Spring time

Sun, warmth, fast growing plants and lambing. Goodbye to the depths of winter. Welcome to spring!

Rach has already discussed some of the challenges growing vegetables in spring (tl;dr there’s very limited produce growing on our farm and the Mornington Peninsula at this time of year – most produce at the supermarket now is shipped from warmer climates). But there are some very nice things happening at this time of year too.

Our accidental lambs have been born, and are growing quickly. Quads, triplets, twins and singles made this years lambing a real lottery. I’ve been the best at guessing numbers so far, and have been more than happy to share that fact with the team (much to their chagrin).

These lambs were accidental because we had a slight mishap earlier this year with our fencing and our unruly rams all broke in to the ewes causing these pregnancies. As a result, we’re unsure who fathered this crop of lambs. Obviously not an ideal result, but the vast majority of our sheep will be lambing later this year (to known fathers).

Did you know that the gestation of sheep is about 5 months?

Chooks really wind back their laying in winter, but come spring time they’re a little happier with more sun, warmth and vegetation. The sun and light is the primary factor in the increasing number of eggs that they produce. Longer day length means more eggs. Shorter day length (heading into and during winter) means less eggs.

And as a result of the change in season, there are more eggs than we’ve ever produced! To everyone that waited patiently and stuck with us through the lean times earlier this year, you’ll be rewarded with plenty of delicious eggs.

Always happy with water and rainfall, our ducks are also laying really well and enjoying the bounty of mosquitoes (and other bugs) that have seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

To cater to the significant increase in organic vegetable boxes that we’re delivering locally, we’ve had to build another greenhouse for our seedlings. Unfortunately for us we decided to put it all together on one of the windiest ever! But the job got done, and both greenhouses are full up with seeds and seedlings growing fast to produce veg in a couple of months. Lessons were certainly learned that day.

As well as looking after our animals and growing vegetables, under normal circumstances we run school tours and farm tours for the public as well as open our farm stay and run workshops. With recent changes to lockdown, we’ll begin welcoming people back on site when the time is right. When that all happens we’d love to see you here!