With the SBS Gourmet Farmer program providing some of the inspiration behind our move to Tasmania last year it seems strange we hadn’t visited the Huon Valley before now, but we rectified that over the Easter long weekend.
Mum was visiting for the break and, at her suggestion, we all went to Hobart for Saturday and Sunday, visiting the much-loved Salamanca markets (where Harvey and I bought our new hats), letting the kids run around in Princes Park, visiting Fullers Bookshop and catching up with Kim Foale aka Frog Ponds Rockon Saturday night. The less said about our accommodation for the night the better, but we awoke the next morning to a glorious Autumn day – just perfect for a road trip into the Huon.
We headed to Huonville first, and then wound our way along the river past acres of sheep and cattle farms and orchards through the very lovely Franklin to Geeveston (where the boys played in the truck at the Forestry Museum) and then back to Huonville and along the other side of the river to Cygnet. I’d wanted to visit the Red Velvet Lounge in Cygnet ever since we started tweeting and wasn’t disappointed. As we enjoyed coffee with white chocolate and pear and quince and chocolate muffins, Ethan posed in Harvey’s new hat.
I’ve also been tweeting with Gillian at Cygneture Chocolate so we dropped in to her new shop (yes we bought some bars) and were pleased to see bags of hazelnuts hanging in her kitchen. We asked if they were from the Kettering farm we’d heard about, but no, these nuts were grown at a farm across the road. So now it seems we can add the Huon Valley to our list of farm options. I thought we were getting closer to finding the right area, but it seems we have widened the search!
