2nd August, 2024

The weather has been mostly dry, if cool. Forecasts are for rain coming in.

I've had a big few days pruning the orchard with Geoff. It was the last week to do it as buds were about to come in and the trees would have put lots of energy into leaves only to have them cut off. I also got a second spray of copper anti-fungal onto all the trees that were affected by leaf curl. Next stage is to lime wash the trunks so that cherry & pear slug can't climb up them.

The sheep spent 24 hours in the hop paddock munching grass, which is growing back nicely there. It shows that while it is very slow, the grass has not stopped growing this winter and we can hope for a good surge come spring. I moved them back today ahead of the rain, because although that paddock has shelter they won't use it. 

I also rejoined all the cattle into one herd, for simplicity. Joey and Star have had their last weaner pellets and are a year old now. Freya and Zippy should be well weaned and Moose was probably long weaned even before splitting the kids off. With any luck they can now be one herd without trying to nurse on their mums.

I have closed off the main paddock to allow some grass to grow, as the knoll paddock will need to be locked up for hay in September. Ideally the main paddock should be too, but that will depend on if we get an early warm spring with rain, or any other variation of cold, dry and late. Perfect conditions will let me have the piggery paddock, barnyard, hops paddock and sheep shelter paddock all knee high in grass to allow the hay-able paddocks to grow. Probably unlikely.

I found some ads for Service Tasmania customer service officers, and will put applications together this weekend as they close next Tuesday. The cyber investigation job application went in on this Tuesday. In encouraging news Elders rang this afternoon and want me to come in for an interview on Monday. Lots of irons in the fire.