As you can see my white boards are beginning to fill up with ideas, character descriptions and a few other things. I don’t always use everything that goes up on these boards, and there’s nothing plotted here, only a place to throw ideas and thoughts at. I’ve been troubling over how to start Book…
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,…
The last couple of days have included a few strange ways of getting around the place! Normally I drive a very nice Nissan Patrol Wagon – very comfortable, fuel efficient and very ‘normal’. My friend, however, has a new, fun type car. Can you guess what ‘breed’ it is from this pic? Yesterday was a…
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…
It’s not often you get to see a full rainbow, let alone have the camera handy to catch them before they disappear. This beauty hung around for about ten minutes, while I fiddled with my lens and managed to get these shots. The above photo, though, really doesn’t do it justice. It was such a…
Harvest! The very word seems to bring out the feral in every man, woman and child, involved in cropping. It also seems to be the time for Murphy, from Murphy’s Law to rear his ugly head. Here are a few examples. Upon jumping in the new (second hand) header, we bought this year, the Boss…
I’m still in the celebratory mood! This time last year I was editing Purple Roads in the tractor, this year it’s Silver Clouds! I really couldn’t be happier! Our Day 2 Competition is: Place a comment below letting me know what you love about the new website and perhaps what you’d like to see?…
I love a good sunset or sunrise. Last Saturday evening, I was hurtling back from the other farm, after showing mum and dad the header and how it can swath canola. Coming from the mid north of South Australia and them being sheep graziers, they have no idea about cropping! Anyhow, I had Mum…
The farm is well and truly looking like it’s summer, even though we’re only in mid-October! Some paddocks have a gold/white tinge across the tops of the plants, indicating it’s done its time. Saturday was a warm 35 degrees, so the crops won’t take long to turn, ripen and harvest will be started before we…
As the time for the unedited proof copies of Purple Roads to go to the printers, nears, my editing time seems to be shrinking – gasp! Late last week I got the third round of edits back and although there’s still a reasonable amount to do, there is a backlog of farm and housework that…
I love the hustle and bustle of harvest. If you discount the fact that you spend about fifteen hours a day, itching and sticking to vinyl seats that you have to peel yourself off of, harvest could be one of my favourite times of the year. Unfortunately those two things don’t help endear itself to…
Making hay is one of the fun things about the farm … unless you get hay fever, like I do! For the last few weeks I’ve been sneezing my head off and will continue to do so until harvest has finished. Rye grass, grain dust, normal dust and ‘fines’ (minuscule particles of…
I love stone fruit and we are lucky to have moved to a house with a delicious peach bearing tree. Big, fat, juicy ones! Trouble is, the tree is completely overloaded, so much so that one of the branches broke off about two weeks ago. Also the fruit all ripens at around the same time!…
Look at this beautiful sunset! You know what that means, don’t you? ‘Red in the morning, shepherd’s warning. Red at night, shepherd’s delight’. We’re going to get harvesting tomorrow … I think! I could look at this sight forever, sipping a cool glass of wine… but there’s dog’s to fed and chooks to put away!…
