If you’ve ever heard me speak about Wolki Farm’s origin story, you’ll know that Mrs W and I started farming on the side just to meet our “clean food habit” on our “food healing journey”. For those of you who haven’t heard it, I’ll share it now, and then explain why it’s relevant to today’s blog.
I’ve struggled with allergies most of my life. I never really knew precisely what made me suffer, just that I did. Skin rashes so bad that I’d scratch them in my sleep as a child. I’d wake up with sheets stuck to my bleeding legs and call for my dad to go through the ritual of peeling the sheets off and dabbing calamine on the open wounds to soothe them.
When I finished high school, I started working for my father in his record store, selling CDs, DVDs, vinyl and some merch. It was lots of fun. Around that time, hayfever started kicking my ass. This persisted for over a decade. I generally had some symptoms year-round, such as a runny nose and itchy eyes. But spring was just awful.
Fast forward to around 2019. I was running a bicycle shop that I had purchased with my parents. Mrs W and I had been married a few years and Otto was one.
That year, my hayfever was so bad that I cracked. I was spending whole days on the couch regularly.
I didn’t sneeze. I SNEEZED. Eight-plus times in a row. Snot everywhere.
It was completely exhausting. As gross as it sounds — horribly itchy eyes, nose constantly running. I’d take four hankies to work with me at 7am and they’d be soaked before the staff arrived at 8:30. Yeah, gross.
I was at the end of my tether and booked in to see the GP. This was a big move. In my family, visiting a doctor was a sign of defeat and weakness.
If you’ve grown up in a family business, you may have similar programming. Taking time off for reasons such as sickness, birthdays or moving house was (is) unacceptable. This is so deeply ingrained that Mrs W and I got married on a public holiday — one of the four days per year our store was closed.
I will often go and do a few hours of hard labour first thing on my birthday just to remind myself that we work every day. I’m not saying it’s right. It just is.
I went to the GP and said the meds I was on weren’t cutting it. I was on prescription antihistamines, eye drops and nasal sprays, plus an over-the-counter steroid skin cream.
I pushed for the steroid injection a friend of mine had recently had. He said it worked great. I didn’t understand the mechanics behind why it worked (tanking your immune system to suppress immune response). I didn’t care. Just do something that works.
The GP strongly advised me to avoid the injection and to let her try some other medications first. She said steroids have serious impacts and she didn’t want to knee-jerk straight to it.
What knee-jerk? I’d been struggling for 15-plus years.
She dialled up the scripts and I went straight to the pharmacy and cashed them in. Before I left the store, I ripped the nasal spray out and dosed myself, searching for the silver bullet. I needed immediate relief.
I kind of got it. The snot stopped dripping. But in place of it, blood started pouring out of my nose.
Be careful what you wish for.
I went home, dejected. I can only imagine the pathetic state Mrs W found me in. The cure felt worse than the dis-ease.
Mrs W’s life-course-altering intervention was about to begin. She has always been into healthy living, exercise, self-care, listening to her body. I wasn’t. I ate whatever, whenever. Sometimes I wouldn’t eat breakfast or lunch because I was busy at work, then smash some noodles on the way home and eat the dinner she made once I got there.
I could justify two dinners if I skipped breakfast and lunch, right?
“Are you ready to start looking at what you’re eating?”
If she said it today, seven years later, I imagine she’d add: “Are you ready to start looking at what you’re eating — and the environment you’re in?”
I was willing to rip any script and try any drug. I’d travelled to Melbourne monthly for six months to get desensitisation injections.
(I’d had a test and was apparently allergic to hair, sweat, dust, pollen and grass. A great sample of things for a future aspiring farmer to be allergic to.)
They didn’t work.
Feeling like I had nothing to lose, I went down the rabbit hole of organic foods via the University of YouTube. I started a little organic no-dig veggie garden in our backyard and quickly stumbled upon things like keto diets and regenerative farming.
We went to our local butchers and farmers’ market to get Grass Fed Beef and Pasture Raised Pork, but couldn’t really find it. I quickly found myself asking what I thought were the right questions and getting slick non-answers. Beyond that, some businesses ridiculed me for asking.
“Are these animals fed grain?”
“Do these cattle graze organic pastures?”
“Are these cows routinely drenched or wormed?”
In my education at the University of YouTube, I came across an American farmer called Joel Salatin via Justin Rhodes’ channel. I read some of his books.
I thought, Right. Doesn’t look that hard. I’ll do it myself.
To a degree, I was right. Raising chemical-free food isn’t that hard — in my opinion, anyway. Farming is the easy and enjoyable part of our operation.
I leased my parents’ 100-acre hobby farm and got to work, quickly filling our larder with eggs, beef, pork and veggies. But raising three pigs is basically as much work as raising ten.
I scaled up a little so we could sell the surplus to cover some costs and make better use of my labour and infrastructure.
Well, the excess I sold was received really well. Other people were on similar food-healing journeys and wanted it. At the end of 2020, we took the leap and purchased a local butchery freehold and set up our own processing.
This blog is getting long, so for now I’ll just say: the rest is history.
(And before I forget — I’m better now. Food healed me. I always forget to give people that closure.)
The reason I’m re-telling this story (for what feels like the 500th time) is that www.wolkifarm.com.au is branching out into selling more products — and these products aren’t raised or produced by us.
I remember once standing on stage and proudly saying, “Every cut of meat ever sold by Wolki Farm will be raised by us.”
That’s kind of the image farms like us are “supposed” to have. But it’s not me. I wish I could go back and slap that dork Jake in the face and speed him up a bit.
I never wanted to farm. Though I love it now, I set out to eat better.
People didn’t start buying our meat because it’s certified (it’s not), because I’m part of a club or association (I’m not), or because I strictly adhere to certain dogma (I don’t).
People bought and supported Wolki Farm because they trusted me.
I asked the right (or wrong) questions. I experimented. I didn’t know what couldn’t be done.
I produced what I needed. It just so happened other people needed it too.
Our goal was never to become ‘producers of everything’. It was to eat better — and help others do the same.
The other products we are listing on our website are an extension of exactly that. We will continue to grow our grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb and pasture-raised pork. We will continue to collaborate with other local, value-aligned farmers.
I’m also going to keep building out our website so it reflects our pantry and habits.
When you visit the Wolki Farm website, you’ll be accessing a portal to “eat like a Wolki”.
If it’s on our website, it’s because it’s in our house.
I have zero interest in getting into aquaponics or fishing. I have to draw the line somewhere. But we love seafood and try to do a seafood night once a week.
Being inland and a bit up the road from town, we rely on our freezer and pantry.
I’ve sourced some snap-frozen, wild-harvested Aussie seafood from a brand called Wild South. We’re really happy with the product and have enjoyed adding it into our rotation.
I’ve also recently been getting into canned foods — sardines, tuna, octopus. We’re enjoying it all. Especially eight-year-old Otto, who’s always up for a tinned fish adventure.
I’m almost always in a rush and don’t like cooking during the day — or anytime, really. Having a tin I can rip open, dump onto some sourdough and keep rolling is fantastic. I really rate it.
Dr Max Gulhane is always telling us to get our DHA — so we need to eat the seafood, right?
We hope you enjoy the offerings we curate as we build out our range and share more of the staples that helped us on our food-healing journey.
