Saturday, June 1, 2013

Food with a future





“Welcome to the home of TYIRRIMA Farm”…
Hello!  Thanks for visiting us at "Tyirrima", Ravensbourne, South-east Queensland.  We purchased this 110 acre property in 1999, and have worked to enhance its existing values as a wildlife habitat, but also utilised the existing cleared areas to build a house and sheds, and most importantly, grow our food crops.  Poised on the edge of the Great Dividing Range, "Tyirrima" sits between the quite humid climate of coastal South-east Queensland and the drier Darling Downs/Granite Belt area with its much cooler winters. As a result of living in this 'ecotone' in terms of soil/vegetation, as well as climate, we have the best of both worlds… and so are able to grow a wide range of plants from the sub-tropical and temperate zones.  Our main commercial crop is garlic.
Recently we’ve adopted Biodynamic principles of farming/gardening… ‘the ultimate method of organic production’.  Biodynamics allows the farmer to build up the soil health, and therefore plant health/productivity, in a way that works with the forces and cycles of nature and minimises the need for external inputs.  After achieving a high degree of self-sufficiency in the range of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and grains that we produce, Biodynamics is therefore the next logical step in ‘closing the loop’.