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,…
Are you a New Years Resolution maker? How do you go with keeping them? I’m not so crash hot. I always come up with the normal ones; ‘must lose weight, going to be more organised, get fit…’ Hahahaha. What a laugh. It never happens. This may seem slightly off-topic but it’s not, I promise! This…
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…
Christmas this year, will be different for us. Like so many families across the world, we will have an empty chair at our table. This, in itself, brings thoughts and feelings I’m unable to express – I haven’t worked out how yet. It will be a quiet one for us too – just the four…
Last Christmas, I had my first Christmas back on ‘home soil’ in more than 18 years. My husband took me ‘back home’ as a thank you for caring for his mum. I guess I should explain that, for farmers in Australia, Christmas is held at the wrong time of the year! It’s really difficult for…
So it’s been about three weeks since the header or tractor or chaser bin turned a wheel. It’s also been that amount of time since the auger has gone. For those of you who aren’t sure what that means, it equates to NO HARVEST! Can’t begin to tell you how frustrating that is! *run around…
View from the top of the header We’re still harvesting. This must be one of the most frustrating harvests we’ve had in years! The wind has howled from the east – cool, moist gale-forced winds, which doesn’t let the moisture come down in the grain enough, so we can get it into the silos. A…
The one thing about cropping, is as hard as you try, there is always likely to be something that isn’t quite perfect about the grain. It might rain, and it get stained or worse, begin to sprout. This decreases the quality. Sometimes you might find that the boomspray has had a blocked jet and there’s…
Harvest is always looked forward to with a mixture of anticipation and dread – well it is by me anyway. Anticipation because it’s our money making time. We get to see what we’ve achieved over the year, reward for the hard work, so on and so forth. Dread, because it’s dry and hot. Long hours…
Some times there is nothing more I love than editing. After all, the hard work has been done, hasn’t it? The words are on the page and all I have to do is rearrange them, or make them better. Yes? *cough, cough* Perhaps there is a little more to do than that. Some times there…
As I type this, I’m sitting at my office desk, looking out over green pastures. Just a few metres into the paddock, there is a mob of sheep and their marked lambs all camped up, which is unusual for this time of the day. The clouds are low and grey and the gentle breeze has…
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…
Have you ever had event in your life that makes you stand up and say; ‘That’s it. I’m changing.’ Or have you ever got yourself into a rut that is so hard to pull yourself out from? Well, that’s me. On both accounts. For those who follow me through Facebook, Twitter, or this blog, you’ll…
Every so often an opportunity arrives, that you just can’t pass up, no matter the circumstances. Harvest and Hay making are extremely important in farming world. Hay means there is food for the stock during the dry times and harvest is the money making part of the year. This year, canola harvest and hay making…
I love winter. It’s my season. I love the way the wind bites at my cheeks and the sound of rain on a tin roof/window/shearing shed/ground. It’s like music to me. And rain it did last night! The deluge woke me at 12:15am and I was still listening to it drum steadily on the roof at…
It’s a bit chilly in our neck of the woods! Over the weekend, our temps dropped well below 15 degrees – in fact there was one time I looked at the weather station and I saw 13c. Winter is well on it’s way. Autumn is lambing and these girls below, have had their lambs, they’re…
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…
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…
Silver Clouds by Fleur McDonald Well, launch day is finally here. I’ve got no idea where the year has gone already! It only seems like yesterday I was struggling to finish the last round of edits, waving good bye to my daughter, who was leaving home and twiddling my thumbs (only for a moment or…
I love naming my characters – especially because, although I had a say in naming our kids, it was The Boss who actually came up with both names! It’s not like I love these characters as much as my children (obviously!), but in a sense it is like naming the offspring all over again, because…
