Continuing fire preparations whilst continuing a normal life

Most of the standard preparations are complete. Having finished giving everything a good water in advance of the coming hot days we have a surplus of water and decided to try and reduce the amount of brown grass around the house.

Photographs in carry bags, wool blankets and carry boxes for furry and feathered family ready to roll

The idea was to slowly build a ring of green grass close to the house to minimise combustible material available to spotting especially under the wooden pergola. The green growth  may give us more time to splash water over any spot fires. We are using really fine sprays which use little water but gradually get the dry dusty soil wet. The same approach is being taken around the chook yard with the added benefit of providing some additional green feed to the girls.

Fine spray

We also moved two chicken tractors next to our emergency bolt hole. If there is an opportunity to move our chickens in the event of fire we will have somewhere to confine them with overhead sprinklers to keep them cool.

Relocated chicken tractors

Also spent some time cleaning up around the place. Flattening cardboard boxes we keep to reduce the fire hazard and tidying up around the workshop again to reduce the fire hazard and make sure things don't fly around loose in a wind storm.

But life still goes on.

Collected milk this morning. Some for drinking as well as knocking over a Havarti in between other jobs such as drying more coffee beans.

Checked the bee hive only to find they are roaring ahead with only two frames remaining free in the second box. Not putting a queen excluder in between the first and second box has allowed the queen more egg laying space and she has worked her magic with lots and lots of good looking brood. Need to prep some more frames and add a new box but this time with an excluder. When I do this I will check the bottom box as well to see what is happening down there.

There was a lot of old comb stored from last years failed hive and capping's from robbing's. Got out the old saucepan and melted all this down in three batches giving it a light sieve to get rid of the worst gunk. After it has set I'll scrape away any rubbish and remelt the lot and then give it a really slow cooling period to allow the last of the rubbish to separate from the wax.