Duck buddies

This is Roger, Dylan and Quack-Quack.

They live on the fringe of the flock: outcasts. They have baggage.

Every morning you'll find them under the dying blackwood tree talking quietly as they wash and forage. The other ducks chatter in the orchard, assimilated.

I raised Roger and Dylan in the bathroom of my house in town. They swam under the warmth of a desk lamp, and came out to watch the news on the couch.

When they moved outside we would play on the lawn. I'd lay on my tummy and they'd walk along my back and tinker with my earrings and tease my hair.

Their confidence grew. I'd step outside with the washing and they'd sprint to the line. Roger would aim for the skin behind my knees and latch on - so great was his affection.

I contemplated a 'Beware of the Ducks' sign.

Quack-Quack is a dumped duck. She was an only child and her owners thought she'd be better-off eating our grain.

She's of "mixed breed" and appears to cogitate a lot.

The three spend most of their days together, but the boys do need Roger and Dylan Time. They have a special bond, these two.

Roger and Quack-Quack slid under the fence into the shelter belt the other day. Dylan was beside himself, wondering what they were up to.

But when Quack-Quack goes under the conifer to lay her egg, the boys waddle and hide.

And Quack-Quack spends the afternoon by herself.

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...

The birth of Harvest - and Tasmania's farmers' market history

In 2001, I recall a close friend of Eliza and I being excited about the start of Tasmania’s first modern-era farmers’ market - in Burnie, on the north-west coast. An organic enthusiast, he anticipated farmers’ markets could solve many of the problems facing farming in Tasmania. They would be a way for farmers who were doing something against the norm to engage with the public, and the conscious shopper could source local food. Tasmania, with its abundant produce, would be a farmers’ market winner.

Our friend teamed up with a few other passionate locavores to present a case to the Burnie Show Society. The society was a logical place to start: it had an existing committee, a suitable venue, and the market proceeds could assist to keep the society running. The society accepted the proposal and the farmers’ market was born. It quickly became a success, with roughly 1,000 people wandering through the gates with their shopping bags every fortnight. The stallholder fees provided a much-needed injection of funds for the show society. The show societies of Wynyard, Devonport, and Launceston soon launched their own farmers’ markets, after seeing the success of Burnie.

A small and scattered population made it challenging for all the markets to be a raging success. Initially, the rules were that stallholders had to produce everything they sold. Unfortunately, the reality was that northern Tasmania was a producer of commodities, and few farmers grew niche products or were interested in taking what they grew to market. For generations their job was to farm and let the processing companies sell what they delivered to them. Due to a shortage of farmers wanting to go to the markets, the committees began to allow producers to sell wholesalers’ products to ensure there was enough range for the customers.

The committees were also worried about the lack of produce farmers could grow in the Tasmanian winter, and as a result introduced the 80/20 rule, where stallholders could source 20 per cent of their items from other producers. Many people saw this as the decline of the markets, as the rule was hard to police and easily abused. All of a sudden supposedly local produce, like sweet potatoes and oranges, started appearing at coastal markets alongside cheap wholesale vegetables. Tourists travelling in the region would have left disappointed with the quality of some of the produce on offer, a situation that wouldn’t have helped grow the quality Tasmanian brand.

In hindsight, the cash-strapped show societies were perhaps not the best groups to run the markets, as they were more interested in collecting funds to repair their showgrounds, than care about running a true farmers’ market and ensuring it reflected the best produce of the region. Ten years on, Burnie is still going strong, the Wynyard and Devonport markets remain, but the original Launceston farmers’ market has folded.

In February this year a new farmers’ market was born in Launceston called Harvest. In contrast to the other farmers’ markets in the north, it was started by a couple of passionate foodies who, on moving to the region, couldn’t believe it was lacking a high quality farmers’ market. They had done their homework (a survey showed a high level of demand from the public), they had reviewed successful market structures and governance, and had lobbied the local council for a suitable venue.  Importantly, they had a long list of producers who were crying out for a suitable farmers’ market. They also had confidence that a genuine farmers ’ markets could be successful – in the south, the highly popular Farm Gate market had been running in Hobart for the past couple of years.

Harvest was launched on Festivale weekend by delicious magazine’s Vali Little and to date, has been a resounding success. Shoppers in Launceston can now access some of the best produce of the north. They have an opportunity to meet the farmers and form a greater connection with their food. Travelling tourists also get the chance to try a whole range of Tasmania’s finest produce in the one spot.

Harvest has been great for the stallholders too: instead of taking home a vehicle of produce, many are selling out and leaving the market with a smile on their face. The confidence of a reliable market has seen existing businesses expand and new businesses created. 

An unexpected benefit has been the chance for producers to get to know other each other and share information and skills. Collaboration among producers is an important step as the food culture in northern Tasmania develops, as food trails begin to emerge, and as the region begins to back its reputation as a food destination.

View our farmers' market schedule here.

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!

Journalist packs in job to go pig farming

“Your dad would be proud you’ve become a farmer’s wife,” the man said in the post office.

The day had been going well: the weight of full-time work had been knocked from my shoulders, and I was enjoying pottering around town ticking off jobs.

But now my cheeks were hot.

I rocked forward on my toes and looked at him.

“We’re not married,” I said.

Generally, the reaction to me leaving the ABC to go farming has been encouraging.

Mum, obviously, was upset she wouldn’t be able to listen to me in the mornings anymore. I told her she could ring me from time to time, just to hear my voice.

Guy’s upset I can no longer be quietened with the volume control, or silenced with the snooze button.

I’ve noticed some discomfort in people when they ask about my plans for the future.

“So you’re going to be a farmer?” they’ll say.

“Just farming?”

And then I feel I have to justify it by telling them about the part time job I’ve picked up at the uni.

“Oh that’ll be interesting.” They look relieved.

No wonder farmers are becoming a rare breed, especially young ones.

It was a big decision for us when Guy decided to stop full-time work, but his heart and head was always with the pigs.

It was an even bigger move for me. I’d been a rural reporter with the ABC for six-and-a-half years. The pay and conditions were good, and the job itself was fantastic. I felt like I sort-of knew what I was doing each day.

I started there where I was 21, and until the last year or so I always thought of myself as ‘Eliza Wood from the ABC’, not just, ‘Eliza Wood’. My identity was completely wrapped around my job.

But you can only survive on adrenalin and mid-morning powernaps for so long. I was tired, and the personal compromises I made in order to work for the ABC had become too much, and I felt my real passion being quashed.

I can now put ‘pig farmer’ [pronounced pug FAAR-mer] on my business card – and proudly.

I have not stepped down the ladder to become a farmer’s partner*.

Dad would be proud of me – not because I’ve paired up with a good-looking bloke who loves animals as much as he did - but because I’m having a go at being Eliza Wood: pig farmer, writer, composter, supreme carrot grower– whoever I want to be.  

*(Guy, I really don’t like that term, can we fix that?)