Sanity saver

I remember being disappointed a few years ago when I went to visit a local organic guru’s garden.

I had imagined a potager with beans climbing up wrought iron teepees, tomatoes tumbling onto a gravel path and garden edges as straight as a draftsman’s ruler.

It was smaller than I expected, and the tomatoes were restrained behind recycled tree guards. There was no sparkling gravel, but a weedy lawn, and something had been nibbling the silverbeet.

I kick myself now that I’d been so silly. A love of gardening doesn’t simply translate into a picture-perfect patch. This was a garden that was real: squeezed on a suburban block, weeded hastily at the end of the working day, and at the mercy of blackbirds, slugs, and the neighbour’s cat.

Gardens are incredibly personal. They’re like a teenage poem that you’re secretly proud of - but if you showed anyone you’d die of embarrassment. You’d make excuses about the messy writing, the misplaced apostrophes, and the lazy grammar… how it’s only the draft, something you just scribbled down in the night.

And even if you are proud of your garden, other people often don’t share your excitement. When I lived in town before the farm, I would drag my visiting mum into the backyard every second day to tour the garden.

“But I looked at it on Monday,” she’d say.

“Yes, I know; but you didn’t see the flowers on the tomatoes then, and I’ve put in some carrot seed too. And the beans have grown at least an inch.”

In the current patch I’m battling wild radish and clover. I reckon the neighbours who walk their dogs past our place wouldn’t even know I had vegetables in there, but for me startling them with a fork and a wave.

The rows of onions aren’t straight and the snow peas have chosen to sprawl along the ground rather than climb my artistic tea tree support.

We’ve been so incredibly busy with Christmas hams, farmers’ markets, shearing, water problems, and shorting electric fences (oh, and the day job too… almost forgot), but I’ve still been out there on dark pulling weeds and picking peas.

And while some people would say I’m a glutton for punishment (‘why don’t you just BUY your veggies for once’…) they don’t understand what I’m like when I don’t spend time in the garden.

My head gets sore from too many things to remember, I feel anxious when I see my piles of gardening books, knowing that I’m not keeping up with Peter Cundall’s planting list. Stress chemicals circulate through my body, caught in a maze with no gate.

All I have to do is pull a few of weeds and I’m fine again. My mind suddenly empties and I start reflecting on conversations I’ve had, things I’ve heard on the radio, and my creativity returns.

And I love looking at my hands: nails ripped, skin scratched, and deep parallel lines along my fingers that hold on to the red dirt, however hard I scrub.

Summer garden from Eliza Wood on Vimeo.

Guy considers wife-swapping

Would you trade your sow for a wife?

The question came up this week during a farm visit from a group of Papua New Guinean farmers and researchers.

They’re in Tasmania for a pyrethrum conference, and they’ve also been touring Tasmanian farms to get ideas to improve their agricultural practices. And they wanted to see a pig farm.

Pigs are worth a lot of money in PNG; a large mature breeding will cost you about $A2,000. They’re also considered legal tender, and you can trade pretty much anything if you’ve got the right number of pigs.

Apparently several large pigs and a few thousand dollars cash will buy you a wife, and the bigger the pig the better. The sow and money goes to the wife’s family with the largest pig for your bride’s father. The better the girl, the more pigs she’s worth, too.

However, don’t give away all your pigs for wives, as you can also use them to buy land. One mature pig would allow me to get about five acres and start a farm with a new wife. And if you have an enemy, a pig as a token of peace calls off the war.

If you have a herd of pigs you can buy multiple wives. But some families don’t accept pigs, and insist on cattle instead.

I began to do the sums and worked out that with our couple of hundred pigs, 50 cattle and 60 sheep that not only would I have something that could match most PNG families’ demands, but I could potentially buy a new farm and have about 20 wives.

But my excitement and plans to ship our menagerie to PNG were short- lived, when I was told you have to ask permission from your first wife before you can gain another, and so on.

If you do decide to go ahead and get a second wife without permission, it’s common for your house to be burnt down and then you have to trade more pigs to get another house.

A look from Eliza indicated that a burnt down house would be the least of my worries.

The visiting farmers asked lots of questions about our free range pig system, with the hope of taking some different ideas home.

In PNG pigs are often kept on a lead or chain that’s moved around the farm so they can work the ground. Others are kept free range where they scrounge for sweet potatoes and edible plants.

Pig farming has come a long way in the past 20 years: pigs now have their own shelters - previously it was traditional for pigs to share a house with the farmer’s family, with the pigs getting one half and the family the other.

One of our close friends Graeme Stevenson spent time working in PNG several decades ago, and recalls using a long drop toilet and hearing the sound of pigs cleaning up the mess.

There have been close ties between Tasmanian and PNG ag scientists for decades. At the moment they’re working together to grow western vegetables to market to the expat community in PNG. It’s an interesting dilemma facing many developing countries as they are influenced by the appeal of western agriculture practices, plant varieties and livestock breeds.

The most common meat eaten by our visitors is not backyard chicken or pork, but lamb that’s been imported from Australia and New Zealand.

Western agriculture offers greater levels of productivity for farmers and could lead to improvements in nutrition, but at the same time it has the potential to displace traditional practices and culture. It can also lead to the extinction of local species and breeds.

Interestingly, the loss of cultural knowledge in PNG and the switch to western food has prompted another Tasmanian agricultural scientist, Bruce French, to develop an international database of edible plants.

Bruce and his team of volunteers are hoping that by identifying native edible plants and documenting their nutritional values, that they can assist indigenous people to overcome diet-related health issues and encourage them to continue using indigenous plants. It’s a fantastic cause and they have already successfully documented 18,000 plants.

When the farmers saw the size of our pigs their eyes lit up, “They are so much bigger and productive than our native pigs. We would love some of these pigs in PNG”.

I guess it would be hard not to be excited when large pigs like ours could give you access to virtually any woman.

While I’m sure the Wessex Saddleback would adapt to a diet of sweet potatoes and pasture, its size and productivity could quickly lead to the displacement of the indigenous local breeds.

That thought was a subtle reminder that it’s probably best to keep our pigs in Tasmania.

Contemplating compost

There are two places that get me thinking about death: funeral parlours and compost heaps.

And I know which one I’d prefer to end up in.

Into a compost heap we put everything we don’t want - an apple core, yesterday’s newspaper, grass that reached beyond the mower blades. But, out of it comes something we do want: rich, sweet-smelling compost that’s good enough to eat.

I compost consciously twice a year, during spring and autumn. My compost heaps are contained within timber pallets and galvanised mesh, drawn together with blue baling twine.

I made my first compost bin when I came back from uni and bought a house in town. Dad and I scavenged the timber off a shed on a farm that had been ripped up and turned into plantation.

At 8am on my first Sunday in suburbia I was waking up my neighbourhood nailing together my bin.

It was hard in town to find the volume of materials to get the heap really heating up. I’d mow the neighbours’ nature strips just so I could get the clippings, and for two seasons in a row I got told off for nicking the autumn leaves off a footpath that wasn’t outside my house. I was too scared to go back a third time.

I’d visit my parents’ farm and volunteer to pick up horse manure, or clean out the chook house.

The last day I spent on the farm with my dad, before he died a week later in hospital, we scraped out his duck pen. Dad held open the bags and I wobbled the shovel above - piled with straw and sloppy, stinking poo - trying not to spill it over him.

Now we’re at Mount Gnomon my compost is a rich mix of life’s waste: piglets that disappeared under 200 kilos of sow, chooks fallen from their perch, and a hairless joey found on the road.

It’s layered with pig manure, and cow, sheep, duck, guinea pig, horse, cat and rabbit poo. There are spud peelings, rhubarb leaves, mouldy loaf-ends and forgotten left-overs.

I love seeing the steam rising from it on a chilly morning. I love seeing the worms bury to safety as I fork it into the barrow.

I know where I’d like to end up.


The perfect mix
Without getting too sciency, the secret to a good compost comes down to the carbon/nitrogen balance.

You don’t want too much carbon (straw, newspapers, cardboard, dried-up weeds) or you’ll end up with a dry, mulch-like material that won’t break down.

And you don’t want too much nitrogen (grass clippings, green weeds, kitchen scraps) or you won’t be able to go near the heap for the terrible smell, and it’ll be slimy and way too wet.

So, you want a bit of this, and a bit of that. Think of pork belly and the way the meat and fat are layered. (Think of pork belly often, just for the sake of it).

When I’m putting a heap together my layers are about 10cm thick, so I’ll have a layer of straw mixed with manure, then some green weeds, some torn-up newspaper or cardboard, rhubarb leaves etc etc. I sprinkle the ashes out of the fireplace thinly, and if I’m putting dead animals in I make sure they’re near the middle so they’ve got the best chance of breaking down.

I read an anecdote in an old Tasmanian organic gardening book about a keen composter whose heap exploded when they tossed in a chicken. Unfortunately nothing as spectacular has happened in mine, yet.

Falling for it

In some ways I wish we hadn’t found it. Our elusive waterfall could have remained so.

When we moved to the farm over two years ago we were told there was a waterfall somewhere over the bank in the far south-west corner.

This is our bit of rainforest. You walk across our back paddock, climb through the fence and head into some partly cleared bush. The eucalypts are huge, and the weak-rooted wattles criss-cross the path.

As the ground slopes down, the bush changes: ferns appear, and wet rotting logs. The air is colder and when you breathe in you feel it deep in your skull.

There are magnificent blackwoods and manferns blocking the sun. Fungi pushes out from the dirt that’s dark and composty.

Guy decided on Sunday we were going to go looking for the waterfall that we’d heard, but never seen.

Neighbour Tom turned up in his bushwalking boots and I stashed a packet of dates in my camera bag. Bushwalking within your own boundary – we are so very lucky.

Guy found the top of the fall pretty quickly, and before I’d even managed to get my camera out he was heading down the bank, finding a way to the base.

Guy’s a much more confident bush adventurer than I: his feet rarely slip and he never comes out with a muddy behind. But I get nervous of the steep drops and take them all sitting down. It reminds me of when my mum broke her leg and could only get up the back step this way.

By the time I got to the bottom Guy was resting on a rock looking up at the spraying water and Tom was splashing through the creek, testing his new boots for grip and waterproof-ness.

While I pottered about taking pictures, Tom and Guy went looking further down the creek.

And what did they find? Another waterfall, and the entrance to a cave.

We walked out of the bush as the sun was dipping, and we reflected on how truly magical it was to be able to sit under a waterfall one minute, and then be back among the pigs in the next.

Duck season

It’s a challenging and busy time at Mount Gnomon. The days are gloomy and recent rains have made a pair of gumboots an essential item for feeding the menagerie.

But spring feels like it’s not too far away: we have only a couple of ewes left to lamb and we’ve had our first Belted Galloway calf.

The biggest indicator that the days are drawing out and the weather is going to improve is the onset of duck season. I don’t mean the shooting variety - I’m referring to the time when our large flock of ducks begins to lay.

I’ve long had a passion for ducks: it was my responsibility as a child to be the duck herder. Every night I’d call our Khaki Campbells with “dill, dill, dill” and they’d come in for their feed, and I’d shut them up so I could collect the eggs in the morning before the crows got them.

Eliza also grew up with ducks, and proudly tells of the time she took hand-reared Jimmy to the North Motton Pet Show on a lead.

The first ducks we bought for Mount Gnomon Farm were Indian Runners. Tall, upright, and elegant, the Indian Runners are great foragers and have earned a reputation for being the ideal garden slug and pest eradicator. The colours we have in our Indian Runners are classified as rare - in fact any colour other than white and white-and- fawn are rare and need support.

We have cinnamon, fawn, apricot, mallard, blue fawn, trout, and harlequin, and as a collection they make a great spectacle.

Indian runners have more of a herd mentality than any other duck and while they’re a bit scatty, they’re easy to train to go into their house at night. About an hour before dusk they run as a group to the shed entrance and wait to be shut up, away from our healthy population of quolls and devils.

The safety of the shed also protects the eggs from being pinched by crows each morning. Indian Runners are prolific layers and if fed a good laying ration can rival most chooks with their egg-laying capacity, often producing over 200 eggs in a season.

We have about 24 Indian Runner hens and when they all start laying it’s quite possible we’ll have to find a home for over 12 dozen eggs a week. We’re not sure what the market is like for ducks eggs, but we’re soon to find out.

Duck eggs are quite different to chook eggs. The yolk contains more fat and the white is higher in protein, and as a result if they’re eaten like a chook egg many people find them too rich. With their high protein levels they also require gentler cooking. However, the protein makes them perfect for baking and you can freely substitute chook eggs for duck eggs in cakes, biscuits, custards etc.

The high protein levels also mean that the whites will whip up better, so your cakes should be lighter and higher (and the richness of the egg yolks makes the cakes even richer).

Due to the relative scarcity of duck eggs most people haven’t cooked with them or are hesitant to give them a go. We’ve been told we’ll have to find some older country-style chefs that learnt to bake at a time when duck eggs were more common.

We would love to hear from people who have a particular use for duck eggs, or a favourite duck egg recipe, or know of someone who is after a regular supply. If not, our pigs can look forward to some special duck egg treats.

Shopping for Shrops

“I don’t eat anything unless it’s got a black nose,” says Neil Neilson, third generation Shropshire sheep breeder from Victoria.

Neil’s in his mid-80s and still farming the unforgiving soil at Baringhup, to the north of Ballarat.

“When we have visitors and we have a roast they all say, ‘oh that’s the best roast we’ve ever had - it’s so sweet’, but it is.”

Neil’s family has had Shropshires since around 1860, when his grandfather bought 20 of the first ewes introduced to Australia from England.

Once in Australia, Shropshires took off, particularly in Tasmania. In the 1890s three ‘elite’ Shropshire breeders immigrated to Tasmania with their flocks.

The Shropshires had a big impact on the sheep meat industry. Before 1900 about 20,000 lamb carcasses left Australia each year. Ten years later there were several millions, and 70 per cent of them were sired by Shropshires.

The boom in popularity was unfortunately followed by a sharp drop after the First World War. It seems European housewives wanted smaller joints as they balanced their budgets, and the Shropshire was too big. Neil Neilson says he can also remember the Shropshire hides being unpopular because they had black skin around the head and legs.

There are now only about 10 registered flocks in Australia, and after many months of planning we have bought a little flock and reintroduced them to Tasmania.

We bought 27 ewes from the Neilsons, and we sourced a ram and another ewe from Fiona and Nicholas Chambers of Daylesford, Victoria. We carted the ram and single ewe home on our ute on the boat, and had so much pleasure telling the other passengers about our special cargo. A couple of months later a transport company brought over the rest of the flock.

Neil has been reminding us how important it is to keep the sheep pure, and cull the ones that aren’t up to standard.

“My dad always used to say to us, ‘if you want to keep something pure you’ve got a big job. You’ve only got to make one mistake and introduce one ram that’s not as good as it should be, and you start back to scratch again’.

“We’ve all been very careful with the Shrops and we’re proud of that.”

He says it’s hard to find pure flocks in Australia, and many have been crossed with other breeds. It will be a challenge for us to source rams of good type.

We feel a deep sense of responsibility now we’ve got the Shropshires. It’s raining at the moment, and the sheep are out in the paddock sheltering their young lambs. There are a couple of ewes still with bulging, low tummies waiting to give birth.

We have a responsibility both to the breed and the Neilsons. This is the first time they’ve sold a group of their ewes as a flock. It’s such a credit to them that they have kept their stud going for so long.

“They seem to have a better constitution than most sheep, and that’s really why we’ve stuck to them,” Neil says.

“They seem to be able to turn their tucker into fat and meat quicker than anything else.”

Listen to Neil tell the story of when he almost lost all his Shrops, and see the photos of our new lambs.

The reality of farming

For the past 24 hours I’ve had my hand up a sow. She’s been in labour so long the piglets are dying inside her. My hands are raw and ripped from trying to drag out one of the piglets by its teeth – the only bit I can catch on to.

The sow’s on her first litter, so we call her a gilt, and the piglets are simply too big for her. She’s worn out from pushing and her muscles have seized up from the strain.

I pulled out the first piglet yesterday, it was breech, but livened up pretty quickly once it was out and rubbed with a bit of straw. I thought that once the first one was born the rest would follow easily. Sometimes you just need to clear the blockage.

But as the day progressed nothing else appeared. And then over a couple of hours we pulled out two dead piglets. They were huge. They could have been a few days old. Gilts typically have smaller litters, but ideally the piglets are small too.

Before bed last night we went out for a final time to see if anything else had shifted. Guy’s hands are too wide for a gilt, so it’s my job to go digging. I lay on the straw, pressed into the spilt birthing juices, breathing in the unique smell of a farrowing sow.

With my arm fully in, I could just wriggle my fingers to feel a snout. When I put my finger in its mouth it bit down hard. Piglets’ teeth are incredibly sharp. I could feel its tongue moving about.

Over an hour I drew the piglet back and forth through the sow’s cavity. Countless times I had it within a handspan of the exit, and then it would be sucked back in by powerful muscles. It fell back fully out of reach after 11pm and I was spent.

Inside I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror: puffy and red-eyed, snot bubbling at my nostrils, blood spattered on my face. I was exhausted. And I knew that the piglet that was struggling to be born would probably be dead by morning.

This is the worst part of farming. A town-living friend said to me once that farming just seems to be all about life and death. Every day we’re confronted with it. Yesterday we killed nine roosters for the freezer. A week ago a quoll took some of our chooks. In the same week two litters of healthy piglets were born. In a fortnight our sheep will start lambing.

Neither of us wanted to get up this morning to check the sow. The piglets would either be dead beside her, or there would be nothing, which meant they were dead inside.

There was nothing.

I can feel a dead piglet just past her hips. She can’t push it through the last narrow bit, and I’ve been trying all morning to catch hold of the piglet long enough to drag it through.

The vet says there’s nothing we can do but let the piglet decompose and pump the sow with antibiotics every 12 hours to keep her alive. We’ve no idea how many more piglets are inside.

Reality shook me as I strained one last time to reach the piglet. I touched its flaccid tongue hanging between its teeth, and its brother - the sole survivor - nuzzled my shoulder, looking for a teat. Farming really is about the cycle of life.

Chestnut crunching for guilt-free crackling

Tasmania has only one commercial chestnut orchard, and our pigs are fortunate we know the owners.

About five years ago I met chestnut growers Colleen and Daryl Dibley. Their orchard is at Preolenna, up in the hills 20km south of Wynyard.

Preolenna used to be a prime dairy farming area, but now it’s a dark monoculture landscape of tree plantations.

The Dibleys are one of the few property owners at Preolenna still trying to make a living from the land.

Unfortunately this year’s been a bit of a fizzer. Chestnuts are wind pollinated, and the rain during January weighed down the flowers and meant the pollination failed.

But the upside of that has meant there have been plenty of reject chestnuts for our pigs!

The pigs love them, so much that when I take a bucket out to the paddock I have to be quick on my gum-booted feet to avoid being knocked over. The pigs eat the chestnuts shell and all.

It’s been known for centuries that pigs fed on chestnuts taste better. And there’s plenty of science out there on the improved meat and fat qualities. Chestnut-finished pork also has high levels of unsaturated fat, including heart-healthy oleic acid.

In Europe pigs have played an important role each season by cleaning out the chestnut orchards after the main harvest, eating the diseased and over-looked fruit. Chestnut-reared pork is cherished and commands a higher price.

You probably won’t notice a huge difference in our pigs this year, since they’re only getting small quantities as part of a broader mixed diet, but it’s nice to see the pigs enjoying themselves, and making a racket, crunching on such a delicacy in Tasmania.

Personally, I like them roasted with parsnips, beetroot, pumpkin, garlic and rosemary, and doused in olive oil and golden syrup.

Two years of hard work and satisfaction

It’s our farm birthday this week – two years at Mount Gnomon Farm!

It’s been a busy and rewarding year and a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Over the past 12 months we added two more rare breeds of cattle to the farm, a rare breed of duck, a couple of rare breeds of chooks and we reintroduced a rare breed of sheep to Tasmania. It was also a year that saw us double our number of Wessex Saddleback pigs, encouraging us to find new markets. Last Christmas we somehow managed to survive the distribution of 200 hams and while it was stressful, it was a great thrill for us to see families enjoying something that we produced, on one of the biggest days of the year.

One of the highlights was being invited to Sydney by chef Alex Herbert who manages and operates the award-winning restaurant Bird Cow Fish. Alex is a big supporter of ethical food and was keen to hear our story and help us establish connections with other restaurants in Sydney. Alex gave us room in her fridge for our samples while we travelled back and forth from appointments with places like Tetsuya’s, Four in Hand, District Dining, Marque Restaurant and Quay. The response to our product was fantastic, but the realities of actually supplying some of these restaurants on a regular basis hit home. A place like Quay, where head chef Peter Gilmore has a signature pork belly dish, goes through 30 pork bellies a week. That’s about 15 pigs’ worth, or 90kg. In Tasmania the restaurants we supply use only a couple of week. There’s a lot to be said about population and running a booming restaurant business.

In November we had enough spare produce to have a stall at the local farmers’ markets in Burnie, Devonport and Evandale. Despite the early starts (a challenge for me, not so much for Eliza who’s used to it), we’ve really enjoyed the markets, as we get to talk to our customers and raise awareness about farming free range and the plight of rare breeds of livestock.

While it’s all been pretty exciting, farming has a way of quickly bringing you back to reality. The same day our first box of pork arrived at Tetsuya’s restaurant, one of our sows lost 9 out of her 10 piglets overnight. We went to bed after Marybelle had given birth to 10 healthy piglets who’d all had a good feed and looked content. But we woke to the horror of finding all but one of the piglets had lost so much weight in a few hours that despite our best efforts to feed them with a dripper we couldn’t save them. Piglets are so small and fragile and need to be fed every couple of hours to survive. In this case their mother had developed mastitis and stopped producing milk, and before we could treat her it was too late.

While the loss of piglets is an emotional blow for both the mother and us, it also hurts our small business financially and six months later puts a dent in our ability to supply our regular customers. Marybelle has made it up, fortunately, and is currently rearing a bouncy litter of 12.

At Mount Gnomon we’ve begun to realise that in farming some things are beyond your control. Just recently we lost our second sow to a snake bite. When we choose to run our pigs free range next to the bush we have to accept that sometimes snakes will come in contact with our pigs. As nature-lovers we respect that snakes are native to the environment and it would be wrong to harm them or remove them. And since they’re territorial the removal of one snake will only see another snake take its place.

The biggest change this year came when I resigned from my job with the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research to take on the role of managing our growing menagerie and developing the business. After nearly two years of working full time while establishing the farm, it was a big leap of faith. If you buy a farm and have a big mortgage, you really have no choice but to work off-farm as you purchase the necessary infrastructure to get the business going. First we bought the animals, then the water infrastructure, pig housing, fencing, a four-wheel motorbike for feeding, a ute for taking the pigs to market … the list goes on. A farm is certainly a great way of spending money. Our accountant mentioned to us that at some stage we’ll have to stop spending and start making some money (Eliza’s mother agrees).

Giving up the luxury of regular payslips was a big step, and when I rang my grandmothers to discuss the move, they thought I was a bit crazy: “You’re giving up a good job to become a pig farmer?”. Both my grandmothers have spent most of their lives on farms and are aware of the struggles facing Tasmanian farmers today. While we might have a reduced cash flow, we’ve now got the time to expand our business, do our own packaging, shuffle the dreaded paperwork, and show more people around the farm. Hardly a week goes by when we don’t have a group descending on the property for a sticky-beak. The biggest highlight for me this year was having more than 35 people accepting our blog invitation to plant native trees to create shelterbelts on the farm. People travelled from all over the state to work alongside each other, and as a result of their community spirit 600 trees were planted in just a few hours.

Thank you for your continuing support of our adventure.

Sourdough obsession

You’d think there were enough mouths to feed on this farm, but I’ve added another one to the menagerie.

Fortunately this one only needs feeding once a week. It’s wild, but hasn’t escaped yet.

About three years ago I went to a sourdough-making workshop at a friend’s house. I came home, inspired, with my little jar of frothing flour and water. Some months later I found that jar in a forgotten corner of the fridge, containing a dark green slime swimming in black liquid.

But a couple of months ago I started thinking again of wild yeasts when I was flicking through a bread-making book. The thought of capturing my own yeasts, and keeping the starter like a pet, inspired me again.

Guy says I’ve been neglecting the blog since I’ve been bread making, and I apologise. He hasn’t, however, suggested I stop baking.

I began with an incredibly simple mixture of organic wholemeal flour and water – one cup of each in a plastic honey bucket with a tea towel over the top. I let it sit for a couple of days on the kitchen bench and it started to bubble.

I fed it another cup of flour and cup of water, and it bubbled again. I’ve read that wholemeal is the best flour to get a starter going - it’s the most vigorous fermenter. I’m also planning to make a rye starter for a different flavour.

After the first feed you need to throw out half the starter (in the compost) and feed it again. When the starter is in its infancy you should do this every day for a week, and you’ll notice the smell becoming richer and more complex.

It’s great getting to know the habits of your starter. Now mine’s established I keep it in the fridge in the garage (putting the starter in the fridge slows down the fermentation, but you still should feed it once a week). When it’s hungry it’ll look flat and won’t have many bubbles. It might even have a bit of darkish liquid on top called hooch – it’s a by-product of the fermentation. After you feed the starter it comes to life in about six hours: it bubbles and rises a couple of centimetres, happy again.

My routine now when I’m baking is to take the starter out on a Friday night and mix a big ladleful of it with 600ml of warmish water. I then stir in 500g of flour (any sort you want, but I usually do this stage with white) and I leave this gluggy mix overnight covered with a plastic bag. Some books call this the ‘sponge’.

Next morning the sponge will be really bubbly and light. It’s like you’ve given your starter a massive feed. Now I add 600g of flour – I’ve been experimenting with mixtures of white with wholemeal or spelt or rye (don’t be too heavy-handed with the rye though, it’s pretty dense) – and 25g of sea salt.

It’s important to rest the dough now, and let the flour soak up all the water. After half an hour I knead it for 5-10 minutes. I’ve read lots of complicated recipes involving long kneads and lots of re-shaping, but for what I’m doing, it’s really not necessary.

The wetter the dough is the bigger the air holes will be. It’ll also spread out more sideways than up. If the dough’s drier it’ll keep its shape better while it’s rising, but it will be denser.

I’ve been splitting the dough in two and shaping it into rounds. Then I leave them on trays covered with cotton cloths and flour for about six hours. That’s enough time to get heaps of jobs done on the farm, or a full day of brass band practice (we competed in the Nationals at Easter!).

Close to cooking time the dough should have just about doubled in size. Your oven needs to be really hot. I crank mine up to 260 degrees Celsius. There are all sorts of fancy baking stones and ceramic containers you can bake in, but at the moment I’m just using a couple of pizza stones. I pre-heat them too.

When the oven light’s gone off I slash the tops of the loaves with a bread knife, down to about 1cm, and then I spray with water.

Then comes the bit where I get a bit stressed: I worry about losing too much heat out of the oven while I’m mucking about getting the dough off the trays and onto the stones, but I’m getting quicker as I become more confident.

Bake the bread for 10 minutes at this high heat, and then check to see how it’s browning. If it’s looking pretty dark I turn it down to 170, if it’s only a little bit brown I’ll keep it at 180-90. The rest of the cooking takes about 30 minutes. It’s ready if it sounds hollow when you tap it.

Problems I’ve had so far that I’ve managed to solve:
- Starter not rising after I fed it – I was being too stingy with the feed and it was a bit too watery. Boosted the flour ratio.
- Not enough air holes in the bread – made the dough moister. I think the holiness has also improved as the starter has matured.

So far I’ve made different combinations of white, wholemeal, spelt and rye breads. I’ve also made a tasty combination of quinoa and spelt. I made an accidental ciabatta too, but so far the Turkish bread has been the biggest hit.

Photos from top:

- Rye and white

- Rye and white cross-section

- Established starter

- Turkish bread

- Quinoa and spelt

- White (decadent!)

Taking on turkeys: 2

The turkeys went too far. They killed two of our roosters, albeit they were headed for the pot too.

We found the turkeys leaning over the bodies, pecking at them. How they actually carried out the murders we don't know, but there are no other suspects.

So, what do we do with five free range turkeys that are now in the freezer?

Roast turkey, obviously, but I'd like some other ideas too... keeping in mind that because the turkeys have been running around outside they'll have leaner, darker meat.

Any suggestions?

Taking on turkeys

My mother hates turkeys. Which is probably why Guy decided we needed to get some.

On a Saturday morning a couple of months ago we were at the Burnie Farmers' Market. Guy had been relaxing reading the paper ("I just get in your way behind the stall anyway...") and I was serving customers, when I heard Guy on the phone, "we'll take the lot".

"We'll take the lot of what?"

Well, you know the answer.

Fortunately by the time we had a chance to drive to Kimberley to pick up the turkeys "the lot" had lessened significantly and there were only 18 left. Only.

These turkeys are just your common white ones, and we're considering them trial turkeys before we source a rare breed.

Fifty-three per cent of the world's turkey breeds are actually at risk of extinction. Almost all turkey meat you buy comes from one breed alone, the Broad Breasted White.

The turkeys weren't a problem when we first got them. They stalked around shyly and kept a good distance. Ten disappeared one night, probably taken by quolls or devils, but not a feather was left.

The remaining eight are now into everything. My car is covered in huge, muddy convict-like prints from bonnet to boot. There are black, smelly messes across the yard - and down the gravel road to our neighbour's house where she kicked them out four times on Friday.

They climb and try to balance on everything. They've eaten my kohl rabi seedlings. They're harrassing the ducks. And this morning there were heavy noises on the roof.

There is one thing I don't mind about them: they make so many different chortling, guttural, peck-peck-peck sounds, and it's quite comforting to hear them chat away as they ambush the other animals.

And in the evenings they climb onto the stable roof, wobble forward and back at the peak, and watch the sunset.

But what I'm really looking forward to is a free range roast turkey. And it won't be long now.

Simplicity in a sheep's innards

I remember being mesmerised by sausage-tying as a child watching a game show on the ABC.

It was a program where school-aged contestants were shown by the experts how to lay bricks, or tie sausages, and then had to do it themselves in front of the cameras with a clock ticking.

We had our first go at making sausages at home this week: boning out pork shoulders, mincing, seasoning, encasing and ultimately tying.

Our bookshelves are crammed with books on meat cooking, charcuterie, and old farm skills, but I decided to keep it simple the first time, and followed a DVD, Pig in a Day, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Hugh’s a chef, writer, and smallholder in the UK on a mission to enthuse people to grow and cook ethical, wholesome food.

I watched as Hugh demonstrated the right meat to fat ratio coming through the mincer. I watched the adding of oven-dried breadcrumbs, of salt, pepper, mace and other spices. I concentrated hard on the even-filling of the sausage casings, and the elusive sausage tying. I rewound the frames and watched again.

And then it was my turn.

I’m not sure about the breadcrumbs. I added the proportion Hugh said, but I think it was too much. Our butcher Neville at the abattoir says there was no need for breadcrumbs, so I think next time I’ll try without.

And more fat - there wasn’t enough sizzle. I think I’ll save some up from our bacon.

And salt, not quite enough salt.

But they look alright don’t they? And how about that sausage-tying in groups of three for a first time?!

*Top picture: Neighbour Tom enjoyed the mincing, but wasn't so keen on filling the sheep intestine casings.

Gnawing on a tail

Start collecting tails and try the recipe.

Saving the Dairy Shorthorn

What does a rare breed farmer get for Christmas?

More animals!

We have been incredibly fortunate to source a small herd of endangered traditional dairy shorthorn cattle from Western Creek breeders Betty and Warrick Holmes.

Western Creek is under the Western Tiers behind Deloraine, and Betty and Warrick are reluctantly selling their animals and farm so they can move back to New Zealand to be with family.

The dairy shorthorns are absolutely beautiful beasts, with quiet and gentle natures, and we are so pleased that the Holmes’ have entrusted us with their care.

They’re a dual purpose breed which means they’re good for both milk and beef, and they’ve been around for about 200 years.

In the early 1900s the dairy shorthorn was the main breed of cattle in Britain, and was called the “farmer’s cow of England”. It fitted in well with the routine of a mixed farm.

But in a similar story to the Wessex Saddleback pigs, as farming intensified, the breed began to be lost.

Farmers were looking for either high milk production, or heavy carcass weight, and it’s hard to soup-up a cow to do both.

Around the world the dairy shorthorn genetics have been altered to focus on either of these traits, but we’re lucky in Australia there has been a concerted effort to preserve the original dual purpose genes. There's also good old stock in Ireland.

In Australia traditional dairy shorthorns are on the rare breeds list under ‘endangered’, along with traditional herefords and traditional angus.

Aren’t their coats lovely? Ours are mostly roan (red sprinkled with white) but we also have a pure white cow and a few white calves. They can also come in red.

We think they deserve to be held back from extinction because they're perfect for the smallholder wanting to milk a few cows and produce a decent beef animal for the freezer. They're also docile and calve easily. Dairy shorthorns were the foundation stock for many other red breeds, including illawarras and ayrshires.

Neither of us drink much milk, but Guy's already making plans for a small milking shed, and Eliza's digging out her cheese books. It'll be great to have our own yoghurt, butter and cheese to go with our homegrown meat and vegetables.

Warrick and Betty Holmes say goodbye to their cattle