Nick and Carina Chambers need look no further than their farm for the ingredients for hosting a long table lunch.
Like many life-changing decisions, the genesis was swift, but executing it took much longer. Nick Chambers and his wife, Carina, were returning from a wedding with Carina’s aunt and uncle, Debbie and James Johnson, when it was decided that they should buy Glen Antrim, their farm near Newbridge in the NSW Central West.
“We were in the back of a taxi talking about how Debbie and James wanted to retire,” Carina recalls. “For Nick, buying Glen Antrim meant realising his dream of having his own farm, so the decision was obvious. Fortunately, they agreed to a long settlement because we’d just moved to Tamworth for Nick’s work as head of grower services for GrainCorp, so it was four years until we could actually take over.”
Carina, who is an artist and the founder and coowner of Long Lunch Linen — a business that imports exquisite French table linen — grew up on a farm at Spring Ridge on the Liverpool Plains. Nick came from
Hobart, where his dad was a lawyer, though his mother came from a farm in Tasmania’s north, so he had lots of fond memories of time spent with cousins on the farm. Nick and Carina met while they were at university in Sydney — she was studying communications, design and international studies and he was studying animal science. They pursued their careers in the city until shortly after the birth of daughter Airlie, who is now seven, when they moved to Tamworth. Georgia, who is now five,
was born in Tamworth.
In 2022, they finally made the move to Glen Antrim, a 1000-acre (404-hectare) farm, where they breed Black Angus cattle, based on 200 breeding cows, with bloodlines from both Carina’s parents’ and her aunt and uncle’s herds. They sow oats to graze their cattle on and cut it to make hay at the end of summer. “We feed it to our breeders in the winter after calving when they need extra energy to keep warm and nurse their young,” Carina explains.
As well, the Chambers have 600 Correggiola olive trees and two truffle orchards planted to 800 French and English oaks and hazelnuts. “The truffles and olives were planted by Debbie and James about 25 years ago,” Carina explains. “They were among the first to plant truffles on the mainland as the initial Australian forests were in Tasmania. It was only in the ’70s that the French had figured out a way of taking the wild spores to inoculate the trees to grow them.”
Learning from James and professional truffle hunters, the Chambers have trained their English Springer Spaniel, Butter, to find the truffles in the ground. “You take the dog through the grove and it signifies when it can smell the truffle,” Carina explains. “Butter is still learning but she wags her tail madly. In France, they use pigs. We initially mark the trees, then go back and dig the truffles out as gently as possible to avoid scratching the exterior.”
Diversification both on and off farm is critical for the Chambers’ operations. “Between droughts, the pandemic, rising interest rates, economic downturns and time away from work to raise our girls, we find that flexibility and diversity are key elements that help us stay afloat,” Carina says. “Nick still works full time for GrainCorp and I work four days a week between my painting and Long Lunch Linen. Georgia is still at home on Mondays. We spend most weekends on the farm and in the evenings during summer when the light is good. Or before work in the winter when we need to feed cattle… I must admit, not my favourite occupation. Fortunately, we have Aldi ski gear for the frosty mornings. Thankfully, we also have the help of a very experienced friend one day a week. We’d be lost without him.” While Nick and Carina rarely take breaks for relaxing, they do relish time spent with family and friends. In the rare breaks between the many demands on their time, they love nothing better than a long table lunch in the olive grove, serving shared platters of their own produce.
“Long term, we hope to one day have enough time to really enjoy it all,” Carina says. “Our farm isn’t big enough to sustain a family so it will always need to be supplemented by another income stream. Nick and I often dream about the future where he can read a newspaper, enjoy a cuppa (while it’s still hot) and farm, while I can potter about the garden and paint. In reality, it mightn’t be until retirement for that to happen.”
