Gone farming...

Normal programming will resume when we get back. In the meantime, HEATWAVE! Enjoy your nearest large body of water. I will be not swimming in dams festooned with cow shit, but may well cavort under the icy spray of a watering can hung from a tree branch. Happy new year.

The hunt.

At the farm, dinner cooling on the stove, the kid asleep in bed, The Boy out in the paddocks, hunting. I am sitting on the back porch, knitting a little beanie for baby G, watching the wind shear through the long, long grass and listening to the birds catching bugs in the warm evening light. One shot. The dog sits up at my feet. The baby doesn't stir.

He was so long coming back that I thought he must have missed. But when he did silently appear at the house paddock fence, still in stealth mode, he had the gun in one hand and in the other, a rabbit.

He skinned it, and gutted it, and while I have to steal myself to eat the meat on my plate, there was nothing gruesome about this process. It was clean and quiet and anatomically interesting. It was a beautiful rabbit, but I could appreciate its loveliness and its death without moral turbulence.

Yesterday I put it in our blue pot, with carrots and onions and potatoes and pancetta, and the stew waits now in our fridge for the end of the Christmas feasting.

This is the kind of meat I can eat, with gratitude and grace.

Meet the new guys.

Eight lovely black Angus steers. Beautiful boys, they are, with eyelashes to die for. They're little, and skittish, and they chased the dog all the way from the fenceline to the house paddock when they first saw her, which she seemed most unimpressed with. They know she's all bark. They'll graze our grass (and hopefully go some way to keeping the bracken and blackberries down), and in a year or two we'll send them off to market.

That's where these fellas have gone. This was taken in winter last year - they were HUGE when we dispatched them on Sunday afternoon. So shiny and fat they almost didn't fit up the race. The four of them took up more room in the holding pen than the eight newbies when they arrived. And now they are steak.

 

We get closer than most people to the meat they eat. We don't eat a lot of it. I think one of these days we'll probably make the leap from once-a-week meat eaters to full-blown vegetarians. In the meantime, we raise cattle. Our boys have a lovely life... It's what happens once they leave our top paddock that makes us a little quiet as the truck pulls out of the gate. 

Unresolved moral quandary to be continued. Maybe once I bring myself to read the last 10 pages or so of 'Eating Animals'.

 

Let it be.

Today is the 15th. I looked at my phone this morning and thought, 'Hmmmm. There's something on today. What's the 15th? It was C's birthday yesterday, A's on Saturday... Nothing in the diary. Oh well.' Cue exceedingly cute baby distractions.

My mum called at 8.30 to tell me dad had sliced his finger open on the hedge trimmer, and to see whether we were going to The Trees. Cue a split second of sick fluttery butterflies in my stomach. That's what happens on the 15th of December. It's been 13 years since my uncle P was stabbed in the head, and on the 20th it will be 13 years since he died.

The Trees are a little stand of gums and wattles that we planted on top of his ashes, in a clearing in Yarra Bend. There's a park bench, and a view, and there was talk of a plaque which never materialised. Every year on December 15, we would visit for a few minutes, light some incense, maybe cross paths with one of his friends. It has never rained.

This year, for the first time since it happened, it has not been the first thing I thought of when I woke up. Mum laughed when I told her I knew there was something on but couldn't remember what it was. 'Oh!', she said. 'You've recovered.' It's true. I finally have.
 

Pic from here.

Nice one, universe.

As I was telling Rosie the other day, we're not all that into Christmas here.

Specifically: "We aren't really Christmas people, but I'm as sentimental as the next sucker, and after reading all these comments I think perhaps I'm going to have to buy the little heathen a star or something. (Or a rabbit. Can you get Christmas rabbits?) This also means maybe having some kind of tree... We did once hang some baubles on a cactus plant, but the kitten knocked the whole lot off the windowsill and killed it. Perhaps I misread her disdain for all things tinsel as a fervent desire to have a real, proper tree! My apologies, kitty. Maybe this is your year..."

Anyway. What should Midwife Nellie bring with her on her visit this morning? Only THE most brilliant early Christmas present ever. Vis:

So exactly what I was thinking of. And delivered by my childhood friend, who delivered my child. Perfect.

The list. Three weeks to go...

I've dropped the ball a bit with the documentation here, but the list grows steadily smaller as the countdown to the end of the year picks up pace. To wit:

1. Go swimming with the kid. 
2. Collingwood Children's Farm. Done. We went yesterday, with the kid's cousin and his mama. I think the kid was probably still a bit young to really have a blast, but he was content to watch D running around chasing roosters, and he had a bit of a pat of a guinea pig. (I have never understood the attraction with those creatures. Weird, they are. And, I believe, delicious.) Here he is poking a goat in the eye.

3. Re-stock the wood pile at the farm.
4. RUN at least once a week. Yeah. Kind of. My back is farked. Going to the physio today. We'll see.
5. Eat a lobster roll at Golden Fields. Yes! It did not disappoint!
6. Finish the Japan book. Slowly plugging away at this, every now and then. Need The Boy to cull the aikido photos down. Getting there.
7. Family photos. Lovely. So lovely. And in 30 years I might have forgotten about how much they cost.
8. Plant some vegies (tomatoes, lettuce, carrots). I have bought tomato seeds and pots and dirt, etc. They mock me from the balcony. Perhaps that will be tonight's entertainment while The Boy is at his end of year dinner thingy.
9. Have people over for brunch.
10. Eat some sourdough from Firebrand.
11. Date night x 1, 2, 3. Golden Fields counts as #3, and that's the trifecta! Hooray!
12. Frame the kid's birth certificate. Oh yes. Must do this. Must find it first.
13. Have a massage. Does a physio visit count? This may yet happen.
14. Take the kid to the beach. Any day now.
15. Be able to run around the Tan by NYE! TBC...

Making progress. And feeling fine about perhaps not knocking the whole list over before the end of the year. Especially because in between all these things, there has also been movement on that other boring list that everyone has, like go to the dentist, get the tax done, blah, blah. No one seems to have cleaned the oven yet though. Where is that maid? 

Golden light at Golden Fields.

We ran into N from next door while we were hanging out the washing after the kid had gone to bed one night last week, when the teeth from the devil were cuttin' through. We looked like shit, clearly (or maybe she'd heard the screaming), because she asked if we were ok in that way that people do when they know you're not. I promptly burst into exhausted tears, and when she offered to come and mind the kid one night, we pounced with the gratitude of the desperate.

It happened to be our second wedding anniversary on the weekend, so last night, with N installed on the couch with a glass of vino and S next door cooking their dinner, we splashed out, and strolled our mid-week selves beachward, for a fancy-pants evening at Golden Fields.

We started outside at sunset, with drinks and salty soy sunflower seeds, and moved indoors when a seat came up at the bar. We were right opposite the open kitchen, and were served by the man himself as we worked our way through a feast fit for damn hell ass kings.

For posterity, and because I was too busy eating to take pictures:
* Grass-fed Black Angus beef, kimchi purée, egg yolk, crudite (I forgot we ordered this and was a little startled by the appearance of a dish of raw beef, but wow, it was spectacular.)
* New England lobster roll, hot buttered bun, cold poached crayfish, watercress & Kewpie (Every bit as excellent as I had hoped. Cross it off the list!)
* Rustic pork dumplings, Shanghai chilli vinegar (Oh my lord. Finest pork bun in the known universe. I don't even like pork buns. Pretty sure I'll never like another one.)
* New season asparagus, smoked hens egg, pea purée, rice puffs (Smokey! Crunchy! Smooth! Green! Yes!)
* Slow roasted salt pork hock, pickled cabbage, tamarind (I could have doused myself in the cabbage juices and licked myself clean. Or something. It was fucking brilliant.)
* Peanut butter parfait, salted caramel, soft chocolate (I die. I die and go to dessert heaven.)

Everything we ate was a goddamn triumph, and we had the best spot in the house in which to do it. LOVED the kitchen view... Apprentices slowly slicing cucumbers and peeling shallots until they cry, sous chefs with slender wrists simmering greens and plating chicken like they're playing a symphony, the whole thing like well-oiled clockwork. Satisfied customer, yes ma'am. We are the luckiest people on the planet.

Happy Anniversary, my love.