Australia goes into lock-down.
But amazingly, this makes very little difference to us.
Sure, we are on our own, but we are locked up on 32 hectares with plenty to do, and we are used to it. We just admire how most people cope.
Local wine deliveries go on, leaving the wine on door steps rather than having a chat.
Friends still call in to get “very essential supplies”, but rather than hugging we shout at one another from a distance.
Sure, we cannot send our wines to the international Wine exhibition in Vienna, because Australia Post doesn’t accept parcels to Austria. But we keep them for for next year.
And repairs go on by the two of us, if ever so slowly.
But: We have learnt from our friends.
When contractors start piling up wood, just down the road from us, we observe covertly but greedily, watch the quiet activity of neighbours with chainsaws and trailers coming and going, and when we hear on the grapevine that it is hoped that the wood will walk away…
Of course we oblige and help!
We find some good posts for yards, and it would be a shame to waste them as firewood. The guy who unloads gives a friendly wave as we cart our bounty home.
And now, we find some time to repair the stock yards.
We get the burnt rails off, dig the burnt stumps out of the ground (they go down about a meter), peel the bark off the new posts and set them into the holes. They are much to heavy to lift and have to be maneuvered in with chain and tractor. Then we find unburnt boards long enough to connect them. Some we have to replace with steel rails.
And then it is done: The main pens are functional again, perhaps not as good as before, but adequate for the moment.
And every spare moment (and sometimes moments I don’t really have to spare) I use to throw up emergency housing for all my homeless flocks of Croad Langshan chickens.
And then the lock-down ends, just in time to get help with pruning the burnt grapevines.