1PageNewsletter Edition September 2015

Australian Truffle Growers Association, PO Box 1564, NEUTRAL BAY NSW 2089

Dear Members, It’s been a busy time for the industry and no less for myself. I have had the pleasure of recently talking about, sniffing and eating lots of truffles in Victoria, West Australia and Rotorua, more specifically at the Melbourne Truffle Festival, a grading workshop at Manjimup and the NZ Truffle Association’s Annual Conference. I’ve really enjoyed getting around the traps to meet with growers and hear their sto-ries. There is much going on which will shape our industry, its long term profitability and legacy, and there is a window of opportunity for AGTA Members, growers and even customers and consumers of truffles to help direct our future.

For example, there is a difference in opinion between the growers in the East and West (of Australia) in the approach to grading truffles for domestic and international markets. Individual companies also differ in their approaches, and in Australia we have a different way of doing it than our Kiwi cousins. At Queanbeyan in November I am looking forward to some constructive dialogue around grading and the development of a consensus around how we may grade truffles in such a way that it will enhance the reputation of the industry. This season has seen new production and increased yields in some areas, a question mark on others and whilst this augurs well for the Australian industry it also reinforces the need for seriously good quality standards and coordinated marketing possibly through a branding initiative. At the AGM and Conference I’m also looking forward to getting an update on the three major industry projects (Pests and Diseases, Biosecurity and Grower’s Guide) that we have underway. These projects will produce outcomes that will impact all growers now and into the future, but they will need your input and support to be successful. You may like to start by contacting Alan Davey, who is collecting data on the location of truffieres and their pests and diseases. Alan can be contacted on alan-davey@grapevine.net.au or 0407 404 447 (but not between 25th Sept. and 25th Oct.). Please watch out for opportunities to engage with Alan and the project teams, especially at the Conference where each project will have representatives. I look forward to seeing you in Queanbeyan.Peter Stahle. President. president@trufflegrowers.com.au

Email Addres s : info@truff legrowers .com.au Edition September 2015

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Members of WA Growers group in Al Blakers truffière during the Manjimup workshop

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Above, NZ Truffle Growers held their AGM in Rotorua (7-9 August, 2015). The top image is attendees on a truffière visit, centre is the view from the podium as Peter Stahle finished his report. While NZ growers have been producing bianchetto truffles for some years, below is part of almost a kilo of tuber borchii that came from the Stahles’ truffière at Seymour two weeks ago. The largest was just over 160 grams, the two smaller ones in front, were lunch! This late season discovery promises to extend Australian truffle dining, with Melbourne and Sydney chefs who sampled them immediately placing orders. Peter is anxious to see what the rest of the season hatches before counting his bianchetti.

Newsletter Edition September 2015

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As part of ATGA member Nigel Wood’s Melbourne Truffle Festival weekend at the lovely retro Ivanhoe Centre, there was an Association seminar titled “Should I grow Truffles, and how?”that drew a group of potential growers notably younger than the usual ‘This is for my retirement’ truffle demographic.The afternoon finished with Skype video sessions from Marcos Morcillo and Christine Fischer from Spain. There are some video and audio recordings that Nigel has offered to share with us going up (along with all the other items promised by Fred) on the Members website soon.

Melbourne Truffle Festival Seminar

Newsletter Edition September 2015

Victorian growers will recognise the faces of Nigel Wood and Ruth Newton, Trufflepaddock (who chaired the day), Sue Daly, Truffle Treasures, Stewart Dunbar of Yarra Valley Truffles and Andres Haas of Black Cat Truffles. Professor Snow Barlow from Melb.Uni shared climate change lessons from the wine growers experience, food writer Rita Ehrlich talked about building relationships with chefs, Peter Brown, soil scientist talked, ah...dirty, Colin Carter talked trees, and Jenny McAuly from Red Hill Truffles talked about her path to become a grower. Peter Stahle provoked the group with questions they needed to ask before deciding to become growers. The day wrapped up as a great truffle growing roadshow.

When talking to Jenny McAuly at the Ivanhoe Festival we arranged an invite to her last hunt of the season at Red Hill Truffles on the Mornington Peninsula. That’s Jenny and dog Thomas and the hunt group in (a small) part of the beautiful Red Hill truffière. Jenny uses Danielle Field from MP Experience tours. www.mpexperience.com.au for her hunt bookings.

ATGA Conference updateQueanbeyan 13-15 November 2015 Market RealitiesVenue: The Queanbeyan Kangaroos Football Club Richard Ave & Stuart St, Crestwood NSW 2620

Growing Truffles 9.00 am to 12.00 noon, Colin Carter and Noel Fitzpatrick provide us with a special ‘Truffles Only’ session of their wildly popular growers Truffles and Hazelnuts seminar.Train the Trainer for Truffle Dogs 9.00 am to 4.00pm. A members only, bring your dog, all day workshop with lunch provided. Conducted by Steve Austin. Sure to sell out, we may have to limit this to one person per farm.Cooking with Truffles (Presenters planned are a Michelin starred chef, a value-adding truffle product maker and a top dessert ‘scientist’). Many of our new growers say they have not had enough of their own truffles to fully un-derstand what the attraction of truffles is. With this session you’ll at least know where to begin.

Friday night from 7.00 pm. Join us for an informal gathering of growers and participants in one of the bar and restaurant areas of the Kangaroo club. Or feel free to visit one of the region’s many top restaurant venues.

9.00 am Opening ceremony with comment from event sponsors, Destination NSW and the Quean-beyan Local Council. Meet the locals.

9.30 AGM, including President’s and Treasurer’s reports and elections.

Morning tea 10.30 – 11.00 am

11.00 am to 12.30 pm - Market demands and an industry response. Guest speakers include a fine food and truffle dis-tributor, importer/exporter with an outside view of the industry on marketing, local and interna-tional sales. We have a view from a large truf-fle producer, and the collective marketing expe-rience from the blueberry industry. A plenary session will sum up and mark the important lessons.

Lunch 12.30 – 1.30 pm

1.30 to 3.00 pm - 2015 Updates. We will hear a NZ industry update covering bor-der control, marketing and grading approach from the NZ Association President. The Australian Presi-dent will present a comparison of grading standards, developed by the Association, by WA growers and from NZ for further discussion. We will also have the viewpoint of a large truffle producer and distributor. This session will be wrapped up with plenary session to sum up and mark the important lessons.

Afternoon tea 3.00 – 3.30 pm

3.30 to 5.00 pm - 2015 Reports. This session will cover the progress with the Association R&D projects with presentations on Biosecurity Plans, a presentation on truffle pests and diseases and information from the WA map-ping project followed by a group discussion on plant health and biosecurity. We will have an update on the Australian truffle growing guide, on the success and importance for regions of local Truffle Festivals and the afternoon will conclude with a brief pres-entation on soil moisture monitoring as prepara-tion for the Sunday during the field demonstration. Saturday Night 6.30pm, casual reception style event at a great local venue including some truffle dishes using frozen truffle, (if we can persuade the Chef ).

8.30 am. Our busses depart Queanbeyan Kangaroos Football Club for a local truffière arriving 9.00 for in-tensive demonstrations on soil moisture monitoring, pruning, soil science, cultivation of established trees, pests, contour planting and other points of interest. Busses will return to the club at 11.30

Lunch 12.30 – 1.30 pm

1.30 until 3.00 pm - Plenary session. With your input, this will decide the events and plan-ning of next year’s focus for the Association, and the 2016 Conference theme. General discussion time and closing of proceedings will be conducted before afternoon tea and an Association Executive meeting of attending executive members.

Friday 13

Saturday 14Sunday 15

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Accommodation Discount offerProbably the closest motel to the ‘Roo’s Club’ venue is Hamilton’s Townhouse Motel. Owners Fiona and Robert de Bono have offered members identifying themselves as being with the conference, “the rate of $110 per room per night. This is greater than a 25% discount.” The motel is at 53 Tharwa Road Queanbeyan, NSW 2620. See the motel website www.hamiltonsmotel.com.au. Phone 02 6297 1877

Canberra Railway Station

Saturday Reception restaurant

Queanbeyan ‘Roo’s ‘Club

Canberra Airport

Direct Flights from Perth/ Melb./SydneyQantas and Virgin both have flights direct to Canberra. There are return flights on Sunday after the finish, it takes around 20 minutes to get to the airport from the conference venue by taxi. It would be wise to book cabs given our group numbers. Queanbeyan Taxis 13 22 11, CBD Chauffeured (02) 6297 9899, Canberra Elite Taxis 02132227

Getting there While having a car for the weekend will give you the maximum flexibility, alternatives to driving to Queanbeyan are travel by air, bus and trains. There is no direct train from Melbourne but you can travel on the Sydney train and change at Goul-burn, or by bus from other rail stations. There is good public transport between Queanbeyan and Canberra and hire cars are available at the airport. All Conference events will have our bus options. Accommodation There are around 16 four-star motels and apart-ments in Queanbeyan, some country-pub hotel accommodation, and attractive caravan parks with some overnight cabins.The ACT offers many more, and is just 15 minutes away by car.

Dining While Canberra offers many dining venues of international standard, Queanbeyan has devel-oped a cafe culture and has always had lots of pubs offering food. There are good ethnic op-tions as well - Chinese, Thai and Indian and the usual takeaway and pizzas. Canberra district is a major wine area with a great reputation and attrac-tive cellar doors many within an hour’s drive, see www.canberrawines.com.au

ATGA local NSW representative and the 2015 Conference organiser is Wayne Haslam, wayne@bluefrogtruffles.com.au. Watch the website for the latest speaker information and all booking costs.

Queanbeyan Railway Station

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Queanbeyan and region visitors . Start planning your weekend at visitqueanbeyan.com.au and visitcanberra.com.au or call the friendly Queanbeyan Visitor Information Centre on 02 6285 6307.

From the info@trufflegrowers in-boxEmail enquiries received from our website

News please Send stuff! Email to fred@ or info@trufflegrowers.com.au

“I have been slowly developing my appreciation for truffle cultivation and would like to take this budding interest to the next level. I’ve tried to brief myself on as much information on truffle production as possible, but while not quite yet in the position to purchase some farming land, feel like its time to get some dirt under the nails (or at least direct a dogs nose in that direction). Now I realise this might be a stretch but I work and live in Melbourne and was wondering if any of your Yarra Valley producers would care for some free labour on the weekends? I’m 35, fit and healthy and used to work as an Economist for the NSW Farmers’ Association (I’m cur-rently working in the same capacity for the VIC Department of Environ-ment), but outside of tending to small vegetable patches, lack experience in larger scale farming. Please don’t hesitate to pass on this request to any of your Vic members, who can con-tact me directly if they want to know anymore about me. Thanks for your time, and all the publicly available information on your website. Regards Danny Rey-Conde 0404 228 890”

While we’ve checked links, we cannot vouch for the bona-fides of companies in these emails so it’s reply at your own risk.

Thinking of selling Online?- Here are a couple of requests for promotion we’ve had, that you may be interested in.

“Farmhouse Direct is Australia’s largest online Farmer’s Market. Just like a physical farmers’ market people come to Farmhouse Direct because they know it’s the number one destination to buy Australian grown and made produce from the farmer directly – no middleman, no warehouse – We all about sup-porting Australian farmers. Sellers on Farmhouse Direct set their own prices, control their online pres-ence themselves and have access to reduced postage rates with Australia Post. We would love to encour-age Australian commercial Truffle Farmers to apply for a stall on our marketplace To find out more please contact us at support@farmhou-sedirect.com.au or register with us at www.farmhousedirect.com.au”. Victorian grower and member Chris Macquet has signaled that ‘when he’s cleared this truffle season’ he’ll be launching some-thing similar. This is a heads up.

He says “We are developing an new website, called FindGoodFood, which connects consumers directly with farmers. When a farmer is about to harvest, say truffles or rasp-berries, all those visitors who have ticked the box (truffles, raspberries) within a specified area, will get an SMS to that effect. They then look up the farmer and find where, when and how he is selling his produce – at farmgate, Farmer’s Markets, local produce stores and any place that supports local produce, such as res-taurants. Essentially, the message is that, local produce is so much better, healthier and tastier than non-local, that its food value index (FVI) and taste so far exceeds non-local, that it is far better to buy local. The trial website has attracted some 40,000 such suppliers, as well as overseas buyers wanting fresh, clean Australia produce, that we are get-ting enquiries for all sorts of fresh produce, including truffles.”

I’ve had this item for a while, a story told by member Peter Brown aka The Dirt Doctor. While not reccommend-ing you planting a truffiere in your back yard, Peter has planted some innoculated seedlings, and before he went on holiday, he tidied up.

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“I have attached a photo of the 2 year old Tuber magnatum and T. aestivum trees I have been experimenting with for Colin (Carter) - a bit amazed to see a Brule suddenly develop. They area got rather overgrown (I was in Bali for a while) so I whipper-snipped they area virtually bare and the Brule sprouted from the regrowth and has continued to develop since. Maybe we should stop worrying about being gentle?”

Are we starting a new meme? I was amused at a recent ‘gathering’ by a grower story of uncovering a truffle. They recounted how they were digging around it, deeper and deeper “and it kept going, and went..” (insert wild hand gestures) “...down this deep!” At least they don’t get away in a pad-dock.