Pasture Perfect Organics

I can hardly believe it, another year totally gone!!  Another great year beginning.

It has been so long since I made a post to the site you probably all thought that I had left the country, or died or something… Nope, just busy as usual.  So, what’s been happening you say?  Where do I start?

ORGANIC STATUS

Some really, absolutely fantastic news is that we are now fully certified organic.  We got the news just before Christmas, so Santa came early in the form of a shiny new certificate. 

Pasture Perfect Pork

Jack and I with Manny the boar                          

  Swineschen Too small to stay with mum

In The News… We have been so fortunate in the past 6 months…  ABC’s Landline programme featured our farm as part of a story on the changes that are coming to the pork industry.  We were stunned when we saw what great footage and complimentary story had been produced.  Sadly, the intensive pork industry is a consumer driven thing.  If we want it to change, we need to be the change and vote with our shopping dollars.  Always seek out certified organic pork.  We were also featured in a small Brisbane Magazine. 

Bumpy Bits… There have also been some hiccups along the way.  We are truly sorry to have had to dissapoint so many of our loyal customers in the 2006 Christmas season, by not being able to supply them with ham, bacon, or for that matter, any pork.  Just 6 weeks before Christmas, the processor that we have been using for the past year told us that they would not be processing any more of our pigs.  We hope to have now overcome this, and to be able to continue working with them in the future.  I will keep you posted.  A huge thanks to Peter Jepson for marketing our pork at the Northey Street Markets in Brisbane.  Lets hope we can get back out there as soon as possible.

Happy Pigs… The pigs are doing so well, our farrowing/weaning rate has increased slightly (we think due to a change in the management of our feeding and weaning processes) and even our growth rates have improved. With the self feeders in the paddocks, the pigs only come running saying “Give us a rub” not “Feed Me”. (Yes, after a few years you do become quite fluent in Pig)

Drought… One thing that has affected us a lot is the drought and feed prices.  We have decided to grow as much of our own feed as possible and slow down on the organic vegetables for a while.  Even the conventional grain prices have skyrocketed with the worst drought for 100 years in many areas.  It must be heartbreaking for a lot of farmers in the southern districts to have to sell a lot of their breeding stock as they are now even running out of water for stock to drink.  Thank God we have been very fortunate with rainfall.

Pasture Perfect Spelt

What did you do for Chistmas? We harvested our first crop of organic Spelt Wheat.  For those of you who don’t know, spelt is an ancient form of wheat that has been found to be very low in gluten and is proving to be great for those that are wheat intolerant.  I know I get the tummy grumbles if I eat too much bread or flour so I will be investing in a small grain mill (for the kitchen) so that I can make my own whole spelt wheat bread. 

On the home front

As I said in winter, my garden should be full of fruit and flowers, and it is. 

 Arrangement from the garden 

  My favourite roses     

Thanks to all of the Wwoofers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) that have been here from July to December.  A Special Thankyou to Yoshie,  who put in a garden bed under my office window and will always have a special place in my heart, Flo and Anne for the smiles and all of the help everywhere, but particularly with the mowing and cementing, and to Hilla for making it possible for us to go on a holiday.  Thanks always to Glen our incredible and indespensable, hardworking man about the farm.

 Yoshie          Flo & Anne             Hilla

Some other great news is that we had the local district heritage guy come out to have a look at all of the old buildings that we have on farm. (Log cabins on the river and old tobacco drying barns and sheds constructed from white cypress logs) He was very interested, so we hope that we will be able to do some work to maintain them, and maybe even restore one of the old log cabins, before they deteriorate too much.

So that’s about it from the farm.  I hope you all are keeping well, and thanks again for caring enough about free range, organic produce that you search out our site.  We’ll keep up the good work.

Yours truly

Miriam and Jack