Orto One - straw eco cottage

Cooking school & regenerative permaculture farm 15 min from Daylesford. We run classes for groups 2 to 10. Surrounded by wonderful neighbours, Jonai Farm (free-range pork), Danny's Farm (sweets) Captain's Creek Organic Wine, Morningswood (berries) and Tumpinyeri Growers (vegetables). LGBTQI welcome! Book both listings: Orto One & Orto Two for a group of 4 . Breakfast not provided but we love to share our summer kitchen garden. Must be vaccinated to book. Thank you very much. Arrivederci! Mara The Orto One cottage is separate to the main farm house we live in and is immediately adjacent to it. The bedroom faces east and receives beautiful morning sun. It has a woollen rug, wonderful mid century furniture and an en suite. It is spacious with views of Mount Franklin. The intimate bathroom receives chlorine free water from our rainwater tank or bore and what a pleasure it is to use! The communal kitchen/living room is accessed by exiting the bedroom and walking outside an undercover walkway (a mere three metres). I use the word communal because Orto Two has access to it. If Orto One and Orto Two are booked by different people not travelling together and both guests are interested in using the kitchen then the kitchen becomes a shared space. We wanted to foster a shared space because when we were in Italy we stayed in an agri-turismo villa with the same set up and we really loved it. The walkway between the bedroom and kitchen is undercover and protected by a beautiful wooden facade. Our winters are very cold and very windy so do what the Europeans, Americans and Canadians do and bring lots of warm clothes, scarves and hats. The kitchen has been lovingly furnished with found objects and furniture from vintage stores in our area. There is an oven and gas cook top, fridge, toaster, kettle and wood fired stove for heating. Once the fire is on, the room heats very quickly. In the bedroom, the Scandinavian NOBO panel heater heats the room to a deliciously warm temperature. A prairie/bee garden adorns the west and to the north the kitchen garden. We are currently fencing the paddocks to make way for future free range pasture fed pigs. We have planted thousands of young trees, wild flowers and native grasses. There are four of us permanently living on the farm, myself and Ralf and our two girls Ahlia and Artemisia. We also often host international volunteer guests who offer us help on the farm in exchange for a home. Our home and garden design is based on permaculture principles and we like to make and grow as much of our own food as possible. I am almost always in the kitchen baking, fermenting, making yoghurt, preserving, making soap, or cleaning foraged fruits and seeds, or in the garden, watering, planting, sowing seeds in trays and choosing what seeds to order for the new season. I work full time on the property. I am fluent in Italian and Ralf in German. To find out what we are up to most days please find us @maravillagedreaming or please search for Village Dreaming as it will give you a very good idea of who we are and the many projects we are passionately cultivating. We are a non-smoking property, and that applies to every bit of our property. We also encourage you to have waste-free meals while here and to take responsibility for the waste you produce by taking the waste you create home with you, with the exception of compostables: we provide a compost bin. We provide a bin in the bathroom as well because that is necessary. I love to give tours of what we are up to and try and offer this opportunity to every guest. If you wish to eat in, there is always something to harvest from the garden in summer, herbs all year round, berries in mid to late summer and a mix of vegetables. In winter, however, we grow soil not vegetables. We really look forward to sharing our story with you and hearing yours. We love having guests! You can access the piazza garden, the kitchen garden and take walks around our property and our beautiful wetland. When the kitchen garden is very productive in summer you are welcome to access herbs and vegetables and berries. Just come and touch base with me to see what is growing abundantly. Our property is very new, we have been building for the past three years and have many projects on the go: revegetation, plantings of nuts, oaks, chestnuts and hazelnuts. The establishment of a fruit and berry orchard. Cooking Workshops: in fermenting, naturally leavened bread baking, preserving, yoghurt and labneh, homemade pasta classes, natural soap making using readily available animal fats or vegetable oils. If you are interested in a workshop send me a message and we can discuss pricing and workshop theme. We also have extremely wonderful neighbours: and we highly encourage you to visit the free range pork farm called Jonai who raise pigs ethically and humanly. They have an onsite butchers shop where you can purchase their various cuts and sausages and an open gate policy. Our other neighbours are a little further away, a five minute drive from us (anyone within a five minute drive is a neighbour to us) and are called Captains Creek Organic Wines, they have an on farm restaurant, a very productive organic market garden and produce organic wines. If you are visiting us during strawberry season (summer to early autumn), then we also recommend Claire and Pete's Morningswood Farm. Our neighbourhood is great. We are in a farm district with pork, cattle, chicken, organic wine and vegetable farmers. The landscape is beautiful I think. You can purchase free range pork from our neighbours Jonai and Organic wine from Captain's Creek Wines. We sometimes have fruit, herbs & vegetables for sale too for those who would like to take some home with them (seasonally available). The Maze House on 3155 Midland Hwy, Newlyn North, has a really beautiful ornamental and vegetable garden. If you are a garden lover like me, you will really like the Maze House. Lambley's Nursery is on 395 Lesters Road, Ascot, a 30min drive from us. They have really wonderful and unique perennials for water efficient gardens. There are lots of foraging opportunities too. Plums, apples, elderberries, and wild herbs in summer. Pine mushrooms, chestnuts and quinces in Autumn/Winter. We are close to public transport, the Midland Highway has a bus service to and from Ballarat. We really encourage guests to consume food and drinks in the kitchen lounge area. The impact of spills in the bedrooms is really felt by us, as linens cannot be used again once wine or tea, or oily foods make contact. The tannins in wine and tea don't completely come out and oils are impossible. We really want to keep our prices low. Food and drink spills have a direct impact on our ability to sustain a low price, as it forces us to buy new linen after a single use. The straw cottage sits adjacent to our straw home, so if you are wanting heaps of privacy, you will find it wanting. However you will have privacy in your own kitchen and guest room. We have designed our property so as to maximise human interactions and wanted to create a village like atmosphere. If you are a foodie then please pop into my kitchen or kitchen garden to see what I am up to. We have built a pizza oven and host pizza nights in summer.