Email 'Seriously, how hard could it be to be a farmer?': Todd and Jeff's not-so-perfect tree change Todd Alexander and his partner Jeff had good jobs, a nice apartment and comfortable inner-city lives. But they weren't satisfied.
So they traded it all in to move to a 40-hectare property in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, to work the land and become the next Maggie Beer.
That was the dream. In reality, the two self-described "urban yuppies" could barely grow a pot of herbs.
"In the beginning people were like: 'You two Sydneysiders have never done anything like this and you have no idea what you're getting yourselves in for,'" Todd says.
"But then we started proving them wrong."
Audio: Listen to Todd Alexander talk about ditching inner city Sydney for life in the country. (Life Matters)
'How hard could it be?'
When Todd and Jeff first moved to their property, they had one pair of garden shears and "an Aldi electric lawnmower to mow the 100 acres".
"To say we were ill-equipped might be under-baking it slightly," says Todd, who has written about the experience in Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and A Pig Called Helga.
They admit they had no idea what they'd undertaken.
Back in Sydney Jeff had printed up a map of the property, which he and Todd laid over their city map.
"We walked it out one night and it was about 45 minutes into the walk and I said, 'You've clearly got the scale wrong, as if anybody owns this much land'," Todd says.
"But that's exactly what we'd [bought]."
Nevertheless, upon arrival, they were self-assured.
Their property had 12.5 kilometres of established grapevines and 1,000 olive trees.
Then came the dead kangaroo in the dam, six weeks into their new life.
The animal carcass sat in the same body of water that sprays their crops and feeds their veggie patch.
They had no idea what to do with a dead roo and searched fruitlessly for answers before accepting they'd have to fish it out.
They bought a blow-up boat from the local hardware store, rowed out to the middle of the dam and, gloveless and rope-less, hauled it back to the land.
Todd recalls rotting flesh dripping through Jeff's fingers.
"[There was] a bit of kangaroo flesh stuck to his cheek and I am dry heaving and he's yelling at me," he remembers.
"It took us probably a good 40 minutes to row that massive thing out of the dam, and as we brought it to the edge I just bolted because the smell was so bad.
"I just thought, yep, welcome to the farm. This is what our life is going to be like."
Proving themselves
When Todd and Jeff first moved to the property, they copped a lot of laughter from visiting tradies and neighbouring farmers.
That's probably not entirely unreasonable.
Todd admits they were so out of their depth they found themselves googling "are red-bellied black snakes dangerous?" and getting around in Crocs and knee-high white socks.
But then they started making some sensible decisions and getting things right.
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