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 | Feb 25, 2016 | Summer
I’m sitting on the back veranda this morning, cozy in a flannel shirt and blanket as I watch the sun come up over our farm. Our lamb, Kebab, hears me moving and bleats his disapproval that he’s not allowed to join me up here. I wouldn’t mind his cute little self hanging out with me, but if he thinks it’s OK now, he’ll think it’s OK when he’s a full grown ram and that, luvs, would be pure mayhem.
I can feel harbingers of Autumn on mornings like this, when mist snakes across the fields and sunlight shimmers through leaves starting to crisp and change color. I can see it in my gardens as flowers that wilt in the summer heat come into their full glory, standing tall and straight, their blossoms jeweled with dew drops. I see it in the orchards as our grapes plump and the apples take on rosy hues.
And I feel it in myself as I look forward to packing away sundresses and hauling out my stash of sweaters and scarves and cute boots that make me feel sassy. I’m pining for campfires and creamy Stilton soup and hot apple cider fragrant with star anise, cardamom, and cinnamon.
I’ve set out books on home preserving and cheese-making and ham-curing, ear-marking recipes that sound especially marvelous for making as cold Autumn winds blow. And stacked up other books that I want to read once I finally have my gardens harvested from Summer and planted for Winter.
We’ve got some hot Summer days to come, but it’s fun to dream in the meantime.
I’ve been going out to my gardens every morning at this time, reveling in magical light and the quietness of a world just starting to waken.
I’ve been pulling out spent tomato plants and harvesting chilies, mustard greens, Red Russian kale, rainbow chard, scarlet snake beans, and even asparagus. I’ve never know asparagus to grow as long as it does here, and I love it!
I shuffle through my seed collection over and over again, somehow finding treasures I missed the day before. I’ve dug 15 new small garden plots, bordering them with the rocks I pull out of the soil, and have been planting all sorts of marvelous things: watermelon radishes (they’re fuchsia inside and white outside!), coriander and dill, crimson carrots, purple topped turnips, yellow and striped beetroot, more kale, mustard greens, and Swiss chard, red cabbages and Brussels sprouts, leeks and garlic chives, and tomatoes, bell peppers, chilies, and cucumbers to winter over in my greenhouse.
Soon it will be butchering time on our farm as we fill our freezers with good meat for Autumn and Winter, and make room in our paddocks and pens for all the baby goats, ducks, and chickens born this year. We also hope to get turkeys within the next few weeks, a couple more lambs, two hives of bees, and, if we’re lucky, a pig or two.
Until then Bear and I will continue to work steadily building pens, mending fences, covering our orchards and vineyard, adding a new water tank, bottling the apple and plum wines we made this summer, and planning little adventures so we don’t get too tired and run down.
Now it’s time to put my hair up, find my hat, start up the tractor, and get to work. xo
by Krista | May 12, 2015 | Autumn
I’m luxuriating in a few quiet moments this morning before I must knuckle down and get to work. The goats are snoozing in the sunshine, dogs temporarily quiet after the last car drove past, and all I can hear is the tick-tocking of the clocks.
We’ve had stunning weather this week, chilly mornings followed by sun-drenched afternoons of warmth and light.
I’ve been outside every day working hard planting my gardens for winter, building a straw-bale greenhouse, and taking advantage of the sunshine to dry load after load of laundry.
Over the weekend Bear and I took some time off for day trips to celebrate his birthday. We had such a lovely time together, exploring nearby towns, treasure-hunting in thrift stores, treating ourselves to delicious things at various cafes. It’s been so marvelous to eat outside on warm afternoons, soaking up sunlight that is so cozy it nearly lulls you to sleep.
Today I’m working on writing projects and tackling in-depth house-cleaning one room at a time. I’m trying to get everything shipshape so I can start school this week without the stress of laundry piles and boxes of veggies needing to be roasted, dried, or frozen for Winter.
Yes, I’m starting school, and I am so very, very excited. I’m taking a course in Business Administration followed by one in Bookkeeping, all working towards a diploma in Business.
I know most people go to school in their teens and twenties, but back then I lived in a world where girls weren’t supposed to go to school. It simply wasn’t an option for me. Thankfully it IS an option for me now, and at 40 years old I’m embracing the “better late than never” mantra, and stepping into the world of education with a hugely grateful heart. I’m especially thankful to Bear who is supporting me fully and cheering me on every step of the way. He is a treasure.
In celebration of this occasion, I’m hosting a giveaway of one of my wood-burned necklaces (see photo below). To enter, all you need to do is leave me a message here or on Facebook telling me something you’d like to do, try, or learn this year. All contributors names will be put in a hat on Saturday, May 16, 2015 and the winner drawn by Bear.
Now I must skedaddle and get the animals fed, the laundry off the line, and the next couple of trays of tomatoes into the oven for roasting.
Wishing you a beautiful week. XO
by Krista | May 3, 2015 | Autumn
“For after all,
the best thing one can do when it is raining
is let it rain.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It has been pouring in Southern Queensland. Solid, steady rain turning sun-baked earth into black spongy mud, filling wheelbarrows and planters, causing every heat-withered plant to lift up vibrant leaves to the skies in unabashed joy.
Everywhere you look are signs of the storms: flooded fields and rivers, branches tossed higgledy-piggledy after fierce winds ripped through the area, new potholes along the highways.
It’s been wonderful. And wild. And scary. And shiveringly cold. But mostly wonderful. It’s like every bit of my world threw up its hands and said, “Let’s sit back and enjoy this.” So I joined in.
To-do lists were set aside, projects completely ignored, and we gave ourselves up to utter relaxation. Movies were watched and naps taken, popcorn popped and soup simmered. I made bread and curry and pasta, delicious comfort food while the farm turned into a giant puddle.
The rains returned this morning, so I brewed up a pot of Cherry Cider spiced with star anise. There’s something about the licorice flavor of star anise that goes beautifully with cherries, and the combo was deliciously warming as the temperature dropped.
Now it’s time to roast some veggies between storms – turnips with fresh thyme and Brussels sprouts with Balsamic Dijon dressing. Teamed up with Beef Garlic sausages from the butchers, this meal is going to warm our bones for sure.
What is your favorite drink on a stormy day? xo
Spiced Cherry Cider
Serves two
Ingredients:
3 cups cherry juice
1 star anise
Directions:
1. Simmer cherry juice and star anise over low heat for 5-10 minutes.
2. Serve hot.
