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.