Spring sprong sprung sprang ...

Spring is belting out its overture and the soil is resounding to the rhythm of life. While the APEC circus is in Sydney and the city of my birth has been 'locked down' by the trappings of an Orwellian police state - steel barricades in the streets and police snipers on the rooftops and demonstrations banned (this must make the Communist Chinese leaders feel at home)... out here at Uamby the real stuff of life is taking place.
DOUBLE JONQUILL
Flowers are growing, birds are building nests, insects are flying, Mother Earth is ignoring these "powerful men" having their talkfest in a faraway city. The paddocks are covered with green stuff - not all of it, not half of it edible. Much of it is capeweed - commonly called "daisies". It is a broadleaf plant, not very digestable. Pretty, though. It is a wonderful sight to wake up to a paddock sprinkled with daisies.
DAISY

There are giant thistles everywhere, not very tasty but important in the 'succession' between bare earth and native pastures. They cover the ground, encourage microbes to colonise the soil and make organic matter by living and dying. These thistles stablise the surface of the ground and protect it from erosion.
Former owner of Uamby Mary Bird planted so many bulbs. The pop up through the lawn. Mary's garden was legendary. Her son David tells me that it took 2 tanks of water a week (pumped from the river) to keep it looking beautiful. Marriage parties held their photo sessions in Mary's garden.
JONQUILLA

These 'bells' emerged in the garden for the first time this season. The flowers here at Uamby are nothing compared to the masses of wattle in the countryside. What a gardener God is!
BELLS

The birds are flocking in vast numbers. Galahs and cockatoos have such harsh voices. They stretch their vowels like true Aussies. Perhaps that's where our accent came from. I crept up to get a good shot of them bursting into the sky. But the shot didn't work. (My little Canon Ixus400 is not up to it. So I have a new camera. A Panasonic DMC FZ50 with x12 zoom and image stabilisation - which means I don't have to creep up so close and my shakey hands will be compensated for by the camera.)
GALAH FLOCK

We have a resident family of swallows, who we have tried to evict several times because they build mud nests in every crevice. They fly around the back verandar, depositing dung on the windowsills and walls. It's like Painting the Harbour Bridge - the cleaning job never stops. Occasionally one will find their way inside, flies around 'painting the walls' and has to be captured and evicted.

SWALLOW INSIDE
They are "Welcome Swallows", so I guess we shouldn't be kicking them out. But they have 2 broods of young each year. They breed like.... can't say "Catholics" anymore, expecially when I'm a Catholic.
SWALLOW ON LIGHT
I will be using my new camera to get some beautiful shots of the new lambs. You see, we can't go too close to the new mothers. They can easily get spooked and abandon their lambs. Itb is a sensitive time. So I can't rush around. It takes a lot of patience to sit still while the flock slowly grazes up the hill towards you, hoping they'll keep coming even after they have seen you. Bruce Christie from the Catchment Management Authority also teaches Stress-Free Stock Handling (which training Louisa and Daniel have done) told me never to circle around sheep because that is the action of a predator. Instead you walk in straight lines and invade their personal space by small increments.
LAMBS AND EWE
This little fellow is a good example of how a blundering photographer can endanger lambs. He/she was just born and I moved into the area without noticing until I had practically stepped on it. It's mother had moved off with the flock. She camed back and the little one got up and ran off with her.
RECENTLY BORN LAMB:

The whole countryside around Goolma is dotted with new lambs. It is a carnival of woolly wonders. Soon they will form little gangs and race madly together across the paddocks, leaping for joy. The joy of being alive. They are the spirit of Spring.
NEW BABY LAMB


Finally, meet Joe. The Father of both Ravi and Kodie. He's Col's working dog. He is normally muzzled. (Bites sheep.) He's an intelligent dog, but he can sometimes appear to be hard of hearing. Ravi is the Brad Pitt of kelpies and Kodie is the Big Bear (his Mother's name is Bear).
THIS IS JOE.

Kodie is our new Kelpie - didn't need her but Daniel came home with her after a night drinking around a campfire with Col. Many truths were told that night. Kodie is a willing worker - loves chasing after sheep. Still, as a puppy, she is stealing our shoes from the back door and hiding them. The Joy of Childhood. Life. Spring.
KODIE

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".)

Der Speigel comes asking questions

Talking to the world's most powerful magazine on a bad hair day.

Klaus Brinkbaumer called from Sydney to ask could he visit. He has come out from Germany to cover the story of Australia's water crisis for Der Speigel. Wikipedia says Der Spiegel (The Mirror) is Europe's biggest and Germany's most influential weekly magazine, published in Hamburg, with a circulation of around one million per week.

We were interesting because of the images of drought that accompanied our 'adoptasheep' appeal. He arrived mid-afternoon on a Saturday with photographer Tasso Taraboulsi. Far from drought, what we had was water water everywhere. (Our hydrology is very constirpated.) Klaus is a seriously charming man who is dedicated to his work. He travelled for 3 months with African refugees as they made their way across the Sudan and on into Europe seeking refuge and a better life in Germany. He is an admirable journalist, the closest thing to George Orwell I'll ever meet. (Orwell joined the hordes of the poor tramping across England seeking work and handouts during the Depression.)Klaus's book won an important award.

We talked mainly about the Carbon Coalition's work and the power of soils to sequester. He is personally pessimistic about the future, having seen the worst cities in the world as they sink under their own refuse. We told him we are optimistic because we have the solution to the world's problems: laughter (and soil carbon).

Tasso is a brilliant Australian freelance photographer who operates out of New York. He took some twilight shots you will see in later posts.

Economic irrationalists and dodgy bookkeepers

This letter to the editor of Australian FArm Journal in response to comments by the high profile farm economics consultant Phil Holmes of Holmes & Sackett. He described those of us engaged in regenerative farming as 'wild eyed zealots' who are afflicted by some pagan religious frenzy.

Dear Patrick,

Phil Holmes is right to say that a primary producer must know their profit drivers. He is not right to describe 'the basic outcome in your farm business' as short term profit. The single-minded drive for financial results for more than 200 years has driven the progressive degradation of the basic plant and equipment of all agricultural enterprises: the natural resource base. This cost to business has never been included in the P&L. Scientists estimate that conventional land management techniques have cost the nation 50% the topsoil and 70% of the soil carbon. Soil degradation reduces productivity and increases costs as fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides are needed to deal with the consequences of 'profit-only driven' management. As the global community is waking up to a massive bill for cleaning up the mess we made of the atmosphere by using it as a free garbage disposal system, it's clear that the traditional bookkeeping for agriculture has had a column missing: a cost of production that is still unrecorded. It's like having two sets of books. Either you assign all the costs of production to the enterprise in a disciplined, economic rationalist way. Or you wallow in the mediocrity of capitalising the profits and socialising the losses. Commonsense demands a clean set of books. Best practice in business today is the triple bottom line: balancing financial performance against social and environmental outcomes. Why do Microsoft, Toyota, and IBM report on their triple bottom lines? It is because, as Phil Holmes remarked in his article, financial success cannot make up for losing your health and your loved ones. Corporations know they can't make money if the environment and society are crook. Regenerating the natural resource base, which is the source of wealth in agriculture, is the only sustainable way forward. The alternative - 'mining' the soil and our waterways while not paying the full costs of production - can have only one outcome. The Cree Indians"Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that you cannot eat money."

Michael Kiely
"Uamby"
Goolma

Bogged! (Trying to Feed the Ewes)

So much rain. While Newcastle was being pounded by vicious storms, we were happy to receive 85 precious mls of rain. Filling the dams. Soaking the rootmass of the pastures. In fact, we have a hydrology problem because low lying areas saturate and become waterlogged (which indicates that we need more deep rooted plants 'ploughing' our soils, making them more sponge-like and capable of holding water).
We have got a lot to learn about Uamby's behaviour under water (not had much experience of too much water in 7 years of drought). We now know not to try taking 1 tonne of feed grain on a 1 tonne truck down to feed ewes on the flatland after rain. WE bogged the Red Landcruiser, Dan's Landcruiser, a quad bike and finally the tractor... each one bogged while trying to pull the other out. (We eventually had to dig the Red Landcruiser out.)

The Cudgegong River did not break its banks, welcoming the flushing out as it had become stagnant and fetid. I hope the platypus family were snug in their home in the river bank. Molly's Creek cut the road for a short while. "What's this stuff?" asked Ravi, the Red Kelpie. "Water," I told him. "What's it doing in the creek?" he asked. "Just reliving old times," I said. He gave me a quizical (?) look.

"Uamby" helps the Holistic Management movement raise money

More than 30 million acres are being managed holistically worldwide. ANd holistic management is a climate change solution. So support Holistic Management International, says the flyer. This has been distributed throughout parts of the United States.

And Uamby is featured prominantly on the flyer: as "The green land" which is managed holistically.

We have been managing holistically for 10 years, now.



Peter Holter, the PR wizard with HMI, visted with us several months ago... with HMI's Australian anchor Judy Earl.


We were hosted for part of our visit to New Mexico by Peter, when we were in ALberqurque visiting with the Southwestern Partnership (one of President Bush's groups of universities and scientific institutions working on geosequestration and soil carbon sequestration.)



We were flattered to receive Peter's request to use our photograph - taken from a light aircraft 2 weeks after we received 75mls in 35 minutes. It has browned off considerably since then.

THE BALLAD OF HAROLD THE BOLD

Louisa is afraid my cameos of life in Goolma, captured in song, are inappropriate. And so they are. But people love them. Even those the songs are about. Billy Moore is clever enough to see the comedic exaggeration in my ballad in praise of his bovine bovver boys. Harold certainly enjoyed hearing his special song. It is the story about New Year's celebrations from 2 years ago when Harold starred in a dramatic incident when midnight tolled. A very "Goolma" moment.

THE BALLAD OF HAROLD THE BOLD

There’s a story of old about Harold the Bold
Whose pub is of legendary fame
I’ll tell you a story so ghastly and gory
How Harold the Bold got his name

When it comes to carousal and sexual arousal
Harold’s pub’ not the ideal
But if it’s hard drinking and sin without shrinking
His venue has quite the right feel

So it came to pass in that palace of glasses
That Xmas had come and had gone
The regulars had hardly shifted their arses
Before the New Year had been born.

Inspired by grog and how much he could flog
Bold Harold was flushed with good cheer
He decided he’d shout all the drinkers about
To keep them as patrons all year.

But try as he may with something to say
He just couldn’t make himself heard
So he jumped on the bar and held up his arm
To give his good patrons the word.

No sooner had Bold Harold stood in his place
Than he was struck down by a blow
A treacherous ceiling fan launched him in space
And hurtled him deep down below.

To the floor of the bar where the sharp objects are
Fell the soft head of our host
He bled from a cut on his arm they said, but
It was his soft head that bled most.

Unseen by the mob which was sodden with grog
Poor Harold lay injured and bleeding
Only one person was sober for certain
And saw what poor Harold was needing.

She bandaged his arm and raised the alarm
By making an ambulance call
Ands one to the priest just in case he deceased
If the ambulance made it at all.

It is said that the party was jolly and hearty
With many a thought for Bold Harold
Who was sent to hospital not by his fall
But his stop when he dropped like a barrel.

His generous attempt to shout us prevented
By ceiling fan already mentioned
History would have been made, he intended
But for divine intervention.

Where the strong beer is sold the legend is told
How Harold the Bold was sent reeling
And they gather each night in the hope that he might
Fight round two with that fan on the ceiling.

©Michael Kiely 2007

the sky was blue and high above

This momentous sky...
you can't hide from the skies out here.
They're in your face.
You turn around and ... wow!

I saw this while patching the fence around the hay shed which had been invaded by sheep and given a bit of an upside down haircut...



They look like they need to break in to the food store, don't they...

We meet Con the Fruiterer at a Sustainability Conference

What a surprise to get an email from Mark Mitchell, aka Con The Fruiterer, at the Business Council for Sustainable Energy conference last week. He didn't know we'd be there. We didn't know he'd be there. Mark has been part of our Inspired Circle
of Friends ssince he got in touch with us about Adoptasheep several months ago and we discovered that he is a gifted inventor/engineer in the sustainable energy space.



Con had a lot of very serious points to make about climate change and global warming, hidden in the humour that had the room rocking for an hour. The best line of the night was his exhortation to politicians and public servants to keep producing millions of tonnes of paper reports each year and storing them in filing cabinets as they are sequestering CO2 that way.

My version of that concept is that we should be encouraging people to get fat, obese even, because they store carbon.The world should be pigging out as fast as it can.

Jessica gets some media

This article appeared in the Daily Telegraph this week:

-------
JESSICA Kiely runs the FRANK team, which does career and entrepreneurship training for young people at schools, universities, colleges and councils.

Describe your business?

It involves holding workshops and programs for young people on how to start their careers and how to start their own businesses.

It began about six years ago in 2001. There was nothing like this when we were at school, which is why we're doing it.

How long ago was that?

Well I'm 30 now. This was the second business I've started up. My first business was tutoring.

We've found that not many people who should be in a position to help are very friendly and helpful when you're young. They tend to be patronising and not take you seriously.

But there is a real need to inspire young people, to help them if they want to run their own businesses. We've moved into the career areas as well now, because the schools are demanding it.

There are some key skills that young people need these days. They no longer get a job for life, they need to be in control of their work and they need to build the skills to give them that control. The new rule is that they have to be skilled up and ready for that reality.

We've also ended up in front of parents and teachers. They need to understand what their children are doing too.

How do you make money?

We get paid for our presentations by the schools, universities or corporations.

How long did it take before you made a profit?

We started in 2001 and we were probably making a profit after six months. There weren't a lot of set-up costs as we were running the business from home where we had no overheads. We've now leased an office for the first time.

For the first four years I did all the paperwork, but we've now got a book-keeper and an accountant to take care of that. And we have project managers who managing the bookings.

How many people are involved in the business?

There are five people in the Sydney headquarters, including me and my business partner. Then we have 27 facilitators around Australia.

They are independent contractors and we pay them per booking, so they can run their own businesses as well. The FRANK team has now worked with thousands of people in every state of Australia, as well as some overseas countries.

Did you ever think you would get this big?

The idea in the first place was that it would have an impact on young people. It was always about doing it well and then getting other people to do it.

What sort of qualifications do you need?

I did economics and social science at Sydney University and majored in eduction and psychology. I've trained up on other things too. I love those courses that you can do in one day.

How is your business different from your competitors?

When we first started there wasn't much difference. Now there is, mostly because schools and the Government see that education needs to change and the information kids get access to also needs to change to deal with the reality.

All our facilitators are amazing young people - they are role models, they are all young, under the age of 32.

Also we go to the schools, they don't have to come to us. We offer the complete program, with the facilitator, activities and a comprehensive customer service program.

What has been your biggest challenge along the way?

The biggest challenge is our growth. Previously it's been organic, but now we're expanding quickly so managing that growth and cashflow and staff is the toughest thing at the moment.

We need to put systems in place so we can cope better. At the moment our strategy is writing our systems manual. It's very boring. It's like putting together a franchise manual.

Where will your business be in five years' time?

We've got global aspirations. Singapore, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, potentially Japan. We can get over the cultural differences by recruiting local people.

What has been your biggest stroke of luck or piece of good planning?

The biggest thing we did really well is our website. We put a lot of work into it. We did a program last year in Bahrain because they found us on the internet.

How did you get your name?

Originally we were called Youth 2 Youth, and we worked with mainly young people aged 15 to 35.

But then a lot of older people wanted to be part of our workshops so we decided we'd get a new name.

In 2003 we'd started a magazine for girls that we called Frank, because the content of the magazine was up front, and also it was different to call a girls' magazine a boy's name. So we decided to re-use that name.

Any advice for budding entrepreneurs?

Give it a go. Don't take too much time planning as that can stop you. The best way to learn is to do it.

What's your web address?

www.frankteam.com.au

SNAKE!

In less than a week we had a black snake (red belly) and a brown snake come to visit. What am I saying - they live with us! The black snake first appeared in the tool room next to the shed. The next time it appeared in amazing circumstances: we were sitting on the front verandah at dusk talking about snakes with a person who was a bit psychic. And I mentioned the local furphy that there were bluebellied blacksnakes down by the river and wondered out loud if they were a totem for the original owners of the land when a black 'shadow' seemed to run along the top of the fence in front of us, and at the same instant I looked down and at my feet (I was sitting on the steps) a black snake was trying to force its way into a small crevice between the stpes and the house. We all jumped up and ran inside, but our visitor's black labrador was attacking the snake, so I ran out and grabbed the dog and pulled it away. But by this time the snake was gone, presumably under the house. Did we see it? What did it mean? Daniel tells me he confronted it coming upthe footpath leading to the house one night. SO the latest sighting is a couple of weeks ago, in the above photo. It made its lesiurely way out fromunder Daniel's cottage, out under his car and into the grass beside the stables.

Then within days we have a visit from the big brown snake that also inhabits where we inhabit. The first time I heard of him/her/it, our manager said he had seen a "king brown" in the shearing shed and he wasn't going in there again. ("Anything to get out of work," I thought. But then I saw the snake's slide marks in the sand leading down towards the stables. On another occasion - during one of our droughts - I came across it crossing the road going towards the river. ANd the last time I saw it, I was reaching down to pick up some star pickets from in the grass and through the fence I saw in a small window between the grass a snake's skin pattern moving slowly along. It was brown. The latest visit came when we were out in the vege garden, digging out the weeds. It was detected by your Connor Grealish who drove over it on a quad bik and raised the alarm. Daniel coaxed it out of the grass and chased it up to the stables. (Ironically Daniel had a statement of the incidence of the high percentage of people who had died from snake bite whwile trying to kill the snake.)
I ran in to get the camera but it was all over. However I found it had shed part of its skin while escaping. It was two and a half meters long. Snake Info: Brown snakes are deadly. Aggressive. Territorial. Black snakes are less aggressive and are said to keep brown snakes away. Ours is a lazy bludger in that regard. Never try to kill a snake. If you find yourslef close to on, stop dead still. They are blind and rely on movement to target their prey. Stand still unless you can levitate at the speed of sound. Like I do. By the way, snakes have a job to do in the natural world. Don't kill them. Just be careful. Real careful.

"Crooks of the worst description"

Kate McCarthy, who edits "Style" magazine, a central west publication, saked me to send her some quotes on off-farm income.

I blathered my way to the core of the story, from our experience:

"Off-farm income is becoming essential for three reasons: 1. Prices of commodities will always trend to the lower levels once buyers are consolidated into a few large players, like the Chinese wool buyers. 2. Climate change is going to affect the productivity on most Australian landholders as we have to cope with hotter, dryer conditions. 3. Most holdings are too small to take advantage of the benefits of scale that big growers enjoy. It's a rare family in our district that doesn't have some off farm income. I admire the ones who don't.

"As newcomers to the farming game - or blow-ins - we didn't know it was uncool to seek off-farm sources of funding in order to survive the drought. So when we put up a website and ran a PR campaign to adopt our flock for 100 days, we were unprepared for the response: we attracted 2500 adopters, mainly from the city, but from all over, and they paid enough to feed the flock for 100 days. We were humbled by the experience. But we were also unprepared for the bitter response of many country people, including neighbours and family. We were characterised as crooks of the worst description by some. We were stunned.

"It was curious. On the one hand we had thousands of messages from adopters saying 'what a brilliant idea' and 'thank you for giving us this opportunity to do something positive about the drought" and on the other we had people saying "how could you take people's money?" We now know who our friends are. And we understand the pride in country people that means they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to apply for drought relief. (We didn't apply for it either. They humilate you and you only qualify when you are on your knees.) But going to the wall for pride isn't brave. It's stupid.

"The lessons we learned were these: There's a lot of talk about bridging the city-country gap. We bridged that gap. It nearly killed us, responding to media 24 hours a day, producing all those personalised adoption certificates. We earned every cent we collected, and every cent went down the throats of our sheep. We don't care what people say, we're proud of what we achieved. Our flock (and our genetics) is intact. We consider ourselves to be part of "The New Bush" - making the necessary changes to adapt to the new conditions. All our adopters are now 'family' and can turn up whenever they like, camp or stay on the property, be shown around, help with jobs, etc. We love having them, although it can disrupt our plans at times. And they hear it straight about why we mules, cull and control roo numbers. I have had industry leaders say we can do more to change city people's minds about farming than they can. And they're right.

"There is a lot of unmet demand in the community for connection with the bush. It is not like taking charity to respond to this demand. We in the country have what they want and are prepared to pay for. If only the Chinese wool buyers felt the same way.

......

Carbon credits.

Ironically we started our voluntary, full-time 18 month campaign to provide landholders with an income stream from the carbon credit market because we were distressed at the breakdown of community infrastructure due to the loss of people because the money wasn't in agriculture. We formed the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming with the support of a group of leading 'carbon farming' growers and ran a campaign which has brought the issue to the attention of all levels of government and brought us to within a whisker of launching the market. In fact we have made our first trade.

The carbon market is tipped to be worth US$120bn by 2012. It will become the world's largest commodity market in history. A lot of people are going to get very rich from selling carbon. We ask: "Why shouldn't some of that money come to farmers instead of merchant bankers?"

"Carbon farming" is a collection of options that all go to increase soil carbon and fertility and, as a result, productivity. There are 5 basic 'rules': 1. No ploughing or burning because it bares the earth, releases CO2, and runs down carbon stocks. Zero-till or non-till instead. 2. 100% groundcover or as close to it as possible. 3. Native perennial grasses are the most efficient 'carbon makers'. Wherever possible, choose deep-rooted perennials for pasture. 4. Controlled traffic to reduce compaction. Reduce the footprint of heavy machinery to preserve carbon in the soil. 5. Biodiversity: as the microbial life multiplies in the humus zone of the soil, so the food chain increases on top of the soil and new species of plants, birds and animals appear. This strengthens the crops and pastures being grown.

These are small changes to farming practice. Already more than half the farmers in South Australia practice no-till cropping.

The National Party in NSW adopted our mission as part of their platform in the NSW elections just passed.

..............

No one is forcing any grower to take part. It's up to the individual. There's a lot of money sloshing around over the mountains, down in the city. An obscene amount of money... We've got to find a way to pipe some of it over the mountains. Adopting flocks or buying carbon credits... giving city people (who after all have to live in those city conditions) the chance to be part of what we do everyday, if only in their hearts and their imaginations, does them a lot of good. And and us too.

Bret and his tree planting bazooka

We were very fortunate in the horticulturalist engaged to help us to plant 2700 trees in the wildlife corridow. Bret Sanders stayed with us over Easter and turned out to be a fascinating individual. He comes from out near Coonabarabran. We spent many hours discussing carbon farming and the organics industry. We made another friend in the natural farming business. He worked like a trojan.