Farm visits: "Tuscany in East Keilor"

Rose Creek Estate has been described as “Tuscany in East Keilor”. Approaching all you see is an unassuming house on a suburban street, but venture down the driveway and behind the house and a remarkable six acre hillside — a commercial olive plantation and vineyard appears! Here Tony and Lina have hundreds of olives and 3000 grape vines from which they produce award winning olive oils and (with their son Angelo) wines. They also have a wonderful house garden with lots of chooks, huge veggie beds, bananas and wide variety of fruit trees. What a paradise! Of course not one that looks after itself entirely… Lots of hard work. But that hard work doesn’t seem like a chore when there’s more than ten of you.

How did he learn to do all this?, we asked Tony. ‘Lots of mistakes’ said he.

Getting started

If you’ve been following our newswire, you know some of the VEG crew and friends have been taking regular trips into the country to meet and work with some of the most creative farmers in the region. The skills and principles we can often bring back to the backyard. This time we didn’t have to go far, Adam and Will even rode their bikes.

Michelle and Carey

The sun shone kindly on us nearly all of the day as Tony and his friends Frank and Tony guided us through their grape pruning strategies, and together we strolled down the rows (well Frank and the Tonys almost jogged, they were twice as fast as any of us), talking, learning and having a grand old time.

Lina cooked up a truly wonderful (and huge) lunch with olive oil and wine from on site. Luckily Paul brought chocolate covered coffee beans or we might not have been able to keep working.