'Find your niche': the legacy and innovation of a Tasmanian family farm

The family farm, Woodrising, has been the test dummy for many a business venture in its lifetime and has changed from grazing, to irrigated cropping, to poppy seed and canola, to dairy, to an essential oil facility.

Mr Henry grew up on the farm, which was part of the World War II soldier settlement block south of Cressy.

He said it all started around six years of age, when his father bought him a sheep to care for.

"I used to get the wool off that every year and sell it to the local skin buyer," Mr Henry said.

"I can remember getting five pounds for this fleece, so I started to save money up, and then I started buying about 12 to 20 ewes a year and doing a bit of trading."

At age 16 he was "adamant" about wanting to be a farmer, but the family business wasn't big enough to accommodate him.

Instead, he used the money he'd saved to buy seven pigs, which turned into a 10-year venture.

Mr Henry attended Launceston Church Grammar School - and three years of schooling on the mainland - but returned home on weekends to build his own infrastructure such as fences and hutches.

"My parents were really good in that they kept the piggery going and they were encouraging me to broaden my horizons and and get some formal training rather than just be a home boy."

Mr Henry returned home after attaining degrees and diplomas on farm management from RMIT and Glenormiston Agricultural College in Victoria.

"I came home in 1974 and Father had had enough," he said.

"He sort of tossed me the chequebook and said, 'this is yours'."

Mr Henry said the change of ownership was an opportunity to implement new ideas on the farm.

"I just looked at the resources we had, and we had this river flowing by and all these beautiful deep, sandy soils," he said.

"I decided that irrigation was probably the way that we go."

In 1991, Mr Henry won the esteemed agricultural Nuffield Scholarship and studied sustainable agricultural practices for six months overseas; he eventually became national vice-chairman of Nuffield.

He was offered a board position at a Cressy property called Formosa as a result of the scholarship, and ended up managing it for 18 years.

The Nuffield Scholarship was a lifechanging experience, but his overseas stint came off the back end of some challenging times for Woodrising.

Even bigger challenges lay ahead.

"We had really bad flooding in 1994 and lost a lot of our crops," Mr Henry said.

"It was a summer flood so all our crops were about to be harvested - we'd spent all our money on them. That was our living."

Then in 2002, their son Tim was killed on the farm at 19 years of age.

"That upended everything; we didn't know whether to stay on the farm or what to do," Mrs Henry said.

"Tim was very attached to the farm, so I think we stayed because we both felt connected to Tim there - which probably served its purpose - but in hindsight we probably should have sold it and moved on.

"They were probably the worst years of our lives: the flooding and losing Tim."

In recent decades, Woodrising has been through many "dramatic" changes.

Along with cropping, the Henrys bought a run-down canola pressing business and established a bio-diesel plant to produce an alternative fuel from the seeds.

They also changed their farming methods after they realised the cost of inputs was rising, but their yields weren't.

Half of the property was converted to a dairy farm, while the other half was changed to "perennial systems where we weren't tilling the ground every year and exposing the organic matter," Mr Henry said.

"It's an example of showing that we were prepared to have a go at something different."

Mr and Mrs Henry said passion and strong work ethic have been the drivers for their success.

"It's important to find your niche," Mrs Henry said.

"When there was work to do, it had to be done."