Hillside Food Forest

19/08/2026

Talking chicken processing and chlorine use.

It’s hardly a black or white answer. Tap water is chlorinated. So understanding the factors that actually drive exposure is essential if you want to make better choices and ask better questions.

Here’s what I’ve learned about processing chickens, chlorine use and exposure as someone who started a farm because they couldn’t find food they could trust.

Watch until the end if you want to know exactly how our chickens are processed.

And for those of you feeling anxious about this topic - I feel you. I’ve been there. Don’t let perfection get in the way of good.
We live in a time where it’s basically impossible to completely eliminate exposure to toxic chemicals in our lives - from microplastics to PFAS, from endocrine disrupting chemicals in our clothes to chemical residues in our food and water. Perfection doesn’t exist - but you can easily make better choices.

And remember: how a chicken was raised is at least as important as how it is processed. Good processing won’t undo a life in a shed.

04/06/2026

We bought a truck! 🚛

Truth is, we should’ve done it ages ago. But we’ve kept our little mobile freezer room alive far longer than we should have - and it’s never let us down. It’s had a hard life doing high kms on terrible roads. We’ve broken axles (yes multiple) and countless bearings but it got us through the first few years as we worked this farming thing out.

In its retirement, it has become our main stationary storage and we made sure to get a truck that can be plugged in to mains power - for those times we bring home a little more meat than the trailer can handle.

Major purchases like this are always scary for a tiny bootstrapped business like ours; But this one’s a huge milestone for us on our path of building a successful working farm from scratch.

30/05/2026

27/05/2026

21/04/2026

Today we dropped off our sample chickens for the judging round of the 2026 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards.

It’s such an honour to be back again this year, and we’re so proud - and excited - to have our chooks prepared and tasted by such an incredible panel of chefs and judges.

These awards attract some of the best producers in the country, many of whom we look up to enormously. So to have our birds judged alongside theirs is incredibly humbling.

A very special moment for us 💚