Cornering the Minister and extracting a promise

Michael Kiely, convenor, Carbon Coalition, gets his man! The Hon. Tony Burke was the guest of honour at the RIRDC Rural Woman of the Year event in Canberra. The Coalition had made an approach to see the Minister and received a curious letter from a senior public servant which said, in effect, that the Minister was too busy to see people from the country like me because he has to get around to see people from the country.the Minister immediately agreed to accept a proposal from the Coalition. He is a charming man who speaks well and said some touching things, like "It's such a privilege to be here with the people who provide the rest of us with food, clothing anf shelter."

Also at the event - and sitting on Louisa's table at the event - was the Hon. Mark Coulton, Member for Parkes (Michael stood against him in the election in November.) We agreed to help him with climate change information. Mark's probably too nice for politics and probably hates Canberra by now. (All politicians are charming and most National Party people are nice.) I also spoke with Wilson Tuckey who said he had a car engine that ran on air and the transmission comes from a Fisher and Pykel washing machine. He's a wild man

One Tree Hill: A Series

I saw this tree through the window of the car while we were held up at roadworks on the road between Mudgee and Lithgow. I stared at it for a while, thinking it looked out-of-this-worldish. Just before the stop light changed, I grabbed the camera and got 4 or 5 shots, one of them was this.


Dang me if I didn't see something similar while driving between Wellington and "Uamby" by the front route (the highway) while flashing lights and waving cars down as Tim Woods drove his humungous sowing machine down the highway. I came back a few days later - late in the afternoon - and took this shot. Eerie.

Tim's big sowing machine comes to slice the pasture

Tim Woods, one of our classmates from the first "Farming Systems Course" came out to help us do some pasture cropping. We used his 'no kill' direct drill rig which he built out of a second hand combine harvester. It has 16 double disk openers to slice open the soil to drop the seed in and seal it with the following rollers.

This causes minimum disturbance for the soil vegetation. It also means we don't have to use herbicide or fertilizer. We planted 30 acres of oats and 30 acres of cereal rye into perennial pastures for a trial. We had a bit of fun and games getting the rig out to Uamby as it is 20 feet wide and many double gates installed in years gone by are a little less than that. SO we had to cut he fence her and ther. thanks for your help, Dennis Woods. (No relation) On the return trip we lifted it onto a truck, but still there were some tighjt moments getting it back to Tim's place Mt Nanima near Wellington. We hope for rain (we sowed almost dry).

The double disks can slice through quite heavy vegetation. It will be interesting to see if the sun can get through to the seeds in Cemetery Paddock - which we cant have animals on at present because the river banks are too overgrown. Thanks to Tim and his super slicer.

Masters of the Skies

We often see a wedgetail eagle calmly scouting out wht's below from on high and I rush for a camera. We even occasionally get three circling together. Well, I was up on the highest point on the south side of the property mustering on foot becuase I couldn't get the quad bike up there, when a wedgey rose up from the valley and soared across the ridge before I could get the camera out. Later I was photographing the Caliope trials when I looked up and there were three of them again. This time I didn't miss.

"Blue Poles" marks natural fertilizer trials

We recently put a small amount (200kg) of "Caliope" out as a thumbnail trial on a hectare in a paddock close to the house (Stanley Paddock). We call it a thumbnail trial because we want to move to bigger trials but don't have the dollars. John Pashai has offered us an opportunity to help him promote his product. He is a passionate soil man, being a farmer and an engineer who bought a 'pelletising installation' which he uses to produce a horticultural product that sells its head off to Italian gardeners. They and some Greek gardeners as well say it is miraculous. It consists of lime, dolomite, humates, and trace elements and plants literally sing when they receive it. For us, as the Carbon Coalition, he formulated a special size pellet for broadacre farming. We distributed it by hand. John tells us about the scientists at University of Western Sydney who took some of his product to trial and put his in some "pots" in a greenhouse and over the weekend something went haywire with the heating and every plant in the greenhouse died except those with John's Caliope.
We hesitated to take John's product on because we're dedicated to the soil carbon trading objective. But things are moving faster than we anticipated and we may just be on the job sooner than we thought. The "Blue Poles" refers to the four star pickets we used to mark olut the hectare. We painted them blue. Caliope means song or singing. The song of life.

Xavier without trainer wheels

FIRST ATTEMPT - CRASH!LAUNCHED BY NONI
ACTION CAMERAWORK BY PA...

THERE'S BEEN A FALL...


SECOND TRY - SUCCESS!






THE SMILE OF TRIUMPH...