It’s almost 5 months since the catastrophic fire that cleaned us up and changed our life forever.Shit has Happened!Next!  So Let’s move on.
Get over it. We have to get on with being in the here and now. The new normal will now be massive fires at intervals set by the new hotter climate. We need to acknowlege this, internalise it and re-build appropriately. We have decided to re-construct eveything in Steel frame and steel cladding. This won’t eliminate the risk or reduce the wild-fire exposure, but when the fire returns – eventually, as it will, in the next catastrophic event,  we will be better prepared with buildings that are less likely to burn. Our first attempt at building something new – a car port. A galvanised steel structure, is now complete. The council has been out here to inspect it and given the final approval and ticked it off. We have had the solar electricians out here this week and installed the 6.6 kw of solar PV on its roof. So we are not buying any of the ‘green’ wind power from the grid any more. We are now back to using our own self-generated solar power.  It has taken 5 months to get back here. It’s a nice feeling to be getting back to self reliance in electricity and food. We decided to use re-cycled galvanised iron to clad the new building.

It makes the rather bright looking new building a lot less shocking. It blends in with the charachter of all the other buildings on the site. The inside is still rather bright, a bit ‘2001- a shed oddesy’, but I intend to line it in times to come when funds and time permit. That will tone it down a bit.

Because my leg is still healing. I can’t do too much – especially on ladders and up on roofs. So I have been grounding myself with working on the stone stairs leading up the retaining wall to the new pottery. These stairs will link the new pottery to the wood kiln shed below.I have found a lot of my stomemasons tools that went through the fire. Luckily, being mostly wrought iron, thay survived the fire in reasonable order, just very rusty.I have enough ‘gads’ to be getting on with, so I can cut up the big stone slabs into smaller sizes more suited to stone step treads in a set of steps.I’m not up to lifting big lumps like this anymore, so I’m using the tractor’s bucket to do the heavy lifting these days.

The weather is holding out, only a few frosts as yet, so we are still harvesting all our green food from the garden. We are making a lot of stir-frys at the moment. Ones that use a lot of capsicums! We make a big double batch and make gyoza dumplings from half, then stuff capsicums the next night with the rest.