t’s been 20 years since Penny and Graeme Hart first embarked on their
rural adventure. It started as a search for a weekender for their family,
including their two (now adult) daughters, Madelaine and Rachael
— somewhere with enough space for Rachael’s pony and enough left over
to support a boutique enterprise or two. When it came to fruition it was
in a place that brought Graeme back to his family roots.
Now known as Hart’s Farm, 10 fertile hectares lie along Manton’s Creek at
Shoreham, which overlooks Western Port Bay at the southern end of the Mornington
Peninsula. “Graeme has ties to Shoreham from quite a few generations ago and his
parents had a beach house here for many years,” says Penny. “And so we loved the idea
of having the combination of the beach and agricultural land here and we wanted
something big enough to have an agricultural enterprise and bring in an income.”
Like many other properties on the peninsula, in days gone by it had been a dairy
farm, but by the time Penny and Graeme bought it, there were beef cattle grazing
on the pastures. At first they followed suit, dabbling with Angus, then Dexter cattle
and spent weekends for the first couple of years removing old pine trees, fencing
the creek and putting in windbreaks. However, four years on they changed tack,
and planted an olive grove. Today Hart’s Farm produces olives and oil from 1300
well-established olive trees, along with heritage apple cider from the orchard
planted in 2010. “We make the cider on-site, in the original dairy, which is now
the production shed where we also brine our olives — our olives go away to be
pressed for oil — and sell our produce in season off the farm,” says Penny.
For Graeme, who is an intensive care specialist in Melbourne, getting out into the
olive grove is a different pace and a relaxing escape from weekday pressures. Meanwhile
Penny — invariably shadowed by Coco their German shorthaired pointer, and Jack
Russell/foxy cross, Harry — it’s cooking the food they produce on the farm that is her
great delight and passion. In the mid 1980s, while they were living in the United States,
she worked in catering, and later back in Australia and living in Sydney, she baked for
local eateries. When they opened a commercial kitchen and bed and breakfast at >
COU NTRY ST Y LE JUNE 2017 37S HORE HAM VIC T OR I A HOME