Faces Behind Food – Geoff – Jerrabatt Gully Organics
Geoff did not start his working life on a farm. He spent twenty-one years as a CSIRO scientist before he and Colleen moved to their present property, “Brook Valley” in Wamboin, in 1994. The following year, they began growing vegetables commercially under the name Jerrabatt Gully Organics and they have not stopped since. In the early years, that meant weekly deliveries to twenty to thirty Canberra customers, a rhythm they kept up until 2021. The scientific training did not go to waste either. It shows up today in the meticulous way Geoff approaches the land, right down to the weather records he has kept for the past thirty years, tracking the patterns of frost, rain, and heat that shape what can be grown and when.
Sustainability is not a marketing word at Jerrabatt Gully. It is simply how the farm operates. Water comes from a licensed bore and from an extensive roof water-harvesting system connected to the sheds and greenhouses, collecting what falls rather than relying only on what can be drawn from the ground. Geoff and Colleen make their own compost and their own seed raising mix, save their own seed from season to season and grow every seedling they plant. Nothing is bought in that they can grow or make themselves. The farm includes greenhouses alongside outdoor growing beds, a small orchard of apples and pears and a small herd of goats. Those goats are not just for company. They earn their keep by controlling woody weeds in parts of the property that are difficult to access by other means, doing a job that would otherwise require considerable manual labour. The farm also carries a mix of perennial and annual plantings, giving it a structure that many purely seasonal operations do not have. Climate and weather shape almost every decision Geoff and Colleen make. Their large greenhouses carries most of the frost-tender crops through summer and shifts to herbs and greens over winter, while everything else is grown outdoors according to the season. It is careful, considered farming, built on three decades of watching the sky and keeping records of what it does.
Most of their produce is sold through Southern Harvest’s box scheme, plus several customers who pick up a weekly veg box from the farm. Geoff also is regular seller at the Bungendore Farmers Market. You can find him there from 9-12 am every Saturday morning.
