Drought is over - for now.

Snakes are about again – my favourite time of the year! Shadow nearly got bitten on Sunday, she put herself between a big brown snake and a bunch of boys staying for a sleep over. I was standing about twenty feet away chipping weeds and didn’t see a thing until it was all over.


It’s also that time of year again for AGM’s. we had the Bredbo Landcare Meeting a couple of weekends ago, a very informative talk from Martin Royds, a local farmer who won the carbon farmer of the year award a couple of years ago and is up for a farming diversity award this year. He talked about the importance of soil condition on the nutrient value of food and how he uses native species to drought proof his property.
We had the Natural Sequence Farming AGM the other night also, we had a presentation from Matt Kilby from Global Land Repair, he talked about different processes, the cross over of NSF, permaculture, soil biology and the relationship between trees, grass, fungi and bacteria.
I had a birthday, but I’ve still failed to grow up any, it passed quietly and the less said the better. I’ve sold a few pigs, some as pets – Scruffy has gone to a new home to be cared for by a family and she took a young fellow with her as company and ten other girls have gone out to new homes as well.

The Cooks garden is looking a treat and the strawberries are plentiful. Young Ben browses the bushes on his way in from the school bus. There are hundreds of young berries all over the patch; we haven’t had a crop like this since we arrived on the farm.
And the rain, last night alone we had 50mm, the road to the house was a river, dams on the TSR overflowed, our dams are all over flowing and luckily I pumped on Saturday because the river is up and brown once again.
Our total for the month is above 80mm, which isn’t bad when the monthly long term average is 65mm. It’s bringing on the grass and the weeds, so early December is going to be pretty busy for us.
With the rain we have had a bumper crop of mushrooms all over the farm. The Cook carried a monster lot up from the garden the other day and decided we would have them for dinner. She cooked them up; they smelt great, made some toast and scrambled eggs to go with them. I love mushrooms; I dished my self up a nice plate full and grabbed a couple of pieces of toast. I had started to eat them when I noticed she was only having eggs, I asked her why? She said “I’m not 100% sure they are safe to eat, so I’ll se if you survive and then I’ll try some” - I survived, the mushrooms tasted great, she’s eaten them since now she’s satisfied they are okay. At least now I know I am useful!
I’ve nearly finished the pig yards and just have to fill the loading ramp yard with dirt. We gave them a test run the other day without the dirt and it went pretty well. We got all the pigs we wanted onto the trailer with a lot less fuss and bother – I didn’t even swear which made the Cook very happy.
We are going out to have a look at a farm near Braidwood later in the week, on the farm they are using a lot of the NSF principles, native grasses, increased soil fertility and strict rotational grazing regimes to great effect.