I shot a couple small videos at our ram sale last week.

I talk about a ram sale in Blue Skies and I thought, if you haven’t been to one before, it would help you visualise the atmosphere and excitement that runs around a shed as the auction starts.

You may have to watch it a couple of times to get you ‘ear in’. Auctioneers talk so fast, often it’s hard to understand what they’re saying!

Neil Brindley from Landmark was our auctioneer and once he called the shed to order, there wasn’t a sound – everyone was listening to him and prices. The two other blokes on the rails with him, are Greg Prosser, Landmark Manager and Simon Norsworthy, stock agent. They were spotting for bids, as was Peter Gale, stock agent, who was on the floor with a buyer.

The bids flew thick and fast, which was fantastic and at the end of the day, we had sold all the rams! That was a fantastic result! The ram that Anthony is holding, was our highest priced ram and is pictured with Peter Gale, Simon Norsworthy, Anthony and me!

Our annual sale – Tomorrow!

For many years now, we’ve held an annual ram sale in Esperance.

We gather up the best of our rams, truck them to town, wrestle them into pens and let farmers pass judgement on them! Tomorrow is the big day (18th Sept 09).

At the moment, I’m snatching five minutes away from washing cars, gathering up the BBQ and eskies and packing the ute in preparation for an early start.

The truck arrives at about 6:30am and they’re in town by 9am. That gives us heaps of time to get them penned the way the need to be and for them to settle down. It can be quite upsetting and tiring for a ram to be taken out of his usual paddock setting and tossed into a noisy shed, with people feeling his rump, looking at his structure and testicles! We try to be as kind as possible to the animals, so giving them time to adjust to their new environment is important.

The kids love ram sale day, as they get out of school and have a great time mingling amongst the crowd and feeling the atmosphere of the day. It’s a great learning experience for them as well.

So, if you’re in need of a good ram, tomorrow, our White Suffolks will be penned from 12pm, sale starting at 2pm, with a BBQ and refreshments provided. We’d love to see you there (with a crate on behind your ute, to take a couple home!)

A little while ago, Anthony and I made a journey across the Nullarbor to Adelaide. We were going to look for good stud rams, to help advance our White Suffolk Stud.

After a day in the airports we went straight from there to the show! It was wonderful to walk in and be greeted by old friends. We had been feeling tired, after a four thirty start in the morning, but the energy that ran around the ram shed, soon got us pumped again!

The quality of the rams were amazing and we did find a couple of fella’s that we think are good enough for our ewes! They’ll make the trip across the two states, by truck and after being checked over for all the stringent quarantine conditions, we’ll drive the five hours to Kalgoorlie and pick them up.

Both Anthony and I find the city really noisy, after the farm – it doesn’t take long to adjust though, but I loved to be able to look out my hotel window and see space.

We only had forty eight hours in Adelaide, but it was wonderful. We had our little piece of farming and then the family time. That was all there time for, before we legged it back across the bite, to start some more shearing on Tuesday.

This is what our first day of shearing looked like at 6:00am!

Sheep all ready and waiting in the yards, clear skies and a wonderful sunrise, sending a message that it was going to be a special day!

We tested our new shearing shed well and truly, with 450 ewes being shorn.

It worked really well, although the shed doesn’t have a lot of storage for keeping sheep dry, so when an unexpected rain shower came through in the afternoon, we got wet sheep and had to stop!

So, only one day of shearing down, with another two and a half to go … but only when the sheep are dry, who knows when that will be!

Coming up on September 18, we’re holding our annual ram sale. To do that, we need to blood test all our sale rams, to make sure they don’t have any nasty diseases that they can pass on to the ewes that they will mate with.

It’s a regular practise with most studs – we feel it would be unethical to sell rams that weren’t tested negative to many diseases that could affect fertility.

Dave Swan, our vet, comes to do this and while Anthony or Jayden (the bloke that gives us a hand) man-handles each ram (only about 120 kilo’s each!), Dave takes their blood and I run around setting up new syringes and labelling the blood vials.

It’s always a fun day – we get to see our rams at close quarters and have a yarn with Dave!

These beautiful looking sheep are our stud ewes, complete with their long, lean and muscular lambs!

As part of our farming program we run a White Suffolk Stud – something that my main character in Blue Skies, Amanda, does.

These girls are just about to be run through the jetting race – to make sure the flies can’t get into them when the sun comes out and the buzz of flies hit the air. We’ve also just marked their lambs and used special tags, so we know who belongs to which ewe – much like we do with the stud bulls.

Anthony is going to the Adelaide show in September, to source more ram semen, as we try and do and artificial insemination program each year. It allows us to source genetics outside of the genetic pool we have already used.

South Australia is the home of the ‘Great White’ and that’s often where the best genetics are found (in our opinion!).

This is what you get, when you’re shifting sheep, yabbering on the phone and not concentrating!

Sent to bring some sheep into the yards, I used the time to call a friend – when I’m busy writing, I don’t always stay in contact with my mates as much as I should.

I was quite happily moving the sheep and catching up on all her news, when suddenly I realised I had driven into muddy patch… and I’d sunk!

I decided then, it was time to finish my conversation and after some swearing, cursing and lots of branches, little mallee roots and rocks stuffed under the wheel for traction, plus the four wheel drive oomph, I managed to get out!

I was really pleased about this, because Anthony wasn’t on the farm and I had to pick the kids up off the school bus in half an hour – and I wouldn’t have been able to, if I had had to walk back to the shed for the tractor!

We were lucky enough to be able to buy the inside of a shearing shed, complete with catching pens, grating, gates… the works.

Having two farms 18 kilometres apart and only a shearing shed on one of them, makes life quite difficult at times and involves stock trucks carting sheep backwards and forwards at shearing and crutching time. Time consuming, not to mention expensive!

We’re really pleased to be having this four-stand board put up on the inside of our machinery shed… so we’ll have a shearing shed on both places soon.

It’s a raised board shed so where Hayden and Rocket are standing, will be cemented and used as the floor where the rousies, classer work and the press stands.

It won’t be long before it’s put to use, with ewes needing crutching as soon as it’s finished.

Check out this cheeky little fella!

I fed some hay out for the bulls who live in this paddock, but they were busy sunning themselves way down the other end and obviously didn’t hear the tractor with the wind that was blowing.

The sheep took full advantage of not having to muscle their way in around the big guys, risk being stepped on, or bunted out of the way!

They hooked into to the hay before the bulls realised what was going on.