twenty first

Sunflowers at last.

We've planted eight or nine rows of them, all along the driveway, all a week or two apart. As each lot of fresh new leaves poked their heads out of the soil, we planted the next. Hopefully we'll have sunflowers for weeks and months to come.

I've loved watching the girls measuring themselves up against their towering stems. I've loved listening to them marvelling over the fact that all of that came out of a tiny seed. I've loved being part of the wondering when the first yellow face will pop her head out. And I've loved the squeals of delight that accompanied the very first sight of golden petals.

My farmer boy just alerted me to the fact that we still have a bag of seeds to plant, perhaps we'll dig them in around the farm gate stall. Maybe they'd flower just in time for apple sales. Wouldn't that be gorgeous.

I change my mind with every season and every new blossom over which flower is my favourite, but today and until that whole row is aglow with sunshiney blooms, it's most definitely the sunflower. How could they not put a smile on your dial.

So tell me honey bunches, what's your favourite flower?
And do you love to eat salty sunflower seeds as much as I do?
Yum.


LoveLoveLoveLove

xoxoxoxox

twentieth

Hello lovelies,

I'm afraid I can't chat tonight as I am deep, deep in pickled cucumber and pickled bean land.

Measuring, stuffing, sterilising, chopping, cooking, pouring, sealing.

I hope you understand.

And I hope you can tell me which land you are deeply immersed in right now?


Big vinegary love,

Kate

xoxo


ps (yes they are my pyjamas)

nineteenth - how to make rhubarb cordial

Hello sweet peas,

I hope you've had a gorgeous day.

I was going to write about something different tonight, but then we made rhubarb cordial from that crate-ful we picked yesterday and now I can't think of anything else.

So just in case you find yourself with a clump or a bunch of rhubarb and your family are as sick of rhubarb cakes as mine are, I thought you might like to make some cordial yourself. 

As with most of the recipes I post here, this one is more of a guide than an exact science. 

Here's how we made it;

Gather

• a bunch of rhubarb  - we used 1.5kg
• a couple of lemons
• some sugar
• a couple of sterilised bottles

Make

• roughly chop your rhubarb into small pieces and pour into a saucepan
• add the zest of one lemon
• pour about a litre of water into the rhubarb 
• cook the rhubarb on low heat until it gets soft and mushy. stir it often to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the saucepan and add more water if it feels like it is
• set aside to cool for a bit
• strain rhubarb mush through a muslin cloth over a big bowl until most of the liquid has dripped through. we left it overnight
• pour the beautiful pink rhubarb juice back into a saucepan and cook over a low heat.
• compost the mush
• add the juice of two lemons 
• slowly add sugar to your taste. i think we used half a cup in the end or maybe a little bit more
• once the sugar has dissolved, turn off the heat and allow to cool a bit
• strain the liquid and pour into bottles
• make some cute labels and then you're done

Next time we make it I might cook the liquid for longer and reduce it into more of a syrup, but today we were making it up as we went along and were eager to get to the taste test bit of the process.

Late this afternoon, after the heat had finally broken, we sat outside in the garden and sampled our cordial. The girls drank theirs with icy cold water and we added vodka, a wedge of lime and some ice.  It was gorgeous. Exactly the tangy but sweet taste of summer that I'd hoped for.

Cheers!

And thanks you guys for the book recommendations. I'm excited to have so many to choose from.


Big smooches,

Kate
xoxox

eighteenth

Just a quick one tonight because it's 9.44pm and we've just come in from organising tomorrow's chook move and I'm exhausted.

So let's do four photos with four short explanations and finish with a question for you. Sound good? Let's go!

Photo one is of a crate of rhubarb we picked while we were fencing off a part of the south orchard for the chooks to move into tomorrow. And on Wednesday they will be joined by four sheep. shEEP!  Did I tell you we're getting sheep? I'm so excited. Finally the beginning of the Daylesford Organics wool project is becoming a reality. I'll introduce you to them once they're here.

And the rhubarb? Well so far I've cooked it until it's mushy with some lemon rind and now it's straining through muslin. Tomorrow I'll make it into cordial.

I'm thinking tomorrow evening after a hot day on the farm we'll be sitting back drinking glasses of rhubarb cordial with a splash of vodka, lots of ice and a squeeze of lime. Oh yeah!

Photo two is of my broccoli seedlings poking their first leaves out of the soil. Funny how farmers and the fashion industry have working a season ahead in common. Hopefully these babies will be big and strong by the time the big chill kicks in and feed us all through the icy cold months.

Photo three is of the blackberries I picked this morning when I got up really early because I have finished my book and don't know what to read next. We ate some on our muesli for breakfast and the rest went into Sophie's Blackberry and Chocolate loaf. It was a huge hit after dinner at our house and felt like just the thing to celebrate our Indi's welcome home.

Photo four is of the apricot jam I made a few days ago being slathered on bread in the garden the yesterday when we had to have an impromptu picnic because our house was too school holidays messy to venture into. I love summer. And I'm happy to report that with all hands on deck we managed to get the house in order that afternoon and it didn't even take that long. But any excuse for a picnic hey.


So there are my four. And now what I'd love from you dear reader is some book suggestions. Last night I finished The Natural Way Of Things by Charlotte Wood. It is disturbing and haunting and at times it feels like a nightmare, but it is also incredibly fearless and beautiful and brilliantly written. I can't stop thinking about it. If I'd had the time I would have gobbled it up in one session, but I couldn't, and in the end I found myself limiting myself to a few pages at a time in an attempt to slow down the inevitable end. I loved it. I loved it so much that I'm scared the next books I read will feel inferior and crappy.

So please help me with your most loved book suggestions, I'll be so grateful for something good to read at night and first thing in the morning.


I hope you're in the middle of a book you are loving, it's the best feeling isn't it.

Ciao, ciao!


Kate

xoxo


ps happy birthday mogus xoxo

seventeenth

Over the past few day I've had a bit of a funny feeling in my tummy. Indi is away, Bren and I have been working like crazy, and the little girls have been pretty much left to work things out by themselves.

Admittedly they've done pretty well, they've played every board game in the house, they've choreographed an entire show and made invitations and costumes, they've written songs and laid around talking and eaten us out of house and home. But every now and then when I kick off my dirty boots and come inside I feel guilty. Everyone they know is off doing fun things and they are stuck here.

Bren likes to talk about the fact that traditionally kids got these long summer weeks off school to help with the harvest. Summer is busy times on farms and we just can't get away.

This morning we walked through the forest, pulled some fences out, and picked some wild flowers on the way. I tried to make both of the girls join us but only one was interested. The other stayed home and wrote a poem. The guilty feeling returned. I carried it around for hours. It was silly I understood, but it just sat there uncomfortably.

And then the strangest thing happened. I got a message from my past self. My self of exactly one year ago, in the form of a Facebook memory. 

Last year on this date I wrote a blog about this exact feeling. This is what I wrote;

The other day, before we went to the beach, we were out somewhere when I overheard someone asking Miss Pepper if she was enjoying her school holidays and what was the best thing she'd done so far. I heard her hesitate and then tell this person that she hadn't really done much at all, just lots of hanging out with her sisters on the farm, playing and doing jobs. 

When I heard her say that I felt a bit guilty. I imagined her in a classroom full of students on the first day of school listening to stories of big fancy adventures and cool outings, and of her sitting there quietly, feeling like she had nothing to compare, nothing to share. Pretty much the same way I cringe inside every time I hear a grown up ask my non Santa visited children what Santa brought them for Christmas. 

When we came home they resumed the game they'd been playing for days. And as I watched them in the golden light and listened to them giggling with sister glee, it occurred to me that all busy year long, these are the times we dream of. These slow days that meander along from one activity to the next, going to bed late and waking up later, eating when we are hungry, getting dressed in dirty farm clothes, wearing yesterday's braids, reading an entire book in one day, listening to an album so many times that you know every single word by heart, playing games that go on for days and days, picking fruit still warm off the trees, eating berries and plums until the juice runs down our chins and our tummies ache, walking through golden grass to feed the animals, spending time together without the demands and responsibilities of the school year. 

These are our summer days. These days are golden and just right.

Amazing right! Can you believe I'd even started fretting about what they'd tell their classmates about their holidays?!

So here's to the next two weeks of golden slow days. Here's to sunshine and games and kitten cuddles and letting our minds wander. I feel so much better now.

I hope things are settled and smooth and sweet in your world.

Lotsa love,

Kate

xoxo

PS Photo credit to Miss Pepper for the one of me and Bren!!

sixteenth

the very first apples of our season

the ripeness test

hello sunflower?

new potatoes and a couple of beans

miss pepper's flower bed

nasturtiums catching the light


Hello lovely blog buddies, how are you?

I'm good. I started today, the 16th day of the new year reading a few pages of my book in bed. It's a school holidays luxury that I'm loving and will be sad to see the end of. It's such a gentle, quiet way to start the day. Lots of people do yoga first thing or go for a walk around the block - I like to read, I love it actually.

After breakfast we walked down to the orchard to check on the progress of some of the apples and cover one last row. And then we spent the rest of the morning putting up fences and planting the last of the tomatoes. Finally. Grow well and fruit abundantly my friends.

While I watered the tomatoes in, farmer Bren bandicooted some new potatoes which we cooked and then ate for lunch with butter and garlic and rosemary and salad. Best lunch ever!

After lunch we were both exhausted and slumped on the couch to watch an episode of a series. There was iced coffee and a bit of knitting involved too.

Once that was over we did a fire drill. We got in our fire clothes, closed the doors and curtains, grabbed the pets and our bug-out bags and headed down the hill to the cottage. Once there we ran around turning on sprinklers and doing the things we think we'd do if there was a bush-fire. It was good to run through it and we learnt a lot about how we'd do things differently next time. Like keeping the cat inside on fire danger days because she really did not want to co-operate and was completely freaked out by the cat carrier.

After that my Mum came and picked up some cucumbers, she's going to go and pickle them with my auntie the way my Nana used to and document the method so we can do it too.

Once she left I went out and picked a bowl of blackberries to make a cake, then we gave the girls their dinner and settled them outside to camp in the tent.

Which brings us to now, it's almost dark, my blog is almost written, and I'm thinking about having breakfast again for dinner. Muesli with cut-up stone fruit and some seeds and nuts. Yep, I think I will.

And then we'll probably watch another episode, shower and fall into bed. Then read. Then sleeeeeep.


So tell me sweet things, how did you spend the day?
What did you eat?
What dd you watch?
Who did you meet?

Catch you tomorrow.

Love Kate
xoxo

PS Photo credit to farmer Bren for the one of me.

fifteenth - how to make pickled cucumbers

We're officially in the middle of a cucumber glut!

A crate a day. All you can eat; straight off the vine, in salads, and sandwiches, and dips and like apples. We're filling the baskets of anyone passing through. And it's still early in the season!

We planted cucumbers last year for the first time and I fell in love. I had one plant and I think I squealed in delight every single time I picked a fruit from its vine. They were so crunchy and delicious and so user friendly.

This year I planted trays and trays of seeds. And when their green leaves poked out of the soil I quickly repotted them to give their roots space until they took up half of the green house. They were a hardy plant and seemed to thrive under cover.

When it came time to plant them in the ground my farmer boy read me a section from Steve Solomon's Growing Vegetables South Of Australia;

Unless you intend to put up enough cucumber pickles to supply all the rellies, neighbours and friends, two vines will almost certainly become one vine too many.

And then I promptly ignored him and planted about 50 plants. Yep, I know.

So right now, we're getting through them, only just, but come next week, or into February - who knows.

Originally I found our pickle recipe on my instagram friend Jules @procrasticraft's page . We've made them so many times over the past few weeks that they've become a kitchen staple. They're super simple to make and ridiculously delicious to eat.

I asked Jules and she kindly gave me permission to share her recipe, so here it is. Just keep in mind that the measurements aren't exact and each time I make them the number of jars I fill changes.

PICKLED CUCUMBERS

Gather

• five medium sized jars - sterilised
• enough cucumbers to stuff the jars full
• fresh bay leaves
• 1tsp each per jar cumin, coriander, mustard seeds
• 4 cups cider vinegar
• 2 cup water
• 3Tbs each sugar and iodised salt

Make

To each jar add 2 fresh bay leaves, and 1tsp each of cumin, coriander and mustard seeds and then your cucumbers.

In a saucepan put the cider vinegar, water, sugar and salt.

Heat until the sugar and the salt have dissolved but do not bring to the boil.

Cool slightly, fill each jar, seal and store.

Leave a day or two and then EAT!

I have no idea how long they'll last but given that they are full of vinegar, sugar and salt, I'd say quite some time. Also we refrigerate the jars after we open them.

Modifications

We're not big on cumin so we ditched it.
We have masses of garlic so we peel and slice a couple of cloves per jar.
We tried pepper corns but they didn't seem to do anything for the flavour.
We haven't tried dill yet because we don't have any but are going to grow some to add.
We cut down on the sugar for taste.

You know what else? I think there's no reason why this recipe wouldn't work as a pickler for all manner of things...beetroot, onions, carrots...

The only thing that I can't work out is if it's possible to reuse the liquid in another batch, it seems like such a waste to chuck it in the compost. Do you know?

So are you in a pickle?
Do you have a go-to recipe?
What are your fave things to pickle?
Do you think you'll try these?

Thanks Jules!

Happy pickling you guys

Love Kate

xoxo