My photo, his hero.

See that photo over there in the A2 supplement in The Age newspaper?

I took it!

When The Age journalist called me a few weeks back to ask permission to use the photo and for some facts about our farm gate stall, she told me it was going to be quite small.

This morning when I opened the paper up in the car park of the service station in town I screamed. Loudly. I feel a bit bad for all the people filling up with petrol who still don't know what the fuss was all about.

Its also pretty exciting to be number one in their list of farm gates.

Yay!

We're in the middle of a crazy, crazy, crazy weekend here at the moment, but I have been thinking a lot about heroes.

Do you have a hero?

Have you ever met your hero?

Would you like to?

When we first moved to this farm nine years ago and had no practical farming or organic knowledge whatsoever, Bren set about calling every number he could find of anyone who might be able to help us with a bit of information. We didn't want anything for nothing, we just wanted a bit of help.

Nine out of ten phone calls were dead ends.

And then Bren discovered an American self confessed 'lunatic farmer' called Joel Salatin who was breaking the rules and inventing new ways of farming. He bought all Joel's books and became an avid follower.

So much of how we originally set this place up was out of Joel's books and so many of Bren's sentences at that time started with 'Joel says...'.

Fast forward nine years and this time yesterday Joel came to visit our farm and meet us. He wandered around and was only complementary as to what we are doing here, of course he recognised some of his systems and advised us of some new directions we could take.

Like I said, its been crazy here and I still haven't had the chance to talk to Bren about how he felt about the experience but at the end when Joel was leaving Bren asked him to sign one of his books. The book is called You Can Farm and Joel wrote 'Oh yes you can - and yes you are.' Must be a pretty amazing feeling I think.

I hope you are having fun and being inspired out there. X