About
Located in Sheffield, Tasmania.
We purchased Grey House at the end of October 2007. There is about 14 acres of mainly paddock and a 4 bedroom federation house. The property also has a large shearing shed, two large colourbond sheds and an old hay shed. A small garage and calving shed. There is a medium size dam in the bottom paddock and a well that is fed by a spring that runs all year, the overflow goes into the dam. A pump moves the well water up to a top tank.
There’s a few mature willow trees along the bottom driveway and a couple of stately gums along the entrance driveway. The soil is a chocolate red colour and full of worms. The slope is gentle south/west facing.
The property was in the process of getting an organic certification through ACO. We decided to support the locals and transfer the certification process to TOP but they haven’t been able to get any of the previous information from ACO so we’ve had to start from scratch.
Our goals are to enclose the property with a 20 metre boundary planting of trees to protect it from neighbouring forestry practices. We also intend to buy 5 more acres from the forestry company to protect our view of Mt Roland and the Paradise farmlands.
We’ll have 3-4 rotational paddocks for Alpacas and Llamas which we will breed for wool. Also we’ll establish an intensive vegetable growing area to mainly supply ourselves and to grow a few specialty vegetables to sell locally.
The property has a few old fruit trees and a few young ones that were planted last year. We’re going to expand the orchard to include espalier trees with ducks and chickens free ranging. We’ll also plant a variety of nut trees including a trial of macadamias.
There will be two new dams (or large ponds) constructed. One in the orchard area and one higher near the top paddocks. We’ll stock them with suitable fish varieties.
We’d also like to grow lavender, olives and varieties of tea (camellia and herb) in the near future.
The property will be managed organically using permaculture principals.
