lyttel fish big pond: low and slow

Grow. Gather. Hunt. Cook. Living the good life.

Rohan Anderson has become a guru. I'm not sure that he wants that title. But he does want to share a way of life that he has embarked on and which he is passionate about. And he wants to share the goodness and the satisfaction he gets from it and the knowledge and appreciation of the process, the story behind the food. And people are increasingly curious. Some people. Perhaps not enough people. But if you build it, they will come. Surely.

And ten of us went on a cold winter's weekend to a homestead on a farm in rural Victoria, near Daylesford.

I had read about Rohan and I liked what I read. I like food. I like to think that I think about the food I cook and eat. But Rohan really loves food and not in a gourmet foodie way. He really loves planting his garden and anticipating the harvest and savouring what the seasons offer, whether that is the two week window to sit under an Anzac peach tree, the juice dripping down his beard and the absolute enjoyment of its sun-kissed flavour, or the fact that his meat intake is regulated by what he can hunt or catch, or mandarins in winter just at the time when we need the vitamin C. And he likes preparing the food, thinking in advance about baking bread or making pasta.

When I read about the Whole Larder Love Workshops which Rohan and his lovely partner, Kate, have started running this year, I wanted to be part of it. But there was a process involved in deciding to go. I live in the city. I have always lived in the city. It feels a little bit bohemian bourgeois or potentially hipster to pay a significant amount of money to someone who has photos of real vegetables on his website...vegetables with dirt on them...just to get in touch with the food chain and to sleep in a stable. When you choose to participate in a weekend where you will dispatch a chicken and skin a rabbit, it has to be for the right reasons.

For me, it was about knowledge. I like knowing the back story. One of the other workshop participants talked about how we come in on food at the halfway point. Often the meat we purchase bears no resemblance to its original form. Knowing the process and the story is becoming more important to me. And I have always been drawn to passionate people. I like hearing them talk about their passion.

I have to admit, my intentions for the weekend were fairly vague. I was certainly seeking knowledge. And I was certainly exploring some of my own ideas surrounding food and cooking and living as we should. Having lived in France, I like the southern French approach of doing things 'comme il faut', in the way that they should be done. Much of their food centres on celebrating the flavour of the seasons and allowing the individual ingredients to shine rather than being fussy about trends and lots of complicated recipes. People often tar all French food with the heavy cream and butter brush. But once you cross the line around Nyons, you're in peasant olive oil country where they gather dandelion leaves for salad, hunt for mushrooms and make seasonal produce the heroes. Simple pleasures take centre stage.

That's what I want.

What I came away with was something more. I hadn't anticipated the sense of community that I felt over this weekend. You never know who you will end with up on these weekend workshop type arrangements. But I felt lucky and enriched to share the experiences and the conversations with these like-minded people. Making bread and pasta and eating and drinking around the big table together.

I did dispatch a chicken. I was unsure whether I would be able to see it through. But I did it and saw my chicken through from alive to plucked, to gutted, to butchered. It wasn't easy. I found it confronting. Who am I to take the life of a living creature for my benefit? The chicken didn't want to die. As with any animal, it was perfectly happy its whole life except for one day. The day it died. These chickens were happy. Well, I don't know that for sure, and I doubt you'd get a coherent answer from them if you asked. But they had been raised in good conditions. I respected my chicken. And I want to be more discerning now about where the food I eat comes from.

And I did skin a rabbit. It was a wild rabbit that Rohan had shot. I skinned, gutted and butchered it. In the rain. And cooked it last night, low and slow, with freshly made pasta and sauteed kale. Which is in season. And it's a superfood.

Rohan is not advocating that we all move to the country and become self-sufficient. All he asks is that we live semi-sufficiently. That we pay attention to local producers and eat seasonally. That we live with purpose.

And it's not just about the food. It's about the people that the food brings together. Getting back to basics with food and with people.

That's it.