Farmers Market and Mullumbimby Farmers Market.
No strangers to awards, the latest for Fabian Fabbro and Jodie Vickers of Woodland Valley Farm, however, blew them away. In October they learned that they had been one of several winners in the Sustainability category of the international Square 50 Awards. It’s the second year this annual awards program ‘dedicated to championing businesses that are changing the entrepreneurial game in their respective fields’ has been running, with nominations from thousands worldwide. Nine were selected from Australia of which Woodland Valley Farm’s Murwillumbah operation Pasta’bah was one, then a winner. ‘We were stoked!’ Jodie tells me. ‘We had no expectations we’d win.
Us in Ferndale!’
Their farm has long-used regenerative and sustainable practices such as carbon sequestration and zero waste – all the waste from their food production going back to feed their hens – as they work toward rebuilding the ecosystem. Pasta’bah, their paddock-to-plate pasta restaurant and retail outlet, was borne out of the floods when Fabian and Jodie needed a new production facility. It now employs 14 staff and, once again, requires new production facilities, so they will be moving into new premises in the Murwillumbah industrial estate by the end of the year. That’s great news for the many fans of their gorgeous pasta sauces, fresh pasta and duck egg custard, another award-winner. ‘It will increase our production considerably’, Jodie tells me, ‘hence new product lines. We have a funghi sauce (in the offing) but there’s no space for it at present! … There’ll be more of everything!’
I’ve been a devoted fan of their eggs for a very long time – although I’ve yet to try their duck eggs. Jodie tells me that they have four hundred ducks, (‘they’re very easy, just hanging out in the creek all day,’ – such a lovely vision!) They sell as many of the eggs as they produce.
Woodland Valley Farm is at New Brighton Farmers Market every Tuesday 8am to 11am and Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday 7am to 11am.
