After planting the orchard and accepting that fruit trees take the long road to reward, I turned my attention to something a little more instant. Vegetables. Herbs. Real food you can see growing week by week. At our old house we had these gorgeous raised beds right between the front door and the letterbox. When the kids were little, the slow dawdle up the driveway became a daily ritual - checking peas, stealing strawberries, learning that food doesn’t magically appear wrapped in plastic.

Half our harvest never made it inside. Toddlers would stand in the beds with bowls overflowing, eating peas straight from the vine. And honestly? That was perfect. One less vegetable to fight over at the dinner table - and one more moment of connection with nature. That little suburban garden was where their love of real food began.

But a farm is a different beast.
Here, there’s too much land to manage, too many projects screaming for attention. Fences to repair. Animals to feed. Buildings to renovate. Water to track. Power to upgrade. Grass to grow. There’s this myth that country life is slow… it’s not. It’s constant.

But this year, for the first time since we arrived, the big jobs were finally done. No more major construction. No more frantic plumbing upgrades. Just the quiet rhythm of maintaining our eco-retreat, caring for the animals, and watching the orchard grow.

So I finally said what I’d been itching to say for years:
Let’s grow veges again
.