10 spring things

Hello honey bunches,

How're things looking from where you're sitting?

It's early Friday afternoon here. Bren has taken Miss Pepper to the orthodontist in Ballarat, the big girls are at school, the cat is asleep on a cushion next to me, the dog is by the front door, and I'm sitting up against the heating panel in the lounge room with my computer on my lap.

It's been a funny old week where we each took turns having an awful, sneezy head cold, but at the end of it everyone is feeling better and brighter than at the start. And that's got to be a good thing, right?

And of course it's the first day of September which means we've left winter behind (officially) and are bursting into spring. Hooray for that!!

So in order to commemorate one of my favourite days of the year, I thought I'd do a 10 things about right now blog.

Here goes;

one
Last week I got the most wonderful comment on my blog's Facebook page;

Shemmariah Beth - You know I was just wondering why I love these Friday arvo reads SO much, and I think it's because in a world full of blogs telling me what to eat, what to do and 12 steps to be what I need to be, this lovely little blog 'just is'. It's just about life, just as it is. And that is Bloomin' refreshing. Thank you Kate 😘

The second I read it I copied it and sent it out to everyone in my family to read. It meant the world to me. That is EXACTLY what I want my blog to be. I get so annoyed when social media tells me how to behave; how to raise my children, live a more meaningful life, style my home, set my priorities... I don't like the way everyone's an expert these days complete with hashtags and like Shemmariah said - 12 steps you must follow in order to get there. It makes me incredibly happy to think that I don't come across like that and I am so grateful that I am being seen and read the way I hoped I would.

Thanks again Shemmariah xx


two
When the sun came out yesterday I took full advantage and snapped some pics of the socks I cast off a few weeks ago. Shame my model wasn't feeling well, but you know, sometimes we just have to get rugged up and head outside in the name of our mother's art. I didn't keep her long though don't worry.

The Revelry details for the socks above are here.

three
I've been spending a bit of time in Bren's tiny workshop watching as he carves spoons and bowls in preparation for a local craft market that will hopefully be starting soon. Each piece of the tree holds its own story and it's such a privilege to watch him learn how to transform the wood while being true to its shape. I talk often about working with nature rather than against her on our farm and the way Bren is doing exactly that with his knives and pole lathe is humbling and so very beautiful I think.

four
Number four thing about right now also comes from a blog comment. Jane, author of one of my favourite blogs The Shady Baker, recommended a podcast episode of The Food Podcast called Wooden Spoons, the back story. I listened, I loved, thanks Jane.

It really is a lovely podcast filled with interesting stories on the topic, great music, and is bound to have you smiling, perhaps wincing in pain and definitely reminiscing about your own wooden spoon memories and thoughts.

I look forward to listening back through some of Lindsay's older stuff.

five
Since casting off all the socks I've been knitting lately I've been knitting beanies from the most beautiful hand-spun yarn. I just love how close to the source it feels, how it is so thick and then so fine and how greasy my hands feel after a session knitting with it. I must get some sheep and learn how to spin, I simply must.

six
Two days ago while waiting anxiously for a phone call full of news, I cleaned the cobwebs off the roof of our lounge room and kitchen. Partly because it was a job that had needed doing for ages, partly because it was starting to look like we live in a haunted house and partly because apparently I clean when I'm anxious. The reason really doesn't matter though because my house looks so much brighter now, I cannot stop looking up and smiling, and cleaning above my head is so much easier since I've been going to gym. Maybe it's a cliche but my house could certainly do with a full spring clean and hopefully this'll spur me on to bigger and better and more.

seven
When you haven't made your beanie wearer a beanie for a very long time and then you do, the amount of gratitude they show you is immense.

eight
Signs of spring: last night it was still light outside at 6.15, there are bunches of daffodils on the kitchen table and on the coffee table, Miss Pepper is planning her tenth (!!!!) birthday party, the proteas are about to flower, the daphne bush and almond tree are blossoming, the bees are flying, I wore a tee-shirt while weeding and forking a garden bed yesterday, I feel like life is full of possibilities.

nine
A couple of days ago a shop keeper was quite abrupt and dismissive of me and it made me feel awful. Especially since I've been a loyal customer of this shop for quite some time. Once I got home I told my farmer boy the story and of my plan to write her a message letting her know how she'd upset me.

He gently talked me out of it, reminding me that that is her story and not to make it mine. Of that old chestnut - Be Kind - Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. She could be struggling with something herself.

He was right of course, although it did take me some time to shake off that ugly feeling.

ten
I'm reading my sister Abby's review copy of The Red Haired Woman. It is a dense and slow story set in Istanbul of fathers and sons, a well digger and his apprentice, living with the past and uncovering its meaning.

Although it is only the beginning of the book, it's full of descriptions of digging a well by hand, and that's reminded me of the journey we've taken on our farm to find and access water underground. We started by borrowing a bore from the property next door, then we had an old water diviner walk our property complete with a metal wand that he held out in front of him to feel for ground water. Following his instruction we dug a 40 meter bore that we soon discovered wasn't deep enough. And finally we had a drilling company dig another bore, 100 meters down in the ground in a few hours. Definitely not nearly as romantic as a man with a pick axe down a hole sending up bucketloads of dirt, but much safer thank goodness.


Which brings me to now. The heating panel behind me has gone cold so I'll need to go and split some more wood for the fire, the washing machine is beeping at me to hurry up and hang out the laundry and it's time to start thinking about dinner.

Wishing you the most wonderful new season wherever you are, whatever you're expecting. May it bring  all that you need and all that you desire.

Do you prefer autumn/fall or spring?
Do you prefer apples or oranges?
Are you an anxious cleaner? Or does the amount of cleaning needed make you anxious?
Do you have anything fun planned for the weekend?

I hope the sun shines warmth on your face whatever you're up to.

Happy days.

Big love,

Kate

xx

spots on socks + other fancy stuff

Hello dear friends and welcome to today's episode of the Friday Foxs Lane.

I hope you've had a lovely week and that you're gearing up for a wonderful weekend.

My week has passed by in a haze of hot days, sleepless nights, garden and girls. Actually I can't work out whether the word I want to use is haze or daze, but you know that blurry feeling you get when your body gets out of the habit of sleeping at night for no apparent reason, your nights are never ending and your days are filled with fog? Yep, that.

So in honour of my loosening grasp of the English language and the hazey-daze, I have decided to take a blogging short cut today and make a list of ten things I am doing right now. Or more precisely doing or done, past tense, so I can include the spotty socks above.

Are you ready? Here we go...

one - sewing in the ends

Everything about sock knitting fascinates me but especially the way it makes me into someone I'm not. On the top shelf of our studio there is a basket that is filled with clothes that need mending. Shirts that buttons have fallen off, skirts with hems that have come down, socks with holes in the heels...the list goes on. This basket has in fact recently overflowed onto the back of my desk chair and on top of my sewing machine. Optimistically, I imagine that one of these days I'll pull that basket down and methodically work my way through it, buttoning and hemming and darning. But the truth is, I probably never will. But for some reason every single time I cast off a pair of socks I finish them off all the way to the end. I find a needle and I thread each of the loose bits of yarn on in turn and I darn them in until they're all done. It's like the little shoe-maker's elves have visited. And only then can I consider them finished.

two - admiring the insides
There's something so unexpected and surprising about the wrong side of a fair isle knitting project that I only really discovered a few months ago when I started knitting colour-work. Since then I've started a little ritual where I save the inside-looking until I've cast them off. Once I'm done I turn them inside out and sit with the wrong side for a while, looking at all the strands and the negative colour pattern. Each time it's so interesting to see how things have knit up on the back, sometimes I even prefer the wrong side.

three - finishing up
Once the knitting, the darning and the admiring are done, the next step is to hunt down a daughter for the photographing part. Sometimes it's as easy as stand, snap, done! But other times the foot looks funny, the part of the sock that I'm not thrilled with is too obvious, the light's not right, the foot model is in a hurry and won't stand still...you get the picture.

Luckily last night all the sock moons and planets aligned and we got the shot and the sock model was back to singing scales within ten minutes.

The details are on Ravelry if you're interested in such things.

four - casting on

I'm going to call the next project to hit my needles - when you love someone who loves the Bulldogs. Not exactly my usual type of colours or colour combination, but I do love her and she does love them. 

I guess it's not really cheating on the Bulldogs socks if I'm sitting here daydreaming about a beautiful skein of CircusTonicHandmade sock yarn that fell into my shopping cart this morning. Australian merino wool...indi dyer...soft variegated yarn...ochre, greys, charcoal and the slightest hint of lemon...mmmmmmm.....

five - preserving the sunshine
Over the past few weeks I've mentioned a few times that this season's harvest isn't looking to be quite as bountiful as we'd hoped and expected. There are definitely some things that have positively surprised us, like the cucumbers, the berries and the beetroots. There are some things that have flat out disappointed us like the apples and the plums. And then there are some that could still go either way.

Over the past five or eight years we've grown most of and made all of our own tomato passata. Enough to last the whole year through. Over January our tomatoes get going slowly allowing us to finally break our tomato fast and to eat them on everything and in everything we can. By March we're not keeping up with the harvest and we start with the cooking and bottling.

This year has been the strangest tomato season ever. The vines are heavily laden with fruit but it's just not ripening. Or rather it's just starting to now, but only enough to eat, definitely not enough to preserve for later.

So yesterday we made the call and went and picked up a 10kg box off our mate Florian at Mount Franklin Organics down the road. Tomorrow we'll squish them, cook them into a sauce with some onion, garlic and basil, and then we'll pop them into jars for later. Hopefully our green tomatoes saw the boxful of red beauties make its way in and will hurry on up. And if not, we've arranged to pick up another box next week, just to be on the safe side.

six - listening

During the week Jo, another knitting mum of three, contacted me about her daughters Mabel and Ivy and their folk duo Charm of Finches. She was hoping we could work together to put on a house concert and as we've been talking a lot lately about doing something like this, we loved the idea and were hoping the same. Unfortunately, at this stage the dates didn't work, but in the meantime Jo sent me the girls' CD and I fell in love.

We've spent the past few days with Staring at the Starry Ceiling as the soundtrack to our drives to school and back, our dinner prep and our lying on the couch with closed eyes, feeling completely transported by their angelic voices, their beautiful harmonies, their original lyrics and all of the instruments in-between. 

With Mabel and Ivy being only one year older than our Indi and Jazzy, I can't help but dream of the places their shared love of music and song and flowy dresses might one day take them.

In the meantime I highly recommend you to click on over to the Charm of Finches site and support the girls and their dreams and melodies by buying their CD. 

Hopefully we'll get another chance to work with them in the future.

seven - listening to the scrape of Bren's knife against his spoon 
One of the best things to come out of this year so far is the dedicated Friday craft day. Just last night my Mum sent me a text asking if we needed help with stacking some wood today. The fact that I didn't have to think twice, or justify myself, or agonise over the decision was awesome. Friday is craft day. A whole guilt-free day for carving, knitting, sewing, drawing, playing guitar and writing my blog. If we decide to do a bit of farm work in amongst all of that then cool, but otherwise even cooler I say.

seven point five - listening to podcasts
Yesterday I listened to Richard Fidler interviewing Kate Summerscale about the life of Robert Coombes who in 1895 when he was 13 killed his mother and went on a spree with his little brother across London. I always love Richard's interviews but this particular story gripped me so tight that I hardly noticed the physical work I was doing in the garden until the whole hour was up.

It is a tragic story of Victorian-era matricide that also includes a boy's own adventure, a court case, an examination of family life with a father at sea and travels all the way over to Australia for the ending.

Kate has written a book about Robert's life called The Wicked Boy which I'm sure is a fantastic read, but I don't feel the need to read it now I've followed the whole story so closely in the author's words. Perhaps I'll look up some of her other books.

eight - splitting

The wood splitter is back for another week and the splinters in my hands and the ache in my muscles are there to prove it. Gosh I love watching that blade slice through those enormous rounds of wood as if they were butter. Not to mention that growing pile of firewood that will be stacked along the driveway and look pretty for a while and then keep us warm when the weather turns horrid.

nine - fermenting

If you were to ask me what I grow well on this farm, after little girls I think my next answer would be cucumbers. I seriously love growing cucumbers. I love how big their first leaves are when they poke their green tips out of the soil, I love how quickly they grow, I love their prolific yellow flowers and I love those green, crunchy, water filled fruit (?) and how much joy they add to my kitchen.

We mostly eat them as they come, in sandwiches and on salads, but when the season really gets going and we're bringing them in by the bagful, we ferment them by the jarful.

The recipe we use is from this book. We pretty much follow it, but often add and subtract ingredients. Lately we've been adding lemon slices (thanks Meg), and bay leaves, and as much garlic as we can be bothered peeling. 

Have I told you that my girls have started calling me Pickle? Tis true.

ten - reading
I just finished reading The Seven Good Years. Bren read it in a few days but I think I took a whole week. Even though I often struggle with short stories, and these are extremely short, I really enjoyed it. I laughed and cried at times but mostly I just admired Etgar's ability to take a simple thing that happened to him and make it into a great story.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. I heard Wendy James interviewed on the radio a few days ago, maybe I'll start her new book The Golden Child. It sounds very interesting and topical.


And with that my lovely friends, I'll bid you farewell. Pepper is sleeping over at her friend's house, the big girls will be home in an hour, which gives me just enough time to pop some washing on the line and get started on those tomatoes.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
I'm going away for three days with my Mum and one of my sisters and I can't wait!

As always please feel free to leave me any suggestions you might have for podcasts, books, music, shows and patterns you're enjoying.

LoveLove,

Kate xx

seventh

And on the seventh day we celebrated our farmer boy.

It was a day filled with family and love and cards (that one's Indi's) and kisses and coffee and archery and spoon carving and cake. So much love for our guy.

And tonight we're heading out on a birthday dinner date!! I'm so excited.

I'd better get dressed and get the girls to my parents' house.

Happy Bren's birthday you guys!

xoxox

harvesting the hazels

'











Autumn, you might just be winning me over.

A sweet sunny day spent harvesting our hazelnuts. Speckled, sparkly shadows. All the twittering bird songs. A new spoon carved. A tiny nest found and admired. Blackberry scratches all over my arms and legs. Warm sun on our faces and backs. A bit of humming, some chats about plans and stages, a lot of silence and listening. Sweet, cardamon spiced, Turkish coffee brewed on a flame and served up in little cups. A chunk of apple cake unwrapped from its waxy paper package. Nuts cracked and eaten, coffee drunk.

One basket full.



I hope your season is the reason for your gladness.

xx

All the little bits

Hello and happy new week honey bunches!!

Although it's only just begun, my week got off to a pretty shaky start this morning when I lost and then found my car keys in the garden where they'd been hiding overnight and are now soaked through so the clicker won't let me in and the car won't start. Then I couldn't to work out what Indi with braces could eat for her school lunch, couldn't find socks for Pepper and then I turned up to school to find that I'd totally missed the grade six parents' meeting. Oh well, onwards and upwards eh.

So although I'm still feeling a bit rattled by the morning and by the wind, I'm sticking to my appointment with my blog before I head off to my appointment with my beautiful Chinese doctor, the housework can wait.

Why don't we have a little catch up on what's going on around here.

Lately we've been;

Picking/Preserving/Eating/Marketing - APPLES!! Hooray for apple season. So far we've picked our Jersey Macs, Gravensteins, an unknown variety we call Daylesford Delicious and some Blenheim Oranges. All year we imagine the time when we can walk through the farm plucking apples off trees and taking big crunchy bites of them, I can't tell you how great it is to be here, now. I couldn't possibly count the number of apples I ate over the past weekend either, yum!

As well as eating them fresh we are also making dried apple rings, apple leather, apple pie, toffee apples and apple crumble...so far.

And this year we've decided that instead of sending all our apples off the farm to shops and markets, we're going to try to sell them from here. Right now, as I type this, our friend Jobbo who built our cubby-house is building us a cute little farm-stall at the front of our property. Hopefully in the weeks and months and years to come people will pop in and buy their apples here. Hopefully we'll be the local apple farm and rather than buying apples that have travelled in trucks and been stored for goodness knows how long, people will choose apples grown bio-dynamically, sun ripened, picked here by our hands, and stored no longer than a few days at most.

If it works well we might even sell other fruit and veg we've grown here too.





Picking - As well as apples, we've been picking and eating plums, lettuce, peas, beans, broccoli, beetroot, basil, cucumbers, potatoes, parsley, onions, carrots, tomatoes and shallots. I love summer!



Watching/admiring/photographing/writing - about wooden spoons. These salad servers were made from both sides of a branch off a pine tree. We've been using them in our kitchen for the past few days but I still love this photo with one finished and one cut but not yet sanded.

I am so inspired and enamoured with my farmer boy's passion and his design and his direction, using the spoons in our kitchen is the icing on the cake.



Reading - a book about grief has been tricky because I have found myself totally immersed in it and finding myself grieving along with Joan for things past and imagined. I'm loving this book but finding it emotionally exhausting, terrifying and intriguing all at the same time. I think this is one of those books that will hang around and haunt me for the rest of my life.



Missing - my school girls.





Winding and knitting - a pair of socks in the most gorgeous golden sunshine colour. These will most likely be the slowest pair of socks I will ever knit  - in purl with all these twisty cables - but they are a challenge and I love them already.



Feeling grateful - every single time I step outside.



I need to go now and walk down the hill to my parents' house where my girls have been making yogurt with their grandparents, auntie and cousins. I need to remember to change my shoes because clogs are no good for gravel or hills. We're having beans and cous-cous for dinner. I hope Indi can eat it too. Hopefully I'll get a chance to walk around the big block tonight. And then maybe I'll do a bit of the cute crochet project I've been making for a book review blog later this week. Phew!

So how about you, what are you reading, growing, loving, writing about, obsessing over right now?

I hope you're wearing the right shoes for the job.

I'll be seeing ya!


Love Kate xx

Twenty ninth

On the twenty ninth day of our year Miss Indi went back to school, the wind blew an absolute gale, I got an email from a blog friend that made me cry, in a good way, and we built the smalls a cubby-house on the back deck where they spent most of the day.









On the twenty ninth day of the year we did jobs in the garden, we built a small fire in the garden and we made and enjoyed morning tea with my parents - in the garden.



On the twenty ninth day of the year we started making plans for the rest of the year. We spoke of our priorities, about how to separate money from happiness in our definition of success and of where each of our girls are and what they might need from us as time goes by.

On the twenty ninth day of the year the smalls made a giant chatterbox and laughed hysterically as they read us the messages under the flaps, Miss Indi came home smiling from school and although we probably didn't achieve all that much, I blame the wind, we had a really happy day together.

When we came in to make dinner, this little arrangement was waiting upon the kitchen table - just like that.


So how about you, what did you get up to today and how's the wind at your place?



I hope you get the message you've been hoping for.


Love Kate xx