If you want to go nuts you’ve got to go to the Ovens Valley — walnuts, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, chestnuts, pumpkin seeds and … stop!
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Pumpkin seeds! Who mentioned pumpkin seeds? They’re seeds, not nuts.
This is the Ovens we are talking about. Nut central. Even the local beef producers grow nuts. Not seeds. And certainly not pumpkin seeds.
Yet incredibly, it’s here we find a story steeped in the generations and stretching back to Slovenia.
That’s where Sharan Rivett’s ancestors, like many other Slovenians, grew the Styrian heirloom variety.
A pumpkin grown purely for its seeds with the flesh left in paddocks for cattle to graze on or to be ploughed back into the soil as an organic booster.
Twenty years ago Sharan and her parents, John and Helen West (John was originally Jože Garbajs before anglicising his name after arriving in Australia from Slovenia), founded the Australian Pumpkin Seed Company in Queensland.
Ten years ago Sharan relocated the business to northern Victoria’s high country.
Bringing a little slice of Slovenia gave Australia its first — and still only — pumpkin seed and oil business.
Today the business is established, diverse and an integral part of the Ovens Valley’s food and wine experience.
The business has also identified a much wider role for the seeds and oil in recipes, from drizzling it over salads to creating sausage rolls with pumpkin seed flour.
You might also have trouble recognising them as pumpkin seeds, Sharan said they were usually twice the size of the standard seed, dark green and have a nutty flavour.
“The big point of difference with our pumpkin seeds is they naturally don’t have a husk like the regular pumpkin and as such are whole seeds which stay fresh,” Sharan said.
“At our shop visitors can see, taste and learn all about the processing of these ‘naked’ seeds.
“We really like to tell first-time customers the whole story, starting with a taste-testing, so they know what they are getting — we also hope to inspire people to feel good by supporting their physical health and wellbeing, focusing on disease prevention through the purchase of quality, fresh food which also supports good farming principles and practices.
“Our seeds are like nothing you’ve ever seen and while the pumpkin seed market is quite large in Australia — the most consumed here, far and away, come from China so this is an Australian alternative.”
Hand in glove with pumpkin seed production is pumpkin seed oil.
Sharan and husband Jay run about 50ha in Ovens and have contract growers in far north Queensland, managing about 30ha for them.
“Having the Queensland harvest means we are better able to manage supply year-round, instead of having to rely on just one harvest and eke it out for the year,” Sharan said.
“It also protects us from times as devastating as the last bushfires, which hit our area hard and we had to evacuate, and then stay away longer than we wanted because the water supply also got contaminated.”
In the Victorian operation, Sharan said they had found it better to grow their pumpkins as seedlings because the southern season was slightly shorter, and by putting established plants into the ground it gets them off to a flyer, even though it involves double handling.
“The pumpkins are machine-harvested and the seeds separated in the paddock — it would be impossible to do it any other way, and while some use the flesh for grazing, we leave it there to help rejuvenate the soil.”
Sharan said they were also doing trials in a sustainable weed-control campaign by planting a cover crop, which they then roll and flatten, crushing the stalks so the plants do not keep growing.
She said the goal was to create a big mulch layer to stop the weeds.
“At the end of the day we are still growing a pumpkin, so we need fertile soil, which we supplement with organic and biodynamic methods,” Sharan said.
“We collect between 500kg and 800kg per hectare — although we have had some significantly better results on occasion — and we are increasingly finding people are turning to our products as they are Australian grown.
“In particular we saw that through our increased online business during COVID.”
The other thing Sharan brought to the all-Australian equation in the Ovens was the oil press.
Her father made their first one and that is still the primary choice today — although Sharan has added a more modern European press to the operation.
She said having access to a press in their backyard saw many local nut growers suddenly becoming part of the story.
“Our collaboration with local farmers is building as we support them by purchasing only Australian-grown produce for the production of our new seed and nut oils,” Sharan said.
“Our own oil, when it is finished, is such a dark green it looks black when it comes out to be added to any kind of food — it is as versatile as olive oil and comes with a genuine flavour.
“Jay is our press master and he tells me by buying Australian and using the artisan methods for cold pressing our oils we are able to produce the freshest, tastiest oils in Australia.
“The Artisan Mill is a family owned and operated traditional oil and flour mill and it is part social enterprise, which allows us to partner with many other Australian farmers and press oil from their nuts and seeds, providing them with an alternative product and income for their farms.”
The original version of this story appeared in the Small Farms magazine,another McPherson Media Group agricultural publication.
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