snow!

This afternoon it snowed. Not a lot, not for very long and certainly not as much as last year, but still white, fluffy snowflakes fell from the sky. And for a little while everything felt quiet and still and right with the world.

I was home alone which was weird. I wandered around the garden for a bit, shrieked and whooped to no one at all and then I did a silly little dance because I felt like I should. After it slowed down, I raced back inside to warm my frozen toes.

And as I sat there by the fire defrosting and scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, it occurred to me that snow really is magical. My feeds were completely full of snow stories and announcements and photos. For half an hour or maybe even an hour, our little part of the world had forgotten about politics and war, anniversaries of sadness and the death of a pet bunny, and instead we were celebrating the white stuff.

It was exciting and exhilarating and cold.

I'm told we might even get more tomorrow. Yay!

The wind is howling outside here, I'm going to take my book into the bath.

Oh and I almost forgot, my photo made it onto The Age website, YAY!

Stay warm my friends. Or keep cool as the case may be.

xx

Slow Living : A Practical Workshop

To create good content you have to live good content.

Beth Kirby, otherwise known as Local Milk, wrote that and it's absolutely perfectly true, don't you think.

This September Beth, together with Luisa Brimble and Rebekka Seale will be coming to Melbourne, to Butterland, to run a two-day, Slow Living workshop exploring creating content through food, florals, photography and textiles.

Oh. My. Goodness!! It's the dream team running a total dream-come-true workshop.

This is the little blurb on their booking site;

During our time together, we will explore the process of living the content you want to create. The first day, we will delve into the natural dye process using local, foraged plants and flowers to brighten rustic kitchen linens, and the second day we will bake wholesome pastries together. Afterward, on both days, we will workshop styling, photography, and visual story telling with the dyed textiles, flowers, baked goods, tea, and coffee. Participants will receive focused, personalized guidance in photography & styling—we will touch on camera basics, building a portfolio, creating a social media presence that resonates, prop sourcing, how to write a pitch & get published, planning photo shoots, post-processing, and more—as well as learn the practical skills of dying, floral arranging, and baking. We will share morning and afternoon teas, lunch each day, and one very special dinner. 

If you, like me, drool over these three women's instagram feeds, if you, like me, are always wanting to learn everything there is to learn about textiles and flowers and baking and styling and photography, if you, like me, would love an opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the best in the biz, if you like me, cannot think of anything better than spending a few days away from home surrounded by utter beauty and like minded folk...then this is for you. It's for us. Let's go!

I've been given a ticket to the workshop but I really, really would love for some of you guys to come along and sit next to me, it'd make it so much more fun. Let's go together!

Check out Local Milk for even more gorgeous photos and details about The Slow Living Workshop here.

And book your tickets to the Melbourne workshop here.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!! It's going to be so wonderful, I can hardly wait.

Thanks Beth and Luisa for the photos. x


I hope you get loads done today my friends, our girls are back at school and I've got mountains of stuff to catch up on.

Big love

xx

the strangest meal

I still get so excited when I see my work published in a magazine. I mean it's one thing to write and photograph stories for my own blog, but it's something else entirely when an editor or publisher chooses me. It feels validating, like I'm on the right track. I love it.

Last week the winter edition of Slow Living Magazine came out and along with a story I wrote and shot about life on our farm in The International Year of Family Farming.


There is also a story about my sister Meg and her bike riding, foraging, adventuring family,


A story written and photographed by friends of ours Sahm and Andrew about locals Wayne and Chris.

And one of my favourite photos I've ever taken of my farmer boy's hand holding a tomato he just picked on the editorial page. Yay!

Of course Slow is filled with loads of other articles written, shot and about amazing people and places that have nothing to do with me too.

Before the magazine went to print Tim Baker, the editor, sent out an email asking all the contributors to write a three or four line bio that included a brief description of who we are and what we do, followed by an account of the strangest meal we've ever consumed and our current favourite dish.

Mine never made it into the magazine so I thought I'd include it here;

Kate Ulman is an organic farmer, mother of three and wife to her handsome farmer boy. One Autumn evening a few years ago while they were walking around their farm admiring, discussing and smelling the soil, Farmer Bren suggested she have a taste. She hesitated, but then wondered who was she to question her husband's precious soil, his life's passion. So she ate a bit. It tasted like gritty earth. Luckily it grows the most gorgeous fruit and veggies, including the Mutzu apple which is her favourite fruit in the world.


I hope you are having a glorious, slow weekend folks, and if you have the time I'd love to hear about the strangest meal you've ever eaten and/or your current favourite dish. It's such an interesting one.

Big love!

xx

knits and knots and natters

The other day I went looking for a bag of green flecked wool that I knew I had but couldn't remember where I'd put. I searched high and then I searched low and found it under my bed with a bunch of other bits and pieces of the woolly persuasion including the start of a granny hottie that I hooked up last year. Fancy that! I fully remember making that red one but I wonder why I started and then stopped this green one. I'd better finish it off don't you think.


After I found the green wool I cast on some Emerald Fingerless Mittens to swap with a potter for some beakers. It feels a bit funny to be making something for someone I've never even met in real life but a bit fun all the same. I hope she likes them.


In the middle of all this I turned around in my desk chair one day and contemplated the stacks of vintage sheets that I have been collecting but neglecting for years. Piles of them all neatly folded and colour coded. I thought about cutting out and sewing a dress for someone but it's not really sundress weather. So I pulled some down, tore off some 3cm lengths, found a 10mm hook, crocheted a 26 chain stitches and started a rag rug.

The beginning was quick and fun but then it started hurting my hands and curling up at the edges so I took a break. It's so cold and there's so much knitting to be done that I can't really afford to hurt myself right now. Or ever. I think I've got a 15mm hook around here somewhere that might help  to make it looser and easier.

If you were an oversized crochet hook where would you hide from me?


The minute before I put my rag rug aside to rest it occurred to me that my time would probably be better spent making something woolly and wearable. In these crazy cold days something that protects against the chilliness must be valued higher than something pretty, every single time.

So I systematically searched through my stash, found three bandless balls of something that looked 12plyish, found a pattern on Ravelry, swatched and cast on. And despite the fact that Indi said I would never wear that colour, I knitted on.

It was a quick knit and after about two nights I found myself nearing the end of the first ball which in turn made me happy and then concerned. Happy because I could imagine myself wearing my thick, cuddly cardi by the end of the week. And then concerned because there was no way I was a third of the way into the knit and yet here I was a third of the way into my wool.

That's when I realised I had underestimated the amount of yarn I would need. And I got out the kitchen scales and weighed it all up and realised that I was right, I was way under. Oops. I'm so used to knitting 8ply that I had forgotten that the same weight of 12ply would give me less length. And being wool from the Bendigo Woollen Mills back-room I knew there wasn't much chance of getting any more. Bum!


After that I knitted up some Small Fry Fingerless gloves for Pepper. Look at her cute little meditation hands.


Next up is socks. Wish me luck.

Or maybe I'll have to put all that on hold to knit with the smooshiest yarn ever that just arrived in Jodie's Jellywares Winter yarn club. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Decisions. Decisions.

So that's me all caught up creatively.
How about you? What've you been up to?

I hope you're feeling inspired and creative. I hope you've got a fun project on the go.

Ciao!

xx

these two

You'll have to excuse this post that is heavy on photos and light on words, but we are half way through the winter school holidays and all sense has flown out of the windows and all that is left behind is silliness and chatter. And song and stories and descriptions and instructions. So many words and yet none left to use here.


There was this day last week where Jazzy stayed inside and stripped her room for painting, my farmer boy and I walked up and down the hill doing the farm chores, and these two played together in the forest for hours. Climbing and laughing and sliding and telling funny stories.

There certainly are times when I wonder about living on a farm, when I worry about country kids and I hope that we are giving them enough. But at times like these I feel confident that this farm fresh world is the best world for us. It is more than enough.


I don't know if they know it yet.
But I do.


I love the way these two play and love each other fiercely.

I'm so glad I had my camera to capture them and their muddy knees.

Happy days friends. Happy days!

May the chatter that fills your head be kind and funny.

Bye!

xx

On a wintry Tuesday

 


It's Tuesday and I haven't left our farm since last Friday. It's been too cold and really, there's nothing out there in the big wide world that I need.

I guess winter is the season we have been preparing for during all the others: we have a freezer stacked to the top with containers, our pantry is groaning under the weight of filled Fowlers jars and there are piles of kindling and firewood ready to burn to heat our house, dry our clothes and cook our food.

It's Tuesday and for the first time in days it's not rainy or windy or both. Today feels like one of those days where winter stops for a second and catches it's breath. It is still freezing cold but it is calm and it's still. We'll rug up to go out to feed the animals and collect the eggs, but then instead of rushing back inside to shelter, we might venture further.

We might check on the crops growing in the market garden, make plans to mulch the garlic, weed the beetroot, spray the orchard, whipper snipper between the trees, bring in another load of wood, move the chickens, pick the rhubarb and start pruning the apples.

The winter jobs might be fewer but the days are shorter and mostly nastier, so we'll study the weather forecast and work when we can.

It's Tuesday and although it's only the second day of the school holidays, I think I might get the girls all rugged up in their winter woollies and make them come outside with me too. They've been crafting up  a storm all morning but I know that a few big gulps of fresh winter air will do them so much good.

We'll run down the hill, watch the water streaming past us, listen to our boots squeak in the wet grass and chat to all the animals. It'll be so cold that our eyes and noses will sting but we'll feel alive in the iciness and it will make us run faster and scream out and sing.





It's Tuesday, the first day of July and the second month of winter.

I am not a winter person. Not at all. But I am a person who loves coming back inside after being out. I love getting the fire cranking, putting the kettle on the hot-plate, stripping off my wet weather gear, making a soup and settling in with some knitting. That I can do. That part I am good at.

Happy Tuesday lovely friends out there, what have you got planned for the day?

xxxx