Sophie Hansen

Local is Lovely

A stint working in the Slow Food movement in Italy set Sophie Hansen on the path to becoming one of the most successful rural bloggers in Australia.

“I was struck by the sense of conviviality,” she explains. “Italian food isn’t fancy. It’s simple, but it’s seasonal and practised and considered, and they take a real joy in the whole process, from growing it through preparing it to sharing it.”

Back in Australia, Sophie met and married a deer farmer, Tim Hansen, moved to Orange in the central west of NSW and took that Italian sensibility into her new life on the land.

Under the “Local is Lovely” and “My Open Kitchen” banners, she created a blog, a book, a series of podcasts, workshops and regular open-to-thepublic, farm-kitchen lunches. She has almost 18,600 followers on Instagram and has taken out the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation’s award for 2016 Rural Woman of the Year.

“One of the reasons I started the blog,” says Sophie, now 41 and a mother of two, “was to give us an income that was complementary to the deer farm, but independent of it as well.” It has done that and more.

“I love that you can live anywhere and, as long as you have internet connection, you can be part of a team,” says Sophie. “I love the flexibility. I love that Tim and I can sit down at night and say, ‘Tell me about your day’.

“And the thing I like most is that I can be connected to the world. I can work and listen to podcasts and shop online – but then I can just turn it all off and enjoy the peace of the country.”

I can just turn it all off and enjoy the peace of the country.