| Damali Farm News – March 2010 How time flies….Damali Farm is now five years old and as we celebrated our anniversary last weekend with a glass of red wine from our own grapes and a meal of food totally produced on the farm, we looked back with pride and gratitude. Having grown up in the area and been familiar with the farm, we can still stand at the end of the driveway with our eyes closed and remember what it was like when we bought it, then open our eyes to the new vista. It is truly an awesome sight and deserving of its name ‘Damali’ an Arabic name meaning ‘beautiful vision’ (also an acronym of our 3 names) As the days grow longer and warmer the urge to get out into the gardens gets stronger and we are outside whenever weather permits tidying the windfall and dieback of the winter months. Bulbs and blossoms are bursting and the lavender is greening up beautifully in its compact hedgehog shapes promising many blooms to come. We’ve been propagating cuttings from 20 different varieties in our greenhouse and hope to have plenty of plants for our popular Spring plant sales. Our biggest projects this year are the application for our winery license and the finishing of our winery, vinegary and wine patio. As soon as we have our license we can introduce and provide tasting of our first wines. We have leased a six acre vineyard in Glenora and expect to have plenty of local grapes this fall. Currently we are producing artisan wine vinegars. It seems to be a common misconception that if you make a batch of bad wine 'you may as well turn it into vinegar' The tagline for our vinegar is 'Outstanding Wine Vinegars Begin With Fine Wines’. As the first artisan wine vinegary on Vancouver Island, we plan to make a culinary art of creating fine wine vinegars. We will be introducing our first two, 'Ortega' and (of course) 'Lavender Infused Ortega' at our Season Opener on April 10 & 11. We feel truly blessed and are always happy to show and share our little piece of paradise. We’re open daily starting on April 1 from 10am to 4pm. Stop by for a visit! The Damali Partners DAve, MArsha, ALIson |
