Owners Corinne and Richard Annetts have run the property for 13 years, and found out just five weeks ago that the tourism destination could be surrounded by solar panels.

“We are devastated, it’s mentally very challenging at the moment and it’s affecting our whole family,” Mrs Annetts said.

“There will be some impact, whether tourists are going to want to come out to the little goat farm in the middle of the solar farm, we just don’t know.”

The solar farm is proposed by UPC Renewables, and will be spread across three solar fields.

Uralla was chosen for it’s elevation, the TransGrid transmission line that already passes through the site and its flat, unconstrained land.

New England Solar Farm project lead Killian Wentrup said the current focus is consulting the community.

“We’re conducting a range of environmental and technical studies ahead of submitting a development application to the NSW Government later this year,” he said.

“UPC is working closely with residents who have the potential to be negatively impacted by the solar farm.

“We  focus first on understanding the specific concerns that an individual, family or local business may have, as these vary. Working together we can then define the mitigation that is most appropriate for the stakeholders’ specific circumstances.”

The proposed solar fields surround three sides of Sunhill Dairy, and the lay of the land makes it unlikely it can be screened with trees.

Mr Annetts said the couple aren’t against renewable energy, they just wish there was an opportunity to create a bigger exclusion zone around their humble goat farm.

“As far as being a tourist destination we don’t know what the impact will be at this stage,” he said.

“We’ve been told the construction could take up to two years.”

UPC Renewables developers met with stakeholders on Thursday to discuss the project and it’s impacts.

And, construction could start as early as January 2019.

Mrs Annetts said she knows the solar farm will have a positive impact on the town, but wants to retain the view she first fell in love with at Uralla.

“We’ve got solar panels on our house, we’re certainly about self sufficiency,” she said.

“But it’s that construction phase that’s going to be the big one, and afterwards we just have to live with the fact that there’s going to be solar panels in our daily sight.”