Why city CEOS crave life on the farm — and how they’re making it work
Instead of buying second homes on the coast, urban professionals are taking on the charms and challenges of hobby farms
4 min
From the Spring issue of Kanebridge Quarterly magazine, on sale now. Order your copy here.
During the week, CEO Nick Keenan is a corporate king, working long hours and juggling the parenting of their three children with his wife Jodie from their East Malvern home in Melbourne. But on the weekend, he swaps tailored suits for jeans and work boots and heads 3.5 hours to his farm in the Victorian Alps. A desire to replicate his childhood growing up on a cattle and wheat farm in central NSW and give his kids—Jackson, 16, Jodi, 14, and Jessie, 11—a taste of great outdoors fuelled the purchase of a block of land near the country alpine town of Myrtleford in 2016. Today, their “hobby farm” features three-bedroom completely off-grid homestead, horses and truffle-producing oak trees. The Keenans have done the bulk of the work themselves in their spare time and during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when their new project also became a sanctuary.
“I wear a suit during the week and I’m a farmer on the weekends,” the CEO of media agency Publicis Groupe says.
“When I need to clear my head, it’s my dirty Hilux ute I jump into, not my latest European cars— the BMWs and Mercedes Benzs— you should see the looks I get from some other CEOs.”
The rise of a new crop of farming families. People making the shift are growing in numbers, with hobby farming a plausible option for those weary of city life and an unexpected way for suburban families to find more time together away from the cities—if only on weekends.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows 66,000 hobby farms in Australia, with more and more city families swapping their nine-to-five for the outdoors, driven by a desire to escape the rat race and show their kids another side of life.
Those who can afford it are discovering that farming comes with its own pros and cons, but financial decisions are key. The living farm fantasy among the well-heeled often means small-scale producers must accept they may never be able to sell their wares at a profit. While a successful hobby farm can become a profitable sideline, it should not be the main source of family income.
“I just really wanted to show the kids a little bit of what dad grew up with,” says Keenan. “My family had 1000 breeders and 28 bulls, so I wanted to replicate that on a minor scale. And then I wanted to put in a windbreak, and I discovered French Holly Oaks that can be inoculated with truffles.”
“We developed this over a year; I had these romantic notions of wandering out from the kitchen and grabbing a truffle to use in cooking. Essentially, it wanted to escape from the city but we didn’t want it to be a money pit either. I think we have nailed the lifestyle balance.”
The Keenans now have 330 truffle trees which, after just three and a half years, are already producing truffle, which they plan to sell on a small scale in the future. Despite the early success of their truffle farm, the Keenans make enough from their media company and not from hobby farming itself to even cover the Airbnb to keep the lights on.
The Keenans have up around 20 percent of their land, the equivalent of about two football fields, given over to a patch of the grazing truffle inoculated oak trees. They’ve planted another 30 around the outside of the house as a windbreak. But the truffle farm is just a sideline for the Keenans who have no desire to become full-time farmers, only to make a bit of money on the side for their personal use.
Bee farming is now Australia’s most popular hobby farm, according to the Department of Agriculture and Forestry. More Australians are finding bees easier and more economical to keep in their backyards than poultry or other small-scale farm animals. In fact, around 80 percent of all beehives in Australia fall into the category of hobbyists, says Mike Allerton of Amateur Beekeepers Australia.
“All sorts of people are attracted to beekeeping—lawyers, academics, students, retirees, dentists—you name it,” says Allerton, who has 10 beehives on three acres in the Blue Mountains.
“There are a lot of backyard beekeepers; some people have just one hive to make enough honey for themselves and give away to family and friends, and some have up to 50.”
Allerton says different councils have different restrictions on beekeeping, particularly if you keep hives in urban or built-up areas, and bees are classified as livestock. And in his area there is a requirement that the relevant Department of Primary Industry is in your yard.
Additionally, beekeeping must abide by the National Bee Biosecurity Code of Practice which dictates things like you cannot feed honey to bees and calling the Department of American Foulbrood, a bacterial disease for bees found in Australia, that can destroy a hive.
Hobby farmers need a few hundred dollars to start with beehive boxes, a smoker, and hive tools, and more ongoing funds to maintain them.
With farming come a few hurdles and hobby farmers who are new to it, as well as keeping up the stringent biosecurity standards and welfare of animals—and of course, as in breaking even. And you do not need agricultural genes or herb school.
“Our farm has been a lot of work, but it’s probably the most rewarding experience we’ve had,” Keenan says. “There’s nothing we love more than seeing the kids outside, swimming, kayaking, and running around the backyard in the fresh air.
“In my opinion, country kids have the greatest gift of all—the great outdoors.”
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At least for people who carry the APOE4 genetic variant, a juicy steak could keep the brain healthy.
3 min
Must even steak be politicised? The American Heart Association recently recommended eating more “plant-based” protein in a move to counter the Health and Human Services Department’s new guidelines calling for more red meat.
Few would argue that eating a Big Mac a day is good for you.
On the other hand, growing evidence, including a study last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that eating more meat—particularly unprocessed red meat—can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s in the quarter or so of people with a particular genetic predisposition.
The APOE4 gene variant is one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer’s.
You inherit one copy of the APOE gene from each parent. The most common variant is APOE3; the least is APOE2.
The latter carries a lower risk of Alzheimer’s, while the former is neutral. A quarter of people carry one copy of the APOE4 variant, and about 2% carry two.
APOE4 is more common among people with Northern European and African ancestry. In Europe the variant increases with latitude, and is present in as many as 27% of people in northern countries versus 4% in southern ones. God smiled on the Italians and Greeks.
For unknown reasons, the APOE4 variant increases the risk of Alzheimer’s far more for women than men.
Women’s risk multiplies roughly fourfold if they have one copy and tenfold if they have two. Men with a single copy show little if any higher risk, while those with two face four times the risk.
What makes APOE4 so pernicious? Scientists don’t know exactly, but the variant is also associated with higher cholesterol levels—even among thin people who eat healthily.
Scientists have found that cholesterol builds up in brain cells of APOE4 carriers, which can disrupt communications between neurons and generate amyloid plaque, an Alzheimer’s hallmark.
The Heart Association’s recommendation to eat less red meat may be sound advice for people with high cholesterol caused by indulgent diets.
But a diet high in red meat may be better for the brains of APOE4 carriers.
In the JAMA study, researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute examined how diet, particularly meat consumption, affects dementia risk among seniors with the different APOE variants.
Higher consumption of meat, especially unprocessed red meat, was associated with significantly lower dementia risk for APOE4 carriers.
APOE4 carriers who consumed the most meat—the equivalent of 4.5 ounces a day—were no more likely to develop dementia than noncarriers. (
The study controlled for other variables that are known to affect Alzheimer’s risk including sex, age, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and education.)
APOE4 carriers who ate the most unprocessed meat were at significantly lower risk of dying over the study’s 15-year period and had lower cholesterol than carriers who ate less. Go figure. Noncarriers, however, didn’tenjoy similar benefits from eating more red meat.
The study’s findings are consistent with two large U.K. studies.
One found that each additional 50 grams of red meat (equivalent to half a hamburger patty) that an APOE4 carrier consumed each day was associated with a 36% reduced risk of dementia.
The other found that older women who carried the APOE4 variant and consumed at least one serving a day of unprocessed red meat had a cognitive advantage over carriers who ate less than half a serving, and that this advantage was of roughly equal magnitude to the cognitive disadvantage observed among APOE4 carriers in general.
In all three studies, eating more red meat appeared to negate the increased genetic risk of APOE4.
Perhaps one reason men with the variant are at lower Alzheimer’s risk than women is that men eat more red meat.
These findings might cause chagrin to women who rag their husbands about ordering the rib-eye instead of the heart-healthy salmon.
But remember, the cognitive benefits of eating more red meat appear isolated to APOE4 carriers.
Nutrition is complicated, and categorical recommendations—other than perhaps to avoid nutritionally devoid foods—would best be avoided by governments and health bodies.
Readers can order an at-home test from any number of companies to screen for the APOE4 variant.
The Swedish researchers hypothesize that APOE4 carriers may be evolutionarily adapted to carnivorous diets, since the variant is believed to have emerged between one million and six million years ago during a “hypercarnivorous” period in human history.
The other two APOE variants originated more recently, during eras when humans ate more plants.
APOE4 carriers may absorb more nutrients from meat than plants, the researchers surmise. Vitamin B12—low levels have been associated with cognitive decline—isn’t naturally present in plant-based foods but is abundant in red meat.
Foods high in phytates (such as grains and beans) can interfere with absorption of zinc and iron (also high in red meat), which naturally declines with age. So maybe don’t chuck your steak yet.
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