five hours

I'm all alone in a tiny cabin on the edge of a forest in a town an hour away from home. From the last school drop off to the next school pick up I've counted five hours. I have no wifi, no washing machine, no farm work, no house chores.

Somehow, due to some crazy planning, compromising and trialling, that little seed of a dream that has been at the back of my mind through all the crazy chaos of the last 15 years of parenthood has come to fruition. I have complete silence (except for the wind and the birds), I have no one to look after or talk to, there are no shoulds, only a heap of coulds.

To be honest, part of me is slightly terrified. I'm worried that my precious time will go too fast and be over before I've done anything with it, and I'm also fearful that it'll drag on forever. I feel bad that my farmer boy is braving the winds and the rain pruning the apple orchard back home. I feel sad thinking about Miss Pepper sick on the couch. And I'm a bit nervous that my mind will travel to dark places and I'll have nothing to distract me from exploring them.

And I think I fear the fact that this thing that I have wanted for so long, this precious me time, is not in fact what I want at all.

And of course another part of me is beside myself with excitement at all the possibilities. I feel rich with time. I don't know what to do first. 

I could knit some squares onto my memory blanket, I could play spider solitaire on my phone, I could have a long shower and wash my hair and then dry it, I could fill in our census forms,

I could hop into bed, put the electric blanket on and read the last hundred pages of my book, I could rug up and go for a walk, I could make some notes for myself for when I go home,  I could tackle my inbox on my phone,

I could fill in an interview for a magazine that I've been putting off for ages, I could cast on another hot water bottle, I could lie on the daybed and listen to a podcast, I could call farmer Bren again, I could try and attempt to graph out the knitting pattern that is stuck in my head,

 I could visit the local town and walk up and down the main street, I could pop the kettle on and make another cup of tea, I could knit the other heel of my ugly socks, I could scroll through instragram and Facebook, I could borrow Indi's water-colour paints and paint in my journal, I could even have a Nana nap.

Or I guess I could sit on the couch by the fire, sip my hot peppermint tea, watch the crazy wind in the trees and the sheep out the window and write my blog. Acknowledging just how precious these moments are and how lucky I am to have them. Trying not to be swept away by the unsettling wind and to enjoy my moments.

I miss my people. But I just had a little thought that I might be a better person for them because I have had a chance to.

Three and a half hours still to go. I'll publish this and still have more time.

Sending you all the love.

Do you know this place I'm in?
Have you been dreaming about it too?
Or have you been here?
How did it make you feel?

Bye!

xx

Little Bo Peep

from last weekend's glamping trip to the beach

from that rare second when i looked up and saw beauty rather than work to-do

from a family potato digging day

from a beautiful parcel of yarn sent to me by jackie @intambo_yarn

This afternoon just after we finished lunch and were putting our boots back on to go outside, I started making a list of all the things that are going wrong for us at the moment. None of it life threatening (for us), none of it life altering (for us), but still somehow we've found ourselves with quite the load and I thought that saying it out loud might make it stop. Or at least justify the weight I'm feeling on my shoulders and the sick feeling in my stomach.

The sheep got out in a storm and we've spent the best part of two days trying to get them back. One of the girls' close friends has had a terrifying health scare. Another one of our girls is having an awful time with some school yard stuff. We've had a minor health scare of our own. We haven't slept through the night in weeks. We're at that stage where we should be starting to wind down for the winter but our to-do list feels HUGE and OVERWHELMING. The days are starting to close in on us as they become shorter and icier and darker. And the thought of our precious girls being driven to and from school through the dark windy forest in the wet and the gloom doesn't make me feel good at all.

Me and my farmer boy talk A LOT and OFTEN about details and plans and the best way to tackle situations so none of the above list was a surprise to him, but still he stopped me at this stage and told me that he thinks what's going on is life's way of reminding us to enjoy the good stuff. To not be complacent and live without thought, but to live with choices and meaning.

He's right you know. I know.

We need the occasional crappy times so we can really fly high when things get good again.

So instead of adding to my list I stopped and I reversed it. I took a big deliberate breath into my stomach and I closed my eyes. I felt the warm almost winter sun on my face. And as I opened my eyes I saw the last of the liquid amber tree's leaves flutter softly to the ground. And then I noticed the bulbous Brussel sprouts and started dreaming up ways to cook them for dinner. It was just a moment but it felt like an important one.

The sheep are still out, I'm still stressing about the girls but we'll deal with it all. That's what we do.

And just before I go there's this photo. Kim Daly took it for Alphabet Journal a few years ago and I think it may be the only photo I have of me knitting. And I love it. But the reason I've put it here is because Karen Templer of Fringe Association, one of my all time knitting gurus and sources of inspiration, wrote a blog about me and called me her 'maker crush'!! Me! I actually cannot believe it. I have to put it in my blog so I can find it in the future when I question my knitting abilities.

In return I can only dream of and drool over Karen's incredible projects, her vision and her community. Karen has created something truly wonderful and I urge you wool lovers and lovers of beautiful things to check out her spaces - BLOG - INSTA.


And while we're out covering our wood piles before the rain and you are out picking your kids up from school, sitting at your desk at work, pushing a little person on the swing or just waking up - please, please cross your fingers that our sheep do what Little Bo Beep's did.


Love ya's!

xoxo

beginner spinner

So what happens when you're really not very good at something that feels important to you?

It's late on a beautiful, warm Saturday afternoon in the middle of March and we've made the decision to stop with the farm work and spend some time together as a family crafting outside.

It's a crazy time of the year and often I'll find myself getting ready for bed at night not able to remember a single time when I sat down all day. Everything is ripe and needs picking, everything is dry and needs irrigating, everything is going soft and needs preserving, everything is becoming a jungle and needs weeding, and mowing and feeding and fencing and fixing and moving and stacking and and and and...so stopping early just to sit together and chat and make feels indulgent, and precious, and also necessary.

My farmer boy is carving a spoon. It's been months since he's made one but he's committed to demonstrating and selling at a market soon and has lots of cutting ahead of him. His hands feel out of practise, his fingers are sore and blistered, but he's in the zone and not long after he starts chipping away he remembers and he becomes excited at the possibilities and the feelings.

Nearby Indi is weaving wool around sticks and inside the house Jarrah is creating with paper and washi tape.

Miss Pepper is taking staples from our sheep's shorn fleece, combing them, using some for her fairy house and making neat piles of the rest for me. I can't help but joke about how she owes me. How I've been brushing and braiding her bottom-lengthed hair for eight years now and it's time for her to pay up. She is strong and likes to discuss the feeling of the lanolin on her hands, the sheepy, woolly smell and the bits of dirt she finds as she cards.

And I am sitting to the side, shoes off, straight backed, deep breathed, trying my hardest to find some sort of rhythm on this spinning wheel I borrowed from my spinning group.

And it's hard for me.

And I am a little disappointed because I think I had hoped that it would click for me sooner. That wool and fibre and textiles are such a big important part of who I am and what I love that spinning would just be an extension of what I can do and would be easy for me.

To be honest and fair I haven't given the wheel that much time. When time is precious it feels better spent on projects that will produce a sure thing. I have a sleeve to knit on a jumper, I have squares to knit into a blanket, I have Indi's cardigan to cast on, winter is coming and there are socks and mittens and beanies in the queue.

But still the spinning calls to me.

I visit the sheep that grew this fleece every day. At the moment I know that they are in our south orchard eating the grass that grows between the trees. I love that they feel so comfortable amongst the chickens and that they sleep with the dogs. I watch them carefully to see how they behave on the warm days and when it is cooler. I love how they stick together as a pack, how they panic when they are separated from one another by accident and look relieved and chummy when they are reunited. I don't mind that they are eating the lower leaves on the branches of the apple trees and I am sure that their little pellet poo is doing great things for the orchard's fertility.

Now that we have sheep, I find myself less interested in buying commercial wool.

I want to knit with wool that tells our farm's story. Wool that holds our seasons, and bits of our land and the love and respect we have for them as part of our farm.

And yet I find myself with lots of tangley twisty bits.

And a bobbin filled with yarn so bobbley and uneven that it almost looks like that novelty pom-pom yarn you find in op shops and wonder why it was made in the first place.

I will persevere of course. I will hold the fleece in my left hand, draft with my right, while treadeling with both feet and trying to get the wheel to spin in a clockwise direction. Phew! And I'll hold my breath when my farmer boy hops on; part of me wanting him to get it and explain it simply to me, and part of me wanting it to be too hard for him too so it's not just me spinning my way into lumpy-town.

I wonder how far away from my dreams of a hand spun, hand knitted jumper my reality is.

In the meantime, we've opened our farm gate stall for the season, Yay!

You can find us at  - Daylesford Organics - 19 Foxs Lane Muskvale.

The stall is open between about 8am and 8pm every day.

Apples are all certified organic, grown here, picked within the last 24 hours, DELICIOUS and cost $6kg.

Please bring your own bags, exact change and honesty.

And tell me, if you please, when was the last time you tried to learn something new?

When was the last time you didn't at first succeed?

And how long did you try and try again for?

Oh and I'm on the hunt for my own wheel if you have any suggestions.

And youtube spinning videos, can you suggest any?

Thanks.

I'm off to pick today's tomatoes and plant some cabbage.

Big spinny love to you,

Kate 

xoxo

What I've been up to - the late summer edition

Hello!

How are you lovely blog buddy?

What have I been up to? I thought you'd never ask. Here goes;

I've been picking celery, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers and herbs from the garden.

Somewhere along the line I ditched the cider vinegar method of preserving and fell in love with fermenting. These fermented pickles are super easy to make, barely cost a thing in terms of ingredients and dollars, they are DELICIOUS and are full of beneficial nutrients for your gut. WinwinwinwinwinYUM!

I'm using Amanda Feifer's book - Ferment Your Vegetables as a bit of a bible, but I'm certain there are loads of great recipes online and in other books too.

I think my poly tunnel cucumber vines are nearing the end of their season but my market garden vines are just taking off. Looks like I'll be shoving cucumbers into jars, filling them with herbs and brine and vine leaves and burping their air bubbles for many weeks still to come.

We're picking apples! So far we've picked the the Jersey Macs, the Abbas and the Galas. Gosh it's good to be an apple farmer in apple season.

After a few years break from pumpkin growing due to lack of interest, we finally planted the seeds and had another grow(!). I'd forgotten how much fun it is to watch those big leafy vines take over the space, to watch those yellow flowers form bulbs behind them that seem to grow and grow and grow every time you look, and even though I am not a pumpkin eater, none of us are, this autumn I resolve to try a whole lot of recipes until we become so.

We've been sharing our grapes with the birds.

I read, and fell in a deep hole, and wept over, and despaired over, and then finally finished Hanya Yangihara's A Little Life. Reading it affected my entire life for two weeks like a bad dream that haunted my days. But as traumatic and heart breaking as I found it, I also thought it was brilliant. I couldn't put it down. I made excuses to run inside to my bedroom to change clothes just so I could sneak a few pages, I stayed up waaaaay too late at night to devour big chunks and I read on the treadmill - which is something I've never done before but which I have always done since. I loved this book and still feel myself sobbing a little when I think back to it.

And even though I made jokes that I needed to read a fluffy romance novel after I finished A Little Life - I started reading Room by Emma Donoghue, a much less traumatic but still very disturbing and claustrophobic novel.

I've almost finished my Flower King beanie from Anna Maltz's gorgeous book Penguin. The pattern calls for a big pom-pom on top, but I'm thinking an i-cord finish might be better for my little penguins to wear to school.

Ravelled here.

I've started a Bracken jumper for Miss Pepper which is knitted inside out with two different sized needles which is fun and fast. It's been ages since I've knitted jumpers and cardigans for my girls but this year I'm hoping to have them all rugged up in time for winter.

I felt like the luckiest Mum on earth when I discovered that an entire ball of HOT PINK yarn had gone through the washing machine cycle and not coloured anything else pink. I have no idea who the yarn belonged to, I have no idea how it even happened but I do know that I am grateful beyond words that there wasn't even a streak, or a tinge, or a speck of pink on anything to be found.

I am loving the little posies of garden cut flowers that have been appearing in jars around the place.

We watched and loved both seasons of The Leftovers and have no idea what to watch next.

And I'm thrilled to report that we have finally joined the rest of Australia by having bowls of tomatoes on the kitchen table. Finally. For a while there I thought that the girls would eat every single one that I brought into the house as I brought it in, but eventually supply overcame even their demand. We still are nowhere near a saucepan of passata or a tray of semi-drieds, but as I keep chanting to myself - tomatoes are an autumn fruit and we are still 10 days away from autumn.

And as usual I've been watering and weeding and feeding and planting and digging and fencing and cooking and baking and jamming and dehydrating, and driving, and listening and solving and writing and photographing.

I haven't yet used the spinning wheel I borrowed from my spinning group, maybe this weekend.


And that's me, us, we.

Tell me about you. How are you travelling? What are you reading, growing, dreaming about?


Wishing you the most wonderful weekend.

Love Kate
xoxo

twenty fifth

Just a quick one tonight because it's late and I'm tired and I still haven't spoken to Bren about the bushfire planning meeting I've just been to.

I'm so excited to introduce you to Cardigan, Socks, Beanie and Mittens, the newest members of our Daylesford Organics team and the start of our wool project.

They are two years old, they are Corriedale x Finn, they are two sets of twins, we bought them off our friends Nat, Jono and Ruby and although I am ridiculously happy to have them here, they run the other way whenever they see me coming. But that's OK, I'm patient.

I feel like I've been waiting forever to have sheep here. The thought of knowing and caring for the sheep that grow my wool is ridiculously exciting to me.

Last Friday I went to my first knitting and spinning group meeting and learnt how to pull a staple and how to comb the staples in preparation for spinning. My hands were covered in lanolin, there was fluff all over me and I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Hopefully next time they'll help me get my old wheel working and I can start to learn to spin.

Years ago I read a blog about a woman's sheep to jumper journey. I can't remember whose blog it was or find the post but I think she planted the seed in me. Her gorgeous relationship with the sheep that was shorn, watching her spin the fleece, wash it and then dye it before she knitted it into a jumper for one of her children was really beautiful. My sheep won't be shorn again until next Spring but in the meantime I have two bags of their fleece from their last shearing to practice on.

Everything about the wool journey excites me and I am over the moon to have these girls on our farm munching away on the grass under the apple trees. I hope they're as happy to be here as I am to have them. I'm also pleased about the fact that they'll be keeping the grass down, and their poo and the thought that this breed are good milkers should we decide to go down that road sometime in the future.

Big hoorays all round!

Oh my goodness, it's LATE and I can't think straight any more. I hope this reads ok and makes sense.


Sweet dreams.

Love Kate
xoxo

fifth

Our Fox Lane family spent most of the fifth day of the new year in Ballarat shopping for jeans, and boots, and archery supplies, and art supplies and undies. It's wasn't a day that I had particularly been looking forward to but I have to say it went pretty smoothly and we actually even enjoyed ourselves. 

On the way home in the car my farmer boy asked me what I planned to blog about this evening and it occurred to me that I still had no idea. He suggested, jokingly, that I tell you all about our shopping trip. Lucky for you guys I didn't take a single photo and have no inclination to do so whatsoever. It did make me realise two things though; The first being that I am not the type of blogger to plan out or schedule posts but rather make them up as I go along. And the second being that my blog posts are still not speaking to me during the day and letting me know what to write about. I know that when I am deep in the blogging routine I often hear whispers of suggestions, themes, words and story ideas as I go about my day. I'll get there I'm sure but at the moment it gets to about six in the evening and you'll find me racing about taking a few snaps and then tapping out the words. Maybe I should write myself a little list.

So this after shopping post is a discussion of eight photos that I just snapped. Here we go.

The first is a photo of a quince, still a while off but beautifully fuzzy and photogenic. There aren't all that many on the trees this year but looking at them I can almost smell that sweet aromatic haze that hangs over the kitchen when I'm chopping them, cooking them, leaving them to drip through muslin and then cooking the rosey red liquid and ladling it into jars. It won't be long and we'll be back there again.

The second photo is of an article I wrote and a photo I took in the latest issue of Slow Living magazine. I wrote about how we use craft to help us through challenging times and I included a simple pattern for a crochet washcloth.

That photo makes me want to print it out and get Pepper to hold it, and then take another photo and print it out and get Pepper to hold it, and then take another photo and print it out and get Pepper to hold it....

The third photo is of a project I have planned. I really, really, really want to get back into sewing clothes. Especially after a big shopping day out.

Somehow I bought two copies of the Dottie Angel pattern, so keep your eyes on this space for a giveaway I'm putting together very soon.

The fourth photo is of a present that instagram sent me in the mail today to celebrate the new year. Crazy!! Inside that cute bag is a sweet animal calendar.

Maybe I should write out the story of some of my big instagram stories from last year and pop them on the blog. Maybe that's number one on the what to blog about list!

Sorry about the fifth photo I know it's a bit scary. Jarrah and Pepper were so inspired by the tree change dolls and their story that they wanted to make their own. First we took a trip up to the Daylesford Sunday market where they bought a few scary looking specimens, now they're stripping the paint off them and later they'll repaint them, do their hair and dress them like normal kids. Hopefully I'll show you the after shot in the next few days.

The sixth photo is for Reannon who asked how we trellis our tomatoes. But now that I'm looking at it I can see that my photo doesn't explain the process at all because I've cut out the important bits, and now it's getting too dark to take another. Oops!

Basically we bang in wooden stakes as we plant the tomatoes out into the ground. Then we use bits of old tee-shirts to loosely tie the middle, thickest, straightest stem up and that becomes the trunk. As the plant grows we tie the trunk up further up the stake. Does that make sense?

We're still waiting patiently for our first red tomatoes here. We were late planting because of our trip but still.....

The seventh is a plan I am desperate to put into action.

Oh and there's movement on the Daylesford Organics wool project. I'll let you know as soon as it's definite but it's all getting very exciting. Farmer Bren even sent me a text message today filled with tiny sheep. Eeeeeeep!! Or rather shEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

And the eighth and last is of a granny smith apple. So close but yet so far.

And that's my eight on the fifth!

I hope you've had a gorgeous day. Or are about to.

Big love,

Kate xoxo

a birthday in the forest

It's funny how time changes us. How the years help us to rearrange our priorities and see cracks in what we once held as truth. Seasons pass, and we experience, and we learn, and hopefully we grow. And sometimes the things we once thought to be law are not the only way any more.

Sometimes it's hard to let go, but often we have no choice.

Three years ago after planning and preparing and throwing 25 birthday parties for my girls, I wrote a blog post stating my 10 ingredients for a top birthday party. Since that post we have celebrated seven more birthdays in much the same way; themes, invitations, crafts, activities, games, food, cake, presents.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are from my own childhood birthday parties and some of my best parenting moments are from parties we've thrown for our girls.



But this year something felt different. Something had changed.

I'm not sure if it was the fact that we had just spent three months away from the farm and were feeling completely overwhelmed with all that we had to do upon our return. If maybe after 32 birthday parties we felt burnt out and in need of a change. If the fact that four of our birthdays fall in a five week period would mean that planning and throwing parties would be all that I would have time for upon our return. If the thought of 10 or 20 kids running wild for three hours with their inevitable sugar highs and lows didn't feel all that appealing. If we needed a break from planning and playing the same old games...I don't know.

But once I had allowed myself to acknowledge the doubt, there was no turning back.

And then a couple of months ago in Greece, after overhearing the intricate and in-depth plans for a Harry Potter themed eighth birthday party, I made my decision for certain. This year would be birthday extravaganza free.
 

I have to admit there were some tears and a MASSIVE tantrum to begin with. Birthdays and friends and treats and presents have become a package deal.

And there was a huge chunk of guilt on my part too. I knew that our decision was right, but it hurt my heart to deny my loved ones what they so desperately wanted.
 

But what I wanted and what I looked forward to, was a complete change of plan. I wanted to reinvent our way of celebrating, even if only for this year.

I wanted to really focus on the handmade; for presents, for activities and for snacks. I wanted to keep it as small and as intimate as could be. I wanted to put an emphasis on this beautiful environment that we are lucky enough to call home and gorgeous springtime that makes our special days sunny and bright. And mostly, I wanted to look at the birthday person and plan a celebration that suited them.



On the weekend we celebrated Miss Indi's birthday, with a pancake breakfast, a hand knitted crown (raveled here), a pile of hand made cards, a tiny spoon necklace carved from apple-wood and lots of freshly cut bunches of flowers.



In the afternoon we five and her grandparents took a table into the forest and had a picnic made up of some of her favourite foods. We made gods eye's, we listened to her favourite music (which is also her grandparents' fave music), we started stringing up our forest weaving loom and farmer Bren carved the beginnings of a sycamore spoon.

It really felt like we were all gathered to celebrate our freshly turned 15 year old. It felt like we had time, that we were really ourselves and it made me happy.



And even though I have no idea how we'll celebrate next year, I have loved this year and hope that some of our new found ways of celebrating each other become family traditions. The week's lead up making cards and presents, the bush walk, the chocolate chip cookies, the picnic, the hand knitted crown, the pancakes, the birthday person as DJ, the forest craft.

The simple yet perfect celebration of someone we adore.

All the little bits

Hello and happy new week honey bunches!!

Although it's only just begun, my week got off to a pretty shaky start this morning when I lost and then found my car keys in the garden where they'd been hiding overnight and are now soaked through so the clicker won't let me in and the car won't start. Then I couldn't to work out what Indi with braces could eat for her school lunch, couldn't find socks for Pepper and then I turned up to school to find that I'd totally missed the grade six parents' meeting. Oh well, onwards and upwards eh.

So although I'm still feeling a bit rattled by the morning and by the wind, I'm sticking to my appointment with my blog before I head off to my appointment with my beautiful Chinese doctor, the housework can wait.

Why don't we have a little catch up on what's going on around here.

Lately we've been;

Picking/Preserving/Eating/Marketing - APPLES!! Hooray for apple season. So far we've picked our Jersey Macs, Gravensteins, an unknown variety we call Daylesford Delicious and some Blenheim Oranges. All year we imagine the time when we can walk through the farm plucking apples off trees and taking big crunchy bites of them, I can't tell you how great it is to be here, now. I couldn't possibly count the number of apples I ate over the past weekend either, yum!

As well as eating them fresh we are also making dried apple rings, apple leather, apple pie, toffee apples and apple crumble...so far.

And this year we've decided that instead of sending all our apples off the farm to shops and markets, we're going to try to sell them from here. Right now, as I type this, our friend Jobbo who built our cubby-house is building us a cute little farm-stall at the front of our property. Hopefully in the weeks and months and years to come people will pop in and buy their apples here. Hopefully we'll be the local apple farm and rather than buying apples that have travelled in trucks and been stored for goodness knows how long, people will choose apples grown bio-dynamically, sun ripened, picked here by our hands, and stored no longer than a few days at most.

If it works well we might even sell other fruit and veg we've grown here too.





Picking - As well as apples, we've been picking and eating plums, lettuce, peas, beans, broccoli, beetroot, basil, cucumbers, potatoes, parsley, onions, carrots, tomatoes and shallots. I love summer!



Watching/admiring/photographing/writing - about wooden spoons. These salad servers were made from both sides of a branch off a pine tree. We've been using them in our kitchen for the past few days but I still love this photo with one finished and one cut but not yet sanded.

I am so inspired and enamoured with my farmer boy's passion and his design and his direction, using the spoons in our kitchen is the icing on the cake.



Reading - a book about grief has been tricky because I have found myself totally immersed in it and finding myself grieving along with Joan for things past and imagined. I'm loving this book but finding it emotionally exhausting, terrifying and intriguing all at the same time. I think this is one of those books that will hang around and haunt me for the rest of my life.



Missing - my school girls.





Winding and knitting - a pair of socks in the most gorgeous golden sunshine colour. These will most likely be the slowest pair of socks I will ever knit  - in purl with all these twisty cables - but they are a challenge and I love them already.



Feeling grateful - every single time I step outside.



I need to go now and walk down the hill to my parents' house where my girls have been making yogurt with their grandparents, auntie and cousins. I need to remember to change my shoes because clogs are no good for gravel or hills. We're having beans and cous-cous for dinner. I hope Indi can eat it too. Hopefully I'll get a chance to walk around the big block tonight. And then maybe I'll do a bit of the cute crochet project I've been making for a book review blog later this week. Phew!

So how about you, what are you reading, growing, loving, writing about, obsessing over right now?

I hope you're wearing the right shoes for the job.

I'll be seeing ya!


Love Kate xx