A little Christmas party

What are you doing on Thursday evening? Come and join us for an apéro* at our new little butchery in Burnie.

We'll have a drink and a nibble, talk about nice things like pigs and gardening, and you can select a few goodies to put under the tree (or hide in the fridge).

Our friends from Red Cow Dairies, Blue Penguin Wines, and Pickled Sisters are coming too to share their wares. We're really looking forward to catching up with our customers and producer friends.

In the new year we're planning to open the butchery regularly on Thursday afternoons/evenings.

*a new word in my vocab that explains that wonderful time of day when you sit down with friends, share a little drink, some good food and forget about your worries.

Milking sheep in Millau

Ever wondered how a sheep is milked? As you watch, imagine going through this process twice a day - both the farmer and the sheep!

These Lacaune sheep were on the Cassan family farm where we stayed at Millau, southern France. Their milk is used to make the famous Roquefort cheese.

Footage shot by Mount Gnomon's Eliza Wood. Editing by Bronwyn Purvis.  

Thank you to the fabulous Chiara and Diodorim Saviola (you met them in Italy at the Agritourismo Casa Nouva). They are not just farmers and agritourismo operators, they are also very talented musicians. On this film you hear their track "Miniature, Andante". Chiara is playing flute, and Diodorim the harpsichord.

Please don't let me be misunderstood

Suzanne introduces me to blood sausage - boudin noir - from Christophe's butchery.

Before I went overseas, people asked how I was going to cope in Europe without speaking another language. I shrugged it off, convinced I’d be able to communicate via my hands and google translate. On the most part, that has sufficed, as long as my hands aren’t full and there’s WiFi available.

Isn’t it funny how quickly you adopt an accent? The first time I rang Guy from Italy he laughed at the way I was talking. I was dropping out all the little, unnecessary words, and sounding very exotic – I thought.

Italy was an easy place to start the trip. Almost everyone we met spoke some English, and many were fluent. It hit me pretty quickly how easy it is to get away with speaking just one language when you’re Australian. It’s embarrassing.

We met a black pig farmer, Aldo, with a great set-up near Parma: lots of free range pigs, some cattle, and an on-farm butchery where he makes fantastic charcuterie, including prosciutto. While we were there, one of his regulars turned up to buy a chicken, and he happened to speak a few words of English.  We walked around the farm all together, pointing, laughing, and nodding when we thought we understood each other. I didn’t, however, find out exactly how many pigs he had and whether he sold all of them through the farm shop.

In Roquefort, France, we stayed with the lovely Suzanne Marques – a widow with grandchildren spread about the country, and a house on the hillside of the village. As soon as we arrived it was clear this was going to be a google translate situation. We tried to connect to WiFi, but the password wouldn’t work. Suzanne, who had her hair set beautifully by the way, picked up her mobile and called one of the grandchildren (we’d mistaken an O for an 0). After that, and showing Suzanne how to type on the iPad, the conversation flowed. At breakfast the next morning, Suzanne greeted us with, ‘Good morning. How are you?’ with a big grin on her face. We saw a book-marked French-English dictionary on the dining table. She’d been up late.

Suzanne took us to a specialist charcuterie butchery in the hills of Viala-du-Tarn. Christophe Fabre’s family had started the business in the village, but as it grew, they had to move to the outskirts. When I got there, they were expanding again, and about to treble their production. Remarkably though, they were able to sell it all within a radius of 200km – mostly at farmers’ markets. Christophe wanted to keep it that way to avoid more stringent export regulations.

We muddled through the conversation as Christophe remembered some English. At least pigs have the same body parts all around the world – they just have different names and different uses. Christophe was making air-dried ham, various sausages – including blood sausage – and lots of cooked pates and canned products. I could smell the cooked meat in the kitchen, and see the machines smeared with fresh, warm fat, but I couldn’t ask what they had been making, how long they’d cooked it for, how quickly they cooled it, what spices they put in, how it was served.

In a few days, Marion arrived. Guy met Marion when he was working in the Northern Territory, and she was there visiting the CSIRO studying ants. We heard about another family charcuterie business, this one near Camarès (from Annie, the sheep farmer). I can’t tell you the name of the family, because they were nervous about my blogging. This came about because of a miscommunication.

We’d spent a lovely couple of hours with Mr and his son. We sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee and munching on biscuits I’d got at the farmers’ market. With Marion translating, I learnt how their business had developed and diversified, and how they split their business into wholesale and direct. We toured the factory and it was fantastic: all the rooms were temperature controlled (to lengthen the meat’s shelf-life), there was absolutely no wastage of the pig, and I could see their products were created with care and love.

I really wanted to see the pigs. I hadn’t really thought much about them to this point – I think I knew they were indoors, and that efficient production was a priority for this business. We were given blue spacesuits and plastic shoe covers, and walked up the drive to the sheds.

The smell was mild and the pigs and their pens were incredibly clean. It was a big operation, and the whole area was air conditioned for the comfort and fast growth of the pigs. The sows and their piglets were in stalls, and Mr pointed enthusiastically for me to take a photo while the piglets were drinking. We talked about the production system, and Mr showed me the sow cards where the litters were recorded. While I could never be an indoors pig farmer, I thoroughly respected the care and science they were applying to their farm.

We got talking about sow stalls, and how they were being banned in France. Their business had got in early and moved to group housing for the sows (unfortunately, because they acted early, they missed out on government assistance - funny that). I started telling them about Australia and our rules. I told them about the media coverage of farmers’ not doing the right thing, and how extreme activists sometimes broke into piggeries to record footage.

This is when things started breaking down. I hadn’t kept things simple, and I’d got too confident now I had a translator with me. Suddenly, I think they thought that if I posted photos on my blog they’d be attacked. I flushed and my heart started racing. I shook my head vigorously and tried to explain.

Even though they said they understood, the rest of the tour was strained. I felt sick all the way home. I didn’t sleep and I was teary the next morning. It’s horrible being misunderstood, absolutely horrible.

I quickly made a card to post, thanking them for the visit and emphasising how professional I thought they were. A few days later I emailed a lovely portrait shot I took of Mr in among his hams. I hope they understand.

More photos from France on Flickr.

Annie's flock at Camarès

Annie Bernat has been welcoming the public to her sheep farm in France since long before it was trendy, and decades later she still loves it.

Annie and her brother's property is in between the narrow roads at Camarès, in central southern France. They've got about 600 Lacaune ewes - the sort of sheep that produce milk for Roquefort cheese.

The soil in this area looks really strange. It's red like ours, perhaps a bit more maroonish, but instead of being made up of soft lumps it's rocky and shard-like. (A bit of research tells me it's a clay saturated with iron oxide, and it's full of the skeletons of corals and marine critters from 250 million years ago).

The dirt seems to grow good grass though, because the ewes are excellent producers (350 litres per girl per season) and the barns are packed with giant fresh-smelling bales of hay.

When we got to the farm the school holiday crowd was taking off its blue shoe protectors after touring the sheep barns, and was headed towards the soft and squeezable animals.

As the mothers gathered up their young and the squishy protectors, Annie tossed grain about for the chooks who came running for the finish line from the ground floor of the stone farmhouse.

Around the corner we stopped to get out the rabbits, and once everyone under 10 had held one we poked our heads into the stable to say hello to the horses.

Then up we went past the tractor sheds, past the Jenny Craig Shetland pony pen, into a simply, but  rather nicely, restored barn.

Annie told me (through my translator and friend Marion) that she got some funding to help with the glass windows and doors, and also for the three-legged stools around the tables.

As the parents lifted the kids onto the stools, Annie rushed about putting baskets of bread on the tables and started sharing the cheese. The chunks of Roquefort were the size of lunch plates and had the ripe smell of room temperature. Jam was also passed around, and the weary parents welcomed the red wine that was poured for them.

There was a lovely feeling of chaos - a bit like a flurry of warm wind between us - but Annie had done this hundreds of times and knew what a lovely feeling it was.

After the families had paid up (a tiny five Euros per adult), Annie sat with us and the left-overs, talking about how she and a handful of women sheep farmers had got together to organise the farm tours. They got some help with printing brochures, and eventually convinced the cheese companies to let them sell Roquefort from their farms (albeit at a higher price than at the factories).

Annie makes barely anything from the tours, and she doesn't have a farm shop to divert the visitors through on their way to the car park, but you can see she just loves sharing her lifestyle and animals with families who are willing to drive out to Camarès and get a bit dirty.

Annie's flock at Camarès, France, a set on Flickr.

A pig farmer in tourists' clothing

It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden a bicycle successfully, and I didn’t expect my next wobbling, bottom-aching ride would be on a pig farm in Italy.

We pulled into the gravel driveway of Antica Corte Pallavicina Relais 45 minutes late, feeling frustrated after driving up and down the main road in Polesine Parmense looking for the turn off.

Our guide, Giovanni, was straddling his bicycle waiting for us: curly haired with a moustache and wearing a crisp shirt and trousers that a tourist wouldn’t imagine wearing in the heat of Italy’s summer.

Giovanni is the director of Antica Corte Pallavincia – a castle on a pig farm with a Michelin star restaurant and a cellar packed with drying pig meat.

Massimo Spigaroli’s a chef who you might have seen on MasterChef, or at Melbourne’s Food and Wine Festival.

In the heat of the late morning, I struggled onto my bicycle (artisan made for use by visitors to the farm) and we began our tour.

The farm is spread out around the town, and the first stop we made was its parmigiano reggiano factory. The workers were cleaning up after making the morning’s batch, and they had fun teasing Giovanni and “accidentally” getting him wet with the high-pressure hose. The cheese is made from milk sourced from farmers around the region, and is exported around the world under the Spigaroli name.

Next, we visited the ducks, geese, and turkeys, whose enclosure was in the shade of the vineyard. The poultry are grown for use in the restaurant. An older man was feeding them greens from the vegetable garden and the birds were pushing and pecking with excitement as they fought for a leaf.

When we reached the piggery – a long concrete building – Giovanni pointed me towards the dark entrance and said he needed to go and do something in another building, leaving me to it.

The stench was incredible. The black pigs were lying in shit and they flicked their tails at the flies. The pigs spooked when they heard me, and slipped on their hooves as they ran to their tiny outside concrete run to urinate.

Pigs grown for charcuterie are large when they are killed – three of four times the size of ours at Mount Gnomon. They’re also a lot older, around two years compared with six months.

Next to the piggery, Giovanni had unlocked the doors to the culatello drying room that was made of stone and covered in vines to help keep it cool. It was dark inside, except for a thin green light filtering through the vertical windows on the north side.

Everywhere there was meat: back legs with no bones or skin, squished into bladders and laced with string. Giovanni told me the culatello spends the first eight to ten months of its drying period here, where the environment is breezy and not too humid.

Back on the bicycle, I watched Giovanni pedal slowly as we talked and I realised my wobbling was being caused by my erratic stop-start pedaling. On the main road we pick up speed and I just hoped the locals in their constant road rage were used to navigating around sore-bottomed tourists.

In the castle cellar, 1.5m below the ground, it was cool and the low-set lights illuminated the culatello like religious figurines. Giovanni was getting hungry, so we talked briefly about the opening and closing of the small windows, and of the fog that drifts in from the nearby river, tenderising the meat.

Still in the depths, we sat in front of a stone wall where a projecting screen unraveled. We watched a very nicely crafted film telling us about the Spigaroli family history, the black pigs that forage in the wilderness, and the artisan production of culatello.

We were hungry now too, and we took the steps up to the restaurant where the white tablecloths awaited our crumbs and greasy fingers.

Lunch was fabulous of course, with attentive service, handcrafted crockery and cutlery, and delicious food. I had pasta filled and topped with parmigiano reggiano and a cream sauce; 150-day aged pork loin seared on the outside, but pleasantly raw in the middle, served with vegetables; and small sweet treats gifted from the kitchen.

Massimo’s a chef, and you can see that it’s the restaurant that makes Antica Corte Pallavicina special. But I couldn’t help but be disappointed with the pigs. Perhaps the pigs were about to be cleaned out, and perhaps in the heat it was better for them to be in the shade than in the flat, baking paddocks outside.

But on the sleek website that drew me to the business, the pigs appeared outside grazing, eating the nuts and plants that make their meat unique. Yes, they do go outside – but only for a couple of months in the autumn.

It is very hard to run all parts of a business perfectly – we know that full well, as we juggle the animals, butchery, farmers’ markets, restaurants, festivals and endless paperwork – but perhaps I naively thought there were people on the other side of the world that could.

Mount Gnomon's photostream on Flickr.

Banging on about black pigs in Bardi

There's one thing that's really confronted me in Europe - not the languages, or the right-hand driving, or the complicated shower fittings - but simply the empty paddocks.

At home I look out the window and see pigs, cattle, sheep, ducks, the neighbours' horses, goats and alpacas. At night you can spy wallabies, possums, rabbits, and the occasional owl or devil.

After a few days in Italy I got pretty desperate to see some black pigs, but they were hard to track  down.

The black pig that's native to the Parma area has a similar story to the Wessex Saddleback - it lost popularity when agriculture became more intensified, but has had a come-back in the last decade or so.

However, finding a market for the meat hasn't been easy, and many farmers have given up on their black pigs.

So I was thrilled when we made contact with some free range black pig farmers who were very willing to spend time talking pigs with us.

Thank you to Yoli Meneghetti and Giacomo Belli from Agriturismo Ca del Fuoco. Film production by Bronwyn Purvis.

Pig farmer visits a Prosciutto de Parma factory

We drove into the city of Parma on a Sunday and almost all the shops were closed – apart from the tourism information centre, a tobacco shop, a gelateria, and a couple of bars.

It seemed only right to have ham for lunch. In the bar we chose, the Parma ham legs hung in the window, and a half leg sat melting on the slicer. I asked for a little taste of ham, enough for one. The chief slicer turned on the machine and began delicately lifting translucent slices onto a round timber board. Then he picked up a darker piece of meat and sliced. And then a salami.

When the board arrived in front of me it came with a chunk of parmigiano and a plate of toast dribbled with olive oil. Enough for a family.

I was confused about the different cuts of ham, so I picked a piece up in each hand and chased the waitress around the bar asking for details. They were both from the back leg, she told me, but had been cured for different lengths of time.  I told her I was a pig farmer – trying to excuse my behavior.

With a full stomach we negotiated the roundabouts out of Parma, and headed for the mountains where the ham I had been eating was made.

In the village of Langhirano the five, six, and seven storey factories towered above the stone houses. Their windows were long and narrow – a feature left over from when the mountain air was allowed to flow through the buildings to dry the meat. The signs by the road were over-sized and cartoon-like: jumping and flying pink pigs with chubby, smiling faces.

These factories produce hundreds of thousands of air-dried hams each year that are exported around the world. When I had thought about the brand of Parma ham, I had assumed all the pork legs came from Italian pigs – but it’s just not possible: the hams outrun the farm production.

With our agriturismo hosts Diadorim and Chiara, we visited a smaller factory, Vescovi, in the village of Lagrimone. They used strictly Italian pigs - the closer the farm the better - and showed us the tattoos on the legs.

But does it matter to the consumer where the pork comes from? Or is it the story of the curing process and the history that they are interested in?