Thursday, August 18, 2011
Hello Everyone! Well we're back 'on deck' after our annual leave, which is one reason why I haven't written for a while. Winter is currently the only time we can leave the farm to take time off, as not much is happening during our long wet, cold and often grey winters. For example today is approx. 10 deg.C, we've had 30mm plus of rain in the past 24 and the recent 'special' feature was wind gusts of 37km/hour or so! When some warmth and sunshine starts returning, things can grow...
A snapshot of our local weather today!
Never-the -less, the garlic is sitting out there enjoying the cold and waiting for spring to 'pop', when it can start 'bulking up' and forming its cloves. We are getting organised with our new seeds e.t.c. for the coming season's vegie crops and starting to make early on-farm preparations towards seed raising our new vegie plants and other timely early season jobs such as weeding the garlic and herb plants. We're anticipating spring might come early this year going by the buds and blossoms around the place but it's no where near spring weather here right now.
The winners were announced for the ABC delicious Produce Awards a few weeks ago on July 25 in Sydney. Unfortunately 'no cigar' for our garlic this year but some of our producer friends won 'gongs' which we are very pleased about. These Gold Medallists include Fernleigh Farm Free-range for their chorizo, Sher Wagu for their beef and Holy Goats for their La Luna soft goats cheese. Holy Goat were also inducted into the Produce Awards 'Hall of Fame' and Fiona Chambers from Fernleigh Farms won the 'Heritage Award' for her tireless work in raising and promoting rare breed animals. Congratulations to these folks and all the other winners for 2011. Apparently it was a record number of nominations this year since the awards began, which is wonderful news for quality Australian produce and sustainable agriculture.
Watch this space for new season farm news from us to come...
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Friday, June 03, 2011
Here's a wee garlic update!
We have 'reloaded' so to speak after the highly challenging 2010/2011 season over spring/summer...
June 2 2011
...Angelica Organic Farm feels back on track and optimistic about the new, 2011 garlic season. :-)
Hoe, hoe, hoe...'Stackers' weeding the garlic beds.
Only another 6-7 months (and a couple more weedings) to go before the 2011 garlic harvest.
June 1 2011
May the Earth Divas and Weather Gods bestow us with abundant good garlic fortune.
Segue to HOT CHILLI...
We propagated a number of chilli bushes this season and they grew really beautifully, flowered and all, but with the cool summer, nothing seemed to be happening at the fruiting end of the deal. Then some little green/yellow/orange 'babies' miraculously started appearing about 6 weeks or so ago...
Semi-ripe Habaneros
Tim brought some home a couple of weeks ago and of course we wanted to check them out, so I added that orangey-coloured one above to my Bolognese that was bubbling away on the stove. We had no recollection off the top of our heads what the exact properties were meant to be of these little beauties but we thought we'd selected something a bit spicy. To be certain we got the flavour of our chilli, I made sure not to add any other chilli AND it was really just as well - ooohweee - you could see the beads of sweat on Tim's bald head within seconds of us chowing down at dinner! It was delicious but VERY spicy!
We recapped on our seed order...Habanero type chillies have a 'bonnet. shape and bear very spicy, shiny, golden orange fruit.
Fully ripe Habaneros
They look like mini-capsicums and are so cute don't you think? They're as if from a little girl's toy kitchen scene - there sweet, cute appearance belies their power within!.
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Wednesday, April 13, 2011
We are definitely into autumn now. Victoria switched back from daylight savings 2 weekends ago and it's nice to have light by 7am and does give a sense of season 'shift' when it's dark by 6pm. Plus its been cold (13 degC days) and wet again the past few days.
Damaged poly-tunnel plastic destined for recycling on a smaller tunnel some day.
This is where I left you last post (above) and this is where our PT 'beast' is at now...
...so now she's got her new 'skin' on and farmer Tim has begun preparing the soil inside her for some autumn plantings, which we hope will help keep us going with some produce into early winter. I say 'hope' because no matter what us farmers do, we are always somewhat at the mercy of Mother Nature.
In the meanwhile, we have been very fortunate with later summer/autumn tomatoes, considering most everyone we speak with are struggling with theirs.
We have yellow ones, red ones, yellow-orange ones, Green Zebras, Purple & Black Russians (though not as many this year) & of course cherry, yellow pear & Pink egg varieties (see down page...)...here's just a few above.
We also are now enjoying the arrival of some new, tasty cool season root crops...
Beetroots making good progress in the paddock.
Baby beets at our Collingwood Children's Farm market stall last Saturday.
More baby carrots making excellent progress in the paddock.
See our lovely, healthy baby carrots in the background, beetroot leaves in the mid & various cherry-style toms. in the foreground.
Potato plants soon to be harvested.
The first of the season - Dutch Creams, Otway Reds & Royal Blues.
Potatoes taste so much different when just harvested, I never imagined they could have such depth of flavour or variation between the different kinds before we grew potatoes. It's most obvious when they're fresh dug but because types like ours are long time varieties and ours in particular are grown in perfect spud growing earth, organically and with TLC, they retain a certain special-ness even after they've been dug up for a while. So much for my lower-carb dietary efforts! Mind you potatoes grown properly, of tastier types and colourful skins do have much more going for them nutritionally and aren't as much an issue for those keeping check on their simple carbohydrate intake.
Beautiful herbs still on-hand...fresh coriander (with long healthy roots) next to the tub of mixed herb posies. Front left purple basil, zingy dill between cori and basil and oregano at front, among other herbs we have at the moment. The Opal purple basil has amazingly survived the frost a couple of weeks back, but it will finish soon and the woody herbs will start their winter die-back too. We may be able to keep some 'border-season' cori and dill on the go until winter. It's been a hopeless year for parsley and it seems we're not the only ones to find that - there's always next season 'as they say'.
A Bella Rossa heritage aubergine.
Bless the aubergine (AKA eggplants), as they continue on for now, slowly and not in vast amounts but surely they come in the small poly-tunnels.
A few zucchs. are battling on but a sure sign the season has turned that we no longer can supply zucchini flowers or abundant zucchinis. Lets face it, we DO get our fill of zucchs. during their season do we not?!
Oh yeah, in case you might have forgotten our main thang is GARLIC...we'll be planting our new stock soon! Yippee x 1000!
We are looking forward to a way better 2011 garlic crop, and pray the weather gods are on our side in this for this season (& many others!), so we can all enjoy a new and abundant harvest by December. We are so terribly sorry to all of you loyal garlic friends who have begged us and whom we have not been able to supply for some time now and of course those who missed out altogether - thanks for your ongoing support :-)
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Friday, March 25, 2011
We have a new addition at Angelica Organic Farm...we procured a great second-hand 'beast' of a poly-tunnel to help us make the most of our growing opportunities within this highland cool climate.
The insides and ribs of the 'Beast'
She is much wider and higher than our other original basic models and her length is more than the other 3 joined together.
It's good to see the green 'manure' oats are doing well with the regular rain and despite the continued unseasonally low temps.. You can see the oats in the background where the new seasons' garlic crop will soon be planted. One of the advantages of this large poly-tunnel is that we can regenerate the soil more efficiently within it, as along with our crop rotations, green manures can be included and we'll be able to use our small tractor to slash the green manure foliage and plough it back in at the right times. We anticipate, this will enable more sustainable use of the land beneath the cover and lessen how frequently we need to relocate it onto fresh land.
Trench 1!
It was looking a bit like 'Time Team' yesterday, with the boys digging all the trenches in order to install the structure and for back-filling the dirt onto the plastic cover's edges to help secure the 'skin' of plastic in place over the 'ribs'. No artefacts were found, perhaps just a few 'new' muscles!
Trench 2 - Tim digging the trench along the front door end.
Tim and Stacy have put in a massive effort for this exercise. First they had to help dismantle it at the other property (it was so great the other farmer et al helped with that), then transport it all on a trailer to our farm - thankfully it was only a local drive. Next they had to unload everything and as you can see above, the door frame poles have great clumps of concrete on their ends to help weigh things down securely. Over the past couple of weeks they've spent quite a bit of time re-assembling the 'beast'. I am so glad blokes like doing this stuff (well some do!) and that I am NOT a bloke myself but have strong, practical examples of men in my life!
Door fitting - Step 1...
See farm dog Billy 'exiting stage right' ...he's not one of those boys who likes this stuff! He has talents in other areas.
Door fitting - Step 2...
Door fitting - Step 3...Nice fit, & nice view Tim!
This door system will be much better at helping us keep the heat within the tunnel at night, primarily because it is fitted and sliding, compared to the doors on the smaller tunnels, which just roll up and down by hand and although we screw them down during cold weather/the nights, they are nowhere near as well sealed as this new set up will be.
The boys had the plastic 'skin' over the structure and partially secured this afternoon, then chaos struck! Just before they were about to get back to it to finish lashing the plastic on, some momentary but huge wind gusts came along and lifted the darn thing clean off and shredding it to bits at the ends and now there's nothing for it other than a new plastic cover...so that was an unexpected expensive little 'ol day on the farm today- sheesh! Fortunately, we may be able to use the remaining plastic as replacement for some of the cover on the smaller tunnels.
Moving right along...
Rows of new heritage beetroots.
Rows of new heritage carrots.
...look above, at the fantastic beetroots and carrots we've got growing along very nicely.
It's so lovely to see the 'oases' of abundance along what in truth has been a very hard season!
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Friday, March 04, 2011
It continues to be a strange old growing season down on the Angelica O.F. 'ranch' (as for most crop farmers this year)!
Wilderness of Eggplant and heritage tomato plants in the poly tunnel -
fruiting much slower and less for this time than in previous years but lovely stuff is to be had on harvest and we anticipate much more to come with predicted upcoming warmer, more stable temps.
Cherry tomatoes in the field.
Here we are, technically in the early days of autumn or what is often more a late summer for these parts this time of year, but we are experiencing a mixture of warmer summer'ish and much cooler late autumn weather - as in a few days of each per week (e.g. today 6 - 12 deg C & the prev. 4 days not much better!!). This has been going on for around 3 weeks now, following what was a couple of weeks of warm-hot and humid weather with mild-warm nights - i.e. good growing weather. Normally February is the only month we can count on for full-blown summer weather!
A Qld Blue pumpkin, about the size of a rockmelon and as such way small for late Feb.
However, the pumpkins we have coming on look great and might surprise us yet. Previous years we have lost many to no rain - fancy!
We are presently wishing for the Indian Summer effect for best results with our now ripening abundant tomatoes and all those other summer/autumn crops we have on the go, which have been finally kicking on, slowly but surely, as we hope to get them to full fruition before say May. We even got a frost one morning this week, which is un-seasonally early and less than helpful - sheesh!! You really need to be an optimist to be a farmer, that's for sure - it's not that you don't get down on your uppers (& any farmer who denies this is fibbing) BUT you inherently need to have a sense of all things passing and of good times to come.
Toms and Tim - a couple of our luscious Grosse Lisse...see the tomatoes are mostly doing rather well, they all just need enough warm and non-frost time over the next month in order to all get to ripening and onto our plates.
We estimate this summer here has consisted of probably about 2 weeks-worth of summer days/nights if you add them together, with lots of mild spring weather (o.k. & pleasant but not overly productive) and a considerable amount of uncharacteristic humidity, which can aid growth but also precipitates some disease, like downy mildew on zucchini plants. The repeated drop of overnight temperatures to below 8 deg C is particularly problematic for all the summer 'night shade' vegetables we all love (toms., zucchs, cucs, capsicum, eggplants...), as these do their growing during the night and if it's too cool at night, well they just sit there and don't fruit or fruit at a much slower rate, even in the poly tunnels unless you have climate control mechanisms, which we don't. So, anyway, you get the gist...it's been too cold and/or wet much of the time and generally unpredictable to sum up!
Thankfully, the last few weeks have never the less been much more productive at Angelica Organic Farm, see below last weekend's farmers' market offerings at Abbotsford Convent Slow Food f.m. and you can expect this and more this Saturday at Daylesford F.M. - Daylesford Primary School, Vincent St Daylesford (9am - 1pm) - be nice to see you there!
Rainbow chard, heritage carrots and eggplants.
Lebanese Cucumbers...freshly picked and crispy.
Sexy zucchini flowers and heritage eggplants.
Various herbage...
Yellow button squash, zucchinis.
Beautiful green, shapely 'Italian' zucchs and tender, sweet yellow zucchs.
A mix of new season colourful tomates - cherry, yellow pear, heritage varieties and Grosse Lisse.
We also have a range of scrummy potatoes coming along and loads of beetroots and more heritage carrots coming up AND seed going in the ground before it gets too cold for the little beauties to grow, grow, grow...Golden shallots and Jerusalem artichokes are planning a come back for next year folks, as of course is our gorgeous gourmet red rocambole garlic!
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Thursday, February 24, 2011
Angelica Organic Farm has had the pleasure this week of supplying a selection of our certified organic herbs to help make up some gorgeous herb bouquets created by Sandy Cummins' Blumin as a nourishing contribution to the inaugural World Wellness Project Summit (WWP) being held in Melbourne this week (Thurs 24 - Fri 25 Feb. 2011).
These herb bouquets will be gifted to the guest speakers at the WWP summit, as a token of thanks.
The WWP brings together leading thinkers from all disciplines, including environmentalists, medical doctors, holistic medicine therapists, spiritual healers, and health and well being product innovators to name a few, all to focus on the challenges regarding the creation of world-wide wellness.
This now to be annual event is bringing together over 40 international speakers and industry experts, so participants will have available cutting edge resources in conjunction with age old wisdom aimed at helping governments, industry and the community as a whole towards innovation excellence and new heights of consciousness for the benefit of global wellness.
The summit aims to create a fertile environment for the meeting of minds, for noble conversations, insights and shared learning which can provide a spring board for the momentum needed for ongoing mindfulness, and the extension of a global conversation which can lead to practical, ground roots changes and healing.
The first sentence of the WWP manifesto pledges: "To create a wave of wellness, for the world and all its inhabitants"...given the political strife, environmental disasters, issue of global warming barely being tackled by governments and extensive suffering taking place all over the planet right now, the inaugural WWP summit couldn't have picked a better time to occur!
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Saturday, February 05, 2011
Summer has finally arrived here in 'Glenlyon via Daylesford' in the Hepburn Shire of the Central Victorian Highlands and Angelica Organic Farm is pleased to see her at last!
Here comes the SUNflowers...approx. 1 mo. behind last season...a welcome sight!
Our surviving crops from earlier in the season are so far growing along nicely and the new ones we are feverishly and optimistically sowing are sprouting cheerily with ease in this most exceptional of summer weather for this locale. Needless to say the weeds, grass and white cabbage moth are going 'gang busters' too!
Our much anticipated rocket - a new crop sprouted after only a few days - yay! Hopefully she will fare better than her predecessors this season weather-wise?!
The last couple of weeks have been consistently warm-hot and the last few days have been possibly the most humid we have experienced here ourselves, coinciding with the flow-on effects of cyclone Yasi having just passed through Nth Qld and Nth/Central Australia. We used to live in Byron Bay then Brisbane and can honestly say the warm, humid feeling, and the smells from the damp vegetation all around and the balmy, misty ambience is very reminiscent to us of those times. This weather brings its own challenges to growers, but personally Tim and I are also enjoying the warmth and the 'flashback' in time, particularly 'off the back' of a long, cold wet winter/spring, as well as the lift from seeing our farm becoming much more productive for this season.
Lebanese cucumbers, masters of camouflage, now 'rocking on'!
Heritage tomatoes - Striped Romans.
Heritage tomatoes - Purple Russians & there's several other types too...
We have such a short general vegetable growing season here compared to warmer parts of our country and even compared to less variable climatic places like the Melbourne area and other Victorian Central Highland locales, so what we grow during that time is therefore highly seasonal and subsequently very tasty and it's always a sense of abundance and gratitude when this time of year arrives - yes indeed. The gratitude, is especially highlighted when the season is so 'late' (and optimistically out to beat autumn frosts!) and now in the light of so much turmoil on the land in pretty much all of our major food growing districts, hardship and destruction preceding and as known will continue for much time to come for many farmers, agriculturally-based communities and in regards to overall food sources for all Australians. What we can ALL do to support our 'food bowls' and growers, is prioritise our weekly food spending for Australian grown produce, local where possible, which is still available as we proceed over coming times.
Aubergine plants, a trial crop excelling in the current conditions.
At the farm now, we struggle to keep up with the now explosive growth rate of the tomato plants, which seem in constant need of being tied further up their bushes to support them. The zucchinis, squash, cucumbers, potatoes and herbs are just loving it too! Pumpkins are so far getting their best chance with us for years...We used to have a large vegie patch in our yard in Brisbane and the growth rates of the past couple of weeks at the farm have truly resembled what was normal for us back then.
Yellow button squash.
Zucchinis are 'GO'!
Pumpkin plants being pollinated & anticipating a fruitful season.
Mixed lettuces coming along.
As you can probably relate to, farmers talk a lot about the weather at any time and particularly rainfall. It's amazing for us at the moment to 'step back' and take stock of how our conversations have meandered and switched from discussing how to manage without much water to how to manage the challenges and destruction from its force in excess and often destructive mode of late. Tim and I never thought we'd hear ourselves even utter that we have found (in hindsight!) the drought conditions easier to manage growing-wise than the totally uncontrollable conditions brought by heavy and ongoing rainfall etc of the last several months. We are blessed with a reliable water source and are highly mindful to use minimal water for irrigation during non-rain periods and although a lot of work at these times, with irrigation we have more control regarding what the plants get and when, to meet their needs.
Irrigation drip tapes being laid along the planting beds,
finally being planted out with seedlings or sown with veg. seed.
What has also been a new and interesting experience for us this season is having so much more moisture just inherent in the soil BETWEEN rain events, from the very wet winter and spring and regular summer rainfall. All the plants respond well to this, with just some consistent warmth to help them along, warming their roots and giving their leaves something to photosynthesise with. The heritage vegetables we love to grow, such as beetroots, carrots, radishes and all the tomatoes, will fare well with these 'novel' growing conditions compared to previous seasons, and with a bit of luck and kindness from Mother Nature over the next few months. The next few seasons will benefit from the significant replenishment of our land's ground waters, rivers and catchments.
In conclusion for this post, we want to extend our deepest condolences and support to our fellow Victorians still dealing with flooding and it's aftermath and to the people of North/Far North Qld, who have just been through the horrors of cyclone Yasi and who now have, in her wake, the immense task of counting her costs, cleaning up and recovering their homes, farms, businesses, lives and communities. Mission Beach and surrounds is one of our favourite places and probably our most favoured relaxing holiday destination and we will revisit as soon as we can for sure.
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Thursday, January 13, 2011
Hello there! Well, what can I say..."...rain, rain, go away..." as the nursery rhyme goes AND who can believe it off the back of up to 15 years of the worse recorded drought? Apparently La Nina (opp. to El Nino) has set in and that in reality, is a natural cycle following drought in this part of the globe. Mother Nature (& therefore humans) REALLY needs this water and Tim and I are truly grateful for that, but knowing that doesn't diminish the magnitude of what our fellow Aussies (and in our case this includes friends and family) are suffering up Nth in these colossal floods and the far reaching impacts of this natural disaster for people, animals, farms and other businesses. Our hearts go out to you all, along with our best wishes for safety, wellbeing and all the support needed in recovery during the aftermath.
As I write this I am hearing of 70+ emergency calls going to the local CFA and other emergency numbers for neighbouring Kyneton (about 30 mins from us towards Bendigo direction) asking for help and advice in coping with flash flooding (the police station is under!) and just excessive rain effecting property and infrastructure. We extend our heartfelt wishes to Kyneton for the best possible outcomes from now on, considering the waters have not yet peaked and for minimal damage and above all personal safety for all.
The creek rapidly flowing under the Back Glenlyon Road Bridge, moments from our farm.
For the past 5 years, this creek (above) has had little more than a trickle by the end of winter, now it sounds like a waterfall as I found walking up to take these photos.
Weather at Angelica O.F. 13 Jan 2011- drizzling but a break in the down pours...
As for Angelica Organic Farm...we are safe and not likely to flood as such (we think... well not by metres!?) . We have a lot to be grateful for here no doubt, not the least are safe, fresh food and drinking water AND some nice bottles of red wine we were given at Xmas!! But if we're honest folks, we ARE suffering the impacts of ongoing high rainfall and humidity and lack of sun at the farm! It is in fact a particularly stressful season.
A familiar soggy sight at the farm over the past months.
For us, apart from a locust plague which couldn't do much because it was too cold for them a few weeks back, we have had no spring - i.e. not much heat/sun and loads of rain after an already very wet winter and so our vegetable season is now approximately 6 weeks behind. Unlike some other farms, we have been able to sow seed and plant out seedlings, however, we have had some crops washed away earlier in the season, others just damaged and unproductive in the ongoing wet and prior to this un-seasonally extended cold temperatures, and our 2nd harvest of late Californian White garlic is currently at risk, still sitting in the wet ground, as we've been unable to harvest it already before this latest deluge...wish us luck!!
Un-planted vegie beds.
We finally got these planting beds (above) raised a couple of weeks ago between the wets...as you can see we still haven't been able to get them planted out at all. One blessing is that our red volcanic earth drains fairly freely by nature. We hope to do some of that planting tomorrow, when there is a break forecast in the rain (We have had about 130mm since Monday night, most of which has been the last 2 days). Potatoes, salad greens and other veg are what we hope to raise from here in these beds.
Weeds next to polytunnel.
Our 'admiration-hate' relationship continues with the weeds! It's taken no time at all for them to thrive in this weather (see 1 example above) - good for them eh? Unfortunately one can't sell or eat white radish, contrary to the name!!
On the bright side... We have great peas, rainbow chard, herbs and some other little surprises NOW and our tomatoes, zucchinis, squash, beetroots and a few other things which have survived, are seemingly growing along nicely, if slowly :-).
Zucchinis are coming...
Lettuces are coming...
Squash are coming...
Beetroots are coming...
An up and coming heritage tomato...
Heritage tomatoes, aubergines and cucumbers coming up...
Field tomatoes are coming...
Our main wish from here is that we get a 'crack' at a late vegie season and all in time before the frosts descend again!
You can visit our stalls at Daylesford, Collingwood Children's Farm, Hawthorn Boroondara and Abbotsford Convent Slow Food Farmers' Markets on their relevant Saturdays to buy gorgeous red rocambole garlic, vegetables and herbs. As the next few weeks roll on, we hope to increase the variety of veg we have to offer - ALL certified organic of course!
Tim and the chard!
Lavandula Harvest Festival on Sunday ...sunny then!
Other local farms we know have had worse flooding than us, more than once even I suspect, and as a result have not been able to get much produce seed or seedlings planted out, in one case, none at all and by the time the ground is dried out enough to work the soil, it will now probably be too late in our limited growing season here for those farmers to do so - thankfully it's not all they produce but still it's a really tough season and our hearts are also with them.
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