The Field Days are over of the year and we are all a bit tired. All that talking, thinking and sunshine. All those old friends and new. All those sheep. 
Anyone who bought sheep, please contact us as soon as possible so we can finalize everything and get the stock to you.

We will be there! Bright and early on Saturday morning. Same place as last year with plenty of sheep for sale. We have packages of five ewes and a good commercial ram for $1200 and you can pick like lollies which ones you want. You can also buy just one ram or a couple of ewes if that suits you better. This year we also have a speaker at 11 am and 2 pm each day who will go through all the basics of sheep care, from injecting,drenching and marking lambs. All of us on site can also answer any questions you might have. We really enjoy the field days and this year the advertising says there will be an additional 150 displays, as long as they are not all selling socks or cheap tools it will be great.

On Sunday we went to an accreditation course to learn about a new way of shearing sheep: Bioclip. The product was developed by the CSIRO and has been around for some years without much interest from wool-growers. A new company has bought the product, and they have launched a new marketing campaign. The product is an injection, which causes a break in the wool, so that the fleeces shed after seven days. 

Seems like a winner except, when the wool falls off, the sheep goes back to bare skin and is vulnerable to sunburn and the elements. Nets are applied to the wool sheep to gather wool, and holds it in place until a new protective layer has grown, so the process takes twenty eight days from go to woe. The company has started marketing the product to the shedding sheep market, where the medulated fibre in the wool protects the sheep from the weather. 

After listening to what they had to say, we're not sure about the product's usefulness. Not all sheep are suitable to inject, so in some cases you can only inject half the mob. What do you do with the rest of them? Get a shearer, which seems to defeat the purpose. Probably needs more thought.

Can't believe that two weeks have passed since I last posted. Very dull for anyone who regularly reads this blog. I have been away for a week, on another little road trip north, to the wedding of an old friend's daughter. I had a great time, but Martin had to stay home and look after everything. I don't think he had so much fun. The "casserole kids (baby poddy bunnies)" all died of mysterious causes. Sad when early on it seemed we would manage to raise them. People say they are easy to kill with kindness. Then he needed to pull a couple of lambs, check lambing ewes in horrible wet windy conditions, and feed things, while he would rather be inside, in front of the fire while watching NASCAR racing, American football, baseball or bull riding, (never was a bull that couldn't be rode, never was a man that couldn't be throwed )

The night we got home Laura's first goat kidded, and we have been in goat mode ever since. I think our imagination failed us when we said yes to goats. If we are to milk them, it means we have to be serious about "getting up and out there" at the same time every morning, and dedicated to milking for months. I am not the worlds greatest morning person, (especially since the children have grown up). Martin has spent two days building a milking stand, and is fed up with my constant modifications, ah well such is farming! ( Anyone for goat's cheese at a $1000 per kilo?)