Hello from Bimbimbi Farm
Hi and I'm one of those excited farming people.
We sold up last year after toying with the idea of farming, looking at ways to but property and negative/positive gear, looked at homes, looked at what was required for us to do what we wanted to do, and realised that we'd be mortgaged to the hilt, so bit the bullet, sold the house, bought some land, 33 acres, perfect for our vision of growing berries, and I have become the YouTube Farmer. (disclaimer - the husband comes from a farming background) but me, I'm a web developer and taking my tech savvy ideas and ability to Google the $h!t out of everything for answers.. which may or may not be right. :-D
But seriously, we've bought land and building from scratch, and I mean scratch - just imagine opening the gate and there it is.. 1 big paddock with a hay shed and a few trees, and that's us so the last few months have been about purchasing equipment to help us do our job. Bruce the 25 yo Massey Ferguson has been one of our best buys with only 970 hours clocked up when we bought it. (Moved hay around paddocks in a dairy farm which I was told equates to little old ladies driving their cars to church on Sundays) I have clocked up about 30 hours on Bruce with training from patient husband and I have learnt most farm implements we need, and the hours and hours and HOURS of driving to get them.
Where we're at at the moment? ..waiting for the bore, paid out the price of a small child for power to the block because this vision of going solar was just too risky, and building fences and infrastructure has seen us gather these implements in our property that I originally thought, when going past farms, was just farmers being hoarders!! (I'm embarrassed, I didn't know but I do know now, so sorry guys for offending anyone, but having gone to some clearance sales, there could be a wee bit of truth in the fact)
I'm doing a farm course at the moment targetted for small business / micro farming and I guess berries is just that. Blueberries, Strawberries and Raspberries, some outside, some under greenhouse which gets delivered in three weeks for my husband and I to build. (16 X 30m three gutter system)
We called our property Bimbimbi (aboriginal for place of many birds) which is ironic that we're growing berries which birds can cause 100% failure in blueberry crops, but we're working on solving that.
I love the country but I do tell my friends it's dreadful, stay in the city, you'll hate it here, no traffic lights for miles and miles.. visit but go back to the carparks you call freeways because if you forget the milk it's a long drive to the shops. And yet now I see more of our friends who come up to visit us to escape that busy city life. Go figure..
I'm so happy, so scared, yet, looking forward to the next 6 - 12 months as we're in the thick of getting things moving.
That's me in a nutshell for now.
I've setup a YouTube channel - http://www.youtube.com/c/BimbimbiFarmAU
I would love to have a story good enough to motivate more people to move into farming and offer a hungry world great food, a tremendous lifestyle and absolutely fantastic country people.
Nina