Fire season but not here

More tomatoes ready for the freezer.

February 15 2017

This weeks the nights and mornings have been cool but the day heats up as it goes on, and the plants still need watering.  There have been horrific fires in NSW, with several houses and lots of stock lost but fortunately no lives. We had one day of very strong winds and fire danger but luckily no fires started. This is the same time of year as the 2009 fires so they are in everyone’s minds. 

Pay TV has shown the film we were in that followed 3 families through the fire recovery period and for good measure they put on our grand designs show again.   Rather too much exposure!  Everyone in Yarra Glen feels obliged to tell us we have been spotted.  Morg was also on TV last week, flying drones at his school, but only Wayne spotted him.  We went down and saw Wayne and family last weekend.    Little Ella is very cute and is now starting to talk.  It is a long way to their house so we don not visit as much as we would like.

We were hoping that we could fly up to Brisbane to see Josh and partner but we are in the middle of lots of jobs that have to be done urgently and the chance of going anywhere seems to have slipped away.  I think it will be best of we postpone the trip until winter when the farm work is at a minimum.  One good thing has happened.  The timber mill delivered our yearly supply of hard wood off cuts for the wood stove.  The truck drives into our big shed and tips off the load.  It is the easiest job of the year and means we have hot water and hot radiators as well as cooking all winter for a very reasonable price.

The first Permaculture field trip came last Saturday. I think perhaps I am taking too much for granted.  No one seemed to have any idea that you milked goats twice a day. I sort of think that everyone knows how their food is produced, but maybe I am not right.  Yesterday I brought a new mobile phone.  It is a very basic model with buttons but amazingly no instructions.  I asked the man in the shop and he said how to use it was obvious!   Well, not to me, it has a red slide knob on the back that could do anything.  With living in an area with no mobile coverage I rarely use mine, but I have used them enough to know that they are all slightly different. I think the gap of understanding between rural and city folk is widening fast.

The fence below the dam is down because of the fallen trees and the goats have discovered that there is nothing to stop them coming up into the house area.  They are now restricted to a small croft by the shed until we get the fence fixed.  Edd is still working on the new water tank.  We have totally cleaned it and are now waiting for Ben’s friend to do some welding so that we can put the roof on. Edd still has some cracks to fill as well but we are making progress.