DISPATCHES FROM THE FARM

March 1, 2010 gave birth to the new late summer edition of Slow Magazine ...

Featuring a really well written article about us and our beloved garlic...

...Jacqui Mott, the editor of this fairly new but unique and very classy publication, took great efforts to get this article 'right'

and we are delighted with the final results. We extend our thanks to her for her commitment to quality journalism and for her warm and genuine manner.

The piece even includes a tried and tested recipe for my French garlic tart...yum, yum!

As I said it is a unique magazine, and is interestingly formatted, with clever and useful features. It is very attractively designed/presented too. Slow Magazine is based in Castlemaine, just 30 mins. up the road from Daylesford but draws on the wordly strengths and experience of its creators I think.

Slow Magazine is available from Borders bookshops and good newsagents or you can visit their website and set up a subscription. 

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!

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.

 

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. 

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.