Pig farmer goes on an adventure

Yesterday I kissed and squeezed Guy and Mum goodbye at Launceston airport. They argued all the way in the car, of course: Guy teasing Mum about her driving and Mum hassling Guy about looking after my cat while I’m away.

We drank coffees and I handed over my camera and tried to explain how to get it to focus. We went through security and Mum’s fake knee set the alarms off. Guy was in tears of laughter as Mum got searched, thoroughly. “She’s lying,” he told the security staff, “She hasn’t got a fake knee.”

And so began the first leg of my first overseas adventure: a Churchill Fellowship that will take me to Italy, France, Spain, and the UK for seven weeks.

My bags are underweight, my clothes are new and clean, and my bits and pieces are organised in see-through bags.

I met my friend Bronwyn Purvis at Melbourne airport last night. Bronwyn’s a film maker, and she’s coming on this journey to help this farm girl get on a big plane and catch super-fast trains, and secondly, to help me record what I see and learn. I’ve been introducing her as ‘Mount Gnomon Farm’s film maker’.

She laughed at my over-the-top packing last night. Doesn’t everyone pack spare rubber bands, lock seal bags, glue sticks, pegs, and scissors? And apparently I’ve packed enough drugs to open a chemist. I put in the instruction manual for my travel socks, too.

The trip we’re going on is all about food and farm tourism, and I’m asking the question, ‘how can Tasmanian farmers incorporate tourism into their businesses, and offer visitors something amazing they’ll never forget?’.

I’d love it if consumers could spend more time on farms sniffing and scratching and seeing how their food is produced. Tasmanian farmers grow fantastic, quality produce, but we could do so much more with it.

So, the itinerary so far (journalists always leave things to the last minute) starts in Italy, where we will visit balsamic vinegar producers in Modena, go to Parma ham and Parmesan cheese factories and suppliers, and stay at ‘agriturismos’ with organic farmers.

Then we’ll head to Roquefort in France, where blue sheep’s cheese is matured in caves. We’re staying with sheep farmers who supply milk for the cheese, and we’ll stay in the tiny village too, that’s pushed up against an escarpment. Maybe a region of Tassie could do something like this: a whole heap of farmers could supply a handful of artisans to make a product so special it’s exported to the world.

Spain’s next, where we’ll follow the Dehasa and acorn-crunching pigs and learn about the science and romance of Jamon. The ham comes from Iberico pigs – big and black with huge ears and smooth hides. The ham makers are still allowed to hang their hams in the open air, without refrigeration – isn’t that fantastic?

At this point, Bronwyn will fly back to her job in Sydney and I will tackle the United Kingdom on my own. I’m planning to go to heaps of pig farms, and of course places like River Cottage and Jimmy’s Farm. There’s a property, Helen Browning’s Organics, that offers camping with the pigs, and even has an on-farm pub!

I’m sitting in the cactus garden at Changi airport in Singapore, my Tasmanian feet and hands swollen already with the heat. The sun’s just gone down, and we’re waiting for the big flight to Paris, where we’ll catch a smaller flight to Rome.

What do you think the first meal in Rome should be?

Peering over the fence

Farmers in Australia have traditionally been pretty cagey about what information they share with other farmers. Perhaps they’re worried about competition, or perhaps they lack confidence in what they’re doing.

Either way, when they don’t share they miss the chance to solve problems and, ultimately, improve their farm businesses. And the chance to inspire and energise each other is also lost.

I’ve never been one for group work – Guy will back this up – but I love it when we meet farmers who are generous and free with their knowledge and experiences. (Guy loves group work so much he used to work as a facilitator getting farmers together to share their skills.)

John and Sandra are from Swallow Valley Farm in California. I suspect part of the reason we hit it off was because of the geographical distance between us. It’s a bit like the way you can have a deep and meaningful with a stranger on a plane.

John and Sandra were doing a talk to the ag researchers at the uni, and by chance I was introduced to them as they were walking into the lecture theatre.

John’s the farm manager and Sandy works off-farm for blocks of time as a presentation graphics designer.  When she’s not tied up with that, she’s working on the farm or at the markets (they do five markets a week).

Swallow Farm’s main business is a sheep milk cheesery – they milk East Friesians. But on the 130 acres they also produce rare breed lamb (Katahdin, a shedding breed), pork, poultry, soft fruits and vegetables… and there could be more that they didn’t mention.

We were really excited to find out they’d had a Mangalitza pig – the primitive-looking, curly-haired breed that you’d definitely not want to meet on your way to lock up the chooks at night. (I say had – the Manga’s now in the freezer, but it didn’t produce much meat).

They also had a Traditional Dairy Shorthorn, the rare breed of cattle we’ve just started processing and selling at the markets. It was good to hear that their ‘Bella’ – also in the freezer – was the best beef they’d ever eaten.

Guy now wants a chook tractor. Not the rabbit hutch-sized ones you see in gardening magazines, but the ones that house 80 birds (Guy just informed me he doesn’t want one, he wants many). John and Sandy have 400 hens and each night they put themselves to bed, with a solar-powered door automatically closing behind them at dusk. If the girls feel like staying out late they’re unlikely to see the morning thanks to the local coyote population.

Interestingly, at Swallow Farm they can process up to 10,000 head of poultry each year without having to deal with painful red tape. So they kill turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese and sell them at the farmers’ markets. The exemption from the rules comes about because of the value placed on the cultural practice of killing turkeys for Thanksgiving. Perhaps we could compare it with mutton bird harvesting?

We also heard little bits about their animal welfare and bee friendly accreditation, their plans to produce biochar from their eucalypt (!) plantation, and their involvement in a new CSA – a community supported agriculture enterprise where the public subscribes to a regular delivery of produce.



Californian farmers Sandra and John

They face the same challenges as we do: reliance on outside meat processing, free range labelling inconsistencies, and trying to re-educate consumers who see the price, but not the value. 



After listening to John and Sandra’s presentation I asked them to park their camper in our yard and have dinner with us. They stayed two nights, we shared our home-grown meat and vegetables, and we said goodbye feeling so fortunate to have spent some time together.

There is so much we can learn from elsewhere in the world – why do we think we have to battle through without asking advice, or having a look at how someone else does things?

Last week I was selected for a Churchill Fellowship to spend six weeks overseas looking at farm tourism, value-adding (such as charcuterie), and how food-producing regions put themselves on the discerning tourist’s map.

I’m planning to spend time in France, Italy, Spain, and the UK – it’ll be my first time out of Australia, so I’m a little nervous, but very excited.

We think Tasmania, and the north-west especially, has amazing potential to provide visitors with genuine, earthy, and top-class experiences that combine real food with really stunning scenery.

So let’s do it!