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

apple blossom

Hello honey bunches,

It's so lovely to see you again here this week.

It's Thursday night here and I just realised that tomorrow we'll be away all day so I'd better get onto this now, tonight. 

Right now Bren's out spraying the orchards against the mildew and black spot that the humid weather we've been having over the past few days tends to bring with it. Jazzy and my dad are sitting opposite me doing revision for a maths test, Indi and my mum are in the other room going over Indi's Philosophy essay and Miss Pepper is sitting at the coffee table eating her dinner. I'm sitting here, just home from the gym, alternating eating spoonfuls of soup and writing words and sentences here. The Banjo frogs are singing ridiculously loudly on the house dam on my left, my arms are aching from lifting weights and I still have to go and check the leaves in the garden for slugs, so I'm going to make it a quick one this week.

We've had such a lovely week here. We spent a day cleaning and preparing all the bee hive frames and boxes and then caught two swarms of bees in the orchard the very next day. 

With daylight savings the girls have been getting home from school in the light with just enough time for a walk through the blossoming trees to smell the flowers, check the fruit buds and watch the pollen heavy bees flying back to their hives.

One day Indi got stung by a bee on her ankle and her foot swelled up so large that she couldn't put her shoe on. The next day I got stung on my face and dreaded it swelling up like her foot but thankfully it didn't.

On another day Indi went for her driver's learner's permit and passed with flying colours. Even though she's a year late, I still can't believe I have a child whose old enough to legally drive on the road.

Miss Pepper starts every day with the announcement that today is her very last Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday.... in single figures as a nine year old, because next Tuesday she'll be 10!! My baby. When I first started writing this blog in 2009 she turned two.

Miss Jazzy is obsessed with drawing and specifically calligraphy. This part of her reminds me so much of me as a teenager. We gave her a big box of colourful art pens for her birthday and watching her carefully decide on and then place them in colour order, I could almost feel my own hands doing the same thing all those years ago.

Jazzy and her friend have written me a long shopping list of things to buy for the slime party they are organising for Pepper this weekend, I can't wait!

Bren and Jobbo have been building onto the the green-house extension on the side of our house and it's looking so good. I've been sharing little snippets in my instagram stories but hopefully I'll get some proper photos soon. The other day I got home from the school drop off and almost wept when I saw what they had done while I'd been gone, I can't believe our old home is becoming so beautiful.

And me? I've been LOVING  the past few days and nights that have been warm enough to not light a fire and dry enough to hang the washing outside.

A few nights ago, while I was in bed in the middle of the night, I felt someone scratch down the length of my foot. I jumped up in fright and couldn't see anyone. The door was closed so it wasn't one of the girls and Bren was fast asleep. To this day it still haunts me when I think of it.

I've just finished reading Wellmania which I really liked a lot, and I then I started reading Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage in the middle of the night last night when I couldn't sleep. I think it'll be great but I'm only on page 29 so it's probably too soon to tell.

I've just listened to the six Dirty John podcast episodes and loved them. After I had finished my Mum sent me this article with photos of all the major players from the podcast and I was surprised at how much they all look like Hollywood actors.

I've been planting so many vegetable and flower seeds and am watching them with much excitement as they stick their little green leaves up out of the soil and reach for the sun.

I still haven't started on my macrame hanging baskets.

I'm still knitting down the sleeves of the blue cardigan.

So I guess it's time for me to swap my gym gear for my work overalls, pop my head torch on, grab a bottle from the recycling and a podcast for my ears and go outside, into the dark garden, and pluck every slug from the leaves. Sometimes I see my life from the outside and I laugh. What must I even look like!

I hope you have a beautiful Friday my friends and then a wonderful weekend.

So how about you?
What have you been up to?
Do you sometimes get a glimpse of your life and laugh?
Tell me a little story from your week just been, I'd love to hear it.

See you next Friday.

Love Kate x

baskets full

I loaded these photos into my blog exactly a week ago.

I took these photos in the two weeks before that.

According to the calendar now it's autumn but then it was still summer, although with the extreme heat wave we've been having one could beg to differ.

Last week when I loaded the photos of the pumpkins and the sprouting seed and wondered about the birds who make nests in impossibly high places, I was sitting with my Mum at a cafe nearby. She was  handwriting a chapter in her novel and I was loading photos, trying not to talk to her, feeling a bit guilty for sitting down when there's SO MUCH to do right now on the farm, and in the end instead of writing the words that go with the photos, I wrote a looooooooong to-do list instead. No all that creative but sometimes quite necessary.

Monday morning one week later and the photos are older and the stories that go with them more out of date. But still these are the things that are filling our autumn days.

Apple picking, pumpkin gazing, cucumber collecting and fermenting, tomato harvesting and preserving, spinach, cauliflower, zucchini, cabbage, lettuce and carrot weeding and eating, watering, watering and more watering, planting the winter veg, mowing, netting and fencing.

It's a fabulous time of the year. It's the time that makes all the rest of the farming months make sense. It's crates of fruit in the doorway so you have to walk sideways into the house, it's bowls of tomatoes and boxes of cucumbers and baskets of apples, it's pots of bubbling produce on the stove waiting to be poured into jars, it's colourful bottles filling every available bit of bench space there is, it's books lying open all over the table with new recipes to try, it's rings and clips and lids and crocks, it's a washing machine load of aprons, it's a sticky mess on the floor next to the stove, it's a sink FULL of dishes, it's this crazy time when we are living in one season but trying to provide for the next, it's the part of the year that I feel most tired, most alive and the happiest.

Happy new season my friends!

What's it looking like where you are?


I hope yours is bountiful and delicious.


So much love,

Kate x

ninth

If I'd blogged yesterday as planned I would have posted this picture of a tomato and captioned it something like - the very last, first tomato of the Southern Australian season. For it seems like everyone around us has been picking them already for weeks.

But I skipped yesterday's blog and this beautiful specimen smelled, felt and tasted as good as we'd been dreaming it would. There are a few slowly ripening behind it, but I'd say we're still a while away from bucket loads.

And in case you are wondering, my eighth day of the new year was a crazy busy one and I just didn't get the chance. I did have a bit of guilt at times, I did wonder if missing one day rendered the whole exercise worthless, I did consider posting something quick and crappy just before midnight last night, and I did contemplate the possible flaw in my character that I had barely lasted a week before slipping up.

I thought about the lovely lady sitting in hospital for six weeks who had written to me, I thought about my Mum and how I'd missed the chance to wish her a public happy birthday, I thought of how there'll be a gap in my record when I look back next year and I thought about what I'd say if anyone asked.

But then each time the thought came up over the last few hours of the day, I made myself remember that the best thing about my blog is that it's my blog and it's a record of my life and that sometimes my life is just too full to squeeze one more 'have to' or 'should' into it. And the best possible thing I can do is tell all those little niggling negative feelings to get lost and go back to living my life and get back to blogging about my life when next convenient.

Which is now, 3.26 in the afternoon of the ninth.

So here goes.

On the morning of the ninth day of the new year we crossed a wide, brown paddock.

And found our one apricot tree. A tree we planted about 10 years ago but has never grown fruit.

We pulled over a ladder and picked those warm, juicy beauties.

The birds had started feasting well before we arrived so we left those they'd started to them.

It was hot work in the sun and we had to take lots of breaks to rest and sample the wares.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a childhood memory of picking and eating apricots straight from the tree until our bellies were full to bursting. I can't seem to place the when and the where but the feeling is so sweet and fragrant and delicious.

I believe that apricots are one of those things that once you taste them straight from the tree, you can never go back to shop-bought again. The flavour, the texture, the feeling - there's nothing quite like it. 

Heaven in a basket.

One basket-full is what we picked this year, although there is already talk of planting more.

I think we'll eat most of them fresh, dehydrate a tray or two and bake some into a cake. Yum!


So there we go, all caught up and back on track.


Sending lots of juicy summer loving out to you wherever you are.

Love Kate xoxo