Oh summer. What a crazy mix of a season you were. On one hand, I can not believe I haven’t been writing in this space since the end of October, on the other hand, the past four months have flown by insanely fast, and at the same time, have felt five hundred years long…especially February. So much has happened during those four months,  that I think “that would make an excellent blog post”…and yet, like any dropped habit, the longer I went without coming back and actually following through on those posts, the harder it was to come back and just start blogging again. I do love blogging, though, and so I am going to give myself some grace for the months that I missed.

We kicked off the new year in perfect fashion, camping at the farm, and exploring our back forest. The first week of January became unexpectedly busy, but we managed to wrap it up with a cheeky visit to the beach, and then onto Coffs Harbour for some shopping, because it is ridiculously hard to buy plain and simple Grosby leather boots in town. One would imagine they would be a staple of a country shopping centre, but apparently not.

Then came the long week, and the last week of January, bringing with it back to work for the mister, and back to school for us. The children and I were halfway through our first main lesson for the year, when the doorbell rang, and I was met the news that honestly rocked me to the core, that a family member that we missed seeing on said trip to Coffs, has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. We were able to travel to Brisbane to be with our full extended family for the final farewell, and in the midst of the emotions involved in that, immediately came home to a major bushfire that impacted a large part of our community. Our property came through unscathed, with the wind working in our favour, but we spent quite a few days working on hazard reduction around the place just in case. Absolute rollercoaster of a week, and by golly were we glad to cross that one off the calendar.

In between all that, of course, life must continue on, and so there have been pockets of work and finding our homeschool groove and cleaning and decluttering the house ready for sale. The garden has been producing in amazing quantities, and allowed us to make our first sale of excess produce which was very exciting! At the minute it is looking rather bare, as our summer plantings come to an end, and life has distracted us and meant we aren’t as on top of autumn plantings as we would like, though we plan to get stuck into that over the next couple of weeks – look for a post on what we are planting and how we are rotating the different beds.

With the cooler weather comes more chances to do school out at the farm, which we are loving the chance to get out and enjoy the fresh air during lessons. Mr 5 has joined us for kindergarten this year, though as we don’t have to officially register him until he turns 6, I am just following his lead. Some days he’s happy to do all the learning, some days he’ll do one page and call it play time. The drought continues to impact the region (and further afield as well), so while it is nice to enjoy the outdoors, it would be much nicer, I must confess, to be forced to school in town! We have started a project as part of our morning walks, following the progress of our town river, that has stopped flowing and is slowly and sadly drying up. I can’t wait until we have to cancel the project because the rock I currently stand on for our weekly photos is once more under water. (edited to add – in a joyful correction, I was literally putting the final touches on this post when the clouds finally remembered what their job was, and dumped us with a ripper 32mm in under half an hour. In the first 10 minutes alone, we had received more than January and February combined. What a pleasant surprise to receive, having started the day with only a 50% chance on rain. Many days of 80 or 90% have failed to produce anything, so 50% may as well be zero, it often feels!).

That was summer, around here. I am planning to post at least once a week on this blog, more if the inspiration strikes. It will, as always, be a mix of farm and homeschool and oils and minimalism and general life and whatever else tickles my fancy – if there is anything you would like to see, just drop me a comment. I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride and seeing what 2019 brings.