Luke and Dearne Tresize from Golden Hill Farm in Rosedale are continuing to stand out for their modern and unique way at looking at farming.
The couple were inspired to buy Golden Hill Farm because they didn’t want to move back to the city, instead wanting to be somewhere rural that was still close to the coast.
Luke said when they first got to Golden Hill Farm, they actually didn’t really know what they were going to farm or how they were going to approach farming.
“However, we soon came to the realisation that running a small farm and feeding into the large-scale system just was not viable,” he said.
“Also having a background as a chef I’ve always had a passion for producing quality food and now we can do it from the beginning.
“What makes Golden Hill Farm different from a lot of farms these days is that we are not just focused on one species, we are committed to running a multi species operation although be quite small at this point in time.
“We are also not 100 per cent focused on what reproduce we are trying to focus on the landscape and build biodiversity wall growing healthy ethical food for our community.”
For Luke and Dearne, they have had a great response to all of their products, highlighting that they was not many small producers in the region that were running a direct to market approach.
“Having that connection to the customer, we believe is a crucial point in building lasting relationships.
“All of our customers are very supportive and thankful that it’s not just the dollars at the end of the day that are driving Golden Hill Farm although they do help to pay the bills.
“Our focus in the near future for Golden Hill Farm is trying to get our own butcher and built on the farm which will allow us to take back a little bit more control and offer more customised products using a greater variety of other local ingredients that are grown in the region, also buy having our own butcher room.
“This will allow us to build relationship for the other small farms in the region and rebuild local food network.
“On 1 March we held the first Discovery Eight local dinner which was a ticketed event to showcase local produce and we brought together 26 local food businesses and a great team to host the event.
“It was a sellout at over 150 tickets sold all who enjoyed some amazing local produce on the night listening to the insides of our three guest speakers, Dr Richard Blackman, Murry Hellmann and Rachael Treasure award-winning author from Tasmania, with the support of some amazing volunteers.
“At Golden Hill Farm we are just first-generation farmers doing a lot of learning as we are going.
“We are committed to growing clean ethical and healthy food for our community.
“When we first started this journey, we came to the realisation very quickly that there was a huge gap in the market and feeding our community was more important than just selling our animals and not seeing the results.
“Over the past 30 to 50 years and even more so now the local food network or regional food network whatever you may like to call it has been eroded away to almost non-existent companies will do anything to have total control of what you eat and when you eat, it is very important that we do not lose what we still have left and we work hard to rebuild our regional food systems.”
