in june

Hello lovely ones,

I've had a bit of a nostalgic week this past week. In preparation for my presentation at Soul Craft festival tomorrow I've spent time going through old photos, old blog archives, old projects, and really thinking about the gifts that living and sharing my craft-filled life online have given me. It'll be nine years this month since I started posting to Foxs Lane. Nine years!! 

And although blog friends have come and gone, and  although the trends have come and gone (hello Kirsty's granny shrug), and although my style has changed a million times (I'm no longer wearing skirts made from tea-towels), and although our girls are so big now that it's hard to even remember that I used to be able to knit them a cardigan from one 200 gram ball of Bendigo Woollen Mills cotton, and I could go on and on...the one constant has always been community. You guys. Us.

Creativity, connection, community.

Our stories, our opinions, our skills, our families, our makings, our ups and our downs. So although my talk will be mainly about my relationship to craft, I can't help but feel it would be completely different, and not nearly as fulfilling, without you guys travelling along beside me.

Which is why it meant so much to me when I opened my post office box this week to find a parcel from Rhonda at Down To Earth, one of my favourite bloggers and possibly one of the blogs I've been reading longest. It means the world to me to think that Rhonda thought of me when she came across this book in her bookshelf and knew that I'd love it. It felt comforting flicking through its pages at 3 this morning and wondering if she was awake and reading too. But the best part of all is, after all these years of reading her typed words, to read her inscription in her own hand writing. 

Thank you dear friend. xx

june second

As you can imagine, a huge chunk of this week has been spent preparing for my presentation and my sock knitting class at Soul Craft tomorrow. I've written questions, thought of answers, found diagrams, prepared instructions, printed pages, taught two friends, gone through old photos and blog posts, had my hair cut, found an outfit, knitted lots of samples, endured the crazy tummy butterflies, breathed deeply, mixed some essential oils, questioned my ability and my authority, written lists and made plans.

june third

All I can remember about last Sunday is that Bren and Pepper made some wooden spinning tops on the lathe, I planted loads of spring bulbs, Indi wrote an essay in Melbourne, poor Jazzy wasn't well and we ate fire-baked potatoes for dinner.

june fourth

I remember being halfway through a conversation with Bren last Monday when I looked behind him and saw the light coming through the window and hitting the cyclamen and I had to rush out to take a photo. I guess that's a big pro for the taking at least one photo every single day. They can't always be the big moments.

I look at that macrame so often and wish for the time to make more. Hopefully when I'm housebound over true winter I will.

june fifth

The greenhouse is in a bit of a post busy season mess, as you can see in the first photo on this post, but somehow through the lattice of windows everything looks just as it should. I love that.

june sixth

On Wednesday, due to the luck of her timetable and my need to escape the distractions of the home and get some serious work done, I spent four heavenly hours in two cafes, sitting across from Miss Indi, drinking coffee and then peppermint tea.

Back at the height of my crochet obsession in 2012, I would have written an entire blog post about those tea cozies!

june seventh

This week three windows went into my studio and three walls were clad in the old car-port tin. Next week the shingles will go on the front and then I think it'll be time to fit out the inside. So far everything but the battens is recycled. I am ridiculously in love with every single detail and ridiculously grateful to my farmer boy and to Jobbo. xx

june eighth

Today. One more sleep til Soul Craft!

It's funny how much I enjoyed hanging out the washing this morning when I knew I had a bazillion other things that I should have been doing to get ready for tomorrow instead. How I shook out every piece to make sure they dried right, how I admired all of the stripes and colours, how I made sure there was nothing long hanging in the back row to get in the way when we carry loads of wood through, and how much an undercover, out-of-the-living-area washing line has changed my life. On Sunday the housework will probably drive me crazy again, but for now, anything but the should is good.

Which brings me to now, 3.26pm on Friday. This time tomorrow I'll be two hours into my class, with one still to go. Wish me luck!

For now I have to go and charge my camera battery, finish printing and collating the instruction sheets, organise my samples, pack my needles and yarn, go through my presentation, wrap my dad's birthday present and take some deep breaths.

Hopefully I'll be seeing some of you tomorrow.

Do you have any last minute public speaking or teaching tips for me?
Do you have any questions you think I should address in my talk?
What's your best procrastination trick?

Hopefully I'll live to tell the tale and see you back here next week with all the gory details...

Love,

Kate x

wish i may - wish i might

Hello my lovelies,

Another Friday, another Foxslane post.

So much of my last week, if not the past three weeks, or even the last year, has been affected by the fact that I can't sleep. It feels like I've spent so much time talking about and trying different preventatives and cures, working on my sleep hygiene, pushing harder at the gym, cutting down on coffee, learning meditation, taking herbs, writing lists...but still I can't sleep. My body has forgotten how to sleep. And so I've been walking around feeling like the front of my head is filled with soggy cotton wool and hoping the right words will come to me in conversation when I need them.

It's frustrating and exasperating and scary. I feel like I'm wasting the days of my life working at quarter strength. Wandering around in a daze, dazing around in a wonder.

But late last night when I was preparing myself for another eight hours of lying in the darkness, my farmer boy suggested that whatever happened or didn't happen overnight wouldn't matter because all I had to do today was sit up in bed, knit a couple of rows of my shawl, edit some photos and write my blog.

I hardly slept at all last night and feel like I'm in slow motion again today but it's been kind of nice taking the pressure off and not expecting to get anything done but the bare minimum. So please excuse me if I'm a bit incoherent in places, I'll totally forgive you if you lean on the pictures instead of the words. And let's just cross our fingers and hope that by some miracle something changes soon and I sleep and make sense again.

So how about we get back to the photo, or five, a day, okay?

may twelve

Last Saturday we picked the last sale-able apples from the trees. Five crates of Jonathan's. It was so cold that I couldn't feel my fingers, the rain was dripping off the trees and nets down my neck when I looked down and up my sleeves when I reached up, and it wasn't an altogether pleasant experience. But the apples were bright red and beautiful, they came off easily and we filled the crates in no time.

As we walked the rows of the orchard afterwards and noticed how the leaves were turning golden and fluttering to the ground, we thanked the trees for the beautiful apples, made plans to take the nets off before we pick the grannies, and acknowledged the fantastic season we've had and all that it involved.

We put those apples on the farm gate stall and by the next evening a box had been taken for an apple pie cooking lesson at a Women's prison nearby and the rest had been sold to passers by. We took the signs down, we put the scales away, we emptied the money tin and then we closed the stall doors until next season.

may thirteen

On Sunday we helped Indi paste one of her photos on the water tank at the top of the hill. It's part of her year 12 art folio and has all sorts of theory and meaning behind it, but like I said I'm not in the right head space for explaining anything complicated so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

She printed up some more yesterday that will hopefully get pasted around our farm over the weekend, I'll report back next week.

After the trek up the hill and the pasting we ate pancakes for Mother's Day lunch.

may fourteen

After school on Monday we went for a walk through the sunflower patch to assess the storm damage. Being such a late crop they're probably not as strong as they could be and many were lying down or bent over, but still there were enough standing upright staring at the sun for us to get lost in the magic of and bask in their glow.

may fifteen

These are the chrysanthemums I bought myself for Mother's Day. Bren bought me a blue handled pocket-knife which is equally as pretty and I probably should have taken a picture of, but I forgot.

may sixteen

On Wednesday Bren and Jobbo built the roof of my studio. I had been worried that adding a roof onto the structure would make it too big and overpowering in that space, but after they played around with angles for a while I think they got it just right. I love it and its little pitched roof.

Bren's parents drove up for lunch which was fun.

And then I walked up and down each row of flowers until I found enough for a bunch.

may seventeen

Yesterday I planted some more garlic, I pulled the basil out of the garden and saved the seeds, I watched as they wrapped the studio up in sisalation and Miss Jazzy got her braces put on her teeth.

may eighteen 

Today. A few days ago when they were discussing ideas for the ceiling of my studio, I sent my farmer boy an instagram photo of a ceiling I love. It was one of those dreamy cabin photos with a pitched roof, chunky rafters and big, wide, dark boards covering the the entire space. From there the boys went into action pulling bits of timber out, sanding, staining, oiling and then holding them up to be discussed. At one point Jobbo remarked that he'd always wanted to see what sump oil did to the colour of a wooden board and the next thing he knew Bren came back from the depths of an old shed with a bucket full from an old tractor. From time to time we laugh at him and his hoarding tendencies and then at other times we are swiftly reminded that he's the one laughing. Or feeling smug anyway.

Eventually they sourced some hardwood offcuts and spent today getting them ready. Jobbo cut them to size, Bren sanded them down and then they played with the ratios of linseed oil to sump oil for the dark and richness.

They got rained out this afternoon because sanding is not an inside job, but with any luck by this time next week I will not only have had some good hours of sleep - but I'll have a studio ceiling too. How exciting.

And I'm still knitting my Merricks shawl in Abbe's Noble Fox yarn. I've just finished the second colour and am about to make a start on the border, it's the most beautiful blue and I'm so excited to use it.

Which brings me to now, still sitting up in bed, staring at the late afternoon shadows dancing on the wall, wearing the new to me cardigan I bought myself this afternoon on our local buy/swap/sell Facebook page, wondering what to make for dinner that Jazzy and her new braces will be able to eat.

And that's me!

Please tell me about you. Are you building? Wallpapering? Is your team winning? Are you excited about something? Dreading something else? Please fill me in, I'd love to hear it all.

Love! Love!

Kate x

endings + beginnings

There's a change in the air, can you feel it? The days are growing shorter, the shadows are lower, the mornings smell smokey and damp, my workboots are always wet and muddy no matter what I've been doing, the granny smith apples are edible even if they're not yet quite ripe and our hot water bottles have been pulled off the shelf and lined up on the bench for filling. I'm trying so hard not to get caught up in the day to day minutiae, but to live in the moment and notice all the endings and beginnings.

This week Bren and Jobbo put the finishing touches on the sun-room extension just in time for us to catch the autumn rays. It's hard to believe that a few months ago this part of the house was my least favourite; all ugly brown bricks, overgrown lavender and blackberry, in the shadow of the carport. Over the past few days we've started filling the end bit with fire wood, we've brought in some furniture and I've potted up some plants. Now it's my favourite spot to eat breakfast, to drink coffee and read, and to sit with my farmer boy in the late afternoon and admire the view while we discuss the dreaded 'what's for dinner'.

My studio build is next, watch this space.

Last weekend a rain and wind storm threatened so we tied up the flowers with star stakes and bailing twine. Overnight an inch of rain fell and the heavy, water-swollen flower heads drooped to the ground and broke their stems. The next morning while I wandered from bush to bush cutting them off I wondered if perhaps our dry season had been a blessing. Being our first flower growing year I have no idea if December and January stems are stronger and hold weight better than these tail-end bendy ones, or if it's always a problem. But I filled a wheelbarrow and hoped that all the buds that I left on the bushes would get a chance for another show before the frosts start and finish off our season.

While I know the time for colour in the garden is slowly fading, I'm desperately filling up the green-house and sun-rooms with pots of colour, hoping we can keep some things flowering in these protected spaces all the way through.

We've been picking Jonathans, Red Delicious and Braeburn apples for us, for the farm gate stall and for the new Daylesford Sunday Farmer's Market.

We've been loving all the very late season blooms that have decided to burst into flower just before the season ends. Hello Breannon!

I'm still amazed by this view and by the fact that this time last year this space was still occupied by two long, very ugly, poly tunnels. All too soon I know that the flowers will die down, the potatoes and pumpkins will come out and it won't look nearly as gorgeous, but until then there's still this picture that stops me in my tracks every single time.

And looking in the opposite direction (shame about the blue bailing twine).

And the zinnias! The gift that kept on giving all season long. I spent a few hours with them the other day; snipping off the dead-heads, cutting out the powdery mildew and tying them up, and look how they're rewarding me. New buds and fresh blooms every day. The beginner flower farmer's dream.

Although we're still picking crates and crates of tomatoes out of the field, their smell and texture has changed. They're still great for eating raw, but the smell of the sauce they make when cooked makes me gag. In order to overcome this problem we've started separating the varieties as we pick them so we can experiment, but still I feel like the season is ending. I think we'll sell the round tomatoes at market this week and sit happily with the 112 bottles of sauce on the shelf.

Chrysanthemums are another type of flower we've never grown before and I'm completely smitten with them. Every time I go out to the garden I find myself standing above them checking on each unfurling petal. I'd love to pick a bunch for the house but I don't want to interrupt their natural growth. Such beauties.

And as this growing season draws to a close we're thinking of the next. Collecting seed, ordering seed, starting to germinate seed and thinking about what worked and what didn't, making plans for next year's garden and being amazed by how much more interest and patience I have for the flowers than I ever had for the vegetables. I look forward to watching what happens to each plant as winter draws near and then to start all over again next year. Imagine how exciting it'll be when all the bulbs start popping their heads out of the ground in spring. 

I'd better get off my bum and go and plant them.

I don't have a photo of my knitting but it's interesting to note that as the seasons change so have my interests. For a while I've been skipping past all the knitting and yarn pictures on instagram and focusing on the gardens and farms. It even occurred to me once not long ago that I might not be a knitter anymore and may need to sell off all my wool. But all of a sudden this week I had a burning itch to cast off my Mirehouse sweater and cast on something new. I logged into Ravelry account for the first time in ages and I started dreaming of all the snuggly knits I could get onto my needles. I guess knitting for me is seasonal too. Hopefully I'll get some pictures of my Mirehouse to show you this weekend. It's pretty cozy.

And that my friends is where I'm at. Finishing one season and starting the next. Although I just had a look at the weather forecast and it seems that these bright, sunny days are set to continue for at least another week.

Tell me what it's like where you are. Are you busy planting your garden or pulling it out? Are you piling on the clothing layers or pulling them off? Are you eating salads or stews? Picking the last of the tomatoes or planting them out?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

See you next week.

Love, Kate x

a punnet of possibilities

Hello honey bunches,

How's your week been?

Let's do a run through of some of what's been going on here, in the last little bit of summer.

Picking - Jersey Mac and Abbas varieties of apple from the orchard.

The Jersey Macs have been a bit spotty to sell, so I've been cooking them and dehydrating them for later. The Abbas's look, smell and taste pretty perfect. Hopefully we'll open the farm gate stall in the next few days and sell them to the passers by.

I'm so excited that we're here again. After a whole season of hoping for the right weather conditions, after netting and irrigating and fertilising and mowing them, after months and months of watching the blossom, the fruit buds, the fruit set and the fruit growth, after weeks of slicing and squeezing and taste testinging, apple season is here!!

I'll be posting the details of what we have for sale and when on my Foxs Lane Facebook page, on the Daylesford Organics Facebook page, on instagram and here. So watch these spaces and please come and try them for yourselves.

My dried apple ring recipe is here.
My fruit leather recipe is here.

Knitting - the back of my Mirehouse sweater.

Ravelry details here.

Reading - my mum's library copy of My Absolute Darling. Woah! It's been a while since I've read a book that I cannot put down. This book is dark and intriguing and incredibly painful. At 80 pages in I still have no idea where it's heading but I'm in for the ride and I'm hoping there's a glimmer of hope somewhere along the way.

 

Listening - to the This American Life podcast. With so many brilliant podcasts available these days, I found I left TAL behind a few years ago when many episodes were repeated and then others seemed overly political or irrelevant to me. For some reason the other day on the way home from school I decided to have a look at what some of their current shows are about and I was pleasantly surprised.

I loved the first piece in Words You Can't Say.

And I really enjoyed Rom-Com.

Arranging - brightly coloured bunches of summer flowers to sell, to give away and to dot around our house.

Pulling - the biggest onions I have ever grown out of the ground.

Meditating - !!!! I've always had this belief that there are those who can and those who cannot. I unfortunately fall into the latter category. I'm too fidgety to sit still, my mind speeds up whenever I try to slow it down, I feel jittery and anxious whenever I attempt to, and so I don't.

I also don't sleep. I've been suffering from such a severe bout of insomnia lately that I don't even know what to do with myself anymore.

I eat well, I exercise, I try to deal with stressful situations, I garden, I don't drink caffeine after the early afternoon...but still I don't sleep and it feels I'm running on empty.

So a few days ago, I agreed to my farmer boy's suggestion to give meditation another go. And because I'm pretty good at following along with apps (that couch to 5km one, the drinking water one, the period tracker one...), he suggested 1 Giant Mind.

We've done one a night for the past four nights. I'm interested in the fact that this style of meditation allows my mind to wander, it allows me to be a bit fidgety and it doesn't make me feel bad if I forget the mantra, as long as I effortlessly come back to it.

Over the past few nights I've still lain awake for hours at a time, but I feel like I've turned a corner. Like things are slowly improving. Like I'm not a complete crazy zombie (still a bit crazy zombie though). I'm going to persevere with the meditation and hope that my sleeping continues to improve. I'll let you know how I go.

Appreciating - the past lives of things we have inherited.

This trestle table belonged to my grandparents and lived in their garage. Every time there was a festival or an occasion to seat more than their dining table accommodated, a few family members would bring the wooden table up, lay it on its metal legs, cover it with a crisp white tablecloth and then set it with heavy silverware, white china, vases of flowers and then course after course of delicious meals. Now that those times have ended, sometimes I miss them so much that it hurts to think about them. Often the memories make me smile too though. What I would give now to take my place with my sisters and cousins and parents and friends, to tell stories and laugh, to eat, and to look up to the head of the table at my grandfather gazing lovingly at my grandmother. To have his big hands delicately roll me up a pancake or peel me an orange. I miss them.

Now that trestle sits in the centre of our new sun-room. Even though we bought a big slab of wood with a history all of it's own to build a table for that space, I can't seem to let this one go. I don't want to put it away for special occasions. I want to be reminded in our everyday. I want to bring them with me.

Emptying - my overall pockets and noticing the things I've collected along the way.

Watching - the eucalypts burst into a blaze of red flowers, listening to the bees in a frenzy drinking nectar from those fuzzy little cups, wondering what my farmer boy has planned as he snips bunches of the red blossoms and carries them into the garden, loving him and his concentrating posy making face, feeling happy every time I see that vase full of summer loveliness sitting on the coffee table for all to see and admire.

Listening - to these two writing a song together.

Planting - broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, beetroot, lettuce, cabbage, leek, kale...

Discovering - new flowers in the garden.

Last year in very early spring I got addicted to buying those $2 punnets of flowers from the nursery. I had decided that I wanted to grow lot of blooms this season, but being so new to it I didn't really know where to start. So I grew most things from seed or bulb, but then I discovered the punnets.

Each tiny tray had six or eight little bunches of greenery with a colourful label on the front. They felt like a bit of a head start and weirdly a bit like buying lollies. Each time I passed, I chose a punnet with a pretty looking flower on the front and brought it home. I had no idea which of the colours would grow or if they would grow at all. Eventually I ended up with quite a selection and planted them at the front of many of our garden beds. Watching them pop open their colourful faces over the past few months has been such a treat.

These Asters have been the latest. Just last week they were all still tightly closed buds in a sea of green foliage. And look at them now! I'm not actually mad on their smell, or that PINK!!!!! But I have loved watching and guessing and discussing, every single flowering plant that I bought back when it was freezing cold last year, often as a reward to myself for doing the school run in the rain or wind. I hope there'll be different ones for me to choose from next season.

As well as all that I'm eating the summer sandwich my farmer boy just brought me - feta, tomato, pickled cucumber and basil, I'm listening to Jazzy playing Stand By Me on her ukulele in the other room, I'm reading a little story I wrote about seasonal eating for a magazine about the Daylesford Macedon region in today's The Age newspaper, I'm wondering where Pepper is and what she's up to, I'm missing Miss Indi who I haven't seen since last Tuesday and I'm getting interrupted every few minutes by text messages from Bren with quotes from Barbara Kingsolver about writing.

What are you up to? What are you eating, reading, planting, thinking, watching, hoping....
Are you meditating? Sleeping?

I hope you have a gorgeous weekend my friends.
I hope the sun shines on your smiley face.

See you next week.

Love Kate x