Farm has roots in mateship
IT’S a long way from the financial districts of London to rural Tasmania, but for an adventurous family the move to develop an organic farm in the Huon Valley has been a huge learning curve.
Matthew Tack and his wife, Coreen Ung, arrived in Tasmania in 2012 to set up a certified organic mixed farming enterprise, Our Mates’ Farm, at Geeveston.
The couple now have two children, Julian, 3, and Rachel, 18 months, joining them on the journey.
Mr Tack grew up on a farm in North Queensland but has learnt from scratch how to grow eating, cider and heritage apples. Their 32ha farm also grazes sheep in the orchard using the British-bred Wiltshire Horn breed.
Clean-up after harvest is taken care of by large black and Wessex saddleback pigs that run free under the trees, and feed on fallen apples.
A small herd of lowline angus cattle also grazes through the remaining pasture.
After studying commerce and economics at university Mr Tack became a chartered ac- countant then spent 11 years working in London as a finance director for a mining company.
In 2012 he and Ms Ung came to Tasmania, having never being here before, and set up Our Mates’ Farm in 2013.
“So many people helped us, encouraged us and taught us,” Mr Tack said. “What we have learnt about this sort of farming in the past four years is incredible. Before we started this journey we knew nothing about livestock for example. We have certainly made a lot of mistakes along the way.
“On the apple side, Andrew Smith from Willie Smith’s has been amazing, sharing his wealth of knowledge. He’s been a great mentor.”
The farm has about 9ha of organic apple orchard. Nineteen varieties are eating apples including gala, fujis and several heritage varieties, while 10 cider varieties will produce their first commercial crop this season.
Our Mates’ Farm supplies organic apples to Willie Smith’s and is in a learning partnership with Matthew Evans and Sadie Chrestman at Fat Pig Farm.
“We called it Our Mates’ Farm because of all the generous help we received along the way, and we wanted a place where people can feel connected to the way we farm and where their food comes from,” Mr Tack said.
His experience in starting from scratch prompted Mr Tack to volunteer to share the lessons learned at Sprout Tasmania’s Cross Pollinate conference on November 6.