“There is no land to buy around us so the only thing we could do was add value to what we are already doing.”
The investigation for diversification options included milking sheep, making cheese and installing a wintering barn.
She recalled how she was feeding their baby when her husband told her he wanted to build a distillery.
Her response was “OK”, but if she had known what she knows now, she would have responded, “absolutely not”.
The distillery business had diversified to include a range of gins from a base alcohol of grain.
Their gin brand Ocean’s Keep is made from an oat base, with a distillate of Bluff oysters.
Another change to the farm operation was starting to grow maize five years ago, to one day make bourbon.
The first maize crop was a “cracker”, so they increased the size of the crop the next season and the yield was terrible.
No maize grew in the third season due to terrible summer weather, around the same time as the Australian bushfires.
The fourth season was “absolutely phenomenal” producing enough maize for 11 weeks of bourbon brewing.
“It is exciting to do a lot of different things nobody else is doing.”
Long-term plans include building a new distillery building on the farm.
About a quarter of the grain grown on the farm was used in the distillery and the rest was used for stock feed.
The nine grains used in the distillery include black barley, black oats and malting barley.
When asked if she really wished she rejected her husband’s idea to launch a distillery, Toni replied no.
“I want my kids to have a choice to be farmers if that’s what they want to do. We want to do everything we can to give them a choice.
“And what would we be doing now? I don’t know, we might not even have a farm.
“When Rob left school, a farm this size could look after two families and in a few years that won’t be the case - which is really sad - it shouldn’t be like that.”
