The answer.

Its an heirloom radish called Red Meat radish or Watermelon radish.

We don't know a lot about this radish. Bren found it in a seed catalogue and we trialed them this year. They are thought to originate in China and be used as a garnish, sometimes carved into roses.

We will definitely be planting them again.

I told you Bren loves cutting them in half.

We were in Melbourne today delivering vegies and eggs to the kitchens of Embrasse and Circa The Prince and both Nicolas and Matt did not disappoint with their excitement either.

Come and see us at the stall Poni, Cathie, Prue, Leonie and Jess to claim your free bunch.

Veg of the moment.

This is a thin slice of our new favourite vegetable.

We have just picked three crates of them this morning.

You should see the grin on Bren's face whenever he cuts one of these amazing vegies in half.

Can you guess what it is?

If you guess the right vegetable and then come and visit us at the farm stall, we''ll give you a bunch for free.

Have fun out there.

NUMBER SIX!!!!

About a month ago I got a phone call from Australian Traveller magazine telling us that out of 1000 nominations we had made it into the top 100 in their 100 Greatest Gourmet Experiences. We were pretty excited at that point. I was mostly excited that they wanted some of my photos to use in the magazine.

Last night there was a function in Sydney to announce the list and out of one hundred we came in at number six!!!!

We had a film crew here from the local news yesterday afternoon to announce it to the region.

We are all pretty excited around here today.

In a list that included eating Vegemite on toast (57), Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden (11), Jacques Reymond (16) and the ANZAC biscuit (63), we came SIXTH!!

There is a whole page article with great big photos that I took. There are lovely words about us and what we are doing and a rave about this blog.

I think it is the first sentence of the article that we are most proud of though, it says;

No-one takes the production of organic yet tasty and interesting foodstuffs more seriously than the folk at Daylesford Organics.

That's been part of our mission statement from the beginning and its wonderful to be recognised for this.

Also in the top 10 is Shannon Bennett's Vue De Monde at number eight who we supply our certified organic, heirloom vegies to and our friends at the Holy Goat dairy at number five.

We do what we do because we believe in it and because we love it but it certainly is a great feeling to be recognised for it too.

Sunflowers.

Our sunflowers are finally in bloom.

We have rows and rows of them.

If you come by the farm stall in the next few weeks, we'll pick you a bunch.

Just be sure to come in your big car. The first customers to take us up on our offer had to drive home with their sunflowers hanging out the window.

Mercurio's menu.

Last Tuesday we set up the stall extra nicely because we were to have some special guests.

Paul Mercurio and his Mercurio's Menu crew paid us a visit.

Bren called them the day before to warn them to come prepared because we'd had over 70mm of rain and it was muddy, so they all turned up with matching, brand new, shiney gum boots. Look at the glare coming off them!

Paul was really lovely. He was enthusiastic about what we are doing, asking lots of questions and happy to taste and smell everything along the way.

This was the prefilming production meeting where we planned the order of filming, the route we would walk and the menu.

And from then on this is what we were looking at for most of the next few hours.

We spent ages walking around the farm and doing each shot over and over from different angles and wide and narrow and with talking and without.

At one stage near the end when the filming was over and everyone was packing up, some of our favourite customers Deb, Alia and Michael turned up. They were so gorgeous and enthusiastic that Paul's producer made the camera man and the sound man unpack to film them shopping.

They were such good sports buying their vegies and eggs over and over again.

We had a great few hours filming but of the three and a half hours of film who knows how much will end up being shown in a 26 minute program of which we are only one part.

A final word of warning to anyone considering doing television appearances. If it is cold then wear your jacket in the first scene, otherwise you will not be allowed to put it on later on for reasons of continuity. It'll be interesting to watch my lips gradually turn bluer and bluer, I wonder how that works in this whole continuity thing.

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?