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

ten things

Hello lovelies,

It's early April, one month into autumn, and the first day of the school holidays. Bren and Pepper have gone camping, Indi and Jazzy are in the other room listening to Cat Stevens and after my initial panic at remembering that it's blog day, I've settled in with my lap-top and I'm ready to go.

So these are the ten photos that I've taken over the past week. Ten autumnal pictures about what my life looks like right now. And because ten is such a nice even number, I think I'll stick with that and write 10 bunches of words about life to go with them. 

Sound good? Good.

Thing one - I've decided that I'd quite like to be a flower farmer when I grow up. For most of the time we have been farming here we have concentrated primarily on growing edible things, but over the past few years we've given over rows and beds to flowers. For the bees, for picking bunches of, and because they add colour and just look so glorious showing off their sweet blossom smelling faces to the world. Next season I want to grow twice as many as we grew this season and then even more than that. I think I'd better start researching eh.

Thing two - Miss Pepper put together these posies to present to Indi and Jazzy the other night after their singing performances in their school's soiree. The big girls loved them but they were pretty wilted by the time they got to them, I told you I needed to do some research.

Thing three - We're at that funny part of the season where too much is too much. Every spare space in our house is filled with crates and boxes and baskets of produce waiting to be preserved. Beans, quinces, apples, tomatoes, pears, cucumbers, beetroot, grapes, cabbages, basil and nashis, all ready to bottle and boil and dehydrate and stew and ferment and freeze. The house smells like overripe fruit and to be honest I think I'm almost at that point when I can seriously say that I'll be happy not to eat another raw tomato until next year. I'm definitely at that point where I'm sick of reaching for something only to find it mushy and mouldy on the inside. Better hop to it and slice and dice quicker.

Thing four - As the days have been slowly growing colder and shorter and darker, I've been compiling a list in my head of things that I love about Autumn and one of those is definitely lighting bonfires. Standing around a pile of burning logs with a steaming hot cup of tea warming my hands makes me as happy, as happy as can be.

Thing five - Watching Bren as he refines his tools, develops muscle memory, gets into his flow and makes the most beautiful bowls from wood off our farm makes me pretty happy too. We've been talking about setting up an undercover space with a wood heater for when the weather turns nasty soon, complete with a comfy arm chair for a knitting companion. Hopefully we've got a few weeks of mild outdoor days before then though.

Thing six - While Bren's been making wooden bowls on his lathe, Miss Pepper has been carving little wooden beads from his offcuts. I'll have to remember to get a photo of them all strung onto her necklace when she gets home.

Thing seven - I finally finished Emily's Bulldogs socks. A quick soak in some wool wash, a nice block, a photo on a daughter's feet and then I'll be handing them over. 

 

Thing eight - Whenever I finish a knitting project I reward myself with knitting a few extra squares onto my memory blanket. Unfortunately the red, white and blue from the footy socks don't exactly work in the blanket's colour palette, so I'm using scraps from socks past this time.

Thing nine -  My blog and clever author friend Zanni Louise sent me the sweetest package this week. A copy of her latest book Archie and The Bear, some brown wool, a crochet hook and the pattern to make an adorable bear hat. It really is a gorgeous book and I am so proud of Zanni and excited to think of little bears all over the world cuddling up to read her wise words and turn her pretty pages.

Thing ten - I just started this book last night so I don't have much to say about it yet other than how different it is to the last three Australian books I read. I find myself constantly rejigging the pictures in my head, the geography, the religousness, the culture, the way the people look and the foods that they eat - it's all so very unfamiliar and foreign - but I guess that's one of the things I love best about books and reading. I have loved the first 88 pages and look forward to the rest.

Thing ten.one - I want to thank you all so very much for your responses to my last blog post. Thank you as always for your kindness and encouragement, it means the world to me. I am very slowly going through them all and thinking about how you read my words, look at my pictures and where to go from here. I'm most interested in the regular Friday posting and how many of you said you look for my blog now rather than have it delivered to you. I like to think of it as part of your Friday routine. And I'm pretty happy with how it's working from my side too. Making me want to commit and be reliable and dependable. It's good.

Thing ten.two - (Ugh, I never was any good at maths.) Somehow with all the long days of hard farm work we've been doing over the past week I've sprained my right wrist. I'm happy to take a day off today to rest it and hang out with my big girls. I was relieved to find that I could still type these words. But I'm upset that it hurts to knit. After all, what good is sitting still without knitting?

Okay, time to stop, the girls want to watch a episode of 13 Reasons Why.


So how about you, have you read anything, watched anything, listened to anything good lately?

I hope you've had a lovely last week and are looking forward to something fun on the weekend.


Love Kate

xx

stacks of wood

Hello you guys!

It's Friday again and I almost can't believe it. Where did this week go? I feel like it was just yesterday or the day before that I was sitting here on the plump green chair writing my blog. And yet here I am again.

Honestly I almost skipped this week. This week was such a big physical week that there was no time or space left for the emotional. And truth be told, emotion is where the story always sits with me. But I do know that if I miss one week then it's probably all over and I'll possibly never come back. And it would have been such a shame to miss the fourth Foxs Lane Friday.

So although the stories are about doing rather than feeling, here they are.

Last Saturday Bob the tree man turned up bright and early to cut up a few trees that had come down in recent storms, and to cut down a few trees that were too close to the house.

Then with a rotating team of family we spent the next four days turning those trees into firewood.

First someone rolled the rounds close to and then up onto the hydraulic splitter. (I think Miss Pepper was actually drawing sap faces onto that round up above, but I didn't take all that many photos of the process and that one sort of gives you an idea).

Then someone split the rounds into chunks. Gosh it's cool to watch that big blade come down and slice through the wood as easily as if it were an apple. And the cracking sound was pretty cool too.

I must admit that one or two of us did get a bit emotional on occasion when the blade opened up a gash in the wood and deep red sap poured out. At times it looked a bit like a crime scene.

Of course there was a bit of old fashioned, analogue splitting too. Look at Bren's dad John go!

It was hot, heavy and loud work. I have scratches all over my hands and arms, and my shoulders ache. But gosh it's a great feeling to put in a few days of hard work and get the job done. To build those long winding walls of firewood that now line our driveway.

I loved spending the days with our girls and our parents working as a team. I loved watching Bob teach Indi to split wood, and for her to smash it. I loved knowing that Bob was listening to Simon and Garfunkel and First Aid Kit in his headphones and not the rock that I had assumed. Coming across koalas, and faces, and slides that Pepper had made out of  the sap and the wood was awesome. And let me tell you there is nothing that tastes quite as good as an iced coffee on a hot summer's morning after a few hours of solid work.

I'm not at all looking forward to those icy winter nights when we'll be burning through that wood, in fact I feel slightly melancholy at the thought that we're on the wrong wide of the summer solstice now, but I do feel pleased that we're prepared.

And I kinda like it when we're so exhausted come night time, that we end up in bed before the girls do.

After the wood, and the summer slashing and the rest of the farm chores, there wasn't much more week to fit farm work into, but we did squeeze in a bit of planting in the igloo my farmer boy built me after he found me crying at the thought of losing another crop to the birds and the animals.

It's made of star pickets, irrigation pipe and orchard netting, all of which we had lying around the place. Pretty cool hey!

We planted cabbages, broccoli, brussel sprouts, basil and tomatoes.

The best was having those 16 year old hands in the soil with us.

And that's that!

Like I said, lots of physical but not much emotional. Which was kind of refreshing considering all the doubting myself and plans for redefining myself, that have been going on lately.


And so dear friends, whatever you celebrate - whatever you believe, we here at Foxs Lane would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your families a wonderful, merry, love-filled weekend, whether it be Christmas or Hanukkah or any other day of the week.

Lots of love,

Kate

xxxx

Twenty sixth

On the morning of the 26th day of the year we woke up in our caravan to the sounds of soft rain on the metal roof.

On the afternoon of this same day, after we had farewelled our family and friends, after we had drunk several strong coffees, after we had walked all the way up and all the way down the main street of Queenscliff and after Miss Pepper had finally learnt to ride a two wheeler bike, we had a caravan craft-er-ama-noon.

I can't tell you how much fun it is to have my farmer boy join me in this made-by-hand world. To have him happy to sit by my side for hours in silence cutting and curling and slicing off shavings of wood. For us to both to be so involved in what we are creating that we barely notice that we skipped lunch. And to have our girls coming in and out, chatting, joining us for a bit and then running off to play something else someplace else.

I can think of not many better ways to spend a chilly summer's afternoon.

His spoon was made from the other half of that piece of pine, and is one half of our new pair of salad servers. I only hope that during the crazy school year rush that begins again on Thursday, that he makes the time to complete the set.

We're heading home in the morning but I think we'll need to plan our next caravan trip soon.


Wishing you laughter.

Big love,

Kate xx

twenty second

On the twenty second day of the new year my farmer boy took me on a detour past the hazel-nut orchard but wouldn't tell me why.

I wandered up and down the rows chatting about how the blackberry vines needed to be cut back, how last year when we picked the hazels I had just gotten out of hospital and my world felt like it was upside down, and how we should make sure we finish eating the last crop before we harvest the next. But I had a feeling he was too involved in what he was doing to really hear me. That he had other plans.

After we found what he wanted we came back up to the house, I started on the laundry and then lunch and he disappeared for a bit.

When he returned he gave me a bunch of gypsy flowers he'd made from the hazel-wood.

I'm not sure who's getting more from this new wood cutting love of his. What a gift. What treasures.

I feel like when we made the almost impossible decision to minimise our business a year an a half ago, that this is exactly what we were hoping for. Time. Love. Passion. A focus inward rather than out. I feel like it took us most of that time to get here but it sure was worth it. I think I said this the other day but I have to mention again what an incredible thing it is to watch someone you love doing what they love. What an honour.

I look forward to seeing what happens next.

I hope you are feeling the love, my friends.

Bye!

xx

seventh

The seventh day of the new year is our farmer boy's birthday.

We tried to convince him to have a party, to go on an adventure, or to go camping, but he told us that all he wanted was a day off. A day where he did not leave the farm, was not busy, or productive.

We gave him a pancake breakfast, loads of hand made cards and prezzies, a pavlova lunch, and we gave him a set of wood carving knives.



And when we went down to look after the animals and clean the irrigation filters, we brought back up with us a bit of black wattle.



First he chopped it in half and then he got to work with his new tools.











After a while the girls got their knives out too.



It was such a gorgeous way to spend the afternoon, busy hands, snippets of conversation and curly wood shavings.



We'll finish the day with a movie and popcorn.

I feel like we gave our boy the happiest birthday and everything he asked for. Oh except the non productive bit, look at all those shavings.

Happy, happy birthday farmer Bren, oh how we lovelovelove you!!

I hope you guys had a great farmer Bren's birthday too.
Oh and I'll draw the five beanie winners tomorrow if that's ok, the movie is starting and I don't want to miss out.

xxxx