Good morning everyone,
We hope you have all had a great week, and didn’t have to work as hard as I had to (lol!).
With our trip to Australia this week – I did not want to work too hard – and have a nice relaxing week. We have an “odd job” man who comes to the farm. Like a fool I got him to cut some of the lower limbs from the trees up our driveway. I can’t believe how much I had to hand pull out and stack for a later fire. Have a look at the photo of the stack. And that’s not all of it!
But we are on our way to Australia today. We leave in a couple of hours. We will overnight in Auckland for a very early flight. We are actually doing “The Ghan” – the train trip from Darwin to Adelaide, with stops at Alice Springs etc. It is a bucket list trip and we are really looking forward to it.
There is no flight from Auckland to Darwin, so we fly from Auckland to Melbourne (where we overnight). Then we fly from Melbourne to Darwin the next morning.
The exciting thing for me is that I am catching up with a very old school mate (and his wife) in Melbourne. I went right through Primary, Intermediate and Secondary school with him, and he was a groomsman at my wedding. You don’t get much closer. It is a least 20 years since we last caught up, so it will be special. We are having dinner with him and his wife in Melbourne.
We have our “herd minder” looking after the cows, horses and kitties. It is good to know they are in very safe hands.
On the Farm:
Fencing:
This is still very much work in progress. The fencers are only a couple of days ahead of where we need to move the stock. There is still three fence lines to erect, so it will be tight. Once they have done this, we need a lane extended so we can store the silage bales safely.
Grass:
We are tight, but the soil temperature is still high, so the grass is still growing. With the changes to our fences, we have 16 paddocks, and during the winter it will take 20 days for the animals to cycle through these paddocks. During the winter I would like a longer cycle, but we will get through feeding out baleage most days.
Spotlight on:
Today we would like to spotlight a very special girl.
This is Sylvia, and apart from the fact she has grown well, she is the daughter of our very very special cow also called Sylvia. The older Sylvia is 5 month short of 19 years old – which is VERY old for a working cow. Sylvia was the very first Angus cow to arrive at Lake Farm, and has always raised the best progeny. Sylvia senior has now retired, but will live out her last few years here with us She certainly deserves that.
But we felt it was important that her last calf should also remain here. We have also named her Sylvia, and we hope she is half as good as her mother! Her dad is our champion bull, Tristan. She could not have a better pedigree.
We have high hopes for you, Sylvia!
That’s all for this week. Our next post will be from Australia!
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Cheers