The winds of Innisfree

It's been a quiet weekend here at the farm and I'm pretty happy about that, given that when I look at the CFA app Victoria seems to be a sea of triangles as fires burn out of control across the state.

Yesterday was another Saturday with a forecast in the high 30s heading towards 40. I'm getting a bit tired of summer now, every time I look at the forecast map and it shows a string of days over 30, I feel a little bit like weeping. Our paddocks have turned yellow and crispy and the longer summer stretches without rain, the more the ground hardens and dries beneath my feet. It's easy to be slightly deluded as to the extent of the summer heat when you look out at the evergreen olives and see them sparkling silvery, grey green in the light. Stray deeper into the paddocks or in between the rows and the grass cracks brown beneath your feet. Each morning I get up and run Indy for laps between the grove, our little 3k circuit wears the dog out and is enough for my arthritic knees to handle, by the time I return to the house they swell slightly and creak as I walk up the stairs at work. I conveniently ignore the surgeon's advice not to run, chowing down on fish oil and hoping that it may help the bone on bone smashing of my knees. Running here though is a delight, the parakeets swoop in between the olive trees as I run, the sheep gaze at me inquisitively from the other side of the fence and despite the fact I'm running laps I never bore of the landscape around me.

Rohan was out fixing a couple of solar panels to the array early Saturday morning so that we could actually generate some power- we were a couple of panels short of actually kicking over the system. Two more panels installed and we were cranking out 9 kilowatt hours (or killer wasp hours) a day and we were feeding back into the grid. Throughout the week I'd enjoyed watching the parakeets flit around the back garden (or what currently passes for garden) but they were beginning to colonise the nashi tree and eye off the fruit. I knew it was a battle when Rohan walked near the tree and a sea of green and red feathers came barrelling through the sky ready to swoop him as he went near 'their' fruit. Sorry birdies - much as I like you, those fruit are going to be mine! A quick trip to Bunnings to grab some bird netting for the nashi and for the grape vines which are beginning to be a favourite of the magpies.

Saturday night and the news bulletins were all about the extreme fire danger that Sunday would bring.  I woke early to the sound of the wind whipping through the olive trees. It was hot, gusty and I began to worry about what the day would bring. Fire authorities were saying it was the worst day since Black Saturday and I was remembering flying back from Sydney to a state charred and hung with black cloud. My constant companion for the day was the CFA app and one of the first fires was one around the corner from our old house in town. By mid morning the change had arrived and the wind had swung around from the North to the South. The sky was clouded with dust, whipped up by the wind, but luckily we remained untouched by fires in our region. Others were no so lucky and I got messages from friends who had left home as townships and fields close to their homes began to burn. More than ever this summer I've had to think about what it would mean to pack up and leave a home, knowing that you might never see it again, and I've rationalised in my brain what I would take and cram in the car and what I'm happy to leave behind.


Sunday continued with a visit from Maryann and Chris, with Maryann bringing lime and poppy seed cake she got at an open garden not far from our place. After afternoon tea and a stroll around the paddocks I insisted she take it home (or I may have eaten the entire thing tonight in front of the tv). Chris got me thinking about cows, goats, sheep. More precisely he got me thinking about what is going to be best on our back paddocks and what is going to work best with the seasons and the quirks of the land we're living on. The deliberations will continue for another day as we try and learn the habits of our land.

I turned my thoughts to farm life food and baking. A social media campaign 'SPC Sunday' was in full flight, encouraging people to take photos of the SPC food products they were buying and eating. I'd seen a recipe for apple cake in the Weekly Times and was wanting to give it a whirl as Rohan is a sucker for any kind of cake business with apple involved. With no fresh apple, but an entire slab of SPC pie apple, it was time for baking.

Today's farm life food also involved making fresh pesto with basil from the window sill and parsley from the organic farm, and then my favourite lazy Sunday night meal of spicy ground beef pizza topped with yoghurt and coriander.

Now we've been in the paddocks carting water to the sheep and Rohan has taken over the kitchen as he begins to brew up a lightly hoppy ale.He's using wheat malt, dry light malt, dextrose and 50 grams of Galaxy hops.

The smell of malt and hops swirls up from the mixing pot, and this will be ready in time for Woody's 21st in March.


The winds of Innisfree have died down and so I end Sunday with the sweet smell of malt.