Fire Season

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Ok I’ve been really quiet on here for a while so I’ll give you a little update on the work we’ve been doing at the family farm of late.

The last couple of weeks at the farm we’ve been getting ready for what is shaping up to be a rather hot summer and the potential of fire. So we’ve had the tractor out and mowed all the nature strips and the paddocks that we’re not using for livestock or crops cutting back the grass so that it is nice and short since it’s gone very dry and would only need a few sparks to set it off. We took the Landcruiser down both sides of the creek and cut all the dead tree’s down and any dead branches off the other tree’s and then slashed the grass under there as best as we could. We’ve ripped out some of the old trees that were dead along the fence-lines with the tractor. We’ve slashed the grass in the shearing yards and cleaned out all the drains in the outbuildings. The bush-land along the western corner of the block needed tidying too as the strong winds we’ve had have bought down a few tree’s and patches of long grass where coming up, so we ripped out the long grass and cut up the trees and removed them. Monday and Tuesday we got into the driveway and cut out all the low hanging branches on the flowering gums and slashed underneath them. On Tuesday we acquired our permit to burn off (new legislation that affects farmers down this way) and built a huge bonfire of all the tree-branches and other rubbish that we had tidied up ready to burn down beside the creek. On wednesday we checked the weather to make sure it was safe weather to light the fire and then did a quick maintenance check on our water truck before driving it down to near the fire. So we then burnt the bonfire, the flames were incredibly hot and were taller than some of the tree’s on our property. Thankfully though we did not need the water truck to put out any fires that may have started from sparks. So now we are tidied up and ready for summer, although we hope that it won’t be a bad fire season for anyone.

We’ve also had a really nice time in the veggie garden at the farm too in the last few weeks, we’ve planted out 25 pumpkin plants and a nice crop of sweet corn. We’ve got the saladlings in (lettuce, rocket etc.) and we’ve been picking broad-beans like crazy. We’ve transplanted half a dozen self sewn tomato plants into their proper-place and put their frames in. The broccoli was on the way out so we’ve ripped out that crop and started a new one along with the rhubarb and the cabbages. We’ve also just started to harvest the carrots and beetroot so we’ve put in the next lot of seeds so that we don’t have too much of a gap in them. There is more I’ve missed I’m sure but that will do for now.

• 30 Oct, 2008
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