riverbennett: The Home Grown Life: Interview with Kathryn Stedman on Self-Sufficent Farming in Sydney

So you finally got your dream of owning land in the North West of Sydney! This property is stunning. How many acres do you have here?

Just under two acres.

You moved to your property 2 years ago. Where did you live before that?

We moved into our house nearly two years ago, but we had spent nearly a year renovating it before we moved into it. It was pretty much a derelict shack.

Before that, we lived in suburban North West Sydney.

What are your thoughts on living in the suburbs and cultivating your own organic fruit and vegetables.

Well 10 square metres can produce enough veg for your family easily. You just have to give it a little thought. To give an example, I have a metre by a metre planter box which I have pak choy growing in at the moment. It probably fits in about 25-30 bunches and from planting to harvest is only 6 weeks. I like pak choy, but I don’t want 30 bunches in one week so I stagger my planting and every two weeks I plant just 10 seeds, that way I have a steady supply, and that can be done with all veg.

As far a fruit goes you just need to change your landscaping mentality. Replace your buxus hedge with a blue berry hedge. Plant a citrus border, train passionfruit vines along the fence. If you had a bit of space you could grow your own watermelons.

Has “living off the land" always been something you wanted to do?

My Mum just said last week, “I always thought you would marry a farmer, but I didn’t realise you would become ‘the farmer’” (I married a Real Estate agent, who I don’t think has planted anything in his life). I’ve always been interested in growing things, but its only since having kids that I’ve become more passionate about it. For me it’s the interest factor, it’s the lifestyle, it’s the health benefits, it’s the challenge and it’s the knowing that I can if I try.

Tell us how you got started...

I started with that metre by a metre planter box and pak choy, which by the way is the easiest thing to grow. I then bought some seed raising trays and heirloom organic seeds and started them growing. Knowing I had nowhere to plant them then forced me to add another garden bed. This process has repeated itself a few times. I also planted a little orchard, raspberry canes and passionfruit vines.

Your chickens are adorable! Tell us about them.

Everybody should have chickens. They go hand in hand with keeping a garden. Aside from making great pets, they give you eggs, they will eat your table and garden scraps, and they provide fantastic manure/mulch to fertilise your garden with. If you let them roam free they will de-bug your garden as well!!! They really don’t take up a lot of room and are perfect for a suburban backyard. I believe in chickens so much that I now breed them to sell. It has been great fun and the kids love it.

I think I have definitely crossed over into crazy chicken lady territory. One hatching night (they hatch in an incubator) we had a blackout in our area and the eggs were cooling down. I remembered a story about Cleopatra incubating and egg and hatching it in her cleavage, and I thought….well why not?? So I put a parker on and zipped all the eggs inside and went to bed (in my defence these were Faverolle eggs that I had paid good money for). Hands down the weirdest thing I have ever done, and I hardy got any sleep. But I hatched out three that night….!

And you built your chickens coops by hand? That is quite a feat!

Well, fortunately God has blessed me with a "mechanical imagination", that combined with my recently honed handy woman skills (from renovating the house), and with left over reno materials meant the world is my oyster... well, at least the hen house is. Lets just say I'm pretty good with a nail and a gun! And I love the satisfaction of building something.

I noticed you had rain water tanks at the side of your house…What are some of the benefits of using rain water.

Because we are rural we have no town water and so rely on the tank water and pumps. The big benefit of rain water is its free and there is no chlorine in it. It tastes really nice. The down side is short showers and if it doesn’t rain, we run out of water and have to get a water truck to deliver some. You really become aware of how much water you use.

You grow all your seeds to seedlings and then you plant them.Why do you do this? And where do you get your seeds from.

Honestly…because that’s what it said to do on the seed packet. Some seeds you can sow directly in the position where they are to be grown (like peas, beans, corn, beetroot). Others need a bit more care and shelter when they are seedlings and once they are big enough you can transplant them out. When seed raising, you use a finer soil that makes it easier to the seedlings to pop up through.

I get all my seeds from The Diggers Club (www.diggers.com.au). Most of their seeds are certified organic and they sell heirloom and genetically un-modified varieties. I just love their philosophy. There are so many varieties of fruit and veg that you will never find at the supermarket because they don’t transport well, or they don’t have a long shelf life or they don’t fit the stereotype that the marketing people have been promoting. Most of the supermarket hybrids are tasteless compared to heirloom varieties, and the only way to get heirloom varieties is to grow them yourself. For example, tomatoes are only ever red at the shops but they actually come in a rainbow of colours. Red, orange, yellow, green, pink, black and orange striped with green. Think of all the different vitamins you get from the different colours!!

Obviously you would be doing a solid amount of exercise from farming, but have you noticed a difference in your health from eating organic, home grown fruit and vegetables?

I’m still building my garden up so I’m still buying from supermarkets unfortunately, I haven’t really been growing for that long. People often ask me what I do for exercise and when I tell them I garden, I’m sure they think I mean pottering around the garden, pulling weeds from in-between the rose bushes. But reality is, I have shovelled tonnes of mushroom compost by hand over the last few months, dug holes, hauled timber, built garden edging, lugged sacks of chicken feed, mucked out pens…its not for the weak. The good thing about this kind of exercise is you build up a natural, core strength, and it has a purpose. Two birds with one stone. I don’t look like the incredible hulk (I hope), but I can lift at 25kg bag of chicken feed onto my shoulder and walk 50 metres up to the hen house no problems. I am so much fitter.

We eat more salads, and veg now, and we don’t have to be sparing with it. I get so much satisfaction seeing the kids munching on snow peas in the yard, or devouring a cabbage salad from the garden and believe it or not, watching them fight over who gets to pick dinner tonight. I feel like I’m teaching them something important with the garden. “You reap what you sow” becomes much more meaningful when you have actually reaped what you have sown.

Your kids obviously love getting amongst it with you, what are some of the things your kids find fun doing in the garden?

Eva, my daughter, loves doing everything. She is my side kick. She helps me sow the seeds, shovel compost, water, weed, pick, plant, you name it. They all like wandering up to get the eggs and they all like to bring in the harvest…who wouldn’t. They also like to watch the chicks hatch.

Is there any advice you could give someone who is starting out on their “self-sufficient farming “dream?

Just do it! Start sowing your seeds. Get the ball rolling. Plant something each week. Build gardens as you need them and educate yourself. I have a few organic gardening books which I have read cover to cover and found them extremely helpful, and get some chickens of course.

Tell us your vision for the next couple of years ahead.

Well, I’m going to continue to build up my garden. I would love to get to the point where I rarely if ever needed to buy fresh food. I’m looking forward to spring. I have giant Russian sunflower seeds to plant (they grow up to three metres tall and the flower head is fifty cm across!!!), seeds for ‘the biggest pumpkin in the world’, loofah seeds (to grow bath sponges), heirloom corn, heirloom French rockmelons, five varieties of watermelon (one is called ‘moon and stars’ because the skin is covered with yellow moons and stars), high antioxidant potatoes, heirloom corn and decorative gourds just for fun. I’m a serious seed addict. I want to be able to share my goods with family and friends. I currently have about fifty varieties growing and I would like to increase this further. I also want to have enough to preserve, freeze, pickle, bottle, dry and juice, so that what I grow one season can be consumed in the next. I think my next big project however (aside from another hen house) is going to be a greenhouse…tomatoes all year round here I come.