IMAGINE BUILDING A GREENHOUSE AS BIG AS YOUR HOUSE TO ACHIEVE A SELF-SUFFICIENT LIFESTYLE...
Welcome to Gemma Lynch-Memory and husband Terry’s 16ha farm in Gardners Bay, near Cygnet.
Their home — a converted oast house — relies on rainwater and recycled sewage, and hot water from a woodheater. The family of eight has electricity usage down to that of a two-person household. Gemma, an artist, and Terry, who has worked in the music industry, found their home while visiting from Victoria in 2009.
“It was meant to be a 48-hour sojourn for Rand R,” Terry said. “Then we saw the property in a real estate window in Cygnet. Not long after that we were standing in the property’s driveway admiring the view and dreaming of owning a farm.” Gemma said they finding the property was the result of a universal alignment and a similar property in the Yarra Valley would have cost four to five times as much.
“You can’t carry a mortgage like that and live a self-sufficient lifestyle,” Terry said. “In Tassie you can have it all.”
The couple call the farm Ijalse, pronounced “i-jall-sie”, a made-up name composed of the first letters of their children’s names. Their first five children — Isaac, 16, Josh, 14, Annie, 12, Lucy, 9, and Samuel, 8 — were born in Melbourne and their “Tasmanian baby” Emily, 4. Gemma and Terry are adding the finishing touches to the 200sq m hothouse attached to their home. It has been their big adventure since April last year.
The exterior of the house is a reminder of its former life as a hops mill. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES “We’re very proud of the hothouse, it’s our work of art,” Gemma said. It has taken them a year to build and aside from the irrigation they built it on their own. “We want a kitchen garden and the experience we have had with gardening is if you have to walk too far to do anything it goes in the too-hard basket,” Gemma said. “The hothouse is the trifecta of problem solving.” With the addition of the hothouse, they have doubled their roof size for collecting rain. The wallabies and possums will never sample their vegies again. And high winds in the area cannot affect their yield. Gemma said the farm should allow them to live 80 per cent self-sufficiently with their vegetables, eggs and some meat. With the freedom of growing their own food comes responsibility too, and Gemma said the children help.
Their farm has been a process of trial and error since they moved from Warburton six years ago. They engaged a food garden consultant to help them when they first moved to the state. She worked with them every week for months to get their outdoor garden running.
OUR BRIEF
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To have a sustainable lifestyle.
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To have an electricity usage of less than a two person-household.
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To convert a small 1990 hops mill into a home for a family with six children.
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To recycle materials, rainwater and sewerage.
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To have a woodheater for all the cooking which would also supply all our hot water.
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To use wind power in the future.
“But the possums ate everything and the wind slowed the growing process down. We battled this for years,” said Gemma. “One day we decided to bulldoze and start again.” Terry and Gemma have gone to extreme lengths to make sure the whole garden is organically approved with certification.
“We have had several businesses and this garden is another project. We are trying to take it beyond organic. It’s about nutrient density and a whole new universe of growing food that’s incredibly healthy. “Extra produce will be sold through the community channels. We are trying to take normal food production to another level. “Soils are often council waste, a lot of the irrigation systems are made from recycled tyres that are incredibly toxic. You hear horror stories of people using soil that is toxic. We have children to feed and won’t allow that.” Gemma said with the house they had to keep the charm of the barn. “We cleaned it, polished it and worked in and around it.”
The original barn doors are the home’s entrance and lead into a boot room built to keep out the draft. Many of Gemma’s paintings are displayed throughout the house alongside art by the children. The lounge area was originally a loading dock for trucks, and they added a wall to make a cosy living room with rustic exposed beams. The kitchen has a square wooden table in the centre and, instead of a cooking stove, a wood fire that also supplies all the hot water. Gemma said Terry made the best sc ones, bread, quiche, curries and stews. “He does all the cooking,” she said. “We eat seasonally as we are usually eating out of the garden.”
Bordering the kitchen is the parents’ bedroom, and bedrooms for the three boys and three girls are in the loft behind the lounge.
“Little ones Samuel and Emily share a room and they have the best time,” Gemma said. The “engine room” of the house is a near-industrial size laundry, which leads to a gym. “With teenagers who live on a farm I think it’s important to give them something to do and be really passionate about,” Gemma says. With no television in the house, the kids enjoy an active lifestyle. “We don’t have teenagers who are bored. They are inspired.”
Above a corrugated iron and wooden staircase is Gemma’s art studio and Terry’s office.
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WHAT WE LEARNT
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OUR CHALLENGES
Farming is not easy. We made a lot of mistakes and have learnt the hard way with too many animals and too much to do.
Kitchen gardens need to be close to the home. Challenge accepted and adding a hothouse was our solution.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Keep it simple. If you think you need 40 acres, you probably need only five.
WE ARE MOST HAPPY WITH
How we plumbed our spring to harvest our own rainwater so there is no need for external water. The garden and our hothouse are irrigated by water from the spring. This was a major goal that we recently achieved.
They also run a tea business, the Tasmanian Tea Company, selling leaf tea at the Hobart Farm Gate Market and online. Gemma is “very excited” they will soon start planting tea herbs in the hothouse. The tea company’s focus is good quality organic tea. The teas use more than 140 ingredients and they try to buy locally, which Terry says is difficult. “Buying organic in Tasmania in a hassle as a lot of people aren’t certified,” he said. “We need freshness, quality, fair trade, ethical growers and it’s an effort to get producers that tick all these boxes,” he said. Gemma is thrilled about their converted barn home but just as proud of what she and Terry have achieved outside, including what they call the “Chicken Taj Mahal”.
Their 22 chickens have seven external laying boxes and the couple aim to have 60 chickens one day. “It’s chicken heaven over there,” Gemma said. “There are a lot of people we met when we first moved who still play a big part in our lives, such as Phil the chicken guy, who we get our chickens from. “He’s an older gentleman from Geeveston who raises Heritage chickens and he has taught me more about chickens than I could have ever dreamt of knowing.” Phil taught Terry how to skin a chicken the old fashioned way.
Gemma and Terry clearly dote on their animals. Charlotte the sheep is like a farm dog. Three rabbits and Omo the cat are also part of the family.
At one point they had more than 100 animals including cattle, turkeys and pigs. “Cattle were way too hard. We had to get rid of them, which was hard,” Gemma said. “Keep it simple” is their new farm life motto. “We have six children, we already have too much to do, we run a business, which takes up a major part of the week plus running the farm. It has to be simple and I think we have found the balance,” she said. “We both have our creative interests which we make time for among running the farm and house. It all goes into the melting pot of building a lifestyle that we’re after.”
Story: Sunday Tasmanian
Photograhy: Nikki Davis-Jones