Chris and Emily Shipway's move to a nine-hectare apple orchard in the Adelaide Hills shocked a lot of people.

"Everyone literally thinks we're crazy for what we bought because it was significant. We bought an acreage with 12,000 apple trees and we didn't have any equipment," Chris says.

The intensive care nurses from Adelaide met on night shift in 2016. Other than their work, they had in common a desire to live in the country.

"We both wanted some kind of Hills lifestyle, [but] we never thought this intense," Emily says.

After two years of looking at cherries, vineyards and cattle properties, Emily and Chris settled on a commercial apple orchard at Lenswood in 2019.

The couple moved to the property, known as @Lenswood Pick Your Own, with a push mower, ute, and then six-year-old daughter Daisy.

It's fair to say their induction into farming in South Australia's apple capital has been a major learning curve.

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