A new start and life style

by Kim
(Harrisville)

This is our place

This is our place

My partner and myself have just brought 12 acres at Harrisville Qld and are wanting to become self sufficient and live a healthy productive life style as we head towards retirement age we are in our 50's and our children have grown up. We are not sure where to start as we have so many ideas. Both of us have grown up on farms and I have had alot to do with horses so we know it is going to take a lot of work to reach our goals. We want horses to be part of our farm. We also want to grow our own vegs and meat and make a small income from our farm. So if anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it. Den will commute for work for a few more years and I will do the farm and work part- time for a while. Our goal is for both of us to give up work and live off our farm.


Our farm is like a blank canvas it is black soil there is not many trees, open paddocks, stables, chook shed, water rights from river and a big 3 bay shed we are very lucky we have good basics to start with . We just need to make the best of what we have so I am open to any ideas

Comments for A new start and life style

Average Rating starstarstarstarstar

Click here to add your own comments

Apr 12, 2014
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Us too
by: Matt

Hi,
Your goals seem very similar to ours. We are almost 50and have recently bought 42 acres at Kiamba, near Nambour and are looking at becoming semi self-sustaining. I also have a farming childhood and have seldom been without a vege garden my whole life. We are looking at raising beef, goat and chickens and hopefully bartering lamb with a neighbour (I love lamb). A couple of comments if I may. As you would know, being a horse person, horses take a lot of resources to keep. Kg for kg, they eat 4 times more than cattle as their digestive tract is quite inefficient. So, to do all you want to do on 12 acres, plus include horses, sadly may not be doable. Just a little food for thought there. The other thing is do you have a tractor? We also have black soil (as in black clay or 'vertisol') and have found that it is extremely hard to cultivate unless you use machinery. I am a strong man and a hard worker and it took me over 2 hours to dig up a patch large enough to plant 6 strawberry plants. This is not a tenable situation for what we want to do. Great making contact and would like to stay in touch, see how you are going with it.
Matt and Karen

Click here to add your own comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Farms R Us.

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.