Marong's home-grown menu drawing a crowd

The duo own Connor Park Winery, Leichardt, where they produce full-bodied reds and first-cross ewes.

The combination of home-grown lamb and locally-produced wine is the point of difference at their other business, The Marong Family Hotel, which prides itself on its legitimate paddock-to-plate menu.

"We work very much on the focus of country hospitality which we live and breath," Mrs Lougoon said.

"When you put that together with a paddock-to-plate experience and a renovated country hotel, it's something that works."

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The concept of their paddock-to-plate operation started not long after the Lougoons bought the hotel 15 years ago, some time before the initiative was widely promoted and used as a marketing tool.

Between 400-500 first-cross sheep are run on the farm several kilometres away.

"When we started, we were using first-cross ewes over Dorset rams and we found that the lambs were quite fatty when processed and more suited to export markets rather than in the hotel," Mrs Lougoon said.

"We transitioned to Suffolk rams shortly after we had developed a full lamb menu at the hotel and that transition helped us offer a more leaner lamb on our plates."

The duo utilise two local studs for their Suffolk and White Suffolk genetics, which include Derby Downs and another nearby stud at Marong.

In October, the Lougoons were the top-priced buyers of a $2800 White Suffolk ram at Derby Down's annual on-property sale.

"We really try and support the local breeders around us," Mrs Lougoon said.

A percentage of the lambs grown on the property go to a processor for hotel consumption, while the balance is sold at the regular Bendigo sheep market.

"We would use about 200 lambs per annum through the hotel and they're processed at Hardwicks in Kyneton and then they come back to our butcher, Meat Matters in Eaglehawk," she said.

"Our kitchen team has been using this product for a long time and we try and use all of the lamb so we have to be quite creative in how we do that.

"We offer a lamb filet salad and a number of other interesting dishes but the other big seller is a hickory-smoked lamb rump."

The pub employs 20 staff from across the district.

The home-grown lamb supplements the wine grown on the family property, with one of the oldest vineyards of Shiraz in the Bendigo district.

The vines were planted in the mid-1960s by Mr Lougoon's late uncle, Tom Connor, who was renowned for his development of farming machinery through his company, Connor Shea Machinery.

Mr Connor invented the first pick-up baler and post hole digger and had visions of perfecting the automatic grape harvester when he set out to plant the vineyard ahead of his retirement.

Sadly, he died in 1982 and his dream of enhancing the harvester never eventuated.

Three years later, the Lougoons bought the property to run as a farming enterprise and it was around that time their pair set out to resurrect the dilapidated vineyard, despite admitting they knew nothing about wine production at the time.

"We would process around 30 tonnes of grape fruit a year and that works out to be about 3000 cases of wine," Mrs Lougoon said.

In the 1990s, they extended the vineyard with new plantings of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, before a slump in fruit sales encouraged them to process some of their own crop.

Prior to this, the fruit was sold to other wineries.

Fast-forward almost two decades the winery now crushes all of its own fruit together with a range of wines from contact growers.