Food and farm visits best at Coen’s Farm Fresh, Lakes Entrance

A small family business born from a love of chickens and vegies is flourishing in unexpected ways in far East Gippsland.

Feeding the goats at Coen’s Farm Fresh at Lakes Entrance.

Coen’s Farm Fresh has become almost an overnight sensation in Lakes Entrance providing not only fresh, seasonal, chemical free fruit and vegies to locals and visitors every day but a petting farm that has been a huge hit with families.

The small start-up business began 18 months ago selling 5kg of produce at local markets each week and now the young family trades 120kg a week, more than half of which is their own product grown on their 1.8 hectare property on the edge of town.

Coens Farm Fresh at Lakes Entrance has been a huge hit with locals and visitors.

Clara Buck initially thought attending local markets with some of her autistic son Coen’s homegrown produce and free range eggs might help develop his social skills.

The single mum never dreamt how effective it would turn out to be or how it would lead to a successful business for her and her two sons, Coen, 10, and Beau, 16.

“The reason I started Coen’s farm – Coen was diagnosed level three autistic and he was non-verbal with a lot of people so I wanted to utilise his interests – the chickens and the vegies – and find a way to engage with people and build his independence skills,” Clara said.

“Before we even got to our first market, it blew up to bigger and more markets than we could handle so we built a shop on our property which is open 9am till dark every day and the shop now supports 26 local growers.”

Coens Farm Fresh at Lakes Entrance has been a huge hit with locals and visitors.

At the heart of the family business is building community connection and they regularly conduct farm working bees, dinners and also farm visits where all visitors get to milk a goat, bottle feed baby animals, interact and learn about farm life.

“We started the farm visits in the September school holidays last year and had over 400 kids come through the gate and at Christmas time we had over 800 through,” Clara said.

“It is a wonderful atmosphere and we love the education side of it.”