Future preserved

The former preschool teacher worked in various towns across country Queensland before ending up in Gatton.

When Education Queensland made the move from preschool to prep, Barbara decided it was time for her to have a change as well.

“I went to TAFE and did a Certificate III in cooking,” she said.

“I was looking around for what I might do food wise as a part-time business and decided preserves was the way to go.”

Just over two years ago she started Gecko Grove Fine Foods and produces an assortment of preserved jams and chutneys using local, seasonal produce.

Her range is diverse, from pumpkin chutney to beetroot relish, fig jam and eight different products using tomatoes.

“My mother wasn’t very much into preserving but other people around were and would make jam and chutney,” she said.

“My mother-in-law is forever putting things in bottles so I drew on that body of knowledge and made up a few recipes of my own.”

Gecko Grove Fine Foods is a family business, with Barbara’s daughter creating the design of the labels and information. Her son is a Brisbane-based chef and helps taste test and recommend flavours to include, while her husband helps with the heavy lifting and selling at markets.

Barbara likes to travel via her cookbook, drawing on recipe ideas from other cultures and experimenting with different flavour combinations.

“You need good quality fruit but it doesn’t need to be the perfect shape,” she said.

“Supermarket chains have pushed us to expect food to look a certain way and the farmers have to cull a great amount of their crop because it doesn’t fit into their perfect guidelines.

“A strawberry that is bumpy and doesn’t fit guidelines is just as tasty.”

She said there were a lot of misconceptions around what ‘buying local’ actually meant. Barbara insists on only using produce from the Lockyer Valley in her preserves; her window to source products, such as capsicum, is roughly four months of the year.

When people inquire about buying products and are told it has sold out, they are bemused to learn it can be several months before the product is made again.

However she’s quick to acknowledge the need for an international exchange of food products and the importance of working out what balance is right for each individual.

“I think people have got out of touch with what grows where and when,” she said.

“People might say, ‘Yes I like to buy local’ but ‘local’ might mean their local supermarket and they might be selling stuff from Victoria or the Northern Territory.

“The deeper you get into it, the deeper your understanding of the whole food chain is; if we only bought fresh and local we’d probably starve - there needs to be a bit of a balance.”

Barbara is a regular on the Darling Downs and Lockyer Valley market circuit and recently attended the Toowoomba Farmers’ Market and Carnival of Flowers. She says markets and events are a great opportunity to meet lovely people.

“Food has really strong memories of the people you ate it with and the people who cooked it for you - it’s nice to link into all those little histories and hear the stories of others.”

For more information visit www.geckogrove.com