expect the unexpected

I think I'm going to call this blog post - expect the unexpected. Not the surprise it's your party!!  kind of unexpected, more of the if you don't have expectations then you won't be disappointed, in fact you may just end up being pleasantly surprised.

This morning over coffee I was having the same conversation with my farmer boy that we've had at least a million times before. I was comparing our crazy, mixed-up, wild farm with those that you see in the magazines and on the design sites. How come after all these seasons, after all those hours, after all the experience and sweat and planning and money and tears...our farm is as wild as ever?

There were times in the past where this sort of statement first thing in the morning might have been the cause for an argument. I would think that I was stating a fact, yet he would take it personally. These days though, after 17 and half years on this land, we're getting better at seeing things differently. Or perhaps he's just getting better at reminding me.

'I think the neat aesthetic picture we have as humans isn't necessarily good for nature' he told me.
'The pretty picture of a farm made of perfectly neat rows isn't how the natural world works. Nothing grows neatly on its own. Nothing grows in isolation. Nothing grows in monoculture. Nature is inherently messy. An old growth forest in all its beauty is still messy.'

I looked out the window and thought of all the times we'd come to this point in the past. When he'd talked to me about what herbicides do to the earth and how as certified organic farmers we've chosen to have less control but more biodiversity, less neatness and more jungle, less magazine perfect and more us perfect.

And so this morning it was a quick turn around from expected frustration to unexpected pride and satisfaction.

This entire past week wasn't what I had expected it to be at all. There was no weeding, no mowing, no planting rows of seedlings in the garden, no mulching, no burning off, no workouts at the gym, and worst of all there was no bee pollination of the apple blossom in the orchards.

At the start of this week while visiting our bees a few things happened that were unexpected: first I hurt my neck so badly, and then not long after the temperatures dropped, the wind picked up and it rained for days.

It wasn't great. I felt sorry for myself and I worried about the apples. It felt hard not to take the terrible pollination weather personally, it felt so dreadfully timed. I felt more concerned every time someone tried to cheer me up by telling me the rain was needed and that Mother Nature would look after us, and I remembered those few years when we hardly got a crop at all. 

But life went on. I drove Indi to school for her practise exams, we planned Pepper's birthday party, I stayed up late into the night and finished two books and I watched the rest of the garden soaking up the rain and loving it.

And unexpectedly because my neck was too sore to do much outside, I planted and planted and planted up the greenhouse.

We planted and tidied up the garden near the house.

I had another spinning lesson with my teacher Rebecca and have fallen in love.

I used to worry that learning to spin would be just another craft that would take time away from knitting, where now I can see that it's only going to add to the experience. Especially when I'm spinning the fleece of our own sheep hopefully within the next year.

I also had a fair bit of couch time and was able to cast off my Lanes cardigan, pictures to follow hopefully next week.

This morning, scared to have any expectations after the week of wild weather, we took our second coffees of the day down to the orchard to see what was going on.

And we were pleasantly surprised.

Most of the blossom had survived the lashing, the bees were flying around in a drunk frenzy and the smell was intoxicating. Thank goodness, thank Mother Nature, phew.

There are even a few teeny tiny apples! That swollen bit on the stem to the right of my finger will hopefully, if all goes to plan weather wise, be a delicious Mutzu apple come next April. That's our Jazzy's favourite apple in the world, if she were here she'd be very excited.

So while some crappy things did happen this week ruling the expected impossible, the unexpected was actually surprisingly okay. Possibly even perfectly okay

And that's me for the week. If I could put in an order for next week I'd ask for injury free and sunny, but I know better than that.

I hope your week has been unexpectedly, perfectly okay friends.
Are the apples blossoming or ripe for the picking where you are?
Are the seeds for sowing or for saving?
Was your week what you expected?

When I write this next week my baby will be 11!! She was one when I started this blog.
I'd best be off and go and bake her birthday cake.

Love to you!

Kate x

10 things

Hello and welcome to another Friday here at Foxs Lane.

I hope that this finds you warm and well and happy in the thought that you've got a little pocket of time to yourself.

I wonder if it's morning or afternoon where you are? If you're reading on your computer or phone? If there are people around or if you're all by yourself? I wonder if you have a queue of blogs to read? If you clicked onto my site or got this as an email? And I wonder how many Fridays we've spent together you and me, through the internet, over the years?

I'm so happy that you've joined me today. I know how precious your time is and it means the world that you're spending some of it with me.

So I thought that this week, to make some sort of sense out of my jumbled up mind, we'd do one of those 10 things about right now posts. Are you ready? Okay let's get started.

 

one

Along with almost everything else in the garden that's ripe right now, we're picking and podding the scarlet runner beans that grew up the outside of the tee-pee in our garden. I love how those dried out, rattley skins slit open to expose the most beautiful purple beans.

two
We're picking armfuls of basil for salads, sandwiches, pizzas, sauces and for pesto.

three

We had a terribly wet spring and then a dreadful apple season last year, so this season feels a little bit lucky and extra special. Walking up and down the rows, watching the apples on the trees sizing and colouring up, tasting them to see if the starches have turned to sugar, and then picking bags and crates full is an apple farmers dream come true.

four

Once picked, most of our our apples go on the road side stall at the front of our farm. If you're passing by you should totally pop in - Daylesford Organics - 19 Foxs Lane Muskvale.

Right now the stall is full of Cox's Orange Pippin, with Red Delicious and Jonathan coming soon.

five
We're picking a crate of tomatoes a day, saucing them and then bottling them for winter time.

I'm sure I write this every year - but even though it feels like such a lot of work to do now, in an already crazy full autumn schedule, I love thinking of the sunshine filled gift I'm giving to winter-us by filling these jars with tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs and basil.

six
We're renovating again. This paving out the front of the sun-room, on both sides of the front door is the start, and from here we're heading all the way across the front of the house to the right. We're extending the sun-room, we're making a wood shed and who knows what else will come up while we're at it.

seven
This is a picture of the first sleeve, but I've actually finished that one and now I'm knitting the second sleeve of my Mirehouse sweater. Gosh I really need to get it finished soon so I can start preparing for my toe-up sock knitting master class at Soul Craft festival.

eight
We're picking flowers. How cool is it that with most varieties of flowers the more you pick them the more prolifically they grow!! Now why don't fruit and vegetables do the same?

After I publish this we're going to pick some bunches to pop on the farm stall for the weekend. Apples and posies, sounds like the start of a beautiful weekend.

nine
I've got the door to the studio open and I'm listening to the birds calling to each other about the delicious grapes they've found growing over our back deck. I'm listening to the washing machine telling me that it's finished its cycle. I'm listening to the wind blowing through the eucalyptus trees. And I just listened to and loved the episode of Invisibilia called - I,I,I. Him. (I should probably warn you that I had to pull my car off the road for a bit because I was sobbing so hard.)

ten
A few days ago when I came to the end of the pile of books on my bedside table I found this copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock in the bookshelves. The kind people at Penguin sent it to me a few years ago when they re released it with this cute cover.

I actually can't believe I've never read it before, but part of me is glad I waited. The story is set in the area where I drive my girls to school every day so the descriptions of the the landscapes feel familiar and almost personal. Whenever I read a book I get completely immersed in its pages and in its world and this one is no exception. A few days ago Indi took me on a drive around the back streets of Macedon and part of the way up to Mount Macedon and although the book was set over 100 years ago in a time before cars or made roads, I could almost see the horse drawn carriage go past with a flutter of white summer dresses floating behind and hear the clapping of hooves on the ground.

From the very first page the descriptions of the flower filled, carefully cultivated gardens have delighted me. Sentences like 'Out in the gay green garden beyond the schoolroom the bed of dahlias glowed as if they were on fire, caught by the late afternoon sun' were written more than 50 years ago but could easily be used to describe the scene outside our sun room on any given February or March afternoon.

I am smitten by this haunting tale, the characters, the eerie mystery, the landscape, the history. If I finish reading it over the weekend I think I'll get my family to watch the movie with me.


I'll leave you with this little Buddhist thought my wonderful friend Melissa sent me a few weeks ago and I've found helpful this week. What we strain to hold - slips through our fingers. By opening our hands, things rest lightly upon our palms.

And that's me!
Tell me what you've been up to?
Where you've been?
What you've thought?
What you've done?

See you next week.

Bye!

xx

almost hourly

Hello sweet peas!

Well here we are on the second last day of the year, on my 56th blog post of the year, which also happens to be my very last of the year. 

Truth be told I'm a bit astounded that I made it. I posted on every single Friday of 2017 plus a few extra. There were a couple of times when Friday wasn't possible so I wrote it on Thursday and published on Friday, there were more than a couple of times when I questioned the validity of the exercise, and there were plenty of times when I sat down with not much to say and ended up saying plenty, but sitting here almost 56 posts later, I'm so very glad I persevered.

My 2018 blog posts are a wonderful record of the year that was, they're filled with stories and insights from you guys, they've been great therapy, they've been good photography and writing practise, they've gotten me two jobs, and they'll be such a great gift for my girls in the years to come.

And each Friday as I've sat down to write my blog I've had a few tricks up my sleeves to fall back on in case the words didn't come; I could list 10 things happening in my life right now, I could do Pip's Taking Stock, I could talk about books and podcasts and TV series, or I could take photos and write descriptions...I did all of those over and over. 

But the one that I never used and always thought about was taking a photo each hour for a whole day. And it's funny that I've never used that one because people often ask me about a normal day in my life and this would show just how varied and abnormal my days can be. It would also be such a great snap shot of a season.

So yesterday I woke up and decided that the last Friday of the year was the day.

One photo every hour on the hour...

I took the top photo of the market garden filled with zinnias at 8am. 

I took the next three photos of the cat's new sleeping place at 9am, after I'd drunk coffee, eaten muesli with berries and yogurt and hung some washing out.

Bren's made me a washing line in that new bit in-between the sun room and the new deck. I have to stand on my tippie-toes to reach it but it's right outside the laundry, it's under cover and everything dries so quickly on it rain or shine. Imagine how much of a game changer it'll be come winter when I don't have any laundry hanging inside. So good.

At 10am I took the flowering bean tee-pee while waiting for the girls to get ready to go down to the orchard.

At 11am we were all ready for apple tree netting day to begin!

We had Indi in the tractor, Bren and Francis pulling out the nets, my parents, Jazzy and I were on cable tie duty, and Pepper and Neve were on crafts.

By 12 we were a well oiled netting machine. Everyone knew their job and was doing it well. My phone alarm was going off on the hour and I'd snap a few pics and continue tying.

But by 1pm we were feeling the heat and the damp and were losing steam. Time for lunch.

Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of my Mum's freshly baked sour dough but trust me when I say it was beautiful. We gobbled it up with scrambled eggs, sautéed silver beet and chats about pregnant Kardashians (!).

I forgot to bring my phone down to the orchard with me after lunch so I had to guess at the times. Later when I saw the time-stamps on each photo I laughed at how wrong I gotten it.

At 2.44pm I took these photos of the girls crafting up a storm in the orchard next to where we were working. They made bracelets, rafts and apple dolls, they played with worms and grass-hoppers, and for some reason they called each other Margaret.

At 4.28pm we were heading towards the finish line. The conversation had slowed down and it was getting harder and harder to stand up in between trees.

At 4.55pm farmer Bren sliced a granny in half!

And at 5pm, on the very last row, I thought I'd better take a photo of everyone doing their job before we finished and it was too late. Francis pulling the nets out and my parents tying each bit of net to a tree to stop the birds getting in.

For some reason I didn't take any of pictures of the orchard all finished. I will soon.

At 6.18pm Jazzy and I walked down to pick some currants and gooseberries even though the birds had eaten most of them.

At 7.12pm I put the finishing touches on yesterday's blog post while Bren put together a survival kit for Jazzy's camping trip.

And just after that we picked and podded broad beans for dinner.

I love those days that are filled with family and friends and farm jobs and food. I certainly found myself laying in bed last night exhausted but with a big smile on my face.

Hopefully I'll get a chance in the next few days to do a bit of a run down on the year that was and my hopes and dreams for the year that will be, but in the meantime this feels like a wonderful place to finish. Full of love for where we've come from and optimism for the upcoming season.

Thank you dear readers for coming along with me this year for the ride. For sharing my ups and downs. For your suggestions and encouragement and wisdom. And really, just for being there. In a world filled with so many opportunities, it means the world to me that you spend some of your precious time each week visiting me.

Until we meet again next year, I hope you and yours have the most fabulous 2018! I hope it's filled with love and passion and fun opportunities and flowers. I hope you find something you love to do and get to do it often. I hope you have lots of fun!

I can't wait to get started!

Happy 2018.

Lots of love,

Kate x