Grow Old Along With Me

About three weeks ago, I took the Emerald U3A horticulture group on a tour of Chamomile Farm and gave a talk. The easiest way to do this was to relate the history of the farm the changes to our business over the years.

If you don't know, U3A is University of the 3rd Age, a learning facility where older people can study a wide range of things from music to horticulture to philosophy, in a relaxed environment. I like the idea, as it's learning for the sake of learning, rather than qualification. It was a useful exercise for me too. Sometimes to stop and think about the past, and changes over the years, helps focus on the direction of the future. The talk went something like this.

My parents bought our 6.5 acres at Emerald in 1971, in what would now perhaps be called a tree change. The land was a treeless paddock previously used for growing potatos. The intention was to grow trees for foliage for the florist industry in which both mum and dad had been involved for more than a decade, in a shop in Sth. Yarra.

With their youngest child, sister Meredith, in her last year of secondary schooling and sons Jod and yours truly in full time employment, the project quickly gathered momentum and the family home in Mt Waverley was sold to fund the project of building a new dream house, one that I'm sure would have been regarded as somewhat a Mc.Mansion by the locals at sleepy Emerald, had the term been invented. Indeed I don't think at the time the art of hamburger fast food had progressed beyond the local fish and chip shop in Australia.

For my part, I was busy with the self absorbed lifestyle of a 19yo, mildly interested in what seemed to be a parental mid life crisis. When the family moved into the new house in Emerald, in September 1972, I wasn't with them. I was at Puckapunyal, having started my 'National Service' a week or two earlier, having been conscripted by ballot. Gough Whitlam swept to power in the federal election on 8 Dec 1972 and soon into the next year made it possible for conscripts to leave the army at any time. I didn't hang around for long and spent most of 1973 at Emerald working to establish a garden, while waiting to start a beekeeping course in 1974 at Qld Agricultural College. I was fortunate that the Whitlam government made training available, with an allowance, for all nashos, regardless of whether they completed their term.

Mum and dad had borrowed money to finish their house and buy some machinery and 1973 was a sharp learning curve. With numerous beech trees, lilacs and dogwoods planted to provide income at some point in the future, the realisation came, after mum sold her florist business (the commuting was demanding and an energy crisis pushed up fuel price), that in the meantime we had no income. We put in a half acre of kiwi fruit but return from this was also futuristic so we set about growing beans and carrots for cashflow. The trials and tribulations of novice farmers were agonizing. Weeds and beetles nearly wiped us out but we did not lack pluck or enthusiasm. Fortunately it rained regularly in those days, but it was often too wet to work.

I was at QAC 1974, always eager for mail, when some photos of the carrot harvest arrived. Dad found an organic fruit and veg shop in Elwood, which bought our entire crop over a period of months. Bruce still buys lemons, limes and kiwifruit from us and has been a loyal customer and friend for all the 35 years since that first crop. In those early years we tried different crops, including some offbeat like buckwheat, for some dubious characters who promised much but payed little, but Bruce always paid top price.

In 1975 after a summer working for a beekeeper in the S.A. mallee, I worked for a beekeeper who had a beekeeping supplies business in Melbourne, which enabled me to live at Emerald. I had bought a load of bees and worked some of my boss's on a share basis. He sold a lot of honey around Melbourne to shops and had a contract to supply mental hospitals etc. He suggested we should sell honey at the farm door at Emerald to generate some cash flow. We put a sign up 'Honey for Sale', a trickle of people came which slowly built in number. Mum and Meredith mucked about propogating a few herb plants in the glasshouse we'd built and put a few pots on a table outside the house where people walked past to buy their honey. The pots of herbs sold, so more were put out, and in the end they couldn't keep up. By accident we became a herb farm/nursery.

This wasn't as simple as it sounds. Our financiacial hardships of '73-75 stressed the venture and family. For much of that period it was a hand to mouth existence struggling all the time to pay the bills. Mum and Meredith scrounged flowers to make posies, and bunched forget-me-nots and buttercups. Dad took these to Kevin O'Neill, who was making a name as 'the society florist', and whom they knew from their Sth.Yarra days when he was a young man who worked for John Holdsworth, the competition up the road. Kevin saved us really. He bought anything we took in with great enthusiasm and encouragement.

Soon after leaving my employment late in 1975 to give more time to my bees and the 'share bees', a crisis came to a head at the farm and it looked like the property was to be sold. A neighbour came across an ad in 'The Age' for an apiary inspector's job in Wangaratta. I applied for it and spent the next 5 years away working for the Dep't of Agriculture.

In the meantime, they hung on at the farm. A wave of interest in herbs swelled and rolled on. Our 'honey and herbs' theme caught the wave and our herb farm became well known locally and far and wide. I married in 1981 and came back to help out at the farm in a business which now was a thriving herb nursery. Cut herbs for restaurants also took off and we continued growing organic vegies, and by now many foliage and blossom trees were producing.

By the late 1980's we were flat out growing herbs, flowers, foliage and vegies and delivering to Melbourne two or three times a week. Competition had sprung up and the economy took a belting in a credit sqeeze followed by a recesssion. Interest rates went through the roof just at a time we borrowed money for a new van. The van motor blew and the fringe benefit tax and airline's strike knocked the restaurant and tourist industry. Even Kevin O'Neill, whose lavish customers included Christopher Skase and Alan Bond, tightened his belt as the house of cards fell over. We were back struggling to pay the bills.

We sold our restaurant run to Melbourne Herb Supplies which became Australian Herb supplies and sold herbs and flowers to them, with them picking up at the farm. Market gardeners down on the sand were now growing herbs on a large scale and had a longer growing season. Over time our cut herb sales fell away, however the foliage and blossom sales to florists built up, again with wholesalers picking up at farm gate, so this became our main focus through the next decade, and till now. Lately, it seems things have changed none too subtly. The foliage business has become strongly competitive and demand for herbs is building again, both for herbs and flowers in the restaurant trade, and particularly in the florist industry.

The U3A group seemed to enjoy my talk. It made me realize how much change is part of lif and business. I'm busy renovating at the farm, removing those trees and shrubs not producing a return, and preparing new garden beds for herbs. Another challenge, but enjoyable.

On my way home the same day, after a pleasant hour or two in the farm vegie garden, I called into Sally's Foodrite supermarket on the Monbulk Rd. corner. Sally was standing on a small pair of steps reorganizing product on shelves, being helped by two of her girls.

"Be careful there, Sal," I said. I had a flashback to 1981 when I came back from Wangaratta. Sally owned the 'Blue Hills' fish and chip shop and I had mental picture of her heavily pregnant wrapping up my order. Her son Brian is now nearly 30 and a big man.

"It looks a bit like Coxy's days doesn't it?" she said with a grin. Coxy owned the shop befor Sal and Jim, and, as he slowly went broke, (must be back in the last recession) he condensed all the goods into an ever reducing area, leaving the rest starkly empty.

"Are you doing this because you're leaving soon?" Sal has sold out to Safeway. A new supermarket will be built with an underground carpark.

"Yeah, it's easier to look after."

"Do you have a date?"

"Not yet, but it's happening."

"When the date comes, will they knock everything down and dirty your lovely clean floor?"

"Yeah, it'll all go."

It doesn't pay to get too sentimental in this world. Driving home reflecting, I was grateful for my time in the vegie garden. A lady recently gave me seven different types of garlic, I wanted to get it in the ground in May. I haven't grown garlic for many years, and I'm keen to build up some stock. Forking over the soil and making the beds did me good. I stopped for a breather and had a good look at the sundial in the middle of the garden. A figure I assume to be 'Old Father Time', with full beard and dressed in a robe, holds what looks like a scythe.

Underneath him is written, "GROW OLD ALONG WITH ME, THE BEST IS YET TO BE." I went home and said the words to Lib. She gave me a funny look, but I think she got the drift.