WEDGED between looming mountain ranges are 500 acres of land that has belonged to the Stokes family for four generations.
It is there that Stokes blood, sweat and tears have permeated fertile Scenic Rim soil for more than 100 years.
On either side of a rocky, dirt farm road are homesteads. On the right is a house lived in by Troy, Vilma, Gabriella, Alexander and Lachlan.
On the left you’ll find the house that belongs to Troy’s parents. Farming is a family affair and a huge part of the family’s history.
The family grow several crops, cycling them through several paddocks as seasons and soil condition dictate.
Corn, lucerne, oats, wheat, barley, soybeans, mung beans, red and brown onions are all grown there.
“These are your reds, they are salad onions and these are the browns,” said Mr Stokes, pointing to rows of long, thin light green leaves
sprouting from bulbs just below the surface.
This onion patch is roughly the size of a rugby field. The leaves create a sea of green and the scent of onions, peppers the air.
“We grow brown and red onions and normally plant the reds two weeks after the browns but the floods came [this year],” he said.
“We had to wait for the ground to dry out before planting them so they’re a month behind.
“Onions like a dryer atmosphere.
“Vilma and dad have just finished chipping them, the weeds were all hand.
“Those reds have not been sprayed this year, we’d normally spray them three times a year for weeds but they’ve not been sprayed once because they were late planted.
“We didn’t want to knock them back so we’ve gone through and chipped them.”
The reason the Stokes are so focused on removing weeds is pickers won’t pull up an onion plant if there are weeds alongside it.“If they find a weed, they don’t pick those onions and will just go around them,” he said.
“They need to be handpicked because our onions are a very soft and mild onion compared to down south.
“Down south onions are like cricket balls they’re that hard, and they’re very hot whereas ours you could eat like an apple.
“The pickers put them into a half tonne bin then they go into the shed where they spend probably three weeks drying. Some people dry their onions by blowing hot air around them but we prefer to let ours dry out naturally in the sun.”
Onions take around six months to mature from planting to harvest. Onions planted by the Stokes in May are only a few inches big but by October will have filled out and become the ball shaped vegetable we see in the shops.
Once the onions have been harvested and dried, they are placed into a large container and transported to the Brisbane markets.
“The whole family come together to put our harvested onions into the truck and every Monday morning I leave home around 1.00am to take them to the markets,” he said.
“If [market vendors] need more then we’ll do two semi loads during the week, but that’s hard because Vilma goes to work and the kids go to school, so we’ve only got the weekends for packing.”
Approximately 27 acres are dedicated to onion growing, with an anticipated harvest of around 27 tonnes per acre. Broken down that equates to roughly 1,300, 20 kilogram bags of onions. Every year the Stokes harvest about 300 tonnes of onions.
“Onion sizes come in jar, medium and large,” he said.
“A jar is a really small onion. We get orders from the market specific to the sizes.
“Chain stores and markets are very strict when it comes to the shape and size of onions bought from growers.”
Doubled or Siamese onions - ones that are too big or too small are often rejected by the larger chains.
Rejected onions are bagged by the Stokes children and sold at $1 per kilogram at a roadside stall just outside the property.
“When their cousins come over they also sort through the odd shaped onions and contribute to the little roadside stall,” said Mr Stokes.
“It’s been a way for them to make some pocket money but lately they’ve not had that much to sell. Some of the chains are buying misshapen fruit and vegetables and selling them as the ‘odd bunch’, which means less for the kids to sell.”
Lachlan Stokes is only 14 but his dad said he does the work of five men.
“He is always asking ‘dad, what do you need me to do?’," he said.
“He can drive any harvester or tractor, any machine really. He helps with planting, harvesting as well as looking after the irrigation systems.
“He doesn’t look at the farm as being hard work. If I give him a job to do, he goes flat out and gets it done well. 

“His older brother will take all day to do something but nothing will be wr