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WORK TITLE: Honey Farm Dreaming
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Campbell, Anna Featherstone
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://annafeatherstone.com/
CITY: Port Macquarie
STATE: NW
COUNTRY: Australia
NATIONALITY: Australian
RESEARCHER NOTES: N/A
PERSONAL
Married Andrew Campbell (a farmer); children: yes.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, farmer, and environmentalist. Honeycomb Valley Farm, Nabiac, New South Wales, Australia, cofounder.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Anna Featherstone is an Australian writer, farmer, and environmentalist. She and her family lived in urban centers in Australia and the United States before deciding to leave the city and their jobs and start a small farm in rural New South Wales. Featherstone and her family accepted the challenge and the steep learning curve that came with such an undertaking and managed to turn their farm into a success by diversifying the products they sell and also offering award-winning agro-tourism services. The Honeycomb Valley Farm in Nabiac, New South Wales, produces numerous commercial products, ranging from goats milk soaps and honey to wild hibiscus and organic turmeric. Featherstone published her first book, Honeycomb Kids: Big Picture Parenting for a Changing World and to Change the World! in 2012.
In an interview in ABC Radio, Featherstone talked about the sense of joy she gets from living and working on the farm. She claimed that “just knowing we can actually grow things, fix things, look after things; that is just such a fulfilling thing to know that.” Featherstone admitted that “it’s such hard work but you know you’ve done it…. The little seedlings we hold between our fingers, one day we won’t [be able to] wrap our arms around them. That’s amazing to see that in nature and you don’t get that in other careers.”
Small Farm Success Australia
In 2018 Featherstone published Small Farm Success Australia: How to Make a Life and a Living on the Land. The account compiles interviews and stories from small farm proprietors around Australia to share their experience, successes and challenges for readers who are considering getting into the industry. Topics range from value-adding and agro-tourism to farming products. The book is divided into six parts and starts with the “whys” of farming, introducing the reader to the positive and negative aspects of the industry before moving on to advice about what products should be developed. Featherstone also gives space for sections on agro-tourism, selling and marketing farming products, and the effects of farm living on a family. Featherstone offers specific case studies to give readers various perspectives on these issues and also offers tips for starting out small from one’s home.
In an interview in the Camden Haven Courier, Featherstone shared the reasons behind talking with other Australian farmers for this book. She stated: “We interviewed these farmers because of their passion for farming…. Their experience is as relevant to established farmers as it is to tree changers who are just starting out and it’s exciting to see the Mid-North Coast becoming a hotspot for entrepreneurial small farmers.”
Writing on the Underground Writers website, Jemimah Halbert Brewster observed that “a huge amount of research has gone into this book, providing a balanced approach that is both informative and practical.” Brewster concluded that “this is a very informative and interesting book, one that will apply and appeal to the growing number of people who are interested in connecting with the land, producing their own food, and running their own business on the land.”
Honey Farm Dreaming
Featherstone also published Honey Farm Dreaming: A Memoir about Sustainability, Small Farming and the Not-So Simple Life in 2018. The personal account relates Featherstone’s motivations for leaving life in the city for a simpler way of living on a small farm in rural New South Wales. The book explains how they initially set up their farm and began diversifying it, adding livestock and bees to produce honey and beeswax, which they sold at four different weekly farmer’s markets. The family also looked for natural and eco-friendly solutions for their personal needs. Eventually, they applied for government funding from the government to turn their farm into a tourist attraction, which would help to supplement the income they received from allowing boarders. Featherstone shares stories about those who have stayed with them, including the children of guests who shot cap guns at their rabbits and a pair of German workers who ate more frequently than they contributed to the work around the farm. Featherstone also discusses run-ins with dangerous snakes and the rescue attempt of a cow that fell in the watering hole.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews noticed that “many memorable anecdotes feature animals.” The same reviewer called the book “a charming but realistic look at the modern farming life,” adding that “hope remains that sustainability is worth pursuing and things will look up.” Again writing on the Underground Writers website, Brewster admitted that reading the book gave her “the feeling that I’d be on holiday in someone else’s life, and that is the purpose of a good memoir. It also reignited my faith in composting and veggie gardens! But most of all, it made me remember the importance of finding moments of peace and tranquility among the layers and layers of life that abound around us.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Featherstone, Anna, Honey Farm Dreaming: A Memoir about Sustainability, Small Farming, and the Not-So Simple Life, CapeAble, 2018.
PERIODICALS
Camden Haven Courier, February 5, 2018, Lisa Tisdell, “Book Launch for Small Farm Success Australia.”
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2018, review of Honey Farm Dreaming.
ONLINE
ABC Radio website, http://www.abc.net.au/ (February 17, 2018), “Tree Change: Family Swaps Sydney City for Small Farm Success.”
Anna Featherstone website, http://annafeatherstone.com (July 25, 2018).
Small Farm Success Australia website, http://smallfarmsuccess.com.au/ (July 25, 2018), author profile.
Underground Writers, http://underground-writers.org/ (February 28, 2018), Jemimah Halbert Brewster, review of Small Farm Success Australia; (March 30, 2018), Jemimah Halbert Brewster, review of Honey Farm Dreaming.
Anna thinks and writes about the environment, society, the future, farming, entrepreneurship, education, family. She’s also into everything from tiny little bugs to the mystery of spontaneous laughter.
Writer. Wanderer. Wonderer.
Anna Featherstone (Campbell) has lived in the suburbs and cities of the USA and Australia and in stunning environmentally-sensitive locations such as coral islands, rainforests and snow-covered National Parks. She's also spent more than a decade small farming, making mistakes, making balms and making a life. She chases her curiosity wherever it leads, capturing insights wherever (and however!) she lands.
Tree change: Family swaps Sydney city for small farm success
ABC Radio Sydney By Luke Wong and Kia Handley
Posted 17 Feb 2018, 11:00pm
Photo: Anna Featherstone made the tree change from a city desk job to mixed farming. (Supplied: Anna Featherstone)
Related Story: Mining family takes a chance on chooks for treechange
Related Story: Escaping city life to start a farm animal sanctuary
Media player: "Space" to play, "M" to mute, "left" and "right" to seek.
Audio: Making a Seachange (or Treechange) - Everything you need to know (Nightlife)
Over a decade ago Anna Featherstone left behind busy office environments and peak-hour traffic jams to pursue a quieter life on the land.
"When we had the kids we wanted to see the horizon," Ms Featherstone said.
"There were too many big buildings in our life, too much concrete and it just didn't feel right.
"We were getting more and more disconnected from who we were and what we could be."
Photo: Ms Featherstone's family farm is located at Nabiac in the mid-north region of New South Wales. (Supplied: Anna Featherstone)
With her husband Andrew Campbell she settled on a mixed farming property at Nabiac on the mid-north coast of New South Wales.
They took on a wide variety of tasks that included raising animals such as sheep, goats, alpacas and horses to producing honey and growing turmeric.
To help others who were looking to enter a life on the land, the couple recently wrote about their experience and interviewed several other tree changers for a book titled Small Farm Success Australia.
Fear of missing out
Ms Featherstone's transition to the land came with its own challenges.
Soon after starting an apiary she discovered her allergy to bee stings and had to switch to keeping native bees that don't sting.
"Everything can go wrong and it will," she told Richard Glover on ABC Radio Sydney.
Photo: Tree changer Andrew Campbell worked in the hospitality industry prior to taking on animal husbandry.
Raised in the Sydney beach suburb of Curl Curl, Ms Featherstone first connected to the land at a young age through her parents' friends who owned a farm in central-west NSW.
"If you grow up in the city in a tower, it's a very scary thing as an adult to move to the country," she said.
"But if you expose kids when they're younger, to the earth, it's not a scary thing."
She said apprehension was one of the biggest hurdles for many city dwellers who wanted a tree change but were hesitant to go through with it.
"I suppose with the Sydney house prices there's this real fear of missing out," she said.
"But I suppose the thing for people to realise is it's just [as big as a] decision to keep living a life in the city as it is to actually try a different kind of life."
Beating isolation and adapting to farm life
The family also operate a farm stay that brings hundreds of visitors to their property while creating an additional income stream.
Tree change lifestyle
Ever wondered what it would be like to swap the rat race for a quieter country life?
Admitting she initially could not even sew a button, Ms Featherstone said her rural experience had taught her skills that have made her more capable as a human being.
"Just knowing we can actually grow things, fix things, look after things; that is just such a fulfilling thing to know that," she said.
She advised those who wanted to make the change to choose a farm type that suited their lifestyle.
"If you're sick of the nine-to-five do you really want to be working 24/7 looking after animals?" she said.
"Or might you be better suited to looking after plants?"
Anna's tips for tree changers
Thoroughly research your prospective location including its rainfall history and access to water.
Consider balancing part-time work in the city and gradually take up more farm work as you progress.
Consider buying a developed farm so you don't have to wait years till your first harvest.
Don't go in under-capitalised.
Bring an off-farm income or diversify what you grow to get you through tough times.
Actively engage in the local community by joining groups such as Landcare or the Rural Fire Service.
A tangible, rewarding career
Ms Featherstone said the rewards of farming were being her own boss and making a difference by connecting with the land.
"It's such hard work but you know you've done it," she said.
"The little seedlings we hold between our fingers, one day we won't [be able to] wrap our arms around them.
"That's amazing to see that in nature and you don't get that in other careers."
Andrew Campbell and Anna Featherstone founded Honeycomb Valley Farm in Nabiac, NSW more than a decade ago. It has been a small but productive farm that has commercially produced everything from organic turmeric and wild hibiscus, to goats milk soaps, honey from native and Italian bees and beeswax balms. The farm has won state and National tourism awards for its agritourism offering which included a farmstay. The farm is closed to the public in 2018 while Anna and Andrew have a year exploring the world outside their acres while sharing their learnings through workshops and books.
Andrew has a degree in animal husbandry (though still can’t pick his favourite out of sheep, cattle, horses, goats, alpacas and chooks) and is also an experienced small business adviser through the NSW Government’s Business Connect program.
Anna thinks about the environment a lot, loves growing Chinese Raisins, turmeric and tulsi and is a balm-maker, bee lover, writer and speaker.
They wanted to inform, inspire and entertain other small farmers and tree changers so have written the book Small Farm Success Australia. In it they they have tapped into the knowledge of more than 25 farmers from around Australia who are doing all sorts of amazing things to make their finances, farms, lifestyle and passions work. What does success mean to you? Is it making a fortune and/or making a fulfilled life and leaving a positive legacy?
Anna has also written a fun memoir, Honey Farm Dreaming – A memoir about sustainability, small farming and the not-so simple life. It is due out early in 2018 too.
February 5 2018 - 4:00AM
Book launch for Small Farm Success Australia - How to Make a Life and a Living on the Land
Lisa Tisdell
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Handy resource: Small Farm Success Australia - How to Make a Life and a Living on the Land co-author Anna Featherstone (centre) with Jill McKittrick and Daryl Brenton at the book launch.
A new book, which showcases the challenges and opportunities of small farm enterprises, draws on case studies from across the country.
Andrew Campbell and Anna Featherstone launched their book, Small Farm Success Australia - How to Make a Life and a Living on the Land, at Book Face Port Macquarie on February 1.
The book draws on case studies ranging from producers of saffron to truffles, sheep cheese, biodynamic beef, barramundi and macadamias.
Ms Featherstone said the book was a passion project to help people on their small farming journey.
She said the book would make people aware of problems, so they could avoid them, and help them tap into innovative thinking so they could become price makers, not price takers.
Locals feature alongside farmers from across Australia, as well as industry champions like restaurateur Guy Grossi and chef Matt Golinski.
Ewetopia Farm’s Jill and Ian McKittrick, Ken Little from Ken Little’s Quality Fruit & Veg and Daryl Brenton from The Beekeeper are featured in the book.
Mr Little gives advice to farmers about how to approach greengrocers.
“We interviewed these farmers because of their passion for farming and as an example of their unique approaches to agriculture and life,” Ms Featherstone said.
“Their experience is as relevant to established farmers as it is to tree changers who are just starting out and it’s exciting to see the Mid-North Coast becoming a hotspot for entrepreneurial small farmers.”
Mr Brenton, a migratory beekeeper, together with his father Kevin, move their 1500 bee hives throughout the state depending on tree flowering cycles, rainfall and logistics.
He advised people thinking about embarking on an agricultural journey to spend time with someone who had already done that.
Mrs McKittrick advised people keen to launch into a small farm enterprise to give it a go.
“At the end of the day, even if you’re not making much money, but you love your life, you come out ahead,” she said.
Small business consultant and co-author Andrew Campbell said they wanted to produce a book to illuminate the challenges and opportunities facing small farms.
“Many people are thinking about getting back to the land or trying to make a real go of their blocks and with the help of farmers like these, we’ve dug up some great information and inspiration to help them on their journey,” he said.
The authors gained their agricultural experience on a mixed farm at Nabiac.
Ms Featherstone gave book launch attendees a sneak peek at her other new book, Honey Farm Dreaming, a memoir about a decade of small farming.
Print Marked Items
Featherstone, Anna: HONEY FARM DREAMING
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Featherstone, Anna HONEY FARM DREAMING CapeAble Publishing (Indie Nonfiction) $None 3, 1 ISBN: 978-0-9807475-4-6
A memoir delivers essays about leaving the rat race behind to start a small farm in Australia.
In 2006, Featherstone (Small Farm Success Australia, 2018, etc.) and her husband left their city jobs to commit to a farming operation on 89 acres
outside Nabiac in New South Wales. With their three young children in tow, they approached the venture with curiosity and energy and worked at
acquiring new skills. "I'm going to teach myself to be useful," the author vowed. For instance, she kept bees even though she was allergic to their
stings, and many of the straightforward recipes for vegetarian food and all-natural toiletries in the appendix incorporate honey and/or beeswax.
They raised chickens, sheep, goats, and cattle to keep the grass under control and sold their products at four farmers markets per month.
Eventually, they applied for government funding to make their farm a tourist attraction--a bee farm with insect-friendly plants--but in the
meantime they made money by running the place as a "farmstay." It was a busy life that suited this "hybrid hippy workaholic," as Featherstone
self-deprecatingly describes herself. Her tone throughout is one of good-natured exasperation, starting with their first farmstay guests' kids'
shooting cap guns at her rabbits. Another highlight is the entertaining story of the German "Wwoofers" (agricultural workers who volunteer in
return for room and board), nicknamed "Sour" and "Dour," who nearly ate them out of house and home and did almost zero work. Many
memorable anecdotes feature animals, from an encounter with an Eastern brown snake to the rescue of Daffy the cow from a water hole.
Featherstone has an ear for striking and funny turns of phrase, like "Most lambs have a bucolic baa, a sweet, milky tinkle, but this one is Fran
Drescher on a megaphone." The author makes it clear that small-time farming is grueling work for little reward--"The problem with the simple
life is it's false advertising"--and toward the book's end, a decade on, she's exhausted. Yet hope remains that sustainability is worth pursuing and
things will look up.
A charming but realistic look at the modern farming life.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Featherstone, Anna: HONEY FARM DREAMING." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532700344/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6ac8a4ea. Accessed 16 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532700344
Review: Honey Farm Dreaming by Anna Featherstone, by Jemimah Halbert Brewster
Posted by Underground Team on March 30, 2018
Title: Honey Farm Dreaming
Author: Anna Featherstone
Genre: memoir
Themes: Australian farm life, sustainability, agriculture, animal husbandry, humour, learning
Favourite quote, p. 167: “There’s no chooks or compost within a concrete mile and I can’t believe how much I care. I wonder how tower-dwellers exist and connect, when their feet can’t touch the ground; when nothing needs attention but oneself.”
This book was sent to me for review by the author. All opinions are my own.
Honey Farm Dreaming is a memoir about Anna and Andrew, two city dwellers with three young children who decide to pack in their city life and hit the country. Over ten years they live and earn a living on their acres in New South Wales, taking in and taking on holiday-makers, backpackers, Wwoofers, sheep, cows, bees, goats, chooks, horses, and hundreds of species of plants. Their experiences are fascinating and uplifting, devastating and hopeful – no moment is boring!
With quite short chapters, each story is a little taste of the symphony that is living on a farm. One of the first stories is of their first holiday guests, complete with terrifying and uncontrollable children, and the stories of guests only get more outlandish as the years go on. There’s also the time Anna finds a snake in the veggie jungle outside the house, and the time she and one of her daughters are confronted with a bike gang in the early hours of the morning where the farmers market should be. There’s Anna’s first foray into beekeeping, to her genius plan to create a native bee habitat and harvest their incredibly rare and delicious honey. There’s the Wwoofers (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) who come from around the globe to help and support the farm or eat them out of house and home. And there’s the night of the legendary cow rescue – not recommended for trying at home!
Readers can also create bits of the farm in their own home using the recipes in the back of the book. There’s itchy bite balm, so delicious-smelling it is also used as a perfume; Farm Balm and Golden Healing Paste for skin health and injuries; delicious vegetarian recipes for spinach and ricotta dumplings, French toast, zucchini fritters, and potato pancakes; and instructions for chutney, relish and cordial. The bounty of the farm brought to you in simple, bulk recipes that’ll send you to the pantry for more.
It’s clear that this work is a series of snapshots over the ten years that Anna and Andrew run the farm, the ordinary and extraordinary blended seamlessly to reveal that they can be one and the same. Featherstone writes with a light touch, giving impressions, feelings, and reflections on the moments she’s chosen to share, while her descriptions of the people, animals, and landscape give the work a strong grounding in the physical world. She also uses alliteration, puns, and onomatopoeia to excellent effect, both as a tool for humour and as a device to strengthen her voice and presence throughout the work.
I came away from this book with the feeling that I’d be on holiday in someone else’s life, and that is the purpose of a good memoir. It also reignited my faith in composting and veggie gardens! But most of all, it made me remember the importance of finding moments of peace and tranquility among the layers and layers of life that abound around us, whether it’s on a farm, in the city, or in a house full of weirdos with no boundaries – there’s always time to smell the roses and talk to the bees.
You can read more about the book on the Honey Farm Dreaming website and blog here.
Jemimah Halbert Brewster, Reviews
Review: Small Farm Success Australia, by Jemimah Halbert Brewster
Posted by Underground Team on February 28, 2018
Title: Small Farm Success Australia
Authors: Anna Featherstone & Andrew Campbell
Genre: Non-fiction
Favourite part: The case study of the farmer in Tasmania who rents tiny plots of land to farm organic rhubarb
Favourite quote: ‘Though wineries sell romance to customers, we’re not a romantic industry. We’re in agriculture and you need a strong business mind. If something’s not working, get rid of it or do it differently.’ (p. 95)
If you’ve ever wondered about trying farming, from a vague inclination to a definite decision, this book is the place to start. I spent all of my pre-adult life on farms, going to school with other farm kids, and generally being surrounded by different kinds of farming in the region my family lived in. But this book has taught me things I’ve never even thought to consider, such as the positives and negatives of value-adding, the risks and benefits of agritourism, and information about farming products one might never consider, from saffron or seaweed to rhubarb or turf.
Small Farm Success Australia is divided into six parts, beginning at the beginning – ‘Why farming?’ – and continuing through ‘What to produce?’, how to learn more about your chosen farming field (both literally and figuratively), how to market your farmed product in order to reach your buyers, ‘Agritourism’, and, finally, the impact of farming on family life. In each part there are interviews and case studies with farmers that demonstrate the importance of that aspect of farming. For example, in the section ‘What to produce’, farmers Jenny and Eric Semmler are interviewed about the importance of research and marketing when setting up a vineyard. Their farm, 919 Wines, produces certified organic wines in South Australia, a region rich in vineyards and wine producers, so it is imperative that they maintain a high standard for their wine or they will be swallowed by the competition in their region. In their own words: ‘Though wineries sell romance to customers, we’re not a romantic industry. We’re in agriculture and you need a strong business mind. If something’s not working, get rid of it or do it differently.’ (p. 95).
The authors also go into a lot of detail about practical ways to make a farm profitable, such as the importance of value-adding, i.e. how to make a product worth more by processing it further, such as selling vegetables in pre-cut soup packs, or selling honey both creamed and raw, or selling meat as jerky as well as fresh. It is this information and attention to detail that makes this book such a useful place to start. Other highlights of this work include: how to educate oneself and find information sources to research everything you’ll need to know if you’re thinking of farming; interviews with a chef and a greengrocer about the best way for growers and producers to approach and build positive relationships with them to sell a product; attracting daigou shoppers from China as an informal overseas export strategy; and the importance of working farm life in and around personal and family life, particularly families with children.
Again and again the authors and their interviewees stress the importance of going into farming with a clear focus and no illusions about the reality of the work required. Farming is a business that happens to be a lifestyle, not the other way around, and it demands an incredible volume of work at all hours, passion to remain inspired, diligence to keep up with the competition, and perseverance at all turns just to keep afloat. In other words: farming is not easy, and it is never a get-rich-quick scheme.
A huge amount of research has gone into this book, providing a balanced approach that is both informative and practical, i.e. what constitutes a business or a hobby, and more personal and anecdotal, i.e. the authors’ personal experiences and the experiences of other farmers around Australia. This is a very informative and interesting book, one that will apply and appeal to the growing number of people who are interested in connecting with the land, producing their own food, and running their own business on the land.