Flowers.

Some flowers from us to you on Valentine's Day.

The calendula flower.

The zucchini flower.

The bean flower.

The corn flower.

The borage flower.

And my personal favourite, the pea flower.

I hope you've had a great weekend. XX

Picking peas and beans.

All these peas and beans as well as so much more will be available at our stall at The Lake House Producer's Day tomorrow. Hope to see you there.

In the meantime, check out a discussion about radishes and a great photo of Daylesford Organics radishes at Matt Wilkinson from Circa's blog.

We love peas!

Trellises for peas.

Now the peas have popped out of the ground and established themselves we are making them trellises.

We make them trellises to climb up as they grow and to make it easier for us to weed between them and then to harvest from them.

We make our trellises from odd and ends we find around our farm.

We have some old chook fencing (first photo) and some farm gates. Usually farm gates are expensive but when we first moved here the paddocks were divided into horse paddocks with these gates between them, so we have many to use for trellising.

Grow well peas!

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.

Market Break

We have come to the end of our Farmer's Market season.

We have a long, cold Winter in these parts where the growing and egg laying slows right down.

We have had a wonderful season, our longest yet (by a month) and we picked up an extra market (Castlemaine) bringing us to four a month.

We have shared the dramas of bushfire and drought with our fellow stall holders.

We have grown, preserved and baked a huge variety of produce each week.

We have enjoyed meeting new customers and loved the interactions we have had with our loyal regulars.

We have had brilliant helpers who turned up in hail and pouring rain as well as sweltering heat.

Thanks Viv and John.

We have shared recipes, ideas, dreams and gossip.

We have been thrilled and disappointed.

So thanks for all your support, keep reading the blog for updates on what we are doing on the farm and we'll see you again at a Farmer's Market near you when the weather turns warmer and the days are longer.

After the peas

Over Summer we grow a large variety of peas and beans.

Many of these are eaten and sold as they are, some are dried on racks for eating in soups and stews over Winter, some are frozen and some are saved for replanting next season.

When they are in season bean and pea plants are so prolific that at times we harvest them several times a day.

I love harvesting them and getting lost in all that green.


After the first frosts come the plants turn brown very quickly and we gather the last of the pods.

This is what it looked like after the chooks had spent a few weeks in there eating the leftovers, scratching the ground and generally cleaning it up and fertilizing it with their poo.

I can't believe this is my fourteenth post and already I am talking about poo!

After the chooks have done their thing we pull down the trellises and yank up the irrigation lines.

The ground is then plowed up and we sow a crop of oats that will grow lush and green over Winter and be plowed back into the soil in Spring to add organic matter and carbon to it. This is called a green manure crop.

Over Winter the soil grows a crop that feeds it and come Spring it will be ready to start planting lots of organic vegie goodies all over again.

It is funny to think that in six months time the last photo will look like the first photo all over again.