Farmers Way of Life: Ding Dong.

Farmers Way of Life: Ding Dong.

Love this!

A Rare Sound

A couple of months ago my husband said he had heard a Kookaburra near the house. 

I thought "nah! he's just never heard one before, goose!!! Wouldn't be a Kookaburra"!

But, oops...... I was wrong! We do indeed have a new bird in the camp.

How cool to have a Kookaburra. My husband has never known of one before in our area, it's bizarre. 

He proved to be very allusive when it came to getting some good pics! Took several attempts of hearing him laughing hysterically, running outside with the camera and trying to locate him in the trees. Persistence paid off.

  Our driveway is looking really gorgeous at the moment after some nice rain.

Bit of a Novelty

We've had another 23mm of rain over the last week or so which has been great for our crops. Prior to that we had received about 22mm over the end of May, beginning of June.

As we are broadacre dryland croppers, we don't irrigate in any way, we have to rely on mother nature to water and grow our crops.

With the extra rain comes puddles. And man does the farm boy love puddles!

Fantastic Mr Fox!!

Yeah! Not so fantastic when you have young lambs!

Over the years we have had several visits from nosy foxes. They come right up to the house and 2 of them have even been camped on our front verandah!

Looking out of our lounge room window (mind the 'Geleez' on the glass!), the kids had a fascinating look at this thriving pest introduced to Australia by the English many years ago.

Whenever we have a visit I always make sure the dog is at work with the hubby or locked up in the ute tray. Our dog (Max) has run foxes down but we don't want him to get mange or get injured by one so we try and avoid an altercation.

This fella looks in pretty good knick, hopefully he hasn't got into our lambs. We do bait for foxes but you can never get them all. If hubby was home this cheeky little bugger may have met with the end of a rifle.

Seeding 2013

Well, seeding has been a stop start affair this year with Canola already out the ground and booming along and Barley still being sown. The rain has been patchy and at one point we stopped seeding due to the soil being too dry. In a standard year we would get a good rain break around Anzac Day and get full on into it.

 This is the spraying rig, my husband is the driver, he goes over and over the paddocks many times each year spraying for various weeds or bugs at different times of the growing season. This is a tractor drawn Hardi sprayer pulled by our John Deere 8130 tractor. You can buy self propelled sprayers but they are expensive and at this point this set up suits us.

 4 year old farmer in training going for a ride with dad, he absolutely loves it.

 This is our seeding rig. The old army truck transports the seed and super (fertiliser) to the paddocks. The auger (long cylinder) on the back moves the seed and super into the Air Seeder hopper (the grey and blue boxy thing).

 The air seeder box and hoses are attached at the back to the cultivator bar. Some seeder set ups will have the cultivator bar in the middle and the air seeder box at the back, depends on machinery brands etc. 
The CAT tractor is our seeding tractor and has done a good job for the last 10 years. Unfortunately, 1 day after this photo was taken, the CAT broke down - bummer!! Yesterday it went on a low loader into a nearby town for repairs on the drive bearings, or something that sounds like that!!
The boys are now finishing our last 3 paddocks with 1 tractor, the John Deere. They are spraying one day, then unhooking the tractor, setting it up to the seeding rig (looms, computers and all that), and seeding that sprayed paddock.

 Luckily, we only have about 300 Hectares to go until all the crop is sown. We would like some more rain though and have had 25mm (about an inch) in the last week. Some areas nearby received 50mm, but you know what they say 'it only rains on the greedy, not the needy!'

 The dog (Max) is bored shi*less over seeding, he doesn't get to go to work in the back of the ute with his dad everyday.