Hi Again,

Another very welcome couple of days of showers with 17mm yesterday & another 6mm at lunch time today that seemed to make the ground outside the yard wetter looking than the previous days slower fall did. Not as much as I was hoping to get on earlier forecasts & not nearly as much as further east of here with reports of up to 3 inches in the old scale in places.

Put a halt on the fencing progress though & gave us a chance to catch up on some office work and for Cathy to get the washing up to date. We also put another water point in last week out in the front paddock which entailed running about 1,200 metres more poly pipe & I used a little Ferguson tractor to tow a 22,000 liter tank out to the end of it. I was a little unsure how that would go with visions of a hole being burned in its base from friction, however with a slow careful pace maintained all was well. With another win being that I got it right into the correct spot first go…..and level!! That completed our effort out the front from originally being just one paddock to now being nine with the possibility of doubling that with portable fencing as we see fit.

Having the cattle out there this week though saw us having the need to move stock in the wet as we only wanted them in those areas for 12 hours to a day maximum to reduce the effects of too much impact in the soft, sticky black soil that Bre is famous for. Worked out well as we got them over to the other side of the river yesterday morning onto a ‘new’ fenced off paddock that has historically been almost 80% clay pan. It’s an area that we have tried to get animal impact into with some success & I’ve also scratched around there quite a bit with the little tractor creating banks to hold water up & encourage growth of any sort of plant that has the guts to try and survive there. Mostly early succession saline plants such as copper burr & poverty bush have the best attempts although some clay pans seem to allow certain grasses to get a hold as well in other paddocks. Turned out very well as it rained all the time they were there & this morning when we went over to move them it seemed they had covered most of the 70 hectares involved leaving plenty of indentations and scuff marks that would have trapped the follow up rain today. It never fails to surprise me just how many young grass seedlings the cattle leave behind in a paddock after grazing at quite high density for short durations. They make grass management a lot easier for me than sheep that’s for sure & it always is a pleasure to move them…..even when it is wet, the ground is sticky & I’m on foot! Mainly due to my old bike breaking down with battery trouble & it was clogging up too much with mud anyway.

Cathy & I only decided at lunch time the day before to get that particular stretch of fence up to concentrate them on that clay pan and the line is a little over one & a half kilometers long. We left here at 12.30, loaded up the truck with wire and posts, fueled up the tractor & put the digger back on, put in two ‘end posts’ (rammed with a crow bar), erected the fence (including putting the electricity on) and were back at the house here by 4.30 in the afternoon………that’s my style of fencing & it works well.

It’s not all work though as we camped out at a friends place last Saturday night to celebrate their sons 21^st birthday which was a great night, and one of those ones where it is really surprising to see the sun coming up before we were finished….must be something to do with daylight saving!! Not much sleep to be had & after getting home at lunchtime there was cattle to shift & a new tank and trough that had to be plumbed up or we would have thirsty cattle the next day.

Had to cancel a few bookings for the “Hutz� this week due to the inclement weather but it’s the best excuse there is & the moisture will give a good start to some grass for the summer & more than make up for the inconvenience in potential grazing days.