The Not So Golden Pond

New Zealand is having a drought. Water is being rationed; particularly here at the farm. We are timing our showers and flushing only when absolutely necessary. Dan and Yael go down to Auckland once a week and do some laundry. There are fires here in the North Island, crops are drooping or dead, and the stock are thirsty.

We water our four far pastures and the quarantine paddock from our pond next to the red, red barn. About a week ago the pond ran dry. We can manage hauling water for the sheep – they aren’t big drinkers. The steers are another story. Boy do they swill the stuff. There is never enough. So we sold off 3 of the steers. And the other 2 went berserk! They jumped the fence; they charged the electric tape; they sulked. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that cows are placid. They knew what the meat truck meant and they freaked out!

We moved them to the new barn paddock and they settled down. So Dan turned his attention to the pond. It was all silted up and the cattails were growing over 10’ high. Being Dan, he decided to dredge the pond himself. So in he went and up and down he dredged by hand, and pulled up cattails, and when he finally emerged many hours later he looked like the tar baby. Oh, and he had only cleared about 1/4^th of the pond.

So we hired Merv and his digger to do the work. Dan and Merv started 9 hours ago and are still at it as I write this. The sad part is that even with all that effort, they can’t get the pond clear enough to rely on for watering the paddocks. We will have to go to plan B which involves buying another water tank and installing it at the red, red barn to catch the roof runoff. Sounds good but water tanks are expensive, very expensive, and there’s no rain anyway so what do we do in the meantime?

We haul water. That’s what we do. Just like the pioneers. This may be the 21^st century but a drought is still a drought and all human ingenuity can’t make it rain (or cure the common cold, for that matter). I guess we still have a ways to go.