Black Barn Farm: Tour the apple orchard and family cottage (2024)

While Jade Miles and her partner Charlie Showers have only lived at Black Barn Farm for three years, it’s been a dream in the making for almost two decades.

What began as an idea when they were idealistic 23-year-old university graduates, is now almost fully realised.

Located nine kilometres from Beechworth in the gentle hills of Stanley in north-east Victoria, Black Barn Farm was originally eight hectares of orchards, which were pulled out in the early 1980s.

Since Jade and Charlie moved their young family (twins Harry and Bertie, 12, and eight-year-old Clementine — also known as Minnie) into the property’s weatherboard homestead in 2016, the land has been transformed into organic permaculture produce gardens, a small-scale orchard, a nursery and an education centre.

Jade, 41, and Charlie, 42, both grew up in the country; Jade on her parents’ permaculture farm in Gippsland, and Charlie in the Ovens Valley of north-east Victoria.

“Charlie and I met at uni in Melbourne and Charlie desperately did not want to stay in the city and I wanted get back to the country,” says Jade.

“So, we bought a tiny cottage in Stanley surrounded by an apple orchard that got bulldozed during our time there. That made us ask why these beautiful food-producing regions were no longer viable. We did lots of research on why small-scale agriculture no longer had a place in rural Australia.”

After university, the pair travelled extensively.

Charlie has worked with the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and as a consultant, while Jade’s résumé ranges from setting up a restaurant in Cambodia to teaching drama at a US boys’ summer camp in Vermont, which they returned to as a family in 2014 to research local food systems, small-scale farming and orcharding models.

“We both worked as consultants so we went wherever the work was,” Jade explains.

“Even when we had the twins we moved 12 times in their first 12 months. When Minnie came along our families encouraged us to stop ‘flitting around’.

“We’d always known we wanted to farm but we’re first-generation farmers so we couldn’t rely on inheriting property, we had to do it ourselves,” says Jade.

“We had four acres in Beechworth planted out to be as self-sufficient as possible, but it wasn’t enough; Charlie wanted to scale it right up and I wanted to see what education around that would look like.”

Despite being on the lookout for more land, Jade says they had always bypassed the property they now own at Stanley.

But when they received an offer that was too good to refuse for their Beechworth house, the builder who had just finished their renovations encouraged them to take a closer look.

“This property had been on the market for five years but it didn’t meet any of our criteria,” she says.

“Neither of us wanted an old house again as we’d done up four by then, and I thought we needed 200 acres and a view. But we went and knocked on the door and instantly thought it could be amazing. It met all Charlie’s criteria from a growing perspective as he was very particular about water access, slope direction and soil type. The house was almost identical in its footprint to the one we had finished renovating.”

So in the summer of 2016 they literally set up camp at Black Barn Farm, living in a tent for six weeks while they got stuck into a basic renovation of the house.

Built in the 1880s as a residence for the township’s primary school principal, the home had been transported by bullock dray to the farm property in the 1940s.

They quickly painted inside and out, stripped the floors, put wardrobes in every bedroom, and converted one bedroom into a bookshelf-lined study.

“I rang all the tradies we had just used for the Beechworth renovation and said ‘You know how you’ve just finished? Well, can you do it all again, exactly the same?’,” says Jade.

“The kitchen was really big and I wanted a warm, cosy, intimate and functional kitchen, so I cut the kitchen and bathroom in half as they backed onto each other. I then gave myself a massive walk-in pantry in the middle, as we grow all our own food and I have shelves and shelves of preserves, chutneys, jams and sauces.”

A reconditioned Rayburn wood stove now has pride of place in the kitchen.

Establishing the produce garden was also a priority.

“It was the first thing I needed to do as I was really grieving that I didn’t have the ability to grow my own food… I felt like I had my hands cut off!” Jade says. “I was confronted with going to the supermarket, but it was only for six months.”

Today, the vegetable garden is productive throughout the seasons. Meanwhile, the orchard has more than 1000 grafted trees, including cherries and 78 varieties of apples.

Last year, they also leased a neighbouring apple orchard that was about to be bulldozed. This allowed them to offer a pick-you-own apples to visitors.

“In 2021 Black Barn Farm home orchard will be fully operational and it will give us a six-month pick-your-own property — from berries in December through to cherries and early apples and pears, then later apples and quinces in April,” say Jade.

The farm is based on an integrated system, with geese as fox deterrents and lawnmowers, a dam stocked with fish, and poultry for eggs and their own consumption.

A friend’s Dorper sheep will eventually be replaced by a flock of Shropshires, which pose less of a risk to their orchard crops as they don’t stand on their back legs to steal the fruit!

They also supply produce to local restaurants and small outlets, and run an online grafted tree nursery.

Jade, who like Charlie is a qualified permaculturalist, also runs workshops on topics such as grafting or seed saving and travels the country talking about local food systems.

“Last year I spoke to about 4000 school kids and most Wednesdays I’m presenting to community groups,” Jade says.

For Jade and Charlie, it’s a dream realised, and well worth the wait.

“Our vision is to eat what we grow, swap with friends, and be connected to our community through food,” says Jade. “Food is the fundamental core of who we are and what we do.”