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 OMG where did that 16 years go ?

FIFO life finished. Full time farming.

2nd child at school.

Enjoying the fruits of my labours.

Today the plan was to move the jersey cows out from their little paddock with the jersey bull and put them with the rest of the mob. Well, at least we got half of it done. The jersey cows are now in the back half, the jersey bull is in the front half but the main mob is in the small paddock to eat the grass down. ( waste not want not). We also attached netting to some of the yard panels to make them suitable to run sheep and lambs. We will be running them in in a few days time to ring their tails.

I also spend half an hour with my horses. I have neglected them attention-wise for too long so its time to get them back into work. Jester is falling back in to his old spooky ways so he will take a bit of quietening down. Remmington is still not fully broken so that will take me a few months.

I've not blogged for a year almost. Shame on me.
Well anyway, the farm has ticked over another year and life is pretty much as it was back then.
The crop this year is about the same area, but less planted and more reliant on natural pasture as last year the pasture was very good.
The oats ( ESK variety) have red leaves at the top so I think thats magnesium deficiency. I will be foliar spraying some soluble magnesium and other stuff in a month or so.

The calves are looking good and we have only 4 to mark out of 90-ish but they are quite big and will be a handful in the yards.

I have decided to run a small herd of sheep for home meat supply. At the moment there is 15 ewes and 2 rams, but 6 of the ewes have had twins, and 3 others have had singles so we will probably sell most at the market. I also invested in a wiltshire ram. Wiltys shed their wool, which for me is excellent as we shear, but use the wool for mulch as its multi-coloured and difficult to sell. Within 4 years the whole flock should be wiltys so they will be pretty much like miniature cows.

I am also still working in the north and plan to for 2-3 more years. We have bulldozed the house pad out of the hillside and have the transformer installed for the power, but that is all that has happened with our house plan.

Today I proved my suspicion that one of my dams contains marron. (freshwater crayfish). I have seen markings on the waters edge that looked like something was living in there, and some remains of one after a bird has eaten. Today I saw at least 10 live ones, and caught 1 as long as my hand ( not including the claws) Also saw in a small pool LOTS of young ones. I intend to catch as many as I can and distribute them to my other 6 dams. In the near future I intend to make a series of ponds down the hill and perhaps increase production to near-commercial scale.

Lets see....cows, sheep, hens, ducks, crop, marron........ yes I am diversifying my enterprise :-)

I was going to drive out to the other farm today (70km away) to deliver a few rools of hay and pick up some old galvanised tanks to use as vegetable garden containers. I would plant in the ground but the rabbits in that area are rediculous and I wouldn't have a vege patch for long.
The rain is pelting down and its blowing a gale so I am lazing around in the house waiting for a break in the clouds. My 18 month old daughter is flogging around the house wanting to go outside. Big mistake. She is a water baby and cannot resist a puddle.

The crop ( wheat and oats ) are looking very good and showing no signs of disease. I have serviced the mower and its all ready to cut.

I am back up here. Its been a few days but I have been so busy I have not had time to write anything. Got called out last night at 12.15am and had to drive down to weeli siding on the main rail line to fix a signal fault. Because there is so much roaming cattle around I had to stay below 60km/h for the whole trip, about 70km each way. Finally got back to my room at the camp at 4.55am just in time to go to the mess for breakfast and then to bed. If I don't get a 10 hour break between shifts I stay home until I do. I am not going to complain about that.
Finally had to go back to work at 3.00pm this afternoon. Now it seems I have to go back to Newman for the weekend for an urgent job. Another unneccesary 3 hours of driving.

On another note, I discovered www.youtube.com this week and have watched lots of loopy videos when I was supposed to be sleeping. I may even post some of my own.

Well it has finally rained here. It is the dryest start to winter on record and the farms are showing it. Very little green on the ground where there should be reasonable grass. I put in the wheat and oat seed last time I was in and hopefully this rain will make it germinate. We have had to feed almost all of the rolls of hay we were going to keep for next year as a reserve. Of the 700-odd rolls I made there are about 100 left.

Finished another 15 acres over the back paddock so completely finished for the season. Plan tomorrow to spread the oat and wheat seed in these patches. Also have to connect up the hotwire fence we built yesterday that divides the back half into two 100 acre paddocks. Ronnie put out 2 bulls into the junction paddock for her parents cows.

Much is happening on the farm. The cows have finished calving with no problems bar 1, who had a still-born calf. Unfortunately the cow was the daughter of my prized cow 'kobi' and we expected great things from her. She earned reprieve by adopting a calf from a set of twins and is raising it very well.
Two of the bulls have been out for 2 weeks. The murray grey with the mature cows and the black angus with the heifers and kobi and her daughter and a few of the late-calving cows. We let the last few bulls out today including the big murray grey, but hopefully all their work has been done by the previous bulls.
I have today finished aerating 35 acres in preparation for planting our first non-pasture hay crop. The varieties we are planting are 'barooda wonder wheat' and 'esk oats'. Both varieties reportedly are ideal for hay making. We will also cut about 60 acres of natural pasture for hay. The season hasn't really broken yet so the ground is well dry enough to drive on with the tractor, wheras normally by this time of the year it would be all boggy.
Kulia (our daughter) is almost saying words. She walks (or runs!!!) around singing most of the time and typical of a 16 month old is into everything. She loves playing with the animals especially my ginger cat. After breakfast in the morning she finds her boots and demands to be taken to let out and feed the chooks and ducks.

Had the surveyer in today to mark the boundary between our 2 blocks and mine and Mikes block. Took about 6 hours of scratching around for survey markers ( some of which were put in circa 1890 ) and sighting posts but it is all done. Will probably start on the fences in about 6 weeks.

Also scratched the surface off a soak that I hope will provide enough water to get a decent vege patch going. Will probably dig it out tomorrow and put a liner in to see how much it makes.
(ignore the date on the pic...it WAS taken today)

We have sorted out which cows we are keeping, and drafted off and weaned the heifers in the yards. A week ago we let them into the back paddock with our 2 house cows and a couple of murray greys we bought and they seem very relaxed and not interested in getting back with their mothers.
I'm working on the planned house area - levelling it off ready to build. Unfortunately the ground is very hard and its taking more effort than I had planned.

Just to finish off the sausage sage, we ended up making 80kg of sausages over 4 days. We had 40kg of mince ready to make more, but the machine broke down so we were saved. All that mince was put into 1kg bags and frozen, so it will be 1kg of sausages at a time because we won't be able to re-freeze them.

The in-laws decided they wanted to make some sausages. There was lots of meat available to mince and they had just bought a new mincer / sausage maker so away we went. 30-odd sausages later and we decided to call it a day. Will probably make some more tomorrow. There is 10kg of meat/filler made up so it will take us hours to do it all.

Several days ago one of the young steers broke its neck in the yards. Waste no want not is the general rule so it was quickly butchered and hung in the chiller for 9 days. Spent the day bagging and freezing all the meat after it had been cut into steaks. Had a nice round steak for lunch and it was quite tasty. Yum. :-)

Much has happened of late. Christmas, new years, various other stuff.
My time at Newman may be coming to an end. My boss tells me that one of the fly in/fly out people must move to Port Hedland, and guess who is the likely candidate ?
Newman is hard work and very hot, but its dry heat and I can handle that, even when it is 45 deg celcius every day. Port Hedland is slightly cooler, but with much higher humidity that sucks the life out of you. Also I will be under the scrutiny of the bosses which will be very restrictive. I can only hope that at some time in the future I get the chance to come back to newman before I leave the rail industry altogether.

As for the farm. Most of the calves have been sold. One load is going today and it should be the last full load for the year. Prices were reasonable but not great so we are ok. I am beginning the earth works required for the foundation of my house. I may even post pics.

its been 2 weeks but I have finally finished making the hay. Final tally :
5x4 rolls = 506
5x6 rolls = 178

not a bad total for probably 140 acres cut. Now comes the big job of moving them all to the storage area. I will probably sell most of the 5x4 net wrapped rolls but the 5x6 rolls are for our own cows.