Checking out the field

The farm with nothing worth insuring is about to change it's status. The significant other is feeling the call of the tool shed-

there is no shed,   the call is a primeval instinct encoded into many significant others about the time their ancestors first stood up and walked on two legs rather than four.

"Me want stick,   me want stone. " 
"Me figure out how to hook stone onto stick"
"Eureka!  me invent tool!"
At least that's how I read the DNA coding.

What usually follows goes something like this
"##xx**#   -- stick broke,  me need to have a beer with mate and figure out how to fix stick."

The mate has the solution
"mate you picked up the wrong stick, you need the newer bigger model."

And so the research into farming tools begins. A chainsaw is an essential to clear the fences of all the fallen trees, but will a 30cm bar be too small or will a 3.0 kw with a 37cm bar,  be too heavy and how much torque do you need?

The decision is made to attend a farming field day where all the experts will be in the one place at the one time.  Directory of all Australian field days & shows

So we pack the dog, the sun cream and our hats and set off down the highway early one Saturday morning. At 10 am a freshly slashed paddock now doubling as the car park is 3/4 full,  Families with babies in strollers,  fellow hobby farmers, machinery tyre kickers and most of the local community are all funnelling through the turnstiles, it's showtime!

When you're past your teens and sample bags and dizzy rides no longer seem so fabulous, the field day is the perfect antidote to revive that fizz of excitement.   The displays and marquees are full of gleaming mowers, water and sewage recycling systems, axes too good to put any where near a log,  solar panels, composting systems, alpacas in every colour and row after row of tractors.

After the third machinery display we agree to split up, tool man is on a mission and I'm attracted to the whip cracking show,  the low line cattle and strangely, the axe display!

At lunch time we meet up and compare sample bags. The dog wanders off to check out a couple of fluffy white Shitzus and a brown poodle. Where are all the kelpies and blue heelers? Home on the farm, doing a days work it seems.

Late in the afternoon two dusty, thirsty, learner farmers leave their first field day with a brand new 35 bar  chain saw and visions of Kubotas and Yanmars with 'conveniently located PTO levers' dancing in their heads.

Things that burrow, grow or move

The dog has just attempted to disappear down another hole, he's only a Silky Terrier,  but even if he was an over weight labrador he'd still fit with plenty of wriggle room.

These are wombat holes, fantastic construction sites that could have doubled as sets on the movie 'Lord of the Rings.' Some resemble old mine shafts, others seem to have whimsical facades - either way, JR Tolkien would surely recognise them as part of middle earth.

At sunset the residents emerge, bleary eyed after a heavy day snoozing. They squat on their front patios and survey the world as they sort out their agenda for the evening.  First, a ramble through the paddock on the lookout for dinner or is that breakfast. Mosses and grasses will do for starters. These over stuffed duffle bags on four short legs can be the farmers friend because they don't mind munching on tussock grass or spear grass.

There is just one problem, they breed-   then the new generation out grows the parental home - so another outbreak of burrowing begins. Judging by the number of false starts and abandoned holes burrowing appears to be an art learned on the job, or maybe the wombats are just upwardly mobile, always on the look out for a better piece of real estate.

Then there are those smaller holes and hollow logs down by the dams, the dog can't fit into them, but he knows they have a resident, usually our friend the red bellied black snake. Luckily the dog is startled by a snapping twig and sometimes even his own shadow, so the snakes are safe as long as we are not on the same path at the same time.

 The fauna down in Apple Gully is benign compared to the evil green, spiky menace of 'Rubus fructicosus' and it's sidekicks waiting to mug the naive city slicker.  The mega fauna of Australia may be extinct but the mega flora is thriving. 'Onopordum acanthium' grows to 2 metres, it lurks in packs and it must have been crossed with a stegosaurus at some stage in it's evolution.

Yes, we are talking about the Blackberry and the Scotch thistle, these two thugs have claimed Apple Gully as their patch and when they need some enforcing done they call on their weedy mates, Blady grass and serrated tussock and there are probably more gang members lurking down the rural equivalent of dark alley ways.

Watch this space - gang warfare is about to break out as the city slickers get down and dirty and take on the noxious gang.