DISPATCHES FROM THE FARM

2010 Garlic Harvest Round 1- Rosie Red Rocambole!

Friday, December 17, 2010

Howdy All! Phew...finally a breath and some time to post you a blog on the new season's rocambole harvest...

As most of you will know from my website updates and our subscribers from the e-newsletters, the 1st harvest of the garlic for the 'early season' red rocambole started on Dec. 3rd and we had it all picked and hung for curing by Dec.6.

The Rocambole Garlic hanging to cure or dry before full cleaning and trimming.

It is all fantastic quality and we can assure you it tastes absolutely delicious...such a treat after a number of lean garlic weeks in the kitchen leading up to the harvest! We've gone a bit mad, including it in pretty much everything we cook...Daylesford/Glenlyon locals can probably smell us coming from 20 paces! (Oh well :-))

After a couple of 'ordinary' weeks here on the farm, dealing with what has seemed like endless rain, the precursor for some washed away seedlings/new crops, delayed plantings, humidity, fluctuating temperatures, slow growing vegies and last but not least locusts, we have been enjoying a couple of sunny days (before more rain...) and a welcome 'up' vibe as we also realise the fact that our beloved garlic IS curing/drying very well, even if slowly, despite the ongoing damp climate - yee haa! It's a nerve wracking time, those first few weeks of our 'newborn' garlic's life as we harvest and see if everyone's plump and healthy and nurture it into the above ground world through it's curing phase and then onto giving it it's big clean up ready for online order dispatch and market sales.

Some clean and un-cleaned bulbs...

We literally clean all garlic that's for braiding (i.e. stems kept intact) and selling as loose bulbs by hand with toothbrushes!

Braid stems in prep...

Cleaning has begun...

AND we also celebrate the 'Plait-o-pussies' (me and the lovely Cheryl) heralding our 2010 garlic braidorama festival!

Angelica O.F. Braid-o-rama is underway!

We will begin posting out your online garlic shop orders after Xmas (once somewhat more cured and when all is clean, braided and dry enough to pack and post safely).

AND we will have early, fresh, juicy AND pretty little garlicy gifts for Melbournites to purchase from us at the HAWTHORN BOROONDARA Farmers' Market this coming Saturday (tommorrow, Dec 18th, 8am TO 1pm) AND at SLOW FOOD Xmas Twilight Farmers' Market on Wednesday Dec. 23, 3pm to 8pm.

We'd love to see you this week at the Farmers' Markets!

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Garlic Progress Report Late Autumn

Sunday, May 23, 2010

It's now already 7 weeks since we planted the new garlic crop. It's amazing how much the plants grow in that amount of time, making the most of their opportunities before the full cold of winter sets in.

They're looking really healthy and will soon be due for their first weed.

Their roots have developed a lot and are averaging about 5-6 inches long . That will hold these babies in good stead for their ongoing absorption of nutrients and their subsequent growth spurt come springtime.

As the late autumn sun sets gently over the garlic fields....

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Noosa Food and Wine Festival 2010

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

As finalists for the 2010 delicious Produce Awards (BTW finalists will be listed in the June delicious magazine and 2010 winners announced July 19), we were fortunate to be invited to attend the 7th annual Noosa Food & Wine Festival over the weekend just passed (April 30, May 1&2).

We were given the much appreciated opportunity to promote our garlic and therefore our online garlic shop service to the thousands of festival goers (about 16000 peops. attend throughout the 3 day event according to 2009 figures), chefs and other participants.

Team Angelica manning their spot on the Regional Vic. stand.

Whatever the final head count was this year, it WAS HUGE folks! We had a couple of very full-on days, which we enjoyed immensely (we didn't even get to the beach in the balmy 27 deg. as we'd expected!). We were so impressed and somewhat amazed at the throng of seriously interested foodies, all enthusiastically checking out the top foods and beverages on display.

We had many enjoyable and inspiring chats with customers and fellow producers. Attending the festival
was an important opportunity for us in a number of ways and certainly not just 'some junket' . Apart from spruiking
our garlic wares to a large and mostly new audience, it was also a rare chance for us to 'lift our heads' so to speak from our often busy (& somewhat secluded) daily farm and Daylesford country life and to reconnect with other aspects of the food community and with other producers who share a similar passion for what they create as well as sharing successes and similar challenges

Farmer Tim (to the right) pressing the flesh with some lovely foodie folk and
Ashley Read (on Tim's left) from the award winning Cobram Estate Olive Oil.

2010 Produce Awards finalists and some 2009 winners' produce was featured in The Great Australian Produce Awards Degustation dinner held on the Saturday night - our very own Alla Wolf-Tasker from Daylesford's The Lake House was among the acclaimed guest chefs cooking for that feast and many other special meals and demos throughout the festival.

Some of the other Regional Victorian 2010 delicious Produce Award finalists we shared the stand with were 2009 Gold Medalists Sher Wagyu Beef, Warialda Beef, Shaw River Buffalo Cheese, Meredith Dairy fine goat and sheep cheeses, Seven Hills Tallarook Boer goat breeders and fine goat meat purveyers, Yarra Valley Salmon naturally reared salmon and salmon caviar.

All the best to all Produce Awards finalists for this year.

Tim & I would also like to extend a special thank you to Leonie Palmer-Fisher for her support and for helping look after us whilst at the Noosa Food&Wine Festival. Thanks for your hospitality and generosity Leonie!

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2010 Garlic crop planted!

Thursday, April 22, 2010

You'll all be pleased to know, that we have planted for the next garlic crop. We planted the 2010 crop on Good Friday and it's all looking great so far.

Rocambole sprouting...

We have planted two varieties this time, the early variety, hard neck rocambole that we all already know
and love and we're trialling what's called a late variety, soft neck. They both get planted at the same
time but the late variety shoots take longer to come up and it is harvested several weeks or so later than
the early varieties.

2010 garlic plantings.

Our hope is to be able to extend our garlic availability, meaning you will be able to get great quality garlic for longer and the late variety will also store for longer before sprouting. So that's an exciting prospect - prolonging our access to decent garlic! We did grow a small amount of late variety garlic a couple of seasons ago and it was excellent and did indeed last longer, through autumn and into early winter.

If you currently have some garlic which has started to sprout, don't panic, it's organic! Our kitchen garlic is starting to sprout a bit now, which is fine as it's the proper time and just Mother Nature at work (not the result of poor/refrigerated storage conditions). You can still eat it and it is still great (and way better than the lousy conventionally grown and imported stuff in mainstream shops) but it is true that once sprouted, the pungency of the garlic starts to decline, so it just won't be so strong is all. Some people prefer to remove and discard the little green sprout once they've cut the clove in half but others eat the sprouts and all (as me and Tim do).

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Slow Down Restaurant & Angelica Organic Garlic

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

There is a newish restaurant in St Kilda (Melbourne) called Slow Down! @ Harley Court (next door to Dog's Bar). Accomplished executive chef, Ron O'Bryan, approached us for our garlic (& other goodies) some time ago and has been happily using it on his menu!

Angelica Organic Farm garlic on the menu...

Angelica Organic Farmer Tim on the menu...whoa...

Slow Down! @ Harley Court champions the Slow Food cooking, eating and food production philosophy, using in season ingredients almost entirely grown within the 100 mile radius of Melbourne, with the 'whole animal' approach to meat from animals who have had really good lives and produce which is organic or biodynamic wherever possible (and most often). Slow Down wants their patrons to THINK about what they're eating (unlike those at McDonalds just over the road)! They pretty much show where they are through their menu by as much as possible sourcing the food they cook with directly from the farmers themselves, mostly artisan producers, which also ensures genuinely seasonal foods, at their premium quality. Slow Down source seafood from 'fishermen who care about our seas and the animals we take from them'.

Slow Down! philosophy!

Just before Slow Down! @ Harley Court opened, they visited the farm to take some photos of our garlic and us to post up on their restaurant wall, along with other local Victorian sustainable food producers they wished to feature on their menu. I couldn't be there that afternoon but they caught some great pics. of farmer Tim and our gorgeous garlic. Little did we know before we paid them a visit last Saturday after market that we would find a picture of Tim and the garlic emblazoned on some of their menus as well as several large images hanging on their walls in their chic little venue next to some of our contemporaries images...What a spin out dudes!!

Tim with Farmer Tim's Slow Down! menu...

We just had to eat, being famished after our Collingwood Children's Farm market and we can honestly vouch for the standard of the food Ron and his team create and the shear creativity of the menu. We started with the complimentary organic sour dough bread (made in St Kilda) and tasty little olives from our friends at Mt Zero, then we had a light dish of fresh figs served with a stunning blue cheese panne cotta and a slightly larger dish of duck confit, accompanied of course by the steamed Kipflers with Angelica organic garlic and lemon - not bad!. We then shared a delightful quince crumble with orange anglais sauce to finish up...it was all to die for and such a treat. Other items on the menu also looked very tempting and include decent vego meals.

The service was knowledgeable, helpful and fun!

Our garlic braids on Slow Down's! walls

Farmer Tim plastered up at Slow Down!

Our shallots too.

It's such a pleasure to be associated with and supplying produce to restaurateurs and chefs on the same wavelength as us regarding ethical and quality eating and food production.

We highly recommend you visit Slow Down! @ Harley Court yourself: 56 Acland Street St Kilda, t: 8534 3030
Wednesday - Friday 5pm 'til 11pm
Weekends & Public Holidays 12 noon 'til 11pm (Sat) & 10pm (Sun & Public Hols)

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Special offer to blogees on garlic braids...

Friday, February 12, 2010

Hi All!

We have a small number of our beautiful hand crafted garlic braids left and would like to make a SPECIAL OFFER tomorrow (Sat. 13 Feb) at Collingwood Children's Farm Farmers' Market to our loyal blog followers who live in Melbourne. All you have to do is visit our stall and mention that you read this on our blog to receive a garlic braid discounted to $22 instead of the current general special of $25 (They were $28 full price at f.m.s).

Hope to see you at the market tomorrow!

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The Lake House Regional Producers Day - Celebrate & taste the Daylesford-Macedon Region!

Friday, February 05, 2010

This coming SUNDAY (Feb 7) is the annual Lake House Regional Producers Day from 10am to 4pm.

Angelica Organic Farm produce will be proudly on display there and we will be selling our delicious garlic bulbs and braids, colourful heirloom tomatoes, mixed herb posies, some other fresh, tasty morsels and some beaming sunflowers!

We'd love to see you there this Sunday!

Angelica Organic Farm at the 2009 Lake House Regional Producers Day

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Cucumbers and Zucchinis

Saturday, January 23, 2010

A short while before Christmas, we planted our Lebanese cucumbers. We grow them in one of the polytunnels (greenhouses) with some of the heirloom tomatoes because we find they don't prosper in our climate when grown outside, with it's fluctuating and at times extreme weather conditions.

In a few weeks we'll be picking an abundance of cucs. daily!

I know some folk manage to grow cucumbers around here in their back yards without any form of covering/temperature control but we can only guess their yards or a particular spot there in present a good little micro-climate for their cucumbers to grow well. The farm is much more open than that and because we rotate crops, we couldn't keep replanting them in the same location year after year even if we did have a specially protected location outdoors.

We planted the zucchinis back in November and they have just started to fruit.

A zucchini plant.

Small zucchini with flower (female) still intact.

See the male flower in the background.

Zucchinis are also know by their French name 'courgette' in some European countries, NZ & the U.K..

They are actually a summer squash. They can be yellow, green or light green but we are only growing the dark green ones this season. They are rich in vitamin C and other anti-oxidents.

They have gorgeous golden, edible flowers (more about that another time). Botanically, the zucchini fruit is considered to be the 'swollen ovary' attached to the female flower. The flowers occurring on stalks without zucchinis are the male flowers. Plenty of bees are needed for pollinating zucchinis for the squash to be produced and to grow healthily. The bees pollinate from the male flowers to the female flowers, fertilising the seeds in the immature fruit. If the seeds aren’t pollinated, the plant won’t waste energy growing a non-viable fruit, so it just withers and drops off, and the plant tries again with a fresh flower.

Anyone who has ever grown zucchinis or cucumbers for that matter, knows they go mad with very quick growing fruit (& can be master camouflage artists!). Unless you want large gourd-type zucchs. and cucs., you really need to harvest them daily to get to the fruits before they become huge...one more day can result in zuch/cuc-a-saurus! Personally, we prefer the flavour of smaller-sized zucchs. and cucs..

So between the zucchs., the cucs. and then the tomatoes when they arrive in the next few weeks, we'll be busy each morning picking their fruits whilst it is at its best, ready for the chefs, local shops and of course our farmers' market stalls each week.

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Sunday Herald Sun Heirloom Tomato Feature

Monday, January 18, 2010

Brrr...we've gone from near 40 deg. C a couple of days ago to 17 or so deg the last couple days with much wind and a few showers! It's a crazy place we live in 'round these parts :). I just heard it's been snowing in the Vic Alps overnight, which helps explain why it feels to chilly today. The vegie plants don't what to make of these extremes sometimes.Hopefully the ground is remaining warm enough for the development of the tomatoes.

Yesterday we got a wee mention in Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun "Sunday Food" section where Wendy Hargreaves wrote a small feature on heirloom tomatoes, accompanied by a yummy recipe from acclaimed chef Guy Grossi.

Actually, the tomatoes are more than 2 weeks away from being ready to harvest.

A striped Roman with a way to go yet...

We anticipate some to be ready in about 4 weeks time - so approx. mid February, then increasing in numbers and variety from there.

Some of last year's crop...Green Zebras, Black Russians & Tigerellas

You'll definitely be able to purchase them at all our farmers' market stalls (Daylesford & Melbourne).

Last Friday I snapped these gorgeous pics. of my two favourite boys harvesting sunflowers for market...

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Angelica garlic is Fresh!

Sunday, January 17, 2010

My only purpose for writing this blog post is to pose a few of these rather stunning new pics. that our photographer mate John Mayger took of our garlic in all its glory during a plaiting session a short while ago.

Angelica Organic Farm's garlic is FRESH :)! Enjoy ...