As usual, it has been a busy time at Three Dams over the last few months. The good news is that all but one of the 311 vines we planted back in early October have survived the summer so far but the local are wreaking havoc! Due to the lack of Spring and Summer rain, the only food available for the kangaroos and wallabies has been our vines so for a brief period around Christmas we had what looked like a real vineyard with lots of growth trailing along the cordon wire. Alas after an invasion by a mob of Roos one night, the whole vineyard was decimated and all the shoots eaten back to the top of the vine guard! The experts here in Heathcote have reassured us that this is not a big problem in the first year so long as the vines get their roots down deep and get established.
The other problem with the lack of rainfall is the ability to keep the water up to the vineyard and all the veggies and fruit trees so we've set up a separate watering system using dam water pumped up into a 10,000 litre holding tank. With a bit of help from Google and some bits from the hardware, I've managed to set up an automated watering system, entirely solar powered that waters everything at pre determined intervals.
In other news, right on cue, the nectarines are back! Smaller than last year (also due to the lack of rain) but sweeter than ever! We also had plenty of apricots, plums and a few peaches with the apples and figs still a few weeks away. All in all, the weather has been a challenge but in the last few days we've had about 45mm of rain with 42mm of that coming in about 2 hrs on Wednesday in a massive stormy downpour.
The energy efficiency of the house is ever improving. We recently made up some roll-up shade cloth blinds to protect the western side of the house from the afternoon sun. We even sourced a very efficient split system AC unit from EBay that we can run off the solar panels in the event of extreme weather. By closing up the house in the early morning, it remains a good 8-10 degrees cooler inside than out mainly due to the wall, floor and ceiling insulation and remote roof extraction fan..
But if you're feeling too hot, there's always our new pool for a cooling dip!
