Meet the couple with a taste for fresh ideas

INEZ Santos and David Simmons met while working on a farm in New South Wales in 2018.

At the time, neither could have imagined that they would be running their own vegetable farm together seven years later.

David’s dad originally owned Sparrow Foot Farm at Franklin, where he had a vineyard and a variety of livestock.

The property also has a timber yard, which David’s father still helps operate.

David and Inez wanted to make the business more productive and thought that vegetables would be the way to do that.

The pair have very different backgrounds.

David was in the army and after leaving the service wanted to see what else he could put his time and energy into.

Inez grew up in Portugal and took an interest in organic foods when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. “We completely changed the way we ate,” she said.

“At the time you couldn’t really find organic food easily in Portugal.”

Spending seven years in Dubai spurred her desire to start a vegetable farm even more.

“Living in a place where it was hard to find community, and that way of living, made me really want the opposite,” she said.

“I knew the lifestyle I wanted to have which was growing food for the local community.”

Seeing gaps in the food system made David want to transform his parents’ property into what is now Sparrow Foot Farm.

“I was looking at local food systems and wondering why we have to source our food from so far away,” Inez said.

“Why can’t we put a bit of effort into growing it locally and making a more secure local food system?

“So I started learning about organic farming, permaculture and regenerative agriculture.”

David said the pair grow whatever is in season.

“We’ve just finished up most of the summer crops, so all through summer we’ve had tomatoes, zucchini, capsicum, eggplant and even rockmelon,” he said.

“Now we’re moving into all our winter crops so lots of cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage.”

The pair sell their produce at the Farm Gate Market and put together boxes of vegetables that people can order and pick up from the property.

“We sell to a few local businesses but at the moment we don’t really have the capacity for more,” Inez said. 

David added that “there’s more demand than we can grow at the moment”.

The couple plans to add more vegetable patches on the farm and hire workers for the upcoming summer. 

Inez said that half of their work was planning and administration.

“There’s a lot of sitting down and planning for the whole year, or the whole season, ahead – and then there’s a lot of physical work,” she said.

“We do it all by hand.”

For David and Inez, the lifestyle of growing vegetables in a rural area was their favourite part of running Sparrow Foot Farm.

“I really like that we have been able to get to know the people we sell our produce to,” Inez said.

“I feel appreciated by my local community, and I appreciate them. It’s a mutual thing.” Despite the benefits that running a vegetable farm brings, there are also challenges.

“You’re kind of at the mercy of the weather,” Inez said.

“However, we have a couple of friends who grow at Kangaroo Valley in New South Wales and with floods or drought some of them have lost everything – all they’ve worked for – in a day.

“You really just have to go with the seasons and with the flow.”

For David, being able to grow organic food that provides health benefits for those who consume the produce is what drove him.

“If we can find simple ways of producing without relying on all these external inputs, we can save a few dollars and have healthier soil, produce and people,” he said.