Words from…Fiona Billington from Unearthed Produce

Fiona Billington is the heart and soul behind Unearthed Produce, a small family owned business located in Paraparap on Victoria’s stunning Surf Coast. Fiona is famous for her creamy garlic paste, lovingly made from her families homegrown chemical and pesticide free garlic varieties. We sat down to chat about her food journey, her passion for healthy and local produce and the important role food plays in connecting us to our natural and social landscapes.

When did your food and farming journey begin?

Well, my grandparents on both my mum and dad’s side grew vegetables. I still have memories of my grandparents in Warrnambool, which were on my dad's side, driving down there at the age of four or five for school holidays and the first thing my grandfather would do was take me by my hand and walk me into the backyard and pull a carrot, clean it off on his shirt and give it to me to eat. So, you know, fruit and veg, we always just grew it. Mum always had extensive fruit and veg in the garden even though we were in suburbia in Melbourne. There was a small flower section, but it was always pretty much all vegetables. My grandparents on both sides of the family were the same.

My grandmother was an extensive cook. She’d make jams, relishes, jellies, those sorts of things. Everything was always homemade. It was always preserved. The idea was that you never let anything go to waste. If it came from the garden we used it, whatever was in season. We’d cook with our produce and then preserve excess. We only ever grew things that we would use, we wouldn't just go ‘Oh we’ll plant this because it looks exciting’. It was always practical.

My love of food probably came from the Lebanese restaurant in Melbourne where my mum worked. She did the cleaning and ironing and stuff like that, and so of course at a very young age I'd sit at the table at the Lebanese restaurant watching all the women cook. I was very much taken under their wing and they treated me like one of their own. I’d sit at the bench bunching parsley, cracking olives, peeling garlic, you know, all that sort of thing, and I worked at the restaurant then years later up until I was about twenty-four years old. From the age of four or five years old right through to my early twenties I was exposed to this environment, so I learnt a lot about food from a young age.

Working with the Lebanese women was like a little community in the kitchen. They’d pass on their knowledge, like you’d have the same relationship with the women that you get through Staying Grounded. It's instilled in you, it's a culture, it's food, family, festivities and fun. That's what it's all about. Everything's done by hand, like even measuring ingredients. They didn’t bring out their measuring cups or iPhones. For example, I cook a lot of Middle Eastern food and I cook many of these recipes just from the top of my head; it’s instinctual.

How did you cultivate and nourish your passion for growing?

I traveled a lot, so there was a patch of my life where I obviously didn't have my own garden, but whenever I rented I always tried to fix up a small vegetable garden or something small like that. I've always cooked, even when I rented I’d have friends often say, “Your food is sooo amazing” or “ You cook so beautifully”, so I was always the cook. I’ve always just done it. I’ve always cooked. I'll read a recipe and I get inspired by them, but I don't follow them! Which in some ways is really bad because my boys will say “Aw Mum, what if something happens to you and I can’t, you know, replicate your food”.

So, on all my recipes I have little tags to what I do and what I change for the boys later on, and even for me, because sometimes I'll go back and I’ll wonder “What did I change in that recipe? I know that I changed something, what did I change?”. It's tricky sometimes, but I do wing it a lot of the time.

Why did you choose to focus your attention and energy on producing garlic and garlic products specifically?

It was pretty much by fluke! Back when we were living in Bellbrae, we had a small veggie patch and we grew a little bit of everything, so we had an abundance of many things. When we moved out onto more land, 100 cloves became 300 cloves became 500 cloves, so I was planting a little bit more every year. I was making garlic paste and giving it to friends. So, I was growing the garlic and had extra garlic, so we thought “Well, what have I got to lose? Some labels, jars and my time maybe”, and I just went for it. I'd always worked in floristry and I still have my hand in that, but this was something that I could do from our land. It was just something that started off small and I just decided to roll with it.

Garlic grows well. It's in the ground for eight or nine months a year, depending on the variety. You can plant it, and well, some say you can plant and forget about it, you can’t, because it hates weeds, so you've got to keep it weeded, and you know, like anything with farming, weather is a great predictor. For example, last year we had heaps of rain and it was so sodden that we nearly lost the whole lot of it because of the excess moisture. The humidity, wet garlic and moist environment is not a great combination for drying garlic. So, we had to be particular when curing the garlic.

What varieties of garlic do you grow and do they require varying attention and care?

They’re all pretty much the same, but obviously when you've got a soft neck versus a hard neck variety, the hard neck grows a scape, which is when the stalk grows up and curls over, and it has little flowers with garlic seeds which are called bulbils and that needs to come off. When you grow hard necks, you need to remove all the scapes, because those shoots divert nutrients away from the plants, as in the bulb, and you want everything to hold in the bulb. We want the bulb to be as big and yummy as possible.

There's like about a hundred plus cultivars, meaning different varieties. You’ve got soft necks or hard necks and out of those two varieties you've got a whole branch of cultivars. So, you've got artichokes, silver skins, creoles, like there's so many different varieties of each one. Some people say, soft necks are better, some people say, hard necks are better. It's really just different varieties to different areas, from sub-tropics to Tasmania, because garlic varieties will only grow well in certain areas.

How did you decide which varieties to grow?

So obviously there were certain garlic varieties that you could only grow based on the climate. When I first started, I had many different varieties, then it was a process of weeding out some of them based on factors like what’s easier to peel. Some are harder than others to peel, so that was one thing. Another was bulb size, because some of the bulbs, like the artichoke variety, can have six or eight on the outside that are really big, while the middle ones are really small. So, you're bashing your head against a brick wall to peel them, even though there might have been less cloves in a bulb, they were easier to peel and they were bigger. For me that was better, and the taste. Garlic is like chillies, there’s a heat scale. You can have something that's really mild compared to something that's really hot and spicy.

How would you describe our current food system?

I think so many people are trying to make a difference, but there's so many people who are not interested in making any changes or doing anything for change. I think some have the attitude that it's not my problem. But when there's going to be no food on their table, it is going to be their problem. I think that people use excuses like, “I don't have time”. It's about managing your time and what is important to you. For me, good healthy food for my family is something I am passionate about, it is important to me. I know where we live, we're lucky, we're really lucky to be in this environment, but even if you live in Torquay, in suburbia, or in Melbourne, you can still grow small amounts of food. You don’t have to have an 8-acre block to grow your food. 

Was there a moment for you when you realised that there was a food system or when you realized that the food system is broken?

I always knew there was a food system. I've got family in Tasmania on their berry farms and dairy farms. My grandparents, my aunts and uncles were dairy farmers from Warrnambool, so I've always known about the food industry. I knew that milk comes from a cow before you get it from the supermarket. I've always known that there's a food system. I think the moment the food system broke was when we gave everything to the big supermarkets, like the big supermarkets just had the monopoly on everything. I still remember as a child, you'd go to the butcher for your meat. You'd go to the fruit and veg shop for fruit and veg. You'd go to the bakery to get bread. You'd only go to the supermarket for your canned goods etc.

Years ago, at the supermarket, after 12pm on a Saturday you couldn’t buy meat, they'd pull the shades down over the meat section. Supermarkets weren't open on a Sunday, so that's when the little milk bars used to get their business because you forgot the milk or the cream and you needed it. Now, it's mostly one stop shops. Everything is 24/7, everything is available all the time and everybody wants everything yesterday. It's sort of the world that we've become, everything's instant. The supermarkets have got a lot to blame for it, but we as a population choose to go to those supermarkets.

It’s making that conscious decision when you walk into a supermarket, “No, I'm not going to buy their meat. No, I'm not going to buy their bread. I'm not going to buy their cheeses. I'm going to go and source them elsewhere from a deli or a local place. I'm only going to buy my non-perishable items there”, instead of “Oh, I’m here, I may as well just get it all”. You can make that conscious decision when you walk in there. It’s similar to when people think “Why am I going to go and plant seeds and wait three months to get all my lettuce, when I can just walk into the supermarket and buy one”. It's the connection versus convenience and I think people are often opting for convenience.

What do you envision a healthy and sustainable food system to look like?

I think when you grow fruit and veg, and then you sell it, it's got to be affordable for people. I think that is a huge thing. You can have 100 places locally growing fruit and veg and selling it, but if it's not at the convenient price for people, it's a waste of time. You're dealing with fresh produce so it's got to move otherwise it’s no good and people want it fresh. If people want fresh, and you pick it and it doesn't sell for three days, and then you sell it on, well how long have they got then to use it? You really need to have a following of people who want the produce. So, it's demand and supply. People only pay for what they think it's worth. So that's where the competition with the supermarkets becomes hard too, but if you can educate people to not go to the supermarket and to buy from other places, because you're keeping people in business and contributing to sustaining that diversity, that’s huge. Education is important because people do get set in their ways. Seasonality is another one. If it's in season, buy it, because you're always going to pay less for things that are in season.

How did moving from the city to the coast/regionally shape your understanding of farming and local food systems?

I don't think there was much of a change. I'd sort of come back from traveling overseas and I just couldn't settle in Melbourne again. I love Melbourne, don't get me wrong, I love Melbourne and I miss Melbourne. However, I've been down here, what? Thirty-two years or something now, and I don't think there was much that changed because I was already raised on the land and we grew produce in Melbourne as well. Having worked at the restaurant too, we were always constantly pickling and preserving like you do for winter and I just bought that all with me.

What do you love most about the work you do?

I think it’s giving my customers a good product. I think that's pretty much it. I'm creating a product that has no additives, pesticides or chemicals. It's a product that I can tell you is made with love because I stand there for hours peeling the garlic by hand. I peel it all, I make it all, I deliver it all so I have that interaction with everybody. When I do tastings I can teach people about the product, so they don't just see a jar sitting on a shelf. I can tell my story and I can tell them where it comes from and how it’s made, so that's really lovely. Out in the paddocks, when I've harvested and I'm sitting there and I'm looking at thousands of bulbs, before I clean them to peel, sometimes I just sit there and I look out onto our property and I often think to myself, how lucky I am that I’m just there and this is ours. I feel very blessed that I can do that.

Are there unique and notable challenges and/or opportunities you’ve encountered working with the land and running a small business in the small-scale agricultural sector?

With any farming, you are at the mercy of the weather. So, from year to year, you are challenged, but also from year to year you can get a totally different crop. This year we're going to be okay I think, because we haven't had the rain like we had last year, but then, you know, next year I could be in drought. You've really got to be mentally prepared for that change. 

You've got to be willing to adapt to your environment. If it's five degrees and you know that you have to weed, you're out there weeding in five degrees. If it's 36 degrees and you know that you have to harvest, you're out there harvesting. You just have to do what you have to do. I suppose you guys would find the same here. When it has to be done it has to be done because nature doesn't wait. For example, when you have zucchini plants, and you forget to check them for two days and the ones that you saw that were one size are now much bigger, so to get the best of your product or your harvest you’ve got to do it when it's telling you. 

When we have excess produce, we always look to the community to give, for example to Feed Me Surf Coast. If I can't sell it and I haven't got time to peel it, it's just going to sit in the shed and rot. I'd rather that it goes there and helps them than go in the compost or the bin. I’ve been able to connect with many different communities with my produce.

Do you have a philosophy that you lean into when working with nature?

I think you only take from the Earth what you need, not what you want. We need to give nature time to replenish its yields and make sure that we’re always giving back to nature. It's common sense but, as we know, common sense isn't very common anymore. We don’t use pesticides and chemicals and things like that on anything that we grow. If there's something wrong with one of the fruit trees, we use natural sprays, like I'll make up a garlic spray. I think my philosophy too is about trying to keep an equal balance in the ecosystem with birds and insects etc. 

What are your visions for the future of Unearthed Produce?

Look, it changes daily! I'd like to expand slightly. I make jams and relishes and things like that from our fruit trees and our excess produce. We also grow berries and pears, so I do a pear, rhubarb and vanilla bean jam or brambleberry jam, things like that. Last year I did a barbecue rib plum sauce from the plums because I’d done jam before and was wondering what else I could do. I’ve also made smokey tomato relishes, sliced zucchini pickles, preserved lemons, I’ve done a huge range of those sorts of things.

But with the food industry, it's so hard, because everything needs to be labeled with all your proper labeling. So, it's not like twenty years ago where you go to a market and you find products with a little label that says ‘preserved lemons’, ‘lemon and salt’. It's got to have the nutritional value; it's got to have everything on it. So, for me to get labels made, well I might only do twenty jars that year, but I have to buy a hundred labels or whatever, then the cost outweighs the product I’m selling. It’s a huge barrier, huge. I know there's people out there that want to know what the food's nutritional value is. For example, when people look at a light cheese to a normal cheese, they’re wondering what the difference is in the sodium and sugar levels. If it’s ‘light’, then they’ve taken something out, but you've got to add something back in and they're not going to add fat back because that's what they've taken out, so it's always sugar or salt that they add back in. So, to me, is it better or worse? Jams and relishes are full of sugar, full of sugar! How much more do you need to know? When it says it's a blackberry jam that's got blackberries in it, it’s going to have blackberries in it. If I’m at a market and I’m the one who made it and I’m the one who’s selling it, I should be able to then just say to people, it has X, Y, and Z in it. It used to be a trust thing and now it’s so much more complicated.

That’s why when you go to markets you don’t see the Nana’s who used to make their stuff and then just sell it at a market because she can’t afford to. You mostly see small businesses or bigger companies doing it commercially, like a lot of places don't do small batches. You go and you see rows and rows and rows of products, whereas I'd love to go to a market and just see ten jars of that and five jars of that, because it's seasonal, that’s what you buy.

If you could give an aspiring local or backyard farmer some words of wisdom, what would you share?

I would probably say just start small. Make sure you've experimented to know that it works because you're going to come across other challenges. So, make sure you know what your plan is and stick to it. Be flexible, like when I say stick to the plan, be aware that nature can go different ways so know that you’ve done your research and you understand what setting up a business means. There's a lot that people don't know when they go into business, but with food there’s labeling so you need to have the nutritional content, country of origin, registering your products etc. Make sure you've got a list of things and just tick them off. For example, my labels didn't have barcodes and so many places wanted barcodes. Now I’ve got a sheet printed with my own barcode that I put on the bottom, but with the next lot of labels I’ll put the barcode on the labels. If you say your product is 100% Australian made or owned, you have to prove that everything in that jar is Australian. But who regulates it? There is a regulator, the Australian Institute of Food Safety, but do they come and knock on your door? No. But one day, if you're at a market, they might turn up at your shop and if they pick up your product and decide to audit you, well you’ve got to be able to prove what it says on the label. So, make sure you just do your research and ask questions. Ask people! Talk to people you know or try to find them and develop relationships with people.

What are some of your favourite things to make using your garlic paste?

Look, you can use it on whatever you use garlic for. It's amazing on pizza bases. So instead of your red sauce you just put that on your pizza base. The other night I had leftover lamb. I sliced the lamb and I tossed it in my garlic paste with some Aleppo pepper, cumin, sumac and then fried it off in the frying pan. I roasted some cubed pumpkin tossed in garlic paste and toasted some pine nuts. Then I put the garlic paste on the base of the pizza, added the lamb, pumpkin and cooked it in the oven. Then when it came out, I added some spinach, rocket, feta and the pine nuts on top. Just amazing! Now, that was three things I'd used the garlic paste in. So, you can pretty much use it on anything.

One of my favorite things is chicken thighs marinated in garlic paste, a little bit of olive oil, Aleppo pepper and cumin and then just on the flame of the barbecue, just cook it off. Get some beautiful pita bread, fill it with the garlic paste and then the chicken sliced up in it and you can have it with a simple salad of tomato and cucumber.

Other things you could do with it is put it into a salad dressing, a good mayo to make an aioli, or a good yogurt when I'm making a tzatziki for a Greek bowl with lettuce, tomato and lamb. When you do garlic prawns, put the butter, garlic paste and then your prawns, throw in some parsley, and eat it with some crunchy bread to soak up the sauce. There’s a bunch of recipes on my website too!

You can find Fiona’s incredible garlic paste in our Food Hub!