I live in a house filled with wood, because I live with a man who knows and loves it, and who needs no encouragement at all to conjure up something beautiful from something he found, or happened to have tucked away in the hayshed, or the workshop, or his car or in one of the many stacks that only ever get bigger, never smaller. There is more wood out in the dairy. Great piles of planks that trip me up when I heave full milk buckets over them, turned redgum verandah posts from a neighbouring farm, local messmate that once helped hold a house up, and chairs that need new seats, tlc, a bit of glue. The chooks get in behind them and lay secret eggs there.

On top of this hill, in a house flooded with light, we need all this wood; it soaks up the glare of the sun in summer and releases its warmth back to us in winter.  Plus, off-cuts keep the wood stove burning.

My new desk is finished, and I am sitting here now looking down the valley to Roger’s cows and calves. He is driving down the hill to feed out hay; the grass has begun to grow but there is not enough of it yet and the wind is cold. Behind Roger’s paddocks roll six ridgelines, and on the horizon is the tower at Loch, seventeen k’s away as the crow flies my friend says. But for a big camellia bush, I could see all the way down the boundary fence to the road and the long row of aspen trees that I love and Roger hates planted along it.

This bench that Al has made me is beautiful. Even he thinks so, and comes around the corner in the evening, when I am sitting here in lamplight, to look at it again.

When Allan makes tables, he always starts with the legs.

My new desk has legs fashioned from an old cedar door, complete with some of its original decorative woodwork. The top is oregon pine, no longer pinkish as it is when young but a rich mature brown, showing its age. It was salvaged from a 1950’s service station in Warragul that was dismantled to make way for a new car yard.

The legs of the bench in the kitchen come from pieces of hand hewn ironbark. They were found in a shed in Yarragon, or more specifically, a shed inside a shed, where they were protected from the wind and rain and grew to be hard as metal. They demanded to be sanded with a wire wheel, and now their surface is lustrous and smooth to touch.

Al is a wood guy, and through him I’ve met others; Tim in Wonthaggi whose sprawling salvage yard is itself a creation, John in Warragul, who stockpiles and sells wood from his garage and earns the ire of his neighbours, Damian, who works in glass too. If you met them I wonder if you’d guess that, with their hands and old tools collected over years, they make things of great beauty.

September 12th 2013

 like to come for a cuppa in my mess? texted Cheryl at 8am this morning.

love a cuppa in yr mess, I text back, be there in a sec, long as I don’t get washed away.

I pull on my last pair of dry boots (two pairs of Blundstones being soaked through to the socks, and my long serving gumboots now taking on water) and dash out to the car, cursing the gate across the driveway that must be opened and closed again to keep the lambs in. Mud everywhere, I’m already saturated. Rob’s flats are covered in fast moving brown water – looks like it’s over the bridge down on Olsen’s Road. The troughs are overflowing, the creeks have broken their banks and the cows are dejected. It’s been raining relentlessly for 24 hours, non stop, punctuated by hail and lashing winds.

I make another dash through the rain and now hail onto Cheryl’s verandah, piled high with life’s comforting necessities; a delivery of chook feed, a reserve stash of firewood yet to be hauled inside, countless muddy shoes and boots, a few good dogs. Her kitchen is dark and warm, and always intoxicatingly full of the good things from the night before – a huge wineglass still half filled with a good red, now covered with a bead edged lace doily, saved for later, a casserole of half eaten confit homegrown duck.

We love the same things, Cheryl and I, and the same things make us miserable. It’s been a tough few months for everyone – money is tight, winter has been, well, winter, and the list of things we want to do, have to do, dwarfs the list of things that actually get done.

But out her kitchen window is a cumquat, bent over with fruit, and the plum trees in the distance are just starting to bloom.

We talk about kids and writing and love, the animals that didn’t make it through winter and how can we secure our futures, and share a cuppa that we drink from delicate bone china tea cups. We take our tea the same way. Strong with the barest hint of milk. Muddy water.

Our conversation comes back around to where it always ends up, where it must end up, to the things that nourish us, that get us out in this weather, the things that release the joy. Gardens, food, our green hills, neighbours, friends, family, unexpected drop ins, picking our beetroot, sowing our seeds, edible dahlias, laughter and spontaneity and generosity around a big old table. It’s why we’re here, and it’s what keeps us going and sometimes it’s very important to tip our lids to that.

I drive back home, and stop on the driveway to watch one of the late calves, born during this terrible weather, feed from his mum. Worrying about them has kept me awake at night but this one is strong and healthy and full of spirit and once the sun hits his back he’ll be off and away. I pick a sprig of wild plum blossom through the car window and think of Christmas, when the bright red fruit will be ripe. By then the song thrush baby will be fully fledged, and the corellas will be back to eat the early peaches while we shake our fist at them through the kitchen window. The seasons march on, and we march on with them. We walk on through the year, and it enfolds its familiarity around us. It is comforting.

Sorry for my absence – but see? The blossoms are out and I am back.

5th September 2013

The lovely people over at Country Style asked me to write a guest post on their blog this week. You can read it here. If you enjoy it, will you leave a comment on the Country Style site? I would appreciate that very much.

And don’t forget to check out the article featuring yours truly, Martha and other farm inhabitants in this month’s (February) issue!

Imagine how much money we could save and how well we could eat if we gave even a fraction of our collective front yard real estate currently under agapanthus and Silver Sheen pittosporum over to growing delectable little lettuces and other garden treats.

I stumbled across someone doing just that in the back streets of Inverloch yesterday and its beauty, productivity and resourcefulness literally stopped me in my tracks. Using raised beds just a metre or two wide, wrapped around an L shaped concrete porch, was a captivatingly productive and well maintained vegetable garden cross dotted with mini crops of onions, corn, tomatoes, beans, capsicums, beetroot and chard and capsicums, and bordered with strawberries and curly leaf parsley.

This lovely garden was not only beautiful and productive, but full of trust and optimism too, being set on a busy corner directly behind a bus stop, yet completely devoid of fences or stern signs. Maybe the guilty delight of bus travellers as they pluck a basil leaf or a green bean to eat on their journey is part of the pleasure of this garden for its owner. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!  Then again, maybe they’ve got CCTV installed.

(I’m collecting small space and front yard food gardening inspiration on Pinterest just here if you want to take a look ).

From the Eye and Leaf newsletter 8th August 2012

Were you wondering just how long it would be before the fifth force of nature that is seventeen fast growing piglets broke out and caused havoc? Yes, I admit it did cross my mind too.  At which point I neatly filed it away in my mental ‘to do’ pile, while simultaneously knowing full well that the next time I thought about it, it would be too late.

Today was the next time.

I can guarantee that you have never seen two humans move so fast as when as when a tornado of orange piglets are sighted bolting past the kitchen door.  We looked at each other, and with looks of abject horror shouted in unison, “the V-E-E-GETABLE G-A-A-A-ARDEN”.  There may also have been the odd howl of  “N-O-OOOOOO!” as we flew out to…well, to do something.  This is all you can really hope for when dealing with pigs.

On the way out I promised myself that I would accept whatever I saw with grace and humour – after all, what’s done is done. And I tried, but I also cried (very gracefully).

Three rows of young garlic had been ploughed up, all the young leeks (a row of about 50), a whole row of just germinated leek seedlings (are you detecting a theme here?) and some of the onions.  At least many of the garlic plants were undamaged, just flung around, and I was able to replant these.  The purple sprouting broccoli, young plants of which I was particularly proud, were completely gone, along with about a third of those amazing black radishes (just germinated) I mentioned a few weeks ago.  It sounds bad, but it could have been much, much worse, so a few hours later I can (almost) laugh about it.  I stress the almost.

This is the first time that pigs have ever found their way into the vegie garden – we had underestimated just how flat a piglet could flatten themselves if they really had a taste for leeks – and it will be the last.  Tomorrow a new fence goes in, and, well, replanting will be done.  The lunar calendar says fertile moon, I say fancy a spit roast?

Tilly’s calf was born yesterday (a girl) and Belinda’s today (a boy).  Both during daylight hours, both unassisted and trouble free.  The sun even came out!

For the first few days after calving cows (like humans) produce colostrum, an extraordinary brew of immune factors and nutrition. While essential for calves, we humans wait for the milk proper.  So, lucky pigs – today was their day.  Twenty litres of thick yellow colostrum.  I’m sure I heard some squeals of delight when they reached their bowls.

When dishing it out, I simply could not resist plunging my hands into the bucket – it looked so luxurious and abundant.  As I walked back to the house I could feel the skin tighten on my hands as the colostrum began to dry.  Tomorrow, there will be a milk bucket for us too.  And possibly even squeals of delight.  Yes, coffee made with fresh milk is absolutely worth a squeal.

From the Eye and Leaf newsletter 8th October 2012

“Hang on a minute”, I said, “this is what you call SUSTAINING”.

Rainbow chard leaves and stalks, red onion, potatoes, our own beef and red wine sausages, garlic, green lentils and mint; it didn’t look pretty but we demolished it.  As well as an entire six egg baked custard.

But even if we had swapped with the pigs I don’t think we would have done too badly.

See?