I had never been to a farm stay, I thought it would be a great place to take the kids... there are some holidays that you really just do for kids right?
Hosanna Farmstay isn't one of those places, It was amazing! Located in Northern New South Wales, under 2 hours drive from Brisbane, I think Hosanna Farmstay may be a little different to some other farmstays around and let me explain why. Not only does it provide an amazing farm experience with a really hands on and interactive experience with the animals, it also provides a full on camping experience if you want it, and it has a lake for swimming!
The animals, the water, then throw in a few camp fires and toasted marshmallows, the result? Jack (my son) and Zoe (my niece) who are both four actually cried on Sunday when we told them our holiday was over and we had to go home. For me this is a first, we go on a lot of holidays but I have never encountered tears upon leaving, disappointment sure, but not tears! Jack went so far as to say that this had been his favourite holiday ever!
So, we went for a visit, my husband and I, our two sons, Jack (age 4) and Max (age 3), my sister and her two daughters, Zoe (age 4) and Sarah (nearly 2). We booked cabins next door to teach other. My sister arrived earlier than us on the Friday and was greeted by the friendly staff at front desk and the manager, Jan. Jan was absolutely fantastic, you couldn’t ask for a nicer host, Jan and all the staff are very willing to accommodate requests and make sure everyone has the best experience possible. Even little things, like providing a tub of sunscreen at reception for anyone to use in case you left yours in your room or tent.
Oh, and for dog lovers, they welcome dogs too! My sister brought her dog (Sheba) and while she was not allowed in the cabin she could sleep on the large deck outside the cabin. Sheba loved it! So, if you have an active and friendly dog bring them along, there are so few places these days to take your fury friends.
Getting there from Brisbane is an easy drive of about 1.5 to 2 hours. If you are traveling in peak hour and wish to miss the highway traffic or like beautiful country drives I recommend the drive though the Currumbin Valley which is a little longer but so pretty, so many beautiful forests, glimpses of lovely valleys and hills, and shady tree covered roads. I love picturesque country side and this area in Northern NSW is really lovely. There are many lovely bush walks around the area also, we didn’t get a chance to try any as we were having too much fun at the farm, but perfect for longer stays.
Hosanna Farmstay is the complete package, a fun, interactive and educational farm experience. The farm has all the usual suspects – cows, pigs, goats, chickens, roosters and miniature horses, and as an added bonus is also home to many rabbits and guinea pigs. My kids especially loved the rabbits and guinea pigs. The enclosure is so child friendly, they can go in there any time (adult supervision required for the young kids to ensure the safety of the animals) and the rabbits and guinea pigs will sit on the their knees, eating food from their hands. You can feed them grass, or buy a big bag of food pellets from reception for $1. The food pellets can be used to feed all the animals and the goats are especially fun. The enclosures for the goats and horses are set up so that they can wander out into the adjoining paddock whenever they like. But never fear if they are not there when you are ready to feed them, just shake the bag of food around in the air and they will see you from afar and come running for their snack. They were so gentle with taking the food from your hand that even my 2 year old niece was feeding them. Same with the miniature horses, I was a little worried as even though the horses appeared gentle they do have strong teeth but my fears were unfounded, none of the animals nibbled fingers, even when the kids failed to hold their hands completely flat.
Obviously the pigs were not for hand feeding however we did feed them over the fence and they grunted their appreciation, I think they miss out a lot as they are a bit stinky! There was a hen and a rooster in the enclosure next to the rabbits. While we were there the hen was working on hatching some eggs and I can tell you those hens really persevere! I didn’t see her move from the eggs the whole weekend.
At various times there will also be little chicks hatched on the farm that go into their special incubator and can be held and petted by the children.
We spent a lot of time down in all the animal enclosures. The kids really enjoyed the feeding and the whole structure is a new purpose built facility which houses all the animals comfortably and is also covered so that when it rained a little during the day on Saturday we still had plenty to keep us entertained without getting wet.
They also have turtles in the reception area! Two tiny and adorable little turtles swimming around in a fish tank. They were rescued off the road one night and have been at Hosanna Farmstay ever since. The staff were lovely enough to show these to us and let us touch them….lucky my children don’t understand yet that some people actually keep turtles as pets as I think I would be hearing a lot of nagging right about now.
And I must not forget to mention “BG”, the resident dog. She is a Great Dane and is currently 4 months old, so gorgeous! She wandered around entertaining the kids with her friendly nature and sloppy kisses.
At 8am every day they bring the cows in from the adjoining paddock to be milked. We found the mornings could be a little chilly as the farm stay is nestled in a picturesque little valley and doesn’t catch the early morning sun. However by 9am the sun was streaming in and all jackets could be discarded. But a tip for you, make sure you take some warm clothes for the mornings, but layers would be good as we didn’t need our warm clothes for long. Another tip for the mums, your kids will get dirty (it is a farm after all) and if this bothers you bring more spare clothes than usual and gumboots would be handy!
Everyone who wants a turn at milking the cow is welcome, my 2 year old niece even had a turn (assisted by her mum of course!)
Alex Reynolds (owner) runs the cow milking demonstration and is very informative throughout. It is a proper milking experience, all by hand, with no machine assistance. Alex gives a full explanation of the milking process starting with the cleaning of the udders at the beginning and finishing with her straining and bottling the milk at the end. She also explains in detail how a cow produces milk. I believe I know a lot about animals (nature and animals really are my thing!) however I was a little surprised by some of the basic knowledge I had never even thought about! Once the cows are milked, you can even try the warm milk... straight from the cow.
Zoe my 4 year old niece really enjoyed milking the cows, and she had more than one go. My boys were a little more reluctant to actually do the milking, however really enjoyed watching how it was done, they insisted that we come back and watch it again the next morning.
A little tip, the milking on Saturday morning was more crowded than on Sunday. However, having said that, the extra people on Saturday were not an issue as all the other animals are around, so while you're waiting have a chat to the pigs and feed the goats, horses, rabbits and guinea pigs.
If you want the complete farm package a farm tour is not to be missed. The tour is a comprehensive and educational tour of the farm, but more importantly, so much fun!
Our boys could not contain their glee when they saw the vehicle we would be touring in, being boys they have a love of all vehicles and seeing the open “safari type” vehicle we were to ride in had them besides themselves with excitement.
I have rarely seen Max laughing so much as when our guide Alex started the tour and our bumpy journey began. We were told that we should “hang on”... that was good advice, as we proceeded to bump our way over the dirt tracks and up and down grassy hills in the paddocks. For my kids, the destination was not important, the ride was entertainment enough!
Our guide was Alex and she really knows her stuff! The whole tour was fantastic for kids, even young ones like mine, as Alex posed so many questions and gave so much information in a way that really had the kids listening and interacting.
Jack is still repeating Alex’s stories to me weeks later, this really proved to me that he was listening and taking it all in.
After our initial hilarious and bumpy ride our first stop was the chicken coop. There is a hen and rooster that you can visit with all the other animals at the farmstay, however this is the proper chicken coop with about 20 chickens and several roosters.
We started off with hand feeding pellets to the chickens which the kids really enjoyed, I find hand feeding is always a winner.
Then we gave the chickens a whole bag of other types of scrap food and the kids received a lesson in just how varied the diet of a chicken can be.
We then all held the chickens and Alex “caught” a rooster and showed us the differences between roosters and chickens, culminating in having the rooster sit on a volunteer’s head! It was amazing, once the rooster was settled he sat on that guy’s head for about 10 minutes, even while he walked around the chicken coop.
Before we left the chicken coop we collected the eggs. This was one of our kids favourite activities, although they had to summon their courage to reach under the chickens to take the eggs!
Alas, one egg was broken, lesson learned, maybe don't let 2 year olds collect chicken eggs.
After the chicken coop was a visit to the farm gardens where we played a form of “guess the herbs” from Alex’s clues and their scent. We also identified many fruit and vegetable plants, learnt about the bees in the bee hive and tasted the ripe passion fruit from the vine.
On our way out from the gardens we picked up a bale of hay for our next stop – feeding the miniature horses and cows in the back paddocks.
To get to the back paddocks we had another laughter filled bumpy ride, and were greeted with the horses ready to be hand fed their hay. These were different miniature horses to the ones kept close to the farmstay. The female horse was looking quite round of tummy and Alex said they were hoping for a new foal. Who knows, maybe next time we visit there may be a baby miniature horse to delight us?
We then went for a little drive to look at some of the landscape, trees, etc where Alex gave some very interesting information on the history and ecology of the area and how it came to be farm land. Where I seem to have failed in the past to explain to my children about the importance of trees in our ecology, Alex somehow succeeded! Maybe I needed to be in a paddock like Alex was when I tried to explain it.
Jack is very serious now about how all the trees were chopped down long ago by naughty people, how we need to control the “bad” trees that have grown in their place, and how trees make oxygen and therefore we should never chop them down again. Pretty serious topics for a four year old and while he obviously missed a lot of the finer points he picked up the gist and is so cute when he explains it all to me in a very serious voice.
The final part of the tour is hand feeing the cows and then another joy filled bumpy ride back to the farmstay. So the farm tour was thoroughly enjoyed by all and was a really educational experience, without us really even noticing it.
Well what can I say about the Lake?......so much fun!! Well before I get to the fun, the cabins all look out over the Lake and it's just so pretty.
The whole countryside is so picturesque and scenic, and the Lake with its lily pads was such a peaceful vista to look out upon.
However, I digress, I was talking about the fun. We all went in the Lake and enjoyed it in different ways. My sister and my husband made use of the kayaks first with the two littler kids. There were lots of kayaks to go around, some just for one person and some for two people. Life jackets are provided by the farm for kayaking (you just need to leave a refundable deposit). I stayed with the older kids and we decided to make use of the tyre tubes, they were nice and smooth too, not old yucky ones (which is important to me).
The kids all plucked up the courage to jump off the lower diving board which really surprised me as it was still quite a jump, about 1.5 metres from the water which really is higher than it sounds once you are standing on it.
Jack wanted to go up to the top diving board and have a go on that too, however we felt that was a little ambitious for a four year old. Are we over-protective, fun police?? Not sure, but a four year old jumping from a three metre diving board didn’t seem like the best idea to us! We had seen loads of older kids on it earlier though and they seemed to be having a ball. I would think it would be suited to about the seven and over age group.
Jack is a water baby and by wearing a life jacket he was able to swim all over the Lake by himself, and I could easily keep him in view. Life jackets are not provided for swiming though (they are for kayaking use) so if you want to use them for younger kids I suggest you bring them from home.
There is also a pontoon that you can use if you have really little kids. It has a net in the water so that you can sit the kids in it like a wading pool and they can enjoy the shallow water. Also, off the Lake is a wood fired sauna, it looked lovely and clean. We didn’t actually fire it up as the weather was already fairly hot and we felt more like cooling down. However, I can imagine on a cooler day a refreshing dip in the Lake followed by a nice hot sauna would go down a treat!
Both nights we had a camp fire which the kids absolutely loved. As it's rare to be able to enjoy a camp fire these days, the kids relish the novelty of the whole experience. And of course, what camp fire would be complete without marshmallows? Obviously the whole experience is enhanced a hundred fold by the prospect of putting marshmallows on a stick and cooking them on a fire!
On the Friday night when we arrived we basically just put our stuff in our cabin and went straight to have a camp fire. I recommend taking some little torches for the kids as it was very dark and the kids had great fun playing their own made up game of “monsters” running around with their torches after they had had their fill of marshmallows. It was so lovely to also be able to show the kids the stars. When you get to a place like Hosanna where there is little lighting to ruin the atmosphere, the stars are so much brighter and vibrant that the kids had a few moments of awe (before the game of “monsters” started up again at full pelt).
Our second campfire on the Saturday night was hosted by Jenny who had made up a batch of damper and set up everything else needed for a delicious damper tasting experience. Jenny showed us how to correctly put the damper on the sticks and the best place to put it in the camp fire to cook it evenly and not burn it. Now, I have had damper several times in my life but not recently (mainly it was at school camps and the like) and I admit I have always found it quite disappointing. So possibly we were doing it wrong, or my taste buds have changed, but this damper was so yummy! It was of course smothered in butter and golden syrup so that was obviously a major factor, but also the fact that we cooked it properly and didn’t make it into a charcoal sausage helped a lot! Jenny also explained the history of damper to the kids who were fascinated with her swagman stories.
So depending on what you want you can either just make your own camp fire to enjoy, or you can have a hosted one where everyone gets to sample some delicious damper. Most of us couldn’t resist sampling it more than once!
As Hosanna Farmstay is mainly a self catering holiday, there is very little in the way of food you can purchase there, just some basics like bread, milk, ice, marshmallows, soft drinks, lollies, torches, toothbrushes, etc. However I say 'mainly self catering' as you can get packages for groups where the staff will cater for you if you don’t want to bring any food yourselves.
Their self catering facilities are phenomenal, the best I have ever seen (and we have done our fair share of camping staying in caravan parks in the past). Firstly, if you are camping you don’t have to bother with eskies at all if you don’t want to. They have a huge cold room with large plastic containers and labels. Everyone can have their own plastic container, label it and fill it with all of their cold food. The fridge is so cold you have none of the usual camping worries of your meat going off if the ice melts or your beer being warm (god forbid!!), etc, etc. It is such a family place I felt there would be no worries at all in leaving my food in the cold room and trusting it would not be touched. We also had a little fridge in our cabin which held all the cold food and drinks we needed for a 2 night stay.
Secondly, I will give some detail of the camp kitchen. Now there is a lot of detail involved so if you can’t be bothered reading it just take my word for it, the kitchen area is huge and there is everything you could possible need in a kitchen.
The kitchens are set up so that you can use whatever you need, and they provide dishwashing liquid, cloths and tea towels so that you can clean your mess up before you leave. I am a bit of a stickler for cleanliness and I found the kitchens to be very clean and tidy. So, let me list for you what they have and be assured, there is even more than what is on this list:
Toaster, microwave, urn, coffee maker (you can buy the pods there to go in it), slow cooker, wok, teapot, plates, bowls, mugs, glasses, wine glasses, cutlery, heaps of plastic cutlery/plates/bowls/cups for little kids, plastic boxes for you to label and store your dry food, pots, fry pans, can opener, cooking utensils, chopping boards, numerous gas stoves, 2 large BBQs with grills and hot plates, oven, kettles, sandwich maker, grater, measuring cups, baking pans, knives, scissors, all the herbs and spices you can think of grown in their own garden, etc, etc, etc! Next to the kitchens is a large open aired covered dining room with loads of tables, chairs and even a high chair.
We made spaghetti bolognaise on Saturday night and while my husband and I were cooking the kids firstly helped Jan bring in the cows from the paddock ready for the morning milking, and then played in the sandpit located conveniently next to the camp kitchen. For the older kids there was also a table tennis table and foosball table to keep them occupied. We found the whole experience great, the kitchens were easy to cook in, everyone was friendly and courteous, there were plenty of tables for everyone and there was a great family atmosphere.
There is a glow worm cave nearby which I have heard is very good. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to go there as the kids were exhausted after their long days. I did however get the scoop from another holiday maker who went to the cave with her baby (in a baby carrier), and her 3 and 5 year old children.
Now bear in mind it is a 2.5km walk to the cave and then a 2.5km walk back along an old railway track. Given the distance and the young ages of her children I was interested to hear if she thought it was worth the trip. Her advice, it was worth the trip but leave early in the evening so that you arrive at the cave just on dark. Then make sure you have torches for the walk home as it is very dark. I would think you may also have to go prepared to carry a young child most of the way back if they are tired. Probably for children aged 6 and above I would think this would be a great activity and an exciting adventure to fill a night.
There is a ridge that runs around the valley that the farm sits in which is a lovely walk with a very scenic outlook. It was a walk that we all did as it is not too arduous or long, but still lets you feel like you have been on a little walk and looked out on a lovely view. The first part is quite steep, but all the kids besides Sarah who is 2, got up the steep path quite easily. It is a short round trip on easy paths/roads that only takes about 10 minutes (at the snail pace of small children).
There are three tiers of accommodation as follows; camping, huts and cabins.
The campgrounds looked very well maintained with large grassy areas and trees for shade. There are both powered and unpowered sites available. The toilets (flushing toilets) and hot showers were clean and tidy and appeared to be adequate in number for the size of the camp ground (there were 4 of each).
The huts provide a comfortable sleeping space and come equipped with full bedding and towels. There are huts near the camp ground which use the camp ground toilets and showers. There are more huts on the ridge which have their own amenities block with hot showers and composting toilets (there were 4 of each). It also looked clean and tidy.
The cabins (where we stayed) can be configured as a queen bed and 2 bunk beds, or 2 single beds and 2 bunk beds. These cabins were very cosy and comfortable and come equipped with their own toilet and shower, bedding, towels, mini fridge, soap, toilet paper, tea and coffee making facilities, reading lights, etc. My first impression was that everything looked so clean and tidy and comfortable. They each have their own deck with a table and chairs which was so lovely to sit out on to enjoy the beautiful views of the lake and the sounds of the bull frogs at night. The top bunk has a side rail so my 4 year old Jack slept there and I never had any worries that he may fall out. Their website has further photos of the rooms.
Details of the rates for each accommodation type is listed on the website. When considering the rates, they don’t just apply to your accommodation, what you get for your money is so much more. Hosanna Farmstay really is a unique experience with so many varied activities available, and therefore I found the rates to be really reasonable considering the full farm, camping and lake experience that you get.
Just as another note, Hosanna will also host school camps mid-week. They have a whole host of activities they will put on for the kids and to me it seemed like a great place for school kids to enjoy as a camp. The accommodation is camping, but don’t fear school teachers reading this, you won’t have to set it up yourself (or even worse supervise the kids attempting to do it!) The staff at Hosanna Farmstay will set up all the tents that you need and fully cater the food for your group. What could be easier than that? Both my husband and sister are school teachers and agreed that it seemed like a fabulous place to let the school kids run free and expend some energy.
Our family absolutely loves going on holiday and camping, however one of the painful things is having to bring along so much stuff! The thing I loved about Hosanna Farmstay is it incorporated all of the things we love, time in the great outdoors, feeding the animals, camp fires, swimming in lake... without any of the hassle! We will definitely be going back. Thanks Hosanna for such a lovely family holiday.
For more information, visit www.hosannafarmstay.com.au.
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