As we are taking a break from overseas travel while we are saving up for building our house, we have decided to take some smaller long weekend trips locally.
So as Tuesday the 1st November was Melbourne Cup day and a public holiday, Kasper took off Monday as well so we could go on a long weekend farm stay in the Pyrenees, which is a 2 hour drive to the north-west of Melbourne, main township being Avoca.
We had booked Saturday to Tuesday on a working farm called Pyrenees Farm Stay. Here's a link with a description: https://www.stayz.com.au/accommodation/vic/the-grampians/amphitheatre/178923
They run a farm with beef cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens and horses, and throw in the absolutely beautiful scenery, it was a big hit to get out of the big smoke and enjoy the quiet farm life!
After we arrived on Saturday, our host Debbie met us to make sure we were settled in. The farm stay was a little 2-bedroom cottage on the farm, next to the family farm house, with amazing views over the farm and the Pyrenees in the background.
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| The 2-bedroom farm cottage |
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| View from the kitchen window |
Debbie invited us on a walk around the farm, so we could meet all the animals. The tour of the farm was great, but the biggest hit was probably when Oscar saw the tractor and combine harvester, and got to sit INSIDE the tractor. Unfortunately, we did not bring our camera for this walk, so no pictures of Oscar in the tractor :-(
The rest of Saturday went with getting settled in and setting up Oscar's air mattress bed. He absolutely loved this bed, and spent a lot of time playing and rolling around with his toys in the bed. Come time to sleep, he lay down nicely and did not get up once! Very good boy :-)
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| Oscar's air mattress bed - we transferred it to the bedroom |
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| Kasper and Oscar in the kitchen/living room |
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| Living/Dining room |
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| One of the bedrooms, there were 2 bedrooms, similar size |
The farm stay included breakfast provisions for all three days, and we must say we were really impressed with the supplies: freshly laid eggs from the farm, bacon produced from the farm's pigs, orange juice, bread, butter, milk and home made marmalade. On top of this, the pantry was also fully stocked with various types of cereals, so we were very well looked after :-)
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| fresh eggs and bacon from the farm for breakfast provisions |
We had brought our own food to prep for dinner while we were on the farm, as we didn't want to drive around looking for dinner when it was Oscar's bed time. 1st evening we had brought some nice steaks and sausages which we had with salad and garlic bread (Oscar had spaghetti with the sausages). 2nd evening we had prepped some potato salad from home and had gourmet lamb sausages and chicken skewers with it, and the last night we cooked some pasta with a chicken vegetable and tomato sauce.
However, as we sat down for dinner the 1st evening we realised we forgot to bring some wine :-( So the next day, we decided to visit St Ignatius vineyard, a vineyard in the Pyrenees we have visited a few times, as they have amazing wines and also offer Argentinian BBQ Sunday lunch on selected weekends, which we have previously attended.
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| St Ignatius Vineyard |
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| Kasper and Oscar on the way into the cellar door. |
We did a wine tasting, and ended up choosing their Malbec wine, as it was fantastic! This meant we could have a lovely glass of wine with our dinner the next couple of days.
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| St Ignatius Malbec wine |
We also visited Avoca to buy some dog food and some spices that we had forgotten to bring.
In the afternoon, we took a walk around the farm again to meet some of the animals - this time we brought our camera!! So here are a few pictures of all the animals we met on our walk. As it was quite cold and windy Oscar ended up in his pram with his blanket, but enjoyed the walk just as much.
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| Horses outside our kitchen windows |
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| Chicken coup around the corner from the cottage (next to where we parked) |
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| 3-week old calf who had been abandoned by the mother (we got to help bottle feed it) |
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| Looking at the cows and pigs |
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| Pigs and cow |
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| walk around the farm - free range chickens walking around in the background. |
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| Curious piglets found a hole in the fence and started following us :-) |
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| Piglets and chickens following us... After I took this picture, Kasper managed to round up the pigs and get them back inside the fence from where they had escaped - Oscar found this very funny and sat in the pram going "ha ha ha ha" :-) |
Monday we decided to go on a bit of a road trip and check out some wineries and their attached accommodation (for future weekend trips). We drove around a fair bit and visited about 4 wineries, but had lunch at Dalwhinnie Wines, which has an absolutely beautiful setting.
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| Scenery at Dalwhinnie's Wines |
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| Cellar Door lunch break |
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| We had a nice anti pasta and cheese platter with bread and a glass of wine for lunch |
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| Little cutie :-) |
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| Outdoor seating at Dalwhinnie's - it was a bit too cold to sit outside though |
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| view from the cellar door |
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| views over the vineyard |
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| Dalwhinnie Wines' cellar door |
Monday afternoon, we relaxed on the farm. Oscar and Kasper went for a walk again and also played on the swing set that was on the farm for kids visiting. As I had had an unfortunate incident with GIANT ants crawling up my pants the previous day (I now have a whole new understanding of "ants in the pants", and the little buggers' bite sting a lot as well), I chose to relax indoors and cook dinner.
Tuesday morning we had a nice relaxing (farm) breakfast before packing up and heading back to Melbourne. Unfortunately, Oscar got car sick and threw up just as we reached Melton (on the outskirts of Melbourne)!! Luckily we were close to a McDonalds so we could get him changed and semi-wash the car seat :-l
So our otherwise fantastic trip ended not so fantastically with me having to completely pull apart the car seat and wash everything, and I can report that luckily, the car seat is as good as new after a wash!
