Gourmet Farmer

Matthew's Fat Pig Farm Kitchen has been feeding people for over a year now, but he knows that the quality of his food is only as good as the soil it comes from, so he embarks on a 12-month mission to transform his food and the way he farms.

It's Autumn on Fat Pig Farm, and Matthew considers buying some goats to tackle the farm's blackberry problem. With the garden overflowing with veggies, Sadie trades some tomatoes for fermented miso paste, which Matthew experiments within the kitchen.

With Winter setting in, Matthew welcomes a herd of goats to solve his Blackberry infestation without using a single pesticide. He then begins to tackle Fat Pig Farms' long-term soil health by planting an edible native garden while designing and building an age-old form of landscaping that will benefit his farm for hundreds of years.

After testing his farm soil's health, Matthew receives the results and needs to explore new ways to rest and rehabilitate the damaged earth in his pig paddocks. He experiments with an acorn pig feed and builds his own mobile chicken pen to fertilise the soil with their life-giving poo.

With Sadie and Hedley away, Matthew has his work cut out for him, managing the farm on his own and repairing winter rot in the farm's apple orchards. But to surprise Sadie for her birthday, he badly wants to build her a new herb garden and plant a whole row of Camellias before she returns.

If there is an art to outdoor cooking, why not have a barbecue that's a work of art? Matthew realises a long-held daydream when he installs an incredible outdoor fire pit built by one of Tassie's most talented blacksmiths. With his farm work done, Matthew finally catches something from the ocean worth bragging about.

It's Spring on Fat Pig Farm, and everything is growing furiously, but there is almost nothing to harvest. Matthew creates an incredible pie with the few things that are available in the garden and learns the intricacies of how to forage for wild food in Tasmania.

With Spring in full swing and bugs in abundance, Matthew invites an insect scientist to survey the health and wealth of the farm's insect population. He learns just how important insects are to the ecosystem and health of his farm, how to cook and eat one of Australia's most common garden pests, and what a huge impact insects have on feeding the entire plane.

It's summer, and Matthew is focused on making the most of the garden's first flush of raspberries. But with the garden and soil now in such rude health, he's looking for ideas on how he can improve his approach to the animals he farms for the restaurant table by exploring the idea of using dual-purpose cattle breeds and a new breed of chicken.

It's been 12 months, four seasons and lots of hard lessons since Matthew set out to transform his cherished slice of Tassie into a farm that grows healthy food while regenerating healthy soils, making it more productive and healthier for future generations. He's tried it all, so what ideas worked and what didn't?