GOING back to nature through organic farming can pay dividends, SARAH HUDSON reports

Eight years ago, Brendon Eisner and his wife, Kate Ulman, moved to a 20ha Muskvale property with a plan to establish a small, organic garden, with enough produce for themselves and a small business.

Today, that business, Daylesford Organics, not only supplies some of Victoria's best restaurants - including Daylesford's Lake House and Melbourne's Circa - but last year won a Vogue Produce Award and more recently, was ranked sixth in Australian Traveller magazine's best gourmet experiences, above famed chef Maggie Beer.

Ask Brendon the secret of the ascendancy, and even he is initially stumped.

"You tell me, it's a good question," the 39-year-old says.

"People laughed eight years ago when I told them I was starting a small business based on organic fruit and vegetables. Back then it was not on people's radars.

"Now it's in people's awareness. People want to reconnect with food production and there's a growing interest in the health of themselves and the environment and the welfare of animals.

"And it probably helps that we're a personable couple, open and honest."

You could add idealistic to that list and possibly even naive as well.

Both Brendon and Kate grew up in Melbourne and while Brendon says he was exposed to farm life as a boy through his parent's Mt Macedon hobby farm, his agricultural experience was limited.

A self-described hippy, he studied permaculture, worked at CERES environment park in Melbourne and from the early days, protested against uranium mining at Jabiluka.

"While it's important that there are people who do that (protest campaigning), Kate and I just didn't want to fight. We wanted to create a positive model, not fight the bad things, but create good things," Brendon says.

They travelled the eastern seaboard looking for a self-sufficient farm but settled on the Muskvale property, as it was close to home and had an organic apple orchard.

"We didn't know a soul here and we moved on to a property not knowing the first thing about anything.

"I wasn't completely green, though, I had a bit of experience on tractors and I'm very practical."

He says he started off small, "methodically", and learnt by his mistakes, adding that if you love what you do everything else falls into place.

From the original 300 apple trees they now have 800, in 40 varieties.

The vegie garden, which started as a small patch, is now 1.6ha and has 30 mainly heirloom vegetables and up to 200 varieties: five different types of beetroots, beans and radishes, three different kinds of peas.

Starting out with 12 chooks they now have 1000, producing up to 50 dozen eggs a day, with the flock protected by two Maremmas, Bingo and Banjo: "We back on to the Wombat State Forest so we have a big fox problem," Brendon says.

"When we first got the chooks we lost 70 in one hit and about 200 in total.

"Since getting the Maremmas we haven't lost one. They live full-time with the chickens."

Once renowned local restaurants heard about Daylesford Organic's tasty crops and eggs, the news spread like wildfire to Melbourne restaurants.

Then in January this year, the couple opened their own farm gate, in the middle of the garden, also selling their own blackberry jam and quince jelly.

Brendon, a father of three, says he suddenly finds himself working incredibly hard and perpetually selling out of stock.

"It's a tricky thing the business of growing. In most businesses, supply and demand is difficult, but getting the balance right on a farm is more difficult.

"You've got to have carrots a certain size and a certain amount at specific times."

Despite the demand from restaurants, Brendon says the farm gate is their main priority, with customers choosing product from a blackboard list, which they then pick fresh.

He says the next aim with the business is to create educative tools about growing organically, workshops, tours and talks.

"I want to inspire people to grow their own vegies, their own food in an organic way.

"You don't go into a rainforest with a bag of fertiliser or go in there and kill off all the rainforest weeds, yet it's one of the most productive biospheres on the planet.

"What I'm doing is nothing new, it's what agriculture once was for centuries."