Housing a farm stay, dahlia farm and an award-winning gourmet produce business, RICK BAYNE discovered an oasis among the green paddocks in Victoria’s north.
Some people complain about having to add GST to their invoices. Jamie and Gareth Adams take it as a badge of honour.
Jamie and Gareth’s gourmet produce, farm stay and regenerative dahlia flower farm business, The Olde Creamery, has been evolving over the past eight years on their three-acre block at Numurkah in northern Victoria.
Over the past 12 months, three milestone achievements have confirmed they’re heading in the right direction.
Last year, The Olde Creamery won the 2024 excellence in horticulture award from Moira Shire and was nominated as business of the year. This year they won silver for their pickled quince at the 2025 Melbourne Royal Australian Food Awards and for the first time they have generated enough income to start paying GST.
Diversity, mixed with dedication and passion, is driving the success.
“The farm has grown organically the way it wants to grow and we just follow it along,” Jamie said.
“In a small business, you need to diversify and have different offerings and we have our fingers in a few different pies.”
They bought the land in 2016 and the Olde Creamery gets its name from the farm’s history as a dairy enterprise.
“We’re essentially the house and old dairy of what was 100 acres of a soldier settlement property,” Jamie said.
While the surrounding land is used for broader farming pursuits, Jamie and Gareth have built their own little oasis.
“The original family farmed here for more than 50 years and still live locally,” Jamie said.
“They love what we’ve done with the place and how it’s developed into what it is today.”
The old dairy is now the office and propagation area.
Jamie and Gareth established The Olde Creamery in 2016, after purchasing their home and working together to create their own patch of paradise.
Gareth grew up on beef cattle farms and got his love of gardening from his grandmother. Jamie came to Australia from west Yorkshire in England when he was 18. His gardening background also came from his grandmother.
“My nan was a school teacher and on weekends we went to garden centres and had tea and scones,” he said.
Jamie’s work background is in administration in the corrections field and Gareth was a commercial cook-chef, mostly in aged care and hospitals, although he has changed careers to balance time on the farm and now milks cows and fixes fences for a neighbour.
The idea of turning their little block into a commercial enterprise started with an Airbnb as a bit of a joke.
“There’s not much around where we are but people came and it was the start of the business,” Jamie said.
The condiments part of the business started through Gareth’s love of cooking and the nursery side started with Jamie’s “obsession with dahlias” and Gareth’s “ability to be good at horticulture”.
“We’ve always had well-maintained gardens because that’s Gareth’s passion,” Jamie said.
“It’s basically green paddocks around us and we’ve turned this into an oasis of a garden.”
Both Jamie and Gareth had been growing dahlias for about 15 years without taking it too seriously. That changed about five years ago and they have gone from about 100 different varieties to nearly 500, growing several thousand plants a year.
They also like to honour the heritage of the flower, paying royalties to Australian dahlia breeders for every tuber or cutting they sell.
“All the varieties that we love have been predominantly bred by people who are now retired or passed on,” Jamie said.
“They put a lot of time and effort into breeding these plants and we’re making money off them and we wanted to share that and honour their work.”
If a breeder cannot be located, they donate the royalty to a newly created dahlia research fund through the Dahlia Society of Australia.
“They’re the only flower I can think of that goes back so many generations,” Jamie said.
Their annual tuber sale is a major source of income and the resurgence of popularity of dahlias has prompted the sale of live plants, one of the first farms of their scale to go down that path.
By aiming to make a quality product that stands the test of time and diversifying the business, Jamie and Gareth are slowly starting to open to the public.
“At the moment we just do open days throughout the year when we’ve got lots of flowers, but we’d like to open more,” Jamie said.
“We both have to work off-farm part-time to cover the overheads.
“We’ve built the business over eight years as a side hustle, going to markets on a Sunday morning, but now we have to pay GST. We grumble about it, but it’s a milestone for us.
“We’ve built something from the ground up and we hope to get to the point that we can come home a bit more. Our ultimate goal is to be full-time generating income from the farm.”
They now have 13 condiments in the range and continue trialling other options and are looking to create more floral centrepieces for events and host more events and weddings.
“Shepparton is the fruit bowl of Australia, so we created a fruit bowl with a flower arrangement in the middle and the council loved it,” Jamie said.
“We’ve done several events with the council and associated stakeholders since July.”
The 2025 Melbourne Royal Australian Food Award was the first state-wide recognition for the business.
“The pickled quince was made from old recipes and experimenting,” Jamie said.
“It was borne out of my love of gin and Gareth’s love of doing something a bit different. It’s a different twist on what everyone thinks of quince, usually being jelly or paste.
“It’s a modern twist but that’s what food is about these days — entering into new markets and getting people to try new things.”
The award recognition is the latest boost to their blooming enterprise.
“It’s quite humbling,” Jamie said.
“We’re just two farm boys in the middle of the country. We don’t have a factory or anything, just a registered farm kitchen in our home, but it shows what we can offer with a bit of dedication and passion.”