qldag

I’m May, and I run a market garden in Meringandan, just outside of Toowoomba. It’s here on the family land I grew up on where I operate Full Circle Farm; growing specialty crops like microgreens, edible flowers, salad greens and other leafy vegetables. This is fitting as it’s also originally where my love for backyard gardening and composting, grew to be a love for farming.

I currently spearhead the PR, Marketing and Social Media of QCamel; a family owned and operated Camel Dairy. And that family… is my family. Safe to say, I grew up just a little embarrassed that my parents are camel farmers, and my mum especially, is some level of camel mad. However despite my own embarrassment and a seemingly bad reputation, it can’t be denied that camels are in fact loving & lovable animals, and frankly, we love our camels.

The backyard of my ¾ acre family home on an urban residential block doubles as my farm, located in one of Queensland’s fastest growing areas; Moreton Bay. I grow culinary herbs and edible flowers both hydroponically & organically on approximately 900 m², and pride myself on these being completely pesticide and insecticide free. 

Right now I work on my family’s conventional farm (Koala Farms) which produces various kinds of lettuce, broccoli. spinach, rocket which is sold in major supermarkets. I work in the tight knit spinach crew which harvests spinach & rocket twelve months of the year. I have also worked on some aspects of our family businesses branding and marketing, which I love – it’s our face to the community.

It has only been 21 years to build a career currently focussed on carcass fat content. Those years have taken me from a beef station 100km NW of Longreach via a local 5-pupil primary school, further schooling in Longreach and Brisbane, to a role as Hardware and Operations manager for an AgriTech startup in South Australia.  

Future Ag Queensland’s Agri-Phoenix campaign for young farmers is up to day 20, so I thought it was time to hear from the old bird who started it. That’s me. I mostly farm ideas, and weeds, and worms. 

The mythical Phoenix represents regeneration and renewal as it rises from the ashes and is born again. I dreamed up this campaign after going to EvokeAG in Melbourne in February 2020, where there was much discussion about ag regenerating after the horror summer fires. That conference was on fire too, with the next generation of farmers – inspired and inspiring with their passion for looking after the environment, as well as their myriad of abilities to innovate & apply new tech to solve old and new problems. 

I have been given an important opportunity to learn from my elders about looking after the land in traditional ways, and to learn from scientists about non-traditional scientific approaches to the challenges of looking after our place.

This garden is our droplet of inspiration which ripples out into the wider regeneration of both our community and indigenous biota. Our 1 acre ‘Closed Loop’ market garden puts into practice what we have learned about bio-intensive and regenerative methods.

We are custodians of the land with a responsibility, inherited and to be passed on, to care for the land for now and for future generations. That’s the belief system I grew up with on a sheep and cattle station in Western Australia. 

We, as humans, need not destroy our natural environment in order to survive. Damaging, factory-scale food production can be replaced by a new generation of farmers doing things differently. My small fruit and vegetable farm, where I also live with my wife and daughter, reflects a desire for self-sufficiency.