Hi! We grow delicious fruit with love and using organic principles on Djaara Country.

We are The Orchard Keepers – Hugh, Katie, Fruit Crew Leaders Bri and Jill, and our team of volunteers, friends, and family. Together we look after our organic orchard on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, in Harcourt, Victoria.

We are a member of the Harcourt Farming Co-op (more on H🙂FC below).

The orchard is home to about 3,000 trees and almost 100 varieties of stone and pome fruit including cherries, apricots, plums, apples, and pears (with a few peaches and nectarines).

We see ourselves in a process of long learning about Country and place, our communities, and the orchard itself.

We are driven by a shared commitment to justice, solidarity, and care. We keep principles of food sovereignty, food democracy, and regenerative farming close to our hearts. We believe everyone should have access to good, healthy food, and we are excited to put that belief into practice.

We aim to be transparent in all that we do, in growing beautiful, healthy food, and connecting with the people who buy our fruit, all the while looking after each other and this special place.

Aerial view of the farm. Photo by Oliver Holmgren

There has been orchard on this property for almost 150 years. It was one of the earliest orchards to be planted in the Harcourt valley after the land was stolen under colonisation. In the early days, it supplied fruit to the nearby goldfields.

We follow a long line of folks who have cared for this land and produced delicious food here. We’d particularly like to honour the original inhabitants, the Djaara people, who cared for djandak (country) for many thousands of years.

The current owners, Katie and Hugh, took over the farm in 1998 from Katie’s dad, Merv, who bought the farm in 1971. Merv was an educated and resourceful orchardist who introduced many innovations (such as piped irrigation) during his career.

Under K&H’s stewardship, the orchard became known as Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens and continued to evolve. They started by diversifying their plantings to take advantage of the emerging farmers market scene to sell their fruit directly to customers, and to provide more resilience against the vagaries of the weather and climate change.

The next big change was becoming certified organic in 2008, which served the farm well and allowed access to certain markets. In 2025, the difficult decision was made not to renew organic certification, a reflection of changes on the farm, such as downsizing the orchard. Our commitment to organic farming hasn’t changed, and in fact, the main difference is in our name (dropping the word organic). You can read more about this change here.

After the devastating ‘big flood’ of 2011, Katie and Hugh again expanded the business with more orchards and on-farm infrastructure, as well as diversifying into the online Grow Great Fruit teaching business.

When they were setting up the Harcourt Organic Farming Co-op (HOFC) in 2018, Katie and Hugh decided to take a step back from active farming and find someone to lease the orchard.

The first lessee was Ant Wilson, who ran the orchard as Tellurian Fruit Gardens and introduced the first iteration of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to the orchard. This was a scheme where customers pre-bought a share of the crop, which they received as a weekly fruit box. Ant also supported the establishment of HOFC and the weekly Castlemaine Farmers Market.

Ant decided to become a farmer in 2016. With no background in farming, he decided the best way to learn was to live and work with the people already farming in an ecological way. After a few years of labour on various small-scale ethical farms (growing veggies, ducks, pigs, chickens, and more), he met Hugh and Katie and applied to lease their established fruit orchard. Ant leased the orchard from 2018 to 2021, motivated by his passion for working with nature and a desire to understand the food system.

This brings us to the first Orchard Keepers Collective (OKs) team, comprising Yoann, Alex, Meg, Ingrid, Bri, and Rachel. This small collective of friends took over the farm in 2021 and changed the name to The Orchard Keepers. They retained the CSA program that Ant had set up and created many new partnerships in the community.

The first OKs team was driven by a shared commitment to justice, solidarity, and care, keeping principles of food sovereignty, food democracy, adaptation to ecologies, and regenerative farming close to their hearts. They were driven by a belief that everyone should have access to good, healthy food.

The Orchard Keepers were a valued and loved addition to HOFC, and they took their role as orchard stewards seriously. Two tough seasons with very high rainfall, plus managing the external pressures of mortgages, young children, partners, other jobs, and different interests, proved too much, and they made the hard decision to cut their 3-year lease period short when it became apparent their lifestyles were not compatible with running an orchard.

Hugh and Katie took the orchard over again in the 2023/24 fruit season. They started the Fruit Crew volunteer exchange program, which has proved to be so successful and valued that it has become a permanent part of the Orchard Keepers enterprise.

Hugh and Katie’s goal is to create a sustainable model that keeps the orchard’s heart intact—providing local people with organically grown food—while operating as a not-for-profit and at a scale that fits their capacity to run it part-time.

Recent changes include downsizing the orchard (without losing any varieties), dropping the wholesale market, and no longer offering pick-your-own. The current goal is to grow enough fruit to feed the Fruit Crew volunteers who help nurture the orchard—a lovely example of a circular economy—while also supplying the local Castlemaine Farmers Market and covering running costs.

HOFC Members 2024

The Orchard Keepers are proud to be members of the Harcourt Farming Cooperative (H🙂FC). H🙂FC is a collaboration of diverse farmers following organic principles who lease land on a single farm in Harcourt. We are passionate about learning our craft, feeding our community, and making direct and meaningful connections with our customers, for example, through Community Supported Agriculture.

Alongside The Orchard Keepers, our fellow co-op members are:

• Sellar Farmhouse Dairy—Tessa Sellar runs a micro-dairy with the help of her partner Oli, milking 10 cows using sustainable farming principles, processed on-site into fresh milk and yogurt. Sold locally through CSA subscriptions and farmers markets.
• Carr’s Fruit Tree Nursery—Under the mentorship of Merv Carr who has been grafting and budding heritage fruit trees for over 50 years, Katie Finlay and Liz Carr are continuing the tradition. Carr’s Fruit Tree Nursery grows a huge variety of quality heritage fruit trees for sale in winter as barerooted trees.
• Murnong Mummas Bushfoods —A social enterprise led by Ira Barker that supports local First Nations people to further skills through connecting with and sharing culture. Murnong Mummas is proud to employ First Nations and gender diverse individuals from the local community.

• Grow Great Fruit—An online business run by Katie and Hugh, teaching organic fruit growing to backyard and small-scale fruit growers around Australia and the world. Though operating mainly in the digital space, GGF relies on the orchards and gardens on the farm as a teaching base.

The aim of HFC is to make the farm as productive and profitable as possible, within a collaborative framework and using regenerative and organic principles. We’re looking for new members! Find out more here.

We reckon this new way of farming will be good for ageing farmers like Katie and Hugh, who want to step back from active farming but don’t want to sell the family farm, for emerging farmers who want to get started but can’t afford land, and customers who are yearning for a connection to the farmers who produce their food.