WALK through the doors of McHenry Hohnen and you’ll be greeted by one of the most amazing smells – think smoked sausages marinating in a mix of freshly ground herbs and spices.
If the smell’s not enough to get you salivating, the fridge full of smallgoods right next to the winery’s entrance will.
There’s bacon and ham, pastrami, chorizo and a range of sausages that’ll satisfy any carnivore’s cravings, made by David Hohnen and his small team of smallgoods producers.
"We are accidental smallgoods makers,” Mr Hohnen said of The Farm House, which originally started as a butchery in 2009.
“When we opened it was called the Farm Shop then, and we had a butchery and gradually moved into smallgoods making.”
A winemaker by trade, Mr Hohnen bought a sheep farm in 2000, before diversifying into pig farming.
“It all began because we needed to make use of the whole animal,” he said.
“When you start breaking down (a term for butchering) whole pigs, you will sell the belly, you might – if you’re very lucky – sell a few chops and the occasional shoulder, but you’re always going to be left with legs.
“So initially we were turning the legs into Christmas hams, and then we started turning the loin and the rib into bacon, and then we went from there.”
Mr Hohnen has always had a use all, waste not mentality.
“Even when I was a 10 year old kid, we were bringing home food from the woodlands and the fields,” he said.
“So that’s where it started really – being a hunter gatherer and taking the food from the field to the kitchen.”
It’s a process he hopes to pass on to Margaret River residents and visitors, through his business that he runs out of McHenry Hohnen and at the Margaret River Farmers’ Market.
“I wanted to provide an opportunity for people to know exactly where their food was coming from,” Mr Hohnen said.
“I can put you in the car and I can take you to the farm, and that to me is no different to the difference between a winery that can take you back to the original vineyard, and one that would just have huge tanks with a blend of all sorts of wine.”
The smallgoods maker said knowing where your food comes from was all part of what he called the Village Economy.
“A Village Economy is that which would have thrived pre-modern transit, -refrigeration and -massive shelf life,” he said.
“It is also a micro-economic system – what is spent in the village stays in the community and contributes to the general financial wellbeing of the region.”
Mr Hohnen said it was fair to say that 95 per cent of food purchases today were made in supermarkets, and not spent in the ‘village’.
“It’s quite difficult in that situation to identify where your food is coming from – not impossible, but quite difficult,” he said.
But, unlike supermarkets, it’s easy to find out where everything The Farm House sells has come from, all you have to do is ask.
Mr Hohnen said they source their meat from Lynford Farm, Harvey Beef, Porongurup Free Range pork, and Mr Hohnen’s pig farm – Palm Springs Farm at Forest Grove.
“Our first really successful sow was a very big ex-pet,” he said.
“It got way too big to be a pet – we called her Big Red because she was a big red pig obviously, of Tamworth descent.
“She is the matriarch of the whole sow herd that we now have.”
Palm Springs is now raising Big Red’s fifth or sixth generation sows.
Once the piglets are weaned then grown to trade weight, Mr Hohnen takes each family (so there’s no anxiety or stress – good meat is all about managing stress) in a small trailer to DBC in Picton to be processed.
They then arrive two days later, back at The Farm House as carcasses.
“We hang them for maybe four or five days to let them set beautifully, and then our butcher Andy breaks them down into their component parts to be sold as fresh meat and smallgoods,” Mr Hohnen said.
Along with knowing exactly where his meats come from, Mr Hohnen can also tell you every single ingredient that is packaged with them.
“A lot of my customers are parents and they’re very concerned for food that is safe for their kids, so they need to know how to read a back label,” he said.
“My back label is easy to read – we add salt, and with the smallgoods we add nitrite.”
A mix of spices perfected over the years are also used to deliciously flavour those aforementioned sausages, which will now be smoked in a brand new, state-of-the-art, German built smoker that was installed last week.
"We initially purchased an Aussie smoker to do Christmas hams, and due to the increase in demand for our products and Perth-based distribution through Blue Cow, we felt it was time to upgrade to a very efficient piece of equipment,” Mr Hohnen said.
"It's like stepping out of a 1983 Commodore and into a 2016 E Class Mercedes – both will make the journey, but the German model has the technology and exceptional engineering that boosts the overall experience and result."
For more information about The Farm House visit thefarmhousemr.com.au.
