Apple Gully Farm: What's been happening down on the farm

click on Apple Gully Farm all the pictures and posts are there

creative garlic

I can't believe that this blog has been lying idle in the blogosphere since late 2013, an age ago.

The great silence suggests that nothing has happened. Not so, it's the opposite, too much has been going on. Spring has come and so has the garlic crop along with 3 new calves. We are lucky we still have the third, his mother had been listless and failing throughout her pregnancy with a problem that despite multiple tests could not be accurately diagnosed. She struggled valiantly on through the last months managing to give birth and support her little bull calf for another month and then as ailing cows do, she sat down and waited to die. So we had an orphan to rear. Its amazing the difference mothers milk makes, despite hand feeding, our orphan is a runt and will probably never catch up with his peers.

the bucket is a substitute mum for our orphan

Spring started with great promise and then rapidly reneged on all it's promises. The wind blew week after week evaporating what little rain fell - green paddocks turned slowly yellow.

Then came summer- with a vengeance. A hot summers day in our part of the world climbs to around 30 degrees C. All through late spring we baked in 30+ days, the pasture reacted to this by not growing. Perversely, on Christmas Day it was cool enough to light a fire, then on Boxing day a vicious hail storm blasted through, shredding the veggie garden and pelting the cows with hail stones like marbles. poor things winced and flinched wondering who or what was hitting them.

hail stones like marbles

For most of summer this year the thermometer has hovered around 34 to 39 degrees C. Combine that with very little rain and it spells trouble. Gradually our creeks have stopped flowing, the grass has turned brown, the blow flies are driving humans and cattle nuts, and the cattle have gravel rash on their noses from scavenging around in the short dry pasture.

In other ways nature did manage to ignore the fiery weather and just got on with the business of growing and producing. The wild plums turned on a great crop. I shared an hysterical January afternoon picking plumbs with a flock of inebriated parrots. As they stuffied themselves with the slightly rotting, fermented plums under the trees they squarked and tottered about like a bar full of drunk students. None of them was capable of flyng more than half a meter off the ground and a few just lay about trying to focus on me or for that matter on anything.
My jam making skills need some work, so I'll be back at the pub -- er-- tree next year to pick another batch.

The mediterranean sunshine has produced a bountiful supply of sweet heritage tomatoes on vines that would now be 15m tall if I hadn't pruned them back to within human reach. We have been utterly spoilt and will never again be able to enjoy a cricket ball hard and tasteless commercial tomato.

our heritage tomatoes

Here's a test-- take 3 supermarket tomatoes, line them up and gently lower a house brick onto them, they can hold up the brick. Now take 3 of our giant Black Russian tomatoes and try the same experiment - you will have instant passata for your efforts.

so sweet and juicy- like a water melon disguised as a tomato

As February rolled around and the hot weather persisted it became clear we could not support all of our herd through autumn and the winter. Even if the rains come, we will still be short on pasture this year. So we confronted the harsh reality of being farmers rather than the keepers of large pets. The old girls as we fondly refer to our original Herefords would have to go.

Tuesday has come and gone and so have the old girls, they arrived in 2010 and had over 3 pampered years on Apple Gully. We've kept their calves who bellow forlornly for the milk bar. Perversely, the rains came the very next day, too late for our old girls.

We are not alone in saying we will be glad to see the back of this summer, the only thing we escaped was the bushfires.