Join us on Matthew Evans’ captivating journey on his Tasmanian farm as he embraces sustainable farming to nourish the land for future generations. This episode dives into innovative solutions like using goats to tackle invasive blackberries, crafting cultured butter from scratch, and creating an edible native plants garden with insights from indigenous expert Chris Scherer. Discover how regenerative practices can transform farming and food, from soil to table. Witness the birth of a sustainable future at Fat Pig Farm, where every challenge is met with a green solution.
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Gourmet Farmer follows Matthew Evans as he swaps city life for small farm living in Tasmania, aiming to connect directly with food by growing and rearing it himself. Despite his inexperience in farming, his journey is a testament to the belief in local produce and the joys of sharing home-grown feasts with friends.
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It’s the middle of autumn in tazzy and the weather is starting to change the garden’s powering but it’s about to slow down as the temperature begins to drop and the farm prepares for the onset of winter oh hello you’re all coming for a feed over the next 12 months our goal is
To do everything we can to improve and nourish our Farm soil and after a visit from Hannah a permaculture expert we now have a plan to manage our rainwater better so we can stop our soils nutrients being washed away so we have to make sure that we have a regenerative approach so rather
Than degrading that soil and taking taking taking you’re setting it up so it can be almost self-replenishing with your support and help to keep producing these good nutritious yields indefinitely it’s simple really the more we can do to look after the health of our land the more able it
Will be to look after us now and hopefully for generations to come there’s really three things I need to get on to the soil the water and the black Brees I’ve got a plan for the black bre might make it easier and then I’ll worry about the nutrients in the
Soil and and after that fix the water so it’s just another day on the farm one man me taking on the forces of nature nothing to worry about right my name is Matthew Evans after years as a big city food critic I bought a farm in Tasmania to better understand
What I eat by growing it myself I built a restaurant right at the top of the farm but now I want to get a better understanding of what I eat eats this means starting from the ground up to improve the health of our soil our farm and our food for generations to
Come from foodie to Farmer to Chef to rehabilitator of the land how hard can it be autumns are very beautiful and busy season for the farm with lots of work harvesting but with the thousands of blackberry bushes taking hold of our paddocks I really need to tackle the
Problem head on today one of our friends Jilly is a blueberry farmer that lives just up the road and she may have the solution to our Blackberry issues goats guess what we’re interested in is trying to control blackberries which are just taking over so is it spread over
Your farm or is it in a specific everywhere it’s all like it’s all along the fence lines it’s creeping back into the paddocks okay um and we really don’t want to use you know chemical sprays at this St they turn into a big problem pretty quickly don’t they blackberries were introduced to
Tazy over 200 years ago but today they’re seen as a nuisance weed because of the way they compete for the soil’s nutrients so sad wanted me to get some goats onto the problem but I’ve heard that goats are pretty high maintenance eaters but if Jilly reckons they have a
Sweet tooth for blackberry bushes then it could be the go so you can see these guys over here are eating blackberries and they’re picking the last of the leaves off these plants which have they’ve had a pretty good go out already they don’t let them seed you know
They’ll eat all the fruit I thought we’d have to look at getting goats maybe you know slash and then get you put something on that going eat the young leaves but they they seem to eat Old leaves any time of year yep blackbery leaves are actually a bit of a herb for
Goats they’re high in tannin and they’re high in other nutrient which helps them with their parasite burden right um so it’s actually really good for them and we’ve almost got to the stage where we kind of we don’t mind having the blackberries in the paddocks because it
It creates good food over a longer season than what we’ve got other some of the other fod for them wow this sounds too good to be true not only are the goats going to be good for the blackberries but the blackberries are going to be good for the goats if we
Were to get into goats what would we need to know they need to be on enough food that they just stay a healthy happy animal they can be a bit more prone to parasites than some other farm animals so you need to keep an eye on that
They need good shelter they need good fences they need their feet to be trimmed a couple of times a year well they sound pretty good yeah so far so good but I’m sure that innocent tazzy smile on jil’s face is hiding something I wonder if there are any
Downsides if you don’t mind them getting into your garden every now and again I definitely don’t want him in the G you know nardy would kill me if he got into the G that’s for sure they’ve done a pretty good job here but um if they’re
So good why are you getting rid of them well they do take quite a bit of work to maintain to keep healthy happy herd I need a lower maintenance solution to my weed problems I’m going to go for machines next time H maybe I should have gone with a machine before promising sad
These goats but I’m sure Sadi will be a lot happier with a herd of these guys around the place than a herd of lawnmowers but when it comes to Grass maintenance you can’t beat our cows an Autumn and spring are the best times to make butter because grass is green and
Abundant the yellow color in butter comes from the beat of carotene in the grass the green of the grass the rich of the butter this is um cafir so they’re little granules that ferment you can get ones that that can live on sugar and water this is a a milk cfir so they’re
Little balls or little grains they call them um they’re bacteria yeast combinations and they actually ferment the milk I want to use them to culture some uh some cream to make a cultured butter never done it before anyway I just need to drain this off these granules are actually quite
Easy to find in local Health shops or even online so a lot of people make a like a milk cafir as a probiotic as a drink U they like the flavor I don’t really love the flavor but this is going into cream to make cultured cream so if
You add those little granules to cream it creates like a sour cream cream fresh um which is too thick and you can’t get those the little grains out again so what I’ve done put put them in the bag so I can fish them out again but they’re
Not really tight in the bag so the cream can get all around going I pop that into my jar this is just a jar of of cream from our cows now I’m just popping a lid on there just Loosely that’s just to stop anything Landing in there this then sits
On the bench overnight about 24 hours should be enough and the whole lot of cream cultur the bacteria the yeast the good bacteria the good yeast that exists in those little grains are going to multiply and send all of this um cream a little bit sour so when you whip it into
Butter you get cultured butter so it’s less waxy it’s got more flavor um it’s a it’s a really lovely butter compared to um just whipping normal cream to make butter all right see you tomorrow butter is one thing but the fermenting process is also a great way
Of preventing food waste when the garden is producing so many veggies in Autumn this is a real Surplus it’s the season and because we’ve had such a bump of crop this year sad didn’t want to waste our glut of excess tomatoes so while up in Hobart she
Dropped in on Adam James one of tazzy’s most talented fermentors to see if he’d be up for a trade hello hey how are you he’s renowned for the wild vegetable ferments that he sells to restaurants around town Adam has a glut of his own how’s it so s
Is hoping to make a deal for some miso that I need for the kitchen wow look at your Tomos Tom holy just these up off poette actually these are beautiful 25 kilos just going to do a bit of a hot sauce with um yeah some rotas is that
What those are called yeah so these are these are super hot oh cool so you’re going to put the tomatillos the chili the salt and then ferment that I’ll ferment that but I’ll probably just process them into more of a past form oh okay and then just leave them in the
Crocs like that and is it kind of more of a pasty exactly yeah just to do their thing so yeah it’ll it’ll end up being like a thick hot sauce oh wow and so you might hit it with some coriander root or something towards the end and afterwards
You’re not going to ferment the coriander in later otherwise You’ lose that exactly and it can just more of an aesthetic thing the color can kind of brown it all a little so I like to hit that at the very end and it keeps its freshness yeah what else you doing what
We got going out those Crocs want to look at the big guys I want to look at the big Crocs all Right Adam discovered fermentation in 2013 after he tasted some fermented miso paste on a trip to Japan and since then he’s been fermenting whatever he can get his hands on I got 77 kilos of um Green Tomatoes delivered last week yeah which was really exciting so so is that just
Green tomato and plus just a little and and just Goosey bushies to kind of start that off I’m kind of going to see how it develops and then I think probably a couple of months down the track I’ll decide where it’s going to go and what it needs like ultimately with what I’m
Doing you know there’s there’s never a recipe and everything nothing’s ever going to be replicated check this guy out this is um Roto so those same chili but we’ve got about 100 L there and I’ve just hit that recently with um a whole bunch of uh turnips and and that’s what
I can smell is the turnips yeah so it really adds a beautiful depth of flavor by adding vegetables like I never use any fillers like you know vinegars or sugar or you know people use xantham gum and all these kind of you know additives so for me it’s always straight
Vegetables um sometimes a little bit of filtered water but generally it’s just the vegetables themselves and then time and and that’s pureed what about salt is there salt in there definitely salt but I I do do it by taste like I’ve yeah I’m not one for sitting there and weighing
And measuring I kind of like to do things instinctively and generally kind of works out all right works out okay yeah lots of chili sauces are fermented in one way or another for instance Tabasco and Shira are fermented to get their unique depth of flavor as well as
Preserving them what um what what can I do to B what are you hoping for um have you got any more miso like that really beautiful plain me thei so like the soybean one the traditional one just the traditional one yeah totally and then I tasted um one of your ferments a friend
Had that had turn turnip tops in it I think the turnup yeah with um so it’s turnup top um with fresh tumeric and yeah that sounds spring garlic yeah that sounds like it’s almost like kind of Curry pasty yes yes yes yes yeah yeah absolutely big of each of those yes
Please yes please yes please now that’s what what I call a classic tazzy business transaction fresh tomatoes for the best Misa you’ll ever Eat with Autumn comes new pigs and one of my sours of eater is almost ready to give birth hello darl I haven’t got any food for you it’s okay you’re a bit nervous I Know V is a her first time mom and she’s just built a nest inside her shelter So Gone around and gathered lots of long grass and built quite a a big nest she probably doesn’t know what’s going on but she’s got this overwhelming instinct to to build things you this this area
That’s going to be safe for her babies um she’ll probably give birth in the next 24 36 hours I’d imagine but you see she’s more up for a scratch right now than than um giving birthy leave you to it Fridays on the farm mean that the kitchen is getting ready for our lunch
Service the cream has been fermenting overnight and should now have a great flavor and be ready to turn into butter this is the cream that we cultured yesterday with that um cafir grains so it’s gone like a sour cream not as thick as I thought it might be W
This is the bag full of grains you can see how it’s grown they’ve grown a little bit but then there’s also a lot of cream in there now and I’m going to tip that cream into my Butter Churn so it’s cultured so it’s a little bit um
Chunky a sort of thing like milking a cow you can’t rush it as a food Butters or go back about 10,000 years to the time when our ancestors first began domesticating animals ancient tribes of Asiatic India would also burn it in lamps as a source
Of light and even smear it on their skin to protect from the cold what we’re trying to do with this is turn cream into butter so we’re trying to get rid of the liquid part the liquid part is called buttermilk strangely it’s such a simple pleasure to
Make your own butter and once the curds have separated from the way it’s pretty much ready The washing process is really complicated um in a factory probably but what we do we take water and we put it over that unformed butter the stuff looks like rotter and that’ll wash out a whole bunch more buttermilk you’re only washing it because the buttermilk is
Going to go off so if I want to keep the butter for any more than 2 3 days I need to wash it a bit the more buttermilk you remove the longer it should last but it never lasts long when there’s fresh bread around that liquid’s a lot more
Clear now I’ve got rid of most of the moisture tiny bit left that won’t matter now is when to add my salt you have the butter you get the occasional Crunch and um Sparkle of salt through the butter right so these paddles are used to press
Out the buttermilk but you can also use it to shape the butter so you can see there’s a little bit of moisture in there that’s absolutely fine for us but if you’re going to keep it for weeks and weeks you wouldn’t want any moisture at all all right H here’s a
Block a beautiful homemade butter which we’ll use at lunch today come the end of autumn is a great time for us to plan what we’re going to plant in Spring Australia has been farmed using European principles for the last 200 years in a way that’s completely degraded the soil but the First Nations
People managed the land sustainably for tens of thousands of years so the question is is there a way for me to reverse 200 years of soil degradation using edible native plants while still feeding my family and servicing the restaurant to get a bit of an Insight I’m off to
Visit local indigenous expert Chris schaer who’s something of a guru when it comes to establishing edible native Gardens good day Chris thanks for doing this pleasure now this is your go is this a garden or is this a forest both both all of the above yeah right Joe and I um have been talking for a long time about doing edible natives in a garden just outside building is there stuff
Here you can show me yes um we’ve got Kia yeah ambigua yeah this is it here mhm we can Harvest it straight away right it’s got a really distinctive flavor and um it’s good for arthritis wow that b was almost peppery it’s got Citrus notes it’s got Savory
Notes it be fantastic with um in a salami or with um over the the open side of a pruto or something like that yes perfect wow that’s delicious there we go can I can I keep that you may this Farm is completely different from any I’ve ever seen I haven’t
Spotted a recognizable Paddock or fence of any kind I’ve already got an idea of how I could use Kia in the kitchen and it’s only the first plant I’ve looked at Chris has 4 Acres of garden with countless edible varieties so it’s going to be really hard to make a choice I
Wonder if this is something I could do on fat pig farm I a wildlife Wonderland of edible native plants I look there’s something in a pot yeah W what are they Tasmania lalata Bush pepper are they’re different varities there are different forms yes they can grow right from sea level up to
Subalpine so we’ve got small Leaf Alpine forms and then the larger this is the more common form how long from when I if I put a plant in to when I would get seed sometimes we can have them flowering in their first year in the pots right give me some culinary uses
That you might native pepper ice cream yeah right we got a little ice cream machine but I’ll give it a crack it’s good it’s really good pepper Berry ice cream is something I’ve always wanted to try and would be great on our summer menu in the restaurant I wonder what else is
Here oh this is like a nursery what are all these things um we’ve got our small leaf pig face it’s another one of our edible but um medicinal plants as well right we’ve got other um that’s gorgeous native violets so edible flowers perfect like that sort
Of stuff beautiful in the garden good in a salad yep how are these going to work in terms of soil structure soil Health every plant has got that quality of sort of giving back to the soil it’s bringing all of those microbes those um micro healing the soil while growing perennial
Things for the kitchen which is actually that’s ticking two boxes straight away and Autumn’s kicked off so we should get start getting stuff in all right well I better go and prepare the ground off you go dig those holes oh real so good to see Chris’s Garden I guess when I see
Things in pots in a garden center or here I think of the potential but seeing how her Gardens come up and that shows me the potentials for for our edible Native Garden it’s not just an idea it’s soon going to become Reality in a former life fat pig farm was used as an apple orchard but those farming practices were pretty harsh on the soil so to nourish our Earth we want to plant a Native Garden right here outside the restaurant with fresh truly local flavors on tap for the kitchen
This the stuff I got from Chris’s garden and I’m pretty Keen to try out this quinia I had an idea for how that sort of citrusy savory note might go really well in a dish what I want to do is use these Japanese turnips they’re a hackery turnip it’s called a
Turnip it’s not like those you know European ones that you might have had that are bitter and strong sometimes these Japanese turnips uh aren’t quite as crisp and you can actually poach them but these ones are sweet and crunchy which I think will go really nicely for this time of Year miso a fermented um rice uh Paste can have soybeans in and all sorts of stuff um this one’s quite pungent it’s really just rice and vegetables fermented with salts probably for a year at least I’d [Applause] Say that’s really good so just going to tip them into a dish just finally sliced radish this is adding pepperiness which I really like now this stuff I reckon I’ve got snagged on this one I’ve been bushw walking a thousand times and didn’t know was edible or
Maybe I’ve just got snagged on other things that look like this it doesn’t look like the most interesting uh bush in the world but I got to say that flavor Kia is used like a herb and has similar qualities to Rosemary and then and then some salt the
Salt will it acts like sandpaper actually helps it grind in a morar right and then we just pound it smells like Australian bush one of them anyway broken down really quickly much quicker than I thought it would I guess it’s a a reasonably firm um herb so
There’s not a lot of moisture in there and this lovely green powder wow now to finish the dish a Sprinkle of this Kia a remarkably um elegant and pretty thing which I don’t normally do but um there you Go planting a garden of native Edibles like Kia will bring a whole new pallet of flavors to the restaurant and actually nourish our soils at the same time I think that’s a pretty elegant method of Land Management and every bit of sophisticated will be how our new goats will manage our Blackberry infestation
And now that I’m committed there are a few things I need to get done before they arrive so goats are due tomorrow these are the blackberries that I want them to eat but the weather closing in it’s getting colder need to set up a shelter for them I reckon might use that shed
There now farmand fill has already got a start on the shed so between the two of us I’m sure we can come up with a plush hotel for our goats you think we might be tempting fade a bit Matthew what’s that with the goats over there and the hay over here yeah
Could have bit it worries me but I can’t get this hay to anywhere else we need somewhere warm for the goats to protect themselves but the only place that I have is the hay shed I hope they really love blackberries because if they get into my hay there’s going to be
Trouble we’re pulling out all the stops on this five-star accommodation not one expense spared you ever had goats no what you know about them do you reckon they can climb definitely so the pallet they’ climb and this what that they just go straight through that I’d say so yep be like imp
Possums do you reckon if we put metal it should stop them the first bit all right I don’t I don’t want we to fix it too mean this bit’s okay this this bit’s Easy seriously are they going to jump up here we’re not buying Mountain Goats No that’s not is that Undoing so they want to do is rub against it they can’t climb pretty tough can reach at least six Hy bals pry good you do the job yeah so that’s the uh the shelter so rather than build a whole new shelter because the winds here are phenomenal i’
Have to probably concrete into the ground um use this one so I’ve got hay ready to feed them I’ll move these pallets out of the way they can use the old hay for bedding lovely and sheltered in here and then they’ve got this absolute smers Board of of uh
Blackberries to eat right outside their front Door we’re only halfway through Autumn but I feel like things are starting to come together we’ve got goats on the way the soil tests are in so fingers crossed our master plan for fixing up the farm might even work there we go come on have a look at this even better
M this is our garden so it’s 2 Acres so the blackwoods will actually give nitrogen to the Soil W