As the lockdown continues, Breidahl’s weekly report is used to help decide what to prepare in the Brae kitchen (the restaurant is currently selling heat-at-home meals and “bakery packs” two days a week) and what to put in the 20 to 25 produce boxes being prepared weekly. But read together, these reports also flesh out a broad picture of how a wide array of fruits and vegetables fare over the seasons in a working garden in a Victorian town 130 kilometres south-west of Melbourne.

Breidahl, who began working at Brae in January 2017, says that like with any gardening, there has been a learning process when it comes to growing food on a hillside in Birregurra. It is about getting to know the soil, becoming aware of the limits of the cultivation seasons and keeping a close eye on the different microclimates that exist throughout the garden.

Conditions across the property vary and it has not all been plain sailing. There is clay soil (to differing degrees across the farm,) strong winds and diminishing rainfall that currently averages about 500mm a year.

There is also never enough gardening hours with Breidahl careful about how she allocates her time. Being a tough and accommodating crop, pumpkins (more than eight different types) have been relegated to an out-of-the-way bed that was made almost overnight. A long strip of paddock grass was mown short, rotary hoed then topped with weed mat with slots cut into it with the pumpkins planted directly into the compost that was added through the slots. They are thriving.

More attention is given to those beds housing more hungry and thirsty crops, including the garlic that Breidahl planted just after this year’s autumn equinox (March 20) for maximum growing time and because Hunter likes to harvest some of the plants green and early.

In one of the beds that – pre-pandemic – was to be filled with garlic, Breidahl sowed an abundance of seeds of a wide mix of such plants as kale, daikon, radicchio, snow peas and Chinese cabbages with the intention of digging the medley through the soil before anything flowered and thereby improving the soil.

The daikon tap roots would have broken up the earth and aided structure, the brassicas would have worked as soil fumigators reducing root-knot nematodes and fungal pathogens and the snow peas would have fixed nitrogen. But once corona hit, the mixed crop was deemed “serendipitous” and kept, and Hunter says his family has been eating from it “six times a week”.

While some of the garden’s more uncommon kitchen garden crops like burdock, black salsify, celtuce and the chicory that Hunter likes forced to yield tender, sweet ‘chicons’, are currently getting less attention to make way for more vegetable-box-friendly ingredients like beetroot and spinach, growing at Brae is largely business as usual.

In some ways, Hunter says the gardening is actually better than usual. Harvesting is no longer the domain of hasty chefs on deadlines. With less foot traffic there are fewer signs of wear-and-tear and more time to make compost, sow seeds and generally replenish proceedings after what was, in these parts, a dry summer with periods of extreme heat.

Hunter says that over the almost seven years since he acquired the land, he has strived to create a working food garden that “has integrity”. “We’ve been strictly organic since the day we took over and we have been able to witness a change in the number of insects, bugs, frogs and birds. A space like this in the middle of farmland is an oasis.”

But he warns it’s been “a slow burn”. “People want their organic gardens to resemble their shopping trolley next week. But a system like this takes time to kick in and function.” A Brae produce box might be a surer bet.

Go to braerestaurant.com for more information.