2018 HOT HITS!

Hello friends,

I have to start this week by thanking those of you who have written to me from near and so very far to tell me what my blog means to you. Honestly when I sat down to write my blog last week I quickly typed out a list of about 16 things that I wanted to write about - my blog break was number one.

But then somehow item number one went for so long and took up so much space that I decided to leave it at that. I'd included that bit about feeling sad that nobody even noticed my blog posts had disappeared even though it made me feel terribly uncomfortable, I'm all about  messy reality after all.

If I ever doubted that my blog was read and received and appreciated, I certainly don't anymore. Thank you for writing to me, thank you for being so understanding, thank you for not being demanding of me, thank you for reading along, thank you for telling me about all the things you love about my blog and what it means to you, and seriously thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking my family into your hearts and being so kind to us, it means the world.

So before I use up all my blog time and space again this week I'd better move along to my 2018 highlights reel. I've never actually done this before, I don't think, but late last year and early this, as my social media feed got filled up with other people's highlights I decided that it would be fun to do the same. 

As an added  bonus, scrolling through last year's 51 posts has convinced me further that I have to stick around. What a great record of a moment in time. Even the posts that I remember struggling with, feeling like I had nothing to say, are interesting to me now from a distance.

So without further ado, here it is, my 2018 hot hits!

January

2018 went off with a bang when we celebrated our farmer Bren's birthday with a big beautiful party. The night started with fancy cocktails and a communal feast in the garden and ended up many hours later with a bit of table top dancing. Quite a contrast to his birthday celebrations this year, a few days ago, which were much more low key, but still just as special.

Happy birthday my love!

January was also filled with a lot of talk about becoming a flower farmer. It's interesting to read my confident words of a year ago and to think of how much more I know now, yet how aware I am of how much learning I still have ahead of me. The more you know - the less you know. Feels like a bit of an ongoing theme with me.

February

The girls went back to school and started year 5, year 9 and year 12.

I wrote a blog post that included this chunk of text - '"I think I'm happier now than I've ever been in my whole life" I blurted out as we drove past the newly planted sunflower patch. "I feel like I'm more authentically, honestly me than I can ever remember being. Like my skin fits and I feel comfortable wearing it.

And I didn't mean that kind of happiness that is short lived, giggly joy. I could have called it satisfied or honest, but it felt bigger and more worthy than that. It was more of an underlying positive feeling about where we live and the way we've chosen to live. It was about nature and love and creativity and time.'

The days were warm, the garden was full of flowers and our baskets were full of produce.

March

March saw us harvesting baskets and bowls and picking bags full.

We started farmers marketing again. We opened the farm gate stall. And the Fowlers machine, the freezer and the dehydrator started humming away, preserving the bounty.

April

Reading through April's posts I remember struggling at the time to write them. I remember questioning myself about how interesting they were. Feeling certain that I was just repeating the same seasonal stories from the past nine Aprils, and running away from the computer as soon as I'd pressed 'post'. But this morning I loved reading back on what I was preserving, learning, picking, pickling, listening to and feeling. I'm positive there's a lot of repetition from year to year on this blog, but that's living with the seasons for ya.

May

The temperatures plummeted and the season started to change in earnest. We pulled the tomatoes out, we picked the last of the apples and we started seriously stacking wood.

In May my insomnia peaked and I wrote that it was - frustrating exasperating and scary

And very excitingly, my studio build began.

June

In June my studio build continued.

The mornings were frosty and the days were cold.

We pulled nets off the trees, pulled out the annual flowers, dug up the dahlia tubers, planted spring bulbs and loads of flower seeds.

AND I conquered my monster fears and gave a 45 minute presentation about my crafty life and taught a bunch of awesome crafty women how to knit socks from the toe up at Soul Craft festival.

July

In July I wrote my first blog from inside my studio. A room of my very own. I can still remember the feeling of walking in and closing the door behind me for the first time. The only thing I can compare it to is driving down a highway alone after I first got my driver's license.Freedom, independence, space and opportunity.

Farmer Bren started turning the most beautiful bowls.

And we spent quite a bit of time staying in the mountains close to the girls' school so they could go to their early and late classes, musical rehearsals and be part of the social scene.

August

In August I started painting from nature as a way to reclaim my creativity and give myself permission to continue with something even though I wasn't great at it.

We took Pepper and some friends on a Goldrush adventure through the forest.

And then finally my insomnia defeated me - I cried all the tears. I scraped the bottom. It terrified me.

September

In September, the spring equinox, the daffodils and wattle came out and coloured our world golden.

And then my all time knitting hero/guru Mary Jane Mucklestone came to Australia and Felicia brought her to our farm for lunch!! How cool!!

A few days later I attended my first ever craft retreat - The Craft Sessions where I met loads of wonderful women, learnt heaps of new skills and shared a room with Mary Jane. I still can't stop smiling when I think of those few days and nights, the late night conversations, the giggling and the story telling. Definitely a 2018 highlight for me.

October

In October our Jazzy went overseas with school for six weeks and turned 15. Our Pepper turned 11 and had a treasure hunt party. I stressed about the jungle-y state of our farm and my farmer boy calmed me down by talking about living with nature rather than trying to tame her.

I planted and planted and planted seeds in the greenhouse.

I started spinning lessons with Rebecca from Needle and Spindle who I met at The Craft Sessions and I fell in love. The apple orchards tried to blossom in a week of rain and wind. And farmer Bren made a bowl from a eucalyptus burl.

November

In November Indi started and finished her final school exams and then turned 18. Our Jazzy came home from her overseas adventure with so many stories to tell and songs to sing.

The giant foxgloves flowered, my spinning obsession continued, we harvested the garlic, divided the dahlia tubers and Bren and I spent three glorious days alone at the beach celebrating my birthday.

December

There's only one post in December. It was a month of finishing school and the commutes there and back, planting out the gardens, picking flowers, starting to pick veggies, time alone on the farm with Bren while the girls spent time with their grandparents at the beach, getting used to a slower pace, working til 9.30 at night, and the mad scramble to find new podcasts while all of my usuals take summer breaks.

In 2018 I knitted - five beanies,  one sweater, one shawl, two pairs of slippers, two cardigans, two pairs of socks, countless blanket squares, some swatches and I'm currently half way down the body of another cardigan knitted using my very own hand-spun. If you're the knitty-type, you can find all the details on my Ravelry page.

According to my Goodreads tally in 2018 I read 52 books comprising of 16,448 pages (insomnia will do that to you).

We survived our first final year of school and were thrilled to learn that Indi was the dux of her graduating class. I didn't eat processed sugar for 365 days. We grew food and flowers, Farmer Bren renovated his workshop (that post is still in my drafts), we drove 1,000's of kilometers, we cleared a track around our property to start fencing it for sheep, we watched a few series, I learnt stuff and taught stuff, there were boys, lots of written and played songs, lots of trips to the gym, some new friends, lots of emotions, tears from laughing and crying, some wonderful celebrations, some great memories.

I can't wait to see where 2019 takes us!


What are your stand-out highlights of 2018?
How have the first eleven days of the new year been for you?

See you soon!

Love, Kate x

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

The last of the apples

On Sunday we picked the last of the apples and pulled the nets off the trees.

It's been an incredible season, possibly our best ever and although I do feel sad at the thought that it will be so many months before I pick another juicy ripe apple from a tree, I feel happy and grateful for the season that was.

Our orchards are made up of 40 varieties of heritage apples to spread out the blossom and the harvest -  so we picked and we picked this year all the way from January through to late May. From the sweetest all the way through to the ones that make you wince with sour. From the ones that hold their shape when cooked through to the ones that completely disintegrate into mush. From the old faves like Granny Smiths and Jonathans all the way through to the interesting Mutzus and the Peasgood's Nonesuch and the Esopus Spitzenbergs.

It's been such fun!

And although we do wonder if the bio-dynamics and the nets made the season so great, we're most thankful of Mother Nature and the rain and the sunshine and the bees.

And the farm stall. How we love that stall. Opening her up in the morning, picking apples and filling the crates, writing cute notes on the blackboards for our customers, our gorgeous customers, and the thought that our apples are being munched and crunched in homes and lunch boxes all around the area.

So to finish on a high and to thank you for your love and support, we have dropped the price to $2.50 a kilo from now until we run out. Which will be pretty soon I think.

So if you are in the area - please come and buy some and take them home and eat them, bake them, juice them, dehydrate them, pop them in Fowlers jars, make stamps with them, stew them, brew cider with them, bob for them..........

And tell me - what's your fave variety of apple and what's your fave way to eat them?

Big love!

xoxo

Oh PS Alli you won the little Tea Mouse kit. Yay!! x