When is a drought not a drought? When it is not declared a drought. If a drought is declared, the government has to step in and help out with subsidies. All we know is that here at Lush Places, our pasture and gardens are gasping. The pasture is the worry. The garden is a luxury but if you move to the country to buy a garden, the lack of rain is distressing.
A good barometer: the hardy hydrangeas. They are drooping almost every day. That looks like a drought to me. I fight with the bloody hoses every day. I hate hoses. They are like snakes. They may not be venomous, but they have venomous intent. They twist and trip you and trick you. They are bastards.
Luckily, the lambs are looking amazingly plump. I went out in the night and saw them chasing each other around the paddock, so they must be happy and full of vigour. They are eating the early fallen poplar leaves.
The oaks are dropping their acorns – too green – and the sheep eat those too. And there are the wizened apples, which early on showed so much promise for a bountiful crop but have given up growing because of the lack of water. A sheep takes its snacks where a sheep can find them.
We haven’t had proper rain since before Christmas. Miles, the sheep farmer, who unlike most sheep farmers (who talk in straight lines, as in: “Gidday. Dry as, innit?”) is given to flights of whimsy. He said: “Could you do a rain dance?”
Many farmers are sceptical about climate change. They have seen it all before and they will see it again, they say. We last saw this sort of dry five years ago. The milk sheep, our sheep, or properly Miles’s sheep, which are milked to make cheese, were dried off in January. They should still be being milked but there is not the pasture. Buying feed is expensive.
Farming is such hard, harrowing, heartbreaking work. Some farmers are having to send lambs to the works early because they know they will not be able to afford the feed come autumn and winter when the grass doesn’t grow.
Don’t think that this doesn’t make them weep. Good farmers love their stock. I once interviewed the-then head of Federated Farmers who told me that she left the farm on the days the bobby calves went to the works.
The lambs are underweight this autumn so the farmers get even less for them. Last year, lambs were fetching about $120. This year, you are lucky to get about $70. Think about that when you are complaining about the price of your next rack of lamb.
I am thinking about the garden. We have a bore so we have water. But should I be thinking about a dry garden? I don’t much care for grasses. I can’t abide succulents. I’m not in love with natives. I like flowers. I like lilies and bulbs, the mop-headed hydrangeas, the grown-from-seed delphiniums, the thirsty dahlias and the old roses, some bred in the 1800s. I could not contemplate a garden without aquilegias or daisies. We have some natives in the garden. They were here when we arrived. The kōwhai, pretty enough, and the hideous flax entertain the tūī. But so do the plums and the figs, and the wax-eyes go mad for the aphids on the roses. The fantails could not care less whether the bug feasts are on the cabbage trees or the far prettier forest pansies.
We inherited established exotic trees: the old oaks, which feed the sheep; the old pear orchard, which also feed the sheep, and the birds; the claret ash and golden elm, which line our driveway and feed and lift our spirits. The summer-green of the ashes has turned to burgundy, and the elms have faded from lime green to a mellow gold. Their roots go deep.
To be a farmer, to be a gardener, is to worry and hope. Just as I am writing this, there is the sound of rain, proper rain, on our tin roof. It is the most wonderful sound in the world. It is the sound of the land and the farmers, and us, breathing again.
