If I was a real stereotypical Aussie farmer, I'd be out dusk till dawn trying to make shit work in a year when instead of being six foot deep in grass, Lantanaland looks like a school oval in an African desert. On a hill. I'd push my akubra back and wipe the sweat away and say "bit dry, eh". No it's not a bit dry it damn fucking dry for February, and I'm glad that Lantanaland is not a proper working farm. I don't own and akubra anyway, usually it's a straw hat that even a hobo would discard, shorts in long grass in snake season and Tshirt.
I was was supposed to have the orchard in and the drippers running nicely. Oh for town water! Instead we bought water today, in goddamn March! For those of you on town water, where a tap is turned on and the water flows, March is the month where I only go outside in gumboots and I lament water flowing out the outlet of the tank. This year, thanks to my lovely parents I even have a second tank, newly installed and sitting there empty, waiting for that wet stuff in the sky. But no. I death watch the BOM site and sit in dark corners, slowly weeping as storms split and wither before reaching Lantanaland. I inspect every light shower, usually so fleeting that it barely washes the dust from my car. I gave the existing fruit trees a nice long drink today, luckily I've babied most of them through, only a blood orange lost to the gods of stupid bloody hot, dry weather.
Well that's the weather hey, not much you can do. What I did do today was race round after visiting the twins in NICU this morning, while the toddler napped and ran another 500m of electric fence so that the cows could at least have a bit more pasture. The neighbours kikuyu pasture that I am "borrowing" is a bloody marvel actually. Mostly seeded by another neighbour, Cliff, who at 80 odd still works harder than I do, it has been eaten down but is surprisingly intact, a good week of rain and it will bounce back. It makes me itch to really get in and improve my own patchy pasture, but first there is the small task of lantana removal.
March is really the last hope. No rain in March and we won't get enough moisture in the ground to give the grass a good growing season before it cools off. Not much I can do except push my battered straw hat back, and drawl, "bit fucking dry, eh".