this time. x

This morning she got a letter from her school telling her who her teacher will be next year. She was thrilled with the choice because she said she 'got the teacher with the best shoes in the school'. She is super excited about school and wants to start now. 'After Christmas and a bit feels like forever' she told me.

You already know how I feel. I am dreading it. I feel sick at the thought of her in that blue checkered dress, sitting inside a classroom every. single. day. A tiny, selfish part of me thinks about what it might be like if school doesn't work out for her and she has to stay home with me on the farm. But the biggest part of me just hopes she doesn't lose her love of her farmer girl life. That she still has the time and the curiosity and the hunger for knowledge and experience in our world too.

This morning before lunch she sorted out the brooder and then welcomed 500 - one day old - chicks to our farm. She cuddled the Maremmas and helped us collect the eggs. She helped farmer Bren with the irrigation lines in the market gardens. She picked and gobbled strawberries and currants and gooseberries. And mostly she walked everywhere with me, singing as we went, but sometimes she sat on the back of the ute too.

It's no wonder I had to wake her when we drove up to her ballet class this afternoon.

I really am trying my hardest to live in the moment and enjoy this time we have together. But sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with a sad sort of feeling that times are a changing and I miss this time already.

This time is windy but terribly beautiful.

xx

Recharge.

In some crazy coincidence, the stars aligned and none of us had any place we absolutely had to be today. A couple of maybes popped up later in the week, but we stayed strong and said 'no thanks'. So after we picked up Miss Jazzy from her sleep-over and did the farm chores, the rest of the day was ours to do with as we pleased.

And we pleased.

It was slooooooooooow. Two of us never even got dressed. And we ate broad bean omelet for lunch and then pop corn and icy poles and ginger beer and peaches over the day. The girls watched a movie and some video hits and the smallest even had a nap. And we made beads and pottered in the garden, and picked some strawberries and did other odds and ends around the house.

It was all pretty cruisey.

It felt a bit like a battery recharging day. Like the calm before the next few weeks of storm. Like checking things off my what makes me happy to-do list. So much so that nobody had a shower tonight and I haven't even washed the school uniforms yet. Oh well. It certainly was a happy BEFORE have to kinda day.

Oh and the beads are one of the projects from Pip's cute magazine Good Stuff Guide. Have you seen it yet? It's full of ace people and projects and recipes and stuff to do and buy and make. And I've got a little list in there too. Go take a peek, you'll love it.

Did you have a fun day today?
Was it a recharge day?
Are you in the market for one?
Have you been making any cool crafty stuff?
Have you made these beads for necklaces?
I think we'll thread ours tomorrow, keep some for us and give the rest away to the teachers as prezzies.
Yay!

Have a fabulous and fun week my friends.

xx

Broad bean - er - ama!

On the last day of spring we harvested our broad beans.

For months our broad bean plants have been growing in our kitchen garden. They started as beans saved from another season's harvest and then planted into our rich, composty soil. Slowly over the weeks those seeds pushed their way out of the ground and became little plants. And then over the months their stalks grew taller and thicker, their leaves filled out and then they bloomed with pretty white flowers. And finally, those tall leafy plants that started as beans, started growing pods of beans of their own. Each flower a pod, each pod filled with beans.

And we watched those pods. We saw them change from little green slithers to fat and chunky. We saw them get longer and larger and we noticed the bulge from each bean inside.

And we watered them and weeded them and kept the slugs off them. And as the pods got heavier we tied the plants up to stakes to help them stay up.

And then last week or the week before we started picking some of the fattest, highest pods for our meals. Just a few at a time to ensure they had enough time to grow to their plumpest.

But late Thursday night when I was out collecting slugs (as you do), I noticed that an animal, possibly a possum, had been feasting on our precious beans. That animal had been greedy, tearing pod after pod apart and gobbling the beans. Double podding them even.

So Friday evening, before we thought they were ready, and after school and work and dinner, we took a book and a beer and harvested the rest. It was a lovely balmy night and we took turns reading to each other as we picked.

It was a week or two earlier than we would have liked to harvest them. But better early than never. Our home is in the middle of a forest, our boss is mother nature, she decided.

And see those pale pink nodules on those roots? In one of those mysterious relationships between bacteria and plants that we don't completely understand, he calls it symbiosis, plants take nitrogen from the air, store it in those nodules for slow release nutrients as they grow and then when the plants dies and decomposes they put nitrogen back into the soil. That makes broad beans plants as delicious for the soil as their bean are for us. So we snapped the bean plants off at their bases leaving the roots in the soil for fixing and their stalks we chopped back into the soil. Clever plants I say.

And us? We've got a crate filled with beans on the floor of the kitchen waiting to be eaten in all kinds of dishes over the next few weeks. That is if the girls don't eat them all raw first.

Do you go batty for the broad bean?
What's your fave way to eat 'em?
Do you double pod?
Can you believe its December?!

Happy summer/winter my friends.

Bye. xx

My 'what makes me happy' to-do list.

Hello day before summer and very last day of November!!

What a crazy time of year you are.

I don't know about you, but I'm finding my days are disappearing in a sea of pick ups and drop offs, final this and preparing for that, make lots of this and rehearse for that. There's costumes and projects, and food shares and transitions and meetings and excursions and parties and inspections and reports and dead-lines and concerts and dances and assemblies...and there are three, tired, fragile children.

Yesterday I drove in and out of town nine times!!!!

And so being the disorganised person that I am, I've often found myself feeling like I am drowning. Overwhelmed and out of control. And that all the stuff I love doing, the stuff that makes me-me, gets stuck right down the bottom of the list.

So this morning, when I stepped back into my house after the first drop off of the day, and I contemplated the mess that needed sorting out and the list of housey chores that needed attending to, I decided to make myself a what makes me happy to-do list.

On that list I wrote things that I love doing, but that aren't exactly priorities. My happy stuff. The stuff that makes me feel passionate and inspires me.

I'm hoping that having this list will keep me more focused and motivated and on task. If I hang and fold all the laundry, then maybe I can do something for a little while that I love, like crochet a coaster or plant out some of the basil.

Like make a new type of bread or sew a dress.

Like thin out the lettuces or sew some bunting.

Like soaking and blocking my just cast off cardigan.

Like taking photos and writing a blog...

And you know what? It might seem small but for now I feel like writing that list has made all the difference to my day. I feel like the shoulds will be more doable if there are some loves in amongst them.

Oh after a bit of contemplation, I just deleted all the games off my phone too. I reckon I could have crocheted an entire blanket in the time I've been wasting lately.

OK here I go, off to tackle the kitchen with my rewards well in sight.

I hope you have the most fabulous weekend.

But before you go, I'd love to know a few of the things that would make it onto your what makes me happy to-do list.

Bye! xx

See ya spinach!

If picking and eating vegies straight from your garden is the very best thing, then preserving a portion to eat in later months is second, and saving the seeds to growit again next season is the third.

Yesterday, after three or four months of spinach eating. After pasta pocket fillings, pasties, pies, stir fries, triangles, salads, pizzas, pestos, lasagne's, frittatas, on toast and in soups, we decided that this season's spinach growing days were over. 

So we pulled up all but one bed of spinach.

Then we stripped the leaves and composted the stalks.

And then we steamed, squeezed and froze the rest.

While pulling a spinach portion out of the freezer over the next few months wont quite be the same as cutting a few leaves out of the garden, it will still be spinach that we grew with love and care, in great soil, organically, in our own garden. And it will still be delicious.

And the one bed we left we'll collect spinach seed off to store and plant next year.

I do love growing and eating seasonally. It makes us appreciate what we have when we have it so much more. And the preserved stuff is just icing on the spinach cake.

Is your spinach going to seed?
Or perhaps you are just putting yours in?
What's your favourite way to enjoy the green stuff?
What have you got going on in your garden right now?

Bye. x

the one where I was painted...x

I really, really, really do love blogging. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. How many amazing things have happened or are happening to me because I keep this online journal. I feel incredibly lucky, I do.

 I have had an outlet to catalogue my thoughts and photos and moments in time. I have received such fabulous feedback in the form of comments and emails and letters and in person. I have been inspired beyond belief. I have felt like part of a wonderful community. I have made the most wonderful friends some now in real life and many on screen. I have had my work featured on your blogs, in magazines and on websites. I have been given gorgeous presents and compliments. I have a journal of sorts of this period in our lives. I have felt connected and involved despite living rurally. And somehow I feel like my blog has really helped me define who I am as a person, as a mother, as a writer and as an organic farmer.

I know for certain that my life is better, fuller, more well rounded, since I have been blogging.

Blogging really is the most wonderful thing.

But one thing I NEVER EVER expected to come from writing my blog is to have been painted by a wonderful, talented artist.

A few weeks ago a gorgeous reader asked my permission to paint me and Miss Pepper from a few of the photos on my blog. I agreed and asked her to send me some photos of her paintings once she was done.

How good are they!!! She really got us don't you think. From the stripes, to the gum boots, to the crocheted collar she found on my ravelry project page and then made herself and added. Wow!

What a wonderful and unexpected gift.

Thank you SO MUCH for sending them to us Zannah!! We all really love them.

Do you write a blog?
Do you read blogs?
Do you feel like blogs have changed your life?
Do you adore Zannah's work as much as we do?
Do you know where we can buy a 12 year old, white or cream petti-skirt?

I hope your Monday is a funday peeps.

Lotsa love.

xx

blackberries and all...

One day last week I found myself in a taxi rushing through peak, city, lunch time traffic on the way to an appointment. Actually rushing is probably the wrong word to use because although I was in a rush to get there on time, the streets were crazy busy and we weren't going anywhere fast.

I felt good though, happy to have escaped the farm for a while.

But we were stuck in traffic, so we started chatting, the taxi driver and I.

He told me of his family back in India and of how poor his village was. He told me how he and his brother had come out here to Australia seven years ago to seek their fortune and how they had spent six of those seven years working in an Indian restaurant. And he told me of his dream to get out of the city, away from the traffic and the hustle and bustle and live a quiet life in the country.

And then he asked about my life. Where I live, what life was like here and what it was like to be an organic farmer. It sounds beautiful he told me. Like a wonderful life. Like an easy life. Is it?

And at that moment, sitting there in that taxi in my city clothes and city shoes, with people and cars and buildings all around me, my life back home looked pretty sweet.

For a second I forgot all about the constant irrigation issues, the squawking of the fire scanner on farmer Bren's tool belt, his stained and rough hands, the weeds, the endless to-do lists, the fire-prep, the little bits of black spot on the apples, the troublesome dog, my fear of snakes, the stink of the sea-weed spray and the foxes.

And instead I remembered the incredible beauty of our farm at the moment. The green and luscious look of the veggie garden, the tiny apples, and plums and quinces, the water lilies on the house dam, the sound of the banjo frogs, how happy the chooks look in the orchards, our amazing customers, the twilight walks, the taste of our certified organic freshly grown produce and how proud my farmer boy is of his compost.

And I told him that no, it isn't exactly an easy life but it sure is a beautiful one. One that we are very proud of and are grateful to be living.

And then I felt a bit desperate to get home. And I think he felt something similar because he asked me a lot of questions about the three Indian restaurants in our town.

I wonder if I'd recognise him if I saw him down the street one day.

It'd be nice to thank him for reminding me that there's no place like home, prickly, overgrown blackberry bushes and all. Gosh it is a wonderful life and we are so terribly lucky.

Are you having a lovely weekend?
Are you loving where you're living?
Sometimes do you need a stranger to remind you?
Me too.

I'm off to supervise Miss Indi's lava lamp making and then to check out the elevator being made by the others in the shed.

I hope you have the best week EVER!!

Bye. x