Juggling a fast-growing heritage livestock business with a hands-on renovation, a career and starting a family against the odds, one Fleurieu couple has embraced life on the land to uncover a resilience they didn’t know was possible.

Words and photographs Ben Kelly

In an era when fewer young people are taking up the call of agriculture, the Fleurieu Peninsula’s Emma Gilbert and Ryan French are a rare breed – as are the many varieties of weird and wonderful heritage livestock on their eight-hectare property at Clarendon.

The couple’s commercial poultry hatchery, The Farm Clarendon, sells 80 different varieties of heritage chickens and ducks – the largest range in Australia – and this year will hatch tens of thousands of fantastically feathered birds to find homes in farms and backyards Australia-wide.

On the back of a renewed interest in heritage livestock – pure breeds that can be traced to the period before industrial farming in the 1800s – these unique birds come in a wide range of quirky shapes, feathers and sizes. Their equally wonderful names range from the gold-laced Polish bantams to buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island reds and silver spangled Hamburgs.

Remarkably, the couple’s fast-growing hatchery is only a few years old and happened somewhat by accident.

When SALIFE visits The Farm Clarendon, firefighter Ryan and his dad Doug French are covered head-to-toe in dust at the end of a hot day constructing a new chicken enclosure. Emma, pregnant with the couple’s first child, has returned from seeing her obstetrician who was perplexed to hear she’d been carrying heavy bags of chicken feed up her steep driveway.

“When I told the doctor what I’d been doing, she said to me, ‘Why are you lifting 20-kilogram bags of grain up a hill? Most women at your stage of pregnancy are taking it easy’,” says Emma. “But that’s just life on the farm – the jobs aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

This determination defines Emma, 30, and Ryan, 32, who had no intention of breeding birds on a commercial scale when they purchased their steep eight-hectare block in 2020. Both from country backgrounds, the couple simply wanted their own patch of land to keep a few animals, a horse and a handful of Emma’s rare pet chooks.

The house and property needed a colossal amount of work, but the couple was up for the challenge, tackling projects in spare time outside of their full-time jobs, Emma in marketing and Ryan in the Metropolitan Fire Service. After clearing tonnes of overgrowth on their western-facing property, they opened up gully views that extend to the ocean, providing sunset vistas from their kitchen and living room.

“We’ve done a lot of renovating and much of it we’ve learnt ourselves,” says Emma. “We still have a lot to do. On social media it might look like this beautiful lifestyle, but it is hard work, and it’s very expensive. When a fence or a trough breaks, it’s never a small amount to fix.”

Emma has always had an entrepreneurial streak, with side hustles that have ranged from a Victor Harbor homewares business to teaching singing lessons and performing in an acoustic duo.

“I’ve always enjoyed having these beautiful chooks as pets,” says Emma. “One day, the fodder shop was doing a delivery
and they said, ‘have you ever thought of selling your chooks? They’re beautiful.’

“I was too busy at the time but later decided to buy an incubator. We started selling heritage chickens wholesale to the fodder shops and when Covid hit, we could have sold as many chickens as toilet paper! People wanted to be self-sufficient and there was a demand for chooks that were a bit different.

The business continued to grow and in mid-2022, Emma left her full-time job to focus on the farm. The couple invented much of their own infrastructure and methods and have even designed a new postage carton that allows them to safely ship small numbers of baby chickens by air freight.

Over six months, Ryan and Doug constructed a 60-metre breeding shed to house 1200 chooks, separated into their unique genetic varieties. At the end of last year, they completed a hatchery where the chicks are hatched, and orders are processed.

This spring, the business will hatch more than 50,000 eggs, with chicks shipped all across the country. Customers can also purchase fertile eggs – which come in a wide range of colours – to hatch in their own incubators at home.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d become a full-time crazy chicken lady; it was not in the plan,” says Emma, who consults to schools and kindergartens to teach students about chooks and help schools set up their own coops. She also hosts monthly workshops and demonstrations on the farm.

“It was risky for me to leave a very stable job which helped to pay the mortgage, but Ryan backed me and said, ‘look, if anyone’s going to do it, it’s you’,” says Emma. “But early on, he was thinking: ‘what is Emma getting into here?’.

“Going from a lifestyle hobby farm to a commercial setup is a completely different beast, but we’re the type of people who like to throw ourselves in the deep end. Resilience is the key.”

Heritage chickens are not only quirky pets, but have traits that were desirable for backyards and small farms in the 1800s. More than one hundred years later, interest in heritage livestock surged during the pandemic, with a renewed desire for home-grown produce and a more grounded way of living. Some varieties have nearly been lost through modern agriculture’s creation of bred-for-purpose animals.

“Many of these chooks are gentle, which makes them good for families, and some have different coloured eggs. Some of the heritage birds can live for up to 12 years if you look after them well,” says Emma.

“You feel more grounded when you’re eating food straight off your own property. I think people are looking at organic foods and really asking those questions about where their food comes from. It’s full circle.”

To keep the farm active across the seasons, Emma and Ryan grow cut flowers and they’ve recently acquired a small breeding herd of Highland cattle which they agist on their neighbour’s property and offer for photo shoot experiences for families and couples.

“Social media has in part helped bring these beautiful heritage breeds back into the spotlight and made them more accessible,” says Emma.

Unfortunately, Emma’s determination to grow her business came at a cost. “My body was giving me signs that things weren’t functioning as they should but I was so busy that I swept it under the carpet, thinking: ‘I don’t have time to deal with this’,” she says.

First, Emma received a false positive screening result for bowel cancer and was later correctly diagnosed with coeliac disease. It was then discovered that she had stage one endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Her doctor advised she was at risk of not being able to have her own children. “It came to a head in May last year where I just couldn’t even stand up, I was in so much pain,” says Emma.

“The next conversation was about needing to have a hysterectomy, which is a massive thing to have done at the age of 30, particularly because I wanted to have kids. We were told we had a six-month window before needing to get to IVF and then needing to think about a hysterectomy. It was pretty serious.”

Told she had a slim chance of falling pregnant, Emma significantly changed her lifestyle and stuck to a strict coeliac diet. She lost 20 kilograms and became healthier than she’d ever been, perhaps helped by the active lifestyle on the farm. Emma and Ryan hadn’t planned to have children for at least a few more years but were forced to make a quick decision.

“Luckily, we fell pregnant naturally last year, which was a huge shock,” says Emma. “I don’t think we would’ve been able to start a family naturally if I hadn’t had that momentous shift with my health and lifestyle.”

Now, with their baby girl due in August – right on the cusp of chicken breeding season – it will pose another challenge, but one which the couple is doing everything they possibly can to be ready.

“We definitely want to have one more (child) if we can,” says Emma. “Our kids will grow up riding horses, getting their hands dirty in the veggies, helping out with the chooks, and I think that’s a pretty special lifestyle for kids to have these days.

“Being my own boss means I can be home with my kids, which is really special. I can enjoy that time and watch them grow up on our property, learning and growing with them.” 

The journey of farming has thrown up many significant setbacks from flood damage to theft, but supported by their families – particularly Doug who works on the farm with Ryan three days a week – the challenges have only made them more resilient.

“Before all this, I didn’t realise how driven we are,” says Emma. “When we stand back and look at what we’ve achieved, we’re just so proud.”

 

 

This article first appeared in the April 2024 issue of SALIFE magazine.