Red Sky

Had a really hot day a couple of weeks ago. Apparently the tractor gauge said the outside temperature was 48 degrees! I took the kids into town, closer to the beach, to avoid the day.

We have had 48 before but it's certainly not very year, we generally get a day or two of 46 degrees each summer though.

 This was the sunset the evening before.

We vacated on Christmas Day too. It was 42 in the shade at the farm, but much more enjoyable closer to the coast.

Harvest is draggin' the chain!

OMG! We are still reaping Barley and we won't finish until a couple of days after New Years.

You would think this is a good complaint; that we have a huge crop; but no, it's just an average crop but we've had several weather interruptions.

Thunder storms this year have meant several breaks of several days to a week where we couldn't reap. When you deliver grain to the silo's, it must be a certain moisture level (which varies for each grain/legume), so when we have rain, we can't reap the crop until it's dry enough.

Our Barley yield this harvest has been very good, but the quality of the grain has not, we've been delivering Feed 2 and Feed 3 (F2 & F3), but the price hasn't been much lower than the Feed 1 grade, so it's not all bad.

Dust coming up over the hill. This is how I know where hubby is working, from the dust

Windrowed Barley on the ground takes longer to dry out after rain than standing crop

 Header box is almost full, you can see the gold coloured grain up on top

Always make sure you stand on the right side of the wind, otherwise you will be covered in grain dust, which is quite itchy, especially Buloke Barley - that's some itchy shit!!!

The 'pick up' is attached to the front of the header. It's like a conveyor belt that picks up the rows of Barley and feeds them into the header.

 If you look closely, you'll see 'Farmer 5' in the cab with Dad

 'Farmer 5' learning his '3 points of contact' while disembarking

 'Farmer 5' has had enough for today, lunchbox is empty too

Hubby nearly stepped on this snake when he got out of the header. Luckily Farmer 5 was not there then. It swiftly met with a shovel and went to greener pastures.

No Power, No Shower!

My pet hate when the electricity goes off is the fact I can't have a shower. Our house runs on rain water so without power for the pump, we have to endure the dreaded 'pommy shower'.

After some very active lightening storms early this week, we saw ourselves without electricity for 19 hours. Which was better than the predicted outage time of 25 hours so thank you to those techies who got it fixed.

Due to the almost non-existent mobile phone service here, I dig out 'the old faithful' to keep contact with the outside world. Although, in our closest town, they didn't have power or telephone because the phone lines need repairs and when it rains the land lines don't work properly! Really great when I wanted to contact the primary school where my children were.

We have thought about getting a generator, but really, our power is never out too long and we have a car fridge and thump-er pack to put fridge items in to stop them from spoiling. It's just he shower thing that gets on my wick.


In October we visited some relatives on Glen Station at Cue. They had an impressive power setup with solar panels and battery packs.

 

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Kerry & Morrie Seivwright and would love to have stayed longer. 

Stunning Scenery

I could have sat up here all day with a deckie and a scotch, it was truly beautiful and peaceful. My poor photography skills don't do it justice.

Cattle have replaced sheep due to the wild dog problem

RYAN family decendants