it’s been a year

Hello dear friends,

Welcome to the last Friday Foxslane of 2021. The ninth post since my blogging come-back in November, and the 1,134th post ever. Wow, that feels like an enormous amount of photos and words about family and flowers and farm-life.

Honestly I don’t think I’m completely back in the rhythm of blogging yet. Each week something seems to pop up and throw me off balance. I’ve mostly struggled with the tech stuff. Learning the new language of this blog and dealing with the most ridiculously fussy Internet, have almost pushed me over the edge every single week to date. In fact just last Friday after I pressed publish on my post after hours of issues with uploading the pictures, Bren suggested that maybe blogging isn’t actually for me after all. Maybe I should think of another way to express myself like writing a book, or a journal on paper with a pen. Old school.

But I’m still here. And I know that it’s probably bad luck to say this, but so far this week everything is running smoothly. Thank goodness. Except for the fact that I can’t seem to narrow down the number of photos. Someone once said that the ideal number of photos in a blog post is 10 and this week I’ve got 20!! Ahhhhhh!!!! Sorry. I think I’ve uploaded them as pretty small files though, so hopefully they pop onto your screen quickly.

I’ve been thinking all week about how to close 2021 on my blog. How to wrap it up tightly, tie some string around it so that nothing escapes, and then hopefully pop it up on the shelf safely and move on into the shiny fresh new year. I’m so ready for it.

I’m going to do a brief recap of the highlights, with the knowledge that some of the highlights might be lowlights, but they’ll be lights all the same.

Although I took this photo a couple of days ago, when I walked in on this scene it told the story of how we lived much of the past year in COVID TIMES. When it wasn’t warm outside we were on top of each other in the kitchen chaos. Pepper did her lockdown online schooling at the far end of that table, Jazzy came in from her studio often to play us a song she’d just written or to get a snack, And Bren and I shuffled papers, wrote lists, analysed and dissected the problems of our little world and the big wide world, prepared meals and constantly attempted to make order of the chaos.

In the picture above you can see a pile of my book Vantastic, a copy of Jodi’s beautiful book that I’ll talk more about soon, our Bren-made wooden breakfast bowls ready to be filled, some bulk-bought nuts ready to be poured into jars and a whole lot more kitchen clutter.

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about Covid, but I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the kind thoughts and wishes you sent my sister. I’m so happy to report that she’s feeling a bit better every day and has been released from her isolation. I also wanted to acknowledge the sad, the difficult, the scary, and the heartbreaking stories you guys shared with me. I’ve read your words, I’ve felt your pain and I’ve carried it with me through the week. I honestly wish I had words that could send comfort or reassurance out into the world, but instead all I can do is thank you for trusting me and tell you how sorry I am. How I wish things could be different. How I hope someday soon they will be.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how slowly this season was developing. How low temperatures, rain and wind were standing in the way of bed prep and plant growth. Well I’m thrilled to report that finally the skies have turned blue, the winds have died down, the temperatures have soared and it feels and looks a lot like SUMMER.

Most of the annual FLOWERS I planted haven’t started blossoming yet, but the perennials and the self seeded annuals are popping out everywhere. Each time I turn around there’s a gorgeous new explosion of colour waiting to be admired; it’s so exciting and soul nourishing and heartening.

It’s the same with the FOOD GROWING. The season has been so slow to kick off that we started doubting our role as gardeners, but finally we’re picking lettuces, rocket, peas, beans, herbs, strawberries and raspberries.

I’m still nervous that some of the late summer, early autumn produce is too small and that there aren’t enough hot days left to get size on the plants and then ripen them to maturity, but I know I have to let that one go, that it’s out of my hands.

In March of this year we added GOATS to our farm. We started slowly so we could really get to know each animal as it arrived before we introduced the next. And now we have 22. All but two are wethers, and all but one are gorgeous.

We introduced the goats for land management. We thought that a herd of goats and a few sheep could keep the grass down, eat the weeds and take some of our mowing away from us.

Little did we know that we would fall in love with them. Little did we know that goats are actually the most beautifully natured creatures in the whole world (shhh don’t tell the dogs and cats I said that). They’re just like puppies but they have the sweetest breath and they look after themselves. They are curious, and affectionate and protective and some of them are cuddly. It’s been such a joy building our flock and learning to read their behaviour and look after them.

These days when I’m asked why we keep goats I tell people it’s for our mental health, for companionship and for therapy. The land management is just a bonus.

In early June of this year we had an almighty STORM rip through our state. Trees fell on houses and cars and across roads, hundreds of thousands of properties lost power for days, in some cases weeks and the stress of living through that turbulent time was extreme.

Here on our farm in Christmas of 2020 we’d finally finished a fencing project we’d been planning for years and years. Our whole property had been divided up into 14 paddocks and laneways that we could use to move and rotate the animals around the farm. The fence-lines were straight and shiny and tight.

As well as losing power and phone and Internet for three days over the course of that storm, 46 trees fell on and broke our new fences. More trees fell in paddocks and in the forest but I’m not counting them. We weren’t insured for fencing because we hadn’t had fencing when we’d last paid for our policy, and we never thought to revise it.

So over the past six months since then Bren, my dad and I have been slowly fixing the fence lines. Paddock by paddock. Clearing the trees, straining and tensioning the wires, and hoping that this time they’ll stand for a bit longer than last time. There are a few areas we still haven’t gotten to, but hopefully will someday soon.

Most of the photos in the rest of this post are of the goats even though most of the words are not. Unfortunately when I wasn’t a blogger, I wasn’t really a photographer either. So the stories don’t match the photos and sometimes the photos tell their own stories anyway.

Another huge change for us this year is that we converted to SOLAR POWER. We now have solar panels on the roof and batteries in the shed, and belong to the club of people who get excited watching the kilowatt hours on the app and who wait for sunny days to run our heavy duty appliances.

This year I gave up drinking COFFEE! I know! I can hardly believe it myself.

About five or six months ago I found myself waiting at the counter of a local bookshop to pay for our family’s purchases. The girls had chosen some YA books, I had a knitting stitch manual and Bren had two books. One of them was a story of a woman who learnt to speak with her dog and the other was a book called Heal Your Headache by David Buchholz and Stephen G Reich. Haha that’s a pretty niche selection there I joked to the guy who served me. You’d be surprised at how popular the talking dog book is, he replied. It’s on our best sellers list. The headache book not so much.

Those who have been following our story for a while might remember that Bren has suffered from awful MIGRAINES for years. They’ve been delibilating and over the past few years they’ve been increasing in frequency and increasing in severity to the stage that he was often suffering for four days of every week. The migraines were affecting every part of his life; it was heartbreaking.

Over the years he’d tried every remedy out there but nothing even made a dint in them.

Until one day he picked up a random book and it changed his life. It still bewilders me that the book doesn’t even have the word migraine in the title. What it does have is a detailed explanation of what a migraine is and then several steps to take to get rid of them.

He read the book, and then I read the book, and then we decided that it all made sense and that we didn’t have anything to lose and so we went on the journey.

Giving up coffee forever is part of the diet the book details. I decided that as making and drinking coffee had been such a shared ritual and love of ours, that I wanted to support and encourage him by joining him.

We both suffered hideous withdrawal headaches for a few days, but about five months later I’m here to tell you that they were all worth it. At first I missed the coffee ritual terribly, I felt bereft without it. I hated that I no longer had a reason to sit in cafes and I missed the sound of the grinder, I missed the flavour and the smell and the anticipation of the buzz. But all that has faded so much over the months that I hardly think about it now. And I can even recognise that I’m missing that anxious feeling in my stomach and am so much calmer. Oh and I’ve stopped nervously chewing on the inside of my cheek. It’s been such a positive change in my life.

I have drunk the odd coffee here and there over the past few months with a friend in a cafe because I can’t help myself, but I always find I have ants scrambling around in my stomach for the rest of the day and a yucky feeling that something might be wrong and I can’t remember what. I think over time that will drop off too, even though I hate the thought of paying four or five dollars for a herbal tea bag in a mug.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention that Bren’s migraines have gone. We call him the miracle boy. I can’t begin to tell you what a difference it’s made to his and our lives. His face even looks different now. We’re thrilled!

This year in a bid to take control of my health in an increasingly frightening pandemic filled world, I started EXERCISING more. Actually I also read a book about perimenapause that spoke about getting fit as a way to cope with the long list of symptoms that would be coming my way.

So I added weight lifting to the classes I was already doing. A few times a week, when lockdowns allowed, I met two friends at the gym and we would lift and lunge and squat and encourage each other and complain and huff and puff and push our bodies beyond our comfort zones. Most of what I do there is still so hard for me but what I get out of it is so valuable that I keep showing up. And I even look forward to it.

I have learned that I can really trust my body. I have learned that my body is so much more capable than I ever knew. I have learned that there is no feeling more powerful than pushing myself to do one more rep than I thought I could. And I have learned that not feeling self conscious at all, being completely in the present moment and having the confidence to wear a singlet and leggings again are worth more to me at this stage in my life than gold.

And those precious few minutes of conversation and laughter and sometimes tears that I’ve shared with my workout buddies between super-sets have been invaluable. I feel beyond lucky to have made these intense and beautiful connections with these incredible women. We have lived together through devastating heartache, sky high joy and everything in between. I feel supported and encouraged and loved and lucky, and I’m pretty sure that they feel the same.

Love you L and S x

In 2019 I read 61 BOOKS.

In 2020 I read 61 books.

In 2021 I set my Goodreads reading challenge to 62 books but somehow I managed to finish reading 84!! I’m not actually sure how that even happened. It’s not like we were in lockdown more than the year before and I don’t think my insomnia was any worse. But there you go, 26,563 pages of 84 books.

And I wrote a whole bunch of new content and edited the old stuff in preparation for the republishing of my book Vantastic .

It’ll be out in shops in Australia on the 5th of January 2022.

It will be released in the US and Canada on the 8th of February 2022.

And on the 17th of February in the UK and Europe.

Please consider pre-ordering my book by clicking on this link - Vantastic!

Eeeeeeeeeep, it’s very soon.

I’ve KNITTED a bunch of things but I still want to sew in the ends and photograph them properly before I introduce them to you. Watch this space.

Of course I started this BLOG back up again after a two year break.

And last but not least I survived. Through pandemic, through Jazzy’s final year of school, through floods and wild storms, through the dramas of parenting, through devastating incidents in our community, through the monotony of feeding people, through the never ending to-do list, through thick and thin, through highs and lows. I am here now and I’m in one piece and I’m feeling quite emotional and proud of that fact. It’s been a year hey.

Which brings me to you. You survived it all too. I’m so pleased you did.

And in amongst all that makes up your lives you chose to spend a little bit of your precious time with me each week and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you! (I actually have tears in my eyes, I’m not joking).

I hope your 2022 is kinder and gentler and filled with more beautiful moments than the last few years. I hope you find passions that inspire you and that you flourish. I hope you find clothes to wear that make you feel amazing! I hope you laugh a lot. I hope you find great things to read, make, listen to, watch and cook. I hope you find yourself in a place where you feel really proud of yourself.

And I hope to see you back here next year.

Sending you so much love.

Kate x