Farm Tender

Claire Moore tells here Ag story

This article is bought to you by McGuckin Transport and Mazaratto Hay Freight.

Concerned about the challenges facing bee populations across the world, Claire Moore has been studying bee keeping in her spare time for the past twelve years. Claire is on a mission to inspire Australian bee keepers to increase their hive numbers and expand their commercial bee keeping operations while also exporting Australia's healthy and clean bees to the world.

Claire grew up in a very small town near the Great Ocean Road called Bellbrae and attended Geelong College later moving to Melbourne where she completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in political science. When she graduated, she started working in finance and spent twelve years working as an assistant stock broker.

Claire met her partner Paul while volunteering making sandwiches for homeless people in inner city Melbourne. Paul is a horticulturalist and is always in the backyard. Claire purchased her first hive (which she still has) in 2007. Naively, she brought the hive home in the back of a two door hatchback with bees escaping while driving down the Eastern!

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Claire and Paul have always been passionate about sustainability and they converted their backyard into a massive veggie patch with fruit trees, bees and chickens. Their backyard has been featured in newspapers and on television many times as a model of suburban sustainability.

While working full time, Claire went to beekeeping clubs after work to learn more from commercial beekeepers. She would see her work mates eyes glaze over when she spoke about bees and the mailroom politely asked if she could have her queen bees posted "elsewhere" after nearly giving them a heart attack when her hives needed re-queening.

Always fascinated by queen breeding, Claire decided early on she would prefer to be a queen breeder than a beekeeper for honey.

When her first child Hugh was born in 2011 the couple purchased ten acres in Kyneton. Claire wanted to be a full time keeper and Paul was tired of inner city traffic going garden to garden. In 2013-14 they designed and built a sustainable house that was a finalist in the UN World Environment Day Green Build Awards on their ten acres and moved to Kyneton permanently. They've also had two more children, Freya in 2014 and Wren 2016.

Claire and Paul began investigating different regenerative farming practices once the firm Claire was working for closed its doors in Australia and that's when she moved into bees full time. But it's not been all smooth sailing. Claire's Mother died of cancer in mid 2016 and in September 2016 Paul developed epilepsy and had a tough time finding the right medication and spent the next eighteen months getting his seizures under control.

The couple started a pastured egg business and now run 1200 hens (We were lucky enough to be the first farm in Victoria to obtain a low density pastures piloultet permit) and they attend farmers markets nearly every weekend. The business is going fabulously, but the passing of Claire's Mother at 68 has reinforced to Claire that life is short. Chatting in the palliative care ward, Claire's Mother said "I don't have time for cancer, I still have so much to do". That's when Claire decided she had to get going on her beekeeping and queen breeding dreams (I have had them for twelve years!) and to apply for the Rural Woman's Award.

https://www.agrifutures.com.au/ 

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