Rob and Nita Lennon own and run Gundooee Organics, producing organic wagyu beef at Dunedoo, north of Mudgee in Central NSW.  They are finalists in the Vogue Entertaining and Travel Produce Awards.  Winners will be announced May 11.  We caught up with Rob at Taste of Sydney in March.

We started producing organic wagyu beef because…  organic farming is a way of thinking and a way of life that’s right for us.  I don’t come from a farming background – my parents were accountants – but I always loved going canoeing and camping around the Gloucester area.  Eventually I thought, I love being out of the city, why not find a way to live out here?  So I got my truck-driver’s license and used to carry wheat from all over NSW.  Then I studied farm management at Marcus Oldham Farm Management College in Geelong, and spent the next 10 years managing mixed farms through central and northern NSW.

There was never any question that we’d take the organic route.  It’s the vibe!

When we bought our own land 10 years ago, there was never any question that we’d take the organic route.  It’s the vibe!  Organic growing is a passive approach.  It creates the right environment for what we want to exist or grow, instead of focusing on getting rid of what you don’t want – a positive approach to things.  Farm systems are complex – if you do one thing, it’s hard to quantify the effects.  If you kill one thing, you end up having to kill more.

We’re encouraging deep-rooted perennial grasses which access nutrients and moisture deeper in the soil profile.  This gives the cattle feed a more complex battery of nutrients, and also allows pastures to hang on to provide grazing through dry periods, and bounce back faster when we do get some rain.  We use grazing management and ‘competition’ to control weeds, one example being in an old ‘sheep camp’ area where we replaced a huge Paterson’s Curse invasion with native pasture without any inputs. And we’re experimenting with pasture cropping – using the same land to grow feed crops for the cattle in our native pasture paddocks.

Gundooee beef is different from supermarket beef because…  the cattle are fed on native perennial pastures, and it’s wagyu.  Both the pasture and the breed combined provide great flavour, as well as providing some great health advantages including a good Omega 3 : 6 fatty acid ratio.  We also take great care with stock handling.  I’ve followed the animals though the slaughter line [at Cowra abattoir] – I figure if they’ve got to go through it I should face up to it too.  They’re completely calm throughout, and that makes a huge difference to the quality of the meat.

The most satisfying thing about producing food is…  days like today [at Taste of Sydney], spending time talking with people who are interested in what we do.  Our nearest organic neighbour is about 100km away, so it’s great to chat with people who care about organic food.

The most frustrating thing about producing food is…  the gap between producing “animals” or “carcasses” and producing food.  The system isn’t really set up to reward producers for producing food.  The focus on consistency and quantity at the lowest cost doesn’t encourage producers to take pride in the quality and flavour of what they grow.  It’s consumers wanting to know more about what they eat that leads to farmers making the effort to produce great food.

It’s consumers wanting to know more about what they eat that leads to farmers making the effort to produce great food.

The best meal I’ve eaten this year was…  no doubt a barbeque with family and friends at home.  They call me Barbeque Bob, because too many barbeques is never enough.  Some of our beef and a fresh salad and baked vegies – you can’t go wrong.

My most treasured food memory is…  throwing some green eucalyptus leaves on the (wood-fired) barbie.  My Mum used to love the smell.  She’s gone now but we still do it.

Slow Food members can make food in Sydney better, cleaner and fairer by…  promoting the vibe!  Don’t take it too seriously – just turn the tellie off, enjoy the experience of gathering and preparing food, and then spend the time with family and friends having a nice meal.

You can find ‘Gundooee Organics’ wagyu beef at…  Sydney restaurants Bécasse, Etch, Plan B, Longrain, and Sean’s Panorama, and occasionally at Glebe Point Diner and Bei Amici.  Also now in some Canberra restaurants including the Ginger Room.  It’s also available through five butcher shops in Sydney:  TJ’s Quality Meats in Balmain, Hudson Meats in Cammeray and Surry Hills, Pino’s Meats in Kogarah, Dulwich Hill Gourmet Meats and now T&R Gourmet Butchery in Double Bay.

Food miles are a big issue for us, so we’ll never export, and won’t send our beef to Melbourne or Brisbane.  How many foods can you get in Sydney but not Melbourne?

How many foods can you get in Sydney but not Melbourne?

We grow free range saltbush lamb because… since the early 90′s we’ve seen the writing on the wall regarding climate change.  We began experimenting with ideas to evolve a kind of agriculture that is truly sustainable, or ‘regenerative’ as I prefer to call it.

I’ve always been uncomfortable with the word ‘drought’, as though a single word can absolve our society from admission that we still have no idea of how to live with the reality of this continent’s climate.  But I think the wool is starting to lift from most people’s eyes as they increasingly see farmers with progressive attitudes and practices bringing their produce directly to market.

People are also waking up to the fact that many of the people they once thought of as farmers are not actually farmers at all:  they’re commodity producers with very little regard for where their produce ends up, who eats it and how it effects them.

Oh yes, the lamb!  Saltbush is an amazing plant. We mostly use Atriplex nummarlaria or Old Man Saltbush, but also grow Creeping Saltbush (Atriplex semmibaccata) and Thorny Saltbush (Rhagoida spinescens).  OMSB is extremely hardy and handles dry conditions well as it has three root systems:  a deep one that can go down to 10m, a mid-range system and a shallow root system. It has a high protein content and provides essential year-round green plant material that ruminants need for their digestive systems to properly function.

We started growing the saltbush for its benefits in dry conditions as it’s virtually indestructible.  As far as livestock were concerned, we were mainly wool producers when we started planting saltbush.  It’s only been since 2006 that we’ve been producing ‘Arcadia Saltbush Lamb’.  It started as an exercise to see how lamb raised on our saltbush would be received in the marketplace, as it’s been known for a long time that
sheep grazed on saltbush tended to have particularly positive eating qualities.

Saltbush lamb is different from supermarket lamb because… it has a very ‘clean’ taste – there’s no strong sheep-y, woolly flavour, and none of that greasy mutton chop fat.  Put simply, the saltbush diet combined with other factors such as excellent water access and low stress seems to purge the animals of all that stuff which can give lamb a bad name. In addition, we hand-pick each animal before sending to slaughter, and work on a very small scale.

Our animals have access to wide variety of plants, not just saltbush.  We’ve planted around 500,000 trees and acacia shrubs since 1996. We are also bringing back native perennial grasses into previously cropped paddocks. I think the overall mineral-rich diet is a big factor in producing such tasty animals.

Another important difference to get your tongue used to (won’t be very difficult!) is the high moisture retention of the meat. One of my favourite ways to cook the lamb is to bone out a leg, cut thick steaks across the grain and cook on the barbeque. It’s great rare or medium rare, just like steak. The lamb also has fantastic flavour and moisture retention using any slow cook method.

“with all the trouble in the world,
people are realising that life’s too short
to eat crap food”

Demand for saltbush lamb is so high right now because… with all the trouble in the world, people are realizing that life’s too short to eat crap food.  There’s no doubt that interest in slow food, farmers’ markets, farmer-direct food, etcetera has increased in recent years. So apart from riding some of that wave, I guess people are no longer satisfied by QA labels alone. They are saying: ‘OK so it’s organic, but how much energy went into producing it?’, ‘Yes it’s free range, but what does that mean?’, ‘Does it actually taste better?’, ‘Is the farmer good-looking with a sense of humour?’ and other very, very important questions.

I think demand for Arcadia Lamb is high because we attempt to provide straightforward answers to these questions.  So far our customers seem to be happy with this approach, judging by feedback from Becasse, Etch Dining, and MUMU grill in Crows Nest.

Another reason for high demand right now is that I’ve run out of lambs!  One of the things about maintaining quality is not trying to push the system too hard.  All our lambs are born and raised on our property.  We don’t buy in and ‘finish’ stock. I think this is one reason why the product integrity stands up. I hope to have Arcadia Lamb back on menu in Sydney around mid-March when the new season lambs catch up.

I think seasonality is fine as long as everyone communicates. It gives a chance for lots of small producers to share markets.

The most satisfying thing about producing food is… how appreciative our customers and supply chain partners are when you show them some basic respect.  This sort of relationship is very difficult, if not impossible, in the industrial food production business. It’s divorced from the nurturing value system associated with real food. I really like the contact with like-minded people, the occasional trip to Sydney, and also being challenged and meeting those challenges to improve what we do.

One of the things I’m particularly grateful for are the relationships we’ve secured with Junee Abbatoir and our distributer and butcher Dick Stone.  These two partners are ideally placed in the supply chain so that the food miles are kept to an absolute minimum, and they’ve been doing a great job getting Arcadia Lamb to Sydney.

The biggest frustration in producing food is… never a frustration, but an opportunity.  I’ve found if you keep things as simple as possible, and know everyone in the supply chain, then there’s no dramas at all.  In an ideal world I’d like to supply Arcadia Lamb a lot closer to home, but we still have a lot of work to do to stop those abandoned shopping trolleys sprouting and growing into major supermarkets in regional towns. I wish Monsanto would develop a herbicide for them!  I do a little bit of business for a butcher in Jerilderie, but it’s a simple fact that the markets are in the major cities.

The best meal I’ve eaten this year was... my friend Heather’s famous chocolate cheesecake.  What makes any meal from Heather’s kitchen special is being warmly invited over to share it.  The other reason is that the main course is equally delicious and usually contains some garden produce.

My most treasured food memory is… when Mum hit a Crested Pigeon in the Kingswood, circa 1980, and brought it home and cooked it for my tea. It was delicious.  I’m wondering with the speed it hit the radiator, would it have been classified as fast food?  It made it to my plate pretty quickly, too.

Slow Foodies should check out… my website first!  Something else to keep in the radar is anything about ‘pasture cropping’ or ‘perennial polyculture’. There are some good people growing crops into living perennial grass pastures without chemicals or cultivation: A really exciting example of a ‘third way’ that’s asking all the right questions when it comes to finding a system that works in our unique environment.

Also check out ACT-based providore Pennie Scott at Bush Goddess Foods.  Pennie has a fantastic approach to the slow food ethic.

I could go on and recommend books but I think the strength in the slow food movement is realising the power of nurturing personal relationships through food.  So go and find someone to wander down to the farmers’ markets with and enjoy good food and life!

“I think the strength in the slow food movement
is realising the power of nurturing
personal relationships through food”

The most important thing about the sustainable food movement is… that it’s the seed for the revolution.  The high energy-using, polluting, industrial system will collapse, it’s only a question of when.  It will keep producing for years but the cost will be more food safety scares, a more intense level of risky manipulation, such as GM crops, and lower nutritional levels in food as soil nutrients are depleted and houses are built on the best soil.

Unfortunately I see this trend continuing for some time yet, until we have a major disaster that triggers a change in people’s thinking.  The challenge will be to unravel the damage done by industrial agriculture, so it’s critical that we keep the fire burning so we are well prepared when the day does come.

To make food in Sydney better, cleaner and fairer, we should all… keep the fire burning, but try not to be zealots.  We need to recruit as many folks as possible from all walks of life, and not alienate people.  Whenever you can, subtly introduce people to clean, ethical, tasty, unadulterated food.  Try to do it without them even realising – then they’ll completely own that life-changing moment when they crunch into an amazing organically-grown apple.  Build the tribe!

Michael Champion runs Champion’s Mountain Organics.  In this month’s interview he gives us his run-down on what it’s like to produce great food.

Read the rest of this entry »