under the fairy lights

Last Saturday night we had a party to celebrate our boy.

Being a January baby he didn't have many parties growing up because he was at summer camp, his friends were mostly away for the summer holidays, and more recently being a farmer boy with an insane summer to-do list meant that we just never had the time.

Over the years we've suggested birthday trips into the city, nights in fancy hotels and elaborate dinner parties, but we've ended up with family picnics in the paddocks, swims in the dams and other low key celebrations instead. It's mostly HOT, we're usually on fire alert, and there are still animals to check on and feed, pumps to turn on and off, filters to clean and irrigation to worry about.

But late last year he made the decision to have a birthday party this year and nothing was going to get in his way.

I'm not sure if it was his pride in the house renovations and wanting to share them with his friends. If it was a result of all the discussions we've been having lately about what a great stage we're at in our lives and how blessed we've been feeling. If it was the fact that all the main players in our lives are happy and well right now. If after all the parties we've been throwing the girls forever, it was just his turn. Or if there really wasn't a great reason, he just wanted to celebrate and be celebrated.

And he sure was!

In the lead up we did all those jobs that we've been putting off for months. We scrubbed, we put away, we screwed cupboard doors back on, we tidied, we mowed, we got rid of cobwebs, we vacuumed and we swept. And then we strung up meters and meters of fairy lights, we arranged little nests of seating, we scattered pot plants and he put the finishing touches on the long tables and benches.

In the end January sixth was one of those HOT and windy days that Australian summers are made of, but as luck had it, at about six when the guests started to arrive, a cool change gently swept through and brought with it sweet relief and a festive feeling in the air.

We had the Trolley'd team serving up the most delicious cocktails from native Australian and local ingredients.

And we asked everyone to bring a plate of food which together made an incredible feast.

I guess it took me a while to come around to having a party in our home. Although I do absolutely love the thought of celebrating our boy and our life, the thought of people discovering what a terrible house keeper I am, the thought of people going though my things, the thought of being responsible for people's food and drink needs and their happiness, and the thought that the party is here in my house so I can't run away if I need to, always held me back.

But a little while into the party when I was sure that things were running smoothly, I left to have a shower and put on my party dress. As I walked through the house I saw with fresh eyes all the work we'd put in over the last week and I felt proud and relieved. And then when I came out and was greeted by so many smiling faces I forgot all about my nerves for the rest of the night.

And as night fell and the fairy lights twinkled we were treated to some fabulous performances. For some it was all about the music and for others it was the banter in-between. The birthday boy made a 25 minute speech (!!!!), there was lots of dancing including Israeli and Greek, and at one stage I felt my face hurting from smiling so much which reminded me of our wedding.

Bren's sister Danielle sent me this photo. There's a video somewhere of us dancing on the table too but I can't work out how to save it and share it here. Probably just as well.

I can tell you that the last guests left at 4.30am and we didn't get into bed until 5am. Thankfully I had a bit of a burst of cleaning energy before I went to bed so the sight I was greeted with in the morning wasn't too terrible. I can also tell you that it did take me most of the week to fully recover and that I aint no spring chicken anymore.

But I'd rather be no spring chicken celebrating life with my 47 year old farmer boy in our untidy house on the hill of our farm than at any other time in our life. 

All night long people asked him if it was a special birthday. I think he's onto something with his decision not to wait for the big ones to celebrate. Not to wait for the milestones and the monumental occasions. I love the idea of making parties for the middle bits. Recognising that they make up most of our lives and are just as important. Maybe more so.

Now that I've seen how well our place scrubs up and will even more so once we've grown grass over that bald patch where the table sat, I'm thinking of more reasons to celebrate and parties to throw; apple harvest, tomato bottling, autumn's garden bounty, back to school, friends, family, love, the seasons...

And as for our birthday boy, I feel like the luckiest duck in the world to be living and sharing my life with him. What an incredible human. How worthy of celebrating. Happy birthday my love. xxxxxxx

I hope your 2018 has gotten off to a great start my friends.

I hope it's filled with wonderful surprises and so many reasons to celebrate.

Do you love to throw a good party, or are you a bit afraid like I was?

What's your go-to dish when you're asked to bring a plate?

Have you got something fun planned for this weekend?

Happy January 12th!
Happy Abby's birthday!
happy second blog post of the new year!

xx

ps. extra photo credits to Emily, Ollie and Danielle, thank you!!! xxx

the second week

sixth

When I decided to do a photo a day in May project last week one of the rules I imposed on myself was to not always capture the prettiest moments, but to challenge myself to look for the interesting and the gritty too. The two photos I took last Saturday are heading in that direction.

It was a freezing cold, wet, windy day and we'd called off all of the girls' activities and were bunkering down inside instead. There was one point in the late afternoon where I looked around at the cozy scene wondering what to capture. If I didn't get my shot then, I'd lose the light and miss my day. The fire was roaring, the house was a mess of papers and computers and musical instruments and girls, but nothing called to me. Then I looked outside, onto the back deck and decided.

I slipped on my clogs, quickly slid open the back door, snapped two photos and dashed inside again.

Leaves from the grape-vine that cover our back deck and give us shade in summer, grapes at the height of autumn, and then a sludgy mess as they decompose into winter.

seventh

Miss Pepper helping me out by searching for scarlet runner bean pods inside the tee-pee.

eighth

Knitted with love for my kitty cat obsessed, youngest. She loves them but did not love me dragging her outside into the cold and pulling up her leggings, as proven by her goose bumps.  

It's a free pattern I found on ravelry, you can find the details here.

ninth

Last year we grew a paddock of pumpkins. This year we didn't get them in til so late that they didn't get a chance to really get going before the days started to cool off, so we gave up on them and eventually pulled them out. The compost it seems had ideas, and seeds, of its own and grew this load. It's probably more than enough for us for the season anyway.

tenth

One of the first things we built when we moved to our farm back in 2001 was this hot house onto the side of our house. Using bits of poly pipe and greenhouse plastic, but without the help of YouTube, farmer Bren and my dad constructed a place for me to raise seeds and shelter some sensitive plants.

It's hard for us to remember where the idea for the plans came from. It's hard to imagine if we thought it would be a temporary fix or a long term solution. It's crazy to think about who we were back then: a couple with one baby girl and no farming experience.

And here we are all these years later pulling it down. Cutting the pipe, slicing at the plastic and digging out all of the soil. It's served us well over the years. I'd guess it's grown hundreds of thousands of plants.

And now it's time for an upgrade. We've drawn up the plans, we've gathered some old windows, we're starting on Monday. Watch this space.

eleventh

Rushing outside last night to catch a photo of the flame tree glowing in the afternoon sun, it occurred to me that I could take the shot from what until the day before was inside the hot-house. Four steps to the right gave me another perspective. Makes me pleased to know that the new hot house will have opening windows. And how about that tree hey!

twelfth

My current knitting project is a Guernsey wrap for Miss Indi. Remember when I told you a few weeks ago that Pepper had a list up on the door where family members could place their knitting orders? Indi ordered a scarf.

The thought of that scarf and the meters of knit stitch or purl stitch that would be involved in the making made me shudder. A more tedious project I couldn't imagine. That is until we sat on Ravelry for a while and looked at the endless possibilities of stitch combinations.

We chose this pattern because it was a mixture of textured patterns found on traditional fisherman's sweaters which would keep it interesting for me and yet was a simple long, rectangular scarf for her. I know I've barely even started, but so far I'm loving knitting it, long may it continue and grow.

The ravelry details are here.


And there they are, my seven (plus a couple) photos of the week.

It's been a bit of a topsy-turvey week for me. One afternoon I cried three separate times on the drive home from school at the sheer magnificence of the show that mother nature was putting on for us, the next day I heard a friend's difficult news and felt so weighed down by the weight of the world. Nasty, short sighted comments on a friend's Facebook shocked me and hurt my heart, but then a brother and sister raised over two million dollars in five cent pieces to kick cancer where it hurts and smash a world record. One of our girls got a role in a local production of The Three Lost Children and we were all thrilled, but then she has this bit of eczema that makes her so uncomfortable it hurts. Some of the olives were hit by frost, but the carrots are sweeter than ever. Up, down, up down. I'm blaming PMS and the full moon. And I'm hoping for clear skies and calm waters ahead. And sunshine of course.


I hope you've had a gorgeous week.
I wonder if the leaves are growing or falling off where you are?
If the days are getting longer or shorter?
If you use circulars or DPN's to knit your socks and sleeves?

Happy Mother's day!

Love Kate xx

baskets filled with hazelnuts + other miscellaneous chatter

Hello loves,

How are you?

It's Friday morning here, the girls are all off at school, Bren is somewhere outside (I think I can hear some kind of power-tool), and I'm sitting up on the green armchair in the corner of our studio, wrapped in a colourful crocheted blanket. The house is quiet except for the howl of the wind outside and I should feel calm and be able to concentrate, but instead I feel scattered and in a hurry.

Most weeks by the time it gets to Friday I pretty much know what I'm going to write about. Most weeks I have a bit of a theme of thoughts, so the writing is just a matter of getting them into some sort of order. I read in Rachael Treasure's book Down The Dirt Roads the other day that 'according to neuroscience expert Dr Joe Dispenza...of the thousands of thoughts we have per day - around 50,000 to 70,000 of them - 90 per cent are the same thoughts from the day before.'

Unusually, this week hasn't felt like that for me. This week I can't really pin point a point of view or a perspective that has dominated, but instead have found myself stuck in the practical world of picking and preserving and putting on a smiley face despite the sudden turn of the season, the house full of emotional girls and the fact that I feel a bit scattered and unsure at the moment.

So this morning over our porridge with honey I asked the family what they thought I should write about.

Bren said he'd like me to write about spurtles. 
Over the past few days he's gotten his pole lathe up and running and has a new found fascination with all the possible forms that he can now create. He said he'd like me to find out how they came to be, why they are round and why people use them instead of their spoons.

Indi asked me to ask you guys about your stress management techniques.
There has to be a better way to deal with life in her second last year of school than feeling constantly overwhelmed, teary and not sleeping. Unlike Bren and I at school, she has made a personal commitment to complete everything thrown at her and give it her 100%. It's tricky because she's starting to get a glimpse of the big wide world beyond school, and that excites her and makes her question what it's all about and for, but it doesn't free her from the stress.

Gosh I could write a whole blog post about how much I dislike the way the current senior school system robs our kids of the love of learning, with all the emphasis being placed on assessments and assignments and essays and exams. At 16 and 17 our kids are wide awake and open to the world, shouldn't we be encouraging them to fall in love with subjects, to follow pathways of their own interest, to ask all the hard questions and to challenge what they're taught? Shouldn't learning be about more than preparing for tests?

But in the end it's not about what I think. Indi has five school assessed courseworks (SACs) over the next few weeks and if you have a fave meditation app, herbal tea blend or breathing technique, she'd be ever so grateful.

Jazzy wants me to write about her.

When she saw that Jackie wrote this on my last blog post - 'When did Jazzy grow up? She has become a very attractive, elegant and tall young woman. That smile and those dimples are to die for. I haven't noticed many photos of Jazzy perhaps that's why it hit me so hard this time.' she was thrilled!! And then she proceeded to trawl my blog for mentions and photos and stories that she featured in. She wasn't impressed at the outcome over the past year.

Funnily enough, way back when I wrote my book, Vantastic, in 2013, my designer Michelle Mackintosh, herself a middle child, counted every single photo and made sure there were equal numbers for each of the girls.  

But in the present day, in my defence, our early teenage Jazzy has spent most of her home time in her bedroom rather than with us outside on the farm. And if you're not out in the orchard picking apples, then you're not in the photos of picking apple, then you're not on my blog.

Having said all that, since this is her bit of my blog I want to acknowledge how happy we are when she joins us around the farm, how she makes us all laugh like crazy, how much we love her stories, her ukulele playing, her outfits and hairdos and how lucky we feel to have her in our gang.

Pepper suggested I write about the first apples.
She wouldn't elaborate on what specifically she wanted me to write about the first apples, but I guess that living on an apple farm in apple season with fruit hanging from the branches, sitting in crates and baskets and bowls and stewing on the stove, it makes sense.

My mum thought I should write one of those blogs where I tell you what I'm reading, listening to, watching etc.
But honestly I'm really not a fan of the book I'm reading, I don't have any particular podcast I'm loving and I can't think of the last time I sat down to watch anything. Better fix that.

And me? 
I guess I'd like to mention the fact that even though we're having a pretty crappy fruit season, there's still so much fruit to be picked and preserved. I guess that's the great thing about biodiversity. Apples, pears, hazelnuts, nashis, tomatoes, they're all ready and ripe and filling up space around the place. Not to mention the vegetables.

Next, I'd love to thank you for your messages on my last blog post that came from everyone from mothers who felt like they had found themselves in motherhood and didn't feel the need to search for anything else, through to mothers who had a glimpse of their past selves and made a dash to grab hold of her and continue her journey before they changed their minds, and everyone else in between. I've had women suggest art projects that I might like to take on, books that explore this theme, and many expressions of feeling the same. I've also listened when people have told me that they felt like I do live an artistic life - 'The way you live, the way you raise your children, the way you write and photograph your experiences...' I'm taking this on, thank you!! I love this community in all of our various stages and phases.

And I suppose that over the past week, during the busiest time of the year on our farm, I've had to make do with finding art in the everyday: making small films on my phone of the dancing shadows on my bedroom door in the afternoon light, arranging cucumbers and herbs in the pickle jars and then spending time shaking them up and watching the herbs and spices fly around in the brine and then slowly settle like snow globes, gathering groups of colours of yarn for someday projects, dreaming of botanical themed water colours...

And then I feel like I should talk about the photos above. Last Monday I spent hours alone in the hazelnut orchard, stripping the trees of their fruit. Even though the sun often glared into my eyes as I looked up searching for the treasure, it was still a pretty idyllic way to spend the time. Just me and my basket and my pockets and my shirt to fill, podcasts to listen to and dreams of all the ways we could use hazelnuts in the kitchen in the months to come.

Later on, once I'd finished picking the three rows, the girls and Bren came down to help me carry them home. I snapped some shots of them and lucky I did, because they turned out to be the only photos I took all week.

So the hazelnuts are drying out, the photos are sitting here, and I've found myself going back to 2014 and another series of photos I took in that same orchard but that time under some quite difficult circumstances after I'd just found a lump in my left breast. Coincidentally, or maybe not, I'm booked in for an ultrasound and mammogram this coming Tuesday. Look how much my girls have grown since then. Oh and look Jazzy, there are lots of photos of you in that post too.

Oh gosh, and there I was thinking I had nothing to say this week.

I'd better sign off before I write another few hundred words.
And how about you? Has your week had a recurring theme? A problem to be solved? An idea to be built on?

Lots of love to you, honey bunches!
May you trust the process, and the people, and yourself.

Love Kate xx

PS To save you the work, Jazzy, I counted for you: Indi is in four photos in this post, you are in five, Pepper is in three and Bren in in two. x

eighteenth

This is the story of the spoon second from the right made of apple wood.



This is the story of a twilight walk down our big hill, across the paddock, through the forest and out into the oldest apple orchard on the other side.



This is the story of visiting our orchard of brides and lifting up their veils to find the perfect branch.



This is the story of how magnificent everything looks in the golden twilight glow.



This is a story of knives and axes and other sharp tools.



This is the story of watching the one you love do what he loves and how much happiness that brings.



This is a story of letting go and allowing the tree and all it's grains and knots lead the way.



This is the story of taking something and turning it into something else.



This is the story of the walk back up the hill home armed with everything we came for.



This is a story of chipping, and carving, and whittling and cutting.



This is a slow story of making mistakes and learning and creating.



This is the most beautiful story from start to finish that I've seen in such a long time. This story has convinced me that I need  a small flock of sheep so I can be part of that closed circle crafting myself. What a beautiful thing.

I do hope that your story is a lovely fragrant one right now.

Big spoon love

xx

watching a bee hatch

Late yesterday afternoon while visiting one of our hives we watched a bee hatching.

It had been one of those messy mornings when the girls wanted to do anything else but farming and be anywhere else but outside, and I felt disappointed and took it personally and found it difficult to give up the idyllic picture I'd had in my head of how we'd spend the day. But eventually I did give up and after an hour or so of broad-bean picking and shelling, we went our three separate ways; one into town, one to my parents' house and us three to visit the bees.

Even though we've had our own bee hives now for a few years, I still mostly feel like a beginner bee-keeper. It's like when we put on our suits, light the smoker and crack open the first hive, we enter a whole other world. And even though I'm not really scared of being stung, I am constantly aware of doing the right thing by the bees. Often I don't even realise until we come home and get our bee gear off how filled with adrenaline I've been. Bees are buzzy and their hives vibrate with activity and by opening them up we are exposing them and you can feel their tension. And we've noticed that different hives seem to have different personalities. We have one particular one that always feels frantic while some of the others are much calmer.

Late yesterday afternoon we visited one of our calmer hives. We cracked open the lid, slowly pulled out a few frames to see what was going on, and on one of the frames closer to the centre we found a bee hatching out of its cell.

It was such an incredible experience to see it nibble its way out of the capping. First came the feelers, waving around and then the head. After a bit more wriggling it went back inside and turned around and tried again from a different direction. And then the whole bee wandered out. A brand new, light grey coloured bee.

What a buzz!! It felt like such a privilege watching that bee's story unfold.

All three of us were so excited about what we had just witnessed as we closed the hive up, collected the honey frames we had swapped from another hive and drove up to the house.

And later on as I heard Miss Pepper tell the story of the hatching baby bee first to her grandparents and then to each of her sisters, I realised that it was OK that they hadn't wanted to come along. This is their world, they are SURROUNDED by bee keeping and veggie growing and bio dynamic stirring on all sides. It makes sense that they need some time out, that they need to find their own passions, and it makes sense that they just want to socialise on their weekends too. I just hope Miss Pepper remains our farm loving, animal cuddling, bee-keeping girl for many years to come.

Check out this link if you want to see some great pictures and info about the bee's life cycle.

And may your news be good news.

Lots of love

xx