As part of a New Year’s resolution, I’ve decided that I have to update Drypond at least every week. So hopefully, this begins a trend to bring you news about the farm and the people who live on it and visit it. Since it’s been so long since I posted anything here, the first task is to bring you up to speed with the news. Bear with me, this will probably be a little disjointed.
The last item here was titled “So Sad…” The little red tractor was dead, a victim of my own stupidity. Well, miracle of miracles, it only took a pot load of money to set things right and the tractor has been back in operation and earning its keep since mid-September. Actually, it took a lot less money to fix than I had feared, so I was very relieved when the final bill came in.
August also saw a visit by the Aitons; Steve, Jennifer and Sean. Steve is an old friend from way back when I first moved to Canberra. He met and married a lovely American lass, and their son is now…oh, 8 or 9, I guess. Maybe a bit older, perhaps. They stayed for a night and a lovely time was had by all.
October soon sped upon us, and my brother Richard and his wife Jane came to visit for a few days. Once again a lovely time was had by all. A couple of weeks after they left, their son Tom called in on his way back to Noosa.
During Dick & Jane’s visit, we erected a big garden shed for Wendy. Zinc-alum and measuring 3m x 3m, the shed has all the room to store tools and so forth that anyone could desire. Wendy had been making do with a huge but old wooden toolbox that was left in the tennis court by the previous owners. The toolbox is now in a bit of a sad state but can probably be renovated and reused, maybe even as a laying box for the proposed hen hilton.
We removed the plastic cover from the middle garden tunnel. The problem is that the covered tunnels are just too damn hot in summer, and in winter they aren’t warm enough to maintain a proper growing environment. However, the plants do need protection from birds, so we are in the process of stringing chicken wire over tunnels 1 and 2. Tunnel 3 is still plastic covered and will remain so but with both ends open.
November and December brought torrential rains to all of Eastern Australia (and Queensland is still flooded badly, including my old hometown of Emerald). We had a couple of rain “events” here that cause quite a bit of damage to our roads, including the road across the main dam. It seems that it overflowed the wall itself, washing away part of the top of the wall and leaving giant potholes. After the first event, I bought a tonne of roadbase, and every scrap was used to fix those potholes. Three days later, another rain event and the dam overflowed the walls yet again, washing away not only my work and the tonne of roadbase, but more wall as well. The rest of the track was a real mess too, so I put in a call to the local bobcat and tipper guy, and he delivered 11 tonnes of roadbase so we could fix everything up. It’s not all done yet, but certainly the worst is fixed.
Christmas time is also the time to spray the noxious weeds on the farm. This year, the growing season has been phenomenal and the St John’s Wort grew in profusion…but not as badly as the first year we were here. And now, with the tractor and the 400litre fire-fighting tank, and a quick change of hose form the heavy 3/4″ firehose to a normal garden hose, we are able to do pretty much the entire farm in just a couple of days. The long grass made the job tricky though because you couldn’t really see where your feet were going and there are so many rocks and holes on this farm!
Almost up to date now!
Chris took off for Tassie for Christmas as usual, and returned Boxing Day; three days later, Judy Reynolds and her two boys Peter and Mark joined us for a visit, and are still here as I write this. New Year’s Eve was a blast with many of our friends making a prilgrimage out to the farm, bless them! Although a lot of them had to leave early on account of children and so forth, a great time was had by the residents of this house, I can tell you. The cleanup effort on New Year’s Day was worth it.
Finally, the pump.
O. M. F. G.
The pump! Aarrgghh!!
The house is supplied by water from rainwater tanks just downslope of the house. Water is pumped up to the house via an electric pump. Well, shortly before the Reynold’s family arrived, I noticed the pump was kinda noisy…and also switching on even when no-one used a tap. And it was switching on ever few minutes! This can mean only one thing; a leak.
So John and I had to fault-find the leak but we couldn’t really do that without creating zones in the water delivery system and to do that we (I say ‘we’ but I really mean John; he da man! Da handy-man.) had to install a couple of gate valves so we could isolate sections of the system; tank and pump, pipe, and house. Basically, a gate valve at either end of the pipe. This took a lot of time for varous reasons I won’t bore you with, but eventually we determined the pipe was the problem, it probably has a small fracture or pinhole that leaks slowly by constantly, and because the pump is an “on-demand” pump, whenever the pressure drops even slightly, the pump switches on and stays on for about 10 seconds.
I shudder to think what my next power bill is going to look like.
So we’ve replace the pipe, and I’ve ordered a new pump; a Davey with a compression tank (this helps to reduce the amount of time the pipe has to be on, and thus I save electricity). The new pipe is currently still above ground, because if I can, I want to shove it up the old pipe which has a larger diameter. The current pump will be going back to its place of purchase to be fixed or replaced, and will become the garden pump (and a handy spare).
There, now you’re up-to-date!