Edwards family farm listed after 80 years on Sale outskirts

Having been held in one family ownership for three generations, some 79 years, Skastholm at 121 Stephenson Street in Sale is now for sale through agents Pat Rice & Hawkins.

Offers close April 19 unless sold before with a sale guide price of $500,000 plus expected to be achieved.

The vendors have traditionally run about fifteen breeding cows on the productive pastures.

Water resources are significant to include a windmill plus direct access to the Flooding Creek, (a feeder stream of the La Trobe River system nearby), which forms one long boundary of the holding with unrestricted pumping rights for stock and garden requirements.

The property was first purchased by members of the Edwards family in 1939 to operate as a dairy.

It is held under an old riparian title with ownership extending to the middle of the stream.

With a land area of 8.7 hectares, or 21.6 acres, the property is located 2.5 kilometres south east of the central business precinct of Sale.

It is the prominent regional centre at the commencement of the Gippsland Lakes that has a current population in excess of 14,000 people.

The property is opposite the Sale Common and the noted wetlands and wildlife sanctuary.

The restored Victorian style weatherboard cottage offers three large bedrooms, with high ceilings and two with open fireplaces retained.

There are all modern services installed while the home has a return veranda.

Domestic needs are met by the country style timber kitchen with a slow combustion stove, a conventional oven and a dishwasher with two adjacent living areas.

It comes with an oversized two car garage cum look up steel shed or workshop, plus an original dairy, a worker’s hut, two hay sheds, a storage building and a set of steel cattle yards.

All the boundary fencing is electrified and with a six paddock internal subdivision.

The vendor says that as she is the last of the Edwards family line and with no succession.

Pat Rice & Hawkins selling agent Matt Childs says that Skastholm - seemingly suggesting a Scandinavian origin - was first established in 1903.

The home has been fully restored from the ground up including the major works of re-stumping, re-wiring, re-plumbing and with a new roof added to provide an executive style family home.

“For a hobby farmer or specialist animal enterprise there is the option to run almost any type of livestock on the well set up subdivision and additional support building,” Childs notes.