this and that

THIS is where I live in springtime. In this little room made of recycled windows and doors. I spend my`days sowing seeds, watching them germinate, talking to them, watering them, pricking them out and waiting patiently for the soil to warm up and the danger of frost to be over so I can plant them outside. It's been just over a year since we built this space onto the side of our house, it's hard to even imagine life and growing before.

THIS is a little glimpse into what it looks like inside the greenhouse at the moment. Trays and pots and planters of fruit and vegetables and flowers, putting down roots and growing up leaves, getting bigger and stronger every time I check in on them.

THIS is the greenhouse overflow. Last week or the week before I filled up every inch of space on the table, every shelf and window sill, and much of the floor space too. So I moved some of the big guys into the sun-room. Now you can hardly walk in there. The forecast is looking promising though, so get ready garden, here these guys come.

THIS is the badge Miss Indi made me to wear on my birthday last Sunday.

THIS is the pile of hair pins my farmer boy made me for my birthday. The light one in the middle is made from sycamore off my parents' old farm in Tasmania and the other three are from wood from around here. As anyone who wears wooden pins in their hair knows, these things are incredibly hard to come by and having four crafted by those hands that I love makes me feel like I've won the lottery. I'm rich!

We had the most wonderful few days away at the beach last weekend. We walked everywhere, we ate a late breakfast and an early dinner out every day, we read books, we watched the whole first season of Succession, we did face masks in the bath, we played games, we talked and talked and talked, we saw A Star Is Born at the movies, I knitted, I was sung to by all of my favourite people, I cried, I laughed and I felt incredibly lucky to have the luxury of so much time alone with my boy. It was the absolute best.

THIS is what my washing line looks like now that I'm a beginner spinner. That's fleece inside those laundry bags and the thought of pulling out the staples, flick carding them, drafting them out and spinning them, washing and then knitting them, kept me up last night. I've got that excited, addicted, can't think of anything else, need more time in my day, butterflies in my tummy feeling about a craft again. 

THIS is one of the little projects I'm busying my hands with while I wait to have enough handspun of my own to knit. It's the Mimi hat by my friend Sabine - Frisabi Knits - the details are here.

THIS is the new shelf in my studio.  The one above the window. It goes across the back and along the right wall to meet the door. I'm going to fill it with plants and books.

THIS is the strawberry bed that I look at from my studio window. It looks like it's going to be a bumper crop this year.

THIS is one of the self seeded patches of spring onions that feeds hundreds of bees every day. They love that stuff.

THIS is the book I am reading the moment, my sister Abby's copy of - The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper. One of the stories of the Black Saturday bush fires of February 2009. I've only read about 50 pages so far but already it feels like a horror story. It is harrowing and devastating and heartbreaking, but it also feels insightful and moving and important. It's probably a good thing for me to read at the start of this fire season: I've already started making lists of things to prepare.

THIS, right now, feels like such a huge moment in the life of our family. Next Monday our Indi starts her final school year exams and by this time next week will be completing her last one and finishing with high school forever. Next Thursday Indi will celebrate her 18th birthday which means Bren and I will have parented a child all the way through from babyhood to childhood to adulthood. In just over a week our Jazzy will return from her six week overseas trip. The emails and photos have been sparse but from what we can gather it looks and sounds like she's been having the most unbelievably incredible adventure. This week our Pepper got to meet her little buddy. As part of the oldest class in her school next year, she gets paired up with one of the youngest. It's so funny to think of our youngest being the oldest. She's so ready though. And in the middle of all of that me and Bren are rushing around trying to balance the farming, parenting, crafting, building, cooking, playing, making, exercising and growing, all while trying to hold onto the magic we felt last weekend.

And that's that.

And THIS dear friends is my thank you to you. Thank you for your birthday kindness, for your wishes, for your sweetness and for your sunshine. I love ya's all!!

Before you go tell me what's going on at THIS time in your world? What's keeping you up at night? What have you got on your shelf? What are you making? What are you learning? What did you get for your birthday? How will your life be different this time next week?

Wishing you luck and love and adventures.

Kate xx

a slice of my life

Hello lovely ones,

How are you feeling? How's your week been?

I'm sitting on the couch in our new sun room. It's quiet except for the sound of the birds and of Jo-Jo snoring next to me. Bren is away, the girls are at school and although I looked forward to this time all week and felt excited at the thought of having the house to myself, now that I'm here I'm finding it hard to sit still and focus.

It's funny, even though everyone who knows me understands that I struggle with the cold, wet and grey, I'm finding this crazy long growing season that we're having exhausting. We still haven't had the Autumn break, the first frost, or any decent rainfall, so we're frantically busy with all of the late summer/early autumn jobs. We're still picking tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, apples, beetroots and carrots, we're still picking and dead-heading the flowers, we're still planting and weeding and preserving and collecting seeds. And in between all of that we're making the most of the sunshine and stacking firewood, watering the garden and wondering if the seeds we plant out now will have any chance of growing.

And that's all great, especially the fact that the days are brilliantly sunshiney and warm BUT usually by now things are starting to slow down, the summer crops are beginning the next part of their cycle as they rot into compost and there's time for catching up on the indoors jobs, for crafting on the couch, and for introspection. Instead we're still working outside from first thing in the morning until dark, our list of things to do feels like endless, and I'm feeling overwhelmed and stretched, and tired.

Our garden is full of frantic looking bees at the moment, buzzing between the flowers, desperately trying to  collect all the nectar to make honey stores for winter and I can relate to them. I also feel a bit buzzy and frantic going from job to job trying to be everywhere at once. I don't wish for the season to be over, not at all, but I would love a little break. A little slow down. A little knitting time on the couch.

Oh gosh, when winter does come closing in I'm going to regret those words, aren't I.

So what else have we been doing?

I listened to and loved The Habitat podcast. 

I've been eating cut up granny smith apple, with muesli, and nuts, and seeds for at least one but mostly two meals a day.

We sold apples, garlic, flowers and tomatoes at the farmer's market and loads of apples from the farm gate stall.

When Bren went away for a few days we were asked to present him with one gift, and we gave him three. Pepper knotted him a bracelet using his favourite colours. I knitted him a love heart to represent the place he holds in our hearts, how much we adore him and all that squishy stuff. And we gave him a rusty nail that I found in the garden while I was digging up the potatoes. The nail represented our land and the food we grow, those who passed through here generations ago on their hunt for gold, and his new skills as a builder.

That bag of sunflower seeds that we found at the back of a drawer and took a gamble on and planted waaaaay too late in the season, grew taller than me and started to open up their beautiful faces and stare at the sun. The birds have started nibbling at them so I'm going to have to be quick if I want to pick some bunches, but what a way to end the flower season.

I filled up my last pot and started the hunt for some more.

My farmer boy ploughed me up a long strip of ground to plant my bulbs in, but now I can't decide if I should mix all the colours and varieties up like a field of wild flowers, or if I should grow type with type and colour with colour.

We picked the four pumpkins we grew this year. I don't eat pumpkins but I love growing them so it was a struggle to hold myself back to one plant but hopefully this lot will be eaten by our two pumpkin eaters in the next few months and there'll be no mouldy puddles of orange disgustingness for us to deal with as there have been in other years when I didn't hold back.

We bought this framed print at our friend Leah's garage sale and hung it on the wall of the sunroom.

I thought a lot about trying to grow potted colour in the sunroom through winter and whether or not that's even possible.

I started thinking about the best way to teach sock knitting to my class at Soul Craft Festival, (which is only six weeks away YIKES!!)

We picked so many tomatoes.

One of us suffered a broken heart and felt it so deeply that it made the rest of us weep.

One of us learnt how to use a tricky maths formula that had been elusive for quite some time and then just stuck.

One of us read a book about playing chess from cover to cover in one afternoon.

I finished Eliza Henry Jones' new YA novel P is for Pearl. I am such a big fan of everything Eliza writes and have been so curious to read this book that she actually wrote as a teenager and put away in a drawer thinking it wasn't good enough. It most certainly is good enough and I'm so happy that she was convinced to pull it out and publish it.

It's a beautiful and also terribly sad story of a teenage girl coming to terms with her family's history while trying to find her place in the present and plan for her future. Eliza writes characters and relationships so well that even though there are no big events in her book, I still couldn't put it down.

I feel like the themes of mental illness, blended families, teenagers planning for their futures, small towns and friendships are so relevant in the world we live in and this story deals with them all so well. I  really look forward to discussing it with my girls after they've read it. I'd also love to ask Eliza at some stage about the changes she had to make to bring it up to date after it languished in her drawer for 10 years; was there outdated language, gadgets, trends? So interesting.

Bren and Jobbo dug the holes and laid the foundations for my studio. I know it doesn't look like much now, but if all goes to plan, there'll be a floor on those stumps by this time next week.

I learnt that at the very end of their season, dahlias pop their centres as they open to encourage the bees to pollinate them, and their stems become weak and bendy. I keep holding myself back from dead heading them so I can collect some seed to grow some different ones next year

There was this one day, maybe it was yesterday, when I felt ridiculously emotional and unable to focus so I took myself into the garden and dug up the last row of potatoes. It was so great to work hard, to get out of my head and into my body and to let the dirt drugs do their thing.

And that's my blog for this week. I don't know why it was such a hard one to write but it was. I feel like I've used every single procrastination tool in my tool box and still I'm sitting here at 5.30, my girls are about to get home and I haven't even thought about dinner.

Have you?

Have you had a nice day? Have you got something to look forward to on the weekend? Are you reading a good book? Growing something new to you? Feeling grumpy, or overwhelmed, or inspired?
Do you have a link for something cool on the internet? I've been trying to work out how to post that video of Princess Charlotte waving at the the media just before going in to meet her new baby brother but I can't work out how. In any case, it's pretty sweet.

See you next week.

Love, Kate xx

when the orchard blossoms

Hello blossoms, how's your week been?

I'm sitting here fresh from a morning of digging trenches and planting potatoes. My finger nails are full of dirt and the knees of my overalls are filthy, but it's certainly nice to have an excuse to sit down quietly for a bit.

It's funny, all winter long I felt like I was blogging about the same thing over and over again. The weather had closed in and it was dark and wet and nothing was really happening here except for the knitting and the reading. I yearned for spring when the sun would come out and things would start growing again. And I couldn't wait for a time when I would be spoilt for choice of subjects to photograph and stories to write about.

And all of a sudden here we are. Two months into spring and my world is filled with action and activity. Celebrations, flowers, seeds and seedlings, farm activities and renovations. There's been so much going on here in the past seven days that I don't actually know how to narrow it down. Where do I start? How do I choose?

I guess I'll start at the main event. The day that had been circled on the calendar and counted down to for the last few months, Miss Pepper's Slime birthday party! And then write a list of other week happenings from there.

Led by these two, the girls decorated tee-shirts, played party games, ate, drank, giggled, sang and made slime. 

I have to tell you that after all these years of hosting little kid's parties, having two 14-year-olds to run things was a game changer. I don't think I've ever been so relaxed with a house full of girls.

And even though the day was wet, so the party had to be held inside, and the slime had to be made inside, which I was dreading, they all loved making and playing with it so much that I forgot to care.

And the mess was pretty contained...until they had to make slime blindfolded...that was a whole different story.

Our birthday girl had a ball and kept making and playing with the slime long after her guests had left.

Unfortunately though the birthday joy was short lived as on Tuesday, her actual birthday, she woke up with a temperature and spent most of the day lying floppy on the couch. It broke my heart when we put her to bed that night shivering and crying over a wasted birthday.

Three days later and she's still not 100% but we've promised her a picnic in the apple orchard to make up for it as soon as she feels well enough again.

One late afternoon we were wandering through the old orchard checking for fruit set when we noticed our first bee swarm of the season hanging on a thin, low branch. I love how calm and full of energy a bundle of bees is when they're swarming. I put my bare, flat hand out so close to them and could practically feel their humming vibrations.

Quietly we placed a bee box full of frames underneath them. Because this swarm was in such an easy place to get to without disrupting them much we didn't even put our suits and gloves on. I held the branch they were hanging onto and Farmer Bren carefully cut through it. Holding the whole weight of the swarm in my hand I slowly lowered it into the box and as they rested on the bottom of the box the swarm collapsed and almost rippled like water. (I made the most amazed looking face which Bren caught on camera but I'm too shy to show you.)

We've successfully caught two swarms so far this season. We've been there at the exact moment a swarm has left their hive, flown up in the air and landed on a branch which was terribly exciting. And we've made the mistake of opening the lid to check on a swarm we'd just caught in their box only to have them leave again.

It's such exciting and interesting work, I only hope our eight hives are up to the job of pollinating our orchards to ensure a good fruit set this season.

When Bren's parents came and stayed for a few days this week him and his Dad spent a few hours making frames for the bee boxes in case they swarm again and for when they need an extra box on top. I love watching the two of them working together. 

Also this week we've mowed and mowed and mowed some more. Sometimes it feels like the grass and the weeds are growing so fast I can almost see it. It does frustrate me when I have a whole bunch of things planned to do but I have to put them off to mow or this place will end up looking like a jungle. But I do love that feeling of looking behind me at an area I've just mown and seeing how beautiful it looks in the mower's wake.

I used to write on my blog about my wish for a fairy to darn in the ends of my knitting after I'd finished something, these spring days I'd LOVE nothing more than a mowing fairy to take care of things. Imagine how great that would be! If you see her please send her my way won't you.

This week the green-house extension has continued along the front of our house. Little by little more windows and doors and walls are being built and I can't begin to tell you how exciting it is to love the look of where we live after all these years. And how beautiful it is to look out on our old familiar garden and see it framed in a whole new way. Having that sun filled indoor/outdoor room is going to change the way we live. I just love it.

It's been another busy week in the garden as I've pulled out the last of last summer's carrots, beets and leeks to make room for potatoes, lentils, leeks, peas and flowers.

This past week we've done everything we possibly can to immerse ourselves in the fleeting blossom season. We've walked amongst it, we've breathed in its perfume, we've danced in it as it's rained down upon us, we've photographed it, and we've watched as the bees fly about in it gathering its pollen. And then we've stressed as the days weren't kind and the wind lashed at it and the rains fell down on it. But then the sun came out again and everything felt alright. It's difficult to think that it'll be another whole year before our orchards turn white again.

Apart from an hour of beginner macrame the other morning when it was too wild to go outside, there has not been one speck of craft action in this house over the past week. On one hand that makes me sad, but on the other hand I do know that it's a seasonal thing. The days out on the farm are long in springtime and the hours sitting on the couch are but a few.

A few days ago after listening to the Fat Talk episode of the Ladies We Need To Talk podcast, our family made a promise to stop talking about other people's physical appearances. It's just not necessary. There's so much more to a person than their looks which are mostly the luck of their genetics anyway.

Last night in the middle of the night I finished reading my Mum's library copy of Delancey:A man, A Woman, a Restaurant, A Marriage by Molly Wizenberg also author of the blog Orangette. I loved Molly's book, in its essence it's a bunch of stories about the time in her life when she and her then husband opened up a pizza restaurant. It is chatty and easy to read, it has loads of beautiful recipes (I must remember to copy out a few before I return it), it has beautiful descriptions of pizza, and it's an interesting portrait of a woman who chooses and then chooses again. I think if I ever get around to writing a book about our life on our farm, Delancey is just the type of book I'd like to write.

And lastly, but still very importantly, I had a realisation early in the week that I can sometimes take things personally when they have nothing to do with me. When I finally sat down and had a conversation with a friend of mine who I felt had been prickly, cold and dark toward me over the past few weeks, she told me it was something she was going through and had nothing to do with me at all. And that instead of keeping my distance if I feel that from her in the future, perhaps I could give her a hug. Of course I apologised and promised to, but I've felt awful ever since. I believe so strongly in practicing empathetic behaviour, I've seen and read all the quotes about being kind to people because we're all going through our own private battles, and I want so badly to be a good human, I guess I just need a bit more practise.

And with that I'm outta here!

Are you making/growing/reading/loving/dreaming/learning about anything exciting at the moment?

Are spring petals or autumn leaves falling from the trees where you live?

My parents have just walked up the hill with a freshly baked challah for us, I must go now and cut myself a slice.

See you next week!

Love Kate

x