At school, when report cards arrived Mum always insisted she didn't care about the marks, what mattered were the Teacher's comments. These past couple of years, I've found myself uttering the same words to the Big Sister. So it must be true. Yesterday I was on the receiving end of my first report card for a good while; when Bearhands, the girls and I fronted up for my first appointment with my ...
Gardening
marriage and dog years
Bearhands and I celebrated nine years of marriage last week. There wasn't much fan fare - a quick lunch before picking up a truck from the mechanic and the kids from school. We've never really marked anniversaries. In our early years, our best attempts were thwarted. Recently I've come to the conclusion that we should really count farming years, because surviving those first two years on ...
Vale Chief Dog
Today we farewelled our dog Chief. Chief came into our lives in 2006. We'd been living on the farm for a while and Bearhands decided a farm needed a dog. I'd grown up with Australian cattle dogs - Mum's uncle was a breeder of champion blue heelers. They're smart and loyal and fiercely protective. We found a litter of puppies in a town an hour away. We travelled up to see them and one pup ...
quick and easy beef and broccoli
I have so much to tell you, but it's birthday week and I'm hanging on by this skin of the tooth the Little Sister lost but refuses to part with. So this is going to have to be quick. The girls have birthdays seven days apart. The farm turns into a B&B/restaurant/function centre during birthday week as our wonderful friends and family come to celebrate with the birthday girls. It's always a ...
the world needs more girls holding fish
All going well, by the end of this week we’ll have sand between our toes, sun on our faces, rod in hands. We’ll abandon our watches (and perhaps even shoes) on the barge and drive the length of Fraser Island scanning the horizon for dingos, sea eagles and breaching whales. I love these pretence-free holidays. I’ll swap my funky felt hat for a sensible number with a chin strap. Somewhere on the ...
thai corn cakes
I'm now 10 days post-treatment and starting to feel a little bit more like myself. This, of course, lead me to over-doing it a bit on Saturday and then tucking myself into bed at the nanna hour of 7.15pm. Bearhands and the kids have been sick, so I'm not sure how long I'll be feeling like this, but I'm enjoying it for the meantime. Because we've nuked my immune system, I'm immune compromised. ...