Monday, February 9, 2015

All the little bits

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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Missing - my school girls.

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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.

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Feeling grateful - every single time I step outside.

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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



21 comments:

  1. Oh how I love your photos! They are soo magical!

    Life is very busy here in Germany right now. Last month was pretty though with my granddad dying and my dad being very ill, but now I have the feeling like life is getting back on track. Can't wait to fit more crochet into my day again (and I won't wear shoes for that)...

    Take care
    Anne (Crochet Between Worlds)

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  2. Living in a small town in the UK, I so envy you and your wonderful outdoor life, picking your own produce, enjoying all that sunshine. But deep down I also know what hard work it must be too! You make it sound idyllic. And then I stop and realise how lucky I am in my (to me) lovely home surrounded by a loving family and know how much more blessed I am than some. Have a lovely, if busy week and I shall enjoy mine too. X

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  3. Beautiful update once again Kate!! I love your shares.
    It seems both you and I havent had a good start to the week :)
    It will only get better from here on.. right?? right!

    Happy Blessed new week to you and your beautiful family xx
    Angie (Angie's Hearth)

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  4. It's still deep winter here on the other side of the globe! The snow is piling up at my window as I type this, the wind is sweeping it almost horizontal over the landscape, it's such a terrible weather outside. But it's perfect for snuggling up on the couch with a cup of coffee and read and crochet. So that's what I'm up to once I managed to leave work and make my way through the snowstorm back home! How I long for spring to come...

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  5. I'm still using the apples from our garden, picked in the autumn (we're now in winter). I hope your apple selling venture goes well.

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  6. Oh Kate you make me smile. Yay for farm stalls, I can only imagine that yours will be completely beautiful. I just can't get enough of your spoon photos!

    I am reading Annabel Crabb's book, The Wife Drought. It raises some very interesting thoughts about the roles of men and women and it is hilarious in places. I am wearing Cons which seem right for almost any job :) x

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  7. Your garden looks so pretty and is so giving!! x

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  8. Missing your girls- oh hugs. How lovely to have the grands and aunts and cousins down the road:)

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  9. We're thinking of coming up daylesford way in about 2 weeks, do you think you'll still have apples at your farm gate? How might one find your farm gate?

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  10. I just love looking through your blog. The photos are amazing and I enjoy reading about your days. I am going to put that book on my ever growing book list.

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  11. In bare feet here as I start my day doing a washing of bed linen sort of day and looking forwards to that slip between fresh sheets feeling, although here in Sydney being summer it is more a sleep on top of the sheets weather.
    Kate as usual you have give us a wonderful feast of words and pictures. May your ventures of garden gate produce selling grow in leaps and bounds....is there a garden gate fresh produce food trail that you can be added to?
    I would love to have the space and openess that you have. Maybe one day as we down size from the city.
    May your day grow better with much joy to be captured in the small things around x

    Alexa-asimplelife

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  12. Thanks for the lovely catch up, if there is some spare yogurt to be had," The Vegie Mumma" has a recipe for Berry yogurt cake which looks delish, I have tasted the rasberry version and it is soooo good.
    Good luck with your garden gate produce stall, maybe some colourful bunting along the top would catch the eye of passing cars, there is nothing like the taste of fresh produce,so I am sure you will be sold out often when word gets around.

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  13. How gorgeous! Is the weather already cooling down where you are? (apples make me think of autumn.. which is pretty much right around the corner). Good luck with selling at your own little stall - I'm sure you'll do well.

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  14. Those socks are in one of my favourite colors. The apples sound delicious, maybe one day I will pop in and buy some. Paul's grandmother used to have an apple orchard and now his mum wont buy store bought ones because they dont taste the same. Homegrown is so much nicer. We have been eating tomatoes from my neighbour's dad's farm and nectarines off my sister's tree. Jazzy is getting very tall in that picture Kate. It must be so nice for the girls to pop over to their grandparent's house for a visit!

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  15. The spoons are beautiful and what a wonderful onion string too!! xx

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  16. Your girls are gorgeous, farmer brens spoon incredible, your produce is stunning, knitting amazing, lovely photos and words... as always! Hope the braces are settling in ok. Lots of icecream and apple sauce? :-)

    I am catching up on reading lots of blogs, growing cucumbers, beans, lettuce, and tomatoes, making apple sauce with our homegrown apples, loving eating crunchy sweet flavoursome Fox's Lane apples (smitten with Jersey Macs), writing about trying to be a mountain of zen (post coming soon!), obsessing about going away soon for some serious relaxing and crocheting in the river!

    Ps: Will you have your beautiful homegrown apples for sale every weekend at the farmgate or just some? We will def road trip out your way again for some more when we eat our way through this lot! x

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  17. Oh the right shoes are so important aren't they!! :) I'm reading "Delicious" by Ruth Reichl, I'm picking perfectly yellow nectarines (thanks to the addicition of a plastic hawk from bunnings not a bird in sight!), strawberries, an abundance of greens, corn, zucchini and rhubarb, I'm obsessed with my new chooks :) I've just done a blog about a summers day where I live. I'm about to head outside with my coffee and breath it all in and am so grateful for all I have.
    Cheers Jan x

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  18. Best wishes with the farm stall. There is nothing nicer than buying produce from the people that grow it, thank you for providing the opportunity to do so to your community.

    I'm obsessing over crochet hippos and trying to get my head around a new job I'll be starting in a few weeks.

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  19. I also find myself rattled by windy weather, I wish I could find it atmospheric or refreshing, but I find myself worried about silly things like whether the chimney will fall off!

    Your socks are very lovely, such a beautiful colour. I am thinking of varying my sock knitting, I have a trusty pattern that I never stray from, and really I should be more brave.

    I hope your day improved x

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Thanks so much for stopping by...

I do read every single comment you leave and appreciate it very much, but I should let you know that I can be a wee bit on the useless side when replying to comments, that's just me, everyday life sometimes gets in the way....so I'll apologise now, just in case.

Kate XX

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