Berry Delicious!

All the shearing over...... and a little bit of quiet time.....

summertime is the perfect time for picking blackberries!

Blackberries are a very bad weed on the farm, they can take over. The bushes grow SO BIG!

They make good places for rabbits, wombats and pigs to hide. All animals that are not very welcome on our farm. We try to spray most of the bushes, but the birds are very good at spreading the seeds and planting new bushes.

Lucky for us we have a few bushes that are loaded with berries.....YUM YUM!

The bushes don't let go of their berries easily...they have very sharp thorns, you need to be really careful.

The berries are very juicy, it is hard to get them past my mouth and into the bucket!

They can be just a little bit messy to!

Home with buckets full....time to start cooking.....

Blackberry Jam....

Blackberry Ice Cream....

Pavlova topped with Blackberries....

and Blackberry Pie

feasts of blackberries..... and MY FAVOURITE ice cream in a cone!

YUMMIEST OF ALL!

Radio Debut!!

Last week a lovely lady came to our farm....she came to see my vegie patch.

She asked me alot of questions about how I grow elephant garlic and where I sell it.

She is the producer on a radio station........I am going to be on the radio!

Tune into ABC Central West Morning Show between 8.30am and 11.00am Tuesday 24 Jan 2012.

You can listen to my interview via this website!

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/01/24/3414786.htm site centralwest

Snip, Snip.....Clip, Clip

Click go the shears AGAIN......more sheep to be shorn and wool to be pressed.

The merino lambs wool is long enough to be shorn now.

Blackfoot and Angel are in this mob, I wonder if I can find them....I hope they have nice wool.

WOW...Blackfoot remembers me, Mum and I have put an ear tag in each of his ears, so now we will always know him.

Angel is not so friendly....we can't find her in the mob...she must be hiding.

The weather has been very stormy this week, so every night we have had to shed the lambs to keep them dry.
We have had 5 storms this week!

Lots of thunderbolts and lightning! Very, very frightening......

The lambs look much cooler now they have their wool off. 
Back to the paddock, the wethers will get fat and ready to be sold.
And the ewes will be back in October to do it all again

Battle of the Breeds

Fat cattle everywhere.....

More steers ready for sale, these ones are a little different to last weeks steers.

Dad, Mum and I bred these ones, their Dad is not a Poll Hereford bull. He is a Blue-E bull.

I call him BIG RED, he is a cross between a shorthorn (red) and a Angus (black).

These steers are 17 and 18 months old, they are very fat. They averaged 558kg on the farm.

They have grown that big just eating grass.

I wonder how they will sell?

$1.92c/kg and they weighed 525kg at the saleyards.

 Dad is a little disappointed with that, the market was a little cheaper today.

Anyway........ BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!

Weary and Worn.

Everything eventually gets old.....these old ewes are off to market.

They have bred many lambs and now they are too old to keep.

 Some don't even have teeth anymore!

The ewes averaged $71.00.....the fattest ones were sold before Christmas for $112.00.

Not bad for OLD GALS! 

 

The rams have all returned from the ewes, some a little worse for wear!

Sally and I can muster them up all on our own, the rams are very well behaved.

Foot sore and tired.

 Mum and Dad inspect them, some will need to be sold and some just require a little bit of tender, love and care!

A few new rams need to be put on the shopping list for next year.

A fresh paddock will do them the world of good.......

Fat and Finished!

Weigh in time....some of PopPop's steers are fat and finished and ready for sale.

All the steers need to have special ear tags put in, so the buyers know which farm they came from.
My job is to load the tagging gun.

Dad checks their teeth to make sure they still have their baby teeth.

They don't look much like babies anymore.

Look at the size of that BUTT, he is really FAT!

When my job is done, I find something that is even better FUN.....

MUD PIES!

Mum and I went to the cattle sale to see PopPop's steers sold.

PopPop would really like $2.00/kg for them, fingers crossed..................

 

As we leave the sale yards the big trucks start rolling in to truck the cattle away....I wonder where PopPop's steers will go?

"Walk up Cattle"

Grass everywhere.....we need more cows!

This summer it just keeps raining and growing more grass.

Sheep like their grass short and cattle like their grass long. We move the cows and calves to the the long grass paddocks to try and chew it down.

I hope they are hungry, they have alot of grass to eat!

After moving the cows and calves we discover that the merino lambs are starting to get fly blown.

The chemical that protects them from flies is starting to run out.

Time to ring the shearers.

A big storm came through yesterday afternoon......big thunder and lots of lightning.

 It was really noisy and a little bit scary.

Bad fly weather, flies love it wet and warm.

A beautiful rainbow appeared after the storm.....

Some people say there is a pot of gold where the rainbow ends.
Maybe I should get my shovel and go on a treasure hunt?
Or maybe it would be more fun to slide down.....

Fields of Gold.

Action stations everybody...........harvest is on again!

This year Dad has got another man to help get the grain off, his harvester is alot bigger and quicker than ours. Dad would take days and days, maybe even a couple of weeks to get the grain off. And there are lots of other jobs on the farm waiting to be done.

Harvest is a busy time, lots of trucks, tractors, headers and augers.

I can't ride on our header, it is too dangerous.

BUT I can ride on this one....

Can you see me?

 This crop of triticale has made Dad very happy, lots of grain has come off it.

4.3 tonne of grain for every hectare.

The silos are fast filling UP! All our silos are full and we have had to use some of the neighbours!

The triticale grain will be sold later, it is used for breakfast cereals and feed for pigs and cows.