Our season has come to an abrupt end. There wasn’t any gradual change in the grass as there can be some years. It went from green to golden in the space of about three days! Now is the time that my love/hate relationship starts with summer. I am not a fan of hot weather – which is quite strange, considering where I grew up, but my skin can’t take the strong summer sun… and I’m a weakling, when the temperature hits over thirty and I have to work in it!
But I love the school holidays, Christmas, the warm nights, awesome sunsets and any excuse for a BBQ and few drinks! (And the beach, if I’m in the shade!)
All that is still to come. First there is harvest: Anthony has pulled the header out of the shed and started to swath some of our barley, so we’ll be harvesting by tomorrow.
Second, there’s the feedlot: these lambs have been drenched and jetted (for flies) and are on their way down to the feedlot. They’ll be my charges, while harvest is going on. I’ll make sure the feeders are full and the water is clean and fresh and then let Anthony know when I think they are ready for sale.
And then there is the seasonal thunderstorms that can bring fires or a deluge of rain!
This time of the year is always stressful – trying to get the harvest off before there are any summer rains, can cause even the most placid person to get rather snarly! It is such a big job and there is so much riding on it that it hangs over everyone head and we all hold our breath until the last truck has left the farm.
Hopefully next year our season will be a ‘normal’ one and not as difficult as the past two years.
those lambs look great already! I thought they were ewes at first! I hate having to weigh lambs- especially when they don’t want to run! We did a few hundred the other day and they were good but only coz they had already done it a couple of times before.
Hi Kelly – the lambs need to put on about another 7 to 10 kgs and then they’ll be ready for the Woolies market! Our lambs always run really well, because they’ve run through the scales so many time before, too – it’s not good luck, it’s the fact thtat they’re trained to do it!!
you are not wrong about the season change!! I do hope that the red glow of a fire that i can see from here is NOT where you are…not likeing this summer already! hate fires hate them!
Our lambs are WA Q Lambs so they get to go to IGA or Super IGA!! 🙂 I love walking through IGA with friends and saying to the chops ‘oh there you are Betty. I haven’t seen you for ages!!’ Understandably I get some pretty weird looks from my friends!!
Our lambs go to Walshes, so they end up in all the Woolies stores.