By Angie Hilton
A 39-year-old father of two and now step father of three, Hayden Findlay is a passionate man of the land.
Owner of Ravens Creek farm, Hayden has nailed the niche market of farming free range pigs along with free range eggs.
Having grown up on Ravens Creek farm with his mum, dad and two sisters, Hayden now shares the 90 acre property with his mum and dad and has transformed the farm into the only true free range pig farm in the region.
After a tough marriage breakdown in 2018, single dad Hayden was running the farm on his own whilst co-parenting his beautiful daughters Pip and Lou. He certainly wasn’t looking for love – until he laid eyes on his now wife and singing sensation Chelsea Gibb while she was performing NYE at the Piano Bar.
Fast forward three years and they are now married. They’ve blended their families, built a new home and Chelsea has traded in her microphone for RM Williams.
You could say they’re as happy as pigs in…a free range farm.
What’s a typical day look like on the farm?
Well every day from around 7am, Chels is out collecting the eggs we have from 1800 birds in two trailers and feeding her goats (she’s been making some amazing goat soaps) and l head out to start feeding pigs and our new calves.
We then both come in and get the kids sorted for school, lunches, morning routine.
Then we come back for a second collection which makes it around 1500 to 1600 eggs for the day that we then take down to the egg packing room for grading, packing, and cleaning.
We have to move the trailers every week or every fortnight depending on weather conditions
and ground just to keep them rotating all the time.
When it comes to the pigs, we’re feeding them, checking their waters, checking electric fences. Like the chooks, everything on the pig side of things is portable and gets rotated onto fresh ground so that they’re healthy and also the land gets that recovery period to grow some more grass.
We start the feeding of the pigs with the sows (mother pigs) that have come in to give birth in the farrowing area. They’ve got an individual paddock and hut to give birth for the first two or three weeks. So we’ll go through, feed them all and check their waters and see if there’ve been any new births that we need to record.
For example, there were 11 born this morning and 10 yesterday.
The mum will then stay with her babies and will be weaned at a later age, so they stay with their babies for over eight weeks. The pigs are then teenagers by then, and eight litters will move into another area where they hang out together, which we call the grower group until they’re fully grown adults.
Our pigs are fully outdoors and free range, so they are slower growing because they’re not just sitting in a shed and basically getting force fed. They grow as nature intends, which is more work, but that also gives them a great quality of life and creates a better product in terms of eating quality and flavour. Our pigs have one bad day and apart from that, they spend their life happy and free outside as it should be.
So would you say a happier pig makes for tastier meat?
Absolutely! The flavour of the meat is miles apart from anything that’s just grown in a shed. Commonly bought pork comes from pigs where the mums never or barely see outside and the piglets are taken off mum at two or three weeks of age. They are then put into either sheds 10 pigs in a pen the size of a footprint at two cars side by side, so you will never get the same healthy meat as you do from a true free-range farm.
Ours have grown up in a very different way and I suppose this allows them to express their natural behaviours. They’re really healthy animals that don’t need to be given growth hormones or antibiotics. Sunlight’s a big key to a healthy environment for any animal. Our pork is extremely succulent, not dry pork like you buy at the store.
The breeds that we run are Berkshires and Durocs which are like the Wagyu of the pork world. They have that marbling quality. The bacon, ham, sausages – any of the products you make, the flavour of it will carry through.
What’s the history of your time at Ravens Creek and did you always want to be a farmer?
We moved here as a family when I was in year nine and I was always passionate about farming. So we started running some cows and producing calves and doing that (pretty simply) each year. Then I went off to uni to study an ag business course which got me into more corporate ag. I found that sitting in an office and driving to Melbourne every day wasn’t really for me.
This sent me on a journey of doing a whole lot of research on small-scale family farms that have stacked enterprises. So they don’t just run cows, they’ve got egg-laying hens, sheep, cows, pigs – multiple things.
Inspired by this, I gave up the corporate world and started redeveloping this farm in its layout – planting 8000 trees that are both productive, but also give shelter and habitat to create a really healthy farming environment that’s also aesthetically pleasing to work in. Then came the pigs, the chooks, bees and our upcoming skin care range ‘Farm Balm’.
Let’s talk about family life. You’ve certainly had a lot of change in the last few years. You went through a tough separation in 2018. You then had to run the farm on your own while co-parenting your beautiful girls for two years. And in 2020 you laid eyes on your future wife for the first time. Tell me about that moment.
A friend dragged me out New Year’s Eve to the Piano Bar on a bit of a matchmaking adventure.
I walked into Piano Bar (bear in mind I never really went out). I walked in the door and heard the most incredibly stunning voice singing the song Shallow. I remember thinking ‘how did they get a singer this good to Geelong?’ Then I saw her and I was equally gobsmacked. How could she sing like that and look equally as stunning? I had a few nervous words to her that night backed by Dutch courage and what I discovered was that her personality was equally as incredible as her looks and voice.
What happened from there?
Well over the coming weeks, months, I discovered Chels is one of the most caring, loving, talented individuals I’ve met. And most importantly she is an incredible mother.
With kids on both sides, we took our time dating and getting to know each other before connecting with the kids. We wanted to be really respectful of the children and where they were all at individually and as a family unit on both sides.
We eventually told the kids that we were seeing each other and reassured them that it wouldn’t be a big change happening quickly. We were not going to just jump in and tell them ‘we’re doing this and doing that’.
Ari was 15 at the time and Elliot 13 – older children who were obviously coming into
young adulthood which was all new to me. So I’d gone from a two year old and six year old to having teenagers.
How would you say Chelsea’s fitted into farm life? It’s a huge change from her stage life.
She grew up with two older brothers and a dad who’s just a mad fisherman and a hunter.
Chels, growing up, was the tomboy who always wanted to get out and be one of the boys more so than doing the girly things. Her dad says she was out shooting and fishing with the boys whenever she got the chance, so I think she probably had an urge anyway, to connect with the land and growing things and she really loves animals.
So she’s really been like a duck to water. She enjoys the freedom of being able to get out there, clear her head and step away from other stresses of life. That feeling that you can step out into the fresh air, get a job done and feel like you’ve achieved something, refreshed and renewed.
Although it’s stressful at times and the job list doesn’t get any shorter, but she loves it. Obviously the last couple of years she hasn’t been able to perform or sing as much as she’d like to, but hopefully that starts to come back when it’s meant to.
When you run a farm, you work from home and you’re always here, it can sometimes be tiring as anyone who runs a farm will know. But if we have to work on a Sunday, we then take ourselves out for lunch as a bit of a reward. So then it’s not all just work, work, work.
But she loves it. I know if I was sick or went away, she could just step in and jump on the tractor and be off feeding pigs and doing all those sorts of things and would be well across it.
What’s life like for the kids on the farm?
The beauty of being on land is that you have a natural playground at your doorstep. We really encourage getting away from screens and getting out to get hands on with nature, build forts etc. We’ve got a vegie patch and they really enjoy planting potatoes and then digging them up. They love picking beans and cucumbers for an after-school snack. They still get a real kick out of collecting the eggs and feeding the pigs. Although the pigs are pretty big, weighing about 65kg, so the young ones still need to be carefully monitored.
We’ve got some baby calves that we’re rearing at the moment, so they really love feeding them. I think It gives them a taste of responsibility from a young age, making sure things are fed, watered, sheltered and locked up so the fox doesn’t eat them.
Getting married again must have been a big decision. Was it important to you both to take that step?
Yeah, it was something important to us both. It was a surprise to Chels that I proposed, though. She thought we were going away to Port Ferry for the weekend, but I’d had a few things planned.
I think it was essential to cementing our life moving forward. We could have lived together and not got married, but I think it’s a statement. It’s showing your commitment to one another.
It’s giving the children stability, too. It’s not just like, ‘oh, so you’re just still dating this guy or this girl’ and you don’t know what’s going to happen next year or are they going to stick around? We were starting a life together, bringing two families together and blending them while also building our house. It was a natural progression, but it was also something we both valued, that we wanted to celebrate and make a commitment that’s going to be lifelong.
Would you say you share the same parenting philosophies?
Yeah we do, and that’s been a breath of fresh air, to meet someone with the same values in terms of parenting, ethics and beliefs. We were very much aligned with everything from organically sourced food we love to cook with, to how we’d like our family home to run and who we raise our kids to be.
Can you tell me a bit about your parents living on the same property and how they parented you? Have you taken on any of that into how you parent your own children?
I had a childhood that was very blessed with loving and caring parents Col and Anne, who did so much for both myself and my sisters Amy and Jane. My mum Anne certainly showed me that love is kindness, thinking of others and how to provide a nurturing home and cook from the heart. She is unbelievably selfless and generous and an inspiration to me. I think there’s definitely elements of how my mum raised me that I’ve taken into the way l now raise our children, but I think you also get to learn things that you would do differently. For example, when l have a conversation with Mum or Dad now (later down the track) and they say things like ‘I wish I’d spent more time when you were younger together just doing simple things instead of
working all the time’…l definitely listen. That one especially is advice I know l should take.
What advice would you have for people around keeping things amicable with an ex-spouse?
I think the big thing is putting the children first. Divorce is not easy for children and you may not always agree on things after you separate, but we both choose to always put the girls first. I also believe it’s so important to speak to the girls in a positive way about my ex-wife, as she’s their mum and they love her. And for our home, creating a nice, warm, loving and safe environment for them is really key.
Trying to give them some peace around the fact that you’re not going anywhere and you love them is paramount. In terms of moving on, I think it’s important for them to know you need to be happy too and that life can move and change and happiness and love can be found again. This means meeting someone and blending a family…having those tough conversations, but being open about them is key.
Any plans for the future of Ravens Creek?
Well, we have a restaurant area with a commercial kitchen that we’d love someone to take over and make a restaurant out of.
We also have a product we’re about to release called Farm Balm, which is something I actually developed to treat my own eczema. Chels is now adding to it as lip balms, perfumes, and salves. It’s all natural, only three ingredients, which are beeswax from our bees, organic olive oil and organic coconut oil. We are really excited about launching this into stores soon.
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Hayden Findlay at a glance:
Three words to describe the children:
Pip 9 – outgoing, resilient and caring.
Lou 5 – independent, caring and loving.
Luka 9 – creative, caring, funny.
Arielle 18 – loving, creative, outgoing.
Elliott 16 – reserved, intelligent, informed.
If you could have three people living or passed over for a pig on the spit, who would you invite?
· Joel Salatin, farmer from the US.
· English celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from the show River Cottage.
· Another English celebrity chef – Rick Stein.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
An espresso martini.
Go-to karaoke song?
Probably Footloose.
Favourite coffee spot in the region?
We like going down to Salty Dog in Torquay, grabbing a coffee and then going for a walk along the beach with the kids and taking the dogs for a swim.
Our Geelong favourites are Neck of the Woods and Box Office.
Do you have a life philosophy you live by?
Choose to be positive. Life will always throw you curve balls and challenges.
I suppose l always choose to be grateful for what we have on a daily basis. For me it’s things like saying to Chelsea how amazing she is, instead of just thinking it.
I think guys can have a tendency to just think about stuff and never say anything. I have
been guilty of that, so I make a daily choice now to remind myself how lucky l am, and tell her that whenever l think it.
If you had a full day to yourself to do whatever you wanted, what would your perfect day look like?
Oh, I think to start by taking Chelsea out for a coffee, then just relax, maybe read. I love escaping to read English Country Living Magazine. So I’d probably sit on the couch in our snug and read that, then go somewhere nice for lunch. Then it would be coming back and sitting down in front of the fire watching Rick Stein, episode after episode. And having a glass or three of French burgundy (he always talks about that).
