collective and the collective's called Northarm Farms . He sells our produce on Saturday , which is awesome , so we don't have to attend that market , because this is part of the thing right that can burn totally everything . You can't do it all .
And you know we are , as I was saying before , in a low population area and and we're a distance from from places , so it's an hour and a bit to our local farmers market , you know . So , if you were to do that , you know that run twice a week because there is the Wednesday and the Saturday . You know , you do you .
You just don't get enough time to get stuff done on the farm or you burn out yeah , and just , i mean when you use the term before food drought yeah , yeah , yeah because it's so does apply
¶ Lessons From a Seven-Way Farm Partnership
.
Yeah , in so much of Australia , little other places , yeah , but and so these realities apply . It's why it doesn't happen yeah , that's it that this is a really significant thing that you've managed to experiment with together yeah , yeah , totally , yeah we're .
It's pretty rare . There's we don't really know of anyone working like this in Australia . There's a few other people that we know that sort of sell together , but not , yeah , not working together like this , like we're a seven-way partnership now . So we're in our second version of Northarm Farms .
Originally we had three couples and three farms and one of those couple the couples had to leave to go and get real jobs so they could afford to buy their own farm .
So they're going to common story unless you do have family .
Who can ? yeah , try to leave part of part of what we need to broach as a society , absolutely yeah , so they're , they're doing that , they've they've managed to find land , but they've had a few two babies now so they're just kind of in that zone .
And so while that was happening , we had been getting to know another farm that Nicole Dolly's run , who are also a local market garden that do the same thing as us , and our good friend moved back to the area to start a mushroom farm , so we had one couple leave and then we had three people just walk straight in and yeah , we just kept going and it was
awesome , yeah so .
So what did you say ? seven , seven-way collective , yeah , seven-way partnership , partnership , you call it yeah would there be any sort of key lessons out of that for people hearing this who might go ? hmm , yeah , why is it doing this ? that come off the top of your head , that have been like even in , potentially that that shift across to your different model .
Like what would you say ?
well , we actually get asked all the time because there's a lot of interest in the model and I think a lot of market gardeners can see , well , that's a really logical thing to do , because we are growing such a diversity and it is a bit of a headache . So we get asked a lot of the time like what's , what's the secret , what's the magic source ?
yeah , and I think it's actually . It's just , it's relationships . Yeah , and we're just so lucky to have these seven people that are on the same wavelength and we have the same values about local food and community and the importance of of our local resilient food system . So , and friendship , we're all really good friends .
So I think , yeah , we're just it's a bit of luck , to be honest like there's no , there's no magic ingredient .
I think it's just having the right people around you , but I'm hearing it right through this whole story .
We could peg luck on any number of things , from you finding this place to finding KC yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah absolutely , and then that you connected as a couple yeah , yeah , luck , yeah , yeah , whatever that is , yeah , whatever it is , it's sort of this there's a lot to be said for committing and following .
I guess that the thing that was bubbling up in your boat anyway , yeah , totally , totally um yeah but yeah , in terms of how it's playing out . I mean , it's also been revealed you're a demon with a spreadsheet and yeah and structure .
So I guess too , just um , i'm imagining , that we shouldn't downplay the part of a bit of just straight up grunt , yeah , organizing , being clear , is this true ?
yeah , yeah , it was a lot at the start . It was a lot to get , just how to learn like I've never , really I've never managed people in that sense before . And farming is tough because there's no separation between your work life and your personal life . It's all just woven into this one thing .
So it's really hard to separate like what's work , what's business , you know what's , you know what's yeah so it's so interesting too , because I think we're in a time where a lot of people , me included , who aren't farming right , seek less of a division between , i mean , the values set the light , what they love in life and their work .
But I hear you too like , and you know many people express I want that division so I can be clear . So it's an interesting , in some ways increasingly shared thing , i think at the moment to be thinking about that but anyway , just yeah , yeah .
So , um , yeah , there's a lot of conversations that sort of happened and I sort of yeah , a lot of spreadsheets , a lot of you're doing .
You're driving this right yeah , yeah , yeah , driver , you're the manager who gets a bit of money for playing that role . I do now .
I do now first year or two it was a lot of working for free yeah yeah , um , and you know we already had the box system going , but we're only doing 20 or 30 people and so so we just sort of upped up that a lot and had to sort of , yeah , we just sort of figured it out like I yeah , i'm really good at organizing things .
I , you know , i had it all in my head how it was gonna work and I just sort of had to bring everyone on board , which was relatively pretty easy . There was certain things that there was weird , you know , push back on and and just learning how everyone operates and what they need and how I I've learned .
You know , i probably learnt a lot about myself to be honest and the things that I do and how to you know how some things you know I need to change myself . Um , so it's been quite a learning journey , but generally we've all been going in the same direction and it's just always worked for everyone , like it's just .
It's just made everyone's lives so much easier to know that we've got this thing that happens every week and we put our vegetables online and people buy them and they're already paid for when we're out in the field harvesting and this is a critical point , right , yeah , yeah .
So how was that ? something you set up from the get-go ? yeah , it's sort of this csa thing , like community supported agriculture thing , where you would you say well , it's not csa .
It all operates through the open food network , which has just been transformed really so .
Listeners who might remember episode 126 and . I think 63 when Kirsten was on originally . Tom bless you . You know this . I was listening to it this morning .
I'm a bit of a novice person , i'm immediately thinking oh , that was precisely double how what was going on there anyway and then decide um , but we spoke with Serenity and Kirsten in their home in you know , more recently and , yeah , the explosion in that platform so it's really interesting speaking to you guys , yeah , as as people who were in it from the get-go
, yeah , and have experienced that in this transformative fashion .
Oh , absolutely yeah , we were with open food network really early on , when it was still free and , um , they were just figuring it out . Yeah , so we've had lots of communication back and forth over the years that with them asking for our feedback and and them sort of developing all these new tools as we've gone along .
And , yeah , it's been , it's been cool to work with , just knowing that you're supporting you know yeah other local like , like supporting farmers with this amazing platform .
Who is supporting you and it's just all feels good and where it is transformative , like what does it ? what does it mean on the ground when you're trying to pull off what you're pulling off ? it makes logistics so much easier like it's got the software stuff that you can tap into yeah , yeah .
So we just upload what we have , like the volumes , um , and then you know the shop opens every week , um , i just have to do a little bit of stuff , and then you know it spits out all the packing sheets and you know everything's been collated already . So there's , you know I don't have to do too much .
Really , it takes me maybe an hour to do all the packing sheets and and make sure everything's good for packing on a Wednesday . So yeah , it's an amazing little program and we just heard about it , like as we were about to start boxes like ourselves back in the day yeah , i think it was at the deep winter gary gathering in barn bay .
Maybe it would have been 2018 . I think that was the first year we heard about it yeah .
So it just kind of appeared at the perfect time for us and , um , yeah , we've been yeah it's been great . It just it makes our lives really easy and it is designed for hubs and collaboration , so it works really well . Everyone can manage every . Each farm manages their own stocks and inventory and it's all just linked together .
So it's yeah , it's perfect for what we do super interesting , yep , okay .
So as we bring this thing to a close , i almost want to go back to the beginning again , in the sense of , well , literally a first nation's presence in this area .
And you're saying there there is a fairly strong presence , and the town , barrowville , is part of that , and there's some brilliant language , reclamation stuff going on , so forth , but also the quintessential issues , if you like . But you're , you are developing relationships there like how , how is that sitting for you , what kind of importance does it have for you ?
and and what's happening , what are you managing to broach in that space ?
well it's , it's sort of it's been at the forefront of our mind for god , several , several years , but I guess it's like where do you sort of , as farmers , growing European vegetables , totally , where do we sort of fit into this , into this puzzle and um , into the picture and and there , because there is a strong , strong presence in Bower , there's a lot of
services to in town , and I think it was you , you , and you're pretty well you case , you , you , you .
You approached penny yeah , it's sort of funny
¶ Stewardship, Indigenous Relationships, and Organic Certification
. We we've heard about , you know , pay the rent and and those sort of organizations and we sort of explored that as an option . But it was like , well , there's this huge indigenous community right here , why don't we directly interact with them ?
so I I had a chat with Trish from Mimi , which is a , an indigenous women's center in Bowerville , and sort of expressed , maybe if they would like some vegetables as our kind of pay the rent , and they were really stoked with that because they've got a little community garden where they try and supply the elders with some veg .
So we drop off um excess stuff that we have and and some of the um staples that we we sell from other farms , like potatoes and apples and bananas and and stuff . So we drop , drop that off each week and and it's really well received yeah , they , they're really grateful . Um , yeah , that we have just tried to make that connection yeah and you know it's .
There's a . There's a long way to go . The Bowerville community it's got a lot of trauma , so there's a long way to go , but yeah we're knowing what we know .
I mean relationships you said it all before but also knowing what we know about nutrition . Increasingly , what we understand about nutrition , that's , yeah , again , a small but big broaching of the space . What else do you guys think about ?
you know , speaking of the value in the broader stewardship I mean , we're talking before about how , just in a way , crazy like probably in a lot of ways crazy that you own this forest that I look over and that that goes for 350 acres . It's the way our culture has come to understand . Land is commodity , isn't it ? But here you are .
Here you are , as certainly in your own mind , stewards of this country . And with the value of that , do you think about the things coming down the line , like biodiversity credits and the like , or is that not really front of mind ? you're interested in other things .
Well , i just think it's sort of just intrinsic to who we are . We're not really looking at it from a , you know , a monetary perspective . It's just to be , to be on this land is privilege enough , and if we just never want to see a repetition of previous mismanagement .
You know this place has had a logging history and when you live here and you get to know these forests and you walk amongst them every day , yeah it's . It'd be so traumatic to think that that could all be . If this place was ever , you know , if we would ever go through a change of hands . You know , to lose to for this place to lose .
That on a yeah and you're you're actively looking into yeah , yeah , totally .
I think , you know , with time , definitely down the track . You know there's already a voluntary conservation agreement on the property , but but with time , you know , and these are the things I have to we have to work through with , with , with family as well , because it's it's no minor matter putting a property under a binding sort of conservation agreement .
So I think , with time , well , that's where we'll definitely be heading , particularly protecting the , the really incredible rainforest gullies that are on this property . That is just is so crucial , you're saying some all growth yeah , there's , there's , there's definite all growth on this property .
Unfortunately , the previous ownership logged out a lot of the older hardwood timbers . But but those , those , those rainforest gullies protect the last of those , those older , older forests on this property .
So and they are those classic , yeah , super big yeah , we're talking like it's .
You know , we back on the world heritage country here and , and you know , you step into that world heritage country and you step onto this property and they're a mirror image , right .
So it's like we're we're on , we within our , without our ownership , whatever that means , like we are the custodians of , you know , of some of that in my sweet wonder when I see some of the ranger programs coming on around the country and and how amazing some of them are going , it makes you wonder where the relationships you've started might be yeah , in some
period of time oh , it's already happening really .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , for sure . One of our good friends has just started started one of those programs with with indigenous crew around here with traditional fire management workshop . There you go . So yeah , it's , it's , it's an , it's an evolving space , that's for sure that's that's powerful yeah , totally , totally .
But yeah , we'll do everything that we can to protect this country . And , um , yeah , it's , it's you . Just , you grow to love it more and more with every day that you spend , spend you know time on this property , so yeah , yeah , final question for you .
You said you were certified organic , but you're not . Now what happened there ?
um , well , one of the first things I did on this place when I first moved here in late 2016 was to look at organic certification , and we went into like a domestic type scheme back then in in 2017 and put the whole property under certification .
But , as sort of as time evolved and and we got to know our , the people who we who were selling produce , to all that extra work that organic certification makes you go through which you know is fair enough but , um , yeah , it just didn't seem like it was absolutely necessary for us anymore , so we yeah , we ended up moving away from that .
Do you want to speak to that case ?
yeah , we , we , we used to sell a little bit to whole food shops and cafes and send garlic down to Sydney , and so it was . It was useful then , but now that we've gone to 100 direct to consumer , it's just not relevant to us . Um , i still think there's a place for it . Two , two of the farms in our collective are certified organic .
Um , but we just you know , everyone knows who we are around here and it just it was just in , you know , a few grand a year and an absolute headache that we could do without .
So , um , we obviously still grow organically , but we just don't have to and it hasn't made one difference dropping it because you like to think , i like to think that knowing that's where we need to go anyway , in closer relationship , and know where your food's coming from and how it's been done , and and vice versa , right , the joy of having that connection , and
let alone amongst fellow producers , all this stuff , that if you know and have a basis of trust , then there you are , yeah , so that at least in more cases than it is now , not to say perhaps there's , you know , there's not a use for the other stuff too , but that it not . It need not be universal and it need not be aspirational .
Even there are , there are higher goals and these are definitely one of the tools we have . So it's to hear that that's the way it's worked for you guys .
It's really something yeah , it's all about that interface and and telling those stories , and you know that's where the markets um also play a major role .
Where you know you can be , you can have that direct relationship with the customer and and communicate exactly how you know how we produce food and be 100 transparent about it , and and we do that with the online store as well , so we don't want to poo poo yes , that's right , it's one of the tools , but yeah , exactly and it's played a hell of a role .
Let's say totally , totally .
But you know we're going , i think that that that system is going through a major shake up at the moment too . So , you know , and there's there's other players coming into it as well with you know , land to market stuff and various various examples . So you know , i think the whole system will will eventually change into more of a .
You know , organic certifications being very heavily inputs based . You know , yes , keeping it sort of a paper trail of that and not so much the outcomes . Yes , i think that's that's probably where the shake-ups needed .
You know there's a lot of pretty average certification , organic , organic certified producers you know , out there doing some not so savory land management practices so well said so to close , what would you say have been ?
let's see if there's a secret source to this . When you talked about the intensity of being all in on all things , how do you keep good as a as ?
a couple in that space we sleep in different bedrooms yes , building a new house in all seriousness , yeah , one of our big things is is is that our priorities are making sure we take summers off .
Oh , yeah , there you go .
So we , we put the whole garden under a cover , crop over that period and you know it's a bit of a . It's a breather time for us case and I gets come together and and reflect on the year but also hopefully , you know , do a bit of travel .
We both love travel and it's dear to us , so it sort of keeps the keeps the flame burning from that perspective but yeah , yeah we generally go overseas for three weeks each January , which is huge for farmers like to take that time and it's um , it's , it's massive because even though we only go away for three weeks , we essentially lose like 12 weeks of income .
Um , so it's a huge . When you're already not making a huge income , that's a huge hit , but the value is is just greater than than that we get to . It's really hard to have a farm and be on a farm and not work or not you know , there's always something to do so it kind of takes us leaving the country to actually shut off and rest , um .
So we do that every January , which I think is a really beautiful reset for us . But on the day today we have very different roles . Tom manages the whole farm , um , whereas I'm mostly in the market garden .
So , um , we kind of we come together for each meal but we're sort of not working together in between , which gives us some breathing space and I think , just having um , we've got a really good community and friendship network around , so there's always stuff happening .
So we're always making a priority to get off the farm or go on a weekend away or or whatever , um . And yeah , it's taken a lot of time to get to that point .
Like the first few years we've kind of broke ourselves through , you know , working year-round and exhaustion and stress , um , and now we're kind of you know we've had a lot of stress in the last year or two with Lenina but we're kind of , you know , hopefully getting to this sweet spot where we can really kind of it's it's humming and you know that's yeah , yeah
, huge .
And and viability , like you're still making it like with all these things and and factoring in these times off , it is still working .
So well done , thank you we couldn't see ourselves doing anything else .
Could be right on no , totally beautiful , all right .
What music did happen to be listening to right now or that has been significant at some stage in your life ?
I know Casey's one I'd love to know what we were joking about it .
Oh okay , yeah , right now I've been . I've been listening a lot to , uh , samper the Great , who is this amazing chick who sings so much about female empowerment and and stuff , so her song energy is like we'll put that on in the morning sometimes to get in the zone while breakfast brilliant .
Yeah , this is what I want to know and you mate .
Oh hey , jade so hard like I'm , i'm such you've been thinking about this for years . I actually have that's the funny thing and I love so , like my , my music um repertoire is extremely diverse . I'd say I think you can attest to that case , but , um , yeah , i reckon .
Uh , the song that probably comes to mind is is Vali by um John Butler , actually there you go , yeah , yeah , yeah . It's um such a beautiful song and I pretty , i think , pretty apt for this place yeah , that's exactly immediately apparent .
Yeah , beautiful you guys , what an absolute pleasure . It's been so great speaking with you . It's a , it's a brilliant story that you share and that you're on about , and it's been an absolute pleasure to be with you in this place talking about it .
Thanks , it's been so good to have you on the farm , aj .
That was Tom Macindoe and Kaycee Simuong at Mandarin Bend Farm in the Nambucca Valley on Gambaynggirr country on the mid-north coast of New South Wales .
For more on Kaycee and Tom, Mandarin Bend, North Arm Farms , how to access their food if you're in that neck of the woods, and if you're in or near Sydney , how to get along to the Sydney Film Festival this weekend for its final screening of Rachel's Farm, the new film Tom and Kaycee appear in, see the links in the show notes .
I'll also include a link to my conversation with Kirsten and Serenity from the Open Food Network and you'll also find a link to the next big regenerative agriculture event in Australia in Margaret River , wa , in September . I'm privileged to be the emcee and hope to see some of you there .
Finally , huge thanks to Blair Beattie from Farmer's Footprint Australia for taking the driver's seat on our journey south from the northern rivers to Tom and Kaycee's place, and Rachel's farm . Join us at the latter next week . For subscribers .
I'll continue to send you behind the scenes stuff and other news of what's unfolding as I get around the country and if you've been thinking about becoming a subscriber I'd love you to join us . It's with thanks , as always , to this community of generous supporters that this episode was made possible . Just head to the website via the show notes, regennarration .
com, forward slash support . Thanks again and , as always , please share this episode if you can think of someone who might enjoy it . And do rate and review it on your favorite app . It all helps . My name is Anthony James . Thanks for listening .