enhancing,connecting, embracing

23.16.2013

We have a helper this weekend. Arden is staying and doing all the jobs that I have put off because they were in the too hard category.  He has pulled out all the bricks that made a path down to the toilet in the ruins and stacked them by the new house so they can be used to build a water feature. This means that the area by the donga will be much easier to mow now. It is important to keep all the grass short because it is still extremely dry and hot and there are fires starting everywhere.

Next he shifted compost from the piles mucked out of the goat shed to my vegetable garden and later if he has any energy left he can hammer in fence posts for a sheep paddock. We fetched the new young ram from Seymour last week so I am keen to move all the sheep onto better grazing. It is fantastic having a young fit worker on the farm again. Edd, Beni and I do our best but we are all limited by age and health issues.

The next job is to core fill the block walls round the base of the goat shed. Once that is done Stevo and Edd can put up the rest of the walls. There is still lots of work needed to get back the amenities we had before the fires but now Edd is teaching two days a week things are going even slower.

I am so glad I resigned from the fire recovery committee. There is trouble brewing over what a logo should look like! I worked with that group for a year to try and get help for people still struggling with big life issues and not having proper housing, I do not think a logo is needed and care even less what it looks like!

Even so, we all had a laugh last night because the words under the logo said “enhancing, connecting, embracing”. Edd felt they were really suitable for this time of year as it is mating season for goats and sheep in the valley. The male goats enhance themselves by spraying their heads with urine and semen (they can’t get to a shop to buy aftershave), but if all goes to plan this will be followed by a lot of connecting and embracing so that we will have a crop of goatlings next year.

Bo and family are now in England staying with my mother. I was thrilled to hear how happy she sounded now that she can meet those three great grand children for the first time. I feel like phoning up every day so that I can share in the experience but I do not think anyone would really appreciate that! We all had a send off party for them at Bo’s house last Sunday. India came because she was picking up our old ram who we are giving to the camp.

He is extremely heavy but we managed to roll him into a wheelbarrow and then into a trailer. We loaded him into India’s van at the last minute after the party for the trip to his new home. The mind boggles at trying to imagine how they will get him across the river to the camp. Maybe on the flying fox? We have not heard from India since she left but we do know there are strong young men at the camp so she will have had help.

Dry and dangerous

11.16.2013

It is still very hot and dry. Yesterday thunderstorms set off fires all over the place. The closest was in Dixon’s creek, just over the hills to the southeast. Most of the fires have been controlled fairly fast but those in the mountains above India’s camp are still going. Sadly two fires fighters were killed last week when a falling tree hit their vehicle. One was a young girl, about India’s age who was having a gap year before starting university. She even looked a bit like India. I so feel for her family.

I have to spend a lot of time giving plants water every day. I do it by hand so that we can use the minimum water possible but it is a real effort. I am just managing to keep the young trees going and the vegetables are a bit protected in their grow beds. At last the tomatoes are all turning red but the pumpkins are not doing so well as they struggle in the heat. Perhaps I planted too many zucchinis and cucumbers and not enough pumpkins.

Yesterday we all went out for the day to Seymour alternative farming expo. We went in Beni’s ute so that we could drop off the wood stove that was in the dairy cottage and get it reconditioned. Beni will need it in the donga for the winter. After that we were free to walk round the show, which was quite large. I had to collect seaweed meal and sulphur that I had ordered from Vitec. Luckily I had remembered to take a shopping trolley with wheels, as it was too heavy to carry.

It was very hot and by lunchtime everyone’s enthusiasm was melting away. I left Edd sitting on a straw bale under a tree and went off to find Beni. Actually, she found me, and then together we found the sheep pavilion that Edd and I had missed earlier. Here we were very lucky and found a young moorit ram for sale, which was exactly what I was looking for. In theory, India is going to pick up our ram to take to her camp and we need unrelated bloodlines. Moorit sheep have brown wool right down to their skin and are fairly rare. I only have one moorit ewe left and some white cross breds.

Edd’s legs were very painful when we got home but his doctor has told him he has a bakers cyst behind his knee which is just what a neighbour said weeks ago. Edd went to see her last night and she explained her method for draining fluid away from the cyst and getting some relief. Edd tried it last night and reports some improvement.

He is now settled into the new job but finds that the paper work is so over the top that it impacts on how much they can achieve. He really likes the kids and says that they are putting lots of effort into getting their work done. They are actually far ahead of the standard that everyone thought they had reached. The high school is starting their visits again this week but unfortunately they can only come on Wednesdays when Edd is working away. I have managed the kids on my own before the fires so I can probably cope again and I have told their teacher that he is in charge of discipline!

bridge over the moat and stone garden

First signs of autumn

11.2.2013

My grand daughter, India, seems determined to fight a fire, so we have all stepped back and let her get on with it. There has been another week of fires through the Gippsland mountains and India and her fellow workers returned after a week away to their camp just the day before the fires started to move again. Luckily the camp had lots of support from the CFA in the form of water bombing planes and fire trucks and the cabin was saved. I am just relieved that it is now in the black and altogether a safer place to be. India has told Al that dead trees falling poses a problem stopping the school children hiking up some trails but they are not coming back for a while. India was quite determined to be in the fire fighting action but this time the fire was burning slowly so we did not worry so much.

The weather is staying hot and dry but now the nights are cooler and there are many signs that the season is changing. We are now turning our minds to preparations for winter. John brought his equipment here last Friday and made footings for the animal shed walls. This only took him half a day so he mucked out the goat shed too and we now have mountains of deep litter in the paddock below the house. We hope that Beni’s son is coming to build the block walls this week and then if we can find Stevo we can put up the rest of the walls with corrugated iron. Once that is done we will have a dry place to store firewood and the goats and hay will be better protected from the elements.

In the garden we still have a glut of zucchinis but finally the tomatoes are ripening and we have plenty of cucumbers, eggplants and silver beet to add variety. I am enjoying the wonderful aroma of fresh basil and garlic in the pesto and there are still lots of strawberries to fill up on. Sadly the hot dry conditions have impacted on the fruit trees and for the first time ever there are no apples or plums. We have a few pears and nashi pears on the new trees I planted beside the fence and the blackberries have survived in the gullies.

The agapanthus and red-hot pokers are starting to fade but the autumn glory sedum are staring to colour up. Now that I have a new supply of shed compost I can get working on the garden and revive things a bit. I have to water everything every evening if I want any garden at all. Fortunately my rock garden by the new house is much less demanding.

Edd is into his third week at his new job. He was due to have his other leg tested at the hospital yesterday but they cancelled the appointment so he is still suffering with very painful legs. He actually felt better after working last week because he spent less time walking around the farm. When he is here he uses the ride on mower as transport. It will fit over the moat bridge and drive right into the house entrance if needed. We allowed for this in the design but we did not think it would be needed so soon!

Justin's new metal work

Time for change

29.1.2013

It rained a little last night, and when we woke the dry, bleached grass was a stronger gold colour and all the trees seemed to be sighing with relief. It was Edd’s first day of off farm work since the fires so we got going a bit earlier than usual and as I could miss out on the vegetable morning watering work it was more peaceful than usual here. Beni and I milked the goats and fed the animals before separating to tackle other issues. For myself I had a mountain of washing to sort and iron and Bernie went off looking for a job.

It was Australia day on Saturday and we hosted a party for the members of Edd’s Welsh choir and their wives. Luckily the day was slightly over cast, so although it was dry it was not too hot. The ruins are a perfect venue under these conditions and I think between fifty and sixty guests shared the day with us. Bo did the catering and that left Edd and I free to work on the venue. Everyone was interested to look round the underground house so that had to be cleaned up too. It was all very possible and went as well as I could hope for.

This concludes all the festivities around the turn of the year and we can now get back to sorting out farm issues. Edd fixed the fence between the hill and us yesterday so that we can move the horses there for the next half-year. It is a good place for them with a hill for exercise and shelter in the ti-tree thicket around the dam. I checked last week and there is very little grazing left. Kangaroos, rabbits and wombats seem to have eaten everything low growing. One day I even spotted a herd of about a dozen deer up there! The horses are still fat and a little hay each day keeps them going through the colder months.

Once we move the horses we can start feeding the sheep barley, if we tried now the horses would chase the sheep away and make themselves sick on it. We are waiting for John to do the shed wall foundations so that we can get a wall up to protect the hay and fire wood before the weather changes. A change has already started. The goat’s milk has dropped enormously this week and it is time to wean the kids and make sure the bucks cannot get near the does.

Justin came today with the metal screen door for our only west-facing window. It is designed to reduce the light if needed and give some protection from fire. Once again he has used a bull rush design and it is a wonderful artwork even when pulled back to the open position. He really is a very talented young man.

India phoned yesterday asking if I could pick her up from Alexandra and give her a lift down to the Yarra Valley. She first said Friday, then Thursday, but today I hear from Bo that she really meant Wednesday, which is tomorrow! I am not sure if her car will be ready by then, Edd is checking tonight. It has needed a lot of work doing to get it in good running order. Once I have sorted the ironing and packed away all the party table clothes.  I now need to concentrate on the accounts. I do not feel like starting new jobs or doing any art until everything is ship shape.

India safe

21.1.2013

India phoned tonight. She has been taken out of the camp and is away from where the fires are heading. The relief for everyone here is enormous.

My biggest worry is that I myself may have been part of the problem. We have all tried to keep going after the fires here and stay optimistic. What we have not done is clearly communicate exactly what it is really like to be in a fire storm. Perhaps we should have stressed how bad it was instead of focussing on how we coped. I say this because even now we hear people on the radio stating the sort of mythology that we trusted before we had the experience. I am pretty sure that they have never faced a tsunami of fire approaching with the noise and apparent speed of a jet plane.

Have they struggled to find their way in air that is so thick it blankets out all light and totally disorients you whilst you struggle to breathe? Have they discovered that in a valley a fire front may pass over, but that you will still be bombarded with fire bombs for hours after all your water pumps have run out of fuel or died for lack of oxygen. Have they known what it feels like when is neighbour is burning to death just down the road because they made a wrong choice at a critical moment?

It does not end there either. Problems with health, mental and physical continue in our valley even after four years. The climate has changed. The problems have increased and I applaud our PM for acknowledging this.

Now that this drama seems resolved we have to try and remember where we were at before we dropped everything except our concern for India.

The ground water table seems to have dropped suddenly in a way it did not even do at the end of the drought and we are having a battle to keep even the established fruit trees alive. The feed is also burnt off in the paddocks and because the fences are not yet all replaced after the 2009 fire we have limits on usable space. We have all the materials now to build new stockyards but the ground is rock hard and friends report that if they try to knock in posts they just shatter. This job might have to wait.

I will deal with it all tomorrow.