DISPATCHES FROM THE FARM

It was a lovely day in all respects...good weather, welcoming environment, excellent produce stalls and hordes of keen consumers and connoisseurs of all types - chefs, restauranteurs, foodie media and lots of others who enjoy passionately & thoughtfully produced, quality  food & wine.

Unfortunately, my digital camera was on the blink, so we were unable to take any photos at all...these ones are from the archives sorry. We may shortly be sent a few pics. from other people's cameras, which I can share with you when they arrive.

We had a great day both both in terms of enjoyment & having a great forum for sharing & promoting our farm's produce, especially our garlic of course. We want to extend a sincere thank you to all of you who attended, bought our goodies & gave us such encouraging feedback. 

Also a big thanks to Alla & Larissa Wolf-Tasker & their staff at The Lake House who do such a professional job of promoting & hosting this event (& many others!) each February. We appreciate their long standing commitment to championing local, artisan producers.

 

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!

You can see above some striped Romans, red and yellow pears, cherry and a few small Black Russians.

They always start off slowly but at least we get to enjoy an early season preview in home meals after our months of 

tender loving care. 

Within the next few weeks there'll be a bounty of these as well as other heirloom types we're growing this season, soon followed by the usual suspects we all love, Roma, Grosse Lisse and such like.

On another subject, Tim saw a baby rabbit closely followed by what was probably a sizable deadly Brown snake this afternoon (these dudes move a little too fast for Kodak moments!). We are hoping it's just the cycle of life...mainly that the rabbit was snake dinner and the only one in such close vicinity to the farm crops. Hopefully there's not a whole bunch of snakes hanging around either! We know they're there but we are both (us & them) happy to avoid each other. It's another aspect to life on the land and we personally subscribe to live and let live and sincerely hope the Glenlyon snakes do too :) in regards to us humans and Billy the farm dog.

Have a lovely weekend all!

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. 

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

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...

  

There are a number of ways for plotting out your planting beds and seed rows. We mainly rely on our drip irrigation 

tape, to form the straight lines and then plant at the intervals we want each seedling to grow at along the tape, marrying each seed/plant with a drip hole.

The small-seeded rocket isn't sown on a 'plant-by-plant' basis, just more thickly in general rows and so absorbs the required moisture from the soil saturation.

 

The shallots have been largely irrigated by the winter rains but now need to be watered via our low-set overhead sprinklers when required. 

Apologies for my shortage of blog posts this week, but I haven't been slacking off.  I've actually been working hard at the farm with Tim, particularly getting the tomato and zucchini seedlings planted out in the field. These tomato plants will increase in size by many times their current size over the coming weeks, under the summer sun. We anticipate starting to pick zucchs in about a month and tomatoes by the end of February. 

As previously mentioned, we grow a wide variety of tomatoes but specialise in heirloom or heritage varieties, which allow us to help keep centuries of plant history and diversity alive and available into the future. Heirloom tomatoes are tender, rich and juicy and what's more they come in pretty much all colours of the rainbow and then some and can include contrasting coloured stripes and speckles on their skins. They make very 'sexy' summer salads!  These tomatoes are so opposite to the often flavourless and tough-skinned field and Roma tomatoes commonly available in the supermarkets and most other shops, which are 'factory' grown on broad acreage farms. We do grow Romas and a couple of other 'typical' red tomatoes but again they are open pollinated seeds from organically grown tomatoes, so they too are tender and super tasty.

       

Each year we have varied how we've planted (raised or flat beds, mulching or not) and/or 'supported' our growing tomato plants (e.g. stakes as above or strings or wire...). This year we're going with raised beds and stakes as you can see. We have found that although labour intensive to install, tomato stakes are the most reliable, sturdy form of tomato support (accompanied by regular ties)  for field grown tomatoes, especially as gale-force winds are not uncommon at the farm.

Like for most of our veg., we use drip irrigation, which is not only water efficient but allows the water to get to exactly where it's needed, the root zone.

Although a real scorcher weather-wise, it was really fantastic to be back at markets last Saturday. Collingwood Children's Farm is such a bucolic setting and there's always a lively collection of stalls and shoppers.

See you soon with more farm happenings...