Let us introduce ourselves. Our names are Barbara and Keng Tan.

We retired to our farm ‘Inilah’ – ‘This is It’ in bahasa Malay – and are staying active growing Christmas Trees and running our cottage, ‘Christmas Tree Cottage’, as a farrmstay.

We are striving to attain a sustainable retirement lifestyle. We are installing solar panels on the cottage to offset the power demand from the farmstay, without jeopardising your comfort. We will continue to add solar panels to our other farm buildings (or maybe add wind turbines if feasible) until we are able to generate enough of our own ‘green’ power to at least meet the total power needs of the farm.

Of our 12 hectares (31 acres) we grow Christmas Trees on about half the area. Our trees are grown on a sustainable basis. The trees we harvest are replaced and the fast growing young trees absorb the carbon dioxide released by the harvested trees. In this way we are happy to say our Christmas Tree business is carbon neutral.

We are keeping the other half of ‘Inilah’ for the native flora and fauna of the area. We have stocked the dams with native fish and we delight in every sighting of native animals and birds. We are planting natives and are identifying more and more native flora species growing up naturally as the years pass since we excluded grazing animals from the property when we bought it.

We love our ‘little piece of heaven’ and want to share its peace and natural beauty with you after you’ve had a hard day’s touristing in Canberra or around the area.