in a hurry

Hello honey bunches!

How are you going? How's your week been?

It's the first day of the autumn school holidays here. Jazzy and her cousin Remy are helping Bren make matza lasagne in the kitchen, Pepper is playing a game on her iPad, Indi is reading her homework aloud to herself in the sun room and I've got a zillion things I should be doing, but instead I'm going to spend a few minutes with you. I'm going to have to make it a quick one this week, but hopefully the pictures will tell a thousand words and it'll all work out.

I took the top photo of the cocktail tomatoes four days ago on a day we came so very close to losing them and the flowers to frost. It felt like a very narrow escape. But there's nothing quite like a near miss to remind us of how fleeting the seasons are and to appreciate what we've got while we've got it.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed picking the tomatoes that day. Even those tiny little, fiddly ones. Not to mention eating them.

Last Sunday we had a stall at the very first Daylesford Sunday Farmer's Market. It was the first farmer's market we've had a stall at in years and years and we had the most wonderful day. We sold baskets of apples and bunches of flowers, we bought lots from the other stall holders, and we chatted with so many people and can't wait to do it again this Sunday.

And these photos are from this morning when Bren and the girls rescued some of the grapes that grow on our back deck from the birds and made grape juice.

Ahhhhhhh I feel like I've got so much more to say, but it'll be dark soon and I have a million things to do.

Thank you once again to everyone who wrote kind messages to me about my blog. They really mean the world to me. I can't thank you enough. I am going to continue for now, how could I not?

I hope to be a bit more organised with my blog time next week.

I wish I could take a photo and show you how many birds are eating Bren's leftover grapes on the deck right now but I have to fly.

Happy long weekend! Happy Pesach! Happy Easter!!

Before you go why don't you tell me something fun that's going on in your life at the moment. Or something not fun but interesting. I'm all ears.


Lots of love, Kate x

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

grape stomping

OK, let's hop off this self-rediscovery train for a bit and come and visit our place on a sunny Sunday afternoon in March. The grapes on the back deck are swollen and juicy and if we don't pick them today, the birds will beat us to it.

Let's pick bunch after bunch after bunch. We can use scissors or just snap the vines off with our hands. You go up the ladder and pass them down to me and I'll fill the bucket and after a while we can swap. Let's sing and laugh as the grapes explode in our hands and the juice runs down our arms. The grapes are warm, the day is filled with sunshine, life is gorgeous.
When we've filled our buckets it's  time for the fun part! Let's tip all those gorgeous grapes into a cut off drum, stalks and all. Let's hose off our feet and jump right in. Let's stomp on all those grapes and make juice baby!
After we've all taken turns stomping and the grapes are feeling squooshed, it's time to strain the juice out. If you reach down into the barrel and get a cup full, I'll pour it through the strainer and into the saucepan.
Yep, it's thirsty work this grape juice making. We're almost there now, have a drink, hose off your legs, feed the scraps to the chooks and let's go inside and bottle it up. We're not really wine drinkers in our house, so we'll pop these bottles up on the shelf for now and bring them down as we need them for icy poles, fruit leathers, vodka cocktails and cordial.

It's delicious don't you think? the perfect mix of sweet with a little hint of sour. Yum!

Thanks so much for your help, it's been such great autumn fun.

See you next week for tomato squooshing?

Big autumn love!

xx