Creating the Orchard
A Slow, Generational Project at Nurture Creek
When we first bought the farm, it was beautiful - wild, green, dotted with tall trees that swayed in the valley winds. But it wasn’t productive. Not in the way we dreamed. The previous owners had grown cut foliage and ferns, so the paddocks were full of pretty, non- edible trees… except for one enormous apple tree and a determined little juniper berry. That was the entire “orchard.”
We wanted something different.
We wanted a place where food grew freely.
A place future guests at our farm stay could wander through, picking fruit straight from the branch.
A place that would outlast us.
So we called in Dean from Twin Hives Permaculture - the man who reads landscapes like most of us read street signs. After walking the land, touching the soil, and listening to the wind like it was giving directions, he pointed us to the middle of the paddocks, just above the log cabin.
“Full sun. All year. All day,” he said.
Perfect for an orchard.
Terrible for convenience.
It was nowhere near water, nowhere near the house, and nowhere near anything useful. But perfect for trees - and that’s what mattered. So we committed.
The Planning: Beautiful, Over-the-Top, And Exactly Right
I wish I could say we were chill about it… but no. We overplanned everything. Varieties, spacing, microclimates, what fruit would cross- pollinate with what. I mapped the future hoop house we couldn’t afford yet, knowing the trees would spend the next few years quietly building roots while we saved. We bought temporary fencing to keep the animals off the baby trees - “temporary” being a lie farmers tell themselves - but it did its job. Then came the hard labour. We hired an excavator, drilled the holes, roughed up the sides for root grip, filled each one with straw, manure (plenty of that here), and rich new soil. It felt like tucking babies into bed with the softest blankets we could find.
The Planting: Hope, Heart, and Whipper Snippers
Planting day felt like Christmas morning.
Each tree got a moment:
Does this one prefer morning sun?
Will this one be happy near the plum?
Is that spot too windy?
Too shady?
Too exposed?
We planted. We watered. We watched.
Some thrived.Some died dramatically.Some died… and then their rootstock sprouted and said “actually, I’ll take it from here.”
All of them, without exception, were swallowed by grass and blackberries. We tried letting the animals in as nature’s lawnmowers… They unanimously voted to eat the trees instead.
So now? Whipper snipper. Always.
Three Years Later: The Big Upgrade
After years of slow, steady progress, we finally saved enough to bring Dean back. This time he built a fully enclosed orchard structure - tall, strong, and beautiful. It keeps out birds, wallabies, deer, and of course our own determined goats, donkeys, sheep and ponies. It’s even fox-proof so we can add ducks one day to eat bugs, trim the grass, and fertilise everything.
Give them a pond, and we’ll have our first self-sustaining orchard ecosystem. That’s the goal for our eco-retreat - every piece supporting the next.
Water, Waste, And A Farm That Feeds Itself
When we renovated the log cabin, we ran a greywater system all the way up the paddocks to irrigate the orchard. Each tree now has a purple hose coiled around its base, soaking up shower and bath water and turning it into fruit.
Out here, nothing is wasted.
Our water comes from the rain.
Our animals turn scraps and grass into manure that grows our food.
Our solar - thanks to Mum buying us a battery - keeps the lights on even when the valley dips into blackout.
Everything feels intentional.
Circular.
Generational.
Slowly - but undeniably - Nurture Creek is becoming the nature retreat we always dreamed of.
The Orchard Today: Waiting For The First Harvest
Now we wait. Three years of work, and the first fruit is on its way.
Apples, Pears, Nashi, Passionfruit, Persimmons, Plums, Nectarines, Apricots, Raspberries, Strawberries, Blueberries, Cherries, Lemon, Lime, Orange, Mandarin, Finger limes, Kiwi fruit.
It’s a long list.
A ridiculous list.
A list that makes us smile every time we read it.
And the dream?
To hand fruit baskets to our farm-stay guests.
To let families wander through the orchard and pick their own seasonal fruit.
To offer that peaceful, grounding experience without needing to queue at commercial orchards or pay commercial orchard prices.
Just nature.
Time.
Space.
And the simple joy of harvesting something grown with love.
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