There was movement at the station…
The above line is from Banjo Paterson‘s great poem, The Man from Snowy River and whilst it is about a horse (the colt from Old Regret), it describes my day.
(NB: A station in Australia is another name for a farm or a property. )
So let’s begin…
Husband up at 4.30 AM to be in the sheepyards by first light. Self sleeps in. Finally leap out of bed and phone stock agent to locate Ovine Johnes vaccination and stare grimly at mist and drizzle. Joy!
Grab cups, tea, coffee, sugar, chocolate shortbread. Sift icing sugar over banana sour cream cake and rush to shearing shed for smoko at 9.30 AM. Noise is terrible. This is weaning day. Ewes and lambs will finally be separated. They have already been drafted… ewes in one lot of pens, lambs in the others.
I boil urn, clean long table, and chairs, and set up for morning tea (ubiquitously called smoko except none of our workers smoke). Men come in, wash, sit, have strong tea and coffee and eat lots of sweet stuff. Back into yards where dogs bark and sheep bellow.
I wash up. Clean up and leave everything ready for lunch. Check to see if if I am needed yet . Ewes are drenched (to prevent worm infestation) and I take the full mob of former mums, driving them with the ute, to a new paddock on the furthest side of our farm on the other side of a major highway. I get in and out to open and close gates… a lot. Bear in mind I’m 5 foot 3 and have to climb up and down into cab of ute. I remember half way across thick pasture to flick the other gearstick into four-wheel drive to keep traction.
Push ewes into holding area.
Wish had camera to film sheep walking through swathes of long stemmed white daisies. Stunning. Noise of frog chorus remarkable as drizzle wafts in an oyster veil across the hills. Slight twanging sound like a plucked violin as sheep rub against the dead electric fence wires.
Drive back across paddocks, opening and closing gates again. Husband and jackeroo have finished drenching lambs. Jackeroo leaves to get four horses shod. Husband comes on 4-wheeler (ATV) and we drive my mob of ewes (550) under highway and into their new paddock amongst those white daisies.
Lunch on the run in ute. Husband goes back to meet second jackeroo to drench First-X ewes.
I move weaned lambs to their new life and their new paddock. Noisy and angry at me. Can’t hear birds, frogs or violin wires.
Go back to yards. First-X ewes done. Husband and jackeroo chatting. Hear crows swearing at world. Shift the mad, bad First-X’s to their paddock. See two black deer jump fence into stock lane, over fence on other side to head off to our bush-runs. Must not tell our hunters as I like deer. Grab at hip which hurts after jumping in and out of ute about 25 times to open and close all the gates. Clean up yards, shed. 4PM. Go and think about cooking dinner.
All stock must be yarded to be jetted for fly-strike before Christmas and moved to new pastures… sigh.
Think sheep have it best.
PS: No photos of day because of no camera and it was raining anyway… so decided to illustrate farm on a good day, the beginning of lambing about 3 months ago.
I’ve been babysitting my brother’s daughters (mostly) and dairy operation (tangentially, mostly done with the help of neighbors) for two days … totally in sympathy on the “do we really have to get up at 4:30?” question.
Servetus, dairy is a million times harder than what I do, because you HAVE to get up at 4.30, no matter what! As you know.
We can postpone on a bad day with no real drama. It’s hellish working in the yards with wet sheep and they won’t move well in the wind and rain… not as dumb as people think. But with dairy cows, they need to be milked x2 per day… no let up! Power to your brother!
Thanks for the sympathy. He and my SIL are in my apartment this week, taking a vacay in the warm and working on their marriage. He probably needs more power for that than for the cows, but thanks for allowing me to whine. I dislike cows. Putting it mildly. And we all get up to help milk. You’re right. The cows will not be denied 🙂
Awww come on. I wanna see the daisies and sheep!! Raining here too and snowing and sleeting and bloooooowing big time. I still think we need to do a Farm Exchange Program. I think I’d get the best deal getting to go to Tasmania tho!!
You completely lost me tho at “All stock must be yarded to be jetted for fly-strike…”…I got the pastures and sigh tho. Guessing wildly here…they have to be rounded up in a pen to get vaccinations for flies/fly related disease???!
Jackaroo=cowboy
paddock=pen
ute=truck
urn=coffee pot
Am I even close? “The Man From Snowy River”!!! Our family loves this movie!!! Huge discussion years ago after viewing it on just how they got those horses to go down that mountainside and IF they went down it and was it really real. Kirk Douglas was fantastic!!!
Hi Debbie, the daisies are a native coastal daisy and the wind and rain have forced them to the brown, poopy stage now. (the post was drafted last week but because of Indie Chicks and Jane Austen, it had to be delayed)
Yarded… small metal yards exactly the same as cattle yards only smaller. Jetted for flies? In Australia, flystrike is the worst summer enemy. The sheep might get slightly dirty in the breech and flies will settle and lay eggs and the maggots work inward. Because our national flock is mostly merinos and they are wrinkly sheep, it’s why we have mules-ed their breeches, to give the shearer space to make a clean shear so the animal presents a clean bum to the wind: no fly-strike! But then organisations like PETA have drawn attention to the cruelty aspect of mules-ing and there is a nation-wide effort to breed a merino without wrinkles.
We’ve never mules-ed on our farm, have just done multiple crutchings (shearing of bums) through the summer and jetting with an organic ant-fly prep. More work though.
As to all the other translations: by George, you’ve got it. See, farming’s a universal language!
‘Man from … ‘ is a wonderful movie and yes, all the horse-work is legit. Wonderful horse-trainer and rider (name forgotten but is legend! Heath someone) My husband was fortunate enough to be invited to the world premiere of that movie in the Australian high country and it was as layback as the movie… the stunt riders all rode into town, practically into the cinema and everyone just cheered!
oh sheesh, don’t even get me started on PETA…
I can’t wait to tell my boys about MFSR horsemen really DID go down that mountainside! What an exciting premiere…wonder what/if like stunts may be performed next December??!!! Just sayin’.
I love sheep!! For many years we lived in the Western Scottish Highlands where they wandered freely about many of the village streets but they could be extremely annoying if they got into the garden where they ate everything in sight!!! Some years ago we had a wonderful experience being in a shearing shed (did I use the right word?) when we visited friends in NZ (not too far outside Gisborne as it happens!) and marveling how all the wooden surfaces were coated with lanolin from their wool! Too bad they weren’t shearing at the time! Truly unforgettable!!
I should of course have said first of all that I loved reading about your day! With the pictures you included, it almost felt like I’d been there too!! Like NB I want to see the “sheep and daisies” also!!!!
Teuchter, if you go to my Facebook, there’s a small video of shearing in the shed a couple of years ago… it’s a wonderful spectacle and the smell of lanolin is amazing. One never sees a shearer with ‘old’ rough hands. There are lots of cuts and prickle marks but the skin is soft from the lanolin.
Shearers these days use slings to save their backs… watching them work is like watching a ballet or taichi as there is a defined rhythm and pattern. I’m a big fan.
On a side note: Gisborne in NZ! When I started tweeting about writing #Gisborne, I got a tweet from someone from the town who wanted to know what Gisborne i was writing about!
I’ve just been back to Facebook and the video seems to have gone. I’ll try and load it again!
And in between all this you find time to write great books, stay at the cutting edge of publishing, bake and sew, and keep up a SMP presence too?
It’s not fair! 🙂
But you don’t see the ‘Grumpy Old Lady’ side! Ask my family!!!