What’s the saying about never working with kids and animals? Jack usually defies that saying, but today he wasn’t acting quite the way I’d hoped he would! I was trying to capture him looking at the pages OF MY NEW BOOK (YAY!!) while I was reading to him. However as you can see, he…
What a great day to spend in front of the fire, editing the next book for you all. Starting from Now will be out in November and this has been an awesome fun book to write, albeit slightly controversial… It’s cold and windy outside and we’ve had a beautiful, and much needed 40mm of rain…
Are you feeling a little tired? Don’t feel like reading a bedtime story to the kids? Well, I’ve got your problem solved! Pop them into bed and let Jack and I read them my latest children’s book, What Should a Horse Say? When I was little my mum used to be really tired at night…
It’s time! I’ve been thinking about re-inventing my blog for some time and now that time is right here. I used to love writing blogs – they would get my fingers all warmed up for writing during the day and I LOVED sharing photos and little stories of my farming life with you all. Since…
Okay, so on the 21st March, this is about to happen… Detective Dave Burrows is launched into his own series. Hopefully Fool’s Gold will be the first of many adventures, he takes us on. Here’s the blurb: Written with Fleur’s trademark warmth and outstanding storytelling, newly badged Detective Dave Burrows and his reluctant wife arrive…
“I am driven to improve agriculture and the viability of rural communities, and to show others just like me that we can do anything!” ~ Dr Jillian Kelly Todays quote comes from Jillian herself. Jillian is based out of Coonamble where she is a large animal veterinarian…but her talents run deeper than being JUST a…
Esperance received a fair bit of rain on Thursday. Rain is one of my all-time favourite parts of mother nature. I grew up in the mid north of SA where it wasn’t a common occurrence and, as a farmer, I know there are good times for rain and others not so great. To me, any…
What a difference a year makes. This time in 2015, my daughter and I were hanging out in Melbs waiting for the last concert in the Taylor Swift 1989 World Tour. Do you know it feels like a life time ago, yet I can remember everything so clearly. It had been a fairly tough year,…
To coin a phrase, but slightly twist it, from Amanda over at Bush Babe of Oz (BB): ‘It’s no secret I’m a Bush Babe of Oz fan.’ In fact I think Amanda and I have a mutual admiration party going on! Not sure how long ago it was now, that we met online – I was…
Farmers are always accused of complaining about the weather. Let me explain why. A couple of weeks ago, we got a beautiful 18mm. It fell over a few days – in fact I think we had about five or six days straight where if we didn’t get falls of five or so millimetres, we…
This is where we spent most of our Sunday and it’s ‘that’ time of the year again. I guess there is a few ‘that’ times of the year on a farm, but this particular ‘that’, is lamb marking. This year, we have about 10,000 lambs to mark. No small number and it will take weeks,…
Getting out of bed at 4am is not hard, when I can walk outside, sipping coffee and see this view. There wasn’t long to admire the sunrise, though, as we had 700 ewes to walk ‘up the road’. A cool ten kilometres. We’d shifted another 700 the previous day. Knowing it was going to be…
Today we’re going to be drafting off a heap of lambs to go to market. Last week we weighed them all up, so we knew how many we had to send and our stock agent could organise a truck. Prime lambs are one of the main enterprises in our business. Both Anthony and I love…
A couple of mornings ago, staggering from broken sleep, bleary eyed, I emerged into the world of consciousness by a beautiful sunrise. For those of you who follow this blog, you’ll probably know I’m a bit keen on sunrises and sunsets and I’m often rushing off at the most inappropriate times (like when I…
With The Boss on the boom-spray practically every day for the last two weeks, our working dogs, Weasel and Law have been hanging out with the kids and me. We’ve been checking out sunsets, heifers calving, watching the tractor go ’round in that ‘beautiful circle‘, Sara Storer sings of. So really, they’re on an extended…
Full moon time is always noisy at our place. The soft light allows the dogs to see a lot more than they usually would. Meita, still being so young and not doing a lot of work (therefore having much more energy than the older dogs) is the main culprit. Bark, bark, bark, all night! At…
A while ago I wrote a post about our new pet calf, Lightning. He’s a beautiful natured little thing and so fit and healthy. Hayden has done a great job of looking after him! Lightning drinks 3L of milk, which Hayden makes up, every morning and every night. He has the days sleeping in the…
I often taken our Jack Russell with me when I’m out doing jobs on the farm. Especially if I’m feeding out hay. He’s loves watching the cows and calves and occasionally he is brave enough to sit up on the back seat and bark at them. (A bigger sooky la-la, you’ve never seen. This dog…
Once in a while, sad things happen on farms. And once in a while weird things happen. This is a ‘both’ situation. Late last week we had a massive thunder storm which dropped about 40mm of rain over the farm. (It makes for over a 100mm since the start of March, so things…
This time of the year is when the craziness starts. The moment we cut the pastures or oats, to make hay, it’s like some gremlin inhabits the farm and makes everyone mad. To get really good quality hay, it’s best if it doesn’t get a rain on it, before it’s in bales. The Boss is…
