Farm fires can even be used as funeral pyres for animals but sadly things don't always go to plan. Photo / NZME
Looking for inspiration, I checked out last May's column and was amused to read that was the last time we'd had a fire call out. A whole year without a visit from the fire brigade, it must be some kind of record.
The fires obviously haven't forgotten us though… last weekend our neighbour was overseeing a controlled burn off in some scrub. I heard the fire siren calling the volunteers to the station and thought "Ooh, wonder if someone's called about that fire next door?"
Sure enough, a few minutes later a couple of fire trucks headed north on the main road – and stopped in our driveway. It took them a moment to realise that no, for a change the fire wasn't on the Paton property.
But, as my firefighting friend Jean commented, it's just a matter of time until Bruce and Bazza find where I've hidden the matches. The fire trucks carried on to the next side road, where they had to stop for the neighbour's herd crossing the road to milking.
Another neighbour rang me the other day to say we had a tractor on fire in one of our paddocks.
Crikey, I thought, it's the wrong time of year for birds to nest (birds think tractor engines are perfect nesting spots and even a small amount of dry grass can cause a big problem) – what could have caused it?
I called Bruce and he drove over to check it out, and found an old tractor blazing furiously and beyond help. One of the neighbours had stoked up a fire and parked his tractor a little too close before he headed home for the night.
Bruce noticed the tractor was the same make as his father Barrie's treasured restored machine and decided to have a little fun. He sent a photo of the incinerated tractor saying: "The old International went up in smoke today."
A short time later, his mother messaged: "Barrie is very upset. What happened?!". Bruce decided it was time to let them in on the joke, but they didn't seem to find it particularly amusing.
At this time of year, everyone's lighting fires – as I write I can see two burning on nearby properties. They can even be used as funeral pyres for animals, though these must be set up carefully as a friend of mine discovered recently.
She and her husband had a sick animal that had to be euthanised. They were very attached to this animal and after saying their goodbyes, it was wrapped in a blanket and placed carefully onto a waiting pile of wood and cuttings, and the bonfire was lit.
My friend headed off for a relaxing massage to recover from the morning's emotional trauma and left her husband to tend the fire. Unfortunately, the emotional trauma wasn't quite over.
The fire was burning merrily and all seemed to be going well, when a large piece of wood shifted, the top of the pile tilted… and the shrouded corpse rolled down the side of the bonfire, out across the grass and down a short bank, where it lay, smoking slightly.
Horrified, the husband rang the wife, now enjoying her soothing massage, and asked what he should do. After talking him through several methods of returning the cadaver to the flames, including a disastrous attempt to skewer it with a waratah and heave it back on, any soothing benefits the massage may have had were well and truly dispelled.
I can't actually remember how he did finally return the body to the pyre, but it all ended reasonably successfully, although I think they are both still traumatised by the whole thing.
We all make mistakes, and Bruce makes quite a few where technology is concerned. I am no technology whiz myself but do seem to have a slightly firmer grasp on things.
We bought a new computer recently and our scanner no longer worked with it. I figured out how to install a new driver so we could use it again and showed Bruce the new process for scanning documents.
I thought he had a handle on it until the other day when I checked the emails and found a message from the fuel refunds company complaining about the quality of the documents Bruce had sent them.
I had a look at what he'd sent and had to agree – not only had he attached some truly abysmal blurry phone photos that were impossible to read, he had also accidentally included a fuzzy-looking picture recipe for pinwheel scones that he had on his phone.
The fuel refunds person commented a recipe for scones would have been nice – if she could read it.