Let then year begin

January 3

We are waiting to hear if the hay has been baled and getting increasingly worried. The temperature is forecast to be above 40C tomorrow ,followed by rain next day!  I have been trying to get help from travellers through the workaway scheme, but they  will arrive too late.  The good thing is that this has all helped us forget about the other big problem. Namely, the water in the main house has somehow got polluted!  It all started after a big rain a few weeks ago but since then we have changed things so that the water is supplied to the house from the same tank as the dairy and the donga , where the water is OK. Mysteriously this has not helped, and we still get very dirty looking water out of our taps at intervals.

I have put an extra filter on in the dairy and we can fill milk bottles with clean water to use for drinking and cooking. The water is good enough to shower with and flush toilets, so it is a problem we can manage for now.  We lived with polluted water in the Northern Territory desert for several years, so I have experience with this sort of thing.

Today I am cleaning up the donga for the workaway people.  I think I have two blokes coming in the next few days.  We have plenty of work for them even if the hay is done.  Last year Lyn helped us one day a week , which was good but was not enough to get things done in a way that we were progressing with farm re-establishment.  Jobs have been on the go for over a year and I can see that Edd and I have far more to do than we are capable of. Years ago, we managed by having travellers called wwoofers who did farm work in exchange for board, so I am going to try this again this year.

January 1. 2019

The new year has begun but we did not party to welcome it in. We are very much in the back to work mode already.  It seems that our hay will be cut this week and we are very short of able bodied workers to cart it into the shed.  Ben is away, and Indi is far to pregnant fort heavy work.  Simon has gallantly offered some help and I can drive the ute and trailer, but it is not an event I am looking forward to.

I have also begun the preparation work for the Montessori conference day we are hosting in just over a week.  Yesterday I concentrated on the work sheets and have most of that done but there is a lot of cleaning up to do everywhere.  It is a strange year with green grass still growing where usually everything is burnt  into inaction. I have had to mow everywhere round the house and ruins and Edd has mowed the old hay paddock and moved the sheep below the big dam.

The pumpkins have gone berserk and taken over most of the vegetable gardens, but the lettuces are struggling with the heat.  The tomatoes are ripening ,the basil has grown well, and the cucumbers are nearly large enough to pick.  We have mizuna , wild rocket , cabbages and beans of various types.  I am freezing lots of the beans for eating later in the year when we are sick of swiss chards.