Bec Lynd, Big River Highland Beef, Plenty, Tasmania
The story of how Bec Lynd came to farming begins with a horse. “I wanted a few acres for my horses and I fell in love with this property,” says the former paramedic. “I’m an atypical and unintentional beef farmer and this is an atypical beef farm: more than half of it is covered in native forest and the remaining north-facing pasture is steep.” This landscape led her to buy Scottish Highland cattle, those lovely doe-eyed beasts with long reddish hair and horns. “I needed an animal that was low maintenance, didn’t need to be mollycoddled, didn’t mind hills and could cope with extremes in weather,” she says. There was no existing fencing infrastructure so Bec also needed an animal that could run inside a portable electric fence. “The fact that they are also great foragers also won me over.” Bec who runs Big River Highland Beef with her wife Rebecca Tudor, sells the beef direct to her community, offering family beef packs at the New Norfolk Market four times a year. The bursary Bec won when she became the 2017 Tasmanian Rural Woman of the Year funded research into on-farm abattoirs in the USA and inadvertently led to her new role as CEO of the Huon Valley Meat Company, a business that works direct with farmers and runs both abattoir and specialist butcher shops in Hobart, where you can buy Tasmanian beef, including Big River Highland Beef. 0418 520 100, facebook.com/bigriverhighlandbeef
The transition to beeswax wraps from plastic is effortless once you’ve felt (and smelt) Queen B’s Uber wrap. Measuring 100cm x 75cm, it can be cut to suit individual needs. Made with wax supplied by Australian beekeepers, we love the ones in pretty Liberty London fabric.
(02) 9905 1188, queenbwraps.com
TASTE OF HOME
In her first book Coconut & Sambal (Bloomsbury Publishing, $39.99), Lara Lee’s Indonesian family story unfolds like the papery layers of murtabak, the ubiquitous blistered Indonesian flatbread. Lara, who was born and raised in Australia and who now works in London as a chef, explored her father’s homeland in pursuit of her culinary heritage. Her love and enthusiasm for her family, and the cooks she meets on the way, spills onto every page and you can almost taste the salty peanuts in the rempeyek, smell the galangal, turmeric and ginger in the Padangstyle rendang and hear the praise you’ll get when you serve the pandan sponge cake, kue pandan dan kelapa.