The Last Heavy Lifting Before the Rains

One of the most challenging aspects of farming in an annual rainfall district can be retaining a sustainable amount of water throughout the year. But given that we have been in a progressive drought for the past few years have made it very challenging, and has left our natural dams barren. On the plus side, this gave us the opportunity to dig the dams a bit deeper before the next rainfall started.

But for this job we hired in a little bit of extra help.

Above you can see the existing dam, completely empty with the petrified tree in the middle, being scraped deeper. The TLB certainly made the heavy work seem easy despite a few breakdowns in the process. And even those counted in our favor, as the owner of the TLB offered to scrape a new road leading to the dam for us, to compensate for time lost on the machines repairs.

I was certainly very grateful, because despite the fact that the old road was still usable it was quite shabby and ill placed which made it hard to get to the dam directly.

But clearing the new road had other perks as well, as revealing this lovely aloe ferox, or as I like to call it the old dancing aloe.

And after all was said and done we watched the rains roll in until the moon showed face in the overcast skies. And although we have had some decent rain since then, we will still need a lot more before the season is over to ensure a successful year ahead.

But we are hopeful!