Lock down in Spring

  

Last week was amazing.  Warm sunny weather got us working outside all day and we got a lot done.  Edd worked with john and his sons to pour the concrete base for the car port and I Painted the wood in the vegetable garden and worked on clearing up the old kitchen patio in the ruins.  This job is traditionally one of the first spring jobs and I have been doing it at this time for years and years.  CB whipper snipped the grass around the vegetable beds’, and I planted out the first pumpkin seedlings that germinated.  

 

I now have zucchini seedings coming up and I have planted Queensland blue pumpkin seeds.  Often, I cheat and buy seedlings from Bunnings but with everything closed down for covid19 this is not an option.  I did check, just in case they would deliver seedlings to me but there was no luck there, so it was back to saved seeds from last year.  The snow peas and broad beans are producing their first pods and the cabbages are nearly ready.  Just in time too.  The freezer that was full to the brim with last year’s produce is nearly empty and ready for a spring cleaning.

 

The grass is growing fast and the sheep are cleaning up on the roof and in our house site/ fire reserve. It has been very hard keeping them going over winter because we were unable to sell the lambs when the market closed.  In this strict lock down we can’t even have people coming to the farm to buy stock, so we have been forced into a situation where we are over stocked.  Luckily, I had sold the spare goats earlier but now we have kids and all the males are ready for new homes.   

 

They are all looking cute and come rushing up for their milk.  All except Tom who Hangs back and is still very shy.  I have no idea why he has this attitude; we have never had another kid like this. Edd says he is sensitive! I think he is just being difficult.  He drinks well but has to be persuaded every time, making the job of feeding much harder than it needs to be.  I do hope someone else really wants a sensitive goat!

 

The kids now drink all the available milk, so I am having a break from cheese making. We have a fridge full of cheese, so this is fine with me.  I get extra time to work in the garden and learn about regenerative agriculture.  I am afraid I have given up in the sourdough bread.  Our friends make much nicer bread than I can make so we are buying bread from them.  Indi can make the great bread and the honey she got from her bees is the best I have ever tasted. It is really nice to eat honey from our own land and watch the bees feeding as they work in the garden.

 

Back at work

 8.9.2020

 

He weather has been much, much nicer.  Clear blue skies and warm dry days. At last we can start to get things done on the farm.  Yesterday Andrew, and his off sider, poured the concrete slab for Edd’s new shed.  The truck that brought the concrete here was huge, but it got to the right place and the only problem was that the sun and wind made the concrete go off so fast it was hard to work.

 

Whilst the men struggled with that, I have been working in the vegetable garden digging the mud and grass of the brick paths where it had accumulated during our long muddy winter. Some of the seeds I have planted have germinated, but not the zucchini, and I really want to get them going first. Not that I am short of zucchinis this week. A neighbour dropped off a large box full for us along with a sack of onions, apples and potatoes.  I will have to send some to Bo, it is far too much for us to use.

 

Our stage 4 lock down is to last another 2 weeks.  Numbers off new cases are still dropping but the modelling shows that there are still too many to get on top of contact tracing.  We agree with the policy, but the list of things I am managing without gets longer week by week.  Some things have arrived by post. Having a parcel arrive is quite fun, but I miss the freedom of just being able to drive out and get things when I need them.

 

The last of the kids have been born and are being weaned today.  By next week we should have them all drinking from the feeder and life will be easier.  I start the morning at 7am with the milking and first bottle feeds.  Then I do garden work and do a lunch time bottle feed at 1pm. There is yet another feed after the evening milking at 6pm and then I cook the evening meal and eat it at 7pm.  Edd does the night feed because I refuse to work more than 12 hours a day.  He is Ok because he can have a lie in whilst I do the morning session.

 

Luckily this regime does not go on for long.  The kids can drop back to 2 feeds a day after the milking when they are big enough to drink a litre each at a time.  The biggest problem is that we usually sell all the male kids at an early stage and we need people to be able to come out here for that to happen.  The other problem is that Iris has worked out how to feed her kids through the pen rails which is interfering with our weaning process.  She may have to be shut up in a separate pen away from them every night.

 

The lambs have survived the dreadful weather and are growing quite well.  We need to fix the bottom fence so that we can let the sheep into the hay paddock where the grass is growing. The capeweed is starting to flower but luckily it was dry enough yesterday for me to mow the crofts and cut it all down.  This stops the flowers forming and allows the grass enough light to grow and take over.  We have not finished the redesigned buck pen yet because we stopped working on it to do the shed slab.  We did get a row of posts in. Edd dug the holes by hand which was possible with the ground so wet.  There is an awful lot to do now the weather has improved.

 

Life during the pandemic

 12.8.2020

 

Monday and Tuesday were dry, and I got the washing done whilst Edd and Stevo did the lay out for the concrete base for the new shed.  Then it rained hard again over night and the outdoor work became miserable again.  This is the first winter we have had enough milk to make cheese every second day.  Luckily the hard cheese is actually very nice and keeps well. I have also started marinating the feta, but I have not tested it yet.

 

Soon everything will change when the goats stat kidding in just over a week.  We managed to get the milking machine reconditioned and Edd has brought two new small gates for the kidding pens.  We had gates for them last year but have used them up elsewhere.  In the dry weather we moved the gate on the old drive so that we can put the ram in there again.  The original gate position was before the chook pen gate, and neither Edd nor I were happy to walk past the ram with a bucket of food for the chooks every day.  I doubt we would have made it to the pen.  Now we can get to the chooks without danger and the ram can keep the weeds and grass under control along the rest of the old drive.

 

The next move is to get the concrete truck down the old drive to pour the shed floor. After that we can move the ram.  Then we can redo the buck pen. This will allow us to move the buck out of the stock yards and then we can get the sheep in for crutching and prepare them for sale.  The market is still closed but we might be able to sell them privately once the lock down is over.  Our aim is to be ready if an opportunity arrives.

 

This assumes that the lock down will be over and there is no real evidence that this will be possible yet.  It has been months now and life as we used to live it seems a far, off dream. The death toll in Victoria continues to rise with nursing homes having the heaviest losses.

 I am expecting a food delivery today, but the supermarket has just sent a note to say that about half my order is unavailable.  It hardly seems worth the effort for them to drive out this far.  Getting anything done needs a lot of patience.

 

My mail order of masks has arrived so we have an alternative to adapted socks for when we can get out further afield again.  I have not gone anywhere for ages, so I have not had to wear a mask myself yet.  Edd gets cabin fever if he is stuck on the farm so he is doing all the essential things like collecting mail and animal food.  The bottling machine at the brewery is waiting for a new part from America so there is no barley available for us to pick up this week.

 

We have moved the horses back to the old vineyard paddock where there is more grass and let the goats back down the gulley. The goats can deal with any remaining blackberries and eat up fallen leaves. We just have to try and keep the animals looked after as best we can until the spring growth starts.

I have got a lot of spinning and knitting done this winter

wet weather and war on rabbits

26.5.2020

Edd and Stevo have raised the sides of the vegetable beds by adding planks of timber above the corrugated iron.  This became essential because rabbits worked out how to get into the raised beds and then eat all our seedlings. Since this work was done the replacement seedlings that we put in are doing better, though the cabbage white butterflies are still causing problems with their hungry caterpillars.

We are having the wettest year we have had for years. The mud is horrible and torturous to walk on. I have spent a lot of time spinning and knitting indoors out of the damp. I have lots of grandkids who need winter woollies, especial the ones that do lots of windy beach walks. I should really be working on the accounts but that is not half as much fun.

Like me the goats prefer to be indoors when it rains. We still have plenty of hay so they can feed without walking anywhere if they choose.  The sheep are not so lucky and are having a pretty rough time.  We are feeding them barley, but we will have to do more. Normally we would have sent them off to market by now, but all the sheep markets are closed due to virus worries.  We need to get them salt licks with extra selenium. They need extra selenium in wet years, or the lambs get white muscle disease which kills them.

First frosts of winter

17.5.2020

This weekend we have had glorious clear skies and warm sunshine.  With no aeroplanes flying and reduced traffic the air quality is the best it has been for years. For the last three nights there has been frost so our window of growing for summer crops has ended. We are still eating the last of the tomatoes, but the plants have died.  I dug up the capsicum and brought it into the sunroom.  It did not enjoy being dug up and I thought it would die but it has got over the shock now and accepted indoor living with the chilli plants.

Milk production is gradually slowing but I still get enough to make cheese several times each week.  Today I am making a hard cheese and last Thursday we made feta.  Edd’s young pullets have started to lay. He is guarding them because we have a fox that sits up by the fence on the road looking as if it has evil plans.

We harvested the pumpkins but only the Queensland blues had a good crop. Even some of them have woody patches. Our friends in Healesville have the same problems and none of us know why.  The olives got picked too but I stored them in the fridge as I picked them so that I had a big batch to process and this did not work at all. Obviously not a good idea but at least my new press worked well. I like the idea of producing as many of our needs as possible on the property and we would need a fat or oil source for cooking and soap.  The trees are still small, so this is a very long-term project.

Our house has stayed really warm and is full of winter sun light and rainbows.  We have not had to put up with much in the way of difficulties during this virus lock down period.  I always keep my cellar well stocked and we have not run out of anything we really need.  We have a lady from town staying here in the dong because she was so stressed by being shut in her house with the same people day after day.

6.5.2020

It is so wet! Last week it rained and rained and rained. The slippery mud is horrible, and the goats have stuck firmly to shed living.   It is lucky that Edd was able to get out and bring home extra straw for their bedding.  We sold Gwen so that we could put all last year’s kids with the herd and put the two oldest goats in a separate croft for winter.  The young goats are now all grained to jump onto the bale at feeding time and their elders are teaching them manners.

The chook panic buying made it difficult for us to get our usual supply of point of lay birds, but this problem faded, and we now have sixteen new birds that should lay soon.

New kids on the block

14.4.2020

Our friend from the next valley collected the goats he brought from us this weekend.  I will miss them, but I am relieved to have reduced the number we have to feed.  With five now at their new home we have empty spaces in the last group of six at feeding time, so we have put the largest of last years kids in with the main herd.  Edd has replaced their baby collars with adult sized ones in their team colour.  This age group will be the ‘turquoise terrors’ as they are pretty pushy.

This is their second day with the herd, and they are already pushing out older goats to get into the dairy faster. This morning we even got them all up onto the platform with their heads in the bale. There are still four in a separate pen who will have to wait until later. It is always an interesting time as we get to know the youngster better.  Some are the offspring of our new American buck Barak and they do look a bit different.  The older goats have started to teach them the required behaviour they have to adopt to fit into the herd. I think the ‘blue collar worker’ group from last year are a bit put out.

Our milking machine is playing up again and sound decidedly sick.  Luckily the goats are giving much less milk now that the season is changing so we will soon be able to go back to hand milking.  We think that taking the milking machine to be repaired would count as a legitimate trip out, and at least get us a change of scenery.  We go right down to Warragul for this which is a long trip.

Tomorrow Edd heads back to Ballarat to pick up the rest of the straw and the borrowed trailer that collapsed on his last trip and had to be repaired. The good thing is that he now has room in the ute for more bales as he did manage to get a ton of oats back on the last trip.  With these supplies we should be able to manage for months.

Today we had an early start because Ben was trying to get his demountable home to the new owners.  Indi and Ben have split up and Indi now lives in a rented house with baby Alice.  It is all very sad. The removal was meant to start early and Edd had to be ready at 7am to cut the fence.  Very sensibly the truck decided it was too wet to get into the paddock and everything was cancelled.  We all got out of bed early for nothing.

life under lockdown

4.9.2020

At last the sun has returned and the world looks lovely.  I sat on the roof whilst the dogs ran around and enjoyed the view down the valley.  The two poplar trees are just starting to turn gold. I am so glad they have survived the drought, fires and changes of ownership.  Bambi was in season today and was very co-operative when I had to lead her to the buck’s pen. We have moved Barak into the yards now because when he lived next to the ram. Rombald kept bashing into the fence between them and shorting out all the electric fences.  So much for my thought that they might become friends!

Bambi is the last of the goats that we want pregnant and she came in season today, so five months from now kidding for 2020 will be about ended.  Edd was not here to help move Bambi because he has gone up to Ballarat to pick up a ton of oats, and straw for the winter bedding, but she was very co-operative.  We are pretty sure that this is OK under our lock down rules.  It is getting essential supplies as well as being work related.  I am very much missing having our usual camps and visits. In fact, I miss the part of my day that I had contact with the broader community. There seems more point in doing the work when it is for other people. 

The last week has been wet and wintery.  There is no one delivering concrete, so the car port never got built and the land is eroding fast.  All Edd and Steve’s carefully placed hurdles have been knocked down by falling earth. It is very disheartening.  When it was too wet to work outside, I have been concentrating on cheese and soap making. I think I have about a year’s supply now. 

The summer vegetables are over except for tomatoes.  We have eaten the last egg plants and beans are few and far between.  The pumpkin leaves have started to die so we will have to harvest them next. We still have an occasional zucchini, but lettuce is the most abundant vegetable now.  We get a few snow peas and there is always silver beat and parsley, so all is not lost.  Edd has planted seeds for winter vegetables but they are not ready to go out yet. 

The most annoying thing is that the sheep market at Packenham has closed.   We had hoped that the spare lambs would have been sold in the first week of April, but this could not happen.  Luckily, we still have a lot of grass but the brewery is not selling so much beer now venues have closed and so there is less brewers grain left over for us to use.

dramatic arrival

6.4.2020

Baby Y, a little boy, has now arrived safely but there was no escape from the drama.  Pip and Al did not get off to hospital in time and the baby had to be delivered at home.  Once again this was followed by an ambulance trip for emergency surgery. It all sounds very much like what happened two years ago when P was born. P was very impressed by the fact they had three ambulances outside their house.

This time it was complicated because the hospital had to manage covid19. There is tight security about who was allowed in hospital so only Al could visit Pip and baby.  Bo has been staying down there and helping, mostly looking after p who is now recovering from chicken pox. Al got his roof back on, but Bo says the electric points are still hanging loose and the kitchen units have no doors, so she has been taking P for lots of walks in between rainstorms.

We have had storms and rain here too.  Cold, winter weather has arrived, and I have started to light fires again for hot water and warmth.  Almost all the goats we want to get pregnant are now mated and the kids fully weaned.  This has meant lots of spare milk. so I have been busy most days making cheese and soap.  I am also preparing the tomatoes for freezing and making soup for lunch instead of salads.  I am missing our regular Indian take away on Fridays with our friend Bernie. In fact, I am missing all my friends and relatives.  We have regular phone contact, but it is not as good as actually being with people.

It is very disappointing not to be able to drive down to Ocean Grove to see the new baby.  I am missing all the grandkids, especially the babies who change so quickly. It is P’s second birthday today and I am reduced to singing happy birthday over the phone.  It was my birthday on Saturday, so I cooked us a special lunch and did not clear up until the next day.  Edd brought me some chocolates and Simon called in with a bottle of wine which we all drank sitting apart at suitable spacing.  I don’t suppose he really should have come but I was glad he did.

chook rationing

4.2.2020

The big news today is that Pip has gone into labour.  Bo has driven down to Ocean Grove to look after Pele when they have to go to hospital.  We are all just holding our breath and praying that everything goes OK. None of us could stand another drama like the one we had when P was born. We are also hoping that by the time they get home with the new baby P will no longer be infectious with chicken pox.  There is no way he could be in contact with Pip or the new baby until he is in the clear.

I think that this is the time when Bo takes over as lead woman in our family.  I have had this role since we arrived in Australia as migrants when I was just 30 years old. I have spent the last 42 years trying to keep a strong family ethic where there was always support for everyone and regular get togethers to maintain bonds.  Now we are basically on home detention due to the virus rules.  Bo is picking up post and shopping for us. This is the second week of lock down for us and so far, it is OK. I think that the experience of living in the central desert where there were no shops, banks, cafes or anything was good training.

I did get one trio out this week to picked up my ration of four young chooks.  It has been a huge effort just to get these girls. Chooks have been selling out so fast that there is a shortage!  To get my girls I had to get up really early and drive to the chook farm. The drive out was bliss. The sun was just beginning to shine through the morning mist and the pinnacles were like floating islands in the clouds. Despite my early start there was a queue of people at the chook farm already in line at suitable spacing when I arrived.  Everyone looked deadly intent and there was no conversation.  This was serious business!   

When I got to the front of the queue, I was met at the shop door, my money taken, and a receipt paper handed over.  Next I had to cross the yard to the chook shed where the owner was very busy stuffing cardboard boxes with two chooks each. II did not even get to look at them. It was bizarre, but very efficient. Two boxes were rapidly passed out of the door over a make-shift counter. And I left as soon as possible to let the next person collect his order.

 Apparently, there will be no more available until the end of April, so I am glad I got up at the crack of dawn and get the four that I did.  We usually buy more than a dozen at this time of year if we have not raised our own day-olds, but I do not resent the ration system.  Four chooks would provide enough winter eggs for a family, so It is only fair to share them in this way.

We usually provide eggs for several families but this winter we may have to cut down on this service.  At least we will have eggs for our own family members.  I am told that the local shop only has intensively produced eggs now, but I am relying on second-hand information about shops now.

Other farm work goes on as usual. We borrowed a star picket driver and put in a temporary fence so the goats can come and go from the top paddock and I have been busy making soap and cheese from the goats’ milk.  Our beans are finally stopped producing but a lovely lot of frilly yellow lettuce has germinated and is growing well. 

The big chook chase

4.1.2020

Yesterday I picked up my ration of four young chooks.  It has been a huge effort just to get these girls. Chooks have been selling out so fast that there is a shortage!  To get my girls I had to get up really early and drive to the chook farm.  There was a queue of people already in line at suitable spacing.  Everyone looked deadly serious and there was no conversation.  This was serious business!   

When I got to the front of the queue, I was met at the shop door, my money taken, and a receipt paper handed over.  Next I had to cross the yard to the chook shed where the owner was very busy stuffing cardboard boxes with two chooks each. II did not even get to look at them. It was bizarre, but very efficient. Two boxes were rapidly passed out of the door over a make-shift counter. And I left as soon as possible to let the next person collect his order.

 Apparently, there will be no more available until the end of April, so I am glad I got up at the crack of dawn and get the four that I did.  We usually buy more than a dozen at this time of year if we have not raised our own day-olds, but I do not resent the ration system.  Four chooks would provide enough winter eggs for a family, so It is only fair to share them in this way.

We usually provide eggs for several families but this winter we may have to cut down on this service.  At least we will have eggs for our own family members.  I am told that the local shop only has intensively produced eggs now, but I am relying on second hand information about shops now.

who cut the fences?

30.3.2020

Someone cut the fence between us and the neighbours on the hill.  All seven wires where cut at the same place so it was not an accidental break.  Edd thinks that someone might have shot a deer and had to retrieve it from our side of the fence.  On the positive side, we have met the new owners of Echo Vale who camped up there, last weekend.  They are very much into conservation of the bush land and seem nice, interesting people.  They have found other fences on their land cut, so they have padlocked the gate.

The goats got thought the cut fence onto the hill and even got through after Edd had mended it.  I walked all the way up the fence line, fighting through the ti-tree and blackberries but there was no obvious way the goats were getting out.  I did find that there was water in the broken dam at the foot of the hill, so we have been able to put the horses up there.  Edd is now trying to rig up a temporary fence so the goats can go in the old vineyard paddock where the horses were.

This left the problem of the sheep who had eaten out the first croft.  The ram has already mated several of the ewes, so we decided to put him into the spare buck pen and put the ewes back with the lambs.  Separating the ram from the ewes was a daunting though. He is large, heavy and assertive.  I was lucky, I noticed he was in the buck pen on his own when I went up to stir the cheese.  I snuck up the bank flat out and managed to shut the gate on him before he had realised what I was doing.

Getting the ewes back was easy. They knew what to do and co-operated. The ram and the buck are now eyeing each other off and strutting up and down their pens trying to look dominant.  Who knows, they might become friends in time and if not, they will keep each other exercised!

There are more red tomatoes every day and I am boiling some up this afternoon.  I can do that at the same time as well as making a hard cheese.  I really need to make more soap but that might have to wait until another day.   Edd planted punnets of seeds and they have germinated already.  They were old seeds, so we are very pleased about this.  Now we have to rear them on until they are large enough to plant out in the garden.

Farm work goes on virus or no virus

Barak in his new pen



The sheep in the first croft above the dairy.

21.3.2020

It is the time of year that we usually buy point of lay pullets.  If they come into lay in autumn, they give us a supply of winter eggs just when the older chooks are taking a rest from production. There is an empty chook shed on the old drive but the ram, Rombald, has spent the summer in the drive area and he has become quite assertive.  Last week be tupped Edd when he went in to get me some lemons, and Edd still has the bruises!

We decided that we could move Rombald into the first croft above the dairy and put the older ewes in with him to get mated.  Before we could do this Barak, our buck goat, had to be moved out of his pen into a pen entered by the old drive. Once there we would not have to drag the goats past the ram to get them mated. The young buck, Nick, was in this pen but we have sold him so he could go to the area around the yards to live until he is picked up.  This was all possible but tricky.

Luckily. a teacher who was expecting to be here this week on camp came for a to give us a hand. He happened to be a strong bloke and with his help we moved everything around and even drenched all the sheep and lambs when we separated them.  The sheep had 20 lambs this year and they have all survived thanks to Zulu, the alpaca, who has kept all the foxes at bay.  We will need to sell most of them before the winter sets in so that we are not over stocked.

The problem now is that the business we get our POL chooks from every year is experiencing panic buying and there are no chooks left to sell this week! Maybe next Friday, I am told.  I was a bit worried this might happen but there was no way I could speed up the process and get in sooner.

It has been a perfect week of weather, but the school camp was cancelled due to Covid19 rules.  All our events and camps are now cancelled, but the farm work just has to go on as usual.  The ram is very busy trying to get the ewes pregnant and we are taking selected does to the buck as they come into season.  The snag is that this year we will have lambing and kidding at the same time which will mean a lot of work.

We have sold several of the does to a neighbour and they will go once they are mated and have stopped producing milk.  Once again we need to reduce stock numbers for winter. Last year’s kids are now being weaned and today I had enough milk spare to start making a hard cheese.  I am also boiling up the last of the nashi pears for freezing.  They will go off if I leave them any longer.  As usual we have plenty to do without moving an off the farm.  We are going into lock down mode and I am going to try and make this blog a link to our farm life for anyone interested.

Camps cancelled

14 March 2020

So, Corona virus is dictating a change in how we all live.  In Australia we begin social distancing as of Monday.  Many events are already cancelled, and when I tried to do the months shopping, I found supermarket shelves stripped bare and all sorts of products unavailable.  Toilet paper was the first product o disappear, but now rice, pasta, cleaning stuff and many other things are just gone.  The shop keepers tell me you have to be lined up ready for the fight when the stores open at 6pm if you want any of these goods. 

We have camps for the next two weeks and then the Easter holidays. There is a suggestion that schools will not reopen after the break and some are already preparing on-line home- schooling material.  I know this as Bo’s youngest child is involved.  I am lucky in that I have a large well stocked pantry and fresh milk, eggs, vegetables and fruit all growing here.  I have spent the month freezing pack after pack of round beans and now I am working on the runner beans.  I will probably have to freeze the nashi pears too because we are not eating them fast enough. 

The tomatoes are now ripening but not in the usual quantities.  Last year we got so many we were preserving them by the bucket full. The sweet corn crop was disappointing too after the rat attack. Finally, the lettuce is ready. and we have silver beet and kale, it is about time to start winter seedings, but I need space in the garden, and means to stop the cabbage white butterflies from getting at them.  The pumpkins have spread across a huge area of bank after they climbed out of the new bed we built, but the egg plants are better behaved and are propped up by a massive growth of basil.  We are eating very well at present

16.3.2020.

Victoria is now in emergency mode with heavy fines if people break quarantine rules. Already we notice a drop in air traffic over head similar to what occurred after 19.11.  yesterday the school phoned and cancelled the camps.  I was really relieved, but it was strange to wake up this morning and not have a day’s work already planned.  It is a beautiful, fresh, sunny. autumn day and at least farm work precedes as normal.  

Yesterday, we sold 5 goats to a neighbour. I hate parting with them. but we must reduce stock numbers for winter.  Ay least they are all going together so will be with friends. and our neighbour already owns two of our goats so it will be great for them.  Mating season is now in full swing and our new buck is busy earning his keep.  Our plan is to move the ram off the drive this week and get new point of lay chooks to supply winter eggs.

I just hope there are sill chooks for sale.  With so much panic buying going on getting even unusual things is growing hard.  Supermarkets are degrading into battle scenes!  Let us hope there is not a rush on chooks.  Edd and I had paid for tickets to see a dance show in Melbourne for my birthday.  We have not been to any show for years, so it was to be a rare treat.  Guess what, Its cancelled.  Just my luck!

Red mud arrives from the Malley

A dust storm has polluted all the water

Fire

It is hard to know what to write.  Australia is in Crisis with out of control fire storms tearing through bush, farms and townships.   Finally, the forces have been activated and the reserves have been called out to help.  Most people feel it is too little, too late and our PM is being heavily criticized for refusing to meet with fire services in the winter and put plans in place for this type of emergency.

Today, we have a reprieve from the scorching conditions and a cool change has brought some welcome rain. It is not making much difference in other places where the wind change tended to make things worse.  Even though the fires have not reached the Yarra Valley most people are directly affected in some way. My friend’s youngest brother has died on his farm and our next-door neighbour in NSW is under ember attack.  We will be lucky if our property up there does not burn.

Strangely the nearest town, Cooma has had an extra problem with flooded streets and houses when a massive water tank burst. Typical Australia. You are busy trying to survive one form of danger and another sneaks up from behind and gets you whilst you are preoccupied.  There is so much happening that you have to actively search the internet for specific places to know of anything dramatic is going on.

Our media is full of apocalyptical pictures of red skies and people huddled on beaches as a last resort.  The roads are mostly closed so thousand are being rescued by sea.  This means holiday makers have to abandon their cars and trailers, but even where roads are open the lack of power limits the availability of fuel.  This crisis is terrible, but the longer-term effects will cause problems for years as we well know. On the land fences and fodder are all lost and cannot be easily replaced.

We have got most of the hay in, thanks to Morg and his friend, but a shed full of hay is also a big fire risk. Luckily the farm buildings are well away from our house. We are preparing our property as best as we can.  We are putting the farm equipment in our fire reserve and moving any essential stuff to the house cellar.  On Friday we had a digger come and excavate a hole in the bank for us to put up a car port by the house.  The pile of earth at the side is actually a welcome fire barrier.  I have given up caring about aesthetics!

 We are not sure what to do with the gas tanks.  They are prone to explode in extreme heat and go off like bombs.  I feel that they should be thrown into the dam but Edd says this is impractical.  Luckily the gas tank for our house is in a pit behind the house roof but we have tanks for the donga and dairy that are actually close to the hay shed which is not a good look!

In the last fires we got all our animals into our fire reserve and they survived OK, so we plan to do the same again.  The wild animals are more at risk and there are fears that rare species could be wiped out completely.  I suppose the same applies for flora.  It will be a long time before the full effects of this calamity can be assessed