Life on the farm 2024!

My blogs are few and far between … life gets away!

We have recently had the most amazing rain which has changed our thought processes. When there has been very little rain, grass not growing , lakes not filling and lots of money spent on grain for sheep, it becomes survival mode. Sounds depressing but that is farm life. Last year we did not have Spring rains and very little in Winter which meant we quickly set up a huge feed lot for about 5000 ewe sheep. This allows the paddocks to rest . This was intensive and time consuming of feeding sheep everyday . We used all our grain that we had grown quickly so had to buy more in at a big cost. The positive of all of this is we could keep the sheep and didn’t have to sell a lot which is important to keep the numbers up.

So now nearly all our lakes are full apart from our big one, Windsors which hopefully will be over flowing by the end of Spring. This not only means it’s fabulous for fishing but also allows us to do more irrigation for crops . Water is one of our main concerns and we are on no irrigation scheme or from a river so we rely on rain falling. Did you know that in Summer, sheep drink upto 6 litres of water a day? As humans, it is important for sheep to have clean, fresh drinking water so all troughs must be checked regularly and cleaned when necessary.

We look forward to welcoming more guests to our farm and just remember, there is ‘no silly question here’.