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Welcome to

Black Barn Farm

A biodiverse orchard, nursery & learning space.
Join us on the journey of regerenative orcharding, living simply,
following the seasons & beating to the drum of our small town.

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The Black Barn Farm Shop is a collection of practical, beautiful and edible
items that reflect what we use, what we’ve grown and what we’ve created.

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Futuresteading

Futuresteading is a practical and inspirational guide to living in a way that values tomorrow:
a slower, simpler, steadier existence that is healthier for you, your home, and the environment.

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Black Barn Farm!

Black Barn Farm

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My morning walk. I leave at first light and rain,

My morning walk. I leave at first light and rain, hail or shine wind my way through the bush tracks around our farm before crossing the bridge on our little creek at the bottom of the paddock and let the chickens and geese out. The kettle is boiled and my day begins.
How do you start your day?

Mother nature is so clever! PURPLE CAULIFLOWER to

Mother nature is so clever!
PURPLE CAULIFLOWER to make you dance 💃

Ahhhhhh The sun is out again, the kids are back a

Ahhhhhh
The sun is out again, the kids are back at school and Charlie just jumped in the car to spend the day touring at Mount Buffalo. I do have a solid day of packing trees for all our customers who want them posted but right now... I'm just going to sit, sip, flick and be.

A couple of years back @countrystylemag spent a da

A couple of years back @countrystylemag spent a day snapping our life and sharing our story. This pic of Georgina was featured in their pages and online. Just yesterday they shared it again and it's timely because in the last couple of days poor Georgina has been pretty fragile. Our winters here are cold and this one has been particularly wet so the poor old little thing has lost a lot of condition. Despite a new rug and a belly full of fresh hay she is still shaky and I suspect that our very own cover girl is not long for this earth.
Everything has its lifetime.😥

Books are here! The shed is drenched in sunshine!

Books are here! The shed is drenched in sunshine! It's time to sign.

Only 1 more week until these words are sitting on shelves in shops.

I suspect the events that are booked from next week until the end of November are about to be hijacked by rolling lock downs but I'm not going to let that (or the weeks more of forecast drizzle and grey skies) take the joy out of these small but significant moments. (I might not be quite so chipper after signing hundreds of books today)...

Enjoy the splash of sun if its appeared in your patch today too. X

Cold start (-4), huge day (recorded 5 pod intervie

Cold start (-4), huge day (recorded 5 pod interviews) now stuffed (almost asleep next to the fire)

I snapped these at 7 this morning after my morning walk where we slipped and slid through the bush on the frosty leaves, frozen puddles and flowing creeks.

It feels like a life time ago. Good day! Goodnight x

Eggcelent Sunday! Despite lockdown and 80mils of r

Eggcelent Sunday!
Despite lockdown and 80mils of rain we've had a few Sunday surprises that's made it a rather lovely day... not least of which is the sudden spike in the feathered ladies lay rate.
Usually we are at least a month away from our spring peak so I've been caught a bit flat footed and need to up my cooking rate...or get them into their breeds and pull the incubator out in prep for spring fluffies.

Tip: save the shells and dry them in the sun. These can be crumbled finely for use in homemade toothpaste or as slug deterrents come spring.

WINTER CITRUS An orange a day keeps scurvy at ba

WINTER CITRUS

An orange a day keeps scurvy at bay, so the saying goes. But when you live in climes that aren’t so conducive to growing citrus it's a hard mantra to maintain.

We planted 10 various varieties 5 years ago in a micro climate behind our packing shed and after years of wrapping them up during winter, they have finally delivered their desired treat.

We don't let any part of it go to waste. Once we've eaten or squeezed we dry the peel and use it either as fire lighters or in herbal infusion blends. This year we are being extra careful not to throw any out as they're part of our new 'black barn brew blends' which we will have in our farm shop due to open in January.
Natural firelighters;
Lighting the fire is a task we try to hold off for as long as possible for once it's lit, it burns till mid October around these cold hills in this old house.
As a natural firelighter they not only remove the toxic smells and chemical ingredients of their store bought alternatives, but they smell delightful as they burn and they’re free.
Simple enough, just leave your orange or mandarin peel on top of the wood box to dehydrate naturally until totally hard and dry then store them in an airtight container. Voila!

Three more weeks! FUTURESTEADING is on shelves in

Three more weeks!
FUTURESTEADING is on shelves in just 21 more sleeps. @murdochbooks are gearing up too - so comforting not to be treading this book launch thing solo.
Amongst other things it's about revelling in ritual and simple pleasures for a life less complicated. If I wasn't trying to plan a book tour around a country in lockdown things would be simpler...sheesh.
Pretty excited!

Weekend workout! Hand lifting our nursery trees in

Weekend workout!
Hand lifting our nursery trees in the sunshine today. This is a broad fork that was made by the talented @fdryantools The 7 tyne fork lifts three trees with every insert. With 1000 trees in the ground that's a lotta digging but it's generally only a 2 or three day job to get them all out and into their variety bundles.
Just out of shot is the rocket stove that we're charring the barn boards with so we took it in turns today to dig and char (while the kids turned the house upside down).

Olive bottling morning. After 3 months in their b

Olive bottling morning.
After 3 months in their brine bucket, these little babies are now bottled in a 3% brine with garlic, fennel, rosemary, chilli, peppercorns and lemon peel. They'll be ready to eat in 4-6 weeks and I toss a little river salt and olive oil over them to serve.

One of my favorite mid winter rituals... usually in my pjs.

Nursery lift! Getting ready to lift our nursery tr

Nursery lift!
Getting ready to lift our nursery trees in prep for our bare rooted trees sale.
Feeling pretty tickled to have snuck this job in today while we slowly pushed boards for the barn through the rocket stove. Multi taking is frought sometimes but when the sun's shining and the kids are happy, picnics in the paddock and a few extra jobs make it feel like a bloody good life.
We grafted sooo many more trees this year to meet the expanded demand. There's still plenty left online and while you can collect them from the farm on the 7th of August we can also post them to you (except tas nt and wa) for a flat fee.
(My phone is now covered in charcoal from multi tasking this post🤣)

Calm before the storm! One of my twins took this

Calm before the storm!

One of my twins took this photo - looking pretty relaxed huh? It's true that being in work boots, outside in the dirt is my single greatest happy place & it's true that the season of deep chill is our time of hibernation & rest after a big growing year BUT in truth I'm full to the brim & far from relaxed. The coming 3 months are exciting beyond words, our barn will be finished & landscaping will begin so we can finally open our doors, the berry planting will be completed & fruit will be abundant & our nursery trees will be out of the ground, off to their new homes with next year's trees grafted & in the ground ready to repeat the cycle all over again. Our years of work is all coming to fruition and it's hardly believable. I'd love to sit with this & really acknowledge it... but in addition to these things I'm about to embark on a 3 month tri state book tour talking all things futuresteading in community gardens, farmers markets, flower festivals, schools, accomodation venues, conferences, book shops, libraries. The support from so many has been mind blowing & I'm excited by the number of people who are genuinely interested to know about this stuff but if I scratch the surface, in truth I'm pretty anxious about how I'm actually going to fit it all in & enjoy the ride while in the depths of it. When I deliver workshops I'm IN IT wholly & without interruption, I LOVE presenting & meeting new people so there's no doubt I'm going to bloody love it but the lead up period has me jittery...& a little (ok, a lot) overwhelmed by what's ahead.

I'm publicly sharing this because it's in complete contrast to everything I've written about in the book. For the next 3 months my life will NOT be about futuresteading and while it's a daunting prospect, it's ok to acknowledge that life is full of phases & stages that don't align with your ideals, natural rhythm & desired state of flow. Also I think it's worth reminding ourselves (We already know this of course), that what you see on the outside is not always what's going on, on the inside.

Now with that shared, I'm off to dig a few holes so I can get out of my own head & keep life real

GONE CRACKERS Left over leavened crackers! Though

GONE CRACKERS
Left over leavened crackers!
Thought it high time I shared this little nugget of frugal kitchen goodness.
Every couple of weeks I accumulate enough unused sourdough starter to make a big jar full of these. I change up the recipe with herbs and spices - rosemary and sea salt are firm faves, or a few chia seeds or perhaps turmeric, cracked pepper or even edible flowers. (I've taken this from my book 'futuresteading' living like tomorrow matters which is why it's a real recipe rather than a make-it- up-on-the-fly)
Makes approx 70 crackers
2 cups sourdough starter
3 cups plain flour
1 cup water
2 tsp salt
Toppings as desired.

Add all ingredients except toppings in a bowl and mix until a dough then leave for 2 hours
Divide dough into four and roll each into a ball. Set aside for 8 hours covered w a damp tea towel
Preheat oven to 120 degrees.
Roll each ball into a flat circle on a well floured bench and add toppings as you roll and flatten.
Cut into strips and place onto oven tray and bake for 40 minutes until bone dry. Cool on bench before storing.

Old HOUSES = endless draughts, heat sapping window

Old HOUSES = endless draughts, heat sapping windows, gappy floorboards & no insulation. While some of these are easily fixed, others are not & freezing your bum off in Winter just goes w the territory of life in sub alpine climates in an old home. Stanley sits at 800m above sea level & experiences frosts as early as new year's day & as late as new years eve, we had hoped to buy land without a house so we didn't inherit a 100yr old house without a temperature design philosophy, but when you've been searching for 10 yrs & the soil composition, slope direction, water guarantee & residual chemical levels are so critical to the farming dream, the house is a secondary influence on the decision.
Before our 1st winter we hunted for a heating solution. We wanted a wood fired solution but our financial reality meant it wasn't possible. Until one day through a phone tree of chats we called a retired gent who spent his days bringing old rayburns back to life. Twas a long winded conversation, speckled w repeated flourishes of adoration for the old girls but one that ended in us committing to a rescued one from a house fire which would be sandblasted to black. DONE!
It was a 12 month wait & when we finally picked her up, the half tonne beauty spent the following 2 years in the shed while we created a flooring foundation robust enough to carry her. Our teeth rattled through 3 Winters before we had the foundation in place & the manpower to install her.
It was NOT instant love. I revel in t heat she fills our home with but I just couldn't get the knack of keeping her hot without flooding the house with smoke & tripping the fire alarm. Charlie developed his love affair before me but w mediation I warmed & was eventually lured. With a regular feed (& I mean daily wheelbarrows full), she heats our radiators throughout, slow cooks our daily dinner, bubbles a bottomless pot of tea, fills our kitchen with a nostalgic warmth & dries our boots all in one. Feeding her is a relentless chore, but it's now part of our rhythm & adds exclamation marks to our days during the Winter months. It's a ritual I'm done w come the longer, warmer days of Spring but one that I revel in during winter.

TOOL FIXING TIME In the height of the productive

TOOL FIXING TIME
In the height of the productive season the tools of our trade are in high demand and the days are full, so there's not much time to care for them, but during Winter, life is slower, we seek activities that are undercover and the tools are sitting on the shelf languishing untouched -mostly. It's the perfect time to go through the pile of bent bottoms, twisted forks, snapped handles and loose heads and give them all a once over. Make or buy new handles, bang out twists, tighten heads and give all the wooden handles a quick sand and oil. We just use olive oil - rancid or old oil is great and we do it all in our machinery shed which is dry. We know if we do this during Deep Winter then at least once each year, our most important assets for food production are given a lick of love and it saves time and money down the track.

Inside quiet! It rarely happens, especially in wi

Inside quiet!
It rarely happens, especially in winter but the drizzle has stopped and everyone else is out so I've made some bread, wiped the benches, stoked the fire and am boiling the kettle.
Can you feel it? It feels like a balm on a wintry day.

STICK FENCING became our ‘thing' quite by accid

STICK FENCING became our ‘thing' quite by accident. Because I'm impatient & prone to spontaneity I bought 6 geese home before we were ready. With no fences around our new veggie patch the geese soon demolished everything I’d planted. We needed an inexpensive solution using something we had & being surrounded by bush, our fence lines were full of sticks. We had also just removed kilometres of internal fencing so we had loads of wire rolls. Voila! While it's not wombat proof, it is chook, geese, wallaby & dog proof. The solution to most things is probably under our nose all the time.

As a really quick guide, here’s the 10 steps to create one.
Collect sticks - as strong & straight as possible. We’ve used eucalyptus but there’s no rules other than avoiding soft wood which will rot too fast. We use approx. 26 sticks per 3m ‘bay’
Cut all sticks to size - we’ve stuck to 120cms as its perfect for animal exclusion
Install posts - best distance is 3m apart, we use hardwood milled posts & ensure at least one third of them are buried in the ground using crushed gravel w differing sediment sizes to pack them in hard.
Drill holes - drill two holes all the way through each post. One 20cms down from the top & one 20cms up from the bottom
Thread wire - measure out the length of the fence in wire, double it & add an extra metre. This is your top wire. Do the same for the bottom wire. Now thread the double wire through the holes in each of the posts & affix securely at one end. Do the same on the bottom row
Place sticks. You will need the sticks to be about 8-12 cms apart if you want to keep children & animals out. Place out the required number of sticks in each ‘bay’ so they are within easy reach.
Place & twist - Twist the top wire over itself 4-7 times (depending on desired spacing) . Do the same w the bottom wire. Rest the first stick in place & twist the wire in the OPPOSITE direction to the way you twisted the first time. Repeat top & bottom before placing the next stick. It's CRUCIAL you switch the direction you twist each time.
Pull tight - at the end of your fence use fencing pliers to pull the two pieces of wire as tight as you can & then nail into place.

We call our harvested food stores "pantry food". T

We call our harvested food stores "pantry food". The act of preserving, dehydrating, bottling, freezing, fermenting & salting our food stores during the harvest is purely with our winter bellies in mind. No method is more right than another, it depends on your preference based on space, time, needs & uses.

During Winter the patch is bare save the odd brassica so most meals rely on our squirreled stash from the height of harvest. Providing we have a usual season without unexpected pests or weather beatings we can generally get enough in the cupboard to get us through to mid Sept.
For a family of five our pantry list looks a little like the list below. Homesteading at this scale has taken 15 years of rhythm building, trial & error to get to these quantities so it's by no means an overnight success. We''ve restructured our life to do this but you don't have to commit to such a list to be working towards food sovereignty...start with one simple thing.

100 x 250ml bottles tomato sauce/passata
12 x 1 litre bottles pickled olives
20 x 1 litre bottles stewed apple
80 litres of apple cider vinegar
Bulbs of garlic x 200 hundred heads
60ish pumpkins
30 jars of dilly cucumbers & beans
20 jars of pickled beetroot
15 jars of pear chutney
15 jars of zucchini & eggplant relish
8 jars of dried tea herbs/flowers : chamomile, peppermint, lemon balm, lavender, rose petals, lemon verbena,
6 frozen sheep
12 frozen chickens
5 jars of dehydrated spring onions
10 jars of marmalade or jam
6 x 750gm jars of pickled green tomato
10kgs fermented artichoke
40kgs potatoes
30kg carrots
12kgs frozen sweet corn
5kgs broad beans
3kgs dried podded beans
2kg dehydrated mushies (8kg pre dehydration)
100 bletted/dried persimmons
5kg frozen cooked spinach/silverbeet
35 sticks salami
10kg frozen mixed berries
30 x 300 gm bags of pesto frozen
40kgs stewed stone fruit bottled
12-15 bottles of plum sauce
2kgs dehydrated apples skin on
24-48 bottles of home brew beer
In addition to this we pick fresh citrus by late Winter & eggs & asparagus appear on the menu once the days lengthen kale & silverbeet keep us going too.
For everything we don't grow, we buy bulk from the food coop

WINTER SLOW COOK FEAST A slow cooked lamb or chick

WINTER SLOW COOK FEAST
A slow cooked lamb or chicken dish in Winter is without doubt a thing of evocative ideals of country life, especially if it's pulled straight from a rayburn . Actually it's a very real part of our Winter days because of its practicality as much as our taste buds. We often have roosters in the freezer over winter and having culled our lambs in late Autumn we have plenty of lamb too. It's an easy solution to brown off the meat, onions and garlic while we pack up after breakfast and then tip the remaining ingredients into the pot before it cooks in the rayburn until dinner time. This allows us a full day in the paddock without having to cut it short to prepare a meal mid afternoon.

Slow Cooked Lamb
2 cups crushed tomatoes/passata
1 cup red wine
4 cloves garlic, crushed and browned
Handful of walking onions cut and browned
What ever lamb cut we have (shank, chump chops, legs) browned first for good flavour during cooking
Peppercorns
Hefty spring of fresh thyme
Halved orange
Few bayleaves
2 cups Vegetable stock
Salt to be added at the end

Whole Slow Roasted Chicken
Whole Chook (browned off first)
4 cloves garlic, crushed and browned
Handful of walking onions cut and browned
3 cups full cream milk
Handful of sage and thyme leaves browned with the onions
Lemon (can use fresh lemon x 1 or preserved lemon x 2 tablespoons)
Cinnamon Quill whole
1 cup white wine
1 cup vegetable stock
Salt to be added at the end

How to create either
Brown off meat onions and garlic in a hot cast iron pan
Add all remaining ingredients
Cook in slow oven (120degrees) for up to 8 hours with lid on pan all day
Serve with mashed potato, wilted greens (which are great with a squeeze of lemon juice) or soft polenta!

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