by Krista | Apr 21, 2016 | Autumn
After a still, cloudy day, the late afternoon is streaming through the trees casting long shadows over the grazing goats and dancing across my bedspread. It’s been a good but busy week, and I’m basking in this moment of quietness and light.
It’s been so nice to be out in my gardens again, nurturing the established silverbeet, elderberry, artichokes, and chilies, cheering on the newly sprouted sugar snap peas, broad beans, lettuces, and leeks. Yes, leeks. THEY GREW!!! After four years of trying unsuccessfully with different types of seeds and in various soils, I finally found success with Musselburg leeks from Eden Seeds in black soil enriched with worm castings. I’m overjoyed.
Bear has been working hard on a 12th century medieval bed. He found a “close enough” bed in a thrift store and we brought it home. He dismantled the entire thing, took out all modern screws, nails, staples, and other bits, and has painstakingly rebuilt, holding it all together with wooden dowels. It is nearly done and is so beautiful. I can’t wait to show it to you. But first I need to finish making linen sheets for it, and a medieval patchwork quilt to keep us warm on very frosty winter nights.
With our first medieval event less than two weeks away, I’ve also been paying special care to my medicinal herbs and plants that I use in my medieval folk medicine demonstrations. Next week I’ll be mixing a comfrey poultice for broken bones, elderberry cordial for sore throats and influenza, fenugreek gel for fevers, and my favorite boozy date jam that makes stomach aches disappear. (If you’re interested in medieval recipes for home remedies, click here to see my book: “herb & spice: a little book of medieval remedies.)
I’ve also been adding flowers to my garden, both to entice our newly arrived bees and for my own pleasure. I put in fiery red salvias, hollyhocks, vinca, and these gorgeous Hypoestes aristata, a gift from one of my gardening friends.
I’ve been adding more Australian natives to our farm – grevillea and bottlebrush – and magnolias, just because they make me happy.
This week my blueberries started flowering. They survived the summer heat thanks to a thick mulch of pine cones and pine needles that also help keep the soil acidic. Last year they produced just enough to snack on a few each day, but this year I hope to get enough to bake with, and maybe enough for some blueberry liqueur.
Today my friends Oma and Jess came over to teach me how to make Hungarian sausages. While I’ve been making Italian sausage and sage-y breakfast sausage for several years, I’ve never made authentic Hungarian ones before. It was so much fun!!! We made a seasoning slurry of garlic, salt, black pepper, and paprika and mixed it into the beef mince until it was perfectly sticky. It was the grown up equivalent of mixing mud pies, only a lot more fragrant. Then I manned the sausage press while Jess fed the sausage into casings and Oma tied off each sausage into long, fat links. 51 sausages later the kitchen smelled amazing, the bottom of my freezer was full, and we were more than ready for bowls of soup and a chat. I’m so thankful for kind people who teach me how to do such fun and nourishing things.
Although there’s been a lot of work this week, there have been many moments of rest as well. I’ve made time to read, watch NUMB3RS and NCIS: LA with Bear, and wood-burn this little wooden knife for me to use at medieval events. It’s small and delicate and reminds me of the wooden butter knives my Danish family uses.
Now it’s time to join Bear at the lamb pen and give Emma and Anni their bottles before it’s time for bed.
What good things happened in your life this week? xo
by Krista | Apr 16, 2016 | Autumn
“Rest, play, and be very, very gentle with yourself.”
That’s what my new specialist told me when I went to see her a couple weeks ago. She knew the therapies we’re trying would knock me flat for a while, so she wanted to make sure I was taking the very best care of myself.
I’m so glad she told me, repeatedly, for such things do not come naturally to me. When I didn’t know how to deal with trauma and the results of it, I became a first rate workaholic, an absolutely spiffing martyr, and my inner critic was given free reign to castigate me at every turn.
But I don’t need those self-protective, Survival Mode crutches anymore. Now I get to bask in safety, freedom, and a whole lot of love, and such a life demands a different set of tools to navigate it: rest, play, and gentleness.
So I’m learning to care for myself, and, I must admit, it’s ridiculously fun.
Rest
In the past I just focused on resting my body, but now I rest my mind and spirit too. Sometimes that means a movie marathon while tucked up in bed with hot chocolate and toasted, buttered crumpets, or sitting on the veranda with a journal, pen, and good book. Other times I sit in the shade of a big tree and watch the goats toddle about, or take Luna and Kebab (dog and sheep, respectively) for a walk with lots of stops for ear scratches and belly rubs (them, not me). This morning I took my camera out to my veggie patch and took pictures of dew drops on the asparagus fronds (pure magic).
Play
My friend Parker is really good at incorporating play into her life, so every day she cheers me on with suggestions and ideas that help me think of things that make my own heart happy.
This week I sewed a medieval Bedouin robe with poofy red trousers that make me smile. Bear took me and our friend Oma up into the hills for an entire day of jollity. We stopped at our favorite market stand and got enormous quinces, perfectly ripe Roma tomatoes, a whole bundle of leeks, and a stack of boxes filled with new season apples. Our car smelled amazing. Next week Oma and I are going to make Hungarian sausages together, and the week after that, Bear and I are getting together with dear friends for our first medieval event of the season. Such good, happy, soul-nourishing things.
Gentleness
I like spending time with people who are gentle with themselves, because they’re also gentle with everyone around them. They have a peacefulness about them, a confident way of thinking and speaking that is rooted in a deep understanding of human nature. They don’t have ridiculous expectations of themselves or others, but instead are comfy with who they are, at peace with their place in the journey they’re on, and accepting of the people they come in contact with. I like that so much.
For most of my life I believed that I had to love others, be kind to others, be forgiving and generous and patient with others, but I had no idea that I could and should extend those things to myself first. I didn’t know that those things can only come from a heart that is full of them already. I wish I’d know it earlier, but I’m so happy to know it now, so grateful that I get to spend the rest of my life filling up my own heart with good things that will spill over and link arms with the love of others. Loving ourselves, loving others, I think that’s how we make this world a better place.
“Rest, play, be very, very gentle with yourself.” What does that look like for you today? xo
by Krista | Apr 4, 2016 | Autumn
“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The storms have passed and Autumn is here in full, golden glory. The world seems rich, as if everything has been dipped in shimmering amber. Especially in the morning as the sun rises over yellowed fields glistening with dew.
It’s been wonderful to be out in it each day, strolling through my gardens to see what’s happening, utterly delighted to find asparagus growing again!!! I have the friendliest asparagus that seems to grow when I need it, not when it’s supposed to, as if its sole mission in life is to make me smile.
I was able to get out and plant things this weekend – sugar snap peas, Brussels sprouts, golden beetroot, carrots, kale, lettuces, purple-topped turnips, and, my nemesis, leeks. I love leeks. I’d have an entire garden just for leeks if only they would grow for me. But they flatly refuse. I try different varieties, different soils, full sun, partial shade, lots of water, little water, nothing seems to work. Still I keep trying with firm hope that one day they will give up their stubborn ways and flourish.
In the meantime I take heart in the things that do love to grow – colorful chilies and my favorite yellow pear tomatoes, fat purple eggplants, tender string beans, and elder berries.
On Saturday morning Bear and I took full advantage of the gorgeous Autumn morning and picked another harvest of olives. It’s so nice that our friend’s trees are ripening in stages so we can do little harvests instead of one massive one that would thoroughly tucker me out. It was wonderful out there, breezy and beautiful, and we chatted away as we picked.
Our friend Gary brought me a whole stack of olive recipes that he’s used over the past 30 years, and as I leafed through the hand-written notes I read snippets aloud to Bear. I had no idea there were so many different ways to cure olives. You can slit each one with a knife and soak in fresh water for a short period of time or leave them whole and soak them for a couple of weeks. You can also cure them in wood ashes, an ancient method utilized by people who didn’t have access to salt/salt water. I’m excited to try that.
We welcomed six ducklings to our farm family over the weekend. Aren’t they cute as can be? I love how the morning sun illuminates their downy feathers.
I also like the Autumn sun rising on my favorite tree. It’s a massive gum outside our bedroom window with a lovely twisty trunk with a hollow that is the favorite nesting spot for all sorts of birds. Sometimes wood ducks are in there. One morning we were thrilled to look out the window just in time to see the parents call for their babies. One by one the tiny tots launched themselves out of the nest, plummeted to the ground, bounced once or twice, shook themselves, then toddled off as if they hadn’t just fallen 3o feet. Amazing.
Now it’s time for a cuppa with Bear. It’s getting close to the start of medieval season for us, so we’re working hard on lists and plans and projects. He’s building a medieval bed, I’m making a medieval quilt, and soon we’ll be ready for our first event of the season. We’re excited!!!
What good things did you see and do over the weekend? xo
by Krista | Apr 1, 2016 | Autumn
It’s been an unseasonably stormy week and I’ve loved every moment. Mist-shrouded mornings with fog so thick the window screens are dripping as if they’ve just weathered a drenching, black clouds muscling together overhead and pelting us with rain, rumblings of thunder so deep they shake the earth.
The back veranda has become my favorite place and I come out here as soon as I get off work at 8 a.m. each morning. It’s a spot full of comforts that cheer and restore, and no matter what is happening in my life, I always relax when I sink down into my chair, pull my red blanket over my knees, and settle back with my coffee or a hot cup of chocolate mint tea.
No matter how quietly I slip outside, the geese always catch me and set up a royal honking that could wake the dead. This rouses the goats who are snoozing happily in the sunshine and a few scramble to their feet, hoping that perhaps this is the day that I’ll come down early and toss them some hay. Kebab, our lamb, is next. He’s always out before everyone, grazing his cute little self among the trees, and when he hears the ruckus from the geese he bleats and gallops up to the veranda, hoping that perhaps this is the day I’ll let him up here with me.
But as I sit here contentedly, calling out greetings but not budging, the animals simmer down. The geese go back to pecking around the compost piles looking for grubs, the goats sink down onto their bellies to snooze a bit longer before Bear lets them out into the paddock, and Kebab trundles off again to nibble on the new grass that has sprung up since the rains returned.
Yesterday (or was it the day before?) my strength started returning after this latest long illness. It’s amazing to wake up feeling awake instead of half-drugged, able to move without too much pain, able to think clearly again after fighting through a fog of fatigue and general awfulness.
So I went out into my gardens. How I’ve missed them. And how thankful I am to the rain for coming the last two weeks so they could grow without me. They desperately need a good weeding, everything needs to be fed, and I don’t have a single thing planted for my Winter garden, but it’s OK. It really is OK. We only have to do what we can, and not one thing more.
And if all we can do is lay in bed with pain pills and season one of Gilmore Girls to distract us, that’s OK.
If all we can do is our job or keep children alive or stare blankly at a computer screen because our inspiration is kaput before we reheat takeout leftovers for dinner (again!) and collapse, that’s OK.
Whatever our “can” is, that’s enough.
My “can” this week was not much. I did my job – breathing thanks that I have work that I love, that pays our bills, that is with people who make me smile every day, and (thank you! thank you!) let’s me work while propped up in an armchair or, if necessary, my bed. Yep, I did my job, and that’s about it. We ate easy crockpot meals and rotisserie chickens and salads from the deli and I watched more movies in one week than I have all year.
And you know what? All that rest, all those lovely stories, all that good, simple food, it really helped.
And yesterday (or was it the day before?) I finally got to go out to my gardens and tear out old tomato plants and dried up bean stalks, I got to pick chilies and capsicums, elder berries and silverbeet. Just little jobs, but they sure felt good.
Then the rain started and I dashed up onto my beloved veranda and gathered my comforts around me and let it pour.
I wrote in my journal and drank hot chocolate.
I read a few more pages in the gorgeous Spring issue of Victoria magazine and got inspired to write more pen-and-ink letters and eat more edible flowers and take more walks in pretty places.
I looked through my stack of recent second hand book purchases and as enticing as they were, I decided to just pull my blanket up closer and watch the rain instead.
I watched as it turned the dusty, pale gum tree trunks into vivid reds and greens and perked up the dried up clumps of lichen on the edge of the veranda. I closed my eyes and listened to it clatter on the tin roof and smiled as the wind blew it right in my face.
I watched it plonk into puddles and trickle into rivulets that meandered through the grass and down the steps.
Bear joined me after a while, bringing hot cups of tea and coffee with him, and we watched the storm and smiled and thought that life really is pretty good when you just do what you can and let go of the rest.
xo
by Krista | Mar 26, 2016 | Autumn
I’ve finished my work for the week and am tucked into a squishy chair on the veranda listening to kookaburras make a racket in the bush and Bear rattle away doing wood-work in his shop.
Autumn is here, making her presence felt in chilly mornings and early nights. I’ve been making soup and hot chocolate, baking scones and roasting nuts, those lovely things that feel cozy and homey as the world around us changes from the lush green of Summer to the brittle beauty of Fall.
My friend Carolyn kindly shared part of her lime harvest with me a few weeks ago – what a treasure!
The green beauties have been juiced into pico de gallo, stirred into shredded chicken with ground cumin and precious green chilies sent from dear friends in Nova Scotia, and turned into several bottles of Cranberry Lime Beer.
I really love home brewing, whether it’s making a big batch of ginger beer or filling giant glass demijohns with apple wine.
Last year I made Finnish Sima – a gorgeous fizzy drink made from lemons that is lusciously refreshing, especially on a hot afternoon. Imagine ginger beer (ginger ale for my Canadian friends) but with lemons instead of ginger.
It’s one of the easiest drinks to make since it only takes a few days to brew before it’s ready to drink.
I thought that if it would work with lemons, surely it would work with limes. So I fiddled around a bit with my recipe, using brown sugar for the sweetener and dried cranberries to kick off the fermentation process.
It worked beautifully. The brown sugar provides a mellower sweetness with great depth of flavor, and the cranberries add a sprightliness that goes brilliantly with the lime juice.
I brought a bottle to my friend Sue’s house and we swiftly realized that just one bottle was not nearly enough. I’m under strict instructions to bring at least two next time.
Be sure to serve it chilled for the very best sipping experience.
It’s been a good week on the farm. We had a tremendous storm a few days ago, nearly 4 inches of rain in about 30 minutes!! I looked out the window in awe as it pelted down, amazed to see our entire farm yard become a river that flowed past our house.
As a result my poor heat-ravaged gardens are flourishing again, with beans, radishes, beetroot, Jerusalem artichokes, greens, eggplants, chilies, and tomatoes.
I’m looking forward to a quiet Easter weekend eating Mexican leftovers and sipping cold glasses of Cranberry Lime Beer as we thoroughly relax.
Wishing you a beautiful weekend too. xo
Cranberry Lime Beer
Ingredients:
3.5 litres of water
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
1 heaped Tbsp lime zest
1/8 tsp yeast
handful of dried cranberries
Directions:
1. Place water, sugars, juice, and zest in a large pot and bring to the boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and sit until lukewarm.
2. Pour into glass demijohn (or large glass pitcher), add yeast and stir. Cover with clean tea towel and leave overnight.
3. Sterilize 4 1-litre plastic bottles with lids.
4. In each bottle add one tsp brown sugar and 5-6 dried cranberries.
5. Strain beer into each bottle and seal well, giving it a vigorous swirl to help dissolve sugar.
6. Let sit at room temperature for 2-3 days until cranberries have all risen to the top of the liquid. Make sure you loosen the lids at least once a day to keep bottles from exploding.
7. Refrigerate until ready to serve. This should nearly halt the fermentation process and stop the bottles from exploding, but check the bottles now and then just to make sure. Gentle open tops to release pressure if necessary.
by Krista | Mar 23, 2016 | Autumn
One of the loveliest things about living in the country is how everyone shares at harvest time. Whenever we meet up with friends it seems that we never arrive or leave without arms laden with tomatoes, jars of preserves, just-picked fruit, a loaf of bread, or a bottle of homemade grog.
It’s such a friendly way to live and I love it.
This week a kind friend of ours told us his olives were just beginning to ripen and we’d better hurry in for a harvest before the birds snitched them all.
We were delighted to oblige.
There’s something quite peaceful about harvesting.
At first everything’s a bit of a blur as you unpack buckets and containers, affix hats and boots, lug the ladder into place, and climb up the rungs hoping you don’t topple off.
But then you start to pick and the whirling world begins to slow down and slides into the gentle rhythm of pick, drop, pick, drop.
The morning sunshine was deliciously warm and the wind sighed softly through the olive branches as we steadily picked. We caught ourselves grinning when we spotted a particularly productive branch dripping with fat, dark olives. It’s like finding treasure!
Bear rigged up a clever picking system for us. Rather than hauling around cumbersome buckets that are easily kicked over, he strung lengths of string through holes in old ice cream buckets and hung them around our necks. This left our hands free for picking olives, pulling down branches, and stabilizing ourselves when the ladder would go wobbly. He even made the straps adjustable so we could arrange them to suit ourselves. He’s a clever fella.
They worked brilliantly, and seemed to be magnets for falling olives that would otherwise have tumbled to the ground and disappeared into the undergrowth.
It was gorgeous out there, the sort of Autumn morning you dream of all Summer long: sumptuously warm yet with a nip in the air that reminds you Winter is coming.
We took turns climbing the ladder and scrabbling around under low-hanging branches to find ripe olives, nabbing a few not-so-ripe ones along the way. I just love the colors, so rich and earthy, like wine and plums and grapes and shadows.
Neither of us have cured olives before, so we’re rather excited to see how they turn out. We’ll be following a Greek process, soaking them in fresh salt water daily for 10-12 days before marinating them with garlic, lemon zest, dill, and whatever other things we come up with.
I’ll let you know how they turn out.
Now I must finish my tea and head to the market. I have a serious Mexican food craving and need to pick up some oranges to make carnitas.
Are you an olive fan? If so, what is your favorite way to eat them? xo
