Once again we will be at the Festival with our famous Chocolate Coated Berry Blend Icecreams.

This year’s Festival will be held Saturday, 18th November with close to 40 Food and Beverage producers and providers from the East Coast of Tasmania booked to attend. Once again, the music program will be first class and, along with all the old staples such as the cooking school (now re-named the East Coast Food and Wine Theatre), the fantastic Vintage Surfboard Exhibition and other special guest appearances, you won’t be disappointed!

Gates Open :10:30am til 5pm with music through to 6pm
Tickets : Adults $10, Children 11-17 years $5
Children under 11 Free  

We are very excited here at The Pondering Frog as we are now officially a Tearoom with an RV Stop Over!

Now the fun begins!

As we will be doing major building from now on we decided to buy a second container as a site office and store room. It arrived on the back of the truck and the driver was very efficient in off loading it. He got it within a few cm of where we wanted it.

The RV Stop Over has a new gravel entry which will also be available for RV’s to park while they are in the Tearoom.

The playground had to be moved over to its final resting place to make room for the cool room/freezer An interesting exercise for Perry, our helper, and Lester!

And of course we needed and new lot of soft fall.

But it is all secured and topped up with soft fall.

There is a lot of behind the scenes work going on with the property.

The old pump had to be moved to make way for the cool room.

We have been given 200 Tasmanian tea trees to spread out over the property. A big job! Our helper ,Perry , has been busy planting the trees to define the RV Stop over area.

Work is almost completed on the cool room/freezer which will be part of the tearoom once it is completed. There has been a lot of stages.

First preparing the slab

Then the concrete

Followed by the walls

Finally the compressors

Our cooker broke the glass in the oven for the second time. Thankfully it has been replaced by a brand new one.

Thanks to our neighbours we now have a rooster to keep the girls happy.

Our resident wombat, Wally, is still visiting. His mange is looking a lot better.

We also had a visiting from a black cockatoo.

An echidna tried to commit suicide on the highway so the shovel was used to rescue him and put him down the back of the property a long way from the highway.

It was animal visiting month – we had a little brown frog visit after the rain. It looked like a Tasmanian toadlet.

With the approval for change of use comes a new and more extensive menu.

We now offer a tub of Aussie prawns

A range of pies

The traditional banana split is a winner.

As is the banana split ice cream and we now have introduced that with chocolate coating as well.

And the list goes on!

A new range of specialty ice cream sandwiches – choc mint or blueberry.

Specialty milkshakes – Banoffee, and Blackforest.

Berry Sorbet

Etc etc etc ……..

Our garden is starting to take off. We picked the first rose a beautiful mauve parchment colour.

The Mr Lincoln is also starting to flower.

We have a range of veggies in the various gardens around the property – celery, tomatoes . peas. Beans …….

The strawberries have started and the new variety is producing huge berries.

The tourists are starting to arrive and we have a few more jobs to complete before we are ready for the season.  Keep an eye here to see what we have in the pipeline.

Spring is in the air and the weather has been magnificent. We are back in our Queensland gear – shorts and Polo shirts!

The new zoning has final come into effect so we have been working hard on getting our Development Application in to Council and approved as soon as possible. Now it is a waiting game until the finalisation and we can start work on the next stage in full swing.It is amazing to look at what we started with

and what we have now!

Plus the expansion of our product line.

The warmer weather has brought a lot of our feather friends back. The green grass parrots and the finches are becoming more numerous.

The ladies (our chooks) are starting to lay again and we are getting an egg a day from each of them now.

Our helper in August was Ashley. She was a real gem. Lester and Ashley put the new animal house together with lots of laughs!

We had a few strong winds that blew the greenhouse away so there was a major job in securing it so we could start planting our seeds ready for planting. I think Lester was looking at it as a man cave lol!

Our resident wombat is slowly recovering from the mange as we continue to treat him with the mixture the wildlife people gave us. He is getting very cheeky and coming right up to the shop at night for his dinner of nice tender green grass. He is a great lawn mower!

Our latest venture is setting up an online shop. We are asked so often if people can buy more products once they have returned home, that we have decided to give it a try. Keep an eye out, it will be up and running very soon. Here are some of the packages we will be  offering.

Frogs are starting to take over the shop area! It is great fun sourcing more and more different options for people to collect.

We love to help people get the most out of their holiday. Giving them a brochure to remind them of the places we have suggested they visit was becoming a problem as we were collecting so many brochures. We have solved the problem by purchasing a brochure carousel which is working a treat!

In preparation for summer we have been out on the property burning off any shrubbery that is a potential hazard.

After our lovely break in June we are now back into full swing mode working on the next stage.

Even though we started the month with a few frosty mornings, it didn’t stop work on the platform for the new tank.

We had fun the day the tank arrived. It took Charlie, Lester and myself , plus the driver to get it off the truck and down the hill to the platform.

We also made a start on clearing the drain along the road to allow the front of property to drain properly and dry out.

The main roads people came this month and moved the distance sign so that it was not covering our shop sign. Fantastic!

We bought a lovely little greenhouse to put the new seedlings in

However we had some really strong winds and it blew down to the lower paddock.

We have made a start on the plantings for this season and they are under cover.

Lester has been busy preparing the soil in the garden for this seasons plantings while the chooks look on!

The old wattle with borers in it came down in preparation for the next stage.

We had the excavator in to level the area where the playground is moving to when the new building goes up.

We had to move the retaining wall over and add some blue metal. It was all hands on deck.

The Solar hot water it just about finished. Just need a few sunny days to get it going.

We had to get a new washing machine.  Our old one was over worked!

We have had a little bit of rain. One of our customers thought he would take a short cut across the paddock – oh dear it was a bit wet! The trusty tractor was able to rescue him.

We have a few new frogs.  Some for sale and some not.

June has come and gone and so has our time away from the property. A big thank you to Dan and Julie for looking after the business while we had some time to get away and see a bit more of Tassie.

They were able to do a few much needed jobs around the place. Dan took down the fence along the road ready for the levee and drain to go in. He also put up the greenhouse and did  myriad of little fix-it jobs. Julie did great job manning the shop  .

The first two weeks of June Lester went to the mainland to visit his family and friends from the Village.

Once he returned we spent a couple of days in Hobart with Collette’s brother, Peter, from Jakarta before heading home for the East Coast Tourism awards.  We took him to Mt Wellington where it was snowing.

We spent time on the piers and in Salamanca – eating seafood and enjoying watching the horse drawn carriage rides go past.

We caught up with our friends Charlie and Caroline for an Italian night out in Salamanca

Although we didn’t get an award we had a great night out at White Sands Resort.

The weather was not very kind for the week that Peter was here however we managed to get to the Bay of Fires,

Pyengana Dairy and Cheese, St Columba falls,

Shop in the Bush and St Helen’s.

  While up there we found a frog band which now graces the entry to the shop.

We went to Freycinet National Park and did the Sleepy Bay walk

and the Lighthouse boardwalk.

Even though the day was not the bet we did get a break in the clouds and could see the entry to Wineglass Bay from the lighthouse.

It was too wet to attempt the Wineglass Bay walk so that will have to wait for another year. To end the day off we went to Freycinet Lodge and sat looking out over Oyster Bay and the Hazards for a late lunch.

On the way home we stopped in at the Marine Farm to get a bag of oysters,  mussels and salmon for dinner.  So we feasted on mussels Parmesan , oysters natural and Kirkpatrick and crusted salmon – delicious!

When we took Peter back to Hobart for the flight home we timed it to go to Dark Mofo.  The gas organ was interesting and the feast was crowded.

We had a snack in the hall then went over for a Greek feast in Salamanca place.Dessert was really yummy!

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On the way back from Hobart we stopped off to see Ian and Jan from Spring Bay Coastal Tours in Triabunna. They took us around their tour – amazing!

Finally home again and ready to start stage 2!