Floods , virus, intense heat and storms Typical Australia

 30.1.22

 

The weather is weird. We have had scorching hot dry days followed by mega storms that produced more rain faster than ever before.  It is not only local.  The Stuart high way, the road that runs straight up the middle of Australia between port Augusta and Darwin is covered with flood water below Cooper Pedi and trucks could not get through. Even the train rails were washed away so trucks tried to take a 3000k detour through Queensland but now that route is flooded as well. The troops are going to fly food in but all the smaller runways are dirt and only helicopters could land. Mean while super market shelves are bare in several isolated towns.

 

Today it is hot and humid.  The first tomatoes have ripened and been eaten for lunch and the sweet corn are small but delicious. Bo’s family have just got over covid and are able to get out of the house again.  Edd and I had our booster jabs on Friday so we feel a little bit safer.  The brewery staff have been sick too but luckily not Simon or Josh. The latter was meant o be up in the NT doing remote Audiology work but with floods and communities locked down for covid it is not happening.  NSW has the most sick people but even in Victoria there are so many people sick or in quarantine that staff shortages are a problem.  Basically, there are problems coming at us from all angles. Inflation too. 

 

Our house stays an acceptable temperature held steady by its underground nature and the goats do not mind the heat at all. We have been very lucky and found a fit young worker who comes on Fridays and helps with everything. He can bounce over fences and chuck hay bales about like pillows. He can drive the tractor, the chainsaws and the weed Wacker and is used to handling stock. He helped us move the Persian lambs out of the shed and onto the old drive way. They were shut in the front section for a week but I am gradually letting them access to more grass each day.  They are so greedy that I was worried they would over eat on grass and get sick if their diet changed too fast.

 

We are now starting to wean the goat kids. They have their last evening milk tonight and then just the morning milk until the end of next month. They are now so pushy that they spill lots of milk just being too boisterous so it is well and truly time. They now have hard feed twice a day and are learning to put their heads through the training bail bit of fencing to reach their food. We cannot let them join the main herd until weeks after they are off all milk and so will not start sucking the milking goats.

The virus hits home

14.1.22

 

Things are not going well. Bo is in isolation having caught covid from Ollie. Morg and Silky tested negative but had symptoms.    It took so long to get tested, let alone get results that who knows.    Al was also sick. He queued 3 hours the first day before being turned way but made it to the test the second day and that came back negative. Even if the results are negative, you and your family still miss several days of work before you get the all clear. This has resulted in a real hit for the work force in general and follows through to empty super market shelves and not enough hospital staff.

 

The ambulances are also not coping with the demand. There was a red alert this week and some people waited 8 hours for help. The virus has now spread into Aboriginal communities and is making life hell again in nursing homes.  Many people are avoiding restaurants and other venues as not worth the risk so with low staff and customer    numbers they are about in the same mess as when we had lock downs but are now without government support.

 

On the farm it has been very hot, above 30 most days and very dry. Plants and animals need extra care to make sure they get enough water. This means extra work for us.  Edd is struggling to walk at all with his damaged hip but elective surgery is on hold and all the hospitals are coping with the pandemic and emergencies, so the chance of a hip replacement has gone down for now. We are very lucky that Sev is able to give us a few hours work each week. He rang me looking for part time work this year, which was amazingly good timing.

 

The zucchini glut has started. They were an amazing dietary addition for the first two weeks but we are over loaded with them now. The tomatoes have green fruit so we can expect them soon and we have eaten the first cucumber. The warrigal greens are pretty drought resistant but the sweet corn have not grown very tall. We ate the first runner beans this week and the round beans will be next on the menu. It is a pity all the lettuces bolted. Luckily the wild rocket is still going strong.

The chooks josh raised have started to lay. Only 8 of the 24 were female but we have already cooked quite a lot of the males and I have a year’s worth of beautiful chicken stock and pots of dog food.  Josh brings then to the house all ready for the pot which is a blessing. Two lucky roosters will live on and each get their own hareem of chooks.  Josh can choose the survivors. He gave Bo 4 chooks and we have 4 here but I will buy point of lay hens to make up the numbers in Autumn.

 

Hay home for new year

 2.1.2022

 

I have just taken down the Xmas tree, tied it up into three bundles and jammed them back into a very old deteriorating box.  It has been so hot this week that even this artificial tree was shedding its paper needles.  This is the same old tree that we had years ago before the fires.  It survived because it was in the cellar and I am nursing it along in its old age. 

 

On a more important note, we have got the hay in.  Bo, her two boys Edd and Graeme carted it home from Healesville and I did the routine work and provided food and drink.  Wayne had sorted the shed out the night before and Josh stacked the last load. The best bit was that it was not really hot. This is very unusual and ninety present of the time we cart hay it is scorching.  The weather has made up for it since then, so we were very lucky.

 

I spend a lot of time each morning watering plants.  My vegetables have survived but the hop plant got really desiccated yesterday and the elderberries trees took a big hit. I have given water to the other food producing trees and they still look OK. I have harvested the garlic and netted the fruit trees but it is hard to do much more that essentials in this heat.  Our new worker, Sev, came and helped us by whipper-snipping round the vegetable beds and ruins garden. It had got to the stage that snakes could not be spotted and as they tend to go where the water is I was not at all happy.  At least that problem has now been dealt with.

 

I have not seen a snake on our property this year but I have encountered the big blotched blue tongue lizard that helps us deal with slugs and snails. I am always happy to see these reptiles. Josh tells me that we have a long-necked tortoise in the dam, but I have not seen it.  Josh and CB are off on a four day hike up in the Kosciusko wilderness area in NSW. It seems very quiet now only Edd and I are on the farm.

 

The news here is not good. Most of our anti-virus restrictions were lifted before Xmas, and now the numbers of cases have gone ballistic.  The services are being overwhelmed and I fear things will dissolve into chaos.  Edd and I have tried to get booster shots but we have not found anywhere local that is doing them yet.  Apparently, our immunity from the first two shots will be almost zero by this stage.  We are not going anywhere we don’t need to.  This is not a good way to start the new year!