Heirloom beetroots and carrots.

It's the first day of winter here in Southern Australia and our little farm is full of rainbows.

Rainbows of heirloom beetroots. Five varieties.

And rainbows of heirloom carrots. Five varieties.

The vegetable cool room is on and full of crates of gorgeous certified organic vegies.

And the farmer boys are a blur of picking and washing and weighing and packing.

It's been a crazy season and we are about five months later than usual, but we are finally doing what organic vegie farmers do and wow it is fun!

Crimes of Farm Fashion Part 2.

Other possible titles for this post:

• We are finally harvesting rainbow carrots.
• Our two new green shipping containers arrived this morning.
• Can you believe they let me take this pic even after I told them I would be putting it on the Internet?
• Sorry girls, they are both happily married.

Crimes of Farm Fashion Part 1 is here.

Optimistic.

I've been thinking lately that the dictionary definition for the word optimistic should include the word farmer and more specifically a farmer planting a crop.

When a farmer plants a crop she/he hopes for the perfect weather conditions to enable that crop to germinate, to grow and to thrive. It cannot be too hot, too wet, too cold or too humid. The farmer hopes that the irrigation pipes don't block or burst, that pests leave the crop alone, that there are no diseases, not too many weeds and enough water to irrigate it. He/she hopes that there is no flood or fire or wind storm. The farmer hopes that Mother Nature is kind and enables a delicious crop to be picked at the end of the growing season.

After a month of 'will we or wont we's', the last few days at Daylesford Organics were spent ploughing, laying irrigation lines and planting out a couple of gardens of carrots and beetroots.

Where other years we plant many, many different varieties of vegetables and lots of successions of each, this year we are most grateful to get anything in at all.

We are optimistic.

From The Earth.

The boys have been picking and washing gorgeous heirloom vegies to send off to Circa The Prince for this year's Delicious Magazine's Produce Awards cocktail party on Monday night.

They picked rainbow carrots, white and yellow baby turnips,

as well as four varieties of beetroots.

Last year we were lucky enough to win the From The Earth category. This year we have been included in the list of finalists but will have to wait until Monday night to find out.

I have a gorgeous new frock to wear and now I just have to decide between last year's shoes or my Hunters, it is the produce awards after all.

Have a great weekend.

School holiday fun!

Last Wednesday we hosted the local school holiday program for a day of farmyard fun.

We collected the eggs.

We dug for potatoes.

Bren taught them the chicken dance.

We dug for carrots.

Everyone was very excited to pull up bunches of multicoloured rainbow carrots.

Bren and Liam washed them.

And then we taste tested them.

A bit more digging.

This time we pulled up onions.

Some were more adventurous than others.

We finished the time here with some egg blowing and decorating but after they left us, the kids went back to the centre and made the best vegie soup ever.

We had such a great day.

Thanks for coming guys.

Rainbow carrots.

Well hello there lovely readers of the Daylesford Organics blog, have I got a surprise for you. Along with the new blog layout with the extra pages you can click on, we also have a guest blogger today. None other than Daylesford Organics' own Farmer Bren!! Hooray!! Please be nice to him this is his very first blog post.

We call these rainbow carrots and for most people they are a novelty. In reality the orange carrot is only about 500 yrs old where as the purple dates back possibly 5000 yrs.

There are many conflicting stories as to the origins of each colour, but it seems that the purple carrot originated in Afghanistan thousands of years ago, with various yellows and whites crossing along the way until the "Horn" varieties were first recorded in the Netherlands in 1721. These varieties are thought to be the predecessor of all today's orange carrots.

I do find this history fascinating, but that's just me. I have a book in the toilet that I pick up now and then called Hybrid. The History & Science of Plant Breeding by Noel Kingsbury, an interesting read if you are a garden geek like me.

Mostly what excites me about carrots is not their history but their taste, look, smell and crunch.

Why grow only one colour of carrot when each one of these has a distinct flavour?

Washing carrots is not a bad job at this time of year, although I won't be saying the same thing come the May harvests.

To me it is a bit like flower arranging. I reckon they are a bit like bunches of flowers.

Great photo Katie!

Who said carrots were boring?

Farming secrets.

Last August Hugo and Helen from Farming Secrets paid a visit to Daylesford Organics.

Farming Secrets is a subscription based program that connects farmers and gardeners with experts in their fields.

They spent a few hours here filming their latest DVD which features an interview and farm tour with Bren and an interview with Clive Blazey founder of Diggers Seeds and promoter of heirloom vegetables.

Purchasing the DVD will entitle you to a phone consultation with Bren about your farm or home garden.

The DVD featuring our Bren will be available for sale later this year but they are releasing a few little previews first.

Click here to watch a couple of minutes of Bren talking about how we get the chooks to work for us saving us energy.

Click here to watch Bren talk about aerating your soil using carrots.

Click here to watch Bren talk about planting by the moon.

Click here to watch Bren talk about using as many different systems of farming as you find helpful and useful.

Designing a logo.

We are working with a graphic designer on our branding and logo.

It is such an interesting process to try to get across to a third party who we are and what we represent, as well as who we want to appeal to.

When we first created Daylesford Organics it was an apple farm. We called ourselves apple farmers and I appliqued us apple T-shirts to wear to market.

Due to draught conditions it soon became obvious that we would have to diversify. Mixed farming (biodiversity) soon became an important part of our ideology.

A biodynamic egg farm up the road was closing down and we saw the gap in the market and overnight went from being backyard chook keepers to having a flock of up to one thousand.

At that stage the majority of our income came from the eggs.

And then over time the vegies started to take the spotlight.

How will we ever be able to get all this across in a picture and a few words?

We've chosen a wonderful designer, gone into great detail with her about us, our farm, our vision and our likes and dislikes. We've discussed the personalities of different fonts and different colours and now we have to walk away and leave her to it.

I can hardly wait to see what she comes up with.

I hope you have a great weekend.

Daylesford Commercial.

The Daylesford Tourism ad is now being shown in every state in Australia except for Victoria. Apparently Victorians already know about and visit Daylesford.

It is a strange feeling to watch our town in this beautiful video.

It is so familiar but so foreign at the same time.

Last night I picked Indi and Jazzy up from that property she walks past with the gorgeous gates and later the lamps down the driveway, I had coffee a few days ago with the berry picking girl and walked around the lake last week. But I admit I have never been to the new spa center.

We delivered some carrots for the table laden with food but I can't find them in there.

I've watched it over and over this morning trying to find familiar faces and places but I can't separate from it to judge if it would make me want to visit Daylesford. What do you think? Do you like it? Would it make you want to visit us?

Stamps.

Look how gorgeous these fruit and vegie stamps are.

My friend Beck bought them from here for me and I just adore them.

Carrots.

Peas.

Beetroots.

And apples.

I'm thinking swing tags, labels, row markers....

I LOVE them Beck. Thank you so much.

The Epicure Green Issue.

We are in today's Age newspaper food supplement: 'Epicure'.

It is called 'The green issue' and has some great articles on all sorts of ethical food matters.

It is fantastic that topics like harvest swaps, farmers' markets, locavores and buying, cooking and eating with a conscience, have hit the mainstream.

On page 20 there is an article written by Matt Wilkinson.

It is a great article, you can find the whole thing here.

I'm not overly happy with that photo. I look like I had been cutting and burning gorse all day which I had. Maybe from now on I'll have to do the farm work in my Campers, just in case.

In Vogue (again)

The August/September issue of Vogue Entertaining and Travel is out and we are in it.

Page 35 is dedicated to the 2009 Vogue E + T Produce Awards.

There we are in the bottom left hand corner.

On page 150 there is a photo of the dish Matt Wilkinson made for the Produce Awards readers dinner at Circa, The Prince.

The dish was truffled egg with Daylesford Organics garlic champ.

 
Also on page 150 is a photo of Alex Kearns preparing his dish for the degustation  dinner at the Noosa Food and Wine Festival.

The dish, also pictured, is a pickled carrot salad featuring Daylesford Organics heirloom carrots.

To read more about the Vogue E + T Produce Awards please see here and here (the basket of vegies at the top of the page are ours).