Morning visitor: a kangaroo
Life on the farm is just wonderful. Mornings are misty, sometimes cold with frost. Groups of kangaroos graze on our paddocks and come very closed to our house. The little joeys following their mothers.
It is so quiet, the air so clean. Winter in Victoria is like an Irish summer. Everything is green which nurtures the illusion that everything is fine. It is not. We are in the middle of a draught.
Our dams are at their lowest ever
Finally, we got a reasonable amount of rain. Last night according to the rain gauge we got 10 mm, the most since early July. The other times it was between 2 and 3 mm, and once we had 7.5 mm. Fact is that the draught is still on. The soil is dry. You just need to dig, and you will know.
Wombat wholes are big
I am still busy chasing the Wombat from his home which it made in one of our dam walls. Not a good idea. Every day I carry some rock down and fill in the whole. It has to go. The beast will dig until it gets through. Then of course it is going to be flushed out but I will have lost a dam.
We applied organic fertilizers to the Sauvignon Blanc and the Pinot Noir. 10 more rows need to be done but because of the rain yesterday, we had to stop. The wire dropping is finished too.
I plan to roll up the barbed wires of my burned out windbreak. The second windbreak has its fence almost intact. Many trees, all local varieties, look dead. Only the larger gums seem to have survived. I have given up on the windbreak near the house but plan to replant the one on our second hill. Also our little wood needs replanting. I will have to wait a bit longer for the assessment of what has survived.
The weekend, my last one for this visit, will be full as usual with socialising, and wine drinking. Heaven on a stick, paradise pure.
The Man from Mosel River 