Featured Field DayField Days and events are an important component of the Organic & B-D Alliance’s activities. The next field day will be held in 2015 - check back here for an update soon !!
Gemtree is a certified organic wine producer - That means they don’t use herbicides or pesticides. To control weeds, sheep are allowed to graze between the vines, and under vine mechanical weeders and slashers are used.Gemtree achieved organic certification in November 2011 and is currently certified by Australian Certified Organic.The Field Day kicked off at Gemtree with a tour of the vineyards and some discussion of issues such as composting, weed and pest control, replacement of wooden posts with metal ones, the different grape varieties, and the local soil composition.
Walking through the wetlands, the OBDA field day visitors were treated to lunch in the picnic area, consisting of all locally sourced organic foods, including:
Melissa Brown and Mike Brown also explained some more about the winemaking processes, and finished off the day with a guided tasting through the Gemtree offering. As always, the hosts (Mike and Melissa Brown) as the well as Guest Speaker (Ben Copeman) were presented with a Certificate of Appreciation and a small gift. Thank you to everyone who came along - please look out for the next field day, and bring your friends! If you are a local organic or biodynamic farmer and you would like to host a field day - please get in touch!
Past field days have included: Temple Bruer Wines Paris Creek Dairy Forest Orchard Apples Triple B Biodynamic Beef
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OBDA News
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The latest OBDA Field Day was held on Saturday November 1st 2014, at Gemtree Wines in McLaren Vale.
After the vineyard tour, Melissa Brown gave a brief explanation of the Gemtree wetlands area, created through a project of revegetation that was continued to create...
After lunch, the group relocated to the cellar door, overlooking the Gemtree Estate, and welcomed Ben Copeman, General Manager of NASAA (Australias First Organic Certifier), to talk about Truth in Labelling, and some of the issues faced by the organic industry in relation to misleading claims and labels by "organic" and "natural" products in comparison to those which are certified organic. These products have been vigorously checked at every stage of production/supply chain to ensure that no GMOs, or synthetic/chemical fetilisers, herbicides or pesticides are present.
