Week Nine - March 5

Overwhelmingly dry.

February experienced the lowest rainfall in 80 years. This is clearly seen when we look out the window and wince at the state of the garden. As we harvest peanuts, sunflowers, sorghum the ground is left bare as there is not enough soil moisture to plant more. I'm raising seedlings in trays and hoping there will be enough rain soon to warrant planting them out. Greywater is used to keep maturing crops alive and my watering habit is around two hours a day.

After last year in which we saw 80 mm of rainfall from April through to September, we had hoped to have had a longer reprieve from such desperation. This is not to be the case. As this is the main growing season it's looking fairly disastrous. Trev biked to the library and copied the rainfall totals since 1870 and we've been entering them into a spreadsheet and looking forward to crunching some data. (we're not so hungry that I'm referring to using our teeth). Though we may have to eat our words if this continues and we fail. What we're looking for is if this is a global warming trend, or whether the rainfall has always been so variable.. and so far it seems that some of the worst years were in the 1800's. Which would seem to refute the effects of Global Warming.

The main goat food crops like pigeon pea, arrowroot, mulberry, lab lab have all slowed down and we are barely keeping up with feeding Possum. We bartered 4 large pumpkins, a fetta, 2 dozen eggs, sweet potato, eggplants, chillies and fresh figs in exchange for money, which we spent on goat food rather than human staples.

We are eating well as we are keeping the veggie garden going with tank water. But it looks dismal. None of the lushness of even a month ago. How quickly things change.

Trev, who was keen on seeing how we would cope if things became lean, should be happy, but isn't. Caleb and I both had the flu this week, and I managed to score an additional ear infection. Something I'm prone to.

On the positive side ... the snake beans are producing, we've pulled up our first lot of Jerusalem artichokes, the chooks are laying well and we were invited to dinner during the week and had a lovely evening with food and good friends. We'll be returning the favour in a weeks time, which should fulfill the barter aspect of our free feed. (thanks Marguerite).

There is also rumours of storms for Sunday. Ones that seem to be withdrawn and reinstated with each weather report and our hopes make good yo-yo's. We've got our fingers, hooves and chook talons crossed for a deluge.

Week Ten - 12 March

Still no sign of rain. We look like heading towards a new record low. While we still have tank water, that will not be the case if this continues. Trev and I took a walk around the garden together last night and arrived back at the house under a rainless cloud of depression. What we wouldn't give for a year of average rainfall.

Possum's stubbornness was almost her downfall this week. We arrived at the goat pen to find a lethargic goat, she didn't meet us at the gate, as per usual trying to shove her nose in the bucket before we can get it into the trough, instead she was led out of her 'house' and it became obvious something was wrong. She kept stretching, occasionally pawing at the ground, which she did while in labour and is a symptom of pain, and she had a big bloated belly. Her diet has been erratic of late as we've tried to reintroduce her to foods she enjoyed when she first arrived here almost two years ago, but soon gave up in preference for the lusher, tastier varieties we were spoiling her with. Ice cream bean tree, and a variety of fabaceae are not on Possum's 'idea of edible' list. But now the pigeon pea, arrowroot and lab lab are growing only under great sufferance I've been offering them to her and she sniffs them and then turns disdainfully away. I've tried to match her stubbornness with one as stiff willed as her own. I failed; she ended up with colic, we suspect from the reduced amount of roughage in her diet. This was the first time we needed to call a vet. She arrived and quickly diagnosed colic and down went a long tube into Possum's stomach along with half a bucket of water and a litre of paraffin oil. By lunchtime she was back to her usual self, standing up on the fence and 'yelling' at me for more food. Which I provided in the form of medicinal amounts of bought Lucerne, and the usual scroungings. The need to do this is in direct correlation to the lack of rain. I had expected the last two months to be a possible dietary issue for Possum, but not half way into the third month.

Caleb is also proving to be as stubborn as Possum on the food front. He will not eat dead dog donuts any longer (only ever offered to him twice), nor salted, roasted peanuts, nor such treats as coconut macaroons, or vanilla custards and kumara chips are definitely out. Dinner time is fraught. The only thing he wants is homemade kebabs and raw carrot, and of course large amounts of watermelon.

One night during the week I made omelette pancakes full of chopped herbs, and smothered in a thick tomato mix, which is then folded twice over into a triangular stack. Trev and I loved them, Caleb refused to even look, and in protest filled his plate with water in an effort to make it inedible. We're not impressed. This is, however, Caleb's normal response to food, in his on again, off again fluctuations. But it's hard not to draw a connection to the experiment. If the same food was wrapped in colourful paper, boxed and served with a toy, it would transform from odious to 'oh yes!'



I'll now endeavour to wax positive about something. The beans are on, carrot seedlings are up and going hard, the chooks are laying at increased rates, temperatures this week have been slightly lower, and therefore more bearable, as we've been also experiencing the highest March temps. Oh, and the latest update came out in the ABC Organic Gardener Magazine.

Week Eleven

78 days through the 181.

I am one letter less on the laptop keyboard, 'L' has almost given up the ghost, and I'l be signing mysef off as 'inda' for a while to come. (If I punch it hard enough it gets through it's neural pathways just fine - but I've begun to ration them).

No rain - and none on the horizon despite the BOM teasing us with promising forecasts and then whipping them away at the last minute. Sadists.

Though the saddest thing happening around here is the garden, drab brown thing that it is. Despite this we made the decision to go gung ho with what water we have and I've planted out three colours of onions, pak choi, bok choi, savoy cabbage, engish spinach, massey early, greenfeast and teephone peas. Al are covered in Hessian. and are doing well, transplanting out lemon cucumbers, hong kong broccoli, taking cuttings from cherry tomatoes and banana capsicums to get more of those going.

Working out in the garden on the chaffcutter mulching up a storm (rainless). Still more to come out of the garden, I'll have monster biceps by the time I'm done. It's a great source of mulch material and I'm preparing as much ground as possible so when moisture finally comes it can cop a mouthful. We need 22mm before the end of March to be able to match the lowest February/March rainfall record since 1870. At this point it looks unlikely to happen. Despite all the usual signs - ants anticipating (they've invaded the kitchen in search of water), the Kookaburra's cooking up a storm, the black cockies, feeing cocky about rain - they're touted as being code for the climate going all precipitate on us.

Caleb's crusade to avoid consuming anything we grow continues. Despite my many attempts to foil it with homemade pizza's (that were fantastic) and other vain entreaties to a stubborn appetite. He will come back out of this, he is not in danger of fading away just yet. I made up a plum puree which he eats on toast and he is galloping through.

The school held a book fair - one with Bionicle books. I came home and raided Caleb's toothfairy money and he picked a book out. When we came home I hid the pliers in case he decided he could earn extra by pulling a few more. I figured it was his money, let him spend it. He's looking forward to Easter when, he tells me, the Easter bunny will provide temporary chocolate relief without any expenditure on our behalf. The Easter Bunny had a crisis of conscience before it realised that depriving a six year old of his chocolate covered, non-religious, holiday beliefs would be tantamount to abuse.

Fruit is thin on the ground as we wait for the citrus to come on, plenty of lemons and limes. Trevor is braving his way through the 'Monster' fruit (monsteria). Down to the last few watermelons. More coming on. We have a verandah ful of pumpkins some of which we have bartered for a bag of onions and a small jar of vegemite, perhaps not staples, but they've livened a few sandwiches up around here.

We have two more weeks worth of water left in the tank - chewing through it at a great rate as I struggle to keep large areas of seedlings going.

It is no longer in question of whether we picked a bad year to do this - we certainly did.

Week Twelve.

Conversation mentally recorded several months ago.
"Well, Easter will be good Mum, 'cos the Easter Bunny delivers chocolate for free".
"Um, yes, well, I guess he does".
Trev and I discussed trying to make something Eastery of our own, but realise that my amateur attempts are going to convince Caleb of one thing only. That the Easter Bunny is dead. So we agreed to empty several shelves at the local supermarket of anything remotely chocolate and covered in enough packaging to stretch to the moon and back. But eventually we were quite modest about the whole thing, though politically incorrect - it was a bunny, not a bilby, as we had planned.

Still no rain of any consequence. 10mm total for this week in two separate 'storms' - which barely amounted to wet concrete, though the town just to the north of us had 18 roofs blown off and hail stones galore. I made a promise to myself not to carry on about the drought any longer. Trev is looking forward to March passing without another drop and we are then in the stakes for the lowest rainfall record, despite there being no prize.

In order to conserve the last 10,000 litres of tank water we turned on the town water in the lower garden. We generally use a total of 600-800 litres a day, now we have divided the majority of household use from garden use, we are using an average of 150 litres a day household, compared to 450 litres in the garden. We never intended to use town water, but circumstances as they have been we have had to compromise (again).

Trevor has always been the Recycling King, his 'dog box' as I used to call his workbench space, has been redubbed, 'the recycling centre' - as he works miracles there. This week he resoled his garden thongs, turned a defunct lighter found on the road side into a refillable and manages to filch various old flints from others to incorporate into 'new' lighters to keep his habit alive.

Trev has gone on a days fishing trip with friends, they picked him up on the way through. He hopes to augment our diet with fresh fish for dinner - however I'm planning on a curried soy bean stew J The allure of vegetarianism is losing its appeal for Trev, who made the quiet comment, "Instead of chocolate at Easter, I'd be content to eat the bunny".

Meals are creamy rice timbales, homemade pasta in homemade pasta sauces, vegetable fritters with fry your tastebuds off chilli sauces and pumpkin soup full of yummy things like snake beans and a generous crumble of fresh fetta served with warm pan scone and parmesan cheese. Caleb is proving resistant to all things edible and lives on toast, apples, watermelon, milkshakes and eggs that Trev poaches in a star shaped biscuit cutter for added appeal.




Rice Timbales with snake beans and tomato and onion.

The garden is looking better since I threw caution to the wind several weeks to a month back and went hard on the hose. Peas, beans, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, wong bok, pak choi, savoy cabbages and others going well. Converting some of those dry and dusty beds into something edible. Oh, and the coffee beans are blushing a nice shade of red as they hide shyly amid the leaves. I visit them often, crouching down in the bushes for a speculative Homer like drool.

Four more days and we can officially say we are half way through our adventure, ordeal, torment, trial, battle. I'm still having fun, but Trev thinks I'm in danger of sounding too light hearted and likes to balance me out with dire forecasts of starvation and wailing protests of the tricks time will play on him … the next three months being more akin to three years. Perhaps next week I should give him the right of reply.

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