Predicted drought
I have read a couple of times now about a predicted drought for us this summer. And in this morning’s paper, it talked about super high temperatures hitting us as early as the end of the month. The forecasters are predicting it could reach as high as 25 degrees and may even surpass the highest record for September which was 28 degrees. They are blaming this on the strong westerlies which will bring hot air off the Australian desert, while the major drought is being attributed to the change from La Nina, which we have had for the last three years, to El Nino which will bring these westerlies and temperatures into the late 30s during the height of summer. The forecasters predict the dryness will be up there with the five previous worst droughts we have had, one of these being the summer of 82/83.
The reason I mention this one, was because my husband, Paul and I had just bought our first farm the previous summer. We were new to both farming and to Northland conditions when this hit. The main creek dried up, leaving just a dusty bed in its place, the ground cracked, creating a haven for crickets, and all the grass died, leaving brown hillsides and no grass for the stock. Fortunately for us, we had a lot of blackberry bushes and the leaves provided food for our sheep while there were couple of water holes in the bush, providing water. Like many other farmers, we did have to sell a lot of our stock, but we were thankful for the blackberry. Kikuya, which we didn’t have on the farm, was a godsend to other farmers as this grass thrived in these arid conditions. This created a poor start for us, having to sell stock early and not having the income we had assured the obliging bank manager we would have. We did however, have the ability to go away shearing which was something we had planned anyway. The farm wasn’t an economical unit and the shearing and rousing income was always part of the budget. We found a lovely man who tended the farm while we were gone.
We drove up from the King Country one day in late March to check on conditions for ourselves. We came around a corner, and the hillside was black, bathed in thousands of crickets. They quickly scarpered when they heard our voices but we knew instantly that any grass that may have tried to grow would be quickly eaten by these pests. Advice from the experts at the time to determine cricket numbers, was to pour dish liquid into the cracks which would flush the crickets out. We did so around the house only to have 20 or 30 crickets exiting each crack. At night, the cricket noise was deafening. New sounds are something that one notices when they move to a new area. It was nice to hear the kiwi too, territorial birds that lived in the nearby bush.
As for the blackberry, even though it was a good food source in the droughts, that had to go as the bushes took up most of the farmland. So, it was goodbye to the blackberry crumbles, the blackberry jam and the blackberry wine, at least from easy foraging. There were still plenty of bushes along the roadside and in neighbouring paddocks.
We bought a second farm a year or two later then sold both in 1987 so that Paul could go back shearing full time. By this stage interest rates had jumped from 7 per cent to 21 per cent, making the whole farming business difficult.
Its funny how a small newspaper article can jog so many memories.