St Patrick's Day - and still the spuds grow on

Called by Fernleigh Farms on St Pat's day - the sort-of official beginning of harvest - to check on our spuds. The plants are looking fantastic. Harvest is now scheduled to take place during the Swiss Italia Festa on Sunday 20 April 10am - 5pm. There'll be tours of Fernleigh Farm at 11am and 2pm.

Also checked on the bookings for the dinner next week at the Ballarat Farm Expo - over 100 people have booked for what looks like an absolutely delicious dinner.

And during the day at the BFE kids will be able to participate in the Spudhunters program - see an earlier blog.

This Saturday is the Potato BBQ and Dean sign launch.

Ballarat Farm Expo Twilight Dinner

Slow Food Ballarat are hosting a special spud dinner on Wednesday 26 March.

Farm Expo Twilight Dinner “Celebrating the International Year of the Potato”

Date: Wednesday 26 March 2008
Time: 5.30pm (to 8.30/9.00pm’ish!)
Venue: The Cattle Pavilion, Ballarat Showgrounds
Entry: cnr. Creswick Road & Howitt Street
Gates Open: from 5.15pm
Parking: Ample free parking outside Showgrounds

Speaker: Ross Brown, CEO Brown Brothers of Milawa

Bookings: All bookings to Easybudget Travel (03) 5333 3566

Tickets: General Admission $49 per person

Farm Expo Exhibitors $44 per person (must include name of Organisation exhibiting with booking)

Slow Food Members $44 per person (must include Slow Food membership number with booking)

No Concessions or Child prices

Menu: Starter Potato sour dough bread with Mt Zero olives and virgin olive oil
Entrée Potato and Meredith blue soufflé with buttered leeks, chard and veal jus
Main Slow roasted district 4-tooth mutton with gnocchi and Captains Creek organic greens
Dessert Potato pancakes with Meredith strawberries and lashings of cream
Finis Filtered coffee or loose leaf tea compliments Pyrenees Coffee Co.

Chef: Peter Ford Principal of Peter Ford Catering and Leader of Slow Food Ballarat

Wines: Featuring wines from the region and members of the Ballarat & District Vignerons Association

First sampler glass of wine provided Complimentary, then available for sale by the glass or bottle

Spudhunters

Gary Thomas, chef and member of Slow Food Central Victoria, has created a fabulous educational tool to teach the young (of any age) about potatoes. Its first outing was last weekend as part of A Taste of Slow. Here's what Gary had to say:

The slow food education activity I set up for kids at fed square over the weekend ran so well that we had to beat a whole pile of adults off as well. Why didn't they just hang around the microbrewery tents, I wonder?

Most importantly, it's just a whole lot of fun to see the look on a kid's face as they dig up a spud for the first time ever and connect the dots on the food life cycle.

Gary's now looking for a cook, a teacher and a farmer to help out at the Ballarat Farm Expo at the end of March.

The deluge

Here are some pics from Bruce Rolfe (Bullarto Primary School) taken just after the big rain in December - just before Christmas. The 3 inch (87mm) downpour of rain was welcome - but not on top of our seed potatoes, as it washed the potatoes out of their beds and in some cases into the dam. We had just had a trench dug to lay the irrigation and this concentrated the rain, causing the damage.
Not desirable!
Fiona


This shows the washing of the soil (and potatoes!) and the erosion which led to silting in the dam.




Look how well the seed potatoes were developing (germinating) before the deluge.


Fiona and a naked spud!


But all is not lost - if you go back to the previous post you'll see the fabulous growth

News from Fiona - our potato minder

Hi everyone,
Here's a little update on the potato babies!
After a difficult start to their life, the first flowers have arrived.

As you can see in the background the potato seedlings are growing well and prolifically.

Unfortunately, some of the potatoes in the variety plots were washed away in
the heavy rain before Christmas. It was nice to have the rain...BUT!

The first variety to flower is the Atlantic!

We are also monitoring the moisture levels in the soil using tensiometers at

different depths.

Fiona

From Soil to Stomach - a children’s event celebrating the International Year of the Potato

Gary Thomas, a leading member of the Spud Brigade, has developed an event for A Taste of Slow at Federation Square on Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th February 2007.

Here's the planning at the moment:

Garden beds to be assembled some with growing potato plants and alternate beds with hidden potatoes that children can retrieve. There is the possibility of having a farmer’s truck onsite to profile crates of different varieties, shapes and size potatoes.

Groups of children would participate in the event in sessions. They would dig for the potatoes and then spend some time with a slow food producer to explain different varieties, nutritional value and how the humble potato could be used in cooking.

There would be an opportunity for a representative from Burnley to add value to this with growing and gardening information.

Boiled potatoes smothered in mint

In preparation for the March harvest, we'll start posting recipes - it's actually wishful thinking - wishing for the first of the new potatoes.

Boiled Potatoes Smothered in Mint
1kg small waxy potatoes (eg kipfler, dutch cream, nicola)
2 cups loosely packed mint leaves, coarsely chopped, plus 3 extra sprigs
1/4 cup lemon-infused olive oil

Cook potatoes and extra mint in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until potatoes are tender. Drain and peel while still warm, add olive oil and mint (if you don't have lemon-infused olive oil squeeze half a lemon along with the olive oil), season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and toss to combine. Serve immediately.