fourth

Once upon a summer's eve we left the dinner plates on the table and skipped out the front door and down the hill. There was a hint of feeling like the days were flitting past too quickly and an urge to make this one stretch out just a bit longer.







The air was growing cool as the sun was disappearing but there was no wind and we felt free as birds. We picked berries, we watched the kangaroos, we searched for fish in the dam, we threw rocks, we made up silly songs and we blew handfuls of grass seeds into the sky.







And as the swollen full moon rose through the forest we watched in awe and felt ready to say goodbye to this beautiful day and head up the hill home.



I can't wait to see what adventures tomorrow brings.


So how did you spend your fourth day of the new year?

I hope your Sunday was/is a fun day.

xxxx

PS. Big thanks for all your gorgeous messages on my blog posts these last few days, I'm loving reading through them. I'm trying my hardest to reply to you in the comments but sometimes I run out of time.

PPS. This is my 900th Foxs Lane post, woweeeeeee!!!!

third

The first thing I did when the latest issue of Slow Magazine arrived in my post office box was scan the cover for any names that I recognised. The second thing I did, once I saw my own typed neatly there, was have a little self conscious moment.

Farmer - Kate Ulman

I knew that I'd written an article that would be inside the covers of the mag, but for some reason that description rattled me for a sec. Mother, wife, knitter, blogger, sister, grower, daughter, maker, friend, for sure, but farmer?

And then I looked down at myself in my dirty overalls, I put one hand in my pocket and felt the irrigation fittings and the tangle of hay band, I looked at my muddy, scuffed up boots and my calloused, dirty hands and I realised that a farmer I am.

For the past 14 years since we moved here I've mainly done the house and girl stuff and farmer Bren has mainly done the farm. Until last year when we changed our farm plan, said a sad goodbye to our farmer boys and Miss Pepper started school. Since then I guess I've been a farmer. I grow stuff, I mow stuff, I break lots of stuff and sometimes I even fix stuff (thus the irrigation fittings in my pocket to fix the drip lines I'd mowed through), I look after the animals, I make decisions, I watch the weather, I take directions and I learn stuff constantly.

So after a quick self evaluation and identity assessment I decided that Slow magazine was right, I am in fact a farmer.



The next thing I did when my copy of Slow magazine arrived, while still standing in the foyer of the post office, was flick through the magazine until I found a photo I recognised. There they are those girls of mine, sitting in the garden where they so often do, frying up a batch of mud-balls on the fire.



Next I drove home so my farmer boy could read me my article. It's so hard for me to really read anything I've written myself. I can see the words and skip through the sentences, but I can't separate myself from them.

Tim Baker, Slow's editor, had asked me to write a piece about our slow home. My intention was not to preach that our way is the right way, not to direct the reader or make it appear that we have it all worked out, but to share our story. To talk about how we do things here, what we prioritise, what rules we have put in place and to share some of the compromises we've agreed on and even some of our mistakes along the way.

As he read my words back to me I remembered them but I also heard them. I hoped that our story is interesting and perhaps even helpful in the way that reading others' stories sometimes is.

And of course the photo accompanying my article was taken by our gorgeous friend and photographer Tim Burder. A photo of us at our kitchen table laden with our produce, me knitting and him shelling peas, me looking at him and loving him. I love that photo.



And lastly I flicked to the front and found my new profile picture Tim Burder took for me recently. I felt a bit self conscious asking him to take it and I felt even more so while I was standing there posing, but it's such a great thing to have it now. Me and that camera shy chook. Everyone should probably have one photo of themselves that they like on hand, just in case, don't you think?

Enough about me, tell me about you:
Do you have a profile pic?
Do you have a title that describes you?
Are you having a slow start to the brand new year?

Lots of love and a gorgeous rainstorm at the end of a stinking hot day.

xxxx

second

I do four things while I'm knitting a pair of socks.

The first and most obvious is that I knit the stitches that create the socks. I love everything about this part from the shaping of the toe, to knitting the foot, creating a gusset, turning the heel, making a heel flap, knitting up the leg and finally creating a band up the top and casting off.

I listened to a podcast today where Jerome Sevilla of Grid Junky spoke of his love for knitting with very fine wool. He spoke of how the fact that it takes so much longer and so much more commitment to create something from such fine wool makes it more meaningful and more special and I totally get that.

The second thing I do is think a lot about the person I am making the socks for. I think about them wearing them and I also think about them and my relationship with them. I think the fact that socks take so long to knit makes them such a meaningful present and I love that I have that gift to give.

The third thing I do is carry them everywhere I go so I can sneak in a row whenever I can. This means my socks travel and become part of my life and my conversations and my memories. I cast on the green socks above at a birthday pool party. I knitted them throughout all the end of school festivities, they calmed and soothed me when we lost a friend far too young, I knitted them in the paddock while we had coffee breaks and at nights after the girls were in bed. I finally cast off those socks at another kid's birthday party which made me feel like I'd knitted all the circles and come full circle.

And the fourth thing I do while I'm knitting a pair of socks is think about how I'll photograph them finished. Years ago in my early times of blogging I used to read a knitter's blog even though I didn't knit. I loved and related to her posts about her family and her farming and her other crafts, but as I wasn't yet a knitter myself I used to skip over her knitting posts. It occurred to me some time later, that each time she cast off a project she'd drape it against her garden wall and photograph it. Every single time the same shot. When I finally did become a knitter I decided that I wanted to take photos of my knits that would be interesting and pleasing to non knitters and knitters alike. Sock knitting seems to have the added challenge of taking interesting, pleasing photos of something otherwise very mundane.

So as I knit each pair I imagine them against white walls, tucked up in white bed sheets, climbing up trees, sticking out of work boots, upside down and in all sorts of interesting and odd poses. I'm very lucky that so far I've had obliging models with pretty strong stomach muscles.

The details for the Diagonal Lace socks are here.

Do you do any or all of those things while you are creating too?
Or do you have other loves and means and ways?

I hope you found a little time to do something for yourself today.

Biggest love

xxxx

first

On new year's eve, just after last year became this year, our friend Melissa handed out white sage leaves from her garden and invited us to go around the bonfire circle, burn our leaf, smudge ourselves and take a moment to let go of the past year and speak of our intention for the next.

When it came to my turn I spoke of how last year around this same circle I had announced that I felt like something big was about to happen in my world and that I was just waiting to see what it was going to be and that not long after that I had had my breast cancer scare. This year I'm hoping for calmer seas and nothing quite so dramatic.

I remembered that last year I had a burning desire to learn how to knit socks and had decided that in order to feel like a real knitter I had to make that come true. In August last year I cast off my first pair and have been pretty much sock addicted ever since. This year I told the circle, I'd like to knit a fisherman's sweater full of twisty cables, the more complicated the merrier.

And finally I thought that I quite liked the word even to carry me through my year but I've since changed my mind and decided to use grow instead.

Today we've had the slowest day in months. We got up late, watched episodes of The Honourable Woman on my computer in bed, read pages of my book, knitted stripes on my socks and had two other families over who ended up shelling four crates of broad beans. It was a gorgeous, restful and happy day.

And at the end of the first day I feel like everything is open, filled with potential. Hopefully in 2015 we'll grow and preserve even more of what we eat, hopefully we'll make a start on the wool project, hopefully we'll travel overseas, hopefully our school will move and become bigger and better, hopefully our girls will continue to find paths that inspire them and fill them up, hopefully my farmer boy and I can work hard on the farm and still find time to follow our other creative dreams and hopefully, as my farmer boy said so well last night, we as a planet can realise that we are all connected and be kinder to each other and make movements towards peace.

And I wish you lovely friends, the sweetest, most creative, love-filled and peaceful 2015.

Do you have a word, a feeling, a project or a resolution to kick it all off, or are you keeping your options open and hoping for the best?


LoveLoveLoveLove

xx

finding balance

Where to start?

I feel like I need to preface this post with to be honest, because although I like to think that I am always honest here, I am also aware that I like to have an undercurrent of gratefulness on my blog, because when all is said and done I do know how lucky I am to be living this life.

Ten minutes ago my farmer boy left with the girls to visit some friends. I am alone in my house for what feels like the first time in months. There is a possibility that I may have the next one to two hours to myself. Thank goodness. Big exhale.



To be honest I am struggling a bit at the moment. Although I am certainly and ridiculously grateful for my way of life, right now I feel overwhelmed by it. Right now my whole instagram feed is full of people on summer or winter vacations relaxing by the beach, reading in bed, knitting a few lazy rows over lunch, while our house, garden and farm to-do lists are so long that we had to slot bits of them into calendar days to try to even make sense of them all. Right now to combat the guilt of sitting here writing this blog, I'm interspersing each paragraph with a trip to the washing machine and washing line, or from the washing line to the girls' wardrobes. I feel less guilty and more productive this way.

Right now instead of doing this I could whipper snipper another few rows of the orchard in preparation for netting them this evening when it cools down, I could wheel hoe the market garden, plant some carrots, leeks, lettuce and parsley in the home garden, I could mow around the house, I could think about dinner, I could do some fire prevention, I could start trellising the beans and that's just the start and that's not even thinking about the housework or computer work. And that's when the girls aren't even here to tell me every detail of their dreams, ask me to braid their hair, watch their show, remind me that I still haven't taught them to sew, ask me to find their sandals, drop them at the pool, cut them another mango, help them with this, watch them do that and then that.

We had our three week holiday in winter, this is our busy season I hear us repeating to each other and the girls like a mantra.

And it's true. Winter is the slow season on our farm and now we are go, go, go. And that would probably be OK except that I feel like I'm not doing anything at all creative. Instead I'm being yanked through my days doing task after task after task. I feel completely out of balance. I often call our farm The Hungry Beast because of it's capacity to gobble money but it is also hungry for my time. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

It's possible that I always feel like this at the start of the summer holidays until I find my rhythm, but this year it's making me feel cranky and tired and unaccomplished and unmotivated. And I don't like feeling like this at all.

I know The only way to fix this is to do something for me, regularly. I need to make time for something creative so I can get back to feeling the love in the other, more demanding parts of my life.

So I've decided that in order to get through and on top of this I need to make some resolutions, change things up a bit for myself without putting more pressure on. So far I've come up with two things I'm going to put into place as soon as possible.

The first one is to blog. I really, really love this blog yet for some reason I never prioritise it. I find the photography and the writing so fulfilling yet it's always the first thing to go when I'm busy. Pretty silly hey! So my first resolution is to try to blog every, or almost every, day in January. Even if it's just a photo and a paragraph. I just know that I'll feel so much more creatively fulfilled if I stick to this plan.

I also feel like it would be really great for me to stretch myself and learn something new. To take something I love and push it further. So my second resolution is to do an online Lightroom course. So far I've been able to teach myself how to take photos for my blog and have been lucky over the years to have been published in some cool publications, but there's always been this point where I've hit a wall and haven't been able to progress with my skills any further. Hopefully this course will teach me about post production, about sorting and filing my photos and give me a bit more confidence with my photography. Maybe it'll even inspire me. It's online and I can do it in my own time, I'm really excited about it.

And you know what? I feel better already.


So anyway how are you going these last few December days?
Are you slowing down or speeding up?
Are you feeling creative, are you coping, are you feeling overwhelmed or calm as a cucumber?
What do you do when the world feels a little off balance?
Do tell.

LoveLoveLoveLove

xxxx

a week in our kitchen garden

Remember when I posted my blog last week and I said I had lots to show and tell you and so I'd post again soon? Well here I am eight days later and not only has time flown - but my garden has grown, making me all out of date. But rather than ditch that garden blog idea and move on, I thought I'd quickly snap a few pics of what it looks like tonight and bring you right up to speed.

Make sense? I hope so.

So just over a week ago we removed the protective covers off the peas because they had grown as tall as their roof. We'd finally made those covers after losing the previous three pea plantings to mice or birds or possums. It was so great to finally see those leaves emerging out of the soil instead of the soggy seed shells. We weren't so successful with the pea plantings in the beds behind that we'd covered with black crates.
 

And now a week later we've made trellises for the pea plants to climb up. My farmer boy made them out of the old bit of fence that closed my parents' block opposite ours.
 

Oh how I love to see those little pea tendrils reaching out and climbing up and wrapping around as the vines grow taller.



A week ago we were cutting and eating big rocket leaves.
 

One week later the succession planting has popped its head up between the rocket rows and we are madly picking and eating the overhanging leaves to give the little baby leaves light and space to grow.
 

A week ago the hot house was full of little baby seedling ready to plant out into the kitchen and market gardens, this week it is emptying out and the spinach is going to seed.



Last week there were so many more roses in bloom than this week.
 

But this week Pepper's birthday flowers seem to be blossoming more brightly than ever.
 

Last week we were still picking and eating from those kale plants. This week those kale leaves are on the top of the compost pile and the beds are full of soil and ready to plant.
 

Last week the garlic was still looking tall and green. This week, maybe even tomorrow, I'm planning to pull it out.
 

Last week we noticed that the cos lettuces on the left hand side of that bed were not really thriving so we pulled out the silver beet triffid that was overshadowing them and now this week they are slowly on the move.



This week the onions are fatter and taller.



I love these three beds but I always forget they are there because they are that much further away from the house. Onions, garlic getting ready to be pulled and mega leek.



And future pesto growing new leaves every day.

Not pictured are the tomatoes in the poly tunnels, the veggies and flowers in the market gardens and the fruit in the orchards.

I had a little panic the other day that we aren't really harvesting all that much from the kitchen garden at the moment, that we are behind where we usually are in other years and that we might not catch up. And then after a few long minutes of hyperventilating and comparing and pulling out seeds, it occurred to me that panicking defeats half of the purpose of the kitchen garden.

One half of the purpose of our house garden is to feed our family, for sure. But the other half purpose is love and enjoyment and passion and therapy. Stressing about the garden is just wrong.

So in between the craziness of the end of the year I am squeezing in moments to plant and weed and thin and fork and dig and harvest and enjoy and breathe deeply and love. It's so much nicer this way.


Wishing you growth wherever you are.

And tell me, how does your garden grow at the mo, I'd love to know.

Biggest love!

xx

a bit a this and a bit a that

Happy new week, month and season you guys!!

There's a crazy amount of stuff going on here at Foxs Lane at the moment, so I think that instead of inundating you with photos and stories right now, I'll try and get a few blog posts up and out there this week. Try being the operative word of course, but my intentions are definitely good and that's what really matters right? I hope so anyway.





So let's get to it.

Lately, I've been;

HARVESTING - and double podding and smashing on toast, frying into felafel and making fritters, out of broad beans. There are still heaps left on the plants but we probably should get to freezing some to eat later and drying some to plant later, soon.



READING - and adoring The Poisonwood Bible. I always thought I had read it before, but now that I am reading it I don't think I ever have. I'm not really reading a lot these days, eight or ten pages at night in bed before I can't keep my eyes open, but part of me feels happy because that will make it last longer. What an incredible piece of writing.

And I do have to mention that although I was excited to go back to a real paper book after my first on the Kindle, I do miss the back-light and the lack of weight. But I can read in the bath and that is a total winner in my book. Ha!



LOVING - our kitchen garden. The smells and sights and flavours of late spring/early summer are just delicious. Some evenings after dinner I pop out into the garden with no other purpose but to walk from bed to bed admiring the new growth. I have been known to compliment certain plants on their daily developments too. Such a luscious joy is the garden at this time of the year when the days are warm and long and there is enough water to keep things green.



KNITTING - the same pair of socks. There's not much sitting on my bum knitting time these busy days.



PLANTING - so many seeds in trays, seedlings in the garden and also this new market garden up near the house.



BUYING - other people's yarn on buy/swap/sell sites. How gorgeous will these guys be as socks and then in my sock left-over blanket.





STICKING - and swapping and chatting about stickers.

Maureen from Pipsticks runs a sticker subscription club and sent us a couple of packets to play with and we're having so much fun with them.

As soon as they got over the excitement of getting envelopes filled with stickers in the post, my girls spent ages examining each sheet, picking favourites, swapping them, sticking them on their own drawings and then organising them into collections.

There's something so simple and easy and fun about stickers. Stickers encourage kids and their parents to be creative. Stickers are great things to collect. An envelope of stickers enables a Mum to make dinner in peace. AND stickers totally take me back to my childhood and my carefully curated boxed collection of scratch and sniff, puffy, sparkly, Hello Kitty and hologram stickers.



WATCHING things grow. Grass, the fruit on the trees, the baby birds, the veggies in the garden and our own children. Pepper's tee-shirts barely cover her tummy these days, Jazzy is growing out of her shoes once a month and Indi started year nine today. Year NINE!!!!! It's all happening so quickly at the moment I sometimes struggle to keep up.



RELISHING - togetherness. I don't know how long this happy to hang out together stage will last, so I'm noticing and appreciating every second while it still does. Sisters are the best!




LISTENING - to our Indi's new song she recorded with her music teacher Geoffrey Williams.


So that's me mostly caught up, how about you?
What're you harvesting, reading, loving, knitting, planting, buying, sticking, watching, relishing and listening to?

I hope you find exactly what you've been looking for.

Lots a love,

Kate xx