On the day of our fourth anniversary at Mount Gnomon

On the anniversary of four years at Mount Gnomon: a selection of photos from our farm.

It feels significantly longer than four years - and the grey hairs and wrinkles support that!

But as the song says, all you need is love, and without love we wouldn't be here riding the roller coaster of farming.

Pig farmers' Christmas

It’s September and the pigs are snuffling and nosing the soft spring dirt.

“Are you taking Christmas orders yet? We were too late last year.”

“Almost… we're not quite organised yet.”

It’s October (pigs are still snuffling) and the enquiries are increasing.

“Can you put us down for a ham? Are you taking orders yet?”

Alright. I give in: let’s open the floodgates.

It’s November and the orders are flowing like grain from the silos.

“Guy, when are we going to stop taking orders? How many pigs have we got?

“Guy, I want to have some spare. We missed out on a ham for ourselves last year.”

Guy stares at the paddock and stares at the spreadsheet.

And stares again at the paddock and again at the spreadsheet.

I think he grunted.

It’s December. Already.

What if we don’t have enough pigs? What if we lose an order? What if we lose two orders?

How many hams? How many hams? How many hams?

Bone-in, bone-out, half, whole, she’s having a charcuterie pack – with ham, no, without – three gourmet barbeque packs please, with an extra kilo of scotch, did you write that order down from the man who rang last night? What man?

I’m tired.

I’m more tired than you.

I’m wearing odd socks. I’m eating sausages for tea. Not sausages and mashed potato with gravy, just sausages.

I’m shocked when I see my arm muscles in the mirror. You don’t need a gym membership when you’ve got hams to hang.

Five days till Christmas.

           

So early this morning I sat outside on Cyril’s bed facing east and listened.

Cockatoos, roosters, crows, bush birds that I will learn the names of, one day.

And sleepy, snuffling pigs.

Dreams becoming a (slightly daunting) reality

If we’d won $100,000 in the lottery the feeling would be very different.

We’ve received a Federal Government grant, and while we’re elated and buoyed, there is a great sense of obligation.

As the apple farmer at the market told me, we’d better spend his tax dollars well.

The other thing is we’ve got to come up with matching funds.

A couple of months ago Guy spent a week writing a massive application for a T-QUAL grant. The grants are competitive and merit-based, and aim to boost the tourism industry in Australia.

As the post office staff starting locking the doors late one afternoon, we pushed 16,000 words into a post bag.

We’ve always wanted to move into farm tourism – and when 650 people turned up for our open day in April, we knew there was real demand.

We can all see the growing interest in real food, cooking, farmers’ markets, ethical production…. but research is showing people also want hands-on farm experiences, so they can get back to the roots of what they’re eating.

And that’s fantastic – because 85 per cent of Australians live in urbanised areas, and are so disconnected from farming.

Farm tourism is a big thing in Europe, the UK, and New Zealand, but it still hasn’t really caught on in Australia.

I imagine it might be because of lack of labour on farms, and lack of farmers’ confidence to market and promote what they do.

But if farmers want to keep their families and businesses going, they’ve got to diversify their incomes.

In Tasmania, 70 per cent of farmers have to work off-farm. From our experience, that’s really hard: you become torn between two jobs; you wish you were at home; and you become resentful.

Onlookers probably wonder why north-west Tasmanians haven’t embraced food tourism.

We grow and make so many products, and we have small farms with soils suited to niche production.

But we’ve been trying to compete on a global market with commodities – and we just can’t keep doing it.

We think food tourism is vital in building the brand of this region.

At the moment few tourists stop as they speed along the Bass highway heading for Strahan or Cradle Mountain.

We’ve got to give them a reason to stop – and not just one or two places offering good food and farm experiences.

We need a whole chain of businesses – farm stays, cooking schools, berry farms, wineries, cheese factories, restaurants using purely local ingredients – to make the trip worthwhile for visitors.

For our part, we’re planning a centre where visitors will learn about rare breeds; we’ll have a butchery and commercial kitchen; and there’ll be a focus on giving our visitors a full paddock-to-plate experience – gumboots included.

And for the full story on what we’re planning, you’ll just have to stay tuned...

To be confronted is to learn

When I walked into the restaurant cuddling a piglet, it didn't occur to me it could put people off their pork belly.

Despite the trend towards knowing where your food comes from, it seems not everyone is happy to share a dining room with a future meal.

Last night we devoured five courses of Mount Gnomon pork at Drift's Pig Out dinner. Chef Tom Dicker took us around the world with dishes inspired by France, Asia, the United States, and Italy.

We had pork hock terrines, rillettes, spicy salads, pulled pork burgers and dagwood dogs, cheek ragu, and of course, rich pork belly. Dessert was an heirloom apple and cinnamon tart - and the pastry was made with our lard.

We set up a piglet pen at the entrance of the restaurant. The piglets were clean, silky, and well-behaved. They snuggled into their straw while we tucked into our meal.

After the fourth course I thought it was time to introduce one of them to our table of friends.

But from the horrified looks darting across the room, apparently piglet patting at a pig out is not the done thing.

I think it's curious that it's quite acceptable to be in the same room as a dead pig, but not a grunting, chubby live pig.

Maybe not everyone is as enthusiastic about paddock-to-plate experiences as I am - but I stand firm in my belief that if we want to eat meat, we stop telling ourselves porkies, and accept where it comes from.

I am heartened though in knowing that the 70 people at last night's dinner are now fully aware that pork = pigs.

Our Rare Day Out farm open day on April 1 demonstrated there are many people in our community willing to learn about how we raise our pigs, sheep, and cattle, and that they want a grass roots experience.

We had 650 people visit us - that's right! 650! I can't think of a bigger farm field day in Tasmania other than Agfest (and I think it will be a while before we aim to attract 80,000 people).

The weather was stunning, the atmosphere relaxed. While Guy and I took groups around the farm our guests munched on pulled pork tortillas, sausages in sourdough, and slurped local beer and cider, and ethical coffee.

Kids spent hours cuddling (and squeezing) piglets and went home with animals painted on their faces.

Despite exhaustion, Guy and I couldn't sleep that night. Instead, we got up and read the blogs our visitors had already posted, and looked at the incredible number of photos on facebook and twitter.

The energy and inspiration generated on that day is still brightening our eyes and hearts.

Our thanks goes to: Guy's brother Dane for getting the farm into shape for our visitors; to Drift for crafting and serving the food; to Seven Sheds and Ritual Coffee for the drinks; to our neighbours, friends, and family who volunteered on the day; and to you - who supported us and enabled us to donate $3,000 to our causes. Thank you.

*Our causes were: Landcare Tasmania, the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia, Learn <> Grown, and Lucy's Holiday.

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.