About H🙂FC

H🙂FC is a collaboration of diverse farmers using organic practices who lease land on a single farm in Harcourt. We are passionate about learning our craft, feeding our community, and making direct and meaningful connections with our customers, for example through Community Supported Agriculture.

Current members are:

• Sellar Farmhouse Creamery —Tessa Sellar runs a micro-dairy with the help of her partner Oli, milking 10 cows using sustainable farming principles, processed on-site into fresh milk and yoghurt in return glass packaging. Sold locally through CSA subscriptions and Castlemaine weekly farmers markets.
• The Orchard Keepers— Led by Katie and Hugh Finlay and a crew of CSA members and volunteers dubbed ‘Fruit Crew’. The OK’s manage multiple fruit orchards growing cherries, apricots, plums, apples, pears, and a few peaches and nectarines using organic principles. Fruit is exchanged as part of the Fruit Crew volunteer exchange, and sold at the weekly Castlemaine Farmers Market and through custom orders.
• Carr’s Fruit Tree Nursery—Under the mentorship of Merv Carr, who has been grafting and budding heritage fruit trees for over 60 years, Katie Finlay and her sister Liz Carr are continuing the family tradition. Carr’s Fruit Tree Nursery grows a huge variety of quality heritage fruit trees for sale in winter as barerooted trees.
• Bushfoods plot run by Murnong Mummas—A social enterprise led by Ira Barker that supports local First Nations people to futher skills through connecting with and sharing culture. Murnong Mummas is proud to employ First Nations and gender dicverse individuals from local community.
• Grow Great Fruit—An online business run by Katie and Hugh teaching organic fruit growing to backyard and small scale fruit growers around Australia and the world. Though operating mainly in the digital space, GGF relies on the orchards and gardens on the farm as a teaching base.

The aim of HOFC is to make the farm as productive and profitable as possible, within a collaborative framework and using regenerative and organic principles. We’re always on the lookout for new members! If you want to know more, get in touch here.

We reckon this new way of farming will be good for ageing farmers like Katie and Hugh who want to step back from active farming but don’t want to sell the family farm, for emerging farmers who want to get started but can’t afford land or want to grow in community, and customers who are yearning for a connection to the farmers who produce their food.

Previous members:

• Gung Hoe Growers—Mel Willard and Sas Allardice led Gung Hoe Growers alongside a dedicated crew of passionate and skillful crew. They fed their local community through 12-monthly and seasonal CSA veggie boxes,  servicing select restaurants, cafes and caterers, local green grocers and the Wednesday Farmers Markets in Castlemaine.
• Tellurian Fruit Gardens – Ant Wilson leased the orchard from 2018 to 2021, motivated by his passion for working with nature and a desire to understand the food system.
• The Orchard Keepers (Originals) – A collaborative team of 6 including Alex, Yoann, Ingrid, Brian, Meg, and Rachel leased the orchard for 2 years and were an important step in the evolution of the current Orchard Keepers model.