A Double Header

This is Chapter 2 of a long catchup blog.

Louisa's brother Chris and his wife Kerry (our photographer) came up for the first 4 days of shearing to shoot a DVD of shearing... Here they are shooting a few seconds of footage in the shed the night before it all began. (Col can be seen ducking out of the way.)


This is the first wool ever sent to market under the label Carbon Credited. We are launching this brand to signify that we have entered into a program to reduce our emissions and to sequester carbon by our land management techniques. We used an old Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) calculator to discover what out emissions are: mainly methane from the sheeps' rumens. And we have applied to join the AGO's Greenhouse Challenge to join more than 700 other Australian companies who have embarked on the journey towards "neutral".



This is a photo of Brodie taken by Xavier. He borrows the camera and I find photos of the floor and the walls and people without heads... Such joyfull photos. I should do an album for him.



Like this shot of the window. Nothing less that capturing the artistic beauty of the mundane.


Spring means jonquills (spelling?) popping up around the garden. Mary Bird, who lived here for many years, had the most spectacular garden. And we have the remnants of it. We'd love to have the time to recreate it.x


No it's not a new dance. Louisa is demonstrating to the film crew and director of our shearing at Uamby DVD what will happen once the day starts and the wool starts flying. (She'll kill me for this. But I've got some other photos I could have used.) Daniel has a new dog - Kodie. I'll photograph her tomorrow.

Spring means shearing

Here's the littlest Uambyite Brodie with his Mum Rachael, my daughter. Brodie started crawling a few weeks ago, and has discovered the ground, dirt, stones, dogs that lick his face.
He had a 'coming out". Like the Balinese who wont let a child touch the ground until it is a full 12 months old. Well Brodie is nine months - close enough. He took to the ground like a puppy dog.





This curious little ewe lamb wandered over to aks me if I had any more hay after we had fed out to welcome the lambs to "Shearing 2007" - their first experience of getting their woollen jackets off. The chilly winds will be gone by tomorrow when they start losing their pure new wool underwear.



Xavier just loves tractors. He won't be hard to recruit as free labour in a few years... He and his mom and little brother Brodie are up from Sydney for 10 days to help with shearing. It was a brave call by Louisa to have them up during shearing, because the stress of shearing is added to by the stress of having an active 5 year old (X-man) who wants his Nonnie's attention all the time. But he was a good boy and amused himself playing outside the shearing shed.



Here are some of the rams looking longingly towards the ewes who are by now heartily sick of them, with the first lambs already having arrived. The rest look ready to lamb.


Father John Frawley is our Parish Priest. We celebrated his 25 years as a priest last Sunday with an "RSL" meal at the RSL. John was made a Monsenior (spelling looks wrong) by the Pope recently for his long and distinguished service. He became a priest after a long time as a Christian Brother, the teaching order established by Irish businessman Edmund Rice. I was taught by the Brothers and they were not ones to spare the rod (or the strap). I got my share of "Six of the best" - which, in Tamworth on a cold winter's morning, could make your hands throb for hours. That was then. This is now. John Frawley is the best churchman I have known in my sporadic relationship with the Church. He works hard each week on his homily (sermon) which he delivers to on average 15 people at Goolma. He comes out to us from Gulgong where the parish is a difficult one for a man of John's age. I'll tell you why later.










Louisa and Lucy the cross kelpie/collie that we bred have become a good team. Lucy would have got a bullet on most other places. But this dysfunctional dog is finally starting to understand. She's got a criminal mindset. Always leading the other dogs astray.







After a hard day's shearing - Louisa is wool classing - we have a couple of drinks with the crew. He we see Col and Louisa chilling out. Col is a brilliant giant of a man. I should be his PR agent.



Len Cooney is roustabouting for us. Daniel is working outside the shed, mustering and feeding out. Len gave me the words to a song - well the first verse - and said 'you can finish it...' What?

Those black caterpillars are back

We are having our annual emergence of Pasture Day Moth caterpillar. They come up from under the soil and head off into the pasture to eat broadleaf plants. (Such as capeweed, sometimes called daisies.) We get a lot of these caterpillars emerging from the soil around the hay shed.
WA Agriculture tells us the caterpillar is the lava of the moth and is called Apina callisto. "The caterpillar is a visually striking insect especially when fully grown to 60 mm long. It is dark brown to black with two yellow spots near the posterior end. Large numbers of these caterpillars may be seen on the surface of pasture where they remain and feed until fully grown."
The moth is brown with yellow markings on the wings and orange rings around the body. "Eggs are laid in pasture and hatch at about the onset of rains. When the larvae are fully grown they may be seen burrowing in the soil before becoming pupae," says WA Agriculture. They aren't a real pest. They need autumn rains to emerge and they only become a problem in very bad years.So now we know... Why are they important? Because they are part of the biodiversity - the network of organisms that support each other in ways we don't understand but if we deny or disrupt it, we play dice with the force of nature.

Red Rumped Parrots, our constant companions

We have large flocks of red-rumped parrots who live in the trees and among the grasses. They flock like budgerigars, but not in the same numbers. They also live on grass seeds that grow in abundance in native pastures. If your pastures are all introduced species, you are not being hospitable towards the local wildlife.
They were perching in the tree outside my window this morning, most of the time with their heads tucked under against the wind. Then, when the sun comes out, they flit to the ground to feed on seed.
My poor little Canon Digital IXUS400 does a good job considering it has a very inaccurate x11 digital telescopic facility which my shaky hands renders blurry, and a slightly more accurate physical x3 telescopic capacity. Otherwise you have got to be like an Indian scout, creeping up on the wildlife to get within range. They have promised me a real telescopic lens, but I don't believe the finances will bear the pressure.

When the ibis return

We have a flock of Straw-Necked Ibis visiting the farm in the aftermath of the soaking rains. They are feeding on the caterpillars and other crawling bugs emerging from the soil. This is a good example of how increasing soil carbon in the humus zone promoted biodiversity. The food chain begins in the humus line. Microbes feed bugs. Bugs feed birds. Birds feed... etc.

They have visited before, about the same time of year. They stay for a week or so, then go off elsewhere. They are commonly found across all AUstralia, according to SLater's Field Guide to Australian Birds. My little Canon Digital Camera isn't up to wildlife photography. But I caught a large wallaby watching the Ibis. It was raining at the time.


Louisa saw this post and comments: "You could have also explained that messy is the new neat, and all those standing dry grasses are habitat for lots of little 'things' and have given that kangaroo enough confidence to come down and be there."

Jessica to be married to Fred

Louisa and I were driving back from addressing the Waste Management Association/Compost Australia in Canberra last week when Jessica called us from the business class section of a Qantas jet about to take off for Paris to tell us Fred Schebesta (her boyfriend) proposed to her and she accepted! Fred was taking her to Paris for her birthday.

Fred is ceo of Freestyle Media, 26 years old (J. is 31), has just sold his first business. He is an Internet guru and Young Direct Marketer of the Year. (I was a judge.) We have known him for 4 years.They met at a young entrepreneurs networking function that Jess ran. Fred shared office space with Louisa and I for several years. Fred became a family friend and a mate of mine long before Jess decided he was the one.
It stunned us when she announced that they were 'going out together', then they moved in together... It has all happened fast. Jess just bought out her partner in her training business.

(Jessica when she appeared in BRW Magazine last year)







(Fred clearing the vegetation from the cemetery in 2005. He has been a frequent guest at "Uamby".)