Farm days

It's been a couple of weeks between posts and so I thought it was time for some farm life updates. Despite promises in the forecast of rain last week, we only had one day where there was proper rain, rain that tumbled down, turning the mountain a sea of mist and drenching us when we went outside in it. It didn't last long though and after a couple of downpours, it disappeared again. The forecast kept promising showers, but they didn't come, and instead, the clouds cleared and patches of blue sky took over as the sun streamed down. I'm sure that come winter, I'll be complaining about the cold and the rain, but I wouldn't have minded a bit more of it this week.

We've had more visitors at the farm which has been great. And I've been settling into farm life, by turning the farm into the site of my very own academic writing retreat - which you can read about at my worky blog here:DIY writing retreat

Leah came up a couple of weeks ago and we spent a lovely day feasting and catching up, while David and Rohan worked at the old house, plastering and painting in preparation for selling. It's amazing how the old house is starting to take shape under the coats of white paint and I wonder why we didn't finish the plastering and painting when we were there! (Well I know it was the houseful of furniture preventing us!).

David came back again this week to put in another day of painting while Rohan and I were at work. He's a painting, sanding and plastering machine and we can't even begin to thank him! Proof of his generous nature was when I dropped in to the house in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago as I left my car there and walked to a meeting nearby. I came back and he'd washed my filthy car to the point where I thought I was breaking into someone else's car as I put my key in the lock! That wins major votes in the father-in-law of the year competition!

My Mum and Dad arrived on Thursday morning for their regular swap meet adventure. They weren't sure how far out of town the new place was or if they would find it, but they're loving it now and spent a lot of time soaking up the sun through the kitchen windows, reading or watching the birds in the yard outside.

Our hope was that the new place would be filled with visitors, with talking, with laughter and with food and it has been this way so far. It's great being able to walk in the paddocks with family, to sit around the table sharing a meal with them, or to see Rohan and his Dad heading off into the back paddocks together in search of rabbits. 

We've installed a makeshift bird feeding station in the yard - but so far they seem less interested in their bird seed and more interested in our fruit! 

My evolution to country/ farm life person continues as I decided that what I really needed was to teach myself to quilt. HUH? I'm blaming country life magazine, the weekly times and removal from constant stimulus of shops for this. I've always liked sewing but with no space to spread out projects, I'd kind of abandoned it. But I woke up with an idea for quilt throws in two colour schemes. Fabric purchased and a quilt cutter at the ready, and I'm going all how to make an australian quilt - truth be told I loved 'How to make an American quilt' in both book and movie form - the combination of quilting, academic writing, and Winona Ryder in the film version - you can't go past it. So we'll see how I go, I'm not convinced I have the time to do this as I'm not sure I can fit everything I need to do in, let alone everything I want to do, but hey, having ambition and a plan is always good right? 

Tonight's farm life adventure will be to cook Spaghetti Squash. I've never cooked them before but have been looking at recipes for them, tossed with garlic, herbs and parmesan cheese and I reckon it could be worth trying as a Sunday night farm recipe. Let's see how it goes :) 

The winds of Innisfree

It's been a quiet weekend here at the farm and I'm pretty happy about that, given that when I look at the CFA app Victoria seems to be a sea of triangles as fires burn out of control across the state.

Yesterday was another Saturday with a forecast in the high 30s heading towards 40. I'm getting a bit tired of summer now, every time I look at the forecast map and it shows a string of days over 30, I feel a little bit like weeping. Our paddocks have turned yellow and crispy and the longer summer stretches without rain, the more the ground hardens and dries beneath my feet. It's easy to be slightly deluded as to the extent of the summer heat when you look out at the evergreen olives and see them sparkling silvery, grey green in the light. Stray deeper into the paddocks or in between the rows and the grass cracks brown beneath your feet. Each morning I get up and run Indy for laps between the grove, our little 3k circuit wears the dog out and is enough for my arthritic knees to handle, by the time I return to the house they swell slightly and creak as I walk up the stairs at work. I conveniently ignore the surgeon's advice not to run, chowing down on fish oil and hoping that it may help the bone on bone smashing of my knees. Running here though is a delight, the parakeets swoop in between the olive trees as I run, the sheep gaze at me inquisitively from the other side of the fence and despite the fact I'm running laps I never bore of the landscape around me.

Rohan was out fixing a couple of solar panels to the array early Saturday morning so that we could actually generate some power- we were a couple of panels short of actually kicking over the system. Two more panels installed and we were cranking out 9 kilowatt hours (or killer wasp hours) a day and we were feeding back into the grid. Throughout the week I'd enjoyed watching the parakeets flit around the back garden (or what currently passes for garden) but they were beginning to colonise the nashi tree and eye off the fruit. I knew it was a battle when Rohan walked near the tree and a sea of green and red feathers came barrelling through the sky ready to swoop him as he went near 'their' fruit. Sorry birdies - much as I like you, those fruit are going to be mine! A quick trip to Bunnings to grab some bird netting for the nashi and for the grape vines which are beginning to be a favourite of the magpies.

Saturday night and the news bulletins were all about the extreme fire danger that Sunday would bring.  I woke early to the sound of the wind whipping through the olive trees. It was hot, gusty and I began to worry about what the day would bring. Fire authorities were saying it was the worst day since Black Saturday and I was remembering flying back from Sydney to a state charred and hung with black cloud. My constant companion for the day was the CFA app and one of the first fires was one around the corner from our old house in town. By mid morning the change had arrived and the wind had swung around from the North to the South. The sky was clouded with dust, whipped up by the wind, but luckily we remained untouched by fires in our region. Others were no so lucky and I got messages from friends who had left home as townships and fields close to their homes began to burn. More than ever this summer I've had to think about what it would mean to pack up and leave a home, knowing that you might never see it again, and I've rationalised in my brain what I would take and cram in the car and what I'm happy to leave behind.


Sunday continued with a visit from Maryann and Chris, with Maryann bringing lime and poppy seed cake she got at an open garden not far from our place. After afternoon tea and a stroll around the paddocks I insisted she take it home (or I may have eaten the entire thing tonight in front of the tv). Chris got me thinking about cows, goats, sheep. More precisely he got me thinking about what is going to be best on our back paddocks and what is going to work best with the seasons and the quirks of the land we're living on. The deliberations will continue for another day as we try and learn the habits of our land.

I turned my thoughts to farm life food and baking. A social media campaign 'SPC Sunday' was in full flight, encouraging people to take photos of the SPC food products they were buying and eating. I'd seen a recipe for apple cake in the Weekly Times and was wanting to give it a whirl as Rohan is a sucker for any kind of cake business with apple involved. With no fresh apple, but an entire slab of SPC pie apple, it was time for baking.

Today's farm life food also involved making fresh pesto with basil from the window sill and parsley from the organic farm, and then my favourite lazy Sunday night meal of spicy ground beef pizza topped with yoghurt and coriander.

Now we've been in the paddocks carting water to the sheep and Rohan has taken over the kitchen as he begins to brew up a lightly hoppy ale.He's using wheat malt, dry light malt, dextrose and 50 grams of Galaxy hops.

The smell of malt and hops swirls up from the mixing pot, and this will be ready in time for Woody's 21st in March.


The winds of Innisfree have died down and so I end Sunday with the sweet smell of malt.

Eau de farmer

It's 10.45 on a Sunday morning, just nudging 36 degrees and I'm bathed in sweat. I smell like eau de farmer, a mixture of salt, earth and grass clippings. I'm thinking you could market it as 'Earthy', in a bottle the shape of a blade of grass and an ad campaign filled with endless sky and hay bales. Clearly I've been out in the sun too long this morning already. Sensible people would have been inside reading the Sunday papers and drinking a cup of tea before it gets too hot to contemplate tea drinking, but I was up early filling up on vegan chia pancakes and running Indy around laps of the grove before the heat really struck.

Then it was into the orchard where I wanted to do a quick spot of pruning before it got too hot. Tan came over yesterday to check out the new place and to have a look at our fruit trees. She pronounced them as being in pretty good shape given that they've been unloved for a while and is confident that they'll spring back into life with some care and attention. First task on the list was to get the secateurs Nam gave me for christmas and trim off the bits of branch that the sheep had broken off in their bipedal pruning work. Their edges weren't neat and tidy and Tan informed me that this is where disease can start in trees. Task two was to snip off bits that were crossing over and rubbing against each other as well, as this can also cause disease. Task three was to get rid of the green shoots that were springing up around the base of the trees as these suckers take valuable moisture away from the main tree. There were heaps of these and so this morning I was out, snipping them off, trying to ensure that the main tree won't have its water supply stolen by springy, stringy little interlopers. Some of the trees (mainly the cherry and pear trees not surprisingly) are suffering from a case of cherry and pear slug, so we'll have to get onto that, but Tan said chickens will help with that, which may explain why there was a door from the chicken coop into the orchard where I presume the chickens used to free range, pecking around the base of the trees. Some of the others have leaf shot, so we'll have to look into some remedies for that too. Our citrus need a good dose of epsom salts as the leaves are turning yellow and beginning to drop, and they are also hungry for a feed so we'll give them some food when the temperature drops a bit and some good watering to keep them happy over the next couple of hot days.

So I think pruning 101 went okay and I'm looking forward to sitting down in the heat of today reading this book which Tan gave us as a farm warming present:

Meanwhile we continue to experiment with farm life food. I used Kale from the organic farm across the road to make our first batch of Kale chips, rolled in olive oil, smoky paprika and sea salt and then baked in the oven. Last night we made our first chia seed puddings with almond milk and cinnamon and topped with blueberries. My favourite dessert was to be had on our nightly stroll around the paddocks. The heat of the day had disappeared and the patches of pink were crawling across the sky. We paused at the mulberry tree and picked them, until the ripest ones were gone. 

Close to 9pm we were still out there strolling with the dog and I was struck once again about how fortunate we are to be able to live this life. There's something about living here that causes me to stop and just appreciate what I have. I joke that the farm is making me overly sentimental, but maybe it's just reminding me that there are so many good, simple moments we can enjoy and it's much nicer to revel in them than to dwell in the frustrations, annoyances and negativities of life. Some people seem to like it when there's drama and negativity, they thrive on it and seek it out. 

Here at Innisfree, we're choosing to dwell with the good.