Merry Christmas!

Wow, the last week (or two, or three) has been pretty stressful - worrying about how many hams we would have was the main concern. And then about a week or so ago we got some rain. And some more rain.....I was stressing whether we would get out to not only deliver to all our customers, but also to get pigs out to be processed! Well, all's well that ends well! We have finished all deliveries now and don't need to take pigs to the abattoir for two weeks! And then there are no markets for a month, so life will take a slower turn (I hope!)

So, while the rain caused a little stress, it has made the place look a picture!! It's amazing what gets transformed in a week!

Thought I'd post a few pictures.

But I also want to take this opportunity to thank all our fantastic customers - some who have been with us since we started and some very new ones too! We have had a great twelve months and things are really starting to look up, as demand has finally reached supply and we now have to increase our production! So, thankyou!

We wish you all the best for a happy and peaceful Christmas and a prosperous and Healthy 2015.

Most of the pigs are happy to graze the grass and not too concerned about the grain.

 

Leauceana loves this weather!

The green is so bright that it almost hurts your eyes!

Lillies in the paddock.

 

Another turkey had chicks - only two, and a little late for Christmas lunch!

 

See you next year.......

Lucy and Kim

 

 

Christmas Hams

It's that time of the year when I need to get orders for our delicious Christmas Hams. I am still not sure if we will have the nitrate free ham available, and I may not know for another couple of weeks.

If you would like a ham this year, we will be offering the following:

Whole or Half Hams - a whole ham bone in will be somewhere between 6-8kg, boneout will be around 4-6kgs.
Bone in or Bone Out - Bone in price this year will be $16/kg but the Bone out will be $20/kg.

If you haven't already given me your request, can you please send an email to anabank@bigpond.com stating the following:

Whole or Half
Bone In or Bone Out
Nitrate Free or Conventional - please state on this if you will substitute a conventional ham for nitrate free if they are not available, or if you would prefer to not have any ham if we don't have nitrate free.

Delivery will be available for the following places:

• Brisbane, Sunshine and Gold Coast in the week before Christmas.
• Rockhampton and Yeppoon - the weekend of the 20/21 December
• Baralaba and local area to be collected from our property

At this stage I don't think we will be able to deliver to Gladstone, however it may depend on the number of orders.

It will also be first in first served, as I'm not sure how many hams that we will have available this year.

Guest Blogging

I was very recently honoured to be a guest blogger over at Natural New Age Mum. I talk about Farmers Markets from my perspective, so I would love it if you go over and have a read. Feel free to leave a comment there too! Natural New Age Mum is a local Rockhampton lady and also one of our customers, so I was quite pleased when she asked me to do a post for her.

This is the link to that blog, but she has lots of other information and interesting reading, plus some great healthy recipes!

Thanks NNAM!

Capricorn Food and Wine Festival

 

The Capricorn Food and Wine Festival (find our more here) is the happening place to be next weekend, the 20th and 21st September. t's free entry and should be a lovely day so bring the kids and have a swim and check out the cooking demo's.

We will be there with a stall - selling fresh pork and giving out samples for people to try. We won't be going to the Yeppoon or Rockhampton Markets, so if you want to get some pork this weekend you'll have to come to the Festival. Please bring an esky and ice if you do. We will hopefully have some, but it would be safer to bring your own, just in case.

 

Make sure that you have something to eat at the Lickity Fingers stall. They are using lots of local ingredients in their products, including our delicious Pork and Kokotongo Organic Beef.

 

 

August Update

Life has been so busy and I can't believe it's so long since I've posted something! We are full steam ahead with our production so we have lots of pigs ready to go. We have lots planned:

1770 - 2nd Sunday of every month - next one is the 10th August
Rockhampton and Yeppoon are the 1st and 3rd weekends - 16th and 17th August
We head to Brisbane on the 22nd and 23rd - if you haven't ordered it needs to be in ASAP!!!!
Emerald - we are heading out there on the 26th if we get enough orders.

We aren't going to be going to Moranbah and Middlemount this trip and I do apologise for this. In the past we've made a weekend of it and stayed the night with my brother at Moranbah. He has left now and so we can't really justify going out there and having to pay for a motel. I'm afraid that the sales we got, which were very much appreciated, where not enough to justify that! So.....I'm really sorry to those who have supported us in the past. If you are coming in to Rockhampton, please touch base, as I'm sure we can organise some way to get our pork to you! Or you could go to your local butcher and suggest they purchase our pork to stock in the shop!

The other bit of news I need to pass on, is that we are currently not able to produce Nitrate Free Ham. Our butcher's smoke house has died and so we are getting another butcher to do the smoking for us. Safefood Qld has regulations regarding ready to eat meat products like ham and salami in that the butcher needs to send a sample each year to them for checking that it's all okay - then he is accredited to produce those products. The other butcher we are using is not approved to do the Nitrate Free ham. He is, however able to do the bacon, as it doesn't have the same rules. So, for the next little while we will be able to produce Nitrate Free Bacon and Conventional bacon and ham. Please read my earlier post here for more info about nitrates and nitrate free.

To finish off, thankyou so much for your continuing support of us. And remember that you get our pork in lots of different ways:

Yeppoon and Rockhampton - markets and private orders, Organic and Quality Foods and Lilly Pilly Organics
Gladstone - private orders, Organic and Quality Foods and Lilly Pilly Organics
1770 - markets and private orders
Biloela, Theodore, Moura and Baralaba - by contacting me and making arrangements, or through Organic and Quality Foods
Brisbane, Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast - until we can supply more butchers, you can buy direct from us when we deliver down that way, OR:

• Sunshine Coast Organic Meats
• Milton Fine Meats
• Your Organic Market
• Organic and Quality Foods

Please contact me if you are interested in getting hold of our pork and we'll see what we can do!

Regional Food

As anyone who knows me, would know - I am very passionate about local food. I'm involved in the local food industry as a producer and as a consumer.  My purchasing decisions tend to be based on Local first, Regional 2nd, Queensland 3rd, Australia 4th, and then if I really must......oversees grown.
Regional makes sense in a place like Central Queensland and my idea of regional would be from Bundaberg to Mackay and out to Emerald.

Relish Capricorn is an organisation that is putting our local region and the food from it on the map! I strongly recommend that you go and have a look (follow the link above) and see what they are all about. It's still a work in progress, but the more people that register - both consumers and producers, the more valuable the information on the site will be. The idea is that it will link the consumer to the producer.

There is quite a bit of food produced in this region and we really need to have some sort of distribution centre in Rockhampton for that food to then get to the consumers around here. We are known as the beef capital, but it's not easy to buy a local bit of beef! We need to change this! It annoys me when we try to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce food miles that most of the food produced here goes to Brisbane and then back up the coast. So get on board and give support to local farmers. You can do this by registering as a member on the Relish Capricorn site.

Some of my thoughts on this were aired on the local ABC this morning. Follow this link to here or read what I had to say.

May, and what's happened to winter?

The weather has been unseasonably warm lately. This is quite a good thing really because our summer rain came very late and so there's been more time for grass to grow - a little more rain wouldn't go astray, and as I type this, there's a faint pitter patter on the roof! Not much hope for anything meaningful though!

This photo was taken late the other afternoon......

We've got three French Backpackers with us at the moment. Two of them are chef's. So what does one do when one is hosting a French Chef? Kill ducks so that they can cook them! We killed them one afternoon and the next evening we are eating duck confit and duck breast - absolutely delicious!

The photo below shows our (current) pig pets. D'artagnan is the big black fella and he's our biggest pet, and is quite loveable. The little black one hasn't been named, as he will go back to the mob when he's a bit bigger. Missy Higgins is the white one and she will probably end up a breeder. They are cute and very interactive, but they do try my patience when I go to milk my cows in the mornings!

Just a reminder to all that we have the following markets and deliveries:
This weekend (23rd to 25th May) will be Middlemount, Dysart, Moranbah and Emerald.
The 31st May and 1st June will be Yeppoon and Rocky again, and then 1770 on the 9th June - we'll do Gladstone orders that weekend too. Please get your orders in this weekend for those two weekends.

I'm planning on heading to Brisbane in the last week of June, so if you live on the Sunny Coast, Brisbane or the Gold Coast and aren't already on my email list, please send me an email and I'll put you on it. anabank@bigpond.com

For our Sunny Coast customers, we are currently going through the process of working out if we should set up a stall at one of the markets there - which would be the best one for us? Love to get some feedback. Maitland our son will be taking on that job, so stay tuned for more info on that.