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.

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.

Garlic & a blog post.

These five kilos of garlic were part of an order picked up this morning to be delivered to Circa, The Prince in St Kilda, Melbourne.

A few months ago Juliette from Homingpigeon came to visit Daylesford Organics and interview us for her book. You can check out what she thought of her visit on her blog here.

Matt & Bridie.

Matt Wilkinson, head chef at Circa, The Prince, and his breakfast chef Bridie have been staying with us for the past few days.

This is the face of the man voted equal second sexiest chef participating in the second annual Taste event taking place later this month.

The article is here, scroll down to the end of the second page.

While they were here they fed the chooks and collected their eggs, planted some onion seeds in the hothouse, made some apple cider, discussed seeds, plants and recipes, made lots of plans for the coming growing season and even ate my cooking!!?

We had a lovely time but I think they'll notice the change of pace when they come back for another trip in mid January.

Listen Up.

Why don't you take your lunch break a bit later tomorrow?

From 3pm til 4pm Lindy Burns will be interviewing our friend Matt Wilkinson from Circa on The Drive program on 774am ABC Melbourne.

Matt will be discussing Put Victoria On Your Table.

He will talk to Jerome, a partridge farmer about selection and technique. Jerome was originally a chef who purchased his business from his game supplier.

Then he will discuss the chef/producer relationship with Daylesford Organics' own Bren.

It is sure to be interesting and informative so make sure you tune in.

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).

Put Victoria On Your Table

As part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival this year they are including a segment called Put Victoria on Your Table (PVOYT). This is a concept that aims to encourage people to buy Victorian food and wine from markets, shops and restaurants.

To launch PVOYT there will be a lunch for 60 media and food industry people at a Melbourne restaurant on the 25th of June. At the start of the lunch a movie will be screened showing the chefs that cooked the lunch talking to the farmers and picking the produce from which the lunch was made.

Today we had Matt Wilkinson from Circa in St Kilda and Richard Cornish here filming.

That's Matt in the grey and Richard is the one with the camera.

It was midday and made for some difficult photography with the sun so high in the sky.

They asked questions and Bren chatted about the vegies, the varieties, organics and the soil. He was so comfortable in front of the camera they asked him if he'd done it before. Of course they warned him that it would be edited and an hour and a half of film would end up as a few minutes.

Every table at the lunch will have a display of our heirloom vegies as the centre piece.

Washing the vegies under the shade of the trees made for better photos.

It was a great visit and the beginning of an exciting new concept.

The movie will be released onto youtube in the near future. We'll let you know when.

Before they left we made some very exciting plans for the future.
I could tell you about them but then I'd have to.......................