How To Pick Up Chicks.

We are off to Melbourne this afternoon to see some family, some friends, pick up my new computer and do some school holiday stuff.

But before we go there's some preparing to do for the 200 one day old chickens that will be coming home with us tomorrow afternoon.

We spread out a bale of straw to sit their house on.

We used to take the wheels off the house and park it on the ground but the straw acts as insulation.

Liam drives the house onto the straw where it will sit for the next few months.

The wire mesh is the floor of the house.

The heat lamps get hooked up.

These lamps have ceramic bulbs so they get hot but don't light up.

This is to keep them warm but not to keep them awake.

The lights are on pulleys that can be raised and lowered as the chicks get older and taller and hardier.

The corners of the house are rounded so they can't get stuck in them or squash their friends.

Next for the wood shavings.

We use wood shavings for bedding on the floor of the house as its virtually dust free and incredibly absorbant. The chicks will live on these shavings for the next few weeks and we wont have to change them at all.

The feeders and waterers are full, the cardboard is down, so they don't get buried in the wood shavings in the first few days.

See ya tomorrow!!

Sunday Afternoon

Here at Daylesford Organics we have a tradition of making pasta on Sunday afternoons.
It's a whole family event.

Mixing, rolling, cutting, draping and drying the dough.



This is the view from our kitchen window.
It's the calmest its been for days.

The house dam is the fullest its been for years thanks to the help of the new bore. You might actually need that bridge to get across to the island.

That path behind the bridge was part of the containment line during the February bushfire. You can see where it burnt through our bush just behind there.

Hello duckies!

Dinner time!

And the vegetarian option.

Put Victoria On Your Table, the movie

Here's the Put-Victoria-On-Your-Table movie I've been promising you.

Please note, the handsome man with the carrots and the beetroots is our very own Bren.

Put Victoria On Your Table (part two)

Last Thursday Bren attended the official launch of Put Victoria On Your Table (PVOYT).  I have previously written about our role in the campaign.

It was a lunch held in inner city Melbourne at Chapter House and the invitation told you to be there at 12 sharp.

The table centers were described as nests of regional Victorian produce.

Included in these nests were our heirloom carrots and our heirloom beetroot.

Also included were Daylesford Organics friends Daylesford Hepburn Mineral Springs Co and Holy Goat Cheese.

I love the look of the long white tables and all that earthy, untouched produce.

Before lunch was served there were some speeches, the launch of the logo and then the movie was screened. The movie was the story of Matt Wilkinson travelling around regional Victoria, picking up the produce to make the lunch about to be served.

And then for the lunch.

In case you can't read the menu above, Alla Wolf Taska from the Lake House in Daylesford made; medallions of smoked Skipton eel, Istra pancetta, remoulade of Daylesford Organics beetroot and fresh horseradish.

Cheers!

Introducing Foxs Lane

I'd like to let readers of the Daylesford Organics blog know that I have started up a second blog; http://foxslane.blogspot.com/ 

Foxslane will be a blog that documents the things I make, bake and create.

Go on over, have a look and let me know what you think.

Mulching the garlic

This year we planted the garlic in between the rows of some of our younger apple trees.

The garlic shoots are about six weeks old.

They are shooting out of the ground now so it's time to mulch them.

The reason we mulch them is to stop the weeds from coming up and competing for water, nutrients and space.

We mulch them by covering the surrounding soil with a thick layer of certified organic oaten straw.

Oaten straw is the stalks left behind after the oats are removed.

That's Liam in his squirrel hunting hat.

He tells us it's warm.

That's how he gets it past the style police anyway!

I love how freshly mulched garlic looks, all snug and warm.

Now that tiny plant has to grow a long green stalk, some leaves, a flower and then the magical cloved bulb.

I can hardly wait til November.

The Gorse Munchers

This morning after I dropped the girls off at school I sat in my car for a while and watched a Mother and her three year old son watching some council workers digging a hole in the road.

As they stood there and watched oblivious to the cold and the wind I couldn't help but think about how different my life is as the mother of three girls.

It was only a few minutes later when I got home that I realised that perhaps some of the stuff that goes on here at Daylesford Organics is wasted on little girls. That little boy would have loved to come home and spend the day with these two machines.

The one above is a excavator with a mulching head and the one below is a skid steer also with a mulching head attached.

These two monstrous machines are here for the next few days to get rid of as much gorse as they can mulch through.

Gorse was introduced to Australia as on ornamental plant or hedge.
It is classified as a weed because it is very difficult to eradicate and because of its aggressive seed dispersal.

As organic farmers the way we try to get rid of this spiky plant that has totally invaded some areas of our farm is to cut it and burn the small areas and then have these big machines mulch the larger areas.

A property near here poisons their gorse but it seems to have little effect at all.

So the beasts will be here for the next few days beeping and eating away at the gorse and my girls won't pay them any attention. Perhaps if they were pink and covered with sparkles it would be a different story.