Thomson River Farms

Thomson River Farms Regenerative market garden. Farm shop open Friday 7.30am - 5pm
(Enter from Rose St, Heyfield)
Also at market: Heyfield, Rosedale, Maffra, Sale.

Message if you'd like to purchase outside of hours listed. Cash & card welcome Thomson River Farms is a regenerative market garden and orchard growing organic vegetables and fruit for our local community. Visit our farm shop at Heyfield in the heart of Gippsland, Victoria, to buy fresh-picked, nutrient-rich food grown the regenerative way, without harmful pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. You

can also find us at many local markets. And our produce is stocked at local supermarkets and supplied to several local cafes and fine-dining restaurants. Founded by Claire and Lachlan McInnes, we’re transforming a former dairy property on the Thomson River into a community-connected farm that restores land and builds local food resilience. Long-term, we plan to host workshops on permaculture, organic food-growing, composting, food processing and more. We hope to meet you soon.

This week only, the farmstore will be opening at 11am. Come along and check out the farm fresh produce!!
13/08/2026

This week only, the farmstore will be opening at 11am. Come along and check out the farm fresh produce!!

Farm store is open Friday 7th August. We’ve got carrots, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, kale, silver beet, pak Choi, Coria...
06/08/2026

Farm store is open Friday 7th August. We’ve got carrots, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, kale, silver beet, pak Choi, Coriander and dill, oranges, tangelos and lemonade lemons. And for those wanting to increase their green veg intake - Brussels sprout leaves!!
All freshly picked and super delicious 😋

We've been busy over winter preparing for the upcoming growing season. Our online store is being trialed, and we hope t...
04/08/2026

We've been busy over winter preparing for the upcoming growing season. Our online store is being trialed, and we hope to extend this to a wider group in September - we'll grow the online customer base as the produce levels grow. Our website if underdevelopment too! Now we just have to sort out the pesky packaging problem!!!
Crop planning has taken a lot of effort, working out what to grow, in which beds, what varieties, making it all fit. We've added some of the suggestions from you too.
The bulk of our effort is in preparing more beds for the summer crops - it's hard work even with the hand tractor helping, but we've developed most of them slowly, growing green manure crops that provide nutrients back into the soil for the microbes.
Our compost bays are finished, now we just have to keep them turning!!
Our recent engagement with the bigger food industry players has reinforced for us the importance of what small farms are doing, growing nutrient rich, flavourful food, with minimal food miles and processing. Whether it meets some arbitrary specification for sale - well, I don't care...and I'll save my rant for another post!!
We are really excited about the next season and expanding the farm further - hopefully you are too!!

It’s been a big week and we sold week at the Heyfield market. Unfortunately it means we won’t be at the Rotary Club of M...
01/08/2026

It’s been a big week and we sold week at the Heyfield market. Unfortunately it means we won’t be at the Rotary Club of Maffra Community Market. Sorry but we’ll be back in September.

All ready at the Heyfield Community Market, we have a selection of farm fresh vegetables. Probably last chance to buy on...
31/07/2026

All ready at the Heyfield Community Market, we have a selection of farm fresh vegetables. Probably last chance to buy one of our pumpkins, only 2 Kent pumpkins remaining!!
Stop by and say 👋🏻

Let’s talk about packaging. As I said in an earlier post, I hate unnecessary packaging, the waste of resources and energ...
27/07/2026

Let’s talk about packaging. As I said in an earlier post, I hate unnecessary packaging, the waste of resources and energy. I read that 70x the energy goes into the supply chain of any product you buy - think about the the layers of packaging, label, ink, machinery, transport that go into that container we throw away once the food is removed.
But, as we move into spring and supplying leafy greens we need to put them into something. We’ve just been to a huge food exhibition in Melbourne, my primary goal was to look at packaging options in the food industry and unfortunately I came away with nothing. That in itself says something, we saw lots of options for plastic wrapping, a couple of compostable containers and recyclable plastic tubs, but nothing I believe won’t just contribute to landfill.
So what are the options? Do we grow lettuce plants so you harvest your own greens instead, or encourage BYO containers to select your leafy greens at the farm store (what if you forget it??), use containers when we do delivery for online store (probably need container deposit).
I don’t live a zero waste life but I do try to consider where I can reduce my packaging and I don’t want our business to increase unnecessary packaging.
If you’ve seen good ideas for produce packaging please let me know.
♻️

Farm store is Closed - we sold out, more produce will be available next week. Thanks to everyone who came out today🥰It’s...
23/07/2026

Farm store is Closed - we sold out, more produce will be available next week. Thanks to everyone who came out today🥰

It’s amazing how the cooler weather slows the growth down, but next week there will definitely be more ready.

This week I’m attending the Food Safety Conference in Sydney which included field trip to a juice processing company and...
20/07/2026

This week I’m attending the Food Safety Conference in Sydney which included field trip to a juice processing company and a baby cucumber farm. Fair to say that the scale of our food production system in Australia is huge, so safety protocols are very important. There’s valuable learning for us as we start on the leafy greens (maybe some rocket soon if the frost hasn’t killed it!!)
What it also highlighted is the different value streams assigned whether it meets supermarket spec or not…and dare I say it, is that driven by consumers believing all baby cucumbers are straight and 10cm long!! I can assure you they are not!! And as a farmer there is no difference in the cost to produce the different value streams. Simply, as a small scale farmer starting out we can’t afford to be wasting produce because it doesn’t look a certain way - so when you see our produce and are maybe a bit surprised by its shape, know that it’s been grown with care and consideration of the soil and the consumer, no nasties have been sprayed, all done by the two of us.

Farm store is open today - Friday, until 5pm. We’ve got carrots, broccoli, pumpkins, beets, kale, silver beet/chard, pak...
17/07/2026

Farm store is open today - Friday, until 5pm. We’ve got carrots, broccoli, pumpkins, beets, kale, silver beet/chard, pak Choi, herbs, celery, oranges, tangelos and lemonade lemons, all fresh from the farm.
If you’re interested in what we’re growing this summer, we’ve got the crop plan in the farm store too.
It’s a beautiful day to come out and visit if you have been here before.
Cash and card available.

13/07/2026

Here’s a snap shot of the past year, establishing Thomson River Farms. It’s been quite the he journey, certainly a change from our previous careers, a@lot of hard work learning about market gardening, marketing and so much more. It brings the greatest joy, eating our food and hearing of that others have enjoyed it too. Bring on the next season!!

Address

13-23 Commercial Road
Heyfield, VIC
3858

Opening Hours

Tuesday 3pm - 6pm
Friday 3pm - 6pm

Website

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