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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.

Click Here To Pre Order

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Black Barn Farm!

Black Barn Farm

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EXCUSE ME...! Now I have your focus, I'll answer

EXCUSE ME...!
Now I have your focus, I'll answer the single most asked question since posting my book cover.
'What the heck is futuresteading'?

Simply put, Futuresteading is living like tomorrow matters.

The term riffs on ‘homesteading’ and has roots in permaculture. Actions are localised, simplified, slow and food-oriented - but most of all cultural. How can we supplant our current, hurtling-towards-destruction culture with a new one that values tomorrow?

Futuresteading starts with gently guiding our thoughts and actions towards a sense of permanence. Reimagining our routines and rituals so that they give back, not take from, the planet. Making decisions that contribute to a steady, vibrant, vital and joyful tomorrow.

It asks: What tiny, significant thing can be done to make positive change right now? Then celebrates the act of having a go.

Futuresteading honours contradiction. It acknowledges that living with integrity involves accepting the straight up hypocrisy of everyday life. That thinking deeply about tomorrow means being okay to live in today. That pursuing an earnest and noble existence works best with a big old belly laugh and encouraging the sum of the parts to bring a magnitude of change.

Futuresteading is a mindset powered by real people and local places, not corporations or government. It defines success as a healthy family, great relationships, an elegantly frugal household, a tight-knit community, acts of kindness, creative fulfilment, integrity, ritual, connection to the natural world and simply being human. In celebrating everything money can’t buy, suddenly success is within everyone's reach.

Futuresteading is not a prescription but an invitation to honour the future in ways that work for you. Far from insignificant, your actions and intentions add to and energise the change that’s happening right now within our communities and beneath our feet. Can you feel it?

We can all do it, we can start right now and it doesn’t cost a cent.

My book (on booktopia now) is 320 pages of practical inspiration towards living a futuresteading life.

I'll share more on the 7 foundations in the coming weeks. Xx

Lets celebrate the leaves turning in the garden by

COVER REVEAL (I've always wanted to say that💃)

Pathway to manhood! These two have spent the last

Pathway to manhood!
These two have spent the last week in the bush undertaking a rites of passage process towards manhood.
What happens in the bush will stay there, partly, and also in the heart and patterns of this emerging young man.
As an identical twin, these processes are especially important. Time to be heard as an individual, time alone with his dad, time to express and define his values and opinions.

Time to reflect, be still, honour what has been and what is still to come.

Of my three, he is my heart baby, the strings to my deepest places are connected to his but as a 14 year old he is definitely ready to pull away from the one who nurtured him till earthside and land as an individual who makes his own decisions, articulates his desires and forges his own path.

It's an inevitable path, this growing up business, but navigating it can be equal part lurching and wracking as anticipatory and wondrous, so offering a clear and international rites of passage process where the mama let's go and other men move into the wings as guardians is one way of building confidence and asurrdness to grow into an emotionally open, capable and loving man.

I'm so excited about seeing him and know it's going to take every ounce of willpower to leave their experience untouched - for its not mine to unpack and understand, it's his and he can hold it close in his toolbox of experiences that make him who he is.

Happy Easter every bunny! I love my people - wish

Happy Easter every bunny!
I love my people - wish they lived here all the time but given they can't, these are the days I tuck into deep quiet places and let them make me grin with an untouchable happiness.

What could be better than chocolates, bush walks, egg hunts, dam swims, tennis games, roasted chestnuts, rituals and feasting with your most loved humans. Doesn't get much better!!

Gem corn! I hold my breath while I peel back the h

Gem corn!
I hold my breath while I peel back the husks of each corn. Every one is different! I feel like a kid and wonder why gem corn isn't a thing. It is definitely a thing in our house. They dry hard and glassy and truly do look like gems - hence their name.
They aren't a sweet corn, rather a grinding our popping variety. When you pop them, each piece holds onto its color and when you plant them you've got no idea what colors the seed will throw. They last for years in a dry cool spot and just one cob just will grow you enough to pop all year.

Join me in making gem corn a thing...too gloriously pretty not to.

On another note, I wrote an article on growing sweet corn for @organicgardenermag not so long ago so if it's one of your favorite foods too but you've had little luck. Take a read https://www.organicgardener.com.au/authors/16192 and give it another go.

CREATING RITUALS Easter is hands down my favorite

CREATING RITUALS
Easter is hands down my favorite time of year. The weather is oh-so perfect, there's no hoopla in the lead up and family flock from all over.
We always down tools and make it a take-it-as-it-comes four days.
While expectations are low, we still have a pocket full of itty bitty rituals that we all do together.
1. Make nature nests - created using whatever we find outside these are made on the Saturday afternoon and it's where the one larger egg is found in the egg hunt on Sunday
2. Egg blowing - we all blow 2 and then rain hail our shine, old or young, we take an hour or so to create delicate, colorful littler masterpieces of ephemeral loveliness
3. Mushrooming - this relies on the weather gods but generally she's on our side and we can fill buckets and baskets full of field mushies from the paddock and pine shrooms from the forest.
4. Pumpkin harvest - the first gentle frosts for the year have inevitably arrived already so we take the wheelbarrow and pull the vines, hunkering the large orange and green orbs into storage for the winter

How do you do Easter?

Chestnuts and beer on a Sunday arvo! Hope you've h

Chestnuts and beer on a Sunday arvo!
Hope you've had a weekend with a little bit of this good stuff too.

And it's a wrap! Yesterday we welcomed a very ful

And it's a wrap!
Yesterday we welcomed a very full house of visitors into the packing shed ( and the hoop house, nursery, kitchen garden and house)for our very last workshop for the season. What an incredible group of individuals who'd traveled from all over the state to join us for an introduction to homesteading. The questions were abundant, the twinkling eyes were on every face and the take home showbags of seeds, scoby, starter and cuttings were eagerly stashed into cars. My cup is full. Thanks to everyone who spent the afternoon with us and is now planting cuttings in their own gardens.
P.s I was too busy talking to take any pics during the workshop but here's a few of the packing shed all set up and ready to go x

Sunshine is back! Picking the pretties to fluff up

Sunshine is back!
Picking the pretties to fluff up the packing shed before tomorrow's homesteading workshop.
It's our last event for the year, before we turn inward and focus on the barn build, the launch of my book and planning for the conning 12 months when at long last we will open our farm gate. Hope you've got sunshine on your patch too. ☀️

Another day indoors! Made cake. Simply made a spi

Another day indoors!
Made cake. Simply made a spiced ginger base and added pureed, sweetened raspberry and nuts on top before baking.
Pickled more cucumbers... never ending. And used up the left over sourdough leven to make the weekly stash of herby salty crackers.
Dahlias still going strong from @wrenhaven_wooragee and our gifted handwoven basket from @meg_makesandgrows is still tickling my fancy...Isn't she clever

Misty mornings!

Misty mornings!

NURSERY STOCKTAKE despite the rain, the clock is

NURSERY STOCKTAKE
despite the rain, the clock is ticking and we've promised to go live in early April with our online tree sales so we've coated up and today we did the count. Last year we increased our grafting by 25% and with a 97% success rate we have 789trees ready to be lifted in July and sent like teenagers ready to see the world to backyards all over the country. I love imagining new heritage fruit orchards popping up everywhich where, to feed us and make us feel virtuous as we pick our own home grown fruit. The online shop (on our new look website will be live by Monday 12 april)

It's wet out there! 26 mils and counting...from t

It's wet out there!
26 mils and counting...from the dry of the verandah.

Is this the break? Last night while we lay in our

Is this the break?
Last night while we lay in our tent up at the dam, it rained!
We've only had 5.5 mils since the start of Feb so it was a wonderful feeling knowing we'd wake up to a farm washed clean of its summer dust layer.
10 mils overnight and more promised during the week might be just the break our inter-row manure crops need (pic four is of our berry rows with millet, buckwheat and cow pea planted in between).
This slow, gentle rain is exactly what we needed but just a few hours drive north of us there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in a whole world of turmoil as they deal with yet another 'extreme weather event'. From drought to fires and now floods. It's a force we have no control over and learning to live with it can be easier said than done, especially if it impacts your ability to farm your land, earn a living or keep your family safe and fed.
Thinking of all those battening down the hatches right now. Hoping liked hell that your crops pull through. Stay safe.

Spuds out garlic in! We planted two rows 30 metre

Spuds out garlic in!

We planted two rows 30 metre rows 10 days ago but after clearing a row of spuds yesterday we took the opportunity to use the already mounded, weeded, loose soil to plant another row (approx 200 bulbs). Given our barn/ farm gate will be open in December when these navies are harvested we think we might use the remaining three spots rows for garlic too... just got to get it in the ground before the equinox.

HARVEST DAYS! these autumnal days are when the har

HARVEST DAYS!
these autumnal days are when the hard work is rewarded with buckets, baskets, hats and even wheelbarrows full of the good stuff. Today's haul was spuds and corn, honey, peaches, tomatoes, apples, pears and cucumbers...Bloody cucumbers.
What are you harvesting right now?

Yesterday we hosted our hide n seek Insta meet. Na

Yesterday we hosted our hide n seek Insta meet. Named as such because we were eager to met those we've only known online and get to know the real people behind the hashtags and the beautiful, curated pics, but ALSO to create a place where others could connect too.

It was a gathering we've post poned three times because of bushfires and then covid, the beautiful sunset didn't arrive and instead we got wild dark skies and wind, only one quarter of our registered guests turned up and Telstra was working on its network so many of us were unable to use our phones.

It's been a big week getting ready for it so I was tired and a little rattled by the elements out of our control and I forgot the acknowledgment of traditional owners AND I forgot to take any photos myself.

BUT, despite it all, it was a really intimate, natural, honest and happy gathering of beautiful humans who were generous (the pot luck afternoon tea was glorious), engaged and beautifully warm. With a belly full of raspberries, happy geese from all the handfeeding and the formal tour behind us, there were real belly laughs as we stuffed in around the packing shed fire eating cucumbers, and cake.

The pics I share are those captured by others. Others who are no longer just online friends but real flesh n blood humans who we really loved getting to know.
Thanks so much for joining us and snapping the pics
@salisburyandmaude
@naomi_ingleton
@wrenhaven_wooragee
@neilgalloway99
@meg_makesandgrows
@maxabella
@farmacy_co
@sofeaco
@carolyn_doyne
@beechworthnaturalfarm
@jimmy.wallis

That autumn berry feeling! After finally getting o

That autumn berry feeling!
After finally getting our 2kms of berry rows planted in spring last year it's blooming marvelous to be reaping the rewards of daily bucketfuls already. This lot is a mixture of 'Caroline' and 'heritage'.

Home made goats chevre! It's easier than you'd ima

Home made goats chevre!
It's easier than you'd imagine and as delicious as you'd expect.
Last week we hosted the @murrnongfarm permaculture design group and we were gifted a two litre bottle of fresh goat's milk. The week ticked past and we weren't getting through it so it got turned into fresh chevre for dinner with friends.

How:
-Slowly bring 1.5 litres of unpasteurized goat milk to just before boiling (take 10 minutes to do this).
-Once it reaches temp, add juice of one lemon +1tsp white vinegar
-Remove from heat and allow to cool for 15 mins
-add half tsp salt and whisk v gently
- pour into cheesecloth over strainer, pouch up and allow to drip until it produces no drips when squeezed (keep the whey)
- unpeel the cheese cloth and ball the remaining cheese, rolling it in herbs of your choice. Cool until serving.
- drizzle with olive oil and serve with crackers.

P.s use the whey as a kick starter for your ferments or as a leaf spray to ward off black spot on apples

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