The leader of Slow Food Hunter Valley and regional councillor of Slow Food International shares this revelation as she paces the floor of her East Maitland business, Reader’s Cafe and Larder.
“The poor sheep had had nothing to eat for quite some time, having only inhaled dust during its last few days and it had starved like the others.” As far as agricultural horror stories go, the sheep story is up there – but Dempster is far from finished discussing some of the more distressing scenes she has witnessed or heard first-hand from local farmers in recent times.
Some of its key projects includes ‘Feeding the Community’, a project that converts excess produce and food from farms into nutritious meals for the disadvantaged and hungry, and ‘Fresh Food in Remote Communities’, which works with local Indigenous leaders and schools to grow fresh food.
But the group is perhaps best known for assisting the region’s farmers, who are doing it tough.
Dempster tells the story of one farmer who was devastated to find his entire harvest destroyed by bugs.
“So I told him to wait and that we were sending some of our team to help.” The Slow Food Hunter Valley volunteers helped the farmer wash the leaves and sort what they could salvage and they sold the produce at market.
How can you look after your family on $185?” “He would have made an average of $1800, but that day he made $185 from what we could salvage.” One farmer who has benefitted from the work of Slow Food Hunter Valley is Austin Breiner, who specialises in heirloom vegetables – most notably pumpkins, having grown 40 different varieties last year from seeds around the world.
With affection, he recounts how Dempster worked to ensure water was delivered to farmers within the region last year.
“And I spent most of last summer carting 1000-litre drums of water around and hand-watering what I could, just to keep things alive until that rain comes … The trouble is, it’s not coming and now the sub-soil is drying out, too, so we’re predicting an even tougher year next year.” Slow Food Hunter Valley is doing what it can, but what can the everyday Australian do to help?
“Seek out farmers’ markets in your area and support your local growers who have struggled to get that fresh produce to your table.” Secondly, you can back the Buy a Bale Campaign, which raises money to support our farmers.