Interview * Peonies & Ponies * Spring Hill Peony Farm

If peonies & ponies epitomise the romance of life in the country then the Spring Hill Peony Farm is set to make you SWOON! You might recall our story (back in May) that featured Nicky Thomas + Mac Barry’s adorable Little Church at Spring Hill, well, as we promised back then we are now featuring their stunning peony farm in FULL BLOOM!

As well as running their DIVINE little church as a venue for weddings, parties & functions, Mac + Nicky grow herbaceous peonies at their peony farm in Spring Hill (a little hamlet about 10kms South-West of Kyneton). They grow peonies for the cut flower market as well as to sell bare-rooted in winter AND by the bunch-full during their Peony Paddock Picnic Open Day each year in November when visitors can wander the joyous peony fields and harvest the precious flowers for themselves.

I sat to chat with this wonderfully passionate & talented husband + wife duo!

“I’ve always wanted to be a farmer,” Mac declared enthusiastically.  “As a child, I spent a lot of time at my Pa’s farm in Baynton (just north of Kyneton) and Dad worked for Dalgety’s, so I grew up around farmers and saleyards.” Despite having such clarity from a young age, it wasn’t until after Mac got a degree in Agricultural Economics and spent several years’ working in finance in the UK and Tokyo that he had saved enough money to put a deposit on his first parcel of land. “Unlike a lot of the other Ag Economic students I didn’t have a family farm to return to. Initially, I leant towards broad-acre farming in the Riverina but ended up intense farming in Spring Hill!”

Mac bought his first 70 acres at Spring Hill in 2000. “I spent the first year or so camping in the old corrugated iron shed dreaming up what I might do with the land. It wasn’t until my Grandmother Josie and my mother Pam happened to mention that Peonies did well in this area that made things fall into place.”

A year later, with the help of his father Martin, Mac planted his first Peony crop. “It’s precisely because of the weather that peonies thrive here,” Mac says getting up to stoke the fire. “Peonies need a cold dormancy period and winter in Spring Hill is perfect!” Mac’s attention turned towards the window. Outside, twins Will and Lulu played on the verandah with the family’s Border Collie, China, while a handful of multi-coloured chooks merrily scratched away in the garden. “The children love it here as much as we do,” Mac mused.

It wasn’t long after he planted his first Peonies that Mac met Nicky, which turned out to be a match made in heaven. “We were both flying internationally for work,” Nicky, an architect, explained. “The day we met in May 2002, Mac was flying back to Tokyo and I was flying via Tokyo to Cork. We struck up a conversation while waiting at the same departure gate and hit it off immediately. Our lives had a kind of synchronicity; we’d both left home at 18 to work and travel and we both loved life on the land, especially horses and the raw beauty of Nature. On my return from Cork, I caught up with Mac in Tokyo and, well, stayed!”

Mac + Nicky lived in the old shed (shown in the pic below) without power while finishing their MBAs. “We used to shower out of buckets and drive into town to charge our laptops,” Nicky laughed. “As rugged as that might sound, to us it was a wonderfully romantic time sitting by camp fires watching glorious sunsets. Although we both loved living in Japan with all the food, fun, skiing, surfing and lifestyle it had to offer, the sky in Spring Hill was so big it invited us to dream.”

The old shearing shed as it appeared in 2004 when Nicky + Mac ‘made do’! Photo – supplied.

In the succeeding years, Mac + Nicky got engaged and bought an adjoining ten acres that included a 1890s shearing shed that formerly belonged to Spring Hill local Cecil Knight, which they then set about converting into what is now their home. Mac + Nicky married in 2005 and their twins arrived in 2007. All the while, Mac’s father Martin helped maintain the Peony Farm. “Family pitching in is familiar and important to both of us,” Nicky explained. “My Grandparents lived off the land in the Otway Ranges and although it was tough, being connected to family and Nature is invaluable.”

“By 2008, the farm had reached its next phase,” Mac said. “We started selling cut flowers to wholesalers and farmers’ markets and that is when the pleasure really began for us. People would come up to us and go, ‘Oh, Peonies! I love Peonies!’ After the years of trial and error, patient soil preparation, weeding thistles by hand and experimenting with non-chemical fertilisers ‘til we got it just right, such enthusiasm is a great reward.”

Peonies take up to five years to mature and the flowering season lasts a brief five to seven weeks. So, each November Mac + Nicky open their farm to visitors. After a short stroll along a bush track beside paddocks dotted with eucalypts that shade tranquil, grazing horses, visitors arrive at a spectacular sight: a decadent, whimsical sea of creamy white, pale dusty pink and deep fuchsia pompoms unfurled and bobbing in the breeze. It’s enough to incite PEONIES ENVY.

The horses at the Spring Hill Peony Farm are broodmares from Mac’s breeding program and some of their offspring. “Mac rides really well, very well, he’s amazing,” Nicky said admiringly. “We plan to add a smaller horse to the group soon so I can ride and the kids can have more of a go too. At the moment, we all get lead around on Frenchie the ex-racehorse, who the kids have ridden since they were one-year-old. Our horses love people,” Nicky added, “so they love visitors to the farm who come to the fence beside the Peony paddock and give them a scratch.”

Peonies are enlaced with folkloric symbolism in Eastern and Western cultures. The Chinese are particularly besotted with them and have attributed such delicious names as The Water That Sleeps Beneath the Moon and I Possessed My Lover in the Garden. Regarded as an emblem of good fortune and happiness, Peonies have been used as a wedding flower in Chinese culture for centuries. How fitting then that Mac + Nicky were graced with the very good fortune of being able to buy Spring Hill’s original old timber church, which just happens to be located right next door to their peony farm!

“It was so exciting,” Nicki enthused. “It really felt right; the timing and the fact that we were able to buy the church from a local person too. Spring Hill is such a wonderful community – so down to earth – so we are delighted to be the church’s next caretakers.”

Nestled amongst majestic native gum trees with heavenly views to rolling hills and the northern sky, the Little Church at Spring Hill oozes quintessential country charm and romance. Nicky + Mac have teamed together with talented local chefs, caterers, photographers and others and offer the church as a wedding venue that, uniquely, has the option of supplying fresh Peonies harvested from the neighbouring field. “It was such a natural progression because people often asked us if we would host a wedding in the Peony paddock – so now we can offer them a gorgeous little church right next door!”

Don’t miss this year’s floral feast for the soul. The Peony Paddock Picnic Farm Gate Open Day runs from Saturday 23 to Saturday 30 November 10am to 4pm daily including weekdays. Entry is $20 and includes up to 20 stems from the paddock! How BLOOMIN’ LOVELY! Nicky + Mac advise you to bring secateurs, gumboots, hat, sunscreen, dogs on a leash (please) & a picnic lunch if that takes your fancy. Otherwise, on the weekends there will be food, coffee, wine & donuts provided by Annie Smithers & Monsieur Pierre in Kyneton. Sturdy ankle-supportive shoes are required to walk through the laneway and farm to the peony paddock (approx 700m). People with any walking impairment can catch the flat-tray shuttle & entry is via the Little Church. How DIVINE! Enjoy! x

Nicky + Mac Barry
Spring Hill Peony Farm
2013 Peony Paddock Picnic Open Day
Sat 23rd to Sat 30th of November
10am until 4pm
1385 Kyneton-Spring Hill Road
Spring Hill Vic