Organic Insights - Spring 2022

8 / Organic Insights / Spring 2022

all trial and error, lots of different varieties… planting deeper avoided the grubs and stuff, but made it harder to get out of the ground…. it was an adventure!” She says they are now happy to share the information that was so lacking when they started. “Some people don’t like to share information, but I say we’re not a secret service. I think the only way to learn is to share.” “People notice what we are doing. The fact our property is so much greener, seeing the difference in the soil,” she says. “Now, people ring us; people come out to have a look at the farm.” Produce from the farm is sold through organic distributor Eco Farms, at the local farmers markets (Exhibition Park and Southside) and through box scheme delivery, Oooby. While Joy loves doing the farmers markets and having the connection with customers, she does find it challenging, to see people claiming to be organic, when they are not.

JOY AND LESTER PRICE HAVE BEEN

PRODUCING THEIR CERTIFIED ORGANIC “NATURALLY GROWN POTATOES” ON A 500-ACRE PROPERTY ‘DENBURN’ AT CROOKWELL IN NEW SOUTH WALES FOR OVER 30 YEARS.

The last few years have been particularly testing for the couple, with drought, fires, and now far too much rain for their potato crops, which include Dutch Cream, Sebago, Pontiac, Rideau, Charlotte, Tassie Pink Eye, King Edward, Coliban and Kipfler Nicola varieties. “At the moment, we still have 95% of our crop in the ground,” says Joy. “We usually plant in November, December, but this season we couldn’t get it into the ground until February,” she says. “We’ve had 3 years of it; the rainfall has been non-stop!” The couple originally built the farm from nothing; having acquired a part of Lester’s family farm that had never been used. They lived for several years in a caravan with 4 young kids while setting up fencing, dams, and other infrastructure; only after which the house was built. “Because nothing had ever been done on the land, it was easier to be organic,” says Joy. “Going organic was almost taken up as a dare,” she says. “Coming from a small town, people were like, “Are you guys’ yuppies, or what?” “They said you can’t grow potatoes without chemicals; and I was like, I’ll show you!!” She thinks they may have even been the first organic potato growers in Australia. “There were certainly none around our area, and there are still none, although there are some conventional growers,” she says. “We said if we were going to do it, we were going to do it properly, so we read through the Standards and went with NASAA.” She says they lost a lot in those initial years. “There was no information at all. It was