Christina Kelman, Rita’s Farm, goes for growth with herbs, vegetables

THE search for traditional Chinese medicinal plants led to a thriving organic vegetable business, writes SARAH HUDSON.

Intuition counts: Christina Kelman on the family farm at Wallacia, west of Sydney.

MOST farmers would call them weeds.

But for the Kelman family, they are among the most in-demand organic vegetable products in their range of Rita’s Farm Produce.

“We sell what we call super-weeds, including two types of dandelions, as well as milk thistle — it’s quite spicy to taste like rocket, stinging nettle, purslane and amaranth,” explained Christina Kelman, a 2019 Nuffield scholar.

AT A GLANCE

CHRISTINA KELMAN

Wallacia, NSW

GROWS about 100 vegetable and herb products on 25ha RANGE includes ‘super-weeds’ such as milk thistle and dandelions

ABOUT 80 per cent of produce is sols at 16 farmers’ markets

WON a 2019 Nuffield scholarship

“We had about 150 bunches of amaranth at a farmers’ market on the weekend and they sold out by 9am. A lot of Chinese and Indian people love it, but also other customers try it and come back for more.”

Since the family started selling excess produce from their backyard market garden 13 years ago, the Kelmans have gone on to corner the market in organic, largely Asian greens, with a line of up to 100 vegetable and herb products.

Spicy option: Christina Kelman on her family’s vegetable farm at Wallacia, near Sydney.

The plants are grown on three farms totalling 25ha at Wallacia, just west of Sydney in NSW.

Aside from the super-weeds, the most popular is kale, grown in five varieties, yielding about 1500 bunches weekly for most of the year; followed by 1000 bunches each of herbs from coriander to dill; as well as rarer varieties such as Chinese cucumber, black capsicum and heirloom tomatoes.

About 80 per cent of the produce is sold in 16 farmers’ markets, with the remainder distributed through the wholesale Eco Farms market in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. Six months ago Christina also introduced online sales and boxed deliveries, distributing about 50 boxes a week in a 50km radius. “It’s a tiny hobby. When I came back to the farm I felt we should give it a go.”

GROW FOR IT

AS POPULAR as their products have become, the 25-year-old said the focus now was on making their organic produce more high yielding and able to withstand diseases and pests.

That’s why her Nuffield scholarship — supported by Hort Innovation’s Vegetable Levy — will this year focus on “the need to produce more with less”: “increasing outputs while reducing inputs”.

Rita’s Produce is named after Christina’s mum, who came to Australia from China in her early 20s, married George, from Scotland, and then started growing chemical-free vegetables 13 years ago for the family.

“Mum used to be a nurse in rural China and would make medicine out of these plants to make people better and when she moved here she couldn’t understand why they weren’t grown,” she said.

From the beginning Christina worked on the farm and sold produce, before working around the world for charities.

With her parents keen to semi-retire, she returned home in 2017 and has now taken over the management of the farm, continuing her parents’ work but also making significant changes such as adding 16 new plastic-covered greenhouses across 1ha (adding to the existing eight greenhouses), to be completed next month, mechanical weeding and some harvesting, and creating new markets.

Their largest property is also in organic conversion, set to be certified this year.

LITTLE REST

RITA’S Produce grows year-round, with harvest generally seven days a week.

Most produce is grown from seed, but one of the new greenhouses will be a dedicated nursery for raising seedlings, such as cabbage, celery, leeks and fruit-bearing vegetables such as eggplant and capsicum.

The remaining greenhouses will be used to grow the likes of cucumbers, capsicums and tomatoes in winter, thanks to the newly installed heating and irrigation.

With a water entitlement from the Nepean River, crops receive either overhead irrigation or drip line.

Given the complexity of their product lines, Rita and Christina keep a book of crop and harvest time, but generally plant and pick intuitively, learning through trial and error.

They do not have a strict rotation, rather never growing the same vegetable family twice, interchanging between brassicas, herbs and root veg.

Half their farm is clay with the other half sandy soil. Crops such as shallots and spinach, for example, do well on sandy soil, which prevents downey mildew.

All soil is given homemade compost in preparation for planting — a mix of largely chicken manure, vegetable matter and woodchips, which also doubles as weed suppressant and maintains moisture.

Christina last year completed a week’s course on nutrition for organic farms and is also taking part in a department of primary industries trial that involves leaf, plant and soil testing to examine soil nutrition and disease in organic broccoli and zucchini plants.

BUG OFF

WHILE soil health is key to creating healthy plants, Christina admits the farm has its fair share of diseases and pests, including white fly, aphids and caterpillars.

“The yield gap between organic and conventional is up to 20 per cent and people even say it’s less sustainable to farm organically because you produce less on more land,” she said. “Conventional farmers always tell us organic farmers get smaller crops and more losses. When you’re restricted in how you can farm, when chemicals aren’t an option, you have to force yourself to do it better to earn more. That’s my focus.”

As part of the Nuffield scholarship, Christina will travel through Europe, India and Canada to research innovative and productive sustainable food systems.

“I could have worked for a bank but I came back to the farm because I saw an opportunity to do something different here, to build a legacy.

“I think agriculture, but particularly organics, has so much potential to be a big, boom industry.”