Gourmet Farmer

It’s been over 7 years since Matthew Evans left a busy, city career as a food critic, to become a farmer in Southern Tasmania. Now it’s time to get serious. After selling his original Puggle Farm, he is moving his family to the much larger Fat Pig Farm, where he has a dream to build a farm-to-table restaurant in the upper paddock.

Australia’s toughest food critic, Matthew Evans, has left his job as editor of the SMH Good Food Guide to pursue a culinary and personal sea change in Tasmania. A semi-cashless economy, Tasmania is full of interesting characters and the best produce you’ll find anywhere in the world. But much of the produce is sold very locally, or not sold at all; foraged sometimes, or traded by those that rear, grow or catch it. It’s a culture of food deeply embedded in the fabric of society and embraced by a mix of locals and new arrivals, from people like Swiss goats’ cheesemakers to fifth generation Tasmanian farmers growing wasabi. Gourmet Farmer follows Matthew Evans as he finds and settles into a farmlet where he rears some pigs, a few sheep, chickens and ducks and grows a range of foods that he can either eat, sell at a small stall or cook as occasional lunches at his farm for the general public. To succeed in his project Matthew must learn about what animals are best or most viable to raise, plant a garden (hopefully some old fruit trees will exist on the property), and learn to cook with a woodfired oven. To live the delicious life to its full Matthew will visit food producers from around the state to see what they do, to find out where good food comes from and what makes it good, so that he can try to grow or rear it himself.