My Connection Statement

Through my online and in-person education opportunities I work with city people who want to improve the sustainability of their urban lifestyle, or transition to rural living and create financially successful lifestyle properties.

About Me - My Biography

Hi there! For those of you who don’t speak Gaelic, my name is pronounced KAY-lee :)

I’m the Chief Soil Steward at Apulia Grove, located near Bendigo in central Victoria, where my husband and I run an intensive, stacked enterprise farm of 80 acres. Our main production enterprise is the 2500 olive tree grove, from which we make award winning olive oil. We are also in the process of starting a market garden, fencing the block into smaller paddocks and implementing regenerative agricultural practices. Life is never boring! We provide a custom, small batch olive oil processing service for backyard growers with between 50kg-200kg of olives, which is often too much to pickle, but not enough for the larger processors to be able to turn into oil.

I also work with women through one-on-one coaching, online and in-person training courses to assist them to design and transition sustainably to living their dream rural lifestyle, even if they’ve grown up in an urban environment their whole lives.

My Expertise

    • System Design Thinking as applied to your lifestyle; an extension of Permaculture design and application
    • Whole-farm planning
    • Business planning for small and medium scale agricultural enterprises
    • Cashflow asset building for ongoing income streams
    • Soil regeneration (especially dry land farms with saline soils)
    • Fire behaviour education and Survival Plan design
    • Domestic firewood management (when, where and how to collect in all states and territories of Australia)

Small and medium scale, domestic and commercial enterprises in both food growing, harvesting and storage as well as animal husbandryTime management!

My Passions

~ Fighting climate change through Permaculture design and application to real world scenarios (hint: you don’t just have to be interested in gardening!).~ Collaborating with women to make tangible and sustainable change in their lives and the lives of their family.~ Educating others about topics in my “U for Useful” Skills file so they can live a happy, healthy, simple, sustainable rural life too.

My Interests

~ Growing things, especially soil and seeds/plants

~ Regenerative farming and Permaculture design application

~ Textile arts and crafts – knitting, crochet, spinning yarn, felting, dyeing etc

~ Reading

~ Small business success

How I Can Help Other Members

~ Supply award winning Extra Virgin Olive Oil for domestic use or client gifts

~ Rural lifestyle design for those looking to escape the city:

  1. What to look for when purchasing a rural property;
  2. How to calculate water collection capacity;
  3. Off-grid living (power, water, sewerage, gas, firewood etc);
  4. Should animals feature in your rural lifestyle?
  5. Property setup and management for a sustainable rural lifestyle etc

~ Self sufficiency improvements and sustainable living tips and tricks:

  1. Backyard garden design for food growing;
  2. Chicken keeping;
  3. Successful composting with little to no garden space;
  4. Water collection and savings in an urban environment;
  5. Make Your Own: Homemade soaps, cleaners, lotions, beeswax wraps and other items to reduce plastic use and save money etc

Why I Became a HerBusiness Member

I became a HerBusiness Member to connect fully with other women in business and to demonstrate that small scale, intensive farms are sustainable ethically, environmentally and financially. I want to show others there is a different way for agriculture in Australia, and to help women to find the joy in their own transition to a simpler, rural lifestyle.

My Member to Member Offer(s)

Wholesale sales price for bulk purchases of any olive oil or soap product. Bulk purchases are 10+ units of the same size in one transaction (eg for client gifts).

Free 30 minute online, one-to-one discussion to clarify why and how to make your rural lifestyle transition happen.