by Krista | Nov 1, 2020 | Spring
Wind continues to howl through the tree tops for the third day in a row, scattering leaves and branches around the farm yard and keeping us nice and cool. Since we’re only one month away from the blistering heat of summer, I’m overjoyed by every cool day we get.
We had luscious rain last week, truly glorious. It sank deep into our parched soil, washed dust off every leaf and limb, and sent newly-planted seeds shooting up into seedlings faster than I’ve ever seen. It is absolutely amazing to look outside and see green grass where we haven’t seen any in years. We still need more rain to fill up our tanks and help the land heal, but we sure are grateful for what came.
Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome (PVFS) continues to dog my footsteps, stealing my voice, waking me in the night with a wheezing, rattling chest, and sending me to bed for days at a time in agony of head and body. We don’t know how long this will last. Some have it for a few months, some a few years, and some never fully recover. I’ve had my weepy and discouraged moments, that’s for sure. And in those times Bear gives me big hugs, urges me to have a good ol’ weep, and reminds me that no matter what the future holds, we’ll face it as we always have, together. Such things are deep comfort to me. It is a dreadful thing to feel inside like you’re a disappointment and a burden, and inestimable relief to hear the people you love banish those lies and assure you that you’re loved for yourself, not for your health or energy or strength, just for you.
So, I have my down moments, my weeps, my woe-is-me’s, and then I take a deep breath and get back to what has become my superpower: finding joy in the midst of it all.
I try to find or create something good every day. Every. Day. Each morning I get out my pen and paper and write down a list of good things, things that will bring joy or comfort or healing or support, and then I do what I can.
Sometimes the “what I can” isn’t much at all: look out the window and watch the birds, listen to part of a really good audio book, have a cuppa with Bear while I prop my head up on his shoulder.
Other times, I can do more. I love those days. Days spent in my gardens harvesting herbs to dry and veggies and berries to eat, hours spent in my kitchen blending herbal teas that help me breathe well, sleep well, and not catch flus and colds on top of this PVFS yuck.
Making things is my favorite good day activity. Homemade cheese, fresh bread, quick Scandinavian-style pickles, that sort of thing. There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing bottles and jars of goodness lined up on the counter that gives me courage to wait out the really bad days.
In my good moments this past week I made Black Bean Pumpkin soup, Cheesy Dill Scones, and Hazelnut Cacao Nib cookies with a generous splash of homemade whiskey.
Sometimes my good things are solitary, and others I get to do with Bear. A few weeks ago we decided on two projects that make us smile: building a model train set and building a Scandinavian dollhouse. These are things that can inspire and delight us on the very worst of days, and we are having so much fun sketching plans, writing lists of parts and supplies, and dreaming up the looks that will thrill us most.
The train set will be mostly Australian with sections for Central, Western, and Eastern Australia that feature desert, rainforest, and coastline. In a nod to my Canadian heritage, we’re having a snow-covered mountain with an alpine village and a Canadian Pacific train chugging along. We grin every time we think of it.
My dollhouse will actually be a mouse-house, a cozy, log home to felted mice with Scandinavian design, furniture, and implements. I can’t wait to see it come together.
This weekend I made a beautiful little pot of mustard using garlic scape vinegar I made last year. Mustard is so easy to make and, if you’re anything like me, makes you feel downright happy to be alive. I like my mustard hearty and strong so I used whole brown mustard seeds to give it a mighty punch. If you prefer yours more mild, feel free to use white mustard seeds or yellow mustard powder. It is scrumptious on a toasted ham and cheese sandwich or a fresh one using leftover roast beef or pork. I love it in homemade mayonnaise and it gives tuna salad and potato salad a zingy bite that is marvelous.
Today, writing this post is the good thing I can do, so it’s time for a lie down with a cup of tea and the Christmas issue of Victoria magazine that just arrived in the mail.
What good things cheer your heart each day? I’d love to hear your ideas. xo
Homemade Mustard with Garlic Scape Vinegar
Vinegar Ingredients:
- Handful of fresh garlic scapes
- Apple cider vinegar
Vinegar Directions:
- Finely chop garlic scapes and place in clean glass jar. Cover with apple cider vinegar and seal. Place in dark cupboard or pantry and leave for 2-3 weeks. Shake once a day to ensure scapes remain covered by vinegar.
- Strain vinegar and bottle. (Reserve the scapes and as a pickle.)
Mustard Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup brown mustard seeds (use white mustard seeds if you prefer a mild mustard)
- 3/4 cup garlic scape vinegar
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Mustard Directions:
- Place mustard seeds in clean glass jar and cover with garlic scape vinegar, stirring to ensure there are no air pockets. Cover and set aside for 12-24 hours.
- Pour jar contents into food processor and pulse until smooth. If mustard is too runny, add more seeds or mustard powder and pulse until desired consistency is reached. If mustard is too thick, add a little vinegar and pulse until desired consistency is reached.
- Blend in salt and pepper to taste.
- Pour into sterilized glass jar and seal until ready to use.
by Krista | Oct 6, 2020 | Spring
We’re having the most spectacular weather at the moment with endless sunshine and wonderfully cool breezes sending the gum trees dancing. The drought continues unabated as we return to severe water restrictions and hope, hope, hope for rain, but outside my office is a stretch of green, my green patch that I water faithfully when the wind turns the windmill and fills our bore water tanks.
This green patch kept our geese, chickens, and the wild birds healthy and strong through last year’s hellish season of drought and bushfires, so I’m determined to keep it going again this year. While everything dries up around us after a brief flush of green from a couple of winter rains, this oasis cheers us no end. We love sitting on the back verandah and watching the life that is drawn like a magnet to this verdant patch. From tiny finches and fairy wrens to magpies, cockatoos, grass parrots, and rainbow lorikeets, they all take turns foraging through the grass to find food for themselves and their babies.
We keep troughs of water filled around our property so there is always water available for our animals, our neighbors’ sheep and horses, and the kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, echidnas, goannas, and other species that call our farm home. We can’t do much about growing the wild grasses, flowers, and herbs they need to thrive until the rains come, but at least they won’t go thirsty.
While we hope for rain, we prepare for drought and the brutal summer heat. I’ve been working hard making our gardens and orchards as resilient as possible by installing drip water systems, thick layers of mulch, and covering the fences with shade cloth to protect them from wind and heat.
And I’ve been planting. So much. It may sound silly to plant things during a drought, but if there’s one major thing I’ve learned through this drought, it’s this: the land thrives longer and bounces back quicker if it has things growing in it.
So I’ve filled my gardens with a mix of trees, bushes, leafy plants, vines, and root vegetables and herbs. The trees provide shelter for the smaller plants, while the leafy plants work as mulch to keep the roots of the trees cool and damp. The deep rooted plants keep the soil loose and friable and herbs like comfrey and yarrow provide endless fodder for the compost bin and compost tea so I can keep feeding the soil. And they all provide food for us, our animals, local wildlife, and bees while making the land stronger, healthier, and more resilient.
It’s hard work but good work and I love it so much.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve planted lilly pilly bushes that are already starting to produce the purple and magenta fruits that I’ll turn into cordials, liqueurs, teas, and preserves, blueberry bushes that are covered with pale green berries, and elderberry bushes that are festooned with frothy white blooms. The apple, pomegranate, and citrus trees are flowering beautifully and we’re so hopeful that we’ll get a good harvest this year. The mulberry trees have new black berries for us every day and the feijoas, jaboticabas, and plum trees are sprouting vibrant new leaves and getting taller and stronger.
My friend Stacey and I have been studying about native bush tucker foods this past year, and we’re planting as many varieties as we can source. This week I put in a native currant bush, a native apple tree, several sea asparagus, and warrigal greens. Next up are native capers, Tasmanian mountain pepper, and native elderberry that produces bright yellow berries instead of the dark purple variety. I love learning about these plants and the ways they are used in food and medicine by the Aboriginal tribes that have managed this land for millennia.
My other great joy these days is my medieval herb garden. I love seeing the bare earth dotted with seedlings of motherwort, tansy, mugwort, rue, tulsi, calendula, chamomile, horseradish, galangal, turmeric, rose geranium, spearmint, marshmallow, burdock, peppermint, wormwood, lemon balm, yarrow, comfrey, and so many others. It’s even more fun harvesting them, drying them, and using them in all sorts of foods and herbal medicines. This week I’ve been making herbal tea mixtures, stirring together various combinations in big bowls before storing them in glass jars to use as the need arises. Yesterday I made one that relieves allergy and headache symptoms, one that strengthens the heart, and another that soothes the nervous system. In winter I like them hot, but in spring and summer, Bear and I prefer them iced and sweetened with honey or maple syrup.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices I make each day. Choices that either support the things I value or distract from them. I’ve been learning to get up each day, evaluate how I’m doing in mind, body, and spirit, and plan my day accordingly, doing what is good for me and the people and things I care about. It has really become that simple, just asking myself, “What is good for me today?”
My life doesn’t look like most lives, and that’s OK. It is good for me, good for Bear, good for the life we are building together. I’m finding new freedom and peace in making my good choices whether others understand or approve of them or not. I love that we can all have different passions, different cares, different things that drive, delight, and fulfill us. We need these differences to make the world a more balanced and loving and interesting place. It is comforting to know I can cheer on the passions of my loves without embracing them myself, to fully support their right to engage in what matters to them without taking it on and distracting myself from the life I am building. I read a phrase this week that thrilled me: “breathe in your trueness“. I love the picture those words create. I clarify my values, confirm my next good steps, then close my eyes, hang onto those thoughts and breathe them in, deep and sure, letting them filter down into my whole being so my path is clear. It makes it so much easier to say no and yes when opportunities present themselves because I’m not responding out of guilt or shame, but out of clarity of purpose. I love it.
What good things are you doing these days? xo
by Krista | Sep 5, 2020 | Spring
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.”
Wendell Berry
It’s a lovely cloudy day on the farm as I sit at my desk and watch the goats and sheep grazing and napping under the trees. Bear and our friend Brendan are in the shed making medieval armour and I’m sitting here quietly, sipping from a cheery Christmas mug full of chokeberry black currant tea and watching the gum trees sway in the wind.
I love home. It is a place of refuge and creativity, an oasis where we can rest our weary selves and delight in our animals, gardens, fields, and the woods. I’m especially grateful for our farm in the crazy times we’re living in. The news provides a steady stream of reasons to be in a constant state of fear and panic, but home reminds me that the world is far bigger than the news, and chockablock full of wonders and kind people and natural beauty and creative endeavours and delicious food and great books and amazing art and wondrous music and gorgeous animals and incredible plants and glorious sunsets. I am learning anew that it is possible to care deeply about issues yet not live in fear. The wild things take me back to that grounded place of peace from which I can do the most good for myself and others.
My French friend Martine loves the wild places too, and last week we packed a lunch and headed to the mountains for a day of adventures. Cedar Creek Falls is one of our favourite spots, especially on weekday mornings when there’s hardly another soul around. We amble along slowly, stopping often to sigh happily at views of waterfalls and towering cliffs and hidden caves.
The wind in our hair and sun on our faces and the sound of water tumbling over rocks all combined to wash away any vestiges of stress and anxiety, and grounded us in a present that was so beautiful you could feel it in your soul.
I love the pools of water, so clear you can see to the bottom, layered in colours of turquoise and rust.
We took turns going on solitary explorations while the other guarded the food. I loved scrambling over the rocks, sliding down to sit by the water, discovering wildflowers and even a tomato growing in tiny crevasses.
So many things were blooming, bright yellow wattle, tangled vines covered with bright orange blooms, and bushes festooned with tiny purple flowers that looked like orchids.
We sat here for a long time, legs dangling over the cliff, sipping cucumber water and eating slices of fresh berry tart with maple cream. We mostly sat in silence, sharing awed grins now and then as we soaked up the roar of the waterfalls, the cool breezes whistling down the canyon, and the sounds of whipbirds and kookaburras.
We returned home to dinner by the fire, our hearts full, our bodies strengthened, and our minds at peace, ready to face the world again. xo
by Krista | Aug 31, 2020 | Winter
It’s quiet on the farm just now. Bear has run to town after working on a medieval project all morning, the dogs are snoozing after their morning exploration of the farmyard, and the goats and sheep are meandering peacefully through the paddock after filling up on the greens I threw over the fence. A pot of roasted garlic tomato sauce is simmering on the stove, almost ready to be bottled, and outside the sun is shining beautifully with lusciously cool breezes billowing gently through the trees and through the open doors of our farmhouse.
It’s almost spring.
Although winter is my favourite season in Queensland, spring is a close second with its verdant life and warm days and cool nights. With my symptoms from a 9 month bout of Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome steadily lessening, I’m overjoyed to finally have strength and energy to be outside in the gardens, orchards, and fields, getting our land ready for spring.
With five gardens and three orchards to manage, there’s always something to do, and after being terribly sick for 18 months, the to-do list to catch up on things is rather monstrous and totally overwhelming. So I break it down into tiny, manageable chunks and celebrate each bit of progress.
Over the past two months I’ve worked through four gardens, digging up beds, spreading and digging in compost, pruning existing plants that need it, setting up my worm farm and compost pile, and planting seeds and seedlings. Today I start on the last one, the hardest one where the beautiful natural black soil ends and the gravelly brown stuff begins. The weeds cling tightly to rocks wedged in earth so dry and packed that each bit requires a thorough soaking before anything will budge. It’s slow, tedious work, but I’ve come to love it. It slows me down, putting me into a gentle cadence of soak, dig, pull, soak, dig, pull until suddenly I look up and instead of a rock hard weed patch there is lovely, soft soil ready for bags and bags of compost to be worked in so it becomes productive land.
It is healing work for me. Some people write or paint or cook or exercise. I garden. I cannot stay anxious or fearful or sad in my gardens, for they drag me away from the news and the pandemic and the myriad sad and horrible things in the world, and connect me to that which is steadfast, beautiful, and something in which I can actually do something to make things better. The slow gentleness of the work also slows my thoughts down, clarifies what I need to do next and what I need to let go of, provides a safe place for my anger, grief, and frustration to be expressed. It reminds me to breathe, deeply, and to rest, often, and to always take time to delight in what I’ve done and learned. Bear grins when I burst into the house with a fistful of asparagus or a bowlful of peas. He knows how much it means to me to have a place that is just for me to grow and learn and create and fail and try again and succeed and forget and remember and learn some more. It has been the greatest classroom for letting go of perfectionism, for even though there is always something wonderful in a garden, it is never, ever, ever perfect. And how I love that.
This morning we decided to celebrate the end of winter with a spring breakfast. Bear went out and collected eggs and I headed to the gardens to collect the veggies of spring: baby carrots, sugar snap peas, spring onions, and asparagus.
I gently fried the carrots and spring onions in ghee until they were soft and lightly caramelised, then added the asparagus and peas just until they were glossy and warmed through. I scrambled the eggs with a bit of curry and topped them with the veggies and some homemade fresh cheese. Delicious. It makes us smile so big when we eat a whole meal from our farm.
Now it’s time for a cuppa and a rest with a good book. Soon enough chores will beckon and sauce will need to be bottled and wood-burned items will need to be finished, but just now, I get to read in the almost-spring sunshine and celebrate this beautiful last day of winter. xo
by Krista | Jul 12, 2020 | Winter
“Hope is being able to see that there is light, despite all of the darkness.” Desmond Tutu
It has been raining gently off and on through the night and this morning turning our hard-packed land into glorious mud. The brown, brittle grass is already turning green and the dogs are having a glorious time splashing through the puddles in the farmyard.
Physically, it’s been a painful week. Some days were spent in bed with eyes covered and ears plugged because even light and sound hurt, but today is a better day, a wondrous day when our drought-ravaged land gets luscious rain and our weary hearts receive a boost of courage to keep on hoping.
I’m on month 7 of Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome (PVFS), and my world is small and quiet as I wake up each day and try to do what the doctor ordered: rest, drink lots of fluids, and above all, don’t lose heart.
Don’t lose heart. That’s the hardest part because I love my life, so much, and I miss it terribly. But each day, even though most of my choices have been taken away by this illness, I still get to choose what to do with the time and energy I have.
I try to make good choices.
I choose to cry when I need to cry.
I choose to be gentle with myself and let go of shame and guilt and unrealistic expectations.
I choose to give and receive love.
And, when I have the energy, I choose to do things that bring me joy.
I have a list of things that I love to do, all requiring varying levels of energy so that even when I’m at my very worst, I still have something happy to look forward to. It never ceases to amaze me that just having one happy thing a day makes all the difference in the world.
Sometimes I have hot chocolate and sit on the veranda with Bear to watch the new baby goats and sheep jump and leap around, others I get warm under a blanket and do wood-burning while listening to Harry Potter audiobooks, and other times I’ll go outside with my camera for a few minutes and take pictures of beautiful things like my gardens covered in raindrops.
They’re little things, so little, but they keep me going and give me courage.
One thing I really love is writing here, sharing pictures and stories and thoughts. So, I hope to do more of that in the months to come.
What little things make your hard days easier to bear? xo
