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

birthday blog

Hello lovelies,

Happy Friday! How's your week been? How's your weekend looking?

Thank you so much for your care for the girl in the forest post. As the days have gone by her place in our story and in our lives has settled somewhat. The other day though out of nowhere I grew desperate for some details and quizzed Bren about what shoes she was wearing - lace up black boots, what colour and how long her hair was - black long bob, and what she had screamed for the most - her boyfriend. 

It's strange to be so connected to someone else in their time of complete distress, for such a short but intense time, and then to have nothing to do with them ever again. But I guess her story is now part of our story and we'll think of her at different times and hope for the best for her. I daresay we'll look at the forest a bit differently now when we drive through it. We'll probably look for lost girls and imagine how it would feel to be out there lost and alone.

What I really want to talk about today is farmer Bren's birthday last Saturday.

When I first started blogging, birthdays were blog gold. There was the planning stage, the invitations, the food, the presents and the party. So many creative opportunities. So much to photograph and say. So much fun! My girls love looking back at those posts and remembering their childhood celebrations. 

My farmer boy was born at the start of January which is right in the middle of the summer school holidays. Growing up he never had birthday parties because all his friends would be away. Since I've known him every year I've come up with a long list of fancy ways we could celebrate him but every year he chooses the simple. And every year we all agree that his way of celebrating is the best.

We started the day off with a huge stack of crepes, and plates full of all the summer fruit, and cups of strong coffee.

We sang, he read out his cards, he opened his presents and we all made a big fuss over him.

Then we went outside and sang for him while he played To Her Door over and over and over until he nailed it. 

Then he carved a birthday spoon out of apple wood. 

What fun to spend an entire day doing the things that make you happy.

While he was axing and carving and cutting, I wound the yarn for his birthday socks and knitted the toes.

After a little lunch, we wandered down to the windmill dam for a swim.

During the week while we had watched the weather forecast for his birthday get hotter and hotter it had occurred to our boy that he'd love to spend the day at the beach. When that wasn't going to work out he decided to bring the beach to him.

The day before his birthday he mowed and cleared a section of bank of the dam. He put some old tarps down and lay some fine gravel over the top. Very early on the morning of his birthday he had a truck of sand delivered. He smoothed it out and voila! Bren's birthday beach!

We found some old air mattresses and a yabby net in the caravan and in between swims and floats, the girls used a bit of sausage to catch the nippy critters.

They discussed the anatomy of each one, they gave them names and then they raced them.

The highlight of the afternoon was when Bob junior beat Bob senior in the grand final race. The worst part was watching in horror as Sheila ate Pepper's prize frog!

All the yabbies were let go at the end of the races and no animals were hurt at all apart from that poor little frog.

As evening fell we came back inside and watched Pete's Dragon together. We ate pasta with pesto, ice cream cake and toasted our boy with mugs full of ginger beer.

He's pretty awesome our boy and it's such a treat to celebrate him.

Happy birthday Farmer Bren!

We love you to bits.

x

So I was just wondering, if you could spend a whole day doing the things that bring you the most joy, what would they be?

I think mine would involve coffee and a few chapters of a good book in bed, lots of knitting, time together in the garden, a family movie that would make me cry, a salad with crunchy noodles, fruit salad and yogurt and a fancy cocktail or two.


Hope your weekend is ace!

Love! Love!

my week in ten

Hello lovely people,

Welcome back to the Friday edition of Foxs Lane.

It's been a week since I've sat in the plump green chair in the corner of our office/studio/second-bedroom with my laptop on my knees and written in this space. And despite the chaos that is my house right now, I'm pleased that I've decided that blogging on Fridays is a thing, and I'm honouring that.

So here goes. This is a list of little stories and things that have happened in my small world since last we met.

one - blog

Obviously I haven't solved all of the issues of my last blog, but I can't tell you how much blogging them has made a difference to my mental state.

I listened to a podcast interview with Colm Toibin the author recently, in which he spoke of the fear that being stranded on a desert island meant that no-one would be able to read his work. At the time that really surprised me. I had thought that a writer wrote for the love of the words, and the story, and because he/she couldn't not write. I hadn't understood that the reader was such an important part of the process. Later that day it occurred to me that blogging is exactly the same. You reading my words is part of my process. Otherwise this may as well be a private journal. I guess it also explains how the mere act of writing and publishing helps me so much with the process of growing and changing.

Reading your responses and suggestions and just knowing that I am not alone in all of this is ridiculously helpful and reassuring too. Thank you xx

So in the last week I have decided that I need to write more, I could study photography; I don't want to do anything that involves writing an essay ever again in my life; I'd love to draw and paint, and I need to work on my confidence in all of the above. It seems like I've been standing behind my girls, pushing them forward for so long that I've forgotten that I can get out there myself.

It's a process though, and if blogging it was the first step, then I'm determined to take the next few steps before I lose the momentum.

two - school

Our big girls finished their first year at their new school. And what a year it has been: from learning the culture of this new school, making new friends, hikes, bikes-rides, a six-week trip to Greece, dealing with a bully, realising that car-pooling doesn't work for our family, spending a few days each week in winter in a local Airbnb, performances, creations, subject decisions and work.

I won't lie, the fact that the school is close to an hour away has been difficult at times. The fact that their friends live so far away has meant that we have often found ourselves driving through the mountain ranges not just on weekdays, but on the weekends too. Over winter the drive was at times dangerous with frosty roads, low visibility, rain, hail, sleet and snow. The days were long and tiring.

But I have to say that often those drives felt like a gift: when the sunlight streamed through the forest, when we hit upon a great Spotify play list, when we had uninterrupted time to really talk, when the podcasts spoke directly to us, or when the world seemed too big and hard and our car felt like the safest place to be.

I'm really happy to have our girls home for the holidays, but I'm also incredibly pleased that we've found a school that encourages creativity and individuality and hard work.

three - anniversary

Last Monday my farmer boy and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary. 17!!! I looked it up and the gift for 17 years of marriage is furniture! How romantic.

We celebrated by leaving the girls at home alone and eating dinner on the balcony in the forest at a restaurant nearby. It was gorgeous and delicious and romantic.

four - books

I finished reading The Sisters Antipodes, which I loved, and Goodreads sent me an email to let me know that I've read 42 books this year, 13,273 pages and one book that 2,090,390 people have also read - The Catcher In The Rye, crazy. But there are still a few weeks left, so I'm hoping to get that tally up at least two more notches.

five - knitting socks

I've slowly been knitting away at my fair isle socks and am hoping to have them off my needles by the end of this weekend. I'm so excited to show them to you.

six - Tom

Last Saturday I went to buy some ceramics from some local ceramicists who were having a stall outside the supermarket in town. While I was there, as well as buying some GORGEOUS pieces, I had a long chat with a woman who is friends with the couple we bought our farm from. I told her I'd been thinking about them often while we were renovating and she told me that the woman had died and the man was devastated. Of course he was. She told me that she would send our love but she thought it would be too painful for him to ever visit us again.

Last Tuesday he showed up. He drove in, introduced himself and came in for a cup of coffee and a tour. He was so open and honest and sweet with us that it just about broke my heart. He said his visit had just been spur of the moment and he hadn't known how he would feel being in his old home again, the home he had built and shared with his wife, but surprisingly he liked it. He loved what we've done and walked from room to room admiring the details. He left with a dozen eggs and promised to come again soon, hopefully in apple season, to help with the harvest.

Bren says that it's very Celestine Prophecy, the way he showed up just after I was talking about him. I think I'm just happy he came at the end of the renovation rather than the bomb site stage in the middle. And I'm pleased he felt comfortable here and that he'll come again.

seven - garden 

After suffering too many heartbreaks, and crying too many tears in the market garden thanks to the birds and animals helping themselves to our crops, my farmer boy built me a massive cage from star stakes, pipe and orchard netting. I'm hoping to get a fencer in early next year to build a more permanent version, but until then this is brilliant! So far I've planted my corn in there, with loads more to come this weekend.

eight - spoon

We celebrated the last day of school with dinner and drinks around the fire. Pepper cooked strawberry concoctions, Jazzy came out of her room to visit, Indi played with some Waifs songs, I knitted my socks and my farmer boy carved a double-ended spoon for the mother of a baby who had told us that spoons were silly because babies poked themselves with the wrong ends.

nine - firewood

For the next four days, starting tomorrow, we'll be working on our firewood for next year and the year after. Bob is coming with his chainsaw to cut down a few trees that are a bit close to the house and then we'll use his hydraulic splitter to cut them to size and then make stacks for the winters to come.

I love that I have my blog as a record of the last time we did this so I can remember and prepare for this time.

ten

I can't think of what number 10 should be and I'm in a bit of a rush to finish this off and get dressed to go out to a party, so I think I'll dedicate it to anyone out there who is having a tough time at the moment. I hope your troubles ease, I hope you find comfort and feel supported, and I hope by this time next week when I write my blog your world looks a little rosier.


Until then, tell me a thing, or 10, about you.
What are you thinking about? How are you feeling? What are you growing/mending/baking?
I'd love to hear all about it.

Big love,

Kate

beginner spinner

So what happens when you're really not very good at something that feels important to you?

It's late on a beautiful, warm Saturday afternoon in the middle of March and we've made the decision to stop with the farm work and spend some time together as a family crafting outside.

It's a crazy time of the year and often I'll find myself getting ready for bed at night not able to remember a single time when I sat down all day. Everything is ripe and needs picking, everything is dry and needs irrigating, everything is going soft and needs preserving, everything is becoming a jungle and needs weeding, and mowing and feeding and fencing and fixing and moving and stacking and and and and...so stopping early just to sit together and chat and make feels indulgent, and precious, and also necessary.

My farmer boy is carving a spoon. It's been months since he's made one but he's committed to demonstrating and selling at a market soon and has lots of cutting ahead of him. His hands feel out of practise, his fingers are sore and blistered, but he's in the zone and not long after he starts chipping away he remembers and he becomes excited at the possibilities and the feelings.

Nearby Indi is weaving wool around sticks and inside the house Jarrah is creating with paper and washi tape.

Miss Pepper is taking staples from our sheep's shorn fleece, combing them, using some for her fairy house and making neat piles of the rest for me. I can't help but joke about how she owes me. How I've been brushing and braiding her bottom-lengthed hair for eight years now and it's time for her to pay up. She is strong and likes to discuss the feeling of the lanolin on her hands, the sheepy, woolly smell and the bits of dirt she finds as she cards.

And I am sitting to the side, shoes off, straight backed, deep breathed, trying my hardest to find some sort of rhythm on this spinning wheel I borrowed from my spinning group.

And it's hard for me.

And I am a little disappointed because I think I had hoped that it would click for me sooner. That wool and fibre and textiles are such a big important part of who I am and what I love that spinning would just be an extension of what I can do and would be easy for me.

To be honest and fair I haven't given the wheel that much time. When time is precious it feels better spent on projects that will produce a sure thing. I have a sleeve to knit on a jumper, I have squares to knit into a blanket, I have Indi's cardigan to cast on, winter is coming and there are socks and mittens and beanies in the queue.

But still the spinning calls to me.

I visit the sheep that grew this fleece every day. At the moment I know that they are in our south orchard eating the grass that grows between the trees. I love that they feel so comfortable amongst the chickens and that they sleep with the dogs. I watch them carefully to see how they behave on the warm days and when it is cooler. I love how they stick together as a pack, how they panic when they are separated from one another by accident and look relieved and chummy when they are reunited. I don't mind that they are eating the lower leaves on the branches of the apple trees and I am sure that their little pellet poo is doing great things for the orchard's fertility.

Now that we have sheep, I find myself less interested in buying commercial wool.

I want to knit with wool that tells our farm's story. Wool that holds our seasons, and bits of our land and the love and respect we have for them as part of our farm.

And yet I find myself with lots of tangley twisty bits.

And a bobbin filled with yarn so bobbley and uneven that it almost looks like that novelty pom-pom yarn you find in op shops and wonder why it was made in the first place.

I will persevere of course. I will hold the fleece in my left hand, draft with my right, while treadeling with both feet and trying to get the wheel to spin in a clockwise direction. Phew! And I'll hold my breath when my farmer boy hops on; part of me wanting him to get it and explain it simply to me, and part of me wanting it to be too hard for him too so it's not just me spinning my way into lumpy-town.

I wonder how far away from my dreams of a hand spun, hand knitted jumper my reality is.

In the meantime, we've opened our farm gate stall for the season, Yay!

You can find us at  - Daylesford Organics - 19 Foxs Lane Muskvale.

The stall is open between about 8am and 8pm every day.

Apples are all certified organic, grown here, picked within the last 24 hours, DELICIOUS and cost $6kg.

Please bring your own bags, exact change and honesty.

And tell me, if you please, when was the last time you tried to learn something new?

When was the last time you didn't at first succeed?

And how long did you try and try again for?

Oh and I'm on the hunt for my own wheel if you have any suggestions.

And youtube spinning videos, can you suggest any?

Thanks.

I'm off to pick today's tomatoes and plant some cabbage.

Big spinny love to you,

Kate 

xoxo