Eggsellent Market!

We're home from Collingwood Farmers' Market, the baby is asleep, the big girls are eating their dinner and I am about to collapse but before I do I thought I'd give you a quick rundown of the day.

We had a fantastic market.

It started off slowly and the weather looked a bit dodgy but that just gave us extra time to set up, drink more coffee and catch up with our neighbours.

Before long the eggs were selling like hotcakes(?) and it felt great to be back after our 2 month break.
The Health Inspectors visited and ticked all the boxes.

We caught up with other stall holders and swapped produce.

Above is Kylie and her wonderful dips and below is Monique, her and her husband make the most amazing felafel and nougat.

After a while the wind picked up. It managed to blow a tent off it's frame, lift a marquee weighed down by twenty kilo sandbags and even pull some tent pegs out of the ground, but as far as I know there was no damage to person or property.

By 11am we'd sold out of 120 dozen eggs, a record in egg sales for us.

It was fantastic to meet Lindsey (the guy) and Miss Jane (I can't find your blog please send me a link). If anyone else came to claim their free eggs after we had packed up I am sorry and look forward to meeting you next time.

Thanks Mum for your help with the stall and the girls. Especially for the fifteen laps you did with the pusher trying to put Miss Pepper to sleep.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.

To Market - To Market.

This Saturday the 12th of September we will be at Collingwood Childrens' Farm farmers' market.

We will be selling the most delicious free range, organic eggs in town.

The weather will be a perfect 25 degrees so come and say hi and make a morning of it.

Anyone who mentions this blog will get themselves a free carton of pullet* eggs.

*Pullets are chickens that are less than a year old. Pullet eggs are small and packed full of the good stuff. People often tell us these are their favourite eggs.

Can't wait to meet you!

Home in September.

We've been away at the beach for 2 weeks.

I thought I'd keep this blog going while we were away but with reports from home of massive amounts of rain, crazy winds and wild, wintry conditions it felt like we were a million miles away. It felt like things would have changed so much, that the photos I had taken before we left would have been out of date.

We got back last night and went for a long walk this morning to see what was going on.

The calendulas are flowering like mad in the green house.

The parsley is bushy and tastes amazing.

The kale has gone to seed.

The broad beans are flowering. I adore broad beans and am very excited by this progress.

The cabbages have hearted.

There are puddles everywhere.

Miss Pepper seemed very happy to swap the water sports of the past 2 weeks for this new type.

The first 3 globe artichokes of the season.

We had a lovely time away but it is great to be back.

Oh, except for the fact that it has just started pelting with rain and it is about 20 degrees colder than what we've become used to.

A HUGE Happy Fathers' Day to my Dad, to John, Bren's Dad and of course to Bren, the wonderful Dad of my girls.

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.

Maremmas, Chooks and TODAY.

What do you do when you have 3 flocks of chooks but only 2 Maremma guard dogs to protect them?

You merge 2 of them without really merging them of course.

The chicks are in the silver brooder and their pool fence enclosed yard and the twenty two week old chooks are in their own house with the whole area surrounded by solar electric mesh fencing.

Banjo the Maremma is protecting the little chickies without having ever seen them.

Many of the older chooks are staying close to the chickies. They can probably hear them and smell them.

And for those of you interested in the Daylesford Organics media branch, Channel Nine's TODAY show will be filming its weather segments every half an hour from 6am tomorrow (Tuesday) from Daylesford.

You can also watch it online by clicking the link on the TODAY website.

They will film Alla Wolf-Taska cooking breakfast from the kitchen at the Lake House. She will be using and talking about local ingredients including Daylesford Organics' eggs.

Chooks On Film.

This is a link to a segment on 9am with david and kim that was shown on TV last week. It is a lovely discussion between Bren and Alla Wolf-Taska and has some great footage of our chooks.

You might have to wait a minute for it to load.

Enjoy the video and 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?