Water is one of the essentials of farm life. It is also one that we tend to take for granted, especially here in southern Tasmania, renowned as it is for being cold and wet. However the times they are a changin’, and much that once was is lost. This image shows the sad state of our rainfall for the last five years. i.e. an ever diminishing curve, interspersed with extreme events.

But graphs are hard to parse. So here are some images that show what the numbers translate to in real life.
August 2015
January 2016
April 2016
So, basically, doom. Fortunately this is only one of our three dams. Unfortunately only one of the other two, our largest dam, from which we get water to flush our toilets and to water the garden, still has water in it. It is however at the lowest level we have ever seen it, and shrinking rapidly.
We are in a much better position than many of our neighbours. One reason is that we are at nearly 400 metres elevation. Because of this it is a bit cooler than in the valley and we get some moisture from clouds that are passing even if they don’t rain as they have to rise over our hill to continue on their journey eastward.
Another reason is we don’t have much stock. On our ten hectares, 25 acres in the old money, we have six sheep, two miniature cows, two pigs and all the chickens. The cows and two of the sheep are here as refugees. They belong to my sister who lives lower down in the valley and who consequently has no grass at all. Next month we will be getting our own miniature cow, but still that is not a lot of load for the land.
Because we don’t have a heavy load of stock we were able to make hay. We got about a third of the hay we grew last year due to the lack of rain. Hay was in very high demand this year as no one else grew as much as usual either. Because of our stocking rate we actually need very little hay for winter. Only if someone is confined to a shed for say, lambing, and we have to feed them will we need hay. This meant we were able to swap our hay for straw, which was also in high demand due to the lack of rain. We need straw for bedding for the pigs, they need to be kept warm and dry in winter, and for flooring and nest lining for the chickens. Pigs will also eat barley straw. For the rest of the animals there should be  enough grass to keep them going through the winter, unless we don’t get any rain before it gets so cold the grass stops growing for winter…