An authentic experience from One Table Farm

One family decided to establish a home/farm/business driven by the concept of living at the source, being responsible for every aspect of the process and offering an example for others who want to contribute to changing their footprint and becoming sustainable.

Sharing the experiences, knowledge and skills they have accumulated so far on their journey creating One Table Farm, is a passion for Cree Monaghan and Tim Hall.

One Table Farm is an authentic paddock-to-plate experience, founded on the principles of sustainability, waste reduction, regeneration, animal welfare, carbon drawdown, organic practices and seasonality.

The diversity represented across their farm and in the produce they grow is a substantiation of their farming philosophy and is a true labour of love.

Deciding to swap the city for regional Western Australia, Ms Monaghan said One Table Farm had evolved gradually, from their initial ideas to how it has all manifested.

"We knew we wanted to live more sustainably and show how it can be done," Ms Monaghan said.

The couple and their three children moved to a 40 hectare block of farming land at Cowaramup in 2014, after having purchased the land in 2013.

"We had nothing at first, no buildings, no electricity, no fences, no ability to get water, it really was a mammoth task."

Mr Hall said they had underestimated the enormity of their task at first.

"Unless you live it you just don't understand the inputs and time," he said.

"Getting to where we are now has been a significant achievement for us."

They said they constantly had people react to their claims of a blank canvas block, with the question, 'so you mean there wasn't even the house?.

But this reaction only strengthened their determination to continue on their journey as it proved that they can do almost anything they put their minds to, given time, patience and research.

"Not coming from farming backgrounds has been a challenge but not an obstruction," Ms Monaghan said.

She said it gave them a completely different perspective to farming methods and techniques.

"We are more open minded about it all," she said.

"We investigate new methods, we didn't inherit spraying equipment and generational knowledge.

"We didn't have a historical point of view or a program to follow.

"We had to learn and research and decide which best suited our farm.

"We also watched a lot of how-to videos on YouTube."

Mr Hall said that the smaller farm size also meant that they had to be more hands-on and they had less ability to use machines, or bigger machinery anyway.

"For us being smaller means being very manual for most tasks around the farm," Mr Hall said.

So since 2014 they have grown and expanded a 1600 square metre orchard, with more than 80 fruit and nut trees, including macadamias, walnuts, pecans, stone fruits, coffee, tea, apples, pears, custard apple, pomegranates, capers and grapes.

They have also planted a 1600m2 kitchen garden filled with differing varieties of vegetables and herbs, dependent on the time of year.

Their dynamic enterprise also consists of bees, chickens, sheep, ducks and a collection of steers and pigs depending upon the time of year.

Eclectic may be a term that comes to mind when you think of the vast variety of produce One Table Farm has chosen to plant and grow, but the whole idea of sustainability is reliant on seasonality.

The whole idea of seasonal produce is what underpins the now largest part of their business, the cooking school and sustainability farm tours.

"Seasonal eating is a big message," Ms Monaghan said.

"We advocate for seasonal eating, low food miles, buying local and chemical spray free where possible."

She said this is all intrinsically linked to the use of seasonal vegetables being grown and utilised at the correct times of the year, where they are geared to be growing at their optimum, requiring less inputs and more resistant to the weather and other affecting factors.

Their cooking school, baking classes and farm tours have only been up and running for two years.

The availability of resources had been highlighted by the advent of COVID-19 and its lasting effects on the world.

Ms Monaghan said if there was a positive to be gained from everything that had happened, it was the wider populations awakening to accessibility and seasonality.

"In some ways it has made people realise they can't get everything 'on tap' and perhaps allows people to appreciate the importance of a local supply of food," she said.

Ms Monaghan said their involvement in a podcast series called All The Dirt, resulted in presenter Steve Wood commenting that their farm looked like one big experiment and in many ways it is.

"We have a go at growing the foods we like to eat and cook with," Ms Monaghan said.

"It has also given us an appreciation for the costs of growing foods and why we pay what we do in the stores," Ms Monaghan said.

"We hope people see the value in it too."

In this regard the One Table Farm cooking workshops are geared to the seasons.

"Our paddock to plate classes connect people to the growing cycle," she said.

"We take participants out into the garden and discuss all the varieties of vegetables and herbs being grown, plus collecting all the ingredients we need for the menu.

"This is a special part of the day, giving people a sense of ownership and satisfaction, plus an understanding of the whole process."

There is huge reward in connecting what you see growing, then harvested and turned into a meal to share.

The sourdough baking classes are different from the seasonal cooking workshops, although all workshops include food grown in the garden.

Mr Hall also supplies the One Table Farm Community Baking Scheme with a regular subscription-based organic sourdough delivery - baking about 40 loaves a week.

This was one of the elements of the business that thrived during COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, when classes and visitors were not an option.

The sourdough classes are aimed at teaching how to make sourdough at home.

"They also get to take some of our 13-year-old starter home and their own freshly-baked loaf of bread," Mr Hall said.

"The class is a long day from 8.30-5pm, but people love it.

"I am teaching them how to make sourdough in a repeatable way.

"Participants make crumpets, pizza, doughnuts, crackers and bread throughout the day, giving them the chance to see different forms of dough.

"They basically make their morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea."

Mr Hall is an experienced sourdough baker, with a passion ignited at an early age, having watched his mother use and feed the sourdough starter, which was on their kitchen bench in the Yukon, Canada.

The sourdough starter bowl they use today is Mr Hall's mothers original bowl.

One Table Farm also partners with local experts to deliver chocolate classes and cake classes, which also still utilise components from the garden.

Ms Monaghan was a zoo and wildlife veterinarian with a qualification in animal welfare and ethics, while Mr Hall was involved in the corporate sector in Perth.

Ms Monaghan said her background had instilled the high animal welfare standards she implemented on their farm and advocated for people buying meat with a known history, with best practice methods in place to be ethically produced.

This, combined with the couple's love of teaching, has really fuelled the momentum of One Table Farm.

Ms Monaghan said they had not been up and running for long, when they were contacted by YouTube and Google Australia.

At first they did not think it was a legitimate contact so ignored the emails, but soon discovered it was a very real proposal.

This led to a team of about 13 people, including two senior management from YouTube and Google to Cowaramup to film a video in February 2020.

'Tim & Crees story: Farming for a brighter tomorrow', is available on YouTube, it is a short four-minute video that has gone viral with 3.3 million views to date, since its release in May, 2020.

The video had the flow-on effect of making their story widely known and garnering interest locally and globally.

While the tourism impacts of COVID-19 have stemmed the flow of international visitors and more recently interstate, there has not been a short supply of local WA visitors wanting to participate in workshops, tours and classes.

Their passion for sustainability and climate change has led them to also use many different methods on the farm, to achieve their smallest carbon footprint and create a truly ethical, best practice and seasonal farm

"We use solar power and gravity fed systems for water around the whole farm," Ms Monaghan said.

"We also use solar to power anything we have functioning throughout the day.

"We keep our cycle as complete as possible.

"We compost, thereby reducing our food waste as much as possible, and follow regenerative farming techniques."

The future for One Table Farm is also very bright, with the couple looking to expand partnerships and collaborations in the future, further their own wheat/spelt/triticale production and look at native bush foods as another element.

"At present we grow a very small amount of wheat," Ms Monaghan said.

"We hope to put a little more in, but because of our size any harvesting is all done by hand.

"We have a benchtop wooden mill with granite stone and use this to freshly grind wholegrains for use in the sourdough workshops."

Already researching more about working with carbon science, carbon sequestration and soil impact, Ms Monaghan said it was the native bush foods that were a very exciting prospect for their ongoing diversity.

"In terms of food planting, we will continue to work on an indigenous food trail," she said.

"We are looking at the environmental aspect of this also.

"Many native plants are drought resistant, water wise and salt tolerant.

"This would possibly follow a trail from our garden to the natural bush we have on the property."

Ms Monaghan said they were looking at both the bush foods and indigenous burning techniques.

Community collaboration is also a big focus for One Table Farm and its philosophy of sharing its knowledge and information with anyone who wants to be involved.

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