Rosalba and I have recently been interviewed by a very nice lady that writes for The Ottawa Herald. The interview has now been published and I’ll re-create it here linking to the article at The Ottawa Herald would not be very productive. The Ottawa Herald seems to remove articles from their public website after 4 – 6 weeks.
Following are the questions and our answers for the interview.
1. Tell us a bit about yourselves.
I am in my early fortys working in the web hosting industry and I like long walks on the beach… well, ok the beach bit is not true 
I’ve grown up in Switzerland which would explain my insatiable appetite for good chocolate, I was basically raised on chocolate. I have worked in one to the large Swiss banks as a programmer. During that time I went for day trips on my motor bike throughout the Swiss Alpes in summer. I never really enjoyed the snow in winter so I looked for another place to live and decided that sunny Queensland in Australia would be nice and moved to Brisbane in 1995 where I have met my lovely wife, Rosalba.
Rosalba was in IT when we met, but decided to apply her analytical skills to a far more worthy cause – people’s health. She has been a practitioner of Chinese medicine now for over 10 years.
2. What stirred your interest in organic farming and products?
From my teenage years on I could never understand how the whole world could be running on continual growth. To me that never made sense as all our resources are finite. Also over the last few years Rosalba and I have purchased most of our fruit and vegetable at an Organic produce stall at the local market. Doing so, we have both experienced the difference in taste of organic produce as opposed to mass market produce. To me buying organic means that we are actually paying much closer to the real cost to produce something, as organically grown fruit and vegetable takes into account the preservation of the soil
and environment. Contrast that with mass produced fruit and vegetable where the producers are sucking the land dry and then use synthetic fertilizer to keep their plants growing.
The other thing I started to understand is that most organic producers are actually people that care not only about the environment but also about their workers, which I believe means fairer working conditions. So by buying organic I feel that I also support the fair trade idea to
a degree.
3. What are some of the challenges you will face in this venture?
Well, one of the first challenges is that we need to establish our fruit trees which is not made any easier by not actually living on the land yet where we intend to have our organic farm. We have already planted about 12 fruit trees and 12 chestnut trees. our goal is to have about 60 chestnut trees and maybe another 20-30 fruit tress of other varieties. One of the major challenges I see looming within the next 5 years is the arrival of peak oil which may make it a lot more
difficult to get diesel for our tractor to do any of the heavier work that always needs doing on a farm.
Other than that, our main challenge right now is lack of time. We generally manage about one weekend per month on our farm which is not quite enough.
4. What are growing conditions like in your area?
Growing conditions are quite favourable. Our soil is fairly deficient in minerals and trace elements, which is normal for mostly anywhere in Australia. Luckily where we are we are getting good rain falls most of the time and most days it gets up to 20 degrees C at least (in winter). We do have some frosts in winter which is great for chestnut trees as they need a frost to flower and set fruit. On the other hand we haven’t been able to keep Mango trees alive yet. The two mango trees we have planted have both died due to frost bite.
5. If you had unlimited funds and acreage, what would you do with it?
Combine a huge wind farm for electricity production with more organic farming. We already have committed half of our property to a local conservation program called “Land for Wildlife” which I would like to further contribute to as well.
I hope you have enjoyed this interview and have learnt a little bit more about us.
Nick and Roger are making great progress with the framing (left). Lovely straight posts adorn our slab and define where our straw bale walls will be. The Kurilpa bridge (right) is a pedestrian bridge in Brisbane that looks like a steel spider web with twigs in it. Interesting engineering!
We now have a slab with rods sticking our where the bales will go. Next week (from 9/11/09) we are going to start putting the frame up with the assistance of a local carpenter, Johan.
e’d been looking for months for the servery windows on Ebay and they were always the wrong size or they were sold before we could put a bid in. So we were delighted with the find. Plus they delivered – hooray! Nuccia is still keeping an eye out for any more recycled cypress for us.
Rosalba and I have recently purchased a wood stove, a Crown No 7. When we got it, it had a few cracks which we got our neighbour, Pancho, to fix for us. We have now installed the stove in our shed temporarily, until the house is finished.
Mark and Rosalba are building a strawbale house!