through a new lens

Hello honey bunches!

How are things?

The last week eh'. Luckily I snapped some photos or I wouldn't have a clue where the time's gone.

Pepper spent much of last Sunday up a tree. The cat joined her for a while but then lost interest and left Pepper up there to sing, make up stories, make herself more comfortable and dream.

I remember feeling like nine years old was particularly difficult with my other two. Aged nine and year nine we'd grumble under our breaths. Those fiercely independent, filled with attitude, eye rolling experts we'd made. It's funny how different this nine year old seems. I'm sure it's not her, it's me and my last chance for a littley. I can feel that she's stretching her wings out wanting more from us and her world, I can sense that she's wanting to keep up with her big sisters and also carve out new path-ways of her own. She's changing there's no doubt about it. But gosh I'm holding onto the unselfconscious dreamer, the silly dancer, the tree climber and the bunny rabbit pyjama wearer, whenever she allows herself to be seen.

While she was up her tree we started pulling down the poly-tunnels. As soon as we took the white plastic off the hoops the whole area looked and felt different. The colours looked brighter, the space felt less cluttered and more open and the view across the garden and into the forest, or across the garden and onto the new hot-house, made us wonder why we hadn't taken them down ages ago.

Then we got to work picking the last of the tomatoes that had been hiding away inside and clearing the space.

We found this red-back mother spider guarding her babies on one of the star stakes we pulled out and moved her into the forest to find new habitat well away from us and our babies. Funny, I'm nowhere near as scared of spiders as snakes.

Farmer Bren carved a tiny bowl.

And a rather large one.

The hot-house build continued with a potting table built inside the space to account for the different levels of the floor.

And a shelf to hold our coffee.

I'm convinced it's the most beautiful room in the house and am only half joking when I talk about moving my bed and a little pot-belly stove in. I guess I should probably wait for the doors to be hung, the gaps to be filled and the roof to be sorted out first though.

Some other things that happened over the past week -

I finished reading our book club book The People Smuggler which I found easy to read, incredibly gut wrenching and an important story to know. It's unimaginable that one person's life could be filled with such terror and torture and risk and horror, and yet he remains a caring, humanitarian. It breaks my heart that after all he's been through that even now Ali Al Jenabi's future is so uncertain.

I finished knitting one beanie and cast on another for the ASRC.

We started watching season two of Billions.

I got a horrible cold and have lost my voice. Funny how many things I desperately want to say all of a sudden now that I can't.

I got a new phone and I don't know how to connect my phone to my car so I haven't listened to any podcasts this week but lots of radio instead.

Miss Indi had a week of year 11 exams, Miss Jazzy did a first aid course at school and Miss Pepper wrote a book about a cheese monster.

We moved our chooks and dogs, planted more garlic and started a new compost pile.

We farewelled Rod May yesterday and feel very shaken up by his legacy and loss.

I clicked on my new lens and used it to take all of the pictures in this post except the one below.

And lastly, but most importantly, it's my Dad Ross's birthday today and I'd love to wish him a happy and wonderful 70th birthday.

Two years ago I wrote this about him on my blog - 'My dad, Ross Ulman, when he isn't driving his electric car as discussed in the latest issue of Renew magazine, he's walking 14,000+ steps per day, volunteering at my girls' school, working at a Ballarat hospital, baking and delivering challah to each of his Daylesford daughters each Friday, selling tickets at the local cinema, helping out in the local kitchen garden program, doing maths homework with my girls, pole-walking around Daylesford in the early morning with a bunch of people not scared off by the cold, and supporting and loving his five Ulman girls. What a man (or an honorary woman as we used to call him when were growing up)!'

Two years later and now he's also; teaching learner driving, writing study timetables and coaching exam technique, driving our girls to school and back a few times a week, smashing his PB at the gym, planning and recording a couple of radio programs a week on Hepburn community radio, and being on call 24/7 for advice and opinion and support for his girls, their partners and his grandchildren.

I feel so lucky to have my dad at the bottom of our hill, so interested and involved and part of our lives. Since we celebrated his last big birthday he's had heart surgery, built a house, moved states and formed a new life and community. This afternoon he told us that he's happier now than he's ever been and that makes me very happy indeed. 

Happy birthday Dad, I love you!

And that's me for this wintry week.

How about you?

What have you been reading, celebrating, making and cooking?

What have you got planned for the weekend?

Have a great one!

Keep warm (or cool).

Love Kate xx

latest may

 twentieth

'October's [or May in the Southern hemisphere] a blink of the eye. The apples weighing down the tree a minute ago are gone and the trees' leaves are yellow and thinning. A frost has snapped millions of trees all across the country into brightness. The ones that aren't evergreen are a combination of beautiful and tawdry, red orange gold the leaves, then brown, and down.

The days are unexpectedly mild. It doesn't feel that far from summer, not really, if it weren't for the underbite of the day, the lacy creep of the dark and the damp at its edges, the plants calm in the folding themselves away, the beads of the condensation on the webstrings hung between things.

On the warm days it feels wrong, so many leaves falling.

But the nights are cool to cold.

The spiders in the sheds and the houses are guarding their egg sacs in the roof corners.

The eggs for the coming year's butterflies are tucked on the undersides of the grass blades, dotting the dead looking stalks on the wasteland, camouflaged invisible on the scrubby looking bushes and twigs.'

Autumn by Ali Smith
Pages 177-178

I didn't love this book. While we were away a few weeks ago I asked a woman on the beach about the book she was reading because I loved the look of the cover. She told me it was a difficult book to read but parts of it were intensely beautiful. Having read it now I have to say that I agree with her review completely.

Some parts of Ali's book are so stunningly written that they are almost poetry. She describes scenes and seasons and relationships in a way that had me sighing and rereading them over and over trying to hold onto them. But the story itself I found tricky. Flipping between past and present, dealing with relationships, contemporary politics, art and time in no particular order made it a tricky read for me at times, but I'm still glad I read it.

twenty first

The things I bought at the Daylesford Sunday market last week. The skirt is pure wool and made in Australia, the clogs look like they've never even been worn.

Obviously I'm never going to be a fashion blogger, but these days my girls are so conscious of where and how and by whom their clothes were made, that we're always going on excursions to find them new-secondhand things to wear. Coming home with bits for me just feels like a bonus.

I'm thinking a charcoal top, a denim jacket, a grey shawl, black leggings, my new kilt, some hand-knit socks and my clogs...

twenty second

Hot house progress.

twenty third

Bowl carving.

twenty fourth

The cleaned window view from inside the hot house.

That lunch time I passed a pot of soup through the kitchen window and we sat with our backs to the house looking out those windows at the view. Is it possible that the world looks even more beautiful framed?

twenty fifth

About a week ago I posted a request on our local buy, swap and sell site:

We're looking for some freshly cut wood (within the last six months) for bowl turning. Ideally the pieces would need to be 15-30cm diameter and length, or larger. And the preferred species include fruit wood, alder, maple, and sycamore.

I had quite a few great responses, one of which told us of a big branch that had fallen off an Ash tree on the the side of a main road near here. Armed with his chainsaw farmer Bren went and cut up a ute load.

And then turned a couple of beautiful bowls.

He's waiting for them to slowly dry out before he oils them, I'm excited to see all those beautiful patterns and colours come out.

twenty six

Today.

Years ago, when we were farming seriously, we had one long poly tunnel set up in the middle of the market gardens. In 2009, a huge flood came through the bottom of our farm and washed away most of what we had growing at the time and parts of that poly tunnel.

A year or so later we salvaged what hoops and bits of plastic we could and built two tunnels up the top near our house. They've never been the prettiest or the neatest of fixtures, but they've done their job ever since growing our cucumbers and tomatoes and protecting them from the cool weather and the frosts.

But this past season, maybe the fifth or sixth that we've grown in them, we felt like the crops struggled. Despite all the green manures and compost we've fed into the soil and the water we've irrigated it with, the fertility felt lacking. So over the next week or so we're going to take them down. We're going to plant oats and peas and barley and then dig them in, we're going to let the rain fall on the earth naturally, and then when it feels right we'll plant spring or summer crops. The poly tunnel we'll build somewhere else.

I'm excited to extend the in ground garden that we planted behind the tunnels, I'm excited to rebuild the poly tunnels somewhere else but I'm mostly excited to change the whole look of this place. Every photo I take of our garden has those ugly, patched up tunnels in the background, soon it'll just be the forest.


And that's me for another week.

I contemplated not writing my blog this week after the horrific events in Manchester. The stories I've been reading feel very personal and relate able and I worried that posting photos and stories of normal, happy life would be trivial. Insensitive even. But after much thought I decided that the way I cope with the big wide world is to find joy in the little moments of my own small world. To notice and capture and honour.

Still my heart is with all those affected. I'm so sorry you have to deal with this.


Sending love to you wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever you believe and wishing for peace and safety.

Have a beautiful weekend.

Love Kate xx

the very last of the tomatoes

It's funny in life that so often you don't know that something was the last until it is over. The last time your child wears something before they grow out of it, the last time you take a photo of your baby with all her baby teeth, the last time you hug someone you love before they leave, the last time you hang your washing on the line outside before the days become too cold…



Mostly food gardening is a bit like that for me. We spend much of summer and autumn enjoying bountiful basil. Plucking those leaves and eating them on and in almost every dish we create. And then one morning the frost hits it and it's over. Burnt. And that's it for another year. It's the same with so many crops, from plentiful to finished over night.

One season passes, another begins.


This week we pulled the very last of the tomato vines out of the garden and let the chickens into the poly tunnels to clean up the scraps. We collected every last red tomato and brought them inside, we picked crates of green fruit for the chooks, we made piles of green leaves and vines for the compost and we stashed the stakes for the next year.

Then we forked each bed to aerate them, we sprinkled rock minerals, we filled them up with compost and then we planted garlic and kale and other wintry, new season's veg.

For some reason this week I got to choose for the tomato season to be over. It had slowed right down but I could have probably gotten another bowl or two from the poly tunnels over the next week or so. But it feels like the time is right. The chicks needed the space to explore, the vines are getting all mushy and disgusting from rotting fruit, we need the space for the new season and the days are getting shorter and I'm running out of time to pick.

So this season, perhaps for the first time ever, I do know that I have just picked my last crate of tomatoes. I think I'll oven dry a couple of trays, eat as many as we can in sandwiches and salads and do one more batch in Fowlers jars. It's a strange feeling and I almost feel like I'm cheating mother nature, but I can tell you that late season's tomatoes never tasted so good. I am enjoying every single one like it's my last - because it is almost my last.

Happy season of green, southern peeps, and for those of you up north, enjoy your bounty.

Big love x

i say tomato

Can I tell you a secret?

I don't like fancy tomatoes. I know, so very wrong for an organic farmer to admit. But I'll take an under-ripe, red, round, firm tomato over a fancy, overly tasty, pulpy tomato any day.


I think it started way back about seven years ago. We were growing tomatoes in a pretty serious way for restaurants and shops and markets and I was growing Miss Pepper in my belly. And while the tomatoes were blossoming and blooming and growing beautifully, I was sick, sick, sick.

And all through those early months of my pregnancy, my main job was to rummage around through the foliage in the poly tunnel and pick out the juicy, red tomatoes. Sounds like fun huh?

Imagine a hot sunny day, condensation dripping down the sides of the poly tunnel and off the roof and occasionally dripping onto your head or down your neck. Imagine the sticky tomato tar that covers your hands and arms up to your elbows as you reach through the plants to grab the fruit. Imagine thinking you've spotted the most perfect, plump, red tomato and when you wrap your fingers around it it disintegrates in your hand, a warm, overripe pulpy mess. Imagine breathing in that humid hot-house air and feeling like there wasn't enough oxygen for both you and the tomatoes. Imagine the overwhelming smell of the tomato plants and the tomatoes themselves, kinda acidic and sweet and strong. Imagine spending hours and hours, filling buckets and crates and feeling sick and pregnant and gagging and so over everything tomato. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Seven years on, every single March and April day I've been spending an hour or two in the poly tunnels picking tomatoes, and that tomato smell and the feeling on my fingers takes me straight back there and I feel a little queasy. Seven years on, while I've still lost my love for the exotic and heirloom tomato, we most certainly, unquestionably have won with our wonderful Pepper Berry. I'll take her over a Cherokee Purple or a Purple Russian any day.

Bye now

xx

Poly jungle

Our family don't do Christmas. Not religiously, not culturally, not socially. It's just not our thing. 

So you can imagine this time of year feels a bit strange. Mostly it's fine. Sometimes it feels like there's this great big party that everyone but us is invited to. But then it's also this lovely peaceful time when we have no place to go, no one to see and loads of time to spend together doing jobs we haven't had time for all year.

Today we spent a few hours in poly tunnel two. Last September we seeded tomatoes onto drip line to see if we could avoid all the pricking out and transplant shock that slows the whole growing process down every year. We had thought we were clever and on to a new thing. We had thought we would have extra early tomatoes this season.

And while poly tunnel one has thrived and grown beautiful healthy plants that look right on track for our earliest season ever, for some reason we neglected poly tunnel two. And the fat hen and dandelions took over. And the poly tunnel became a poly jungle (thanks Dee x).

We did consider plowing it all in and starting from scratch. But when we found established plants in amongst the triffids, we decided to give them a go.

So we yanked all the weeds out and fed them to the chooks. We disposed of the nest of eggs that had been there for goodness knows how long. We trellised all the vines. We fertilised them and composted them and watered them in. We whispered sweet blessings to them. And then we tucked them all into a bed of mulch.

Now all that's left to do is to irrigate them and hope that they bulk up, blossom and fruit.

Grow little tomato plants, GROW!

From our family to yours, wonderful wishes for a merry and sweet Christmas. And if it's not your thing, enjoy the quiet and the peace.

And happy growing.

xx