What I've been up to - the late summer edition

Hello!

How are you lovely blog buddy?

What have I been up to? I thought you'd never ask. Here goes;

I've been picking celery, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers and herbs from the garden.

Somewhere along the line I ditched the cider vinegar method of preserving and fell in love with fermenting. These fermented pickles are super easy to make, barely cost a thing in terms of ingredients and dollars, they are DELICIOUS and are full of beneficial nutrients for your gut. WinwinwinwinwinYUM!

I'm using Amanda Feifer's book - Ferment Your Vegetables as a bit of a bible, but I'm certain there are loads of great recipes online and in other books too.

I think my poly tunnel cucumber vines are nearing the end of their season but my market garden vines are just taking off. Looks like I'll be shoving cucumbers into jars, filling them with herbs and brine and vine leaves and burping their air bubbles for many weeks still to come.

We're picking apples! So far we've picked the the Jersey Macs, the Abbas and the Galas. Gosh it's good to be an apple farmer in apple season.

After a few years break from pumpkin growing due to lack of interest, we finally planted the seeds and had another grow(!). I'd forgotten how much fun it is to watch those big leafy vines take over the space, to watch those yellow flowers form bulbs behind them that seem to grow and grow and grow every time you look, and even though I am not a pumpkin eater, none of us are, this autumn I resolve to try a whole lot of recipes until we become so.

We've been sharing our grapes with the birds.

I read, and fell in a deep hole, and wept over, and despaired over, and then finally finished Hanya Yangihara's A Little Life. Reading it affected my entire life for two weeks like a bad dream that haunted my days. But as traumatic and heart breaking as I found it, I also thought it was brilliant. I couldn't put it down. I made excuses to run inside to my bedroom to change clothes just so I could sneak a few pages, I stayed up waaaaay too late at night to devour big chunks and I read on the treadmill - which is something I've never done before but which I have always done since. I loved this book and still feel myself sobbing a little when I think back to it.

And even though I made jokes that I needed to read a fluffy romance novel after I finished A Little Life - I started reading Room by Emma Donoghue, a much less traumatic but still very disturbing and claustrophobic novel.

I've almost finished my Flower King beanie from Anna Maltz's gorgeous book Penguin. The pattern calls for a big pom-pom on top, but I'm thinking an i-cord finish might be better for my little penguins to wear to school.

Ravelled here.

I've started a Bracken jumper for Miss Pepper which is knitted inside out with two different sized needles which is fun and fast. It's been ages since I've knitted jumpers and cardigans for my girls but this year I'm hoping to have them all rugged up in time for winter.

I felt like the luckiest Mum on earth when I discovered that an entire ball of HOT PINK yarn had gone through the washing machine cycle and not coloured anything else pink. I have no idea who the yarn belonged to, I have no idea how it even happened but I do know that I am grateful beyond words that there wasn't even a streak, or a tinge, or a speck of pink on anything to be found.

I am loving the little posies of garden cut flowers that have been appearing in jars around the place.

We watched and loved both seasons of The Leftovers and have no idea what to watch next.

And I'm thrilled to report that we have finally joined the rest of Australia by having bowls of tomatoes on the kitchen table. Finally. For a while there I thought that the girls would eat every single one that I brought into the house as I brought it in, but eventually supply overcame even their demand. We still are nowhere near a saucepan of passata or a tray of semi-drieds, but as I keep chanting to myself - tomatoes are an autumn fruit and we are still 10 days away from autumn.

And as usual I've been watering and weeding and feeding and planting and digging and fencing and cooking and baking and jamming and dehydrating, and driving, and listening and solving and writing and photographing.

I haven't yet used the spinning wheel I borrowed from my spinning group, maybe this weekend.


And that's me, us, we.

Tell me about you. How are you travelling? What are you reading, growing, dreaming about?


Wishing you the most wonderful weekend.

Love Kate
xoxo