My Dams Runneth Over

After a record May rainfall – 230% above average for May in the time I've been keeping records – we were really happy to see water in our dams after years of seeing nothing but sun-baked mud. The song of Frogs returned to lull us to sleep.

Even though its hopelessly too late in the season, I optimistically sowed some of the veggie beds with Carrots, Swiss Chard, Garlic, some Barley,... Funny how a little water affects one's emotions.

House dam. Overflow foreground right.

Whenever the district council get around to sending a grader to maintain our little road, we know that rain is on its way. It's the surest rain dance we know, and infinitely more reliable a predictor than the weather forecast experts. On Monday the road got graded. On Tuesday evening it started to rain at about 6p.m. And didn't stop a steady, solid downpour, until 6 the next morning. 74mm  overnight! Both our dams are overflowing gently – a thing we've not seen in perhaps 5 years, and the rainfall already exceeds the average for June (though not the mean) despite being less than one third of the way through the month.

Bottom dam (and Keira, a bit mystified by all this water.)

The first question everybody asks is, "So does this mean the drought is broken, then?" And the answer is a predictable, "Maybe."

The rain we've experience over the past month is still way off normal. The point is not "drought or not drought". The point is not "too little water vs. plenty of water vs. too much water".

The point is "abnormal weather patterns" – unpredictability. The most reliable prediction climate scientists can make is that, as we humans stress the climate further, we can expect to experience a greater number of extreme weather events, more extreme weather of greater severity. I think that our own experiences seems to bear this out. Even though the recent rain does not really count as a "severe" weather event it is certainly poking its head well up above the "norms"¹.

Even as I write the rain is falling so hard that we can barely hear ourselves shout, as it beats down on our metal roof... and we're very happy to have the water visiting again.

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[1] Whatever "norm" means in relation to weather. The very notion of climate is, itself, no more than a mathematical fiction.

Yay, Rain!

At last... just when we thought the drought was coming back.

Now I'd best get on with Winter plantings of Garlic, Onions and Cabbage...

Rain and Snow

Just a short update, as there's not much to tell... Brilliant rain for the month of June. Hooray! We got a wonderful 71mm - fully 65% above the mean for June. This meant that there was sufficient water in the dam to warrant re-priming the pump. Before the rain the inlet pipe was high and dry.

Now here we are only 1/3rd into July, and a rainfall of 45mm over the past couple of days means that we're already reaching the mean rainfall for July. It's plenty cold, so there's been quite heavy snow on the surrounding mountains. We first saw the snow while returning from a trip to Cape Town for the past week, and, although snow on the local mountains is not unusual for Winters, I doubt we have ever seen snow so low down the slopes! Of course it mostly melted in last-night's rains and today's follow-up sunny and warm weather, but it's still pretty early for snow around here. Small surprise for our many (many!) foreign visitors who thought of Africa as The Hot Continent!

Notwithstanding this great rain, we're still far from confident that the drought has broken. Optimistic, yes. Hopeful, always. But the fact remains that the rainfalls we're seeing still represent "abnormal" weather patterns: Winter is "usually" our dry season.

Oh, well. In hope and optimism I've planted some Swiss Chard, Carrots, Shallots and Salad Greens (Lettuce, Red Mustard and Rocket, semi-mixed-up.) All are up except the salad stuff which still needs a few more days.It's far too late for Cabbage tribe, Broad Beans or grains, so we've mostly missed out on the Winter growing season. Just holding thumbs for Spring. I guess that means I should get busy preparing Spring beds and making compost.

PS: Hard luck, Netherlands! I was rooting for you guys. Spain played brilliantly, though!

Long Blog, No Time

It's true. Really, really true. The Earth does go around the Sun! Night falls noticeably earlier. By 7 of an evening we want lights to read by, and suddenly we know it's Autumn. And suddenly we realise that the Summer past has been a complete disaster for our self-sufficiency efforts.


February was shaping up to be a particularly bad month. What the drought had not yet killed, the Bushbuck came and ate. And what little they left was pulled out by Baboons.

And then the rains came. Not enough to believe that the drought is over yet, but enough to bring this February's rainfall up to the average I've recorded over the past 8-or-so years. The average, mind! And we're ecstatic to have it. The Tomatoes - all 34-odd varieties - are gone. I think I've lost the last of the OSU Blue. Fortunately I still have some seed of all the wonderful new varieties sent by kind people all over the world, but now I'm going to have to wait until next year to discover what they look like, taste like,... their preferences and peculiarities. Gone, too, the 2-dozen or so Chile varieties... A small handful - perhaps 8 plants in total - have survived the drought only to get munched by the Bushbuck. At this stage, if I still had a doggie to feed (I don't eat red meat, myself) I'd be sorely tempted to fill the freezer with Fillet of Bushbuck!


Despite the reasonably good rains, dams are still pretty-much empty. The soil was so dry that every drop was absorbed and very little runoff water made it into the dams. Pictures here are of the bottom dam; on the left is the dam before the rains, on the right is after. As you can see, very little change in the water level. The only change is a mysterious Red Tide floating on the water's surface. No doubt it'll be gone quite quickly. If you click through to the full-size image on the right, you'll see J standing at the water's edge, and Myah the Bumpy Dog swimming; at the point J is standing, she would be up to her armpits in the water if the dam was full!


At least the Forest gets to breathe again! And, as though they've been waiting forever for the rains, mushrooms have burst out of... everywhere! The lawn is a mass of yummy Agaricus campestris. We found a well distributed cache of Boletus aestivalis - a close relative of the well-known Porcini (B. edulis), just smaller and with a thin stem - a short way away in the Pine Plantation Down The Road. So, in some fashion, life goes on. I do think a lot, though, about how our Winter prospects would look if we were truly dependent on only our own produce. It's a frightening picture, because we would certainly be facing severe hunger, if not outright starvation. As it is we're near the end of our money reserves, and having to buy in dreadful bought lettuce... We haven't had to buy veggies for probably 8 or 10 years, now... It's a blow, I can tell you!



But life goes on...

Rainish on the Plainish

At last! Some rain. 11mm on Friday evening, and another 11.5mm last night. A reasonable looking forecast for more rain on Wednesday -- should be great queueing to vote in the rain ;-) -- and maybe some more next weekend.

Does this mean the drought is finally over? The ground is still terribly dry, and the dams remain empty. Still, we remain optimistic, so I ran out and planted some stuff, just in time for last night's rain: a salad planting, and some Onions interplanted with Peas. I'm still not taking a chance with anything that's valuable or where I have very small seed-stocks. So things like Spelt and the new Chickpeas are going to have to wait until the water situation looks a little better.

I'm trying a little variation on my standard salad-planting... The normal pattern is about 1.5m of bed containing 3 rows of loose-leaf lettuces, all mixed-up, densely sown, and harvested with the sheep-shears. In between those rows go a row of Rocket and a row of Red Mustard -- we love the flavour combination. In the past I've tried to squeeze Radishes in, too, but in truth it doesn't work too well; the Radishes grow at such a different pace to the leaves that they're better off in their own space. This time I've cut down to 2 rows of Lettuces, a row each of the Rocket and Red Mustard, and put the Radishes into the middle row. We should get a better Lettuce/Rocket/Mustard ration that way, and the Radishes should just be separate enough. We're trying a Black Radish brought back from France by my parents... can't wait to taste it!

The Onions came out of their seed-tray just in time! I've only planted 3 rows so far, and put in another row each of shelling Peas ("Greenfeast") and yellow Snow Peas. The Peas should be long gone by the time the Onions want more space, and hopefully the Onions will be able to steal a little N from the Peas in their early days. It's a good theory anyway...

Its good to have some moisture on the ground again! Let's hope this is not just a flash in the pan.

Drought Update

What can I say? Still no rain. I'm just back from a week in Cape Town teaching a programming course, and still in recovery. Business trips to CT seem to knock me out totally for about 2 days after I return... I've hardly even looked at the veggie garden since I returned -- just been out there to take a look and water the seed trays.

It's disheartening, to say the least. I estimate about 4kl of water left in the dam -- just enough to keep the tadpoles and Chillis alive. The Brandywine tomatoes are dead, along with Lime Green Salad, all the green-beans, and the Galapagos Orange and Resi Gold are on their last legs. I'll try and keep the Resi Gold going awhile longer if I can -- perhaps with the bathwater. Plants that I've watered with washing-machine water have not fared well. I think the surfactants and shit in the detergents are just too harsh for most veggie plants. The fruit trees seem to handle it better.

Right now I should be planting seed trays of Onions and Cabbage Tribe, and direct sowing Peas, Chickpeas and Broad Beans, and preparing Winter beds. There's no point. The weather forecast for the coming week predicts a 20% possibility of Trace Amounts of rain on Wednesday. Or, in other words, an 80% of sweet Fanny Adams.

So Thank You All, those of you who have been so kind as to send me wonderful new Chickpea seed, new Brassica varieties, Wonderful Winter Grains,... you're stars! But it may be a while before I get to grow them... I'm not prepared to squander these gifts unless they stand at least some small chance of success. I keep planting seed-trays for Winter, using varieties where I have a plentitude of seed, in the vain hope that the drought may break by the time they need to be transplanted. No such luck, so far; I've tossed any number of seed-trays of otherwise-thriving seedlings that don't stand a chance.

I know that sooner or later this drought has to break. (Or does it? Says who?) But right now it's depressing. And I'm bored! No beds to dig -- the ground's too hard. Not much to harvest -- the drought's killed the fucking lot! The best I can do is try to mulch the few empty beds that remain un-mulched (for lack of mulching materiel.)

The only bright light in all of this is that it's a great time to weed and hoe!

That Good Ol' Inundation Time

That time of year. The Inundation -- not so much the water, though happily the dams and soil are looking much improved from the good rains we've had so far this month -- but the inundation of work in the garden. It's been keeping me pretty busy, I can tell you. I've managed to dig one new bed, bringing the total to 14, and with a little luck I may even get another one dug. Be aware that "digging a bed" for me means heavy composting and double-digging in a heavy clay soil to prepare a deep-bed, so it's a significant investment of energy. And then some people wonder when I am quite... pointed... about visitors to the veggie garden not treading on the beds, but sticking to the paths.  There's also been a lot of rehab work on paths and existing beds, after their 9-month neglect while I worked on a programming contract.

All the plants are terribly slow this year. Spring has been cold, windy and wet, and it's only really in the last week or two that most plants have shown real signs of waking-up. This year's Spring Disaster (isn't there always one?) has been seedling-mix. Usually I use my own compost for seed trays, but it tends to be a bit dense, retaining water a lot, and thus restricting oxygen to the plant roots and slowing plant development. So this year, feeling flush from the effects of the Sojourn In The Desert¹, I splashed out on "professional" seedling mix. What a lot of rubbish. It fails to hold water in any adequate way. It forms a lovely cement-like crust over the top, and just generally is worse than my own compost. Chillis planted into it have still failed to show-up. Chillis planted a month later in my own mix are looking much better. Sadly I risked a number of varieties of Chillis, Tomatoes and Lettuces where my seed-stocks were at their end, and I've now lost those lines. Grrrrrrr... That'll be the last time I buy that rubbish. Rather focus on finding ways to lighten-up my own seed mix.

On the bright side, both the Globe Artichokes and the Jerusalem Artichokes are doing really well, as are a bunch of relocated Tomato volunteers. Squashes and Cukes not so good -- too much cold for them -- but we'll keep trying. Beans (for drying) are doing well, though I still lack a really good Pinto bean, and am struggling to source a decent (large-size) Butter Bean. I like Beans.

I've become a lot more focussed on trying to get real staple crops going, so there's been much more work on the simple stuff -- Beans, Potatoes. Leafy crops are all very tasty, vitaminicious and the like, but what we monkeys really want are Carbohydrates. (Bananas are filling the gap, but there's a limit...) As soon as I get all the right factors in the right place at the right time, I'll be burning the rank grass off the top fields and putting them under grains and oilcrops. Fire is frightening stuff, though, no matter how powerful a tool for clearing land! Between the money-world "disasters"², the increasingly obvious climate changes, and the ever-pressing oil prices my thinking is that anybody who grows food is going to do OK over the next few years!

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[1] The Programming Contract. It may only have been 9 months, but there were times when it felt like 40 years...

[2] I find it difficult to take that whole catastrophe too seriously. I mean, really, it's all too "We deluded ourselves into believing that Some Crap was a real value and... It all turned out to be Crap!" No sympathy, me. Of course its had the inevitable effect³ on our Developing Nation Crap Currency, which means that the veggie-breeding book I want (Carol Deppe's book) was R260, but is now R330!

[3] Of course we shouldn't neglect the effect of the Idiot Who Would Be KingPresident and his fuckwit minions...⁴

[4] OK, OK! I know I made a promise to myself that this blog wouldn't cross into politics, but really... we're in for a Kakistocracy⁵ worse than the US'ians have suffered these last 8 years.

[5] The word "Kak" is a common South African term for "shit". It actually derives from the Greek word "kakistos", meaning "the worst".

Flood Update

Well, the rain has stopped for a little while, though there's a reasonable chance we'll get some more today.  304mm so far, in a span of about 36 hours!  It's stuff like this that really screws-up the averages.

The N2 (national road) is/was blocked in at least two places nearby.  Over 1000 people have had to be airlifted to safety.  More rain forecast for Monday.

Our road is very badly damaged, but people seem to be getting in and out.  Several people in the neighbourhood have been asking the district roads people to fix the culvert for a long time, now, to no avail.  My guess is that they'll get around to fixing it just in time for the next floods!

A Rain Of Fish

One of my very first posts when I started this blog was about a Big Rain – the Floods of '06, a little over a year ago. Well, brace yourself for The Sequel!

After a drizzly day, yesterday, the heavens opened in the late afternoon, and have not yet shut. At about 8 this morning the rain-guage was showing a guesstimated 102mm overnight.  The scale ends at 100mm. All the dams in the area are overflowing with ummm...  interesting... results for the roads.  I think we'll be unable to get to town for a while, even after the rain stops.  And it's showing no signs of letting-up yet.

There's a river down the middle of the veggie garden, since the small dam beside the house overflows that way.  No serious harm to anything, though, since it was designed and the earth carefully shaped to channel the overflow between veg beds.  It's only the odd mole-tunnels that can cause some small washouts.  Pity the poor Moles, though.

In other parts of the region people are being helicoptered to safety. We're pretty safe; just helicopter in some Scotch and we'll be fine for quite awhile ;-)

Many more pics at Photobucket for the interested. Including the Rain of Fish.  (A bunch of freshly-dead fish lying around where they've been washed out of some dam or other. Great amusement and yummies for the Dogs!)  Sadly Photobucket seems to lack any way of putting the pictures in any kind of sensible order... :-(

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Congratulations to Kevin and Becky, and a big Welcome to Owen! We wish you much happiness, learning and fun!

Heavy Weather

Monday night saw us weathering a blazing gale-force storm.  Sadly no rain came with the wind!  Happily we had a few drops (8mm) last night and this morning; our storage had reached about 26% draw-down: one tank was almost empty after six weeks of almost no rain (2mm in that time!)

The house rocks like a Spanish Galleon in these howling winds, and it kept us anxiously awake deep into the wee hours.  The Chicken House blew right over!  Luckily there was just enough light for the boys and I to right it in time for the Chooks to get to bed and prop it up with a motley assortment of poles and ropes.  I guess we're in for a spot of repairs and rebuilding, now; opportunity to implement the design changes I've been thinking about for a looong time, now.

We lost power around 5:30 on Monday evening, and it was finally restored around 2 this afternoon -- about 45 hours.  I was getting just a bit anxious about the freezer full of Summer Tomatoes.

At least four trees came down around the place -- we're still counting.  At least we won't want for firewood anytime soon.  Thankfully Dale is home for university vac., and very good with helping out on these chores.  I'll post some pics as soon as I get some, but things have been happening so fast, and the camera is definitely not one of the things foremost in my mind.

I confess that being without power for a couple of days has given us cause to rethink some of our priorities around getting more self-sufficient.  A new fireplace (ours is rusting to shreds!) is less important than a wood-stove.  A manual/wind/solar pump to move water from the storage tanks to the header tank.  Rebuilding the Pizza Oven.  Canning/drying/pickling as a way of preserving food instead of freezing.  Building a high-efficiency freezer and/or fridge.  We are getting quite a few of things right, and I feel quite please and proud of that.  But still have a lot of gaps to fill! 

Horrible Weather

Hot, dry, adiabatic wind from the North-West battering at the trees.  Too hot for serious work, too dry for transplanting.  Blowing so hard I can't even offload the horse-shit I collected on Friday into a compost bin; it would all just get blown right back into my face.

No rain in sight.

I seem to have lost the seed I had for a very nice-looking Golden Wax Bush Bean.  The couple of plants that have made it will have to do for seed saving.  The one bean I tasted was spectacular, and I really need a couple of good bush varieties to use as interplants.  As I recall, the seed was one of those packets from Baker Creek that was less-than-satisfactory.  Along with the Golden Beet I was so looking forward to, what I got was dismal germination rates, and very low plant vigor.

Moan, moan, moan.

Big(ish) Rain

Completely unpredicted by the bloody-useless weather service, here we are getting a healthy dose of rain.  Very glad about it, too!  I'm even starting to think that I should go and empty the rain gauge before it overflows.

Of course this means I'll have Tomatoes splitting left, right and centre...

Update: 48mm since last night, and counting...

Heavy Weather

We received over 200mm of rain in total over the past 48 hours.  Fortunately it has stopped now, and the sky seems to be clearing in the West.  (Update: Its raining again!)  All we need now is for the power to come back on.  Power dropped last night almost exactly at 7p.m.  and is still off.  At first we thought it was just part of Eskom's rolling blackout program, but, at 8:30 the next morning, clearly this is something else.  Trees down on powerlines, perhaps.

The veggie garden seems to have come through it pretty well, though I see the little hoofprints of a bushbuck who took advantage of the dog sleeping inside.

It rained, and it rained, and it rained.

And the Piglets are entirely surrounded by water.

Checking the rain-gauge brought only heartbreak.  >100mm is all I can record.  The chicken-run is a river; all the neighbourhood dams are overflowing in torrents.  I guess the water-tanks are full, but I'll be buggered if I'm going out in the rain again to check.  The veggie garden is awash, though coping quite well - I did not see any serious damage, despite the dam near the house overflowing through the veggie garden.  It was quite carefully designed so that the overflow goes through the middle where I planted only permanent herbs, avoiding any of the veggie beds.

The road out is flooded - local farmers are tractoring out the cars of people foolish enough to attempt the crossing.  And here's me without a supply of Scotch laid in :-O

Cold Front

Looks like a cold front on its way - and fast, too.  Good.  We need a decent rain.

So outside to chop some firewood - on the optimistic assumption that the wind won't be too strong for a fire.  (Our chimney doesn't work worth a damn in wind, and ends up sucking all the smoke back into the house.)  Need a new axe-handle; the handle has split lengthwise inside the axe-head, so the head is wedged none-too-securely. Then my chopping-block split.  Oh well, more firewood, says the Optimist.

Just one of Those days.