first

Hello lovely blog, lovely blog readers and lovely blog friends.

It's new years' day. It's a warm, overcast Friday afternoon. My whole family are out, I've done everything that I absolutely had to do and now I'm sitting here on the little couch in my bedroom thinking about where I've come from, where I am now and where I hope to go in this brand new year.

It's so rare that my world is quiet enough and still enough to follow thoughts all the way through these days and already I've found half a dozen ways to distract myself from writing this post, but here I am. Alone and with the time to do this thing that I really want to do yet am struggling to do.

I've always said that the more you blog - the better you blog, and now that I've blogged so little for so long, I don't trust my words and feel uncomfortable in their lack of flow. But this feels important to me and so I will persevere.

I have no idea if people read blogs anymore. I have no idea if people will read this blog anymore but I do know that this blog is important to me and that I really need to keep it going. The feeling of accomplishment and happiness I get when I put together and publish a post, the joy the interactions with the community bring me, the sweet feelings of nostalgia that scrolling back through old blogs invokes and the sense of how important prioritising something that isn't farm or family related really is.

So to start off with a bang, the same way I did last year, my plan is to blog every single day this January and hopefully regularly from there.

January is bound to be a very busy month on our farm and in our family, but I'm going to try my hardest to snatch a precious chunk of time each day to take some photos and write some words here. I'm thinking about craft posts, gardening and farming posts, some stuff about the girls, maybe some blogs about parts of our trip I never posted here, hopefully some book reviews, some cooking and any other random bits and pieces that pop into my mind.

As well as blogging more regularly, this year I'd love to buy a flock of sheep for land management and wool, I'd love to play with natural dyes, I'd love to work hard to find balance between work and play, I'd love to design a piece of knitwear, I'd love to work on being kinder to myself in my head, I'd love to find ways to get more involved with the causes that make me cry, I'd love to knit a Lopi Icelandic sweater, I'd love to unfollow a few people on social media who are not kind, I'd love to find some new recipes to add to our tired collection, I'd love to play with some botanical embroidery, I'd love to teach, I'd love to reacquaint myself with my sewing machine and sew some garments and I'd love to find a way to do a bit of housework regularly rather than leaving it until it's overwhelming. I'm sure there's more but that's a start.

Ok, the pile of cucumbers on the kitchen bench aren't going to pickle themselves....

I guess I'll see you tomorrow, and in the meantime if by chance you are out there reading along I'd love it if you'd say hi, maybe where you are from, if you have a blog what's it about or maybe a suggestion for something you'd like me to write about.

Until then, wishing you a wonderful and sweet 2016.

Lots of love,

Kate

xoxo

PS The first thing I wrote on the first day of last year is here. And I'm proud to say that although I'm still working on some of the things I hoped to achieve then, I did knit that cabled fisherman's jumper.

home is where our kitchen garden grows....x

We've been away for three weeks.

And now we are home.

All morning we've been weeding, thinning, planning, planting, harvesting and breathing it all in.

Our hands are dirty, our hearts are full.

There's an Indi and Bren baked carrot cake in the oven and some carrot juice on the cards.

Holidays are ace but coming home is best.

Home is where our kitchen garden grows.

xx

#herecomeswinter

With the promise of more than two inches of rain on the horizon, we spent the whole of yesterday in the garden. We cleared out autumn and settled her in for the long, cold winter ahead.

We weeded, we forked over the empty beds and we filled them up with fresh compost. We picked bucket loads of carrots whose tops were starting to rot. We harvested the last of the tomatoes and beans and yanked out their vines. We thinned out and transplanted kale and spinach and cos. We planted broad beans soaked in garlic and chili (to deter the pesky possums). And we seeded a spiral of rocket and some parsley. 

And we lit a bonfire for warmth and to burn the sticks that held our tomatoes and beans up all through summer.

And my farmer boy made us cups of steaming hot Turkish coffee with cardamon.

It's a wonderful gift to realise that we are exactly where we want to be right now, doing exactly what we want to be doing. We are together, we are doing what we love: making and growing our own, we are being creative and we feel inspired and good. We feel really good.

Time and circumstances and bad weather may challenge that and probably change that, but for now it is.

And when we came in last night at dark, stoked the fire, settled in for the night and heard the rain starting to tumble down on the roof, we felt like we were up to date and on the right track.

Winter looks like she is settling in but our garden's ready for her.

If only I were as ready in the kitchen.
Soup again?
What're you having for dinner?

xx

My 'what makes me happy' to-do list.

Hello day before summer and very last day of November!!

What a crazy time of year you are.

I don't know about you, but I'm finding my days are disappearing in a sea of pick ups and drop offs, final this and preparing for that, make lots of this and rehearse for that. There's costumes and projects, and food shares and transitions and meetings and excursions and parties and inspections and reports and dead-lines and concerts and dances and assemblies...and there are three, tired, fragile children.

Yesterday I drove in and out of town nine times!!!!

And so being the disorganised person that I am, I've often found myself feeling like I am drowning. Overwhelmed and out of control. And that all the stuff I love doing, the stuff that makes me-me, gets stuck right down the bottom of the list.

So this morning, when I stepped back into my house after the first drop off of the day, and I contemplated the mess that needed sorting out and the list of housey chores that needed attending to, I decided to make myself a what makes me happy to-do list.

On that list I wrote things that I love doing, but that aren't exactly priorities. My happy stuff. The stuff that makes me feel passionate and inspires me.

I'm hoping that having this list will keep me more focused and motivated and on task. If I hang and fold all the laundry, then maybe I can do something for a little while that I love, like crochet a coaster or plant out some of the basil.

Like make a new type of bread or sew a dress.

Like thin out the lettuces or sew some bunting.

Like soaking and blocking my just cast off cardigan.

Like taking photos and writing a blog...

And you know what? It might seem small but for now I feel like writing that list has made all the difference to my day. I feel like the shoulds will be more doable if there are some loves in amongst them.

Oh after a bit of contemplation, I just deleted all the games off my phone too. I reckon I could have crocheted an entire blanket in the time I've been wasting lately.

OK here I go, off to tackle the kitchen with my rewards well in sight.

I hope you have the most fabulous weekend.

But before you go, I'd love to know a few of the things that would make it onto your what makes me happy to-do list.

Bye! xx