This week we’ve been in high demand.
As you know (see The Great Cattle Muster) we escaped last Saturday night from the farm with the flood waters rising rapidly behind us.
Part of that escape was to put the cattle in the so-called ‘home paddock’. As far as we understood, that was the correct thing to do. We subsequently found out otherwise.
We returned to our Glenorie home/office expecting a few days of relative calm and ‘normality’ until the waters receded, when we’d return to the farm. Isn’t it amazing how things rarely seem to work out as you expect?
Sunday, there was an SMS from a friend saying her husband had just been taken to hospital and she needed to be in Melbourne for a few days. So, could we stay at their place to look after hubby on his return and the dogs & cat? (Not sure what the priority was but we’ll leave it at that.)
Fine, we thought we’d just move to Lane Cove for a few days and all would be good.
Then a message from our Glenorie lady – her son had just been taken to hospital and could we look after the dogs? Oooooh Kay! Things are now getting interesting.
Alright, between Lane Cove and Glenorie we could juggle things and everyone would be looked after.
The next thing was the call from the farm lady (we’ll call he Daisy. Clearly not her real name, no-one is called Daisy anymore are they?). The cattle couldn’t be left in the ‘house paddock’ because there’s no water supply. We had left them a couple of large buckets of water but this wasn’t going to be enough. Her question was “what are YOU going to do about it?”
Knowing the driveway was flooded (we’d had confirmation from a neighbour), I volunteered to walk through the water (haven’t yet worked out how to walk ON water – a talent that would be enormously helpful, given the circumstances) but that wasn’t an option as the water can flow too fast and sweep people away. Plan B was to visit the neighbour and get across either by walking around the property or borrowing their boat if there was no other access.
Daisy told us she would contact the neighbour re the water levels and get back to us. We did suggest she ask the neighbour to check the cattle’s water and top it up, if necessary. She was too embarrassed to ask him to do that. We couldn’t understand how she was OK with asking him to check the driveway on her property but not the animals’ water and so we were getting a tad peeved with what we felt were unreasonable demands.
Wednesday afternoon we had a message that the driveway was now above water and so we were compelled to drive from Lane Cove to the farm – approximately 90 minutes each way.
Just before the ‘exciting’ news came, I’d been in the process of closing the ‘boot’ door of our car. It’s a hatchback and so this door is attached at the roof of the car, and closes by being pulled down. Being clearly distracted, I omitted to get my head out of the way while closing the door rather forcefully – wanting to make sure it was properly closed (being angry with Daisy’s demands had nothing to do with it, of course).
As a result, I went for the drive to the farm with an icepack on my head. (It’s OK, Danita did the driving.)
Because of the time, we’d decided to make the best of a challenging situation and have a barbeque at the farm.
Arriving at the farm
We got to the farm and the animals had plenty of water. I found out later that our friendly neighbour had, indeed, refilled the buckets.
On getting the meat out for our barbeque we discovered the freezer had stopped working. It was obviously recent as everything was still cold but not frozen. The house has a little bar fridge with a tiny freezer compartment and so we stocked it with whatever we could. However, a significant amount of food wouldn’t fit and so we took that with us.
We enjoyed our barbeque (feeling that some degree of revenge did come into it since we were there because of the cattle) and headed back to our bed in Lane Cove.
It occurred to us that had Daisy not insisted we sort out the water situation we wouldn’t have saved the food in the freezer and that would have been quite expensive. So, while starting out quite angry with her we ended up feeling grateful to her. That’s when I realised it’s impossible to stay angry with someone if you’re feeling grateful to them.
We returned to the farm full-time on Thursday and on Saturday the freezer came back to life. Huh???? Could someone explain that one for me please?
Until next time, happy travels!