bits and bobs

Hello!! How are you? Happy springtime!

Long time no blog hey. Possibly the longest time since this blog began, possibly too long for me to even remember where we've been and what we've been doing.  But that's OK, I'm here now with twenty minutes before I have to go and pick up the girls from school, and that's all that matter's right.

So a little while ago the clouds finally parted, the sun came out and we've been busy bees in the garden, in the kitchen, on the farm, at school and everywhere else in between - ever since. I've barely opened my computer in weeks. But I have been taking photos here and there and so I thought I'd just catch you up quickly on some of the highlights.

We've been picking daffodils. Always one of the very first signs of spring around here.

One sunny day Miss Pepper woke up very early and wrote a list of everything she wanted to do that day. It looked like comic strip with a drawing of her doing the thing and a description underneath. Pick a basketful of daffodils was the very first thing on that list. So we did. And now we have jars full of yellow happy flowers throughout the house.

I'm so excited that spring is finally here. Last night it occurred to me that I've now survived 14 Daylesford winters. That is a lot of very cold, dark months and I am so relieved to see the back of this past one. Phew!

I'm reading another Miss Mogantosh book suggestion.

It's interesting to read a book that is so similar to the one I always thought I might write. Leaving the city for a life of organic farming, the steepest learning curves, the never-ending jobs lists, the dirt and mud, the cost of things, the joys of farming, the taste of food grown with love, the interesting characters along the way, the live-stock and dead-stock, the love of a farmer boy...it's all there. But in this case it's in America with the added bonuses of real deep snow, encounters with the Amish, maple syrup and draught horses.

Our stories are so similar and yet vastly different. I'm really enjoying Kirstin's tale and bookmarking so many bits to chat with my own farmer boy about when I get the chance.


I'm still loving my wool craft classes at the girls' school.

I've been thinking a lot about holding some workshops here on our farm over the warmer months, teaching, making and sharing. I love the thought of passing on the knowledge and skills that we have to people who don't necessarily live the same sort of life as we do.


We've been making our coffee on a little burner out in the paddock in the sunshine, eating snacks of dried nuts and fruit and knitting a few rows here and there. Ahhhhhh there's nothing quite like the feeling of breaking after a hard morning's work, sitting with the sun warm on our backs, counting how many different bird songs we can hear, while sipping sweet cardamon coffee.


I worked out that every Saturday for the past few Saturdays, I've cast off a sock and cast on another sock. Last Saturday I finally finished Miss Indi's fairy bread socks and she loves them! She actually took them off me and wore them straight away!! It has been a long time since my teenager has worn anything I have handmade for her and seeing her love those socks as much as I loved knitting them for her was the biggest buzz ever. Hooray!!

Socks ravelled here.


That same Saturday I cast on a pair of socks for my farmer boy.

A few weeks ago he was on a boy's only trip to Melbourne when he popped into a wool shop, asked for a ball of sock yarn that would be knitted on size two needles with graduating colour and chose this. Amazing right?!

I could hardly wait to cast them on.


I should probably mention that when our local craft shop didn't stock the one meter long, size two circular needle I'd need for knitting two socks at the same time, I was forced to shop online and by accident lost my web-shopping virginity on these beauties.

I bought them from Tangled Yarns who had the best customer service and I can highly recommend.

I always thought that I needed to actually squish the yarn myself before buying, but I've been proven wrong. There is something so exciting about getting a parcel of delicious wool in the mail, it's almost like a present. I'm pretty sure I'll be online buying again before too long.


Of course we've been taking advantage of the warm, windless days by spending time in the kitchen garden, the market gardens and the orchards weeding, forking, tidying, planting and getting ready for the growing season.

And we've been planting bucket-loads of this gorgeous looking mix of Burrum Biodynamics green manure seeds. Giving back to the soil that gives so much to us.

And that brings us up to now, to this week when the weather has closed in and is cold and wintry again. At other times this might have made me miserable but instead I'm feeling glad for the opportunity to slow down for a bit, to catch up on some inside jobs and for the rain that is watering in the seeds and hopefully filling up the dams and water tanks before summer. It feels like a big, deep breath.


So tell me, if you feel like it, what you've been busy with. What you're making and baking and growing and reading. I'd love to know.

Be well my friends, I hope your shoulders feel strong enough to take on your load.

Big love

xx

my story in eight

These are the last eight photos I took off my camera.

Mostly with photo taking, I take a bunch of pictures all at once and download them soon after and blog them not long after that. In those cases I pretty much know what to expect. And as the photos flash onto the screen, more often than not, the words that tell their stories come too.

Other times, my camera sits on the kitchen table or near the front door for days at a time, only picked up for a quick snap here and there. After these times the downloading is more of a surprise and more fun. Random snapshots that tell the tales of my life at a moment in time. 

As the eight photos in this post downloaded I was half looking and half eating a feijoa. As they popped onto the screen I noticed how autumnal their colour pallet is. I realised that I am so very obviously the Mum of school girls now as none of the photos has little kids in them. And I saw that although a huge amount more than these eight events has gone on in my life over the past few days, these photos do tell the story of my late autumn beautifully.

Photo one of the kitchen garden up there, tells the story of tiny little lettuces and spinachs trying to put on as much growth as possible while there is still sunshine and a bit of warmth in the air before winter really kicks in. Our kitchen garden is my happy place these days. I am always kicking my clogs on and picking some herbs or greens for a meal, doing a spot of weeding or transplanting or admiring. Yesterday we noticed the first few broccoli of the season which was cause for much excitement.

Photo two is of the loveliest, chunkiest wool I am currently using to knit my farmer boy a new beanie. I don't know about you but I find it very difficult to source really chunky, soft, pure wool. This stuff is from New Zealand, I bought it in Ocean Grove last week and now I'm thinking I should have bought more. Details here.

Yesterday I drove past farmer Bren on his tractor wearing two beanies at once, so I think next up once I finish this beanie will be a balaclava.

Photo three is of a marker for a seed tray filled with onion seeds in the hot house. On Tuesday we filled the hot house with trays of onion seeds and leek seeds. I'm hoping they grow big and strong soon enough to transplant them into the garden and leave us the space to start the tomato season all over again in August.

Photo four is of the bottle tree in Autumn. I love how that tree and its bottles tells a different story each season. After a summer of thick green foliage that practically hid the bottles from view, the leaves slowly turned golden and reflected in the bottles' glass. And now as the leaves fall to a carpet below the tree the bottles remain, swaying and occasionally clinking in the cool wind.

Photo five is of the basil seed we saved from this year's crop to dry out and plant again next year. There may not be any fresh, green basil leaves to flavour our cooking for some time, but our freezer is filled with containers of pesto for the winter.

Photo six is of the carpet of autumn leaves I mentioned above. I remember when I used to live in suburban Melbourne autumn was always filled with raked up piles of autumn leaves to be burned, composted and sometimes run through. The leaves on our farm are a bit more free range, blowing around, making a pretty mess and then disintegrating back into the earth. I think they are terribly beautiful and they make me happy even though I know that the leaves on the back deck and in the entrance way are a sign of my bad housekeeping.

Picture seven is of a big bowl full of green-manure seeds I mixed up before planting. Doesn't it look like soup mix! This mix of fenugreek, broad beans, peas and vetch went in where the tomatoes came out of the garden. Our garden worked super hard making the vines and fleshy tomato fruit over the past six months and this green manure crop will feed the soil and prepare it for next spring's plantings.

And picture eight I took a few minutes ago. Picture eight is of some gorgeous wool felt I bought off lovely Lizzie this morning at Mill Rose. I have book mark plans for this pile. Book marks with little vintage caravans parked on top. The publicity campaign for my book has begun and these book marks will be a part of it. I'm both excited and nervous. The release date is still a few months away but there's loads to do before then. Eeeeeeep!

I hope your week is telling a wonderful story.
I hope it is warm, delicious and pleasing to the eye.

Ciao x