16th March, 2024

A couple of big nights at work, didn't feel like working on the blog when I got home.

The weather has been cooler, slight breeze, but the UV is still way up there.

Still no sign of rain, today I noted some of the short grass on the knoll paddock was purple, which is a response to frost usually. That is bad, in that if we get early frosts the grass will go dormant before it can respond to any autumn rain, and there will be no grass growth to go into winter with. Hopefully it's a stress response to lack of water and we get rain before the frosts are too hard.

The red clay is also cracking wide open, which most people think is bad. But it means that instead of any rain running off like a terracotta tile, it will run into the cracks and filter into the soil. Organic matter also goes into the cracks and gets incorporated into the soil faster too.

Juliet's son, Thomas, is home from studies and at a loose end. She sent him over to help me on the farm and we did some more fence work today. He clipped the grass off another stretch of fence and I put the solar energisers out ready to add batteries and liven up more sections of fence. 

We also patched the fences around the hops paddock and put the sheep in there to eat it down. They don't like being in that paddock as they feel exposed, and they complain about there being no shade. There is shade, the old chook houses have enough shade inside and out for double the number of sheep. But that means they'd have to stop sooking and go looking for it.

I combined the two cow groups on the 25 acre side again, as I will have to start hand feeding properly now. At least Annie is yelling less now. One more day on the remains of Leigh's bale in the yards, then two days eating the remains of the two bales from the boat shed. Then onto working my way through the silage bales. There's probably five days in a bale of silage, and I have about 15 left. If I fence off most of the paddock it will get a chance to regenerate if it rains without them eating every little blade of grass as it tries to come back.

A third hops vine has now set flowers and will have its first small harvest this season. The smaller passionfruit has been eaten back by snails again. The bigger one is tall enough to suffer some damage and keep going, but I will have to bait the smaller one if it's to survive. The king david apple is nearing ripening for the fruit, I ate one yesterday and it was very close.

I gave a carton of eggs to Billie and Jason, as their chooks aren't laying. I'll probably be able to get them a carton a week. 

Poppy is doing well on the carprieve, it's removed a fair bit of the joint pain and she is alot more cheerful, but it's not done anything for her back end co-ordination and strength. Watch and wait I guess.

I think that's it for now.