After winter, spring will come...

It's been a while between farm blog posts- winter descended on the farm, days grew shorter and colder, and nights dropped below zero. During this time the farm fell into an easy, quiet rhythm. Days began and ended around the fire, clutching mugs of tea, heads crowned with woollen beanies and hands clad in mittens or gloves, the fire and the kitchen became the throbbing heart of the house. In winter it is easy to see how the kitchen has taken centre stage in portrayals of farm life, for it is here that you return to seeking warming food and drinks after being outside in the bitterly cold air. Our first winter on the farm has seemed icily cold, but perhaps that is how it will always be here at Innisfree? Walking the dog in the morning, wrapped in layers and quilted jackets, my feet crunch over grass that has been snap frozen overnight. The heavens open and rain falls, making a persistent slush in the lower end of the paddock and near the hay shed. My gumboots are caked in mud and if you venture too far you get bogged, 4WD or not. 

The olives meanwhile slowly ripened and on weekends we went out to pick more, laying them in containers of salt. After a few weeks we put some in water to leech out the salt and tasted them. They were a revelation- richer and sweeter than any store bought olive I had tasted. After tasting them I donned my apron and went straight back outside to pick more. 

Weeks passed and still winter persisted. The mountain lay shrouded in cloud and for days not a glimmer of sunshine broke through the grey. I flew overseas for work, leaving Rohan home on the farm and arriving in London on a bright, sunny day. Lying in the bedroom that night in our apartment I was sweltering as I remembered the way London traps the heat and feels hotter than it actually is. The next day Rachel and I went for lunch on the rooftop at Selfridges, and, there in the sun, I got my first London sunburn. My pale, wintery skin was no match for the English sunshine and I'm embarrassed to even write that. So while I spent nearly 2 weeks in England in storybook sunshine, back at home winter was reaching out her gnarled, cold fingers over everything. Snow fell on the paddocks and open water tanks froze solid for days. As I wandered in sunshine through the fields next to Herstmonceux Castle where my conference was, Rohan sent me photos of the farm, white and crisp. I loved the summer sun on the other side of the world and my trips to the ballet, the theatre, and being in London. Each time I'm there I feel strangely at home, I wander down streets that are both foreign and yet strangely familiar after consuming a English novels like food.  Despite this part of me yearned to be home on the farm and when I saw photos of the cows sprinkled with snow, I wished I was home to be part of the story that is our first winter on the farm.

Rohan meanwhile was living through a comedy of errors as he bogged his car, and then had a neighbour bog his car and someone else's tractor in the paddock in an attempt to offer assistance. I commented that it seemed a bit like swallowing a spider to catch a fly... Our neighbour David came to the rescue, dragging all the bogged vehicles of various sizes and ownership from where  they lay idle and immovable. 

Over the last couple of weeks there have been signs that the seasons are beginning to move towards change. In our kitchen garden planters the seeds that Rohan planted are beginning to germinate and tiny, green limbs begin to push their way through the chocolate soil. The grey clouds are beginning to clear and on some days, like today, the sun pushes across the sky leaving only whispy clouds. In the paddocks, the sheep are moulting, saggy pieces of fleece hanging from them as they rub up against fences, leaving tufts of white fluff behind. They begin to resemble balding, middle aged men, with tufts popping off their hides every now and then. 

With the advent of sunshine we become more active. The mower is retrieved and I begin my mowing meditation, gliding up and down between rows of the grove. We buy a new mulcher, needing a bigger one to handle the pruning that Dave has been doing and that we still need to tackle. In the concrete tank I'd pretended I would make a dipping pool, we now have 55 trout. The nutrients from there will feed our gardens and later in the year I'll be feasting on fat, juicy trout. There are fruit trees to be pruned and ash from the fire to be sprinkled around the cherry trees to save them from the cherry tree slug that munched through their leaves prior to autumn.

We still need to get chickens and hopefully in the next school holidays Rohan will have time to mend the chicken coop so that we can keep the chickens safe from foxes. On the radio I heard that is only 125 days till Christmas and so my kind turns to fire preparation- as always there will be much to be done to prepare for the ever present threat of fire come the warmer weather.  

In the meantime we need to call our local landcare who are working on a gorse eradication project - this will be perfect for us to become involved in and we can begin to tackle the back paddock which is suffering from an invasion of gorse. Yesterday we shepherded a koala that was heading to the middle of the road, making sure that he/ she found their way back into a tree alongside the mine rather than the middle of the bitumen.

There is much to be done but eight months after we moved in here I still cannot believe how much I love it. I think it is the open, endless sky I love most of all. It's an ever changing landscape: a sea of clouds; a pallet of muted pinks, oranges and reds; a rumbling, dark and threatening storm; and a twinkling, black map of the universe.