Bryant Ussher was seven years old when he first went to school in Kin Kin. The paddocks, the mountains, the slow rhythms of the hinterland, all seeped into him early. Decades later, when he and his wife Susie took over the family’s 400-acre property in 2018, it felt like a homecoming.
The land has been in Bryant’s family since the late ’60s. But the version of Eastwell Farms that exists today – with its new fences, new roads, and a firm commitment to chemical-free farming – is something Bryant and Susie built together from the ground up.
The motivation wasn’t purely philosophical. In 2013, Bryant was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The experience quietly rewired the way he thought about food, land, and health and the connection between it all.
“When we came here to the farm, we just said we’ll do it chemical-free if we can,” Bryant says. “And doing chemical-free in this coastal environment is definitely a really big challenge.”
It’s a challenge they’ve embraced with methodical care. Their 255 Nguni cross cattle – a breed naturally resistant to parasites – are moved twice a day across 37 permanent paddocks in a high-intensity grazing rotation. The cows eat grass their whole lives. Nothing else, nothing artificial.
“We work on trying to make this place 100 percent ground cover 100 percent of the time,” Bryant explains. “That’s one of our mottos. And effectively clean, green beef – because we don’t do anything that is not natural with the animals.”
The result is beef they sell almost entirely direct to the public, bypassing the industrial supply chain to reach the people who’ll actually cook and eat it. A small handful of produce stores in Noosa and Gympie also stock their meat, but the connection between farmer and eater is something Bryant and Susie clearly value. “Environmental health is really everything,” Bryant says quietly. “Absolutely. And that’s not just for the animals.”
The Eastwell Farms Shopfront
Pull up to the Eastwell Farms storefront on their farm and you’re immediately somewhere unhurried. The building was once nothing more than a BBQ shelter, now transformed using recycled timbers salvaged from an old dairy shed on the property. It has the texture and warmth of something built with intention rather than speed.
Inside, it’s less a farm shop and more a small curated world. Local free-range eggs, Noosa Black Garlic, tea from nearby producers, and honey from hives the local bee man keeps on the property sit alongside their beef, tallow skincare, and mushroom extracts. Out back, a bountiful veggie patch and fruit trees are Susie’s pride and joy.
The farm holds three to four open days a year, and is also open by appointment. Both are worth planning around.
Farmer Alex and the Mushrooms
Susie’s son Alexander came to farming by an unlikely route. He studied computer science, spent years restarting other people’s computers, and eventually hit a wall.
“I got really sick of being in an office,” he says. “I wanted to do something a bit more tangible. I didn’t realise, but I really wanted to be out in the sun too.”
That was around five years ago. In 2020, Alexander started cultivating medicinal mushrooms on the property – and hasn’t looked back. The operation now runs out of two 40-foot converted cool rooms beside the meat freezers, completely powered by solar: one for incubation, one for fruiting. He bags his own substrate, steams it, then inoculates it with mushroom spawn. The varieties – oyster, lion’s mane, shiitake, reishi, turkey tail – spend up to three months in incubation, then move to the fruiting room before they’re picked.
It’s painstaking, hands-on work, the kind that doesn’t translate easily into a job description but makes perfect sense once you see it. The mushrooms turn up on the menus of some of the region’s most respected kitchens: Spirit House, Locale, Croc Hunter Lodge, Bandita, and The Kin Kin Hotel, and find their way into the cooking of celebrated chef Matt Golinski.
This year, Farmer Alex is also starring on Farmer Wants a Wife – which might bring a new kind of attention to the quiet paddocks of Kin Kin.
“It’s so rewarding working with people, providing them food, and then seeing the reactions when the food is fulfilling and nourishing,” he says, “as opposed to restarting someone’s computer.”
Eastwell Farms is in Kin Kin, about 45 minutes from Noosa. Open days run three to four times a year; while farm tours and visits outside those times are by appointment. Check their socials for upcoming open day dates.
This is an extract from our Noosa Unhurried guide – download your free copy here.