Last night, with an eye to the forecast red wind warning, a State of Emergency was declared in Canterbury. It’s hard to think of anything other than what’s going on with the weather today; it’s been quite the mixed bag.

We woke to absolute calm but by 7.45 when I got out into the paddocks (there was a little bit of hurry up involved as, in the early hours of the morning, I had remembered the upended plastic buckets hiding the old sleepout anchor points I still haven’t got around to digging out) it was starting to get a little blustery. Goat feed bowls were lashed to the fence, the guinea pigs tarpaulin tied down, water troughs filled to the brim, and the barnyard gate clipped open for the sheep. I wouldn’t have been quite so gracious had I spotted the lamb in the vegetable garden gorging on the brussels sprouts tops beforehand. Thankfully, that’s all he’d got; the gap he’d squeezed through was too little for any of the bigger, more clued up, flock. By the time I’d done a patch-up job on the fence and fed the menagerie, my hat was scrumpled up in my top pocket; there’s only so many times you can run after it.

The Bean Counter had a late start for a multitude of reasons so he held the fort while I dashed into Darfield to pick up a couple of things. Thursday is fish day at Johnny Fresh and if the boat went out I wanted to secure the Homestead’s share. It had and I did but whilst out the light dimmed, the wind hit and the main street, which had been business as usual when I arrived, emptied. Aside from the dust clouds, that is.

A kind-of tree had been blown down in the shelterbelt while I was out but, as you can see, it wasn’t exactly a specimen of botanical health.

We decided The Bean Counter should head down State Highway 73 to work early; the weather hadn’t hit Christchurch yet and we hoped he would “run-before-the-storm” which ended up happening.

Then like that (insert sound of clicking fingers) it stopped. It rained for a bit and then the sun came out and the sheep wandered back out to the middle of the paddock. I wandered out, too, for a bit of a recce. The only small concern (not one feedbag was spotted, Dawn) was the disappearance of my recently assembled liquid compost tank’s lid. I finally found it wedged between the chicken coop and barn. It is now more securely affixed.

And then it started up again…

There’s power outages, roads closed, trees down, and no end to the stories of stormy mayhem but for now, here at Union Homestead, we’re okay.

Sending love to all those less fortunate; our thoughts are with you.