The sheep mount a coup of Innisfree

When I last wrote I was heading into the first 'heatwave' week of my time here on the farm. It hasn't failed to deliver and all week we've had temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s, with today heading towards another scorcher. The wind has already picked up and is swirling through the trees outside the window, and I'm hoping that our luck continues as it has already this week, with no major fires in our area. Unfortunately for those living on the outskirts of Hopetoun, they've had emergency warnings due to large fires in the area, with Courtney and little baby Ned heading home to family in Colac, while Ben remains behind to fight the fire. There is something so much more immediate about the threat of fire when it is people you know at risk, and when you begin living out of the town areas. While living in town you know it is possible that a fire could spread from house to house, but you tell yourself it's much less likely and that crews would respond quickly. Once you begin living on the land you watch with anticipation, wondering if today will be the day, and if so, how long will it take crews to respond?

Wednesday night was both beautiful and worrying. After a hot day and a couple of small grassfires a few k's away, the sunsets were glorious shades of red and pink, inching their way across the sky and casting a glow through the windows of the house. We wandered around through the olives looking at the work Rohan had done in trimming and clearing between all the trees. It was a magical moment, the trees bathed in the setting sun and the dog padding between us, picking up random pine cones and carrying them in her mouth like a bowerbird getting ready to store treasures.

Later that night an electrical storm began to pass by, and nestled between Mount Bunninyong and Mount Warrenheip we watched the light splinter through the dark clouds and counted until we heard the accompanying thunderous crack to work out how far away it was. When the light and the crack combined over Mount Warrenheip we nervously checked the CFA app for fire activity. On the emergency Victoria website fires were popping up all over the place, and yet still, we remained lucky with small fires 5 k away that were quickly extinguished. By 11pm the storm front had passed and yet on the mountain we could see car headlights winding their way around and searchlights waving through the sky looking for signs of smoke. There is a lot of telecommunications infrastructure on the mountain top and so it is closely watched by the fire tower on the mountain opposite  - something which gives me a greater sense of calm about the outbreak of fire. We woke the next morning, all was calm and the world continued on, while in other sections of the state, fires bloomed and bleary eyed CFA crew continued to battle.

Meanwhile, life continues on. I went back to work on Monday and was happy to see the email from the boss saying we could work from home if our home offices were cooler than our one at work. Given that my office is on the 3rd floor and has no air-conditioning, it was stifling in no time and so I gratefully decamped to the home office to work. Our first visitors arrived for the week in the form of Joe, Amy, Peyton and the beautiful Harper, only 10 days old and sleeping like the proverbial baby when I returned home from work. We took Peyton out to see the sheep, who were continuing their bipedal work by munching on the trees in the orchard, stripping them of leaves and fruit. Lucky we wanted a good clear out in the orchard.

By Wednesday the sheep were clearly becoming increasingly sentient and deciding that the apples outside the orchard looked better than the trees inside as we discovered baby lamb chop had jumped the fence and was happily munching on the trees on the outside of the fence. On with the gumboots and time for a bit of sheep wrangling as we herded her back over the fence and inside the orchard. When I told my boss that yesterday he said that herding sheep is much easier than herding academics. We decided that meant it was time to clean up the grass in the cattle run so we could run the sheep down to another paddock for new feed. Rohan set about doing that on Thursday while I went into the office for meetings. When I came home he announced that lamb chop had clearly led the others astray and all three had made a push for freedom and for more leafy trees to prune. He'd herded them all back in but the imperative to get them moving to a new paddock seemed greater, although someone did tell me that no matter where you put them sheep will always want to escape to another paddock. Maybe like humans, they think the grass might be greener on the other side of the fence?

Today its back to the old house to try and get the last of the stuff in boxes and out so that we can paint it inside and get it on the market. I want to buy a tractor! That means selling the old house and getting some cash we can use to buy a few more things around the place. Next on the list is cows for the back paddocks. Rohan came home after a couple of hours at Michael's place the other night where they'd been discussing farm life and so now we're on the look out for cows. I find myself reading the livestock ads in the local paper and oohing and ahh-ing over the price of tractors. How has it come to this?