It’s dark and quiet this winter morning. Roosters just started crowing, heralding the imminent arrival of the sun. Soon sheep and goats will gather at their gates to be let out to the fields to eat, Fergus and Merida will start bleating for their first bottle of the morning, and Fezzik will be galloping around the farm yard, getting the wiggles out after a good night’s sleep.

Quiet moments have been precious and rare lately, stolen between meetings and classes, projects and feeding, gardening and writing. I treasure every one, for they are the moments that nourish me for the next thing, whatever that happens to be.

Growing up in Canada and the northern US, winter was always down time. Gardens slept under the snow, people hunkered indoors around roaring fires for long evenings of games and reading and movies, heading outside only to skate, sled, or go to work or school.

Things are different here.

Summer is now my down time, when it’s too blazing hot to be outside save for early mornings and late afternoons, and winter is the busiest time of my year. I practically live outside, loving the absence of flies and mosquitoes, using these cold but beautiful days to tackle all the farm projects that get set aside when outside feels like an oven.

We had an extra long growing season this year, so I just finished harvesting the last of the capsicums and leeks, and there are still mountains of chillies waiting to be picked. Bear and I fried up the capsicums and turned them into luscious pasta sauce, and yesterday the leeks joined a pile of onions in the frying pan and became a huge batch of French Onion Soup that freezes beautifully.

The kitchen is covered with jars and bottles filled with all manner of concoctions we’ve been making: honey from our bees, multiple batches of apple cider vinegar, port wine steeping with cherries and sherry steeping with peaches, plum wine vinegar, date wine vinegar, demijohns of apple wine, rosella syrup, mulberry liqueur. The list of deliciousness goes on and on.

There are also jars of medieval and herbal medicines that look like something out of a mad scientist’s laboratory. Tinctures of hawthorn and yarrow, pastilles of rose leaf, rosehip, and mint, and bottles of oxymel, an ancient Greek preparation of vinegar, honey, and herb of choice. At the moment I have thyme oxymel and rosemary oxymel brewing, thyme for sore throats and coughs, rosemary as a lovely tonic for strengthening the immune system and protecting from bacterial infections. These and others will be in my display and demonstrations on medieval folk medicine at Abbey Medieval Festival. I love making these things, using them, and experiencing their positive effects on our health and well-being.

Last week the sheep broke into one of my gardens and devoured nearly all my carrots, beets, radishes, silverbeet, calendula, and lemon balm. Sigh. So I salvaged what I could, then decided it was a good time to redesign all the gardens.

I wrote a list of the veggies, flowers, and herbs I love most, then started digging. And digging. And digging. I created borders with hardwood planks and the innumerable rocks I unearth in my digging, and started filling each section in. Elderflower hedges, a massive asparagus bed, and plenty of room for huge artichokes. I planted sugar snap peas, shelling peas, and sweet peas, golden beetroot and striped beetroot, black radishes, and nasturtiums. I divided and transplanted all sorts of things: spearmint and peppermint, feverfew and sorrel, borage and fennel and coriander and hollyhocks.

Bit by bit, everything is coming together, and I love it. I’ve left several garden beds open to fill with tomatoes, capsicum, cucumbers, beans, and other things this spring, but for now, the gardens are done.

This week is all about medieval preparation and finishing up work projects so we can turn our farm over to our caretakers and spend a week of pure fun at the Abbey Medieval Festival. There are articles to write and garb to sew, food to make and pictures to edit, animal feed to stockpile and the house to clean. There is wood-burning to finish and book orders to ship, laundry to do and wine to bottle, and it makes me laugh just to look at my to-do list, let alone imagine completing it, but we’ll get there, we always do.

And in the meantime, we’ll take these quiet moments and sip our cuppas while watching the sunrise, or sneak in a nap mid-afternoon, or have lunch on the veranda and watch the birds.

It’s a crazy life sometimes, but a good one. xo