Rainclouds have their Silver Lining

Yeah, well … we’ve had a bit of rain over the last week or several.

And maybe in some places it was a little more than normal for this time of year, and maybe none of us can really remember what the warmth of streaming sunshine is like, and perhaps we’re sick of kids and pets and everyone else being underfoot because we can’t get outside … because it’s still raining.

But then, it is winter, and the drought of only a few months ago may have skewed our perspective a bit.

Lots of city people seem to be somewhat afraid of a real rainstorm. Some of them don’t even like it when there’s a heavy shower. They find it intimidating, standing with shoulders hunched as they watch fat raindrops slam into the window or bounce off the deck or slither off the slick polish of the family car.  And it costs a fortune to use the tumble-drier to keep up with the washing.

Over the past few weeks, as more and yet more rain has swept across the country, and the nightly TV weather buffs somberly tell us that another “system” is on the way as they indicate the North-Cape-to-Bluff black, wrinkling little clouds squeezing rain out of themselves on-screen. The general comment is: “I’m sick of it… It’s awful… It’s so depressing”.

Well, I’m gonna stick my neck out. I reckon rain is great.

Farmers, road-menders, phone and power technicians have to go out in it all the time – it’s part of the job, and there’s no shirking that at the end of the day they’re going to be soaked and cold, and there will be another pile of sodden clothes to deal with.

Farmers do it because their stock need caring for; linespeople do it because the rest of us would whinge and snivel if they decided to stay inside and dry like the rest of us, even if we didn’t have electricity. Road-menders do it too, because storms tend to erode and wash away hillsides that slide down onto highways in thousand-cubic-metre mud-heaps, and it all needs clearing away right now because the public demands the right to be able to drive anywhere all the time for any reason.

Fixing broken phone or power lines, and rebuilding smashed-up roads in those conditions at this time of year is always a sod of a job, but those people always get out there and do it. Feeding out warm dry hay to hungry, cold animals is what farmers have to do, every day, this time of year – and they usually get muddy and cold and wringing wet in the process. Bear them all in mind when you’re next having a weather gripe.

As little kids, my brother and I used to love it when it rained, because then we could go down to the drain in the swamp and build dams, using sticks and bits of ancient wood that kept coming to the surface as the swamp dried.

We’d pull clumps of mud-rooted rushes and grass off the banks and ram them into the gaps in the dam, and the water would back up for maybe 50 metres before the pressure suddenly forced the dam to burst, and we’d race along the banks watching the pieces of wood swirl and plunge on the mini-flood.

Or we’d create huge mud-slides down the home-paddock hill, running at it and barreling down on our knees as the groove got slicker and muddier. 

And then we’d slink home, suddenly and acutely aware that our mother may not appreciate unearthing (again) two small shivering bodies from the curious balls of mud and grass and cow manure that were puddling and dripping on her back doorstep, each with two filthy feet protruding from the bottom.

Those things could only happen if it had rained long and heavily, and we loved it.

Sadly, our house had a thick tile roof, so we missed that joy of being small children and snuggling in semi-terror into a warm bed as the rain hammered down on a tin roof.

But as we grew up and had to help around the farm, there was a certain feeling of invulnerability about climbing into a heavy wool shirt and thick jersey, pulling on a long oilskin raincoat and sou-wester hat, stepping into knee-length gumboots and “sallying forth” into the saturated darkness of an early August morning and following the dripping herd across half a mile of sodden, muddy farm to the bright milking shed lights.

That steaming mug of tea, along with a slab sandwich of brown bread, butter and crunchy sugar, was absolute nectar – but we had it only after the first sets of cups were on and milking had properly begun.

Somehow the beating across my head and shoulders from the rain out in the open paddocks was good, and I can remember laughing aloud several times with typical late-teenager disregard, and a feeling of absolute security – sou-wester down over my ears and tied under the chin, oilskin coat flailing in the wind, and saturated bare legs and feet  squelching inside wet gumboots.

Shorts and no socks were almost always the order of the day, regardless of the weather.

Years later I spent a rain-soaked few days in the big country of Fiordland with two Doc officers, vainly searching for kakapo thought to have been there. It rained all the time, day and night, and after the first day we were wet all the time, day and night, and so was everything else. Three or four layers of wool was ideal – even carrying all the extra water it was still superbly warm.

And I was reminded then of the early settlers of the South Island’s lower West Coast who hacked an existence out of that harsh, dripping landscape, and how most of them never bothered wearing a raincoat because it was totally useless after half an hour of swinging an axe. They just wore wool and put up with the wet.

In the big 1958 Otorohanga flood, my father, like many other farmers around the district, loaded all his cream cans onto the farm trailer, filled them with clean water, and drove his tractor and trailer the five miles into town to offer what help he could. After massive cloudbursts further up the Waipa Valley, the Waipa River had swept through the town’s main street and adjacent housing area, leaving it covered in sloppy sludge.

As Dad ploughed down the street, he came across one haggard-looking shop-keeper working to clean his premises from knee-deep muck.

“Want any water there?” Dad asked brightly.

Setting aside his shovel, the man spread has arms wide, surveyed the slushy mess surrounding him and said, in hushed tones of absolute anguish: “Do I want any water…?”

My father drove slowly away.

But the rain will continue as and when it wants, whether we like it or not, ensuring the grass will continue to grow. It means cows with new calves, and ewes with new lambs, have good tucker, and the youngsters will thrive as their dams produce plentiful milk supplies, and for both dairy and sheep farmers that means a good strong start to the new season.

It may also mean, for canny farmers, the opportunity to lay in extra supplies of silage and hay as the seasons turn in the next few months.

For despite the seemingly endless rain, there is word around that the country may be in for another drought this coming summer.

And then we’ll be praying for rain.

Kingsley is a columnist with the Waikato Times in Hamilton. His Outdoors columns appear fortnightly. Last year he published a selected 25 columns in book form, and a second book has just been published. Kingsley can be contacted at kingsley(at)accuwrite.co.nz

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