I take it all back, Mr Weatherman – you’ve got it right for once! Rain, glorious rain! The dreaded word “drought”, which was whispered in every conversation around here since Christmas, has been consigned to memory. The skies are still black, thunder rumbles, promising even more rain.
Recently neighbour Jan and I went to look at the river at the bottom of our mountain gorge. It was overflowing its banks on its rush down the diverted furrow into our big irrigation dam. As Jan and I watched from the dam wall, we could see the level rising. Jan went quiet and frowned. “Another metre, Townie, and the level will be at the spillway which isn’t nearly wide enough to carry the overflow.” “And then?” I asked. “If it carries on raining, the water will flow over the wall, as it did 20 years ago, and cause a breach. The part of the wall will collapse and the water will flood our pastures below.”
Farming makes you live from one crisis to another, I’m discovering. From drought to flooding, what’s next? “Fetch your workers and wait here,” Jan commanded, taking off. He came back half an hour later, driving his bulldozer towards the spillway. Within two hours it was twice its former width. “That should do it!” said Jan in a satisfied tone. “Now it’s your turn to finish the job, Townie. The furrow from the spillway needs clearing and to be made a little deeper.” Not having operated a bulldozer before, I was given a rudimentary, on-the-spot lesson. Satisfied I’d got the hang of it, Jan left me to it. But his confidence in my mechanical abilities was premature, unfortunately. With so many levers and pedals, I soon became confused. I set the blade too deep and dug a hole in the furrow that the bulldozer virtually disappeared into. I couldn’t get out of it.
I sent one of my labourers to fetch Jan for help, but he returned to say Jan had gone to town. Abandoning the machine, I walked to the dam wall. The water level was still rising. Then it started to rain again.
I phoned Jan on his cell and explained my predicament. A barrage of expletives followed.
By the time he got back to the dam it was overflowing the spillway and pouring down the furrow. All that was visible of the bulldozer was its exhaust pipe, like the periscope of a submarine. I’ll spare you his reaction, the only printable part of which was, “You’re a bloody disaster on a farm! Why don’t you just go back to the city, Townie, or did you cause havoc there too and have to escape here to avoid ridicule?” We haven’t spoken for a while … – Derek Christopher |fw
