By CASEY NEILL
THE Jessops moved to Macclesfield to get back to basics.
They bought a rundown 15-acre farm riddled with jumping jack nests and fallen trees and over the past five years created a fresh food haven.
Melanie and Warwick and their sons Bailin, 8, and Ollie, 5, have six sheep in their paddocks – and four in the freezer.
“Having your own lamb you know where it’s coming from, what you’ve fed it,” Melanie said.
“We’ve got a mobile butcher now that comes around.
“We would like to eventually have a few less sheep and then have a cow and a calf.
“We’ll do a calf each year for our meat and just eliminate the supermarket really.”
They have a vegie garden, fruit trees and chooks for eggs, and a neighbourhood barter system adds to their fresh food haul.
“The lady down the road has bees and she’ll give us honey and then she’ll use our wood-splitter,” Melanie said.
There’s an organic pig farmer across the road.
“Warwick is a diesel mechanic so he helps her with maintenance and then she gives us pork,” she said.
“This year we’re trying to get pork from across the road to make our own Polish sausage and salami and cure our own meats as well, just to get back to what our grandparents used to do.”
Melanie grew up on a farm in Upper Beaconsfield and “didn’t have processed foods a lot”. She would visit her grandmother’s Dandenong property where she grew fruit trees and “made everything”.
“You turn 18 and then you move out of home and then you eat all the things you shouldn’t eat,” she said.
“Then I fell pregnant with Bailin and it just got me thinking about stuff again, so I started reading books.”
She wanted to share her back-to-basics lifestyle so set her sights on a co-operative. She’s been running The Hills and Valleys Co-op with Emerald mum Alison Edwards for 18 months.
“Some people don’t have the land to be able to grow their own produce,” Melanie said.
“Having the co-op means everybody can access it, everybody can get good fruit and veg.
“We’ve just started doing dried goods as well.
“Alison and I, with other people as well, we run a canteen at the school twice a term and there’s no artificial colours or preservatives and we cater to all food allergies, so every kid in the school can have the opportunity to eat from the canteen.
“That, to me, is really important.
“Somebody might not like what we have but I don’t want anybody who can’t have what we have to offer.”
Melanie gets creative with her lunches, whipping up sushi or wraps using silverbeet leaves.
“Alison and I are discussing we’d like to do some cooking demonstrations because I always get asked about the lunches that I do for the boys,” she said.
“Sometimes people are wanting different ideas so they’re not having bread all the time.”
“On our Facebook page we’ll share recipes.
“It’s really become a passion for me, and nutrition and all of this.
“People are getting back to ‘the majority of the time we need to eat good, fresh food’.
“I think it’s the way to go. I think it’s the way forward.”
Melanie said the farm was “a lot of work”.
“You spend your weekends doing stuff on the property but we do enjoy that as well – we really enjoy it, otherwise we wouldn’t do it,” she said.
“I just want everybody to know that they can do this.
“We’re learning. You don’t have to know it all.”
