The mostly organic range of Kerfuffle wines

Ben and Henry the dog show us round the vineyard. This is Shiraz, which grows like a weed

Pest Controllers

Although Kerfuffle isn’t certified organic, they spray as little as possible and use natural forms of pest control, like chooks and guinea fowl.

And the wine tastes great!

The start of the walk through a part of Wombat State Forest

Boyf, Billie and I had a day out in the Daylesford area yesterday. Dogs are allowed in most State Forests, so we made a point of taking Bill to the Wombat one. We hadn’t realised just how much it had been burnt in last year’s bushfires. It’s great to see so much of it regenerating – fire is needed for some species to germinate.

Walking through regenerating bush

A lot of new growth could be seen through the burnt forest

We were walking for over two hours and it was only when Duncan stopped for a *ahem* comfort break, that he saw these….

Morels!!!

We got the chef at the Farmers Arms Hotel to confirm they are morels and when we got home, we looked them up in my mushrooming book….they looked just like real morels (not false ones) and what’s more, we found that morels commonly grow after forest fires…

So, hopefully, we’ll be fine when we eat them tonight. If not, it’s been fun!

Morels - pre-cleaning

Howard's gardening advice

The boyf and I volunteered at the Veg Out community garden in St Kilda yesterday. Like my previous sessions, we were on compost duty, which means shovelling a lot of decomposing veggies, clippings and weeds to make a layered pile that will break down into the rich, dark compost that gets dug into the gardens.

I’ve been volunteering a few months, but only applied for my own plot two months ago, so it was a great surprise to be told we could have a plot yesterday. Turns out we were in the right place at the right time, as the plot assigner was there for the last day before he went off on travels and two plots had just become vacant.

The boyf and I having dug in some compost into our new plot