Archive for the Category »Harvest «

Dec

I love getting the first clean, fresh, pages, back from Allen and Unwin – it looks like a book and is ready to read. It’s like starting again and seeing the book through fresh eyes.

This edit was particularly difficult for me. We were going flat chat with harvest and I had a deadline to have the edit finished by… deadlines and harvest just don’t work.

I spent hours sitting in the tractor, waiting for Anthony to call me over to the header and take a load of grain away from him! It was frustrating when I spent time sitting, waiting, not doing very much, when I had Blue Skies hanging over my head. Then I decided to take the manuscript with me and see if I could read through it while I was waiting! Well, that was an interesting experience!

When I’m driving the chaser bin, I often take a book – there is always time to read – it doesn’t matter if you read the same sentence twice or skip a page – it doesn’t effect your work. Editing a MS does! I don’t know how many times, after getting so caught up in what I was doing, that I didn’t see the signal (auger out from the header), to take a load of grain back to the silos. There were a few terse calls on the two-way, asking if I was intending to help that day!

By the end, there were lots of dirty finger prints all over the MS and a couple of pages that had water spilt on them, when the kids jumped in the tractor for their daily ride. But more to the point, there was lots of green marks that indicated the changes I was making… it was slowly getting done.

It was then a process of transferring everything I’d changed onto an email and sending it back to my editor. I made the deadline and we finished harvest… I’m not sure I want to try doing both of them at the same time, ever, again!

Category: Blue Skies, Harvest, The Farmer's Life, The Writer's Life 3 Comments

Dec

Full moon, an end to harvest and a finished edit!

Fleur

I must say, after a fairly intense three weeks, harvest has finally finished and I, for one, am glad! I love seeing the grain come in and finding out what we’ve produced! But three weeks of 4am starts and after dark finishes, as well as trying to edit Blue Skies, has taken its toll!

I was feeling pretty pleased when I went to sit outside in the peace and quiet to watch the moon rise, complete with a glass of wine! We had finished harvest, I had just hit the ’send’ button on an email to my editor containing all the changes for Blue Skies, so that had been put to rest and how could anyone not enjoy watching this moon rise? It was massive and the light it cast across the country side, was magical.

So now I’ve enjoyed my feeling of freedom, I’m back to waiting! Waiting for my editor to get back to me and for the unedited proof book form to arrive, waiting for the last silo of grain to be cleaned and delivered and waiting for the next pile of jobs to build up! We start today weaning our calves and preg-testing the cows, so the waiting for Blue Skies won’t seem so bad.

But at the moment, I’m just as happy to raise a glass of wine to the moon and enjoy the feeling of not being busy- for a short time!

Category: Blue Skies, Farm animals, Harvest, The Farmer's Life, The Writer's Life 4 Comments

Nov

Harvesting

Fleur

Flickr Video

When we did the first edit for Blue Skies, we got to the part about harvest and Ali asked me to insert what a header was. Now, I’m sure most of you who jump on here to have a look know what a header is! But, just in case there are any city folk who haven’t seen harvesting, I’ve taken a video – it’s not the best quality, but you’ll see the dust, hear the roar of the engine and rustle of the dry stalks.

The dust is so itchy – especially in this variety of barley. If you accidentally walk through it when you’re unloading, you’ll tear yourself to pieces for the rest of the day!

As you’ll see from the background, we were harvesting as fast as we could before the thunderstorms hit again – that night the thunder was right over the top of us! But not much rain, although with the amount of lightening hitting the ground, we were grateful for the small amount we had – it was just enough to discourage any fires that thought about starting.

Category: Blue Skies, Country Life, Harvest 2 Comments

Nov

Season finishes

Fleur

Our season has come to an abrupt end. There wasn’t any gradual change in the grass as there can be some years. It went from green to golden in the space of about three days! Now is the time that my love/hate relationship starts with summer. I am not a fan of hot weather – which is quite strange, considering where I grew up, but my skin can’t take the strong summer sun… and I’m a weakling, when the temperature hits over thirty and I have to work in it!

But I love the school holidays, Christmas, the warm nights, awesome sunsets and any excuse for a BBQ and few drinks! (And the beach, if I’m in the shade!)

All that is still to come. First there is harvest: Anthony has pulled the header out of the shed and started to swath some of our barley, so we’ll be harvesting by tomorrow.

Second, there’s the feedlot: these lambs have been drenched and jetted (for flies) and are on their way down to the feedlot. They’ll be my charges, while harvest is going on. I’ll make sure the feeders are full and the water is clean and fresh and then let Anthony know when I think they are ready for sale.

And then there is the seasonal thunderstorms that can bring fires or a deluge of rain!

This time of the year is always stressful – trying to get the harvest off before there are any summer rains, can cause even the most placid person to get rather snarly! It is such a big job and there is so much riding on it that it hangs over everyone head and we all hold our breath until the last truck has left the farm.

Hopefully next year our season will be a ‘normal’ one and not as difficult as the past two years.

Category: Country Life, Harvest, The Farmer's Life, Weather 5 Comments

Oct

The old and the new

Fleur

Today was a very exciting day! Our brand new toy, a John Deere tractor, was delivered.

Tractors are such a huge part of our farming life – I think, either Anthony, I or our workman, are in one every day! If we’re not feeding hay with it, we’re spraying, seeding, pulling the chaser bin, carting gravel, the list goes on.

Our old chamberlain tractor, (nicknamed, Charlie Chamberlain) was Anthony’s dads first ever tractor, and we inherited it, when he died. Even though it’s as old as the hills, drafty and hasn’t got a radio (gasp!) or air con/heater (double gasp!), it still runs as smoothly as the day it was bought, but it’s time to up-grade!

We now have a fleet of three John Deere tractors - that means Anthony, our workman and I have one each… and the kids get to have Charlie! I’m sure there will be arguments between Anthony and Jayden about who gets to drive the new one – I’m actually just happy on our old one, that isn’t controlled by a computer!

We now joke that old Charlie might be designated to our kids, first car! I’m waiting to until Hayden is sixteen to actually gauge his real response. At the moment he thinks it’s a cool idea!

Category: Country Life, Harvest, The Farmer's Life Leave a Comment

Sep

Let there be hay

Fleur

Check out our beautiful looking oats crop. In another five or six weeks it will probably be as tall as my chest!

It’s about then we head into it with the mover and cut it all down in rows. Then we leave it to cure (dry out), rake it and start baling.

Haymaking is a time of the year we really hope it doesn’t rain. Rain decreases the quality of the hay and can make it turn mouldy if it rains for too long and the rows of hay stay wet for days on end.

Mouldy hay doesn’t do the stock any good either — in fact, if they do eat it, cows can abort their calves from a nasty bacteria in the mould.

And of course, if you bale wet hay, there’s always the chance of losing your haystack through a fire — wet hay bales have been known to spontaneously combust … a bit like me when I lose my temper!

Category: Harvest Tags: feed Leave a Comment

Mar

Mrs Inkster's Giant Pumpkin!

Fleur

mrs-is-giant-pumpkin

We live in very fertile country as this photo shows! I can’t believe the size of this pumpkin – just imagine how much pumpkin soup it would make or how many people it could feed!

And I have to tell you, it’s not the only giant one in the patch. There’s four! Along with other amazing gourmet products grown with good ole’ sheep manure.

I think this might be being entered in the Condingup Community Fair Vegie Comp – there seems to be a rather intense rivalry between two of Condy’s families and Mrs Inkster tells me that her vegie’s have copyright on them!

Sorry Gill, I stole a photo!

Category: Harvest, Mother Nature Tags: fair Leave a Comment

Feb

Profusion of Peaches

Fleur

peaches

I love stone fruit and we are lucky to have moved to a house with a delicious peach bearing tree. Big, fat, juicy ones!

Trouble is, the tree is completely overloaded, so much so that one of the branches broke off about two weeks ago. Also the fruit all ripens at around the same time!

There are only so many peaches one can eat without upsetting the body’s equilibrium!

So the simmer pot has come out and I’m bottling, stewing, freezing… anything that makes the peaches last a bit longer.

Its a messy job, with juice everywhere, sticky fingers and knife handles, but it brings so much pleasure to know that we’ve prolonged the life of this fruit and they’ll be yummy into the winter months.

Category: Country Life, Harvest Tags: fruit, Harvest One Comment

Dec

This is more like it!

Fleur

There is a sense of urgency in the air in the Condingup/Beaumont area! After a half a day harvesting, yesterday dawned bright and warm and there are trucks, headers and chaser bins moving on most of the farms in the district.

The golden glow of the stubbles that have already been harvested are taunting the farmers who haven’t started yet but today we should all get going.

We need to get as much grain off as quickly as possible, so that if the predictions of ‘destructive thunderstorms and gale forced winds’ that echo around the cab of the header, come this afternoon, we have some safely in the silos.

We sent our first truck of the harvest off with a great sense of relief that harvest is finally underway and even though I’m watching the thick black clouds roll in, I think that we’ve had our fair share of rain over the past three weeks and we’ll still be harvesting tomorrow … but then again I’m also ever the optimist! Here’s hoping.

Category: Harvest Tags: grain Leave a Comment

Dec

Beaumont Bin Beauties

Fleur

This week I made two trips to the Beaumont Bin (which is one of the outlying silos that grain is delivered to once harvest starts) to have the moisture in our grain tested. Tarren is one of three beauties working there, testing the moisture, checking the specifications and giving the truckies a bit of lip when needed!

The moisture of the grain needs to be right for storage and the rest of the tests tell us what grade the grain is, therefore what we will be paid. After all the rain, the quality of seed is surprisingly good, which is fantastic for both the growers and the buyers!

The big silver enclosure you can see behind the ute is usually close to being full by now, but the rain has held harvest up and now even though there has been some sunny days, the moisture in a lot of grain is still too high to harvest, so here’s hoping for a few 35 degree days and a good, long crack at harvesting!

Category: Country Life, Harvest Tags: grain Leave a Comment

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