November 25^th 2010

We have made our movie but a word of caution if you click this link, it is a big file, 36 megabites or thereabouts, which is fine if you have broadband. It is on our facebook page where it plays well if you have a slower connection speed. If that is still a problem we can send you a copy by mail. If you want a copy of the dvd we'll send you one if you send $10 to cover the copy and postage within Australia make it $20 Australian and we'll send it to you overseas. Just send us an email and we'll give you the payment details. Still trying to get it working on our website, Matt our website builder is a bit busy at the moment building websites for others, but will get to it when he can. We want to have a link on our homepage, but the gremlins keep getting into it somewhere! Here is a link that should work for you though. Papanui Open Range Eggs - “The Movie” but it IS a big file.

The Hunter Valley Smelly Cheese Shop in Pokolbin near Cessnock is our newest Hunter Valley retailer. Great shop full of treats, so check it out when you visit the region next.

Sam the Butcher in Bondi is our newest Sydney retailer, he's got lots of great meat and knows lots about good food, so drop in and say hello at 129 Bondi Road, Bondi.

Duke Bistro in the Flinders Hotel in Surry Hills has started cooking with our eggs too. Say hello to Mitch the chef there.

 

November 2010

Once again it is raining, we are having a magnificent spring on Papanui. I hope you have been looking on our facebook page as that is where I tend to update with the latest retailers and other stuff.

Since the last news we have welcomed Lombardo Bros. at 29 Brougton Street, Kirribilli . Three generations are involved in this fruit shop, just like a family farm, Michael, Pino and Michael, grandfather, son and grandson respectively, fantastic!

Locally we welcome as of today Country Fresh fruit shop in Muswellbrook. Peter Maggio is the boss and you will find him in the Coles shopping centre complex, telephone 65410444.

A couple of weeks ago we had a bit of fun on Papanui making a movie about how we produce our eggs and the lives the chooks lead. Will Minchin of episode productions did all the camera work, production and script plus he's working on the footage getting it ready to go to the editor next week. He normally is a producer/director with a cameraman and sound-man but he was travelling light for this job, thanks Will. Stay tuned, I'll let you know when its ready for a viewing. We plan to provide our retailers with a DVD for in store promotion. We will try and get it onto our website too, although it was shot in HD which I think will be lost on the website. Hugh Wennerbom, a long time supporter of ours, came up to Papanui for a couple of days to star in the movie and to see for the first time exactly how we produce our eggs. Hugh is a foodie – he's been a providor, which is when we got to meet him, he's a farmer, a journalist, a philosopher too we found out, and these days he holds secret dinners in Sydney, word of mouth dinner parties that are extremely popular. Thanks Hugh for giving some of your valuable time.

 

September 14 2010

Its raining again! We are experiencing a great spring as is most of eastern Australia – about time too! Only a few days until the Merriwa Show. Come along and see all the fun .

Our newest customers are Fita Fruita 99B Eastern Road Turramurra
Granny Smith Natural Food Market , 6 Princes St, Turramurra and the very latest is Neutral Bay Fresh Food Grocer, Shop 5, 7 - 19 Young Street, Neutral Bay.

We have some new chicks running around the brooding shed at the moment, their job is to lay eggs going into next winter to keep our supply up. It is a bit of a challenge to produce eggs all year round without the use of artificial light, some years we get it right and others we miss the timing by a few weeks and production suffers, so fingers crossed! Really it is all up mother nature, just depends what kind of weather she delivers in autumn.

Our facebook seems to be working, here is a link if you want to check it out – make a comment while you are there please and tick the “like this” if you do, makes us feel loved, I hate it when everything is only one-way!

August 10 2010

As I write this it is raining outside. It has been very wet recently, hard to believe we can keep getting rain so regularly after so many years of drought.

We have made it onto Facebook complete with hitches and complications caused I think by my ineptitude, but Sarah has helped me to sort it out to some degree. Now I need to get my head around how to use it in conjunction with this site, so stay tuned or alternatively be amused or should that be bemused?

We have produced a small colour brochure which gives an outline of how we produce our eggs. It is available in all our retail outlets, so grab one if you like, although if you have made it this far into our website I think you know more than any brochure will tell you! Again thank you to those people who have emailed or called by phone to say hello and to comment on our eggs, we really do appreciate the fact that you have taken the time to give us feedback.

Our new chooks have started to lay this last week or so. They are very happy to be out in the paddock with grass and no fences, we were stuck for a week or so in getting them out there as the ground was too muddy to enable us to move the buses, but all good now. Our chefs that like our pullets eggs will be able to use them in the next few days. If you would like to try them ask your shopkeeper to get some in, we do not pack them into cartons unless there is a request as the extra cost of packaging on a lower priced product does not make any business sense unless we know there will be a sale. As we've said before they are in fact the best eggs we produce and chefs understand that, but shopkeepers don't unless customers ask for them. These eggs are only available for a few weeks at a time and only three times a year.

We also have laying hens for sale as the new chooks are replacing these older ones. If you would like some chooks with guaranteed personality and foraging ability plus still laying lots of eggs then please contact us asap.

As part of our continuing expansion of our chook numbers on Papanui we are looking for some old truck chassis to make our feeder trailers from. If you have any or know of an old truck not too far from Merriwa please contact us

In a few weeks we will be taking delivery of our next lot of day old chicks, so we are very busy getting everything cleaned up ready for their arrival (in between doing all the other jobs related to chooks and lets not forget the beef cattle). We built a new room to raise the chicks in earlier this year and it really is the best thing, it is so well insulated and draught-proof that we hardly need any extra heating for the chicks, the last lot were so happy it made all the expense and hard work seem worthwhile.

Our cows are well into their calving, I counted over 100 calves going through the gate a few days ago so we are over the halfway mark on Papanui and the other farm will see calves being born very soon. This rain is just coming at a perfect time for the cows as they need extra green feed to enable them to produce the milk for these new calves, so big smile to be inserted her (if only I knew how to do such a thing!).

Locally the next big thing for Merriwa is the Merriwa PAH&I Association annual Show. If you were wondering what the PAH&I stands for it is Pastoral, Agricultural, Horticultural and Industrial and that was one of the quiz questions we had last year in our inaugural Young Farmer Competition during the lunch break. We also had billy boiling and wine tasting as the fun part of the day. The more serious sections of the competition were beef cattle, prime lamb, horsemanship in the livestock area and quad bike, motorbike, butchery, welding and a theory questionnaire in the remaining sections. We had eight contestants and the winner was Richard Wilkinson who took home $800 prize money. There was plenty of money for second and third places as well. Papanui Open Range Eggs was proud to be a major sponsor of this contest and will again stump up cash for this years event. So if you are looking to do something different why not come along to the Show, Friday 17 and Saturday 18 September 2010, click here to learn more

June 1 2010

Rain again, it is incredibly muddy at the moment, with the forecast of more rain later this week – fingers crossed!

We are trying to get onto Facebook – we had a houseful of younger people last weekend and it was agreed that we MUST be on Facebook, so if we ever receive an email back from Facebook then we can proceed.......... stay tuned!

Some new retailers have joined us recently

Fina Espresso Bar at 82 Archer Street in Chatswood and

The Greedy Goat in Barenjoey Road Palm Beach are both cooking with our eggs and

R & G Russo Providores in Mona Vale is selling them.

See our Clients tab for full details.

Recently I bumped into a lady who bought some of our old chooks, she said they were laying very well, she is collecting 5 eggs a day from 6 chooks (which is a lot better than we do on Papanui!). I asked if she appreciated the way they fly up onto cars and other machinery (a habit they have picked up from the buses and feeder trailers being made of metal – an unusual behaviour for chooks but one that we have been often told of) and she replied that one had hitched a ride in the back of a vehicle that travelled to Sydney before being discovered! It is home safe and sound now though.

Another story from another lady called Amanda from quite a while ago and I kept forgetting to mention here was the way the old chooks from Papanui are so friendly with dogs ( having had them protect them in the paddocks here). She had a beagle called Bea that the chook (called Tinkerbell) was very friendly with, in fact they used to sleep together and she sent me a photo

May 5 2010

Well the Races are over, another great day in Merriwa – note for your diary next year we race on Easter Saturday April 23.

The next event in Merriwa is the Festival of the Fleeces on the June long weekend.

We welcome some new retailers this month.

Hudson Meats have 3 stores – Surry Hills, Cammeray and Lane Cove.

MakeUwell is in Terrey Hills and also does online sales.

April 18 2010

Winter is fast approaching. We've been fortunate with the rain and have plenty of feed as we prepare for the cold weather.

We've some new retailers -

Adriano Zumbo Cafe and The Gourmet Grocer both in Balmain and

Spar Alexandria in Alexandria.

Also The Boathouse in Palm Beach.

Another is The Agora in Lane Cove.

Plus Signorelli Gastronomia in Pyrmont.

Also Australian Gourmet Meats in Waverly.

Note that Paddington Fresh has changed its name to Farm Fresh Foods.

Also closer to home Rock Restaurant & Firestick Cafe has just started to use our eggs in their kitchen.

The list of our customers that use our eggs in their kitchens is here.

And the list of our retailers is here

The annual Merriwa Races are to be held this coming weekend on the day before Anzac Day. If you want to experience a unique day of horse racing then be there. An interesting feature of the track is that there is a bit of a dip in the track that in the longer races the punters lose sight of the horses for a while – so there is a lot of interest as they come back into view to see if there have been any dramatic changes in the places! It doesn't cost much for entry and you can bring a picnic lunch to have out of the boot of your car or you can buy tucker from the CWA ladies kiosk and wash it down with an ice cold beer from the bar if you like.

The Daily Telegraph recently paid us a visit click here if you want to see the online version of the article they did – they really were only interested in the Maremma dogs – but one tries to educate when the opportunity arises. Blondie got to be the star of the day, her sister Marsha was a bit put out I think, but what can you do? Bud and Gretel as well as Romeo and Juliet were none the wiser about the whole photo shoot so we won't mention it OK?

We are going to the Noosa Food and Wine Festival. It is on from April 30 till May 2. As part of our winning a gold medal at last year's Vogue Entertaining + Travel Produce Awards we have been given some space at the NSW tent to display our wares. Say hello to Di and Merrie who will be manning the stand if you are there.

January 3 2010

The short version is RAIN!

We've had over 100 mm in the last week, a bit before Christmas but most since Boxing Day. The real thing is that the sky has remained overcast all these days since Christmas so the effectiveness of the rainfall has been as complete as it could possibly be and it has fallen very gently on the dry ground. Often summer rain is quite useless for any plant growth as the temperatures are so high following the rain, which is usually storm rain that runs off rather than infiltrate the soil, so that plants will not grow and soil evaporation is very high.

We have increased the soil cover on Papanui markedly since we began cell grazing in the early 1990s. Soil cover can be green plants or dead plant material, just depends on when the last rain fell as to what we have at any given time. This cover helps storm rain to infiltrate the soil as the high impact rain drops have their energy dissipated before coming in contact with the dry soil. When the soil has been dry for a long while it actually repels water initially so causing soil erosion as the drops form into little runs then bigger and bigger runs until it has enough volume to wash away soil in its path. Having cover on the surface of the soil allows the moisture to wet the soil slowly thereby making the soil more absorbent and able to store the rainfall.

You can get the same idea if you take a dry cloth and tip a cup of water onto it. You notice how most of the water runs straight off and the cloth is mostly dry? But if you dip the corner into the cup instead it begins to “wick” up the material and absorb the water? As custodians of the land it is our job to wick up as much of the rain as we can to allow plants to grow to help cover the soil ready for the next rain. The alternative is water caused soil erosion and lowering the productive potential of the land.

During extreme drought conditions as we have experienced over the last few years there have been times when all soil cover has disappeared from the combination of prolonged high temperatures, winds and animal hoof impact. There is simply nothing one can do in this situation other than hope that when the rain does eventually come it will be by way of gentle showers rather than massive storm events. In the winter of 2007 we had the massive storms on bare soil and the result was lots of soil erosion. It breaks your heart to see the devastation when it is your life's work you can see going down the creeks.

New places to buy our eggs - in Scone is Paddock to Pantry – in Sydney are Arlingtons in Seaforth and Terry Wrights Gourmet Meats in Randwick. Also Morgans Too has changed their name to Jammy Cow – more details on our complete retailers list click here