I first started ozrural in the 1999. Originally an information site about alternative farming. Alpacas, ostriches, jojoba, snails, worms, sheep dairy. You name it I talked about it. I was employed by the Gordon Institute of Tafe in Geelong, Victoria, Australia in the Wool and Rural Studies Department for 15 wonderful years. During that time, I taught across many fields, and pursued my interest in farm diversification. We ran many workshops, seminars and conferences and I authored a few books including the Weekly Times ‘Beyond Broadacres’ and I wrote over 100 agnotes for the Victorian Department of Agriculture.

Over the years I started selling Farming books, then Horse books as horses have been one of my lifelong passions. In more recent years, sales of books slumped in Australia, and it was impossible to compete with the likes of Amazon. People could get books from overseas for less than I could buy the for wholesale in Australia. Having retired, I now make and sell kit picture frames I make in a shed on our farm, work with our horses and I have a small flock of sheep kept mainly to give my Smithfield dog work.

Ozrural the webpage languished as I sell very few books now, so whilst cleaning out many old webpages recently, I decided to close ozrural and recast it again as a blog. I hope you find some of my posts interesting, but I am mainly going to publish randomly on any topic I am interested in largely related to farming, and horses.