Bronzewing Farm in Underwood, Tasmania, Australia | Farm

Bronzewing Farm

Locality: Underwood, Tasmania, Australia

Phone: +61 417 469 534

Address: 357 Underwood Road 7268 Underwood, TAS, Australia

Website: http://www.tasmanianmountainpepper.com/

Likes: 227

Add/Update information

Reviews

Tags

• Farm

25.01.2022 Distractions... We have a bumper crop of Tasmanian Mountain Pepper we are harvesting, but when these kinds of distractions come up, you just have to take the time...

25.01.2022 The Adventures of [a] Lassie [named Ruby]

23.01.2022 Finished planting... Well for this autumn anyway. With friend Charlie Burrows' help, we planted another 834 Tasmanian Mountain Pepperberry plants before "the first frost". This brings our total plantings to 3,171 - with another 2,000 ready to go in the ground in Spring. Then we are finished - well we'd better be...

23.01.2022 Definitely Bizarro World. Snow today; with the Corona virus lockdown, the next panic buying will be firewood...

21.01.2022 Sunbaking... Our Tasmanian Pepperberries have been soaking up the summer sun. They are deep red only on the side facing the sun - the other side is 'grass' green. We don't harvest until all berries on the bushes appear 'black' (really dark, dark red - like red wine grapes ).

18.01.2022 Welcome Swallows... The swallows have had a tough breeding season this year - unsuccessfully fighting off feral sparrows (who want to use the swallow's nest) and feral starlings (who just pick a fight, because they can). However, one enterprising pair decided that as the hay elevator is only used once a year, it would be a great spot to have kids. It did become 'interesting' when we actually had to use the elevator, but perseverance pays off - the four baby swallows are pretty crammed into the nest. Grow fast little ones - you have to fly to the mainland in a few months.

15.01.2022 Jumped out of my skin... Well, one of us must have (although in fairness, the copperhead snake probably didn't 'jump'). Found this skin this morning on the path between two of our cattle paddocks. We always have plenty of copperhead snakes around the farm (just doing their thing, while we do ours) - and we often have to rescue them from the bird-netting we use on the Pepperberries. Full size in Tasmania is 1-1.5 m; so this one is pretty big. Ruby the farm dog really doesn't like snakes, and she wasn't too impressed when I held up this one's skin either.

15.01.2022 "Stuffed" Santa... Lilydale Lion's Club (in our local village) has run a "stuffed santa" competition for the last couple of years. Lions provide the santa suit and it is up to you to put Santa in... whatever position you want - but out on the roadside (beats taking the kids to "Christmas lights" on Christmas eve, which you can't see until 10 pm). Some neighbour (TBD) has gotten into the swing and put Santa on a bike outside our house (which is on a corner with a dead-end ...dirt road). It may, in reality, be a test of the honesty of passers-by. The bike is chained to the Give Way sign..., but... mostly the thieves here don't want your bike - they want your chainsaw. Very practical people our miscreants. Well, Ruby, the Bronzewing Farm guard dog will have double duties this month... And Santa already looks like he's been getting into the cookies and port, or sherry, or beer, or something. See more

14.01.2022 Students from Grades 5 and 6 at the Tamar Valley Steiner School (http://www.tamarvalleysteiner.com.au/) visited the farm earlier this month. They were really cluey and full of questions, however, Ruby the farm dog stole the show - particularly when she ran off with Mali's clipboard...(https://www.facebook.com/notes/bronzewing-farm/farm-hand-ruby-the-dog/167622240061939). You can see their Mountain Pepper drawings below.

14.01.2022 Harvesting 101... Harvest of Bronzewing Farm's Tasmanian Pepper Berries is labour-intensive as it is all done by hand. Consequently this unique Australian spice is not cheap like regular black pepper, but Tasmanian Mountain Pepper has no botanical relationship to black pepper, and the flavours and aromas are just exquisite.

14.01.2022 Whoo-hoo... Rhuby Delights (https://www.facebook.com/RhubyDelights) launched their new product - Chocolate Coated Pepperberries - at the 4-day Tasmanian Craft Fair at Deloraine (http://tascraftfair.com.au). Why "whoo-hoo"? They are chocolate coated Bronzewing Farm freeze-dried Tasmanian DEVIL Mountain Pepperberries. Whoo-hoo...

13.01.2022 The end is nigh... Harvest of our Tasmanian Mountain Pepper berries is almost over - and our yields continue to increase. Neighbour Grant Murray helped out on a day that started at 0.7 deg C and rose to a balmy 10.8. The bush that Grant is harvesting yielded 3.4 kg (about 15,000 pepperberries...; all harvested by hand...)

13.01.2022 Harvest's over... Or we're over harvest... We had a record yield this year, and expect next year to be 3x bigger again. The yield was helped by our BwF1 cultivar producing harvestable crops for the first time. BwF1 is highly productive, but tends to produce fruit on almost "grape-like" hanging clusters. These clusters tend to tangle each other which makes harvesting a little tricky, however, the plant in these pictures yielded 6,500 berries... (unfortunately that only comes to 1.4 kg ).

13.01.2022 No Mountain Pepper...!? There is no bush Mountain Pepper this year... We don't use Tasmanian Mountain Pepper sourced from the bush, only from our plantations, but about 90% of all Mountain Pepper is collected from the bush. Well our bush block, and a neighbour's bush block have no pepperberries at all this season. This typically means the "bush crop" has said the conditions aren't right... This is why we are trying to "cultivate" the this crop - give it the water and nutrients that the Tasmanian seasons often can't deliver... Our crop is looking really good - but we have started to put up the bird netting (keep the Tasmanian Currawong at bay)

13.01.2022 Maatsuyker madness... Apparently no "The Shining" problem for Grant and Hannah who have spent the last 6 months as the sole Caretakers for Maatsuyker Island. Maatsuyker is off the south coast of Tasmania and has Australia's most southerly lighthouse as well as a host of seals and is a haven for seabirds. The island also has large populations of Tasmanian Mountain Pepper. Following emails over the last 6 months, Hannah and Grant visited the farm to see our Tasmanian Mountain Pepper on their way to catch the overnight ferry to Melbourne and then drive back to Western Australia. Ah, now to fit back into the "madness" of civilisation...

11.01.2022 Bird netting is essential to protect our Tasmanian Mountain Peppers from the raucous Tasmanian Currawong.

11.01.2022 Zero Litter... Launceston City Council apparently has a zero tolerance to littering with a fine of $157 for dropping a cigarette butt..., the exception seems to be when they do it themselves. Following roadworks, we were left with discarded lunch-wraps, coke cans, coffee cups and yes, cigarette butts outside our front gate. A complaint to Council resulted in an employee driving up to have a look and the resolution was that they told the contractor who said they would clean... it up. That was 3 weeks ago. We cleaned it up today: The "ecocup - Produced by Nature" coffee cup was obviously being "returned to nature" by the quickest possible method. What sort of "Bogans" are these littering Council Workers - oh yes - I see from the Coke can, that they are in fact Bogans. I look forward to Launceston City Council fining themselves and donating the money to the bushfire appeal... See more

11.01.2022 Spring is here; the Swallows have returned; the wattles are in full bloom; the bees are in the plum trees; and the Tasmanian Mountain Pepper are ready to grow.

10.01.2022 Mountain Pepper Herb... No it is not the name of some Tasmanian backwoodsman, but what we guess you'd have to call freeze-dried whole leaf of Tasmanian DEVIL Mountain Pepper. You use these leaves whole or hand-crushed in your soups, stews and salads. There is a different array of aromatics in the leaf compared with the berries, but both pack the same punch in your back pallet. We have been harvesting and drying for the past few days and packaged everything up this morning for sale through www.pepper-shop.tasmanianmountainpepper.com

10.01.2022 Outrageous... The flowering and fruit set on our Tasmanian DEVIL Mountain Pepper this season is just incredible. Last season was our biggest harvest to date - next harvest is looking like being 4x bigger again. Now, if it would stop raining, we could do some weeding and mowing (and mowing, and mowing...)

10.01.2022 Currawongs being trained to pick pepperberries...

08.01.2022 Biennial bearing... In the bush, Tasmanian Mountain Pepper produces huge crops in some years and next to nothing in others. 2020 is one of those 'bad' years. Our pepperberry farm also has this 'alternate bearing' but we look at it differently: Some years we have a surplus of berries... Biennial bearing is pretty common in fruit trees, so now to find ways to "accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive, and start messing with Mister In-Between"

08.01.2022 The AONB theme continues... Sunday afternoon, platypus cruising around on one of our farm's dams, must be an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - or at least pretty much a great blend of Wildlife and Agriculture.

07.01.2022 Monday's (2nd Nov) "Beyond the Farm Gate Tour", organised by the Tasmanian Women in Agriculture, makes its' first of six north-east farm stops at Bronzewing Farm: plenty to see, hear and taste... Mountain Pepper "nibbles" first thing in the morning...

07.01.2022 Spring is coming... The buds are swelling, the Cootamundra wattle is in full flower, the plum tree is about to burst into life, and then Khione had a different idea and dumped 75 mm of snow on us. We don't get snow really - Underwood and surrounds had a 12 hour blackout: Yippee for our Tesla Powerwall which meant we went on pretty much as usual (bad really, we couldn't take a 'snow day'...).

07.01.2022 Ruby the Bronzewing Farm Thylacine... "And down the 'cat walk' comes Ruby sporting the latest in Tasmanian Tiger evening wear". Cute, but a pity the only remaining Thylacines are a metal laser-cutout and a dog in a 'Tiger-skin' rug. To think that the last one died in the Hobart zoo in the 1930's - after a very successful 'bounty' campaign. We all still hope that there is a small population hidden away in Tasmania's remote forests.

05.01.2022 Goodbye Ruby...tuesday... "While the sun is bright, Or in the darkest night, No one knows, she comes and goes... When you change with every new day, Still I'm gonna miss you." Ruby's cancer got the better of her today. Some of her farm activities were logged here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/829989207773284/

05.01.2022 No flies on us... It is not often that you say "what a beautiful fly", but after a welcome 50 mm of rain over the last couple of days, all the bees, butterflies, and this jewel of a fly, were out rejoicing in the garden. Pretty sure it is an aptly named "long-legged fly" of the family Dolichopodidae (perhaps even Heteropsilopus cingulipes). These flies eat other tiny insects.

02.01.2022 Works a treat... If you've got a frog pond, you obviously have to put in a Japanese scare-deer... It goes with the 'frog hotels', and we can confirm - there are no deer on Bronzewing Farm. Now, if you are in the suburbs you could install one to drive the ratty neighbours away...

02.01.2022 Quality is key...; and this is NOT quality. ABC News ran a story about wild collected Tasmanian Mountain Pepper on 17th March which included the main photo below. This highlights one of the major problems with bush collected Mountain Pepper - the wide variation in ripeness of the berries. The berries should all look dark black when harvested to ensure full flavours and aroma. The second photo is of a Bronzewing Farm harvest of mature, ripe pepperberries. The Mountain Pepper "industry" does itself a disservice by not having harvesting and berry maturity standards.

02.01.2022 Ease the lockdown blues with the aroma of the Tasmanian bush... Anybody who orders any of our Tasmanian DEVIL Mountain Pepper or Pepperleaf with a delivery address in one of the suburbs under the reimposed "Stage 3 Stay at Home" restrictions in Victoria will also receive a complimentary 15 g jar of our exquisite freeze-dried pepperberries. Just crush the pepperberries and release the flavours of the Tasmanian bush and let your mind be taken elsewhere (and no..., its not hallucinogenic...). To order go to: www.pepper-shop.tasmanianmountainpepper.com. Suburbs are those listed on 8th July 2020 and the offer will remain vaild until 11:59pm on Wednesday 19th August, 2020.

01.01.2022 Dueling banjos... Tried to prepare more beds for planting Tasmanian Mountain Pepper, but the frogs penetrated the 2-stroke noise-suppression headphones... so I had to take notice. Perhaps only a problem if you live in paradise... Certainly a "Deliverance"...

01.01.2022 AONB... Anyone who has seen the British TV show "Escape to the Country" will have come across this "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" term, with everyone going "ooh and aah". It seems to us though that they are made up of villages and hay fields, so we have trouble understanding the "Natural" bit. Weeding Tasmanian Mountain Pepper is not really very exciting, but all you have to do is pause and look up at Mount Arthur (1180 m) in the distance to be revitalised. And this is just an Area of Ordinary Beauty in Tasmania... ooh, aah.

01.01.2022 Harvest underway... We started harvesting last Thursday; well Ruby the farm dog only provided moral support... Crop load looks really good. This year we purposely delayed harvest by 1 month in order to maximise berry size and to minimise the number of berries that still have the stems attached. This gives us big plump, stemless berries which are ideal for freeze-drying.