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Location: Wilderness Farms occupies 350 hectares on the banks of the Edith River, just north west of Katherine in the Northern Territory
History: John Etty and his partner Caroline Milwright first met on the SS Australis en route to Europe in 1975. They met again in Israel on a kibbutz where they both worked. They maintained their friendship over many years whilst on different paths, they finally came together in 1991 when John was teaching permaculture in Darwin.
John and Caroline spent the next 18 months at an aboriginal community near Katherine where they spent weekends looking for land. In 1994 they found their property, which they developed from scratch. They farmed organically from the start and became B.F.A. level A in 1996.
Products: Wilderness Farms specialises in watermelons, rockmelons, eggplant, pumpkins, and after a long absence in the market, zucchini.
Water and Soil: The farm is irrigated using water from springs in the riverbank several kilometres upstream. The soil is a deep, dark, rich levee soil, which has been flooded twice in the time John and Caroline have been farming. This has added to the already rich soil.
Isolation: The isolation of Wilderness Farms ensures that no contamination from neighbouring farms exists, and therefore protects its organic status.
Sustainability: John and Caroline use certified composted fertilisers produced in South Australia as a base fertiliser in most of the row and tree crops. Seaweed powder is applied through the irrigation water to boost the growth of soil microbes and to give some micronutrients to young plants. Insects are controlled using bacterial sprays in conjunction with Neem extract and summer oils.
A green manure crop of mung beans is sown at the start of the wet season and turned into the soil in mid January. This provides much of the nitrogen and builds up soil humus.
Different crops are rotated from one field to the next each year, with a brassica crop planned to reduce harmful soil nematodes.
The crops are mulched using Wilderness Farm’s own hay, paper mulch or when necessary plastic mulch. As the quality of paper mulch continues to improve it is likely to become the favoured method for row crop mulching in the future. It can be ploughed into the ground at the end of the season.
The work: Wilderness Farms relies principally on WWOOFers for farm help. At least until zucchini picking time where all hell breaks loose! Imagine being bent over for 150 metres carrying 10 kg of zucchini in the heat! They do make a great soup though.
Short term: Wilderness Farms is kept busy supplying the many ‘out of season’ fruit and vegetables, which grow in their warmer climate while the rest of Australia experiences the cool winter months.
Long term: Wilderness Farms plans to rely on the permanent tree plantings (i.e. citrus, mango, bananas), and develop agro-forestry, eco-tourism, and organic education.
Dear customer,
We would like to thank you for buying our nutritional and ecologically friendly organic produce. Next time you think you’d like to buy a fruit or vegetable that is out of season in your area, ask for produce that has been quality grown and packed by John Etty and Carolyn Milwright at Wilderness Farms.
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