Farm Day

Farm Day is organised by a group of people in Victoria, with the aim of strengthening the relationships between country and city people. It has been going for a few years, but this is the first time we have hosted a city family for Farm Day.
On the weekend of May 30/31 Tracey and Ray Goddard and their four girls aged 15, 13, 10 and 8 came to visit our farm. We took them to feed some sheep, where they learnt what oats and lupins are, and Emma-Lee took some grains home in her pocket. We had a barbecue lunch (with farm sausages and steak) before looking around the farmyard, and then we went out to the paddock and lit some fires. As the sun set we waited for our damper to cook on the fire. The kids cooked some marshmallows and we had a few drinks while enjoying the sunset (except those who were bitten by mosquitoes didn't enjoy it so much).

Filling up the sheep feeder

Hugh with the city girls in the paddock.

Roger put the crate on the back of the ute so we could all travel safely around the farm

The girls built a little shelter in the bush out of sticks

City lovers in the country...

The Goddards stayed the night with us, and in the morning Kiara opened her presents because it was her eighth birthday. We had a big breakfast with porridge and toast and eggs, before going to watch some sheepdog trials at Nan Lloyd's place. After lunch the rain held off (unfortunately0 and despite a bit of drizzle we had a walk in the bush. After yet another cup of tea/coffee it was time for us to bid farewell to our city visitors.
I hope they learnt a little bit about country life, although I wouldn't be surprised if they went home with the idea that farming people light a lot of fires and spend most of their time drinking and eating!

Feeding Sheep

At the end of May we were feeding sheep, while waiting for pasture to grow after the first rains for the season.

Wedge-Tailed Eagles

Wedge-tailed eagles are the biggest birds of prey around here. They can often be seen feeding on carcases of dead animals, and they will sometimes take newborn lambs, which doesn't endear them to farmers...

Birds and Trees

Can you see the ducks in the tree in this photo?

The other morning after I dropped the girls at the school bus, Hugh and I had a slow trip home, stopping to look at the birds and trees.
Mountain ducks are pairing up, and preparing to nest in the holes in trees. There are lots of old trees around the farm with nesting holes for parrots, cockatoos and mountain ducks.
One of the trees we looked at had quite a colony of pardalotes or tree-creepers. They were high up in the trees and hard to see without binoculars, but we could hear them.

Maybe this could be a place for a nest...

Two maned geese or wood ducks on a dam bank.

More ducks on the dam bank.

Then they flew away...

Where we stopped, with some big lone Marri trees in the front paddock.

Pregnancy Scanning Ewes

With a late start to the season it becomes important for farmers to manage their precious feed resources. One way to do this is to ensure only the most valuable ewes - those which are going to produce a lamb - receive the best nutrition. To this end we had our sheep pregnancy tested on Tuesday.
A team of workers and dogs push the sheep through a race into the scanning crate.
Pregnancy scanning is carried out by ultrasound, and the operator separates the non pregnant ewes through a drafting gate.

Nan filling the yards with sheep.

Yesterday Nan Lloyd (http://www.sheepdogs.com.au) came over with some of her dogs, to help Roger keep the ewes up to the guy who was doing the scanning. A couple of good dogs can make a big difference to the flow of the sheep. We also had a friend's son, a young school-leaver, helping get the ewes into the scanning crate (that's the sort of thing I used to do before children and before photography...), and everything went quite smoothly. Thanks Nan and Fraser!



Mike from Tim Stevenson's Sheep Services came to do the ultrasound scanning. He is from New Zealand (what we call a "Kiwi"), so he has had a lot of experience with a lot of sheep, and he worked really quickly. And he was quite photogenic, but he was a bit worried the photos were to go into a glossy women's magazine!! Sorry Mike, you're not that famous, but I'm sure the three followers of my blog will appreciate your photos.









P.S. Sorry about the quality of the photos. I have a new computer and I didn't transfer the presets for the photo editing from my old computer. Now that I see them here they are far too dark.