At 10am I took the flowering bean tee-pee while waiting for the girls to get ready to go down to the orchard.




At 11am we were all ready for apple tree netting day to begin!

We had Indi in the tractor, Bren and Francis pulling out the nets, my parents, Jazzy and I were on cable tie duty, and Pepper and Neve were on crafts.



By 12 we were a well oiled netting machine. Everyone knew their job and was doing it well. My phone alarm was going off on the hour and I'd snap a few pics and continue tying.

But by 1pm we were feeling the heat and the damp and were losing steam. Time for lunch.

Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of my Mum's freshly baked sour dough but trust me when I say it was beautiful. We gobbled it up with scrambled eggs, sautéed silver beet and chats about pregnant Kardashians (!).



I forgot to bring my phone down to the orchard with me after lunch so I had to guess at the times. Later when I saw the time-stamps on each photo I laughed at how wrong I gotten it.

At 2.44pm I took these photos of the girls crafting up a storm in the orchard next to where we were working. They made bracelets, rafts and apple dolls, they played with worms and grass-hoppers, and for some reason they called each other Margaret.



At 4.28pm we were heading towards the finish line. The conversation had slowed down and it was getting harder and harder to stand up in between trees.


At 4.55pm farmer Bren sliced a granny in half!




And at 5pm, on the very last row, I thought I'd better take a photo of everyone doing their job before we finished and it was too late. Francis pulling the nets out and my parents tying each bit of net to a tree to stop the birds getting in.

For some reason I didn't take any of pictures of the orchard all finished. I will soon.




At 6.18pm Jazzy and I walked down to pick some currants and gooseberries even though the birds had eaten most of them.


At 7.12pm I put the finishing touches on yesterday's blog post while Bren put together a survival kit for Jazzy's camping trip.


And just after that we picked and podded broad beans for dinner.

I love those days that are filled with family and friends and farm jobs and food. I certainly found myself laying in bed last night exhausted but with a big smile on my face.

Hopefully I'll get a chance in the next few days to do a bit of a run down on the year that was and my hopes and dreams for the year that will be, but in the meantime this feels like a wonderful place to finish. Full of love for where we've come from and optimism for the upcoming season.

Thank you dear readers for coming along with me this year for the ride. For sharing my ups and downs. For your suggestions and encouragement and wisdom. And really, just for being there. In a world filled with so many opportunities, it means the world to me that you spend some of your precious time each week visiting me.

Until we meet again next year, I hope you and yours have the most fabulous 2018! I hope it's filled with love and passion and fun opportunities and flowers. I hope you find something you love to do and get to do it often. I hope you have lots of fun!

I can't wait to get started!

Happy 2018.

Lots of love,

Kate x

It's the first of December and the first day of summer and I have a head ache. I went to bed with it last night and woke up with it this morning. I'm not somebody who usually suffers from headaches and I'm unsure if this one is due to pmt, to the stress of the past few days getting prepared for the crazy amounts of rain forecast to fall this weekend, to some sort of barometric pressure (?), or if it's just here in my head telling me to slow down and have a quiet day on the couch. In any case it's really making it impossible for me to think straight, let alone type coherent sentences.

So it's another post that's heavy on photos - light on words from me today.

This week we pulled out a bunch of old tea pots that we inherited when we bought our farm. We filled them up with herbs and flowers and popped them outside the front door.

I spent a lot of time this week shuffling plants around the new green-house space. I made big colourful groups of pots, then I thinned them out a bit, then I stuck to the same colour scheme, and then I changed my mind and started all over again. I'm definitely a 'the more the merrier' type of plant lover, but I also want it to be easy on the eye. I guess I'll keep on moving them until they feel right and then I'll move on to a different corner of the room.

This week we finally made a start on the tomatoes. I forgot to take a photo but you can just see the patch between the bean tee-pee and the cubby. So far we've planted over a hundred plants with more to go in next week.

This week we tied up all the tall, gangly plants so they don't fall over in the rains.

This week our over-wintered carrots went to seed. I offered them to a local wedding florist who might use them for her functions this weekend, how gorgeous would that be.

This week we started eating peas from the garden.

This week I spent a lot of time looking out of these windows into the garden, and in these windows to the green-house. I still can't believe how much I love it every time I see it.


And this week we watched a few more episodes of Ozark, I started reading my sister Abby's review copy of Fen Stories, I finished turning the heels and began knitting up the legs of my tree socks, I was humbled and excited and slightly terrified when The Soul Craft Program came out and my talk and class are included, I picked and ate loads of strawberries, I didn't listen to any podcasts because I've lost my head-phones, I sat by the lake and watched the Daylesford kids swim, I hilled the potatoes and weeded the onions, I pulled some of the garlic and left the rest, I listened to Bren's tractor working in the apples until late every night, I loved Pepper's class play, I missed our big girls and I felt exhausted but oh so happy with the choices we have made that have bought us this life we live.

I hope you've had a lovely week.
Tell me a couple of things you've been up to. I'd love to read them.

Until next Friday...(can you believe there are only four more left for this year??!)

Love Kate x

The next thing was the rain. On Thursday morning on my drive out to school it rained so hard and there was so much water that I hurt my wrist gripping the steering wheel so tight. I had to drive so slowly but still it was scary. And it was LOUD! When I finally got home I was completely rattled and it took me ages to calm down enough to focus on the jobs I had to do. But ever since then I've noticed that the garden has exploded; colourful flowers have popped, plants have germinated, thickened up, grown tall, started climbing. And the roses!! Wow!! What a show they're giving us this year.





And then of course the green-house build continued. It took a while to convince my farmer boy that we should pull up the perfectly good (but oh so ugly) concrete that was there already and use old red bricks to pave it instead, but gosh it's going to be worth it. Even though we're not allowed to walk on them yet and have to play hop-scotch every time we leave the house, I'm head over heels in love already.

And I'm ever so grateful to Frobden, (Francis, Jobbo, Bren), for making my dreams come true and not whinging too much about your sore hands and backs. xxxx


After a long discussion recently about the fact that craft in our family and on our farm is a seasonal thing, I feel okay with the fact that I've only knitted a couple of inches this past week. When you're working outside from morning to last light, when your hands are so dirty you can't wash them clean anymore, and when your arms and legs ache from the weight of the day, knitting often gets left by the way-side. But when I do have a crazy week like the one that's just been, all action and full of decisions and brick dust, then a few rows of sock knitting feels just like home and is exactly what I need.

For those who have asked about sock knitting recently, please forgive my lack of personal response.

I swear by Wendy D Johnson's book - Socks From The Toe Up. I use her basic sock pattern for every single pair of socks I knit. I use everything in it from the cast on, to the slip stitch heel, to the cast off. I love it and highly recommend it to everyone from beginner to advanced.

Ravelry details here.

Last weekend while we were visiting our Jazzy at a festival she was performing at, an older woman I didn't know verbally abused me. She began with sarcasm, which I mistook as kindness, so I thanked her and turned to walk away. But when she realised that I had misread her she let loose with a barrage of insults: I made my daughter push in the queue in front of her, I was a disgusting person, I encouraged my girls to be rude and disrespectful, I was entitled and I ruined the world for people like her. Someone needed to put me in my place. And of course I was a terrible, terrible mother.

By the time I realised what was going on I was so surprised that I didn't know how to act. I wasn't aware that I had even committed any of the crimes she was accusing me of. I looked around me but the crowds of people seemed all of a sudden to be engaged elsewhere. Indi had pulled my girls right out of the way, and the only other person there was the woman's male companion who looked on with interest and what could have been a slight smirk. But he didn't step in and neither did anyone else.

So I asked her why, instead of getting so angry and waiting until it was too late, she hadn't spoken directly to my supposedly pushing-in child and used it as a positive lesson instead of one filled with hate.

And she let loose on me again. All the same and more. On and on and on.

She didn't leave me much room to say anything myself, which is probably a good thing because I was so stunned I don't know what I would have said anyway. Right until the end I expected her to stop and apologise and say that she confused me with someone else. Right until the end I expected her to become self aware and feel a bit embarrassed. But she didn't.

And then she and that male with her stormed off. And as they did I called after them that she must have had a very sad and disappointing life to feel the need to behave like that, and that I forgave her.

I didn't though.

She yelled at me six whole days ago and I'm still finding myself shaking as I write this.

After it was over I found Bren and the girls and burst out crying and I don't think I stopped for the next two days. I felt like I'd been punched in the guts.

And then after the crying wore off I felt like she'd scratched a scab off and underneath felt raw and ugly.  I felt sad and anxious and distressed. The world felt scary and nasty.

As the days have worn on and I've spent time in my normal life, with my hands in the dirt, with the people that I love, doing the things that I love, I've slowly gathered strength and been able to get some perspective. But I still feel a bit vulnerable and protective.

And in truth, although this story has consumed my past week I really didn't want to write about it here. I don't want that woman on my blog. I want to leave her in the past and move on. And I have a feeling that she is mentally unwell and although she behaved terribly, I want to get to a place where I have compassion for her.

But as I loaded the photos this morning and started typing words, I realised the story wants to be told. As a blogger that's how I process my world, that's what I do.

So although it's a less detailed version than the story I told to anyone who I saw this week, here it is.

And the photos are my way of showing myself that I'm okay. Better than okay really. My best revenge on that situation is the beautiful world we're making here.

first
The apples are doing well. Each of the lumps under the flowers in that top photo is a possible apple. The fruit set looks good, the black spot looks minimal, and the mildew is only visible in a few spots.

second
I bought that cute sexy legs pot off my clever ceramicist friend Tania the other day and now I'm auditioning plants to sit in it. The girls think it should be a plant with long straggly hair that we could almost plait, but I'm kinda liking the pretty purple flowered fluffy do.

third
The other day we planted beans in the tee-pee again. This cyclic seasonal way we live our lives never ceases to comfort, reassure and ground me.

fourth
The purple broad bean flowers are exciting me no end. It feels so fancy to grow another version of the same thing we've been growing for years.


fifth
I'm growing lentils!! How cute are they!!

sixth
I visited a gorgeous local flower farmer the other day to buy some dahlia tubers and on the way out  she picked me a bunch of ranunculus. It's difficult to explain the joy that one bunch of colourful flowers bring, but they do, trust me. I hope I can grow my own next year.


seventh
I'm reading Sara Vidals' Bella and Chaim. A story of the holocaust in so many time frames. It's such an important story and it's breaking my heart.


eighth
I've only got the sleeves of Miss Pepper's cardigan to go, the buttons to sew on, and then it's done.


ninth
I think I might knit something with these skeins next.


And that's me. It's my birthday tomorrow and this afternoon we're going to pick the girls up from school and head away for a couple of days. A couple of days in a new-to-us place with only one thing planned and the rest of the time to explore and adventure and relax.

I'm so excited to get there but I'm actually the world's worst packer and it's going to take me most of today to get sorted, which is never fun. So I'm going to love you and leave you and hope that everyone you meet is kind and considerate of you.

See you next week when I'll be older and wiser.

Love Kate x