We are well and truly in the months of winter now. We had a week of crackling frosts, then they were driven away by a week of freezing winds. That didn’t help me to get out and about in the garden at all, so I stayed inside working in the studio, out of the wind.

We celebrated the winter solstice with a dinner here in the big decorating room in the pottery, at the big work bench, converted for the day into a refrectory table. We can seat a dozen pretty comfortably in there. It is such a big, almost empty space, that it doubles up very well as our entertaining area. It is huge and uncluttered, as opposed to out house, which is small and compact, and none of the rooms in the house were designed to seat 12 people for a meal. We have however, had over 30 souls in there for a house concert, crammed in cheek and jowl. But that was only for listening to music, not a sit down meal.

On this occasion, I cooked pizzas for everyone, as it is cold outside, it was a good time to light up the old wood fired pizza oven and crank out a few pizzas. 

I try and stay clear of the usual suspects. My favorite this time was wilted spinach and oven roasted pumpkin from the garden, with a few olives. I prepared everything before hand, picking, washing and wilting the spinach before everyone arrived. I spent the morning in the kitchen prepping. The pumpkin was finely sliced, diced and roasted in the new solar electric oven, with olive oil salt and pepper and some finely diced garlic, also from the garden. These crunchy little gems melt in your mouth and smell and taste delicious.

We have been enjoying the first truffle of the season for our breakfasts this last week. We buy only one truffle each winter. It’s a special indulgence. They are hard to buy around here directly from the growers, who prefer to sell in larger amounts directly to restaurants. Luckily we have a son who is a chef and has access to the trade, so we order one each season through him. We take what ever comes. I only ask for something less than $100. At $1 a gram, it can quickly add up, but usually we get something around $30 to $50 worth. However, this year, the price has gone up to $1.50 per gram, and what turned up in our order is a beauty! 50 grams. That is about 50mm dia. and the biggest that we have had the privilege to enjoy so far. 

This is a 4 or 5 meal truffle!

We store the truffle in a container with the eggs for tomorrows breakfast and a cup of rice that will be the next nights risotto dinner.

The best way to enjoy truffle in my opinion is just simply grated over very soft scrambled eggs.

We spent the weekend cutting and splitting wood for the kiln and house. These are logs still sitting in the yard, left over from the bushfire clean-up.

Yes, We are still dealing with the aftermath of that horrible event. It’s still all around us, in the dead trees still standing, but on this occasion, we are cleaning up logs still sitting on the ground from burnt tress that were felled for safety reasons by the State Government clean Up squad that came through after the fire to ‘make-safe’ the area where people might be living and working around their houses.

Some of the logs were particularly straight grained, so were ideal for splitting very fine for the side stoking of the 2nd chamber of the new wood kiln.

Others were gnarled and knotty with many forked branches, so I cut these short for use in the house stove. You can see the new pottery up in the distance. We are clearing up further from the core area around the house now, So we are making some progress.

It was a full day and by the end of it I was conscious that I was very tired and needed to stop before I ended up hurting my self. I have damaged my hand in the splitter years ago, by working on into the gloom in the evening, just trying to get the job finished in one day. 

As the shadows lengthened. I called it quits. I will finish the job another day.

What started the day as a 3 big piles of twisted logs and butt ends, ended with several small er piles of split timber kiln fuel. 

49 years ago, when we started out together on this creative journey. All we had was a two metre long, ancient, two man cross-cut saw and a block buster hammer. My, how things have changed! I still have the big cross cut saw, it hangs up on the wall in the barn. I still have the block buster head too, however it has had countless wooden shafts, broken and replaced since then. My days of swinging the block buster are numbered, but it still gets some sporadic use for small jobs that are too small to be bothered getting out the tractor and hydraulic splitter. It’s a bit like kitchen gadgets that take more time to clean up than the time saved using them. I still admire and appreciate many old things and ways of being, but splitting wood with a hammer is not one of them.