Tree changers making a difference

Meet the Hughes family Ashlee, Matthew, Dakoda, Blacky, Pearl

‘Innesvale’ is the wide-open space Matt and Ash Hughes of Wollongong found in their search for a change from ‘sea change’ to ‘tree change’.

The Hughes family story started in Sydney when Ash, a young country woman, left school and sought opportunities in the ‘big smoke’.

With plenty of energy and enthusiasm and a natural ability to work hard and achieve, Ash started her first retail business. Then she met Matt.

At the time, Matt was managing and working his family-owned business - 21st Century Pest Specialist. He soon bought the business and has now seen the benefits of setting up in the Cabonne region. (See details below left).

‘Flipping homes’ became the Hughes joint business which the couple saw as an opportunity whilst living in Sydney and later in Wollongong. With the young couple’s flair for home renovations and creating stylish results for their individual client needs - saw a new business opportunity emerge for Ash.

Moving towards their ‘tree change’ goal - the young couple worked together for some years buying, renovating, styling, selling.

“‘Innesvale’ is our sixth property purchase,” said Ash - a fabulous outcome for the young couple now in their early 30s.

“When Dakoda was born, we wanted to spend more time together as a family and to build our family dream of land, paddocks, animals, pets, and to create new ideas.” she said.

“I sold my interior design decorating business in Wollongong when we felt the time was right to move onto our ultimate dream. We found ‘Innesvale’ which ticked the lifestyle, family, sustainable living, and business boxes - and a small school for Dakoda to attend. It’s all on our family planning board.”

The young Dakoda loves the freedom of the paddocks, her horse, and the family’s move to sustainability with their sheep, goats, alpacas, chooks, ducks and vegie gardens.

“I never want to move from here”she said.

The Hughes family planning board has been progressing through ‘Stage 1’ in developing their sheep and building their goat herd (meat and dairy).

“We’re a healthy-eating, healthy-lifestyle family and we’ve been planning ‘Innesvale’ pastures in order to re-activate the soils to be able to improve the foods we grow and grazing results”, Ash told the Express

“We’re creating better foods for our family and better foods to feed out to our farm friends.

ABOVE: Matt Hughes in the paddocks of ‘Innesvale’. See Matt’s business ad below - as the name states the products and services offered are of the 21st Century. Safe, reliable, innovative ways to keep homes, biz premises, commercial spaces, housing developments, free of all pests including bird control and termites.