i did it!

I completed the Rotto Swim.
19.6km of grueling, shark infested seas with a team of four people on a little boat.

we started at 8.30 in the morning, setting out on a 6m boat with four people; a skipper and three swimmers. we waited until our first swimmer began the race on the beach amongst about 500 other boats. the kyaker then had to sit and wait for the swimmer to arrive, then once joined, then had to find our boat about 1km out to sea. then the tagging began; one by one we each had our turn of swimming; 12 minutes at first, then 10, then 8... etc. i found that i was able to sustain the minutes like everyone else, but i was very much slower! we had two really really fast swimmers in our team, so in the end posted a really really good time.
it was only that night that the kyaker, Bartsy, told us that he had seen two sharks beneath us! errrk! glad he told us afterwards, not during! also glad that 'jaws' the movie was shown on tv the evening after the swim, not before or else i probably wouldn't have swum at all!

then at the end we all had to reach the beach together and run through an iron man finish arch and collect our medals. we felt like stars because there was thousands of people at the end of the race all cheering us on!
all good fun, not sure whether i would do it again though?!?!

swimming lessons tomorrow at our house, and work in the morning at boyup brook.
good to be home again, back to perth on wednesday.
not sleeping well at the moment. chow

Another Day working in the garden

Jenborg put the boot in today and got me out in the garden. I haven't done much gardening lately so it was good to get out. I got the Vegi gardens renewed with fresh soil and mulch so we can continue our winter plantings. I also restarted the paving. This is a sore issue in the house at the moment. I like doing the paving, it's like fencing, it's hard to do and takes allot of effort, but it's very rewarding to look back on. It's just hard to find the time during the winter months to do it. The lambs don't help, they where all over me today as I tried to lay the foundation bricks for the paving. Stepping in the cement, nibbling my ears or is that slobbering. Cinderella was a great help, she laid the cement and kept the lambs off as I put down the bricks. Cinderella loves cementing, it must be the mud thing. There aren't many times you get to make things out of mud with your Dad.

Back to work tomorrow. Spraying crops, fencing and feeding sheep

Another Day Making Apple Crumble

This is not something I do every day but last night I made apple crumble. It's not that I set out to make it, it just happened. After dinner Jenborg and I peeled a few apples to have for sweets. I placed them in the microwave and then Jenborg got on the phone. It was somewhere in the second hour of the call my stomach commanded me to make crumble.

I do allot of cooking, but I have never made apple crumble. Having already made the apples all I had to do was make the crumble. This is not going to be one of those stories where every thing goes wrong and the kitchen burns down, no, the crumble was great. One night and two more helpings later it still tastes great. (I also made custard) In fact I made it so big we will be eating it all week. Who would have thought you could get so much satisfaction out such a little thing.

Recipe
1 kg peeled and chopped apples (nuked in microwave)
Placed in an over proof dish so the apples come half way up.

3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp all spice
3 wheat bix (crushed up fine) or use rolled oats
1 cup SR flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp milk
Mix topping stuff in a bowl and spread on top of apple. Place in oven on high and remove before the top burns. Enjoy.

p.s. if you like the crumble more than the apple, double the recipe, I Did.

Another Day Feeding Sheep

As I was feeding the sheep today I started to get the feeling that soon the farm would be back to normal. No more feeding sheep, pasture growing and fit sheep running around. It's going to be another month but it's coming. This is the third difficult season in a row and it had started to make me question every thing I have done in the past. I have been running a high input high stocking rate system for the past 10 years and in 9 out of ten years it has been successful. We use rotational grazing, perennial pastures and late lambing, all to maximise profits. All the things that every benchmarking survey, consultants report and research program has proven to maximise returns, we have done. They where right, it does maximise returns, except when it doesn't rain, two years in a row. On the other hand cropping has been a great success. Implementing the best practice approach has yielded great returns regardless of the year. At times cropping has been stressful, but nothing like farming sheep. The sheep are totally reliant on you providing all there feed, when they lamb and when they are shorn. With cropping if it doesn't rain, you don't put the crop in. Your not committed until it rains. With sheep all the the husbandry decisions are made before the season starts, before it rains. This is ok in a normal year when it rains at the normal times, but in a drought when it doesn't rain you can't just say ok we wont run sheep this year. Your committed and you have to see it through.

Having been through the past two years I can see why many farmers run very conservative stocking rates. Sometimes it may be the things that happen to us over a short period of time that shape the rest of our lives. Despite how I may feel at the moment,I don't think I am one of those people. I look over what I have achieved over the past decade. The farming system, including the way the farm looks, the stock and there performance and the life we have made here. It's all of those things that will fire me up in three weeks time when I stop feeding and will keep me going as I attempt another 20 shots at this farming game.

Another day and the last of the wethers for sale

We have two buyers for our wethers today. One month ago we were beging people to take them and how we have two buyer lined up at the door. I will be happy to see them go, as it will free up alot of feed for the ewes who are due to lamb in three weeks.

The last few days the wind has been blowing endlessly and I am happy to see it calm down today. I don't mind the cold or the rain but I just hate the wind.

Another Day and it's Cold

30 mm of rain has fallen over the past three days. The feed is really starting to grow now so by the end of the month we should have all the sheep on pasture. Today we drafted up 2000 single bearing ewes (ewes with only one lamb in gestation) and took off the poorer 25% and put them onto 2000 kg DM( dry matter) (a measurement of pasture quantity. On average, single bearing lambing ewes require 1200 kg DM and twins need 1800 kg DM) This should give them a good boost before lambing begins in about 4 weeks. The other 1500 go back to the holding paddock to be fed wheat for a least the next three weeks while the pasture gets a chance to get to 1200 kg DM.

We put the wethers we shore two weeks ago in the shed as there is a sheep weather warning out tonight. It's very cold, wet and windy outside, even with the fire cranked up full we are having trouble keeping the house warm. Tomorrow it's going to be a Max temp of 12 and a min of 5 with 45 km/hr winds. Winter has arrived.

Another Day Away

Jenborg decided at the end of this week it was time to get away for a break, and that was just what we did as we descended on the sleepy town of Denmark for the weekend. I'm not sure the town was ready for us as Cinderella and Za-za preceded to destroy every cafe and shop in the town. I don't think we are bad parents, or neglectful it's just that they don't get to play in town that often and they (and probably us) are not sure of the proper protocols. The staff at the coffee shops give us that look, the one which says "oh boy here we go" but one older lady sitting nearby made a nice comment about how full of life the girls are. This was as Za-Za was ripping up the paper and dropping it on the floor but before breaking up a cup cake and scattering it about the table and floor.

Needless to say we had a great time. The girls loved the beach and managed to get naked despite it being only 14 degrees. Spot the farm girls. Jenborg was happy as she had managed to distress me. I was happy as we all had a great time.