our farm gate stall!

Our farm gate stall is one week old!

Sitting at the very front of our farm, built by our friend Jobbo - @thebuilderrecycles - made entirely from timber and tin found around our property, it is exactly what we had hoped for.

I can't tell you how much it pleases me to know that the apples we've been picking are going straight into the shopping bags of our lovely customers. There are no trucks, no cold-stores, no middle-men, no retail markups - just fruit and vegetables and flowers grown here, picked by us, certified organic and DELICIOUS!!!!!

I feel so very grateful for the support we have been shown so far. I love that Miss Pepper's BPOD (best part of day) each day is collecting the money from the tin. And I feel like this little farm stall is something we have spoken of and wondered about for so many years and now she's here - and isn't she gorgeous!!

If you are local, if you are passing by or if you've been dreaming of a day-trip to our lovely area - please pop by. We are Daylesford Organics - 19 Foxs Lane Musvale.

(That's not our postal address though.)

But speaking of postal addresses Reannon and Nell please email me yours so I can make and send you your cupcake motifs, yay!!

And to everyone else - I hope you find kindness and generosity when you share your dreams with the world.

Love ya's!

xx

i say tomato

Can I tell you a secret?

I don't like fancy tomatoes. I know, so very wrong for an organic farmer to admit. But I'll take an under-ripe, red, round, firm tomato over a fancy, overly tasty, pulpy tomato any day.


I think it started way back about seven years ago. We were growing tomatoes in a pretty serious way for restaurants and shops and markets and I was growing Miss Pepper in my belly. And while the tomatoes were blossoming and blooming and growing beautifully, I was sick, sick, sick.

And all through those early months of my pregnancy, my main job was to rummage around through the foliage in the poly tunnel and pick out the juicy, red tomatoes. Sounds like fun huh?

Imagine a hot sunny day, condensation dripping down the sides of the poly tunnel and off the roof and occasionally dripping onto your head or down your neck. Imagine the sticky tomato tar that covers your hands and arms up to your elbows as you reach through the plants to grab the fruit. Imagine thinking you've spotted the most perfect, plump, red tomato and when you wrap your fingers around it it disintegrates in your hand, a warm, overripe pulpy mess. Imagine breathing in that humid hot-house air and feeling like there wasn't enough oxygen for both you and the tomatoes. Imagine the overwhelming smell of the tomato plants and the tomatoes themselves, kinda acidic and sweet and strong. Imagine spending hours and hours, filling buckets and crates and feeling sick and pregnant and gagging and so over everything tomato. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Seven years on, every single March and April day I've been spending an hour or two in the poly tunnels picking tomatoes, and that tomato smell and the feeling on my fingers takes me straight back there and I feel a little queasy. Seven years on, while I've still lost my love for the exotic and heirloom tomato, we most certainly, unquestionably have won with our wonderful Pepper Berry. I'll take her over a Cherokee Purple or a Purple Russian any day.

Bye now

xx

moving the chooks along

This Friday the Blackwood flock of chickens, above, will leave our farm and make their home on another organic farm a couple of hours away.

I'm guessing that apart from the drive, the Blackwoods wont notice much of a difference between their old and their new homes at all. They'll travel along as usual dust bathing, eating, drinking, scratching for bugs, laying eggs, hanging out with their hen buddies and when dark comes, they'll even go to roost in the same houses they have since they came to live with us a year ago when they were one day old.

Our lives on the other hand will be very different indeed. 

The Blackwoods are the last flock to leave our farm and for the first time in years we will be down from 2,000 chooks to just 200. From 10 Maremma dogs to two. From two wonderful farmer boys to none.

This Friday marks the next stage in our organic farming adventure.

We're excited (and a little bit scared), we're happy (and a little bit sad), but we're really ready.

Hopefully our extra time will be spent trying to find a bit more of a self sufficient balance. Making, growing and doing more, and buying less. Hopefully scaling down the business will mean we'll have more time for other plans. And hopefully someday soon, the places we deliver to will stop calling us the egg man and lady.

So it is with much happiness for them and for ourselves that we farewell the Blackwoods.

Stay tuned for the next adventures.

xx

sunshine & sisters

And then the sun came out from behind the clouds and changed everything.

For the first time in weeks we left the house without a gazillion layers of clothing. For the first time in weeks all three girls came with us to collect the eggs. And for the first time in weeks, with no real threat of rain, I took the real camera out with us.

The light was so bright, the colours were so clear and we all just stood there in a pocket of sunshine for a while soaking it in. Feeling it on our skin. Feeling happy.

The girls played and laughed and sang and wrestled. Their joy was contagious.

Even the wood piles looked pretty and decorative, rather than the usual desperately necessary.

And we realised that there's only one more week until spring. Thank goodness.

And even though we didn't get to see our feature in today's Herald Sun magazine because it doesn't come to the country, we received loads of gorgeous messages and we feel very full and grateful and lucky. Thank you!!

I hope your day was filled with sunshine and happiness.
Did you get up to anything special?
Did you see our feature? Did you run? Did you take photos? Did you play fight with your sister?

Loads of love to you peeps.
The countdown to spring is on.

xx

How to make fruit leather ❤ SO YUM!!

Finally, after many months of supplying us with their delicious fruit, our apple trees are dropping their last few leaves and getting ready to go to sleep for the long, cold winter ahead. They've worked hard for us this year and we've eaten, shared and sold hundreds of kilos of fruit. Hundreds of kilos of crisp, tart, juicy, sweet delicious apples.

And now as winter sets in and makes herself comfortable, we're making plans to use up the last 20 or so crates we have left and to switch off the cool-room. Heritage varieties of apples are delicious in their season, but are not meant to last a long time.

So along with the stewing and juicing and eating fresh, we've been making apple leather. Constantly. And the girls have been eating it as quickly as we've been making it. It's totally delicious.

So I thought I'd share the simple recipe here just in case you wanted to make some too.

First wash, peel, core and slice your apples and place them in a saucepan on a low heat on the stove.

From what I've read, the rule is to add half a cup of water to the saucepan for every four cups of chopped fruit, but I just add a big glug here and there to make sure the mixture isn't too dry and isn't sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Stir in the juice of half a lemon and some cinnamon if you feel like it. Have a taste and see if you need to add some more.

Simmer and stir. Simmer and stir, until the fruit is soft and mashable.

Using a food processor or a blender, mash the cooked fruit until it is completely smooth and lump free. Like baby food.

Lay a sheet of baking paper over your oven trays.

Spread apple mixture evenly over one oven tray at a time until the mixture is about half a centimeter deep.

Place your trays in the oven at the lowest heat setting possible and leave the oven door slightly ajar. You might need to place a spoon in the oven door to keep it from closing but beware, the spoon will get very hot.

(This oven method is wonderful for us because our wood cooker is on 24/7, but a food dehydrator will work just as well.)

Keep the fruit leather trays in the oven for as long as it takes to completely dry out. We've found it best to leave the trays in the oven overnight as the process takes about eight to ten hours.

The apple leather is ready when it is no longer sticky or wet, but dry and leather-like.

Once your apple leather is ready and dry you can peel it off the baking paper and roll it up.

Keep the baking paper sheet and use it again on your next batch.

Cut the fruit leather into little bits.

Or chop it into cereal or salads.

We like to store the rolled up apple leathers in a glass, sealed container. To be honest, I have no idea how long it will keep as our girls eat it almost as quickly as we can make it.

What I do know is how great it feels to feed our family something we have made from the freshest, organic fruit, with no sugar and only two ingredients. No nasties, no numbers.

And there have been reports that even the kids who only eat junk food in their school lunches love it too, so it must be a winner. Yay!

OK, off you go, if you get some in the oven now, it'll be ready for their school lunches tomorrow.

I'm off to peel this lot.


See ya later - apple dehydrater!!

Let me know how you go, OK.

xxxx

seasonal - sustainable - wonderful

At the start of the cycle, last spring, we planted tomato seeds in trays in the hot house. We nurtured the seeds and watched them grow. When they were large enough to cope, we moved them outside or into the poly tunnels to give them space. We tried to provide ideal growing conditions by planting according to the moon's phases, weeding out some of the competition, feeding and irrigating and staking. And then over the last few months we enjoyed the harvest.

We had a wonderful, bountiful tomato season this year.

We picked colanders and baskets and buckets and crates full.

We ate them straight off the bush and in salads and sandwiches and cooked them in absolutely everything. And we preserved enough sauce and semi drieds to hopefully last us through out the year.

And then along came the first frost of the season. Just like that the outside tomato season was over. The frost burnt the foliage and damaged the remaining, as yet unripe fruit.

Following the first frost the chooks went in to clean up. They gobbled up the fleshy fruit, they ate the bugs and scratched up the dirt. And they pooed. Our chooks are really the hardest workers on our farm.

In the next few days, after they are done, my farmer boy will plow the tomato scraps and the chook poo into the soil adding much needed organic matter and fertiliser to the land that has grown our beautiful and delicious fruit.

After the plowing up we'll probably plant a winter pea crop or a broad bean crop to add nitrogen. We have to do everything we can to look after the health and balance of our hardworking soil. Everything that comes out with the growing, needs to go back in and more.

The tomato journey comes to an end.

And then next spring we'll start all over again.

As much as I dislike the cold and wet and grey, I love the seasons. I love that everything has it's time.

My farmer boy asked me the other day if I could commit to seasonal eating completely this year and cut out fresh tomatoes until they grow here again next summer. That is a big one for this thinly sliced tomato with salt on crackers loving girl. It even makes me panic a bit. But I think I'm going to try. It makes sense I think.

I'll be enjoying every single precious tomato I pick in the poly tunnels for the next week or so, that's for sure.

Are you a seasonal eater?
Could you do without?
Thinking about how far away the tomatoes are grown and how they travel to get to me over the depths of winter certainly helps.

Happy week my friends.
Keep cozy.

xx

Toffee apples.

This autumnal afternoon in April, after weeks of picking, drying, bottling, stewing and baking apples, when Miss Jazzy suggested we make toffee apples, I jumped at the idea. And then I sent her and her sisters down to the orchard to pick some.

They came back with a box of Splendors and a fistful of sticks and we got to work.

We followed this recipe.

Delicious heritage apples picked fresh from the tree, toffee cooked from the very best certified organic ingredients, excitement in the anticipation, delight in the crunch, pure childhood joy!!

Years ago I made toffee apples and sold them at farmer's markets, today I enjoyed not worrying about the bubbles and just enjoyed the process.

And they were declared the best toffee apples EVER!!

Toffee apples in Autumn are going to be a family tradition at ours now I think.


When was the last time you enjoyed the sweet childhood fave?
If you close your eyes can you remember that mix of sweet and tart?
The crack of the toffee and the crunch of the apple?
Deeelish!

Later
xx

Oh and my book is going to the printers tomorrow. OH MY GOODNESS!!!
I'll show you the cover in a few days time. Eeeeeeeeep!!

true love

I so shouldn't be writing this blog post right now.

Farmer Bren has gone into town to take the girls to school and I promised him crates filled with freshly harvested beetroot upon his return.

But I just cannot help myself. Sometimes the words in my head are desperate to be typed and blogged and other times, like this morning, it's the pictures.

These pictures sum up my life so perfectly at the moment. It's autumn. We're picking tomatoes, apples, beetroot, carrots, sunflowers, onions, basil, peas, beans, lettuce, rocket, plums, grapes and pears.

My arms and legs are achy, my hair is flat from being under my sunhat, my uniform is denim overalls or jeans, a black work tee, a huge straw hat, my battered old work boots and I have so much dirt under my finger nails that I've given up on trying to get it out.

As much as I do miss my girlies while they are at school, I am loving the hours in the orchard or the market garden with my farmer boy. Alone. Without being interrupted. Like a working holiday. Bliss.

The cool rooms are filling up. My freezer is filling up. The girls' tummies are filling up. The bowls of fruit and veg on the counter waiting to be preserved for winter are filling up.

This is it! This is the time of year we've been waiting for. This is the part that makes sense of all those hours spent irrigating and fertilising and composting and mulching and weeding and worrying. This is the time of plenty and bounty and beauty.

I'm off to pick the beetroot.

We're off to Collingwood Children's Farm farmers' market in the morning to sell our delicious, certified organic autumn bounty.

We'll rest in winter.

So what are you up to this weekend?

What are you growing or planting or eating?

Are you coming to see us at market?

I hope so!

I hope you guys have the most wonderful, delicious weekend.

Bye!