Summer stress

Summer has arrived with hot days in the high 30s- the sort of weather that dries the last of the green grass to a brown husk and which leaves the cows slurping water from the trough. Here, our water tank to pool conversion has been one of our best farm hacks so far. We float in inflatable chairs staring at the mountain and Rohan becomes like an ADD kid splashing and spraying water at whichever poor sod happens to be in the pool with him (note this is frequently me). I had no choice but to attempt to use Annemaree as a human shield the other day, and even that didn't seem to work. Meanwhile the cows in next door's paddock stare over the fence at us, perhaps wondering why the hell humans are floating in brightly coloured chairs in a tank of water. 

Our neighbours kids seemed to be wondering the same thing as they came over to fish for trout with their dad in our trout tank. Claiming their dinner they headed home, only to return later looking for lemons to go with the fish. The next morning they returned bearing home made pickled onions, which taste so good, and have the lowest food miles of any going around- picked and pickled across the road. 

Yesterday morning I got a facebook message from a friend wishing us well for the day ahead, saying that the air was heavy as the CFA warned regional Victorians about the fire danger. When delivering our onions, our neighbour asked if we had our fire tank full and our pump ready to go and he and Rohan traded tales of their fire plans, of the way they'd pumped crops full of water the night before, and of the things we hope will keep us safe. With the hot, dry northerly swirling and whipping leaf litter into a frenzy, Rohan and I drove  to the service station to get more diesel, only to see 8 small mobile fire fighting utes and drivers parked there, just seemingly waiting to spring into action. Another friend down the road said she was like a meerkat - leaping from one window to the next and peering out. I'd read that olives are fire resistant and therefore recommended as trees to retain when thinking about managing trees for fire preparation. My sister said I seemed stressed and maybe I shouldn't have moved to the country, but it's not an either/ or proposition, but something much more complex. It's an unwritten requirement to be aware of, and to worry, about the risks unlike those who live on the land or the urban fringe of regional towns and cities and who don't have the worry cross their radar. I'm prone to thinking about Chris Wilson's lyric 'this is a wide, brown land', and so in summer it is likely that there will be days like yesterday when the air is hot, the wind howls and the CFA app lights up like Xmas lights blinking from across all areas of the state. You just hook up the fire pump to the tanks, hold your breath slightly and hope that your light won't be the next one to blink on the map. 

And then, came the rain. 

The storm warning map heralded it's arrival but so too did the birds. They'd been quiet most of the day or maybe I just hadn't been able to hear them over the howling of the wind. As the sky turned grey, the birds began to sing and to flutter in the trees, and then heavy, fat droplets of rain began to fall. Thunder and lightning inched across the sky, but with the advent of the rain. I was less worried about lightning strike causing a fire. With the smell of rain on the concrete paths around the house and steam rising from the road into town, my fire stress began to dissipate as the rain tumbled down. This morning, the fog has returned to Innisfree and we can't see the mountain as it is shrouded by cloud. In other parts of Victoria and South Australia, others are not so lucky, their lights still blink on the fire map, firefighters still work to save farms, livestock and lives. In moving to the country, you become so much more aware of this, it is more immediate than just a terrible story on the 6pm news bulletin that you can easily disconnect from. You become more aware of how our lives are all interconnected whether we live in town or on the land. If the land suffers, it spreads like a web to all of us, no matter where we lay our head at the end of the day. And so we all hope that days which are described as the perfect storm for fire conditions are few and far between in a long summer.