Flat Out Produce
Simple, Honest, Wholesome Food from the Captains Flat Region
My kitchen is my ‘happy place’ (except the cleaning up part…) and cooking and creating is essential for my physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Hi, I’m Kerenza Brown, founder of Flat Out Produce, and this is our story.
Origins
Eating locally grown produce whenever possible has always been super important to me and becoming a parent further solidified that value. Eating local also goes hand in hand with minimising my environmental footprint, another key value of mine.
One way I had been realising these values was to gather excess produce from my friends’ gardens (and my own!) and turn it into jams and chutneys to sell at the local Captains Flat Markets under the name ‘Renza’s Homemade‘. With a young child in tow, I enjoyed experimenting, creating, blending and sharing with the community. And I got a real buzz every time I saved a crop of something homegrown from the hungry cockatoos!
The problem was, every second market stall was selling the same kinds of foods. I needed something more unique.
Then, in 2016, I began following a low FODMAP diet for the many food intolerances I suffer from, most prominent of which is an inability to cope with anything from the allium family (onion, garlic etc.) This is a very restrictive and often boring diet (it’s amazing how accustomed we are to using onion and garlic to flavour all kind of dishes), so I was keen to find ways to add interest to my new diet. Through experimentation under the guidance of an awesome dietitian, I discovered I could tolerate the ‘juice’ of garlic and onions. This was a major breakthrough.
What followed was lots of reading, research, experimentation, patience and taste-testing until I eventually figured out that I could safely infuse olive oil with garlic, or onion. (The safety part is vital for garlic!) The results were so good I soon began experimenting with other flavours such as rosemary, which worked really well, and ginger, which did not work.
Something told me this was the unique idea I’d been looking for.
My husband came up with an appropriate business name (Flat Out Produce) that reflected what I wanted to sell and the fact that it would always be local. And a few sales indicated there was a local market for my new product. I just needed a good-quality, reliable and local olive oil to pair with the local alliums and herbs I was using. Not an easy ask given our climate. But not an impossible one as it turned out.
A friend introduced me to a local grower with an olive grove hidden up in the hills behind the ‘Flat. Fast forward a couple of conversations, a tour of the olive grove and some taste-testing, and in 2018 we formed an amazing collaboration and partnership between Flat Out Produce and the Lien family’s Aminya Grove. It was completely unplanned, but it’s super rewarding. I even spent the next three years learning everything I possibly could about olive oil production — an area I never thought I’d be involved in!
Aminya Grove
A passion to connect with nature, a strong family work ethic and a belief in the health and nutrition benefits of extra virgin olive oil led the Lien family on an unusual path — to establish a high-altitude, cool-climate olive grove and one day, share the fruits of their labour with family and community both here in Australia and in Taiwan.
Led by Mr Lien Senior, the family’s adventure started in 2000 when they secured a property high up in the hills behind Captains Flat in the NSW Southern Tablelands, bordering the Tallaganda National Park. The family had to learn how to become olive growers, planting 15,000 Correggiola and Frantoio olive trees, chosen for their suitability to the growing conditions and oil production. After a number of years of trial and error, the first successful, but modest harvest was in 2010. Gradually, Jason Lien took over the running of the olive grove and the business from his father, and continues to produce an excellent extra virgin olive oil of the highest quality.
Situated at an altitude of 1100 m, Aminya Grove is higher than many cool-climate olive groves, which typically sit at around 850-900 m above sea level. Due to the altitude, tree growth is significantly slower than in other regions, which, when combined with variations in climate conditions, results in variations in volume and yield. Depending on the season, the grove produces between 2000 L 10,000 L per year. However, careful management of the trees and attention to detail in the processing phase, ensures a consistent, high-quality extra virgin olive oil, full of flavour, even in the ‘lean’ years.
The Olimia Estate extra virgin olive oil has a completely unique flavour profile, which it owes to its unique location.
Trees are planted in 8 m x 6 m spacing with a 1 m clearance to allow for mechanical harvesting. A 100,000 ML bore provides irrigation, if required, however, the grove now primarily relies on rainfall. The olive grove is entirely chemical free, and maintains its Australian Certified Organic status every year.
The harvest takes place in late autumn, typically around the end of May/early June, allowing maximum time for the fruit to ripen. It’s a short, but intense period with olives being processed at their peak — which is as soon as they are harvested (unlike in many large operations where the fruit is often left to sit for days before being processed). All processing is done on-farm and it’s a family affair with friends also coming to lend a hand.
The oil extraction process is carefully managed to ensure the extra virgin olive oil produced is of the highest quality. The oil is then settled in stainless steel tanks for a few weeks until it’s ready for bottling. Absolutely nothing else is added — just olives!
An amazing local produce collaboration
Through our collaboration:
- The Lien family has an accessible, local market for their exceptional extra virgin olive oil
- I have access to a steady supply of tasty, locally produced, extra virgin olive oil to use as the base for all my infusions
- Our community has unprecedented access to export-grade, organic, extra virgin olive oil that’s grown and produced right here in Captains Flat
It really is a perfect match.
As anyone in business knows, getting your product to market — to the right market — is critical. Unfortunately, for a family business like Aminya Grove, local produce markets are the only real option for local sales, and when you’ve got to juggle numerous family and business activities as well as other commitments, that’s often a hard juggling act. So the Lien family had originally only pursued a small export market.
The more locally grown and accessible products our community has access to, the better. And the Flat Out Produce — Aminya Grove collaboration means this superb local product is finally able to be enjoyed locally.
Local, organic produce
I am honoured to be able to bring this wonderful extra virgin olive oil to the local community, in its pure, unadulterated form and in my range of infused olive oils. The Lien family are proud that their olive oil is enjoyed and recognised locally.
Since 2018, my ‘hobby ‘ or ‘side hustle’ has become a ‘micro business’, and I’ve been selling mainly through the Southern Harvest Farmers’ Markets, the Southern Harvest Produce boxes, and other produce markets including Nerriga. It’s a juggle and sometimes it all falls apart. Being a mum, working in a completely unrelated ‘salaried’ job, wrangling an unkempt, but full-of-potential, garden, and saying ‘yes’ to being involved in too many other community activities when perhaps I shouldn’t… well sometimes it all just gets too much. But I love sharing my creativity and passion with others, and espousing the benefits of keeping it as local and sustainable as possible (without feeling guilty when life gets in the way) — living more simply, and enjoying what we have rather than focusing on what we could have…
The garden is still unkempt and neglected, our miners’ cottage is always in varying stages of improvement, the dog and the 9-year-old seem to take turns at winning the prize for being the neediest depending on the day, and I have a never-ending list of things I’d like to do/should do/must do — but it’s worth it!
If you have any questions about our olive oils, eating locally or any other related topics, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
