WELCOME TO PATRICE NEWELL OLIVE OIL & GARLIC
....and some early spring lambs.
2016 SEASON PURPLE GLAMOUR GARLIC AVAILABLE SOON.
To be kept up to date on our 2016 Garlic crop, available to order online direct from Elmswood Farm late October, please join our email newsletter to the right.
September 2016 - 37 sleeps till harvest
Although Dead Nettle is an annoying weed in the garlic patch, it's a happy edition to the field for the bees.
Because Betty and the crew have diligently kept weeds out of this year's crop, the bulbs are already showing signs of future deluxe size.
July
Olive Oil deliveries continue......
The garlic's well advanced and there's plenty.
Frosts are simply part of the required seasonal process - everything's on schedule and looking very good.
weeding....
never ending and relentless no matter what time of year or how well done pre planting.
No cheap & simple herbicide sprays here at Elmswood we have, Will, Betty Luke & Mick working in the cold paddocks through the winter and into the spring for deluxe sized garlic bulbs rely on having the space to themselves for 9 months a year.
Flooding rivers not a problem
These photos show the Sheoaks with their feet in flooded water.
These huge trees were born after we took the cattle out of the riparian zone so that together with the perennials had a chance to take hold……Just look at them now!
June 2016 - 130 sleeps till Garlic harvest.
Garlic looking good in the morning sun.
Lots of rain too! And the Pages River has been flooding.
May 2016
There were loads of different bird nests across the grove during harvest and thankfully some didn’t shake out during harvest.
At last count 117!
And the Garlic is making good progress
The Garlic is now well established before the cold slow winter ahead takes grip.
April 2016 - Olive Harvest.
Bins filling, the press is cranking and so is our online organic olive oil shop.
The sun's shining down on us as we pluck the fruit from the trees.
The one thing olive harvest isn't is quiet. The shaker is very noisy.
March 2016 - 4 sleeps till olive harvest
If all goes well we should be harvesting our olives next week!
As soon as we start I’ll email you so you can order some delicious fresh and unfiltered oil!
Our Olio Nuovo.
Our straight off the press special!
The Garlic's going in & 28 Sleeps until Olive Harvest!
March has arrived with much excitement at Elmswood.
Our new equipment is being christened.
Here Mike Fix ( Fix Engineering ) and manager Glen Clarke test out the new soil Rehabilitator.
February 2016
We’re getting ready to plant our 2016 garlic crop but our eyes are on this year’s Olive Oil.
Olives are looking good but a lot can happen between now and mid April.
Fingers crossed.
January 2016 - 119 Sleeps till Olive harvest
Olive Harvest expected in April, for our Olive Oil offering after May.
So far, there's plenty of fruit dangling from the trees - enough to say there's no reason (at this stage) not to say a huge harvest is not entirely out of the question...........this year's crop has plenty of fruit that's been through a lot and come along way.
To be on the special Olive Oil list - particularly for the Fresh and Unfiltered or if the yield gets tight....
Please click here
December 2015
THE ONLINE SHOP – FOR DELIVERY DIRECT FROM ELMSWOOD FARM WILL RETURN SOON....
SEASON'S GREETINGS
We will post the last of the garlic on Monday 14th December.
The 750gm volume of garlic is so we can offer free postage on these last few bulbs before we close the shop. The garlic is SMALL, but the clove size is still good. And of course the flavour is the same.
Manager Lindsay
checking our garlic boxes before they leave Scone Post Office.
Clipping the garlic in the sunshine after the rains…..
Looking forward to some freshly cured garlic?
The colour of the garlic clove skins are colouring up nicely.
October 2015 - Garlic Harvest Under Way
Patrice Newell Purple Glamour Garlic is being harvested! All looking good. A great team has been hard at it!
Here's the scape from our Purple Glamour Garlic. The scape remains green as it develops the ‘flower’ or bulbil. The shape is referred to as a turban, hence this garlic is classified as a TURBAN variety.
Day 1 Harvest 2015. Here is the team harvesting our early purple garlic…..NOT our main Glamour variety which is still growing.
Always fun to kick off the season, test out the gear and get in the 'garlic groove' with this trial variety.
We call this garlic our early purple…it’s an artichoke style, soft-neck. We’ve been testing it for a few years now and although I am very fond of it, the flavour is not as sweet as our main Glamour variety.
Our Purple Glamour Garlic is doing well in the heat and most of the plants have scapes popping out now…..
If only every harvest could occur in the school holidays. Always fun to have the next generation help. Here, Ben, Grace and Georgie help hang the garlic.
Glen reinforced our hay shed to ensure it won’t collapse! It can hold 3 tonne of garlic. Thanks Glen.
September 2015
Hello garlic lovers, Phillip and I have been in Vietnam and Cambodia. The garlic has been enjoying the rain and sunshine while we’ve been away. All on track for a 2015 crop!
July 2015
Weeding and more weeding……they just keep coming!
We keep planting different varieties but so far we still love our glamour garlic the best. Big cloves. Easy to peel. Not too hot. Sweet when baked. All in all delicious!
Cattle have got their winter coats on too.
It’s been great to finally post some honey made on the farm by our genius bees.
June 2015
What a time it’s been in the Hunter Valley.
We have been spared the worst of the winds, but many of our friends have been washed away, cut off, crops ruined and left with expensive repair bills.
In-between showers we were able to shake some trees and get some olive oil made…..
And then into the post to the very lucky customers, on our Fresh Olive Oil list.
Sorry we just didn't have enough this year to be making a racket, just an email to those on one of Roger's various special lists....
To be on the Fresh Olive Oil list - to be the first to be notified -
please email Roger [here]
April
Another Autumn and another garlic crop is planted.
Thank you sky for the two inches of rain over Easter. Just what the garlic ordered.
Our home-made planter still does the trick.
The garlic may not be perfectly, evenly, spaced but we find this doesn’t matter very much.
The Lablab hay is spread over the whole area. (2000 small square bales).
The garlic is already peeping out above the mulch.
As we’re expecting another dry season, we’ve added onto the existing watering system. Two rows of irrigation tape for three rows of garlic.
March
Our 2015 garlic crop is being planted! - garlic stored as seed stock….ready for breaking up
Despite this very hot autumn, the garlic cloves are ready to plant. Let’s hope it will rain soon!
We’ve made millet and lablab hay this year for our mulch needs
I often get asked if people can just drop into the farm….and it’s difficult to coordinate the time. We’re having a day discussing organic farming at Gundy. It will start at the Gundy Hall where Tim Marshall will talk about organic certification and provide a lot of different case studies. Then we’ll visit Elmswood where we’ll be getting ready to plant garlic.
It’s free. But you need to book
Organic Farming Workshop
Monday 16 March 2015
9.30 am – 1.00 pm
Gundy Hall, then
“Elmswood”, Scone Road Gundy
Morning Tea and refreshments will be provided.
Cost: Free
Hunter Local Land Services (LLS) invites interested participants to attend a workshop on organic farming, the benefits, challenges, costs involved in converting to organic farming, potential markets and how to access these, selling your own organic produce.
Tim Marshall – TM Organics, will talk about the benefits of organic farming for soil and livestock health, organic weed management, the conversion process and potential markets for Organic produce, with special reference to livestock, viticulture and perennial horticulture. Tim has thirty five years’ experience in organic growing, standards and certification in Australia, Europe, USA and Asia.
Patrice Newell – certified organic farmer and retailer, Gundy, will host a farm visit and talk about the production of organic beef, olive oil and garlic and what’s involved in retailing their farm produce.
Please book your place by Monday 9 March 2015.
Book online [here] or contact Hunter Local Land Services Muswellbrook office on (02) 6542 4444.
February 2015
The lab lab has been cut and the mulch about to be made.
Planting 2015 garlic in 6 weeks time……..
January 2015
Well, it has happened! We’ve run out of garlic.
Thank you to all our customers. You’ve heard the message buy early and you have!
We’ll have to plant more next year.
November
Garlic lovers alert!
Looks like we’ve almost run out of garlic! Sorry.
We need to finish the orders we have and do a stock take.
After all we have to keep some garlic to replant!
IT’S READY…….OUR GREAT LITTLE ONLINE GARLIC SHOP IS OPEN
Our PURPLE PREMIUM GLAMOUR GARLIC is our main variety. Best by mid Autumn.
A hard-neck. Average clove number is 12. They’re big cloves, with purple/brown skins. The garlic inside is white.
The outside skins – up to 6 layers – are purple when we harvest but as they break off, they increasingly become lighter. SO. Our purple garlic sometimes starts to look white as the season progresses. The purple colour of the skins of the cloves however, usually stay a purple/brown colour. The flavour is moderately hot, with a sweetness. Many customers say the low sulphur aspect means its very easy to digest. It’s our favourite.
The Garlic is curing to perfection
All the garlic has been harvested, it’s curing in the shed and we’ve started clipping and getting it all ready for sale……we’ll let you know when it is done, so we can start sending it out!
October - Harvest has commenced
...everything is on track for online orders very soon
It's definitely going to be a garlicy Christmas!
September
This year the CWA has nominated GARLIC as their crop to discover. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking about my favourite vegetable at my local branch Scone and this week at Maitland. Thanks to the team for my CWA gifts too.
A little bit of rain and the garlic starts to shoot up in gratitude. A little scratch around the root will reveal the bulb just starting to form. September is the month to keep the water up to the plants to ensure they bulb up properly.
The bees have been all over the rocket this August. And judging by the clusters of buds on the ironbarks we’re destined for a honey flow very soon. Moved some hives closer to home to watch the spring excitement.
August
This winter the most exciting garlic news has been that sprouting garlic may have more health benefits than fresh garlic! Who would have thought…….so think twice before you toss out that tired garlic……
Read a review of the report from ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry here.
Please let us not say another bad word about sprouting garlic.
May - Garlic Update
Well it is very dry here, but the garlic is mulched now and the weeds have started to poke through.....The next garlic crop is on its way.
By now our main purple garlic variety is well and truly sprouted if you have some in your kitchen! I’m still using the cloves and always cut up the green shoots too.
If you have some left over, stick it in the ground, even if you don’t get a big bulb in spring at least you’ll have some tasty green garlic shoots through winter.
April - the 2014 garlic planting is underway.
It doesn't take long until the first shoots of garlic appear.
FEBRUARY 2014
LATE-HARVEST WHITE - SOLD OUT!!!!
Our garlic crates seem to be emptying pretty fast now.
Early -White garlic also SOLD OUT!!!!
Purple Premium Available
And an end of season special........
Although we like the bigger purple bulbs the slightly smaller purple bulbs are really very good. PLUS they last longer than bigger bulbs.
We still have some of our original boxes. We thought they were pretty good when we designed these but they needed too much taping up so we changed the design, BUT I never threw them out because I hate waste. They’re still in perfect condition.
So we’ve pulled them out of the back of our container and worked out we can fit 2kg of small bulbs in a box - without any wood wool.
Until stocks last this is the bargain of the season!
Click here to order.
Small purple premiums are on SPECIAL
JANUARY 2014
By January we have lots of different garlic offerings as we sort and grade our different varieties.
Our purple premium remains our NO 1 GARLIC.
LONGER-LASTING, LATE-HARVEST WHITE has up to 20 cloves.
This is a soft-neck garlic with white skins on the cloves and on outside. They often get water marks on them, which brown. So it’s not the prettiest garlic around.
We love it though because it has always been our best lasting garlic. Perfect right up to June.
Some of the bigger cloves have a green colour. This is perfectly okay and just an attribute of this variety. It doesn’t mean it’s about to sprout. This garlic has much more punch than the purple. It’s hot. A little goes a long way. If you like a strong garlic flavour this is perfect.
And a beautiful WHITE garlic is available too.
This is a very creamy variety perfect if you like to do a lot of baking.
It was a treat for Phillip and I to have our daughter Aurora back from Edinburgh for a brief visit. And there she was at work in the garlic shed skillfully packing our beloved bulbs.
Half, 1, 5 and now
3 kg box – you’re spoiled for choice!
Click here to order your fresh new season supply.
We wish everyone a wonderful Garlic season.
Back by Popular Demand
Olives and Garlic go so well together.
SIMPLY CHANGE THE DELIVERY ADDRESS AS YOU ORDER and your present from our farm can be on its way.
Our PURPLE PREMIUM GLAMOUR GARLIC is our main variety.
A hard-neck. Average clove number is 12. They’re big cloves, with purple/brown skins. The garlic inside is white.
The outside skins – up to 6 layers – are purple when we harvest but as they peel off, they increasingly become lighter. SO. Our purple garlic sometimes starts to look white as the season progresses. The flavour is moderately hot, with a sweetness. Many customers say the low sulphur aspect means its very easy to digest. It’s our favourite.
Here's the hard working garlic team on the last day of harvesting our purple garlic. Still smiling.
Thank you team.
The elegance of the garlic scape.
Garlic harvest is underway. Lindsay, Graeme, Mami, Betty, Luca and Gavin! Thank you.
"Soooo excited. Your wonderful garlic is spread around a very large family and my daughters are already saying “When????” Kind regards" Di
"looks fabo, looking forward to giving my friend Angela some of your delicious garlic, can smell and taste already!!! best wishes", Trisha
"Hurrah, thanks for the update. I really enjoy them. I'm suffering bad withdrawal we haven't had any garlic for 6 weeks. Counting the days. Thank you for all your effort to bring us the most beautiful garlic in the world! And all your efforts to bring environmental issues to the fore. Best regards", Maggie
"I cannot wait for the Harvest to begin and once again we will be enjoying your delicious garlic. So delighted that all is going to plan despite the hiccups you have to face along the way. Best wishes", Libby
October 2013
It was at the end of the last garlic season that Australian Country magazine visited. See here their lovely story about our garlic!
I sliced down this garlic to show you the scape!
You can really see the different types of garlic now in the paddock.
What we have here is bulbils on the right, just to show you what comes from this tiny thing……a one clove garlic that we can re plant next year to get a big bulb.
I'm always slicing open the garlics to check how the cloves inside are forming.
As you can see they're all looking fabulous. The dark bit in the centre is the scape.
We have at least 7 juicy skins protecting each bulb now.
September 2013
This is what I like to see……fresh garlic - so light and crunchy - in the vege basket for dinner.
49 sleeps till harvest and all is on track. The plants are bulbing up well and soon cloves will start to form.
August 2013
Winter is the time farmers usually go visiting.
Organic Farmers - Neil and Gina Wiseman from Coleambally called in.
If you buy Vitasoy's organic soy milk the chances are Neil and Gina grew the soybeans.
Nothing beats a good discussion with innovative farmers. Successful land management is all in the detail. If only Coleambally was closer! Please come back Neil and Gina.
August - and Spring is already in the air.
In four weeks we'll start to see this year's garlic bulbs fill out underground….ready for harvest in October!
July 2013
It's been a wet time at the farm, perfect for root vegetables!
We still have some white garlic that hasn't spouted!
Keeping the garlic in a cool, well ventilated place is essential for keeping garlic fresh.
June 2013
For more regular posts please visit our Facebook Page
Weeding garlic is a quite a job as you can see here!
I love the month of June.
Cold nights. Warm short days.
Winter is the season for slow growing.
The garlic is in the ground.
The olive trees are thinking about next season.
The calves are weaned.
The cows are about to calve again.
The ewes are about to lamb.
May 2013
Our annual treat at the Palm Beach Boathouse with graphic artist Katherine Smith - responsible for our gorgeous boxes and thank you notes - and garlic obsessive business partner Roger Sternhell.
April 2013
Sad day last box of white packed up today. Good bye garlic season……roll on November 2013.
The end of April and the new garlic crop is looking good.
Purple hardneck garlic will eventually sprout.
It's 100% natural and safe to eat.
Lisa from Taiwan breaks up the large bulbs of Purple Glamour Garlic for planting.
What an amazing Autumn. A Perfect Easter. We hope your Easter break was peaceful.
Garlic planting has begun at Elmswood.
Graeme and Lisa surrounded by purple garlic being broken up for planting.
And here the planters are getting 4 rows done at a time.
The native grasses have thrived with the rain during March. They're now all waving their seed heads in the wind.
March 2013
Wondering which garlic to buy?
If you're looking to buy a garlic that you want to last three months or more - we suggest you order our Late Season WHITE.
This garlic is a variety that won't sprout until May or June.
Some customers have advised theirs stayed firm and fresh well into September.
Click here for more information on storing garlic.
Please sign up for our newsletter - to the right - and we'll notify you when new season fresh PURPLE garlic is available in November 2013.
Remember Garlic is a SUMMER crop.
February 2013
Greetings from the farm, where the sun warms, the river flows, the grass jumps and there’s no imminent weather events looming.
In seven weeks we’ll be planting our 2013 garlic crop.
So we’ve been sorting seed stock deciding volumes and varieties.
When we pack our premium purple we also grade for size. So this year we again have a few crates of
SLIGHTLY SMALLER PURPLE GLAMOUR GARLIC.
Available at the special price of $30 a kilogram, packed in our narrow box with no woodwool.
January 2013
Summer Storms
What began as a quiet Christmas - New Year break at home with friends and family became high drama. In the middle of the heat wave, with farmer friends losing crops and belongings in bushfires, we were hit by a whopping freak storm that lasted just 20 terrifying minutes. It uprooted many of our oldest and most beautiful trees, rampaged through the olive grove, damaged electricity poles, gear and vehicles. Elmswood looked like a war zone. Phillip and Gavin have been removing trees off fences and clearing roads ever since.
My favourite tree killed.
Extra help was needed to clean up the mess
Beautiful Olive trees planted in 1997 where uprooted.
AVAILABLE NOW
- Purple Glamour Garlic
- Late-Harvest Longer-lasting White Garlic
- A box of different garlic varieties
New research confirms Garlic CAN help reduce hypertension. Read the article just out in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition here.
Our Varieties
There are hundreds of different types of garlic but many of the differences can be subtle. Our TWO main varieties are strikingly different!
LONGER-LASTING, LATE-HARVEST WHITE has up to 20 cloves.
This is a soft-neck garlic with white skins on the cloves and on outside. They often get water marks on them, which brown. So it’s not the prettiest garlic around.
We love it though because it has always been our best lasting garlic. Perfect right up to June.
Some of the bigger cloves have a green colour. This is perfectly okay and just an attribute of this variety. It doesn’t mean it’s about to sprout. This garlic has much more punch than the purple. It’s hot. A little goes a long way. If you like a strong garlic flavour this is perfect.
A box of mixed Garlic varieties
A special offering until we run out…. A box of selected different garlic’s. Big, small, oblong, hot, sweet. Including our premium purple - you’ll notice them because they’ll be the biggest bulbs - and also the late harvest white. All grown on the farm in our biodynamic trial plots. Sorry, they won’t all be labelled.
December 2012 - Happy Garlicy Christmas.
May you all have a peaceful Christmas break.
The Garlic Packing Shed is also on a small break - deliveries resume 7th January.
You can still place orders over this time.
Please sign up for our newsletter - see on the right - and we will notify you when our farm produce becomes available.
Garlic Gifts to Send
SIMPLY CHANGE THE DELIVERY ADDRESS AS YOU ORDER and your present from our farm can be on its way.
We can write a special note to be included inside the box, and/or place another sticker on the outside of the box for special instructions
Olives and Garlic go so well together.
November 2012
"Hi Garlic People. Just a note to say thankyou for the amazing garlic. We have received our 5kg and already are enjoying it even on toast with tomato at breakfast!"
Regards, Rhonda
Garlic Deliveries Full Steam Ahead!
No need to complain about inferior imported Garlic anymore. Our Fresh Purple Glamour Garlic is here!
Graeme, Betty & Jane have been working hard clipping the Garlic for sale.
October 2012
The Great Eastern Ranges Initiative is a plan to connect people and nature along the east coast of Australia. From far north Queensland to the Grampians in Victoria – That’s 3,600 kms!
The Hunter Valley is a section with many nature gaps. Land clearing and mining has played havoc…..…we need to re-connect the biodiversity corridors here.
We’re on a mission to fix it. The management of privately owned land is crucial.
See more at www.gersteppingstones.org.au
Honey is on the way soon.......
Welcome to the month of October. Our garlic crop is growing before our eyes. We’re going to be harvesting our EARLY purple crop any day now. And by the end of the month our main, PURPLE GLAMOUR variety should be ready to hang in the shed for curing.
It’s an exciting month!
September 2012
Spring has arrived with perfect weather, but it’s been dry here. For the first time in two years we’ve had to water the garlic crop in September. Without water, the bulbs won’t fill out.
Here’s our main purple garlic pulled out of the ground September 24th. You’ll notice the bulb shape is just starting to form.
August 2012
August has been a time for holidays at Elmswood. Graeme went back to China for another visit, I’m worried he wants to move there! And Phillip and I headed off to the UK where we enjoyed London during the final week of the Olympics and then went onto Edinburgh to visit our daughter.
It was amazing how rare fresh garlic and good olive oil was in Scotland. One really had to hunt for it. But one happy farmer not far from Edinburgh did grow some hot purple garlic. Here’s me with his box at the Castle Terrace Market, Edinburgh.
St John’s Wort, Hypericum perforatum, is a weed rapidly spreading across the nation causing all of us in the Hunter some grief every spring, but here it was as a garden feature in Edinburgh!
July 2012
This winter's so cold even the thermometer's frozen. We've put a warm blanket of mulch on the garlic but the poor olive trees have been enduring minus 8 degrees.
The garlic is mulched but Graeme and Betty have been checking all the rows for weeds anyway.
Mustard is in flower along the verges of the crop.
Besides having glorious honey the bees provide the wax for our candles.
They smell delicious when burning and I use a thick wick to make them last.
There was a brown snake around the house all summer…..when I cleared the old summer grass from the vegetable garden a perfect snake skin was hidden underneath…..I guess the snake will be back again next season!
June 2012
June 1st was a special day. The start of a new season……. and a trip off farm to Camden where we gathered at Mickey Robertson’s Glenmore House for a chat about the farm. In particular olive oil.
Here’s me and Mickey in her gorgeous garden.
We had a fantastic lunch munching on her garden fresh vegies.
If you’d like to learn about growing vegetables, she conducts kitchen garden classes.
The best thing about weather this cold is that it provides the best excuse to fry vegetables.
I know I’ve said it before, but frying in homemade grass fed animal fat is one of my favourite kitchen traditions.
We butcher our own meat here so I get to render the fat.
This is a very special ingredient. Grass fed, no chemicals.
I pour the fat into cake tins. Let it set, remove it, then freeze it.
Here's a block of Fat. I melt it down.
Get the fat hot. It usually takes about 5 minutes to cook, but this depends on the size you cut the vegies. The bigger the pieces the longer it takes.
Scoop out with slotted spoon or tongs.
Drain on paper and sprinkle with salt!
The best thing about this is, you can eat a little and feel so satisfied. For me, this food always reduces my aches and pains!
I keep the fat in the pan and re use it about three times.
When it’s ready to be thrown away, I cut it up into pieces and twist it into newspaper and use as kindling.
Waste not want not.
May 2012
We’ve had frosts for seven mornings.
It’s been one of the coldest May’s in memory.
Minus 8. I can’t remember having such heavy frosts this early in the season.
The garlic loves it. The Olive trees don’t!
May has to be the best month everywhere in the world.
Sad to say but this year we have not harvested our olives for oil.
A small crop together with abundant birds meant we hand picked the best and now they are soaking in salty water in preparation for pickling olives……more on that later.
Meanwhile Garlic is looking wonderful, and the bees are buzzing.
We're looking forward to munching on some good olives after they've cured in the brine.
I don't remember there being a lot to smile about during the tiny olive harvest, but it clearly wasn't all bad. Just disappointing we didn't get a big crop. But that's farming for you!
Even Graeme chipped in to pick olives.
Roger and Phillip taking a rest during olive harvest.
Gavin carefully went through every crate to make sure there were no bruised, nipped or ugly olives in the crates.
April 2012
Greetings to all this beautiful Autumn.
Trees are turning and Demeter is standing proud in our garden!
Olive harvest is hopefully going to happen at the end of April. A poor crop this year - after the massive one last year!
It's hard to believe I’m still picking up odd bits of chain around the farm.
My collection has become quite extensive.
They're glorious.
Meanwhile, over Easter, we finally boxed up soap ready for delivery. The wet summer meant it just refused to fully cure. It's a slightly darker colour due to the greenness of the oil.
March 2012
2011 Garlic Harvest is Sold Out.
Preparations and plantings for our 2012 crop – due November 2012 – are full steam ahead.
To be notified when the Garlic is ready to order please sign up for our Newsletter.
From tranquil clear water to a torrent.
All the debris dumped on our bridge.
Greetings.
It’s that time of year again when we stop thinking about one crop and pay attention to the next.
Yes, we’re about to plant our 2012 garlic crop.
Please go the garlic pages to read all about our garlic.
Meanwhile olive trees, cattle and sheep are taking up our attention.
We do not sell our beef direct nor to special butcher shops.
But the cattle are certified organic and managed using holistic management principles.
Our famous premium Biodynamic Extra Virgin Olive Oil is ready to post in a
3 x 500ml bottle pack
and also our new glamorous economy box
6 X 500ml bottles.
Order click here to order on line our Australian biodynamic Olive Oil
Olive Oil deliveries Full Steam Ahead
Above and below is our main Purple hard neck variety
January 2012
This week we trimmed our LATE HARVEST, WHITE SOFT-NECK GARLIC.
This is the garlic that we plant two months after our main crop and consequently harvest two months later.
Some of the cloves have a natural GREEN tinge.
It’s the last variety to sprout.
We’ve been planting it each year to test it and for the first time we’re selling it.
It’s definitely a stronger flavoured garlic and takes longer to bake than the purple.
I literally use half as much when cooking.
The only snag with it is that it rained just before harvest and the outer skins were stained brown – so it’s perhaps not as beautiful on the outside. But remains perfect on the inside.
But just as a crooked carrot can still taste as good as a straight one, I hope for those who snapped up the crop - you’ll enjoy this garlic. For those who missed out, again sorry.
OCTOBER 2011
The Garlic Inspector Echidna is pleased with progress
SEPTEMBER 2011 - 35 Sleeps till Garlic Harvest
Spring has arrived. September is the month when garlic starts to bulb up and we prepare the soil for the following years crop.
Here’s Graeme with the winter oats we grew on last year’s garlic area.
We plough it back it to help build up organic matter in the soil.
The soil is alive with worms, smells sweet and looks edible
"I am super keen to buy your garlic. The box you sent us last year lasted for ages. I confitted (is that even a word?) it and used the garlic confit in our aioli.
I also went foraging down on the banks of the Nepean where wild fennel grows like weeds. This is potent stuff and I used this with your garlic to make a super garlic and wild fennel mayonnaise."
Ross Dobson Food Writer
JULY 2011
Garlic is on track for November - 85 sleeps till Harvest
June 2011 - Philip and I in China
- We met some farmers growing garlic for their household.
We didn’t get to the big garlic farms, but the garlic most people were growing in the south was small but strong in flavour.
- Beekeepers were out in force
Along many streets we came across Beekeepers. All the bees were calm, no need for nets, and each person was quick to offer a sample of their honey. The bees we saw were only working local natural flowers, not crops. The different honeys were all floral. All quite unusual.
- Yulong River was spectacular
These Karst mountains have been my idea of wild China forever. I want to go back.
- We had a lesson in traditional tofu making
Making tofu is very time consuming. The beans are soaked, crushed, and then drained. The pulp is fed to animals and the milk fermented with a piece of gypsum, then strained and allowed to set.
- Many farmers had Fluffy Lion Dogs - or Chows
Who doesn’t want a Fluffy Lion Dog?
May 2011 - Olive Oil....How delicious.
I must be increasing my fat quota 100% this time of year. I’m pouring olive oil over everything.
It’s also the season for Jerusalem Artichokes those much underrated tubers.
My friends Gideon and Eli were visiting last weekend and filmed a few things around the farm– including me harvesting Jerusalem Artichokes……… if you’re not familiar with how they grow you can see the film here.
My regular way of cooking them is a simple sauté.
Preferably I get enough to fill a single layer of a fry pan.
Scrub the artichokes – no need to peel - and cut into pieces about the size of a walnut.
Sauté one onion, and when cooked add the artichokes, mix and then add 2 cups of white wine, then 2 cups of good stock. They absorb a lot of liquid so be careful not to let the pan dry out. If you don’t have stock, add Worchester sauce, or soy, or even miso to water, a dash of balsamic vinegar is good too. Put the lid on and in about 15 minutes the juices will get syrupy. Stick a knife into them to test if they’re soft. If they need longer, add more stock or water. When ready, I pile them into a serving dish and pour loads of olive oil over it and chopped parsley.
They have a nutty, comforting flavour.
When Fresh Olive Oil is available try Tony Bilson's Olive Oil Ice Cream Recipe.
P.S. I’ve started a PhD with the Tom Farrell Institute at Newcastle University on Pyrolysis and Biochar. More on that this year as my research develops.
A letter from Roger Sternhell
Thank you Patrice.
You’re a brave farmer, entertaining my mad fruiterers ideas from cyber space.
But most of all, thanks for your genuine integrity and commitment behind your sustainable practices and the remarkable quality that you produce.
Thanks for having a go, of being proud of what you have achieved at Elmswood and sharing your story and most importantly for the booty itself.
All this fuss over web sites, on line ordering, credit card facilities, banks and information technology, Australia Post and the production of getting your fine produce, directly, efficiently and reliably from your farm to deserved diners’ kitchens is worthy of support, endorsement and excitement.
All the tasks have been a pleasure. It's been like ten years of Dynamic Organics all rolled into one.
Anyhow, enough of my banging on, there is so much more to read, I do hope you enjoy the fascinating story of Patrice Newell and Elmswood Farm in cyber space.
Regards, Roger.
