The top orchard.

Ten years ago we bought this farm off a guy called Tom and his wife Lois. When Tom and Lois first moved here about 15 years before that, they hadn't been too sure of what to do with this place, so Tom made an orchard up near the house and planted one of every fruit tree he thought might do well and then watched them to see what would happen.

He planted a few varieties of plum, lots of different apples, some pears, a quince, cherries, apricots, lemons, mulberries and peaches.

After a few years he saw that this area is not suitable for growing peaches and apricots and lemons because it gets too cold but he also saw that the apples thrived.

So Tom set about planting an apple orchard and while they lived here he grew and sold certified organic apples.

In the ten years since we have been here we have planted about five hundred more apple trees and lots of other fruit trees too. These apples are the working apples. The farm fruit trees. But the top orchard is a bit like the home orchard. It doesn't always get as well maintained as the other orchards and often the fruit doesn't look as good and the birds and kangaroos get a lot but its always worth a walk through in Autumn to see what's around.

Today we found lots and lots of apples. Most are spotty and starchy still but we'll keep checking them now and pick them as they ripen.

We picked the last of the plums, including this love heart one.

A crate of quinces.

A crate of Pepper.

Jazzy upside down fruit.

And loads and loads of pears.

Its been a horrible year for the farm apples with the humidity and mould, but somehow these fruit trees on the top of the hill haven't done too badly. I'm not going to question why, I'm just going to enjoy them.

Have a wonderful week.

Misters October.

When you buy a copy of this week's The Weekly Times you get a dog calendar as a free gift. The calendar is full of gorgeous photos of man's best friend.

When October 2011 comes around, you get to look at our Farmer Bren and Bingo for the whole month. Now that's something to look forward to.

Our calendar is already hanging in the kitchen open on October which is making our two little October babies just a bit excited thinking they might have birthdays all year through.

In other exciting news, we've started harvesting our garlic.

We've spent the past few days while the sun has been shining pulling up the glorious, juicy bulbs.

We've got many rows left to harvest, but I have to tell you that it feels great to stop worrying about the wet and the locusts and to focus on something positive for a while. Great!

After we pull up a row, we rack it all up to cure for a few weeks.

You can get your hands on the best, most delicious garlic in town, at the Slow Food Farmers' Market next Thursday the 23rd of December at The Abbotsford Convent from 3pm-8pm.

Garlic toast for dinner tonight I think.

See ya!

Farming our future.

Over the past few weeks I have overheard Bren on the phone to different restaurants around Melbourne telling them how due to the large amounts of rain and the cold Spring whether, that our season is really late this year and we may not have any produce until mid January.

You'd think he would be stressed about not producing anything yet, about letting them down and about constantly having to deliver the same bad news.

But he's not.

After almost ten year of working in so closely with Mother Nature, he knows that she is calling the shots and there's nothing he can do about it.

I also know that to my husband what grows above the surface and what is harvested from the plants is an added bonus. What he really cares about is what is going on below the ground. He is obsessed with the health of his soil. I have heard him talking on more than one occasion about taking a few years off from growing stuff and just focusing completely on his beloved soil and compost.

I also know that he is looking at the bigger picture.While I am concentrating on what we will have to take to the farmers' market this weekend, he is looking way down the track into the future months and the years to come. He speaks often of the olden day farmers who would get one bumper crop about every seven years. Growing a crop takes so much out of the soil that he wants to make sure he is putting as much, if not more, back in.

Any minute now the ground will dry out, the boys will work the soil and plant the seeds and then there will be the never ending cycle of weeding and picking and planting but for now we are just waiting, watching, planning, composting and enjoying our children, the next generation.

Have a great weekend every one.

And there's an interview with me over at Thea and Sami today if you want to go and check it out.

Our cover boys.

Look at those gorgeous boys on the cover of this week's The Weekly Times.

I know you might think I'm biased, but it really demonstrates their special relationship perfectly. Look at the way Bingo has his leg on Bren's leg and the way they are staring into each others' eyes. Love it!

This morning when we were driving out to take the girls to school, one of the chook fences was down and Bingo was patrolling the border making sure none of his precious chickens escaped. One of the girls joked that the chooks wanted to head into town to buy the paper that they too were on the cover of.

This is what the cover looks like and no, the 'Mutton madness' has nothing to do with us. There is another photo and article on page four but the real, full length article will be in next week's issue.

Who would have thought that Victoria's mainstream rural paper, 'The voice of the country since 1869' would put a half page photo of an organic farmer on its cover? Good for you for moving with the times Weekly Times.

I made him pose for this photo when we went to buy the paper this morning, but I wish I'd also taken one of the excited newsagent staff reading their copies and telling us what a great photo they thought it was.

Last week's The Weekly Times also had this photo of Bren and Joel Salatin accompanying an article about Joel's visit to Daylesford.

And I just found this photo on their website taken at last Saturday's Show Grounds Farmers' Market.

Phew, what a great week for Daylesford Organics in the news. The scrap book is getting fatter. And all of this without paying a publicist, yay!

I hope you are having a great week out there.

Joel Salatin @ Daylesford Organics

So as we come to the end of autumn we also come to the end of The Harvest Festival.

We had a fantastic week running and attending activities, but of course the highlight was the self proclaimed lunatic farmer himself Joel Salatin.

Thanks so much to DMP and to The Lake House who brought Joel out from America. The Daylesford Organics team attended every seminar he gave, but the best part of all came last Friday when Joel came to our farm to walk around and talk to us.

Nine years ago when we started farming organically and were on the steepest learning curve imaginable, it was Joel's books that advised us on many of the particulars like movable chook houses and electric netting fencing and indeed gave us permission to believe we could do it.


When not many other farmer's wanted to share their knowledge with us, Joel's books did.


Nine years ago, many of Bren's sentences started with 'Joel says...' and this renegade farmer gave us permission to do things in an unconventional way and to make our farming dream a reality.

Nine years later on a wild and wet afternoon, Joel came to our farm and spent the best part of an hour walking around, looking at our systems and discussing our plans with us. Of course he recognised a lot of his own systems and ideas but he was also very complimentary and interested in our methods too.


It was one of those fantastic full circle life events. Here we were with the master showing him what we had learnt but also how we had developed our own farming systems.


We spent the last part of Joel's visit discussing future directions Daylesford Organics could take and let me tell you, watch this space because we are pretty excited to put some of his suggestions in place.


As Joel was leaving our farm Bren asked him to sign one of his books. The book is called You Can Farm and in it Joel wrote 'Oh yes you can - and yes you are.' How cool is that!

Saturday brought with it the publication of one of my photos in the A2 section of The Age newspaper. There was a 'top 5 farm gates' and they listed us as number one.



When I opened the newspaper up in the car park of the local service station I screamed. Loudly. I was thrilled they had made us number one and that my photo was enormous.

I guess we do owe an apology though to those who read the bit in the paper and then came to visit us yesterday only to find we were closed. Unfortunately, while we knew the piece in the paper was coming, we had no idea which date it would be published and it was bad timing that it coincided with an all day seminar by Joel. The seminar was called 'How to scale up without losing your soul' and was attended by our whole team leaving no one to man the stall.


We do feel terrible if you made the journey and we weren't here and hope that you found other ways to busy yourselves in the area.


Have a great week out there.

Garlic @ six weeks.

Our garlic has been in the ground for six weeks.

This year we've planted most of it in between the new apple trees.

Better look busy, the supervisors are on their way.

Farmer Bren is checking how much the roots have grown in six weeks.

Pretty impressive huh?

Once you remove last year's garlic clove,

you are left with the start of this year's bulb.

He likes to taste things to see how they are going, but can't understand why I wouldn't kiss him for the rest of the afternoon.

The other Brendan is using the wheel hoe to weed in between the garlic plants.

Liam is hoeing between the little garlics,

and playing funny buggers.

Its looking like a wonderful crop so far.

Want to see it for yourself?

There's still a few places for the Walking The Talk farm tours.

Date: Saturday 22 and Saturday 29th May.

Time: 2 - 4pm.

Place: Daylesford Organics. 19 Foxs Lane Muskvale.

Cost: $20per person, 15yrs and under free.

Booking: Email info@daylesfordorganics.com

Hopefully: See you then.

Delicious.

Farmer Bren's hands are clean today because we're doing our tax.

Liam's hands are dirty because he's planting the last lettuces of the season.

And we're in the latest issue of Delicious magazine that came out today.

In an article called pick of the crop, Matt Wilkinson, state judge for the Produce Awards and head chef at Melbourne's Circa, the Prince, showcases our heirloom vegetables in a vibrant salad.

I hope your week is getting off to a great start.

Farmer Bren's talk.

Last Saturday night Farmer Bren gave a talk about heirloom vegies and eating sustainably at the Home Ideas show.

We took lots of coloured vegies with us for the audience to see and taste.

Bren got a bit excited at times about his beloved carrots.

And of course he did the boring radish,

exciting radish trick with the Chinese Watermelon radish.

Winefoodhotel.com who sponsor the food stage filmed the talk and you can watch a few minutes of it below.

Finally, we at Daylesford Organics would like to congratulate our friends Nicholas and Tara of Embrasse restaurant on the birth of Louis. Welcome to the parenting adventure guys.

Have a great weekend.