the farm – Page 3 – helenthura.com

November 16, 2008

a missed chance

Mum and I went to The Farm today and just before Mum started cooking tea, my phone rang. “Hi Helen, it’s Leanne from SES, are you free tonight?” It broke my heart so much to say that I was up north so I couldn’t go out tonight. I so dearly wanted to say yes as it would have been my first activation and it would have been a storm activation at that and I would have gotten my oranges.

sigh. We have had one hell of a storm this evening though. We left Brisbane round 1545 ish and as we drove the view out the rear just got progressively darker. A while after we got to The Farm, it started blowing a gale and then it got darker again and the rain started. It rained, and it rained and it rained.

As we drove home there were branches down all over the place and traffic lights and street lights out all over the place as well. I thought about giving them a ring to see if it was too late to come down and join a crew but then I thought that I am fairly exhausted from a big weekend moving and I have 38 Navy kids enlisting at 0700 or 0730 in the morning, I need sleep!

I am now sitting in my room at Auchenflower and the rain stopped probably 10 minutes ago. The only sound now is the trains as they zip past and the various bug noises.

Oh well I have SES tomorrow night and I am sure I will hear all about what I missed out on (clearing gutters I bet)

July 15, 2008

Strawberry Fields Forever

Have you ever bitten into a strawberry and feel your entire mouth start to smile? A smile that starts as your lips feel that first drop of strawberry juice and extends upwards and upwards as your teeth close together after the last bite.

That is what these strawberries pictured taste like. Strawberries that you are eating mere hours after they have been picked. Strawberries that you have seen grow and grow since they were first planted a few months ago. Strawberries that are sweet but with a slight tang and the texture is just right.

This is what strawberries should always taste like.

July 8, 2008

Cherry Tomatoes

I started writing this post a few weeks ago but I didn’t get a chance to take the last photo for the post till today. So now I present a tale of Cherry Tomatoes. At the moment, each time we visit the farm one of the things that I do or I do with Mum is pick the Cherry Tomatoes and now I give you a photo-documentary of the process.

Picking the little red balls. Some weekends we do this in near dark other weekends like yesterday we did it in the winter sun. When I took these photos we had not picked the tomatoes for three weeks we had a bounty on our hands.

We pick the reddest, ripest tomatoes we can find, knowing that they will pack a whole lot more punch when they are dried.

After filling our buckets and trying to avoid the cobblers pegs and pea weed, it is time to clean them. The sink is filled with water and the tomatoes are poured in, washing off the dirt.

We stand there, on either side of the sink, methodically picking up a tomato, plucking off the stalk and putting the tomatoes on a rack to dry.

After they have tried it is on to the fun stuff. Cutting each and every tomato in half and placing it on the rack to go in the food dryer.

Then they dry and dry and dry some more till we have little red discs, typically a bit smaller than a 5c piece. Then we feast on them in salads, pasta, dips, cous cous, sandwiches etc or take photos of them in a vase on the balcony….

May 7, 2008

sweet red goodness

An overflowing container of cherry tomatoes, a visit with the most treasured man in my life, getting covered in Cobblers Pegs as I lift up the vines gently plucking each little red ball off the stalk, dicing a handful through tuna mornay for dinner. A family table; laughs, love and the hope of tomorrow. Just another afternoon at The Farm. That was how I spent my May Day afternoon.

May 6, 2008

would you believe it?

We certainly didn’t.

Mum is now with phone! Due to changes in how Grandad is been looked after, Mum now has a mobile to keep to date with all the happenings that come with the healthcare of an 88 year old.

The last 24hrs have proven most interesting in watching Mum learning how to use her new phone 😀

Matthew of course helped out in Mobile Phone Studies 1001 and of course hid his face from the camera.

However this one I caught him unaware 🙂

March 10, 2008

slightly bigger impact

I was walking home from the bus stop today for the first time in weeks (I have been getting picked up since I did my ankle), as I was walking past one house I looked up over the tiled roof to the blue sky and though to myself it really is a prefect day. I am walking home from the bus stop, the cake box under my arm is empty, my hair is down, I walked out of work at 4pm and my desk was clear, the sky is blue after it was washed this morning and the temperature is just right. Oh and I was also listening/singing along to This Year. That last bit might have had a slightly bigger impact on me realising that today is a perfect day than say the empty cake box.

It also wasn’t just any This Year that I was listening to either it was from the show at Bottom of the Hill in San Fran last week. One thing I have noticed from listening to the recent shows on archive.org and reading blog reviews is that the shows are becoming more and more a big singalong. Am I complaining? No. Incidentally the Mountain Goats are one of two artists who I have never felt uncomfortable singing along to at gigs, the other is Peter Combe, he is/was a children’s artist, that is expected. A ‘Goats show is really just one big family reunion or perhaps it is the growth of a cult, we all look at this man on stage (JD) and his disciples and we say those words along with them. Saying those words from the bottom of our heart. Where it is ok to say those words, not those gigs where people around you look at you and start “bumping” into you if you start singing along at any level above a whisper. Saying those words like they are going to deliver you from salvation. mmmm perhaps I should just put The Mountain Goats in the religion box on facebook.

Which leads me to the The ‘Goats and their upcoming tour. In just about a month exactly I am going to flex off early from work on Friday and fly down to Newcastle see them play and then go to Sydney for the Saturday night show before coming back to Brisbane on Sunday, catching their Tuesday show at the Zoo before going up to the Sunny Coast on Thursday for the last show. Crazy perhaps but as Mum tells me I am footloose, fancy free and working the 8-4. I haven’t bought my plane tickets or show tickets yet but I will be doing that in the next few days.

This is a photo I took on the way home today. A little lost shoe.

And two from the farm yesterday.