Building Belvedere Farm
A story of passion and community
Warm, candid, and engaging, Nick Holliday has an authenticity that’s earned him a loyal following of thousands on social media. His followers don’t just watch from afar - they connect with his refreshingly honest take on life as an Australian smallholder, where he shares the triumphs, the trials, and everything in between with heart and humour.
With farming parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, he is passionate about the land, his livestock and his community. And it’s his - and his wife Brydie's - commitment to creating positive change that underpins everything they do at Belvedere Farm, a 350-acre property at Bullcamp, in the South Burnett Region of Queensland, that they share with their three-year-old son.
“I am a fourth-generation farmer but no prior generation had passed a farm on to the next,” explains Nick.
His family’s agricultural roots trace back to Russia, before moving to cane farms in Bundaberg between the wars, then later to a fruit and veg smallholding on the Sunshine Coast. By the time he was ready to step into the role of farmer, that land had been sold off in bits.
At the time, he was living in Brisbane and building a white-collar career. But the pull of the land was strong. “I knew I had to leave Brisbane soon - otherwise I’d be stuck there forever - so I bought a vacant block of 20 acres in Maleny and became a hobby farmer.”
He built a house on that land in nine weeks (“and it didn’t fall over!”) and began commuting to Brisbane for work while raising beef and selling it to friends, later adding eggs to the mix. It was the beginning of something bigger.
Nick met Brydie in 2019 and shortly after, they took the leap into full-time farming, soon outgrowing their space. “We found that 20 acres in Maleny was insufficient, so we started leasing three other blocks, growing pork, beef and eggs. We eventually sold the property in Maleny and bought 350 acres at Bullcamp, and we have been here since July last year.”
Life on the land
Their days now revolve around livestock, specifically pigs, cattle and chickens. “My heart is in livestock farming,” Nick says. “In winter, I’m up at 5am and the first farm job is feeding the pigs… they will break out of their paddock and come and tell you about it if you don’t!”
Watering chickens and cattle comes next, alongside fencing and maintenance.
By midday, the farm gathers together for lunch. “Every day we enjoy a cooked lunch - we have a farmhand and a woman who grades our eggs, so we enjoy a communal lunch with them when they’re working, which is lovely.”
Brydie handles egg collection, all 1,200 chickens’ worth, while Nick moves cattle every two or three days using electric fencing: “That’s my favourite job. Watching them spread out on new grass is just incredible.”
Evenings are a mix of admin, ordering feed, and updating social media. But nothing on the farm is ever entirely predictable. “There’s often emergency jobs to attend to, like cattle breaking through fences, tractors breaking down, things like that.”
A different way to farm
Nick and Brydie are guided by a framework of holistic grazing. This principle is based on the teachings of Allan Savory, the founder of holistic management and the Savory Institute, which shares Savory’s teachings with students across the globe.
“With this grazing plan, we know what paddock our cattle will be in in three months’ time,” explains Nick.
But while they plan meticulously, they also remain responsive - to weather, seasons, and the land itself.
They also lean on a mix of traditional and observational knowledge. “The most powerful thing is intergenerational knowledge, which for some is fifty years or a hundred years… for First Nations people, it’s tens of thousands of years’ knowledge about how the land works. But we’re picking things up as we go - and observation is key.”
And despite the relative isolation of rural life, they’re not alone. “I’m lucky to have good mentors in other farmers and other experts who help us every single day.”
His previous career as a union organiser continues to inform his work. “That job was all about building community and common purpose. Those skills have been incredibly useful as a farmer when it comes to building our CSA [Community Supported Agriculture], and working with other farmers and suppliers.”
Team Belvedere
Working with family can be both a joy and a test. “Smallholding is one of the great killers of relationships around the world,” Nick admits.
At one point, with pigs living in neighbours’ gardens and operations spread across multiple leased properties, it got tough. But the couple made a plan.
“We have a 100-year plan - we know what we want the farm to look like for our son’s children. And we worked backwards, right down to considering what we want our mornings and evenings to look like.”
And it's a real team effort. Brydie runs the chicken operation, builds fences, drives tractors and manages customers. “She can do everything around the farm that I can, except perhaps welding,” Nick says.
But there are still challenges. “The first is being responsible for all of this country and the beating hearts in our animals and wildlife,” he says. “Dead animals and health issues with the livestock - even though it doesn’t happen often - are enormously challenging.”
Then there’s the economic reality. “We’re not yet viable. We’ve been farming for ten years as a proper business and it’s been paying our mortgage for six years, but we’re still barely paying ourselves a wage - although we’re not focused on money.”
They’ve seen many other small-scale farmers throw in the towel, but Nick is determined: “We need a thriving ecosystem of good food.”
Mutual Aid and a shared table
Belvedere Farm’s food system is deeply rooted in fairness and access. “Every dozen eggs costs us $12–13, but people who eat our eggs pay the full cost of producing those eggs. When you buy a dozen eggs from Woolies, they still cost the same to produce, but someone else pays the difference.
“That can be in the form of poorly paid workers, neighbours [of factory chicken farms] dealing with the smell, the environment, polluted waterways, for example, or poorly treated animals. But that’s capitalism.”
That’s why they created a Mutual Aid fund. Through it, those who can afford to pay full price help cover the cost for others who can’t. “We have been running the fund for four years and have provided $25,000 worth of produce to people.
Most recently we supplied 25kg of meat to Sisters Inside in Brisbane, which helps women and girls in prison.”
But Nick is clear that it’s not charity, it’s mutual benefit. “We sell more product, which allows us to produce more pigs. But we’re making a positive change.”
They also run a CSA program with seventy-five members. Established in 2021, those members subscribe for six or twelve months and receive a monthly selection of the farm’s best produce.
At first, they weren’t sure it would work. But they soon found out while on a trip to the Bunya Mountains - with no phone reception. “We didn’t know if anyone would be interested in a CSA,” explains Nick.
"We had a Scrabble set with us and we spelled out “Belvedere Farm, CSA, $150” with the tiles and took a picture. When we went to the pub and had wifi, we uploaded it."
"We didn’t think any more about it until we came back… and we discovered we already had thirty-five CSA members! We thought, ‘Shit, well, we better do this now.’”
That was four years ago. Now, the CSA is what allows them to keep going. “It’s a special relationship and we couldn’t farm without them.”
Sharing the real story
Social media plays a vital role in their farm’s life. “Social media is the way we tell our story to our community and our eaters,” he says. “We don’t just post cute pictures of pigs - we try to tell it how it really is.”
That includes the hard parts: illness, breakdowns, economic stress. “If I am to criticise anything about the regenerative agriculture movement, it’s that some farmers paint a picture of a self-sufficient property, a successful small business, but we’re all going to struggle unless we have a shared understanding of the economic and political system.”
But it’s their community that keeps them going through those hard times - when they get messages from CSA members who’ve cooked meals with their produce, for example. “We cooked your pork ribs last night. Thanks for what you do”, the messages say.
And it’s not just support from their customers that helps drive them forward, but the wider farming community: “There are times when you might shed a few tears in a quiet paddock because something’s not going right,” Nick says. “But then you can call another farmer who understands and shares your experiences. It’s an incredible lifeline.”
In those moments, it all comes full circle, from paddock, to plate, to connection. Nick and Brydie aren’t just farming - they’re farming towards something rooted in food, fairness, and futures.
And it all started with a house that didn’t fall over, some cows, and a simple Scrabble post that changed everything.
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