Lavandula - Swiss Italian Farm

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Lavandula this week

This week the weather turned cold and we're moving into winter.So Lavandula is open weekends only through June, July and August; and daily through the Victorian school holidays.

Smoke curls out of the cafe chimney and Jarrat Volke has moved to his winter menu (pork belly, lamb shank pie, tagliatelle with an osso bucco bolognese). When it's sunny everyone wants to eat al fresco in the ash grove, when it's moody and misty the cafe interior is warmed by the wood stove.

Carol White's European-style garden is at its best at the moment. A Melbourne girl who fell in love with the European feel of the house, dairy and barn, she planted a practical garden for use in her kitchen, and grew lavender as her cash crop, making sure that the gardens had the European look to suit the buildings.The lavender has been trimmed and looks like grey green sculpture. The vegie garden has been put to bed under a blanket of mulch. The trees have lost their leaves and little birds are beginning to think about territory and nests.


Napoleon at Lavandula's La Primavera Sunday 24 October      Entry $5 $2

As well as the usual ingredients of our lovely little spring festival saluting the farm's Swiss Italian heritage,
this year we have an amazing treat to mark our 10th La Primavera...
a costumed re-enactment of the 1796 Battle of Arcole.
Napoleon hugely enhanced his reputation when he led his troops across a bridge in the Adige Valley, to outflank the Austrian Army and cut its retreat. (At this time the northern Italians and some Swiss Italians were supportive of Napoleon, hoping he would rid the northern states of Austrian rule)

The enactors will make a camp, rehearse on Saturday, want to have a Georgian dinner Sat night and will fight the battle once only at 12 on Sunday.

 

Come and join us...




ARCHIVE

DAYLESFORD MASSAGE EN MASSE

To highlight Daylesford’s pre-eminent position as massage, spa and wellbeing capital of Australia, Tourism Victoria created Massage en Masse and located it at Lavandula Tuesday 30 March.

In the early morning light, on the lawns of Lavandula’s beautiful formal Italianate garden, 263 masseurs and their 263 clients smashed the Guinness Book of Records number for The World’s Biggest Simultaneous Massage...

Now, to be part of it, you'll have to come find a masseur - www.spatown.com.au/body therapy

 

 

 

Lavandula's Autumn Harvest Festival Sunday 2 May 2010

Our next round of harvest will be the autumn crops. Already the quinces are turning yellow and their fragrance fills the air.

Autumn is a busy time for bringing in the main food crops at Lavandula: grapes for wine, fruit and vegetables for jam and chutneys, and the olives.

When the grapes are ready we make wine.

When the olives are ready we harvest some for oil and others for pickling.

So, Lavandula's Autumn Harvest Festival demonstrates these seasonal farm chores: jam making, fruit bottling and olive pickling. Of course as usual, we'll have food, wine, lively rocky jazzy music, and slides about travel in Ticino . You'll find both succulents and gorgeous chooks for sale.

Lavandula's Autumn Harvest Festival  10.30am-5.30pm    Sunday 2 May  2009  Entry $5  $2

 

 

 

 

Lavender harvest, January 2010

When the morning is hot , the harvesters will be at work early, bending to move aside the bees and cut with hand sickles the stems of lavender.

Before Christmas their work started on the short stemmed deep purple Hidcote lavender, then they moved on to our mainstay, Miss Donnington - in our climate it's the best lavender to hold its fragrance.

Basketfuls are taken up to the house and bunched, then hung under the verandah roof to dry.

Some bunches go straight to the Barn for sale fresh (we sell 40,000/annually).

Late in January when the weather has been hotter, we process fresh lavender through the still: