Last week, we were proud to host a group of 25 students with their Professor from Murdoch Uni’s School of Sustainability, organised through Denmark’s Centre for Sustainable Living. The main gist of the Moombaki part of the tour was to look at resilient communities and ecological entrepreneurs (who us? I laughed). But when we look back at our history over the last 15 years, we’ve fenced off the river from grazing stock; planted thousands of trees (with a complement of understory plants); rehabilitating the habitat of the local fauna (and we were reminded that we used pigs to dig up and fertilise what was to be the heritage apple orchard); and then put in a vineyard with not much money and lots of hard work, with a vision of being ecologically sustainable!

Well, we did start to feel that we had achieved quite a bit, even though at times it felt like we weren’t getting anywhere (except for a too close relationship with the bank!) We are glad to see though, that this is all coming around, and if you do stick to what you believe in, and do it ethically, and just hang in there, well you might just get success. And then there’s our supportive mailing list customers, buying our wines, and giving us great feedback – this is what makes the small business vineyard-model work! And the wine awards are just a bonus!