Fleur's latest novel 'The Shearer's Wife' is now available to pre-order on Booktopia
The kids and I climbed Mount Howick recently and were left in awe of the view! Every time we go up there, we know it’s going to be good, but I think we forget how great it is until we get there again. It’s also quite deceiving how high the hill is. Our cattle look like…
DetailsI think it’s fair to say that we’ve had our fair share of dust storms over the last week! This photo could have been the start of the storms that hit Sydney. Taken in the north of SA (thanks Helen Williams) it shows not only the destructiveness of high winds and dry land, but how…
Details[flickrvideo]http://www.flickr.com/photos/fleurmcdonald/4035228275/[/flickrvideo] I shot a couple small videos at our ram sale last week. I talk about a ram sale in Blue Skies and I thought, if you haven’t been to one before, it would help you visualise the atmosphere and excitement that runs around a shed as the auction starts. You may have to watch it a couple of…
DetailsThe build up to any sale is huge, especially big if you’re putting your efforts before your peers and they are judging your work. Our ram sale was a great day! After an early start, the rams were settled in their pens and Rochelle and I headed off to the supermarket to grab all the…
DetailsWe do live in a wonderful country and every so often, nature throws something at us, that I hope I can capture well enough in a photo, to help remind me how I felt when you saw it. It was a warm day, the bees were buzzing and the atmosphere was still. I’d been madly…
DetailsOur annual sale – Tomorrow! For many years now, we’ve held an annual ram sale in Esperance. We gather up the best of our rams, truck them to town, wrestle them into pens and let farmers pass judgement on them! Tomorrow is the big day (18th Sept 09). At the moment, I’m snatching five minutes…
DetailsThis is why, when you live on a farm, you need a four wheel drive! Often you become a transport company! Ours is called FNA transport – officially Fleur and Anthony Transport, unofficially, a rather rude word starting with F Average Transport! I took some of the extra wool into Esperance, to make the journey to…
DetailsThis is a really important little note book. It’s small enough to fit in my hand bag or just sit along side me on the passengers seat of the car – and it goes where ever I am at the moment. This is the start of Purple Roads. In here I document every single thought I…
DetailsA little while ago, Anthony and I made a journey across the Nullarbor to Adelaide. We were going to look for good stud rams, to help advance our White Suffolk Stud. After a day in the airports we went straight from there to the show! It was wonderful to walk in and be greeted by…
DetailsSometimes when the crop gets a bit too high and there’s a disease or fungus in it, we need to call in the plane. If we run over it with the boom spray and tractor, we’ll do more damage to the plant, than good. Cropsdusters are daredevils, I’m sure! They fly so close to the…
DetailsCheck out our beautiful looking oats crop. In another five or six weeks it will probably be as tall as my chest! It’s about then we head into it with the mover and cut it all down in rows. Then we leave it to cure (dry out), rake it and start baling. Haymaking is a…
DetailsThis is what our first day of shearing looked like at 6:00am! Sheep all ready and waiting in the yards, clear skies and a wonderful sunrise, sending a message that it was going to be a special day! We tested our new shearing shed well and truly, with 450 ewes being shorn. It worked really…
Details