If it weren’t for the support of the farmers’ markets, Oliver Bora, egg and bone broth purveyor extraordinaire, might not be on his current upward trajectory.
He’s also an inspiration to potential young farmers, a 20-something-year-old whose free-range, pasture-raised hens, from the relatively modest number of 450 when he first started out, now number close to 4,000. Thanks to a crowd-funding campaign while he was still at school, Oliver was able to launch his business and eventually relocate to The Farm, increase the number of hens and broaden his customer base. ‘I’m struggling to keep up with demand!’ he tells me. ‘I wish the hens would lay more eggs!’
Increase in this demand has much to do with the prevalence of bird flu and the resultant rising costs of supermarket eggs. Byron Bay’s Bay Grocer used to order 70 dozen eggs a week and that’s recently soared to 120 dozen. ‘It’s also to do with the food security of having eggs in the shire, produced in the area, raised on organic feed’, he tells me.
The other success story for Oliver is his bone broth. ‘It’s a really big seller,’ he says, ‘especially through this winter. It’s nutritional, anti-inflammatory, gut-nourishing. Since I started it’s become a big hit.’ He makes it in conjunction with the Coop in Byron Bay, slowly simmering the bones for 18 hours with loads of aromatics.
Never short of projects and ideas, he’s looking at adding two or three more chicken caravans. ‘I’ve been developing my own caravans’, he tells me. ‘They’re purpose-built, with nesting boxes and roosting sticks.’ He shows me the design: to accommodate 600 chickens per van, they’ll measure 9 metres long by 2.5 metres wide. ‘I’ve got quotes and pricing for Australian-made products,’ he says, ‘and over the next month I’ll be developing the prototype.’
Oliver’s Eggs is at Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday from 7am to 11am.
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