2 steps backward

 28.5.2021

 

We are in the two steps backward stage. Rain has made it impossible to continue work on the carport and we are back in lockdown for at least a week. This time it is the Indian variant that is spreading in the community. Someone caught it in hotel quarantine, and it has spread very rapidly through community contact.  I am booked in for my first vaccination next week, but it still feels a bit like playing Russian Roulette as we hear of more clotting cases.  

 

I have been busy cooking. With an extra body here our food consumption has shot up.  It is now worth the effort of baking bread and turning all the leftovers into soup.  I am missing the zucchinis and we have probably harvested the last of the tomatoes. We got a huge harvest from the quince tree, and we have sold some at market as well as given heaps away. I am slowly tackling the pumpkins with the aid of a small hatchet I got at St. Andrew’s market and rendering them into freeze able form.

 

Josh has done a total sort out and clean in the mud room. This has helped sort out the stored vegetables and allowed josh to convert the space to some sort of laboratory. He has a large container bubbling away in one of the sinks and something massive called a heffor filter,

 (No-idea how it is spelt) is now taking up most of one worktop.   Obviously, Josh has not changed during his years away.  This morning he has ignores the weather and planted replacements for the stone pines that the deer totally destroyed. More trees survived than we expected but we have been rearing replacements in pots to fill the gaps.

Progress with the car port at last.

 27.5.2021

 

We have been lucky. The weather managed to stay dry and warm enough to allow work on the car port.  Josh dug the mud out of the trenches and he and Edd laid down the drainage pipes and covered them with chippings. They then fixed Drain cell to the walls and put in the down pipes that will take water from the future guttering.    Then it was a matter of getting Skiddy, our geriatric skid steer loader and carefully tipping scoria behind the walls.    Edd worked the loader and Josh got behind the walls and raked it into the correct places. My job was sweeping up spilt stuff and painting water proofer onto the front of the wing walls.

 

The result pf all this effort is that we are no longer worried about mud being washed down into the cavity between the walls and the earth cut out. Actually, we now need mud there and hopefully a bigger, younger piece of equipment will arrive next week and move the huge pile of dug out mud into its final location.  We can now park our cars in this space, but we cannot put the roof on until the steel beams arrive.  Edd borrowed Josh’s car and drove up to Shepparton last week to put in the order for the steel, so that is on the way too. 

 

We just got our work done before a storm hit us. Lots of rain turned the drive into a muddy mess and the power was off for most of the evening.  We have candles and Josh has all sorts of torches so with the gas cooker we could do all the usual evening stuff.  The water can run by gravity, even without pressure pumps and the fires use the dead wood we have collected. Josh has set up a way we can have music on our speaker from our mobile phones, so we had a very relaxing evening.

 

Edd is still feeling very sore after running into the glass door at the post office last week.  

(This is dead true; I swear I did not hit him).  He got two black eyes, a massive scab on his nose and a sore hip and wrist from when he fell backwards.  The people around him wanted to call an ambulance but he just came home and has been going a bit slowly.  He found that working on skiddy made his head woozy and his hip painful.  He has stayed at home until he has begun to look a bit more presentable.

 

This meant that it was only Josh, Bo and I who went to the opening of a friend’s exhibition in town.  The traffic was awful, and it took ages to get there but we had a good time to talk and enjoyed the exhibition when we finally arrived. The art was all these pastels still life works that vibrated with colour.  Josh liked one of sunflowers the most. Sadly, our friend’s husband was not there due to worsening dementia, that was just starting when we were last together about two years ago.

 

The big news is that Bo’s family is considering buying a Tesla car. Simon is test driving one this week. We get together with Bo’s family most Sunday evenings for a family meal around the huge table in her new house.  The whole family is much happier in the new place.  The boys are both in trade apprenticeships and only Silky is still at school. 

 

 

fungal forays

16.5.2021

 

This weekend a cold front has hit us and combined with the wet weather to insure we keep outdoor work to a minimum.  Josh has been foraging and arrived home with pine and field mushrooms in abundance.  Field mushrooms are common on our farm, but pine mushrooms are harder to find. I have never actually found any but obviously I have not looked hard enough because Josh found them growing under our old Xmas tree today.

 

Yesterday we went to our friends 50^th wedding anniversary at DeBortoli’s. We had a wonderful afternoon catching up with many of the friends who worked with us in the desert. That was about 30 years ago now, so we have known them a long time and we have a rather special bond with them after all the time we spent living and working together. It was real community living with all our time spent in walking distance of each other. Josh had been too young to remember most of the people there, but they all remembered him.

It was a great way to spend a miserable cold wet afternoon.

 

A sea of mud is developing in front of the house where the drive has been dug up to build the car port.  Edd put down a load of chippings but they immediately sank into the mud and have done little to improve anything. On a better note, our new storage shed has stayed completely dry, and the water is draining away from behind it down the gully.  The shed has an open front, but it is in the rain shadow of the larger shed and the rain so far has never blown in.

 

Storage in the house is harder. Josh and all his stuff have to be fitted in somewhere. Josh is using the spare room for storage and has out his swag down in the back storage space. He finds he is less disturbed there.  We hoped he could have his own space in the site office, but it is too damp, and the roof has started to leak again so that idea failed.  I really enjoy having him home after so many years so accommodating him with some of our space is fine.  I imagine he will get sick of it long before I do. 

 

 

 

Changes

 4.5.2021

 

It is horrible outside today. Cold damp and miserable. Even the dog would not come outside to do the farm work with me!  The mornings chores are not so bad once I start.  We do the same routine every day, so it is like a dance routine, and works out so everything gets fed and the goats milked with the minimum of effort. If we follow the same routine everyday all the buckets and gear end up in the right places without having to think about it.

 

Luckily until yesterday the weather was sunny and dry.  Edd and I worked on the drainage and water proofing of the car port walls. We are not quite finished, but we are getting there.  We would not be this far if it were not for our son Josh.  He was over from Perth and dug out behind the walls to make room for the drainage pipes.  We have been unable to find anyone who would do this job by machine or hand, so we were extremely grateful for Josh’s superb effort.

Sadly, he was able to help because he and his partner of several years have split up.  I really thought they were a good match and wish they could have sorted out a shared future that suited them both.  When there seemed no hope of a new start Josh flew back to WA to pick up his car and cleanout his stuff from their rented house.  He should arrive back here any time now.  It is a marathon road trip so I will be much happier when he is safely home.

 

Travelling in Australia is a bit unpredictable at the moment. Whenever a case of Covid gets found in the community there is the risk of lockdowns and border closures. It is possible to get stuck away from home or sent into expensive and not very safe hotel quarantine.  There were some cases in Perth recently, but Josh has managed to get backward and forward without penalties. He says he has had no check points on the journey, but there was no guarantee what he would encounter.

 

We have more drama coming up with my granddaughter. She has been told that she must move out of the house she rents in September. This is such a shame as she has worked so hard on the garden. She has beautifully tended vegetable plots where there was once a scrappy lawn, and she has a small pen for her chickens in a corner under a tree where nothing would grow. For her daughters second birthday she has set up and repaired a little cubby house for her and her friends to play in.  We are worried now because for her to find another rental place as nice that she can afford will be really hard.  

 

On a better note, Bo’s family look really happy in their new house. Edd and I joined them and Simon’s parents for a meal last Sunday