Life on the Land: July 2013

Tuesday 30 July 2013

Snap Shots

Most of the time the best things about living on the land are the things we get to see! Plus a picture is worth a thousand words right?

Our canola having fun in the sun.

Nature's symmetry always amazes me!

Some of the flowers budding on the bush grasses.

Look closely! These survivors are always a favourite.

Patterns...

Natural alley ways for the roos and the occasional cheeky sheep!

These colours never get old, starting to design a dress off it!

Gum blossom colours...

Sometimes looking up makes your day that little bit better :)

Eucalypts at their best!

Some super fun guys ;)

Possibly the crowning glory of July in the bush. Certainly looks like a tiara.

This gets me incredibly excited!! For those of you that don't know this is how orchids start their existence. Seeing this base leaf means soon we'll be getting the most beautiful spider, donkey, jug, dragon (and many more) orchids!

Seeing the different banks of vegetation is often an indication of soil type.

This goofball never fails to make me smile!

Golden sunsets make a long days work seem extraordinary. Permission to knock off granted.

That beautiful golden hour.

Life on the land... All the photos are from today, it was all about revelling in looking at the natural things around me in a different perspective. Thank goodness for the trusty iPhone camera!

Wednesday 24 July 2013

The Best Laid Plans...

One of the mottos on this farm: only plan for 2/3 of your day. Why, you might ask? Purely because when you live on the land the unexpected always pops up. If you plan your whole day you will undoubtedly end up chasing your tail as you try to fit the unexpected into that plan as well. I have a list like this on the go most of the time.

As you can see, things get added and removed constantly. With all these jobs laid out today I still ended up behind the eight ball with an impromptu trip to town and finding three heifers in our paddock. (We don't run cattle at all!) They were adorable though...

So after sorting them, I figured my day was almost over and I may as well do something nice to finish off. I love this time of year, lambs are being born, the crops are growing, there's finally a few puddles around! You can't help but smile. :)

Sunday 14 July 2013

Cycle of Life

One of my favourite things about living out in the bush is witnessing the cycle of life through the plants. Watching the green tinge in the golden summer pastures bloom into verdant emerald life. As if someone has taken a watercolour brush to it and layered it across the deep brown dirt, the crisp creamy yellow stubbles. I love watching the leaves morph from green to purple, red, orange, those coppery warm hues that autumn brings and the way the tree strips itself bare. What inspired this blog? Well, the winter flowers are blooming along the roads and I stopped today after top dressing to take a few pics for you all. Seeing these flowers means the wildflower season isn't far away, the warmth will begin creeping back into the weather and the crops will start rocketing up. Each part of the cycle naturally indicates, to those of us who live on the land, where we stand in the season. If the season is drier or wetter, warmer or colder. It's like a clock for us, only far more beautiful!

The red leschenaultia above is my favourite winter flower, it's such a gorgeous red hue and it stands out so well against our grey green bush!

The Other Side of Dung Samples!

My photos have gone in in reverse order so start at the bottom!

And count...

Squeeze into the super cool slide!

Fill to the line with saline solution.

2 teaspoons per pot.

Pooh soup!

Checking the Radar

Our fore fathers who lived and breathed the very same land as us would probably be incredulous if they knew the tools we have at our disposal these days. To what am I referring? Radar, meteograms, four day forecasts; our ability to know what the weather will most likely be, ahead of time. Our grandparents had to read the clouds or the patterns over their lifetime instead of utilising the internet and science we have at our disposal now. Does it help? I'm sure it does as we know when to pull the roof over the super shed, when to stop harvesting, when to put the freshly shorn sheep into shelter. On the other hand, does knowing exactly what isn't coming wreak havoc on our minds? Allow us to feel despair where our fore fathers would have just kept going, oblivious to what the research says isn't there? There are upsides and downsides to everything. As people who live on the land and love every second of it we learn to moderate when we use some of these tools. Each generation of farmers faces different trials, and each generation of farmers works to get the very best out of the tools we have. That is why we are where we are today.