Rose arch

The rose arch defines the outer limit of the home garden; beyond here, there be dragons. Well, sheep droppings, attack weeks, dust and orchard work.

This arch matches one at the entry to the house. We buy them from Sam, local supplier, ex-fencer and current country & western performer with a new CD. Gossip holds that the arches are built at the local prison, bursting at the seams with guests of the present one term coalition hard-on-crime government. We will never forget erecting the first arch.

The trouble occurred when we tried placing the arch into the four metal pipes at the base. It was too heavy and awkward. We dropped it. Ruth would say I dropped it. It bounced back and one end struck her in the left temple, severing her facial artery. That necessitated a frantic dash to the emergency department for stitches.

So, we approached the task of situating the rose arch today with some trepidation. Our son and his wife were here. We needed their help but did not wish to place them in harm’s way.

Bringing the painted arch from the shed to its erection site was uneventful. We placed the arch into position and spray painted the location for drilling. My son and I hand augured the holes. The shaft of the augur snapped as the fourth and final hole was dug. We placed the metal pipe into the holes, check the tops were level and tapped one or two in.

I reversed the ute back under the arch. We jumped on the tray. One side went in easily. The other was tricky but Kim, our son’s wife, claimed that her actions were central to our success.

A lick of paint to the four supporting pipes and leading the climbing ‘iceberg’ runners to its home; and the garden perimeter will be secured.

Kumquats

Each of our neighbours grows outstanding citrus. On our farm citrus perishes; that is, apart from the one squat kumquat tree by the back verandah which annually produces sunny, bursting fruit.

The kumquat does not back onto a north facing brick wall. It is largely un-nourished. Its diet is of spent tealeaves, coffee grounds, blue wren droppings, toenail clippings and windblown newspapers. No need for a composter.

As I type, the fruit is being sliced thinly and pipped for marmalade. The tangy aroma wafts from the kitchen. In other years we have plopped the kumquats into brandy with copious sugar to create a zesty liqueur perfect with ice-cream on a sticky summer evening.

Highway 61

I first heard Bob Dylan as a fourteen year old while lying on the bare boards of the lounge room of a fibro public housing home on the south coast of NSW. His relentless nasal poetic mix of uncertainty, rebellion and hope, lodged. For one who picked guitar and hitchhiked, Dylan posed questions and answers to the imponderables of youth.

Living in a rural setting, happy, active and engaged, was a vague dream of adolescence. There were the necessary prerequisites of school and university to come. Through these times Dylan circled in the background, mocking.

Today I live on a farm. The imponderables have faded. I am living the answers. Odd now, listening to Dylan and typing on a computer. So much has moved on. The farm is about to become self-sufficient. Our family merges humour with purpose. Meeting are rare events, comic, insightful, astute and sensitive.

The next generation is almost at hand. The farm is an asset yet to reveal its full value for us all.

Day job

While I’m at the day job business continues on the farm. Ruth was pruning the new orchard when Chris arrived. I phoned Chris last week. He said he would come Monday. By Tuesday I texted him a nudge. Chris is the local irrigation expert. He is meticulous but busy as his thoughts are not focused on an early pub lunch. I had asked him to repair the chewed wire on the valve in station one. I knew he would look over the whole system. He did. He wound back the timer on the pump from 2054 to 2014, and reset the month, day, date and days of watering. He rearranged the sequence of the orchard stations on the pump controller. After he had done all this he checked with Ruth. She taunted him that I would not be pleased.

As they spoke, an unknown car headed along the dirt track to the pump shed. Chris offered to inquire. His laden ute was parked nearby the shed. Ruth observed their interaction from afar. By the time she arrived she realised that the stranger was our shearer, Brian.

Brian was concerned that his young lambs in our front paddock were about to encounter hardened heads of barley grass. At present the heads were soft and edible but in a fortnight they would stiffen, catch in the wool, poke them in the eyes and set up scars in the skin. These lambs had been weaned fro their mothers two weeks ago. The ewes were in the orchard where there was little barley grass.

‘Could we put the lambs with their mothers in the orchard?’ Ruth asked.

‘Yerraahh. The ewes wont feed them now. You interested in buying any of the ewes?’

Summer is approaching and feed will disappear. Brian was sounding out if he might offload some of his feeding problem to us.

‘How much do you want?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I give you $20 a head for pregnant ewes.’

Brian was silent.

‘You know what Barry would say if I buy ewes to feed through the summer.’

Meanwhile, in the house, the painter cursed as the recently plastered patch adjacent to the pantry fell onto the kitchen floor.

9.05 goods train to Echuca

Local oracles claim the morning train to Echuca carries empty containers to be filled with milled Riverina rice at the terminus. The return trip is via Bendigo. The rail lines that passes adjacent to our northern fence is deemed by punters to be incapable of bearing rice laden containers. We have not seen many trains return at night. Perhaps local gossip is correct.

This morning the Echuca train passed by while I was maintaining the irrigation system in readiness for fertigation, while our painter and decorator was draping our kitchen to repair the ceiling damaged eight years ago by on overflowing air-conditioning system. Time had got away and the unpainted plaster over the pantry door had become a happy topic of conversation for those wishing to impune sloth on my part.

Irrigation maintenance was a mixed bag. Where the sheep spend the greater part of their day, the sprinklers were flattened. Where there are no sheep and it had been monitored recently, the uprights lay horizontal with  sprinklers caked and tubing chewed: hares I guess.

Thankfully, while dissolving the cal nitrate in the fertigation tank by the dam, the birds descended. The pelican circled the dam clearly successful in landing fish after fish. It ducked its head under water, trapped the prey, gave it a few sharp pecks with its beaks, lifted its head and sent it waterslide south. Spoonbills oscillated their cutlery beaks to catch yabbies. Ducks gathered and swallows skimmed the water surface.

Yet again, no sign of a returning Echuca train today.

Wire strainers

These heirloom wire strainers tensioned the ringlock forming the trellis for beans today. The strainers, the ringlock and the mode of construction are used usually for sheep fencing.

This building technique is meticulous. Our neighbour is the exponent. We tell him that all his fences, gates and trellises will be here for 200 years.

 

New life

With my wife, Ruth, loitering at the garage door as I arrived home this afternoon; something was up. “That lamb delivered.” One lamb had not been sent to market four weeks before because of bad feet. Ruth noticed that the young lamb was developing udders. They have grown over the last fortnight. She was not old enough to be called a ewe.

Ruth went searching for this pregnant lamb this morning and found her bleating – a sad sign that a fox has whisked off the newborn. She scouted about on the ATV till she noted a dusky snout protruding from the lambs nether region – an obstructed labour. She called our neighbour Michael who came with Nordo, his sheep dog. The motherlamb was guided to the race. There, Michael extracted the newborn. It did well; was bouncy and bonny.

Ruth keeps her new lambs in a large wire crate to avoid foxes. This is where I met mother and daughter: paired, feeding, warm and secure.

 

Hail-guns

When the deep green-black hail bearing clouds approach from the north, the cherry, apricot, apple and peach orchardists wheel out their hail-guns.Through the lightning and over the thunder boom these cannons, thrusting air skyward to steer ice laden clouds elsewhere. Hail-guns may be the Somme for us, but for stone fruit growers, hail can spell the end of the season with massive losses. Which fruit is at risk depends on the timing of the storm. Cherries and peaches have flowered and are susceptible.

Walnuts are weeks off leaf burst. This storm poses little threat to us.

Cityslickers

When family come to the farm they arrive with an up to five year old memory of the place. Where they expect a summer dust-bowl, spring is green, lush and leaping. The garden now shields the house, the walnut trees are about to bear, the fencing abounds and sheep bob. Every square inch of the place is now in use, with chooks and pigs to come. They listen to our boast that this is a 200 year project with patronising bemusement. They question our carbon credentials because of our prunings’ fires:

Not recognising that this pile is a tiny percentage of last year’s growth nor noticing the adjacent metal pole topped with a solar panel powering our satellite directed water channel gate that directs water to our dam.

And the questions … not learned insightful observations, but groping incomprehension delivered with urban arrogance. You don’t learn how to maintain an orchard at the pool, the gym or over coffee.

I am being hard on our city cousins but they do not feel the pressure to get the orchard floor clean prior to fertigation with bud burst imminent and copper spraying needed. There were twenty rows of umbrella sedge to be whipper-snipped. Down to seven now after this weekend.

The women say to my wife that she needs more female friends; but if she is managing the production and marketing she has to speak with blokes. Few women have roles in manufacturing, marketing, shearing, plumbing, welding, sheet metal, irrigation maintenance, earthmoving, fencing or trucking.

The farm is a unique world. Having city family here for the weekend reinforces that fact.

Spring

Naturally, spring is stunning, especially our Manchurian pears.

The buds on the walnut tree are swelling and en masse they have a red purplish hue, not unlike our soil.

The orchard is expectant, impatient to get on with business.