NDBT

So saturday morning (the 19th?) I took the bus (the CAT bus!) down to the Perth coty farm, which hosts an organic farmers market on weekends to meet up with Gabrielle, the founder (for lack of a better term) of Kervella goat cheese farm. Gabrielle is a lovely woman who was raised all over the world, and started selling goat’s cheese about 20 years ago. Since then, Kervella cheese has become the ‘bee’s knees’ of goat cheese in Australia (as one girl put it). It’s even been voted the best cheese of any type in Australia.  Anyways, the farmer’s market was very cool and afterwards we drove about 45 minutes from Perth into the Swan Valley to get to the farm. The drive was lovely, and it passes a number of small farms and some bushland, including some that was set aside for Aboriginal use.

The farm itself was several paddocks for the goats, a trailer for wwofers, a railway carriage that had been converted into a kitchen/dining room/ lounge for us (and Sabbath, the black cat), the dairy, Alan and Gabrielle’s cottage, and some further paddocks for a few cows and horses (they have a really pretty clydesdale). Oh – and 2 chicken hutches (hutches? pens?). The farm was at the top of the ridge, and was fairly new, because the old farm plot had been swapped to help create the Paruna wildlife corridor (more on that later). I loved the railway carriage – it was cozy and very homey. And I got a gecko in there one night.

When I first arrived, there was a couple staying there; Niall and Caroline. They were recently married (he was Scottish, she was Aussie), and they got a camper van and were traveling around Oz for a year, since Niall had seen more of the country than Caroline. They were both big foodies, and so I got great food cooked for me while they were there (I washed up). They are probably about the only travelers I’ve met whom I’ve been a bit envious of – they had this amazing camper to live in, and they just seemed super-, super-happy.

Most of the farm work was with Alan, who has also lived all over, including quite a while in South Africa. He leant me some really good general science magazines written here in Oz (Cosmos), and we had lots of discussions over dinner and cheese wrapping about politics, nuclear power, food processing, you name it.

The daily routine was pretty simple; sweeping up the dairy at 7:30, then feeding the chickens (or chooks, as they say here) and collecting eggs, washing up in the cheese factory (usually cleaning out the cheese moulds), then usually a project. This could be wrapping and labelling cheeses, cleaning out the frommagerie (cheese room), landscaping with compost, helping feed the goats, etc. Then I helped out with the afternoon milking at 3:30 (Alan said I got to be pretty good at this!) and sweeping up again. And then cooking dinner several of the nights. During the down time I read a lot (Finished my murder mystery and a Tale of Two Cities – SO BRILLIANT!) or played with the goats (especially the younger ones – I christened my favorite one Blinken because she was blind in one eye). The farm was very tranquil and had tons of birdlife around (probably due to the goat food). There were galaas (pink and grey cockatoos), white- and red-tailed black cockatoos, kookaburras, ducks, little green parrots, small red and black birds, and some wood pigeons. There were also 2 Kangaroos in the far cow’s paddock one morning.

The first couple of days I was there, there was a kid that had just been born, that I bottle fed a couple of times (and saw castrated), before a guy from “Old MacDonald’s Farm” (they bring baby animals to parties, schools, etc.) came to pick him up. I was actually really relieved – Niall and Caroline had tried to nurse 2 kids the week before that had both died, and the guy who picked the kid up said he seemed pretty strong and like he’d be okay.

After about a week, a German girl, Tina, joined me. She works in food safety, and was emigrating to Oz with her boyfriend (Aussie). She had written a grant for Gabrielle and Alan a few years ago and decided to come wwoof for a couple weeks as they got settled. Then the last few days an English girl, Jenny, came back. She had wwoofed at the farm before and was returning briefly.

The last couple of days I was there, we took the milking herd out to pasture, and tried our best to become shepherdesses. (The milking herd was kept near the dairy. The 3 paddocks near where we lived were for the babies, the first years who needed to get pregnant, and some older ones who needed to get pregnant again after drying up. The 2 males who got to do the honors were Bob and Gabby. Bob looked like Elvis and would chase any girl who got near him in his paddock). There were a few goats who stood out – one was Penny, who was a super-pretty brown and black goat; she had the best horns of any of them (besides Gabby). Another was babyshoes, who had had medical problems with her hooves, and so she walked slowly on the tips of them, and spent a lot of time on her knees or hooking the backs of her hooves onto ledges. She was adorable.

Occassionally the goats in heat would be super-noisy and keep us up at night (that’s another thing – it was very cold! Especially the first couple of nights – I was freezing, but luckily it warmed up a bit after that). Some of the milking herd had to have rope binding their front feet to their rear to keep them from jumping the fence and trying to get to the males. And there were 2 new young males that they had just bought, who were still too young to mate, and were driven absolutely crazy being able to see the girls and not get at them.

Saturday night, we had dinner with Alison, Grace and Billy. Alison managed the Paruna wildlife corridor I mentioned, as well as three other properties in South West Oz. The dinner was fabulous (cheese from the farm, goat stew, and apple/blueberry cobbler. That’s another thing – all the meat we had was from things killed on the farm – so it was all super-good). The meal was really lovely – and Alison kindly arranged to take us on a night walk in the nearby Krakamia wildlife refuge later in the week.

The night walk was awesome. Not only did I get to ask Alison lots about how the organization (the Australia Wildlife Conservancy) worked, but we got to see lots of animals. Like Paruna, both areas are fenced and they bait for foxes, cats, and rabbits, which are the three animals that threaten the local marsupials. And – I didn’t know this – Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinction of any place in the world. Something like 1/3 of extinct mammal species have been Aussie. The reserve was Marri-Jarrah forest, which they were working on restoring. At the refuge we saw Western Grey Kangaroos, White-Tailed Cockatoos, some bats, Brush Wallabies, Tamar Wallabies, Bandicoots, White-tailed (?) Possums, and TONS of Woylies, which are small wallaby type creatures – kind of like quokkas. I tried to take lots of photos, but as it was night, they didn’t turn out much better than my night pictures from Madagascar.

There were a few types of cheese made at the farm; fraise (fresh), cendre (ash covered – which is mainly decorative these days), blanc (which came in jars and was really good with herbs in it), and affine (aged). It was all really, really good, but the affine was my personal favorite.

Overall, it was a really great experience. I can’t imagine other wwoof farms being better, although I certainly would like to do some more now. Obviously, like any country, many Aussies live in the city, but I feel like I got to see a bit of ‘real’ Australia, if that makes any sense. And I got to be on a working farm, which I’ve always wanted to do.

There’s (what seems to be a somewhat old) article on the farm here: http://www.rirdc.gov.au/champions/KervellaGoatCheese.html

A newer one here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/epicure/kervella-and-the-friendly-goats/2006/09/04/1157222038392.html

Tags: Travel

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