‘Down came the jumbuk'(s)…
Damned cold today. 7 degrees Celsius (44 fahrenheit). Rugged up and hopped behind OH on the four wheeler to feed out to those of our girls with child!
It’s been the toughest summer and autumn and we’ve got to the hard end of our pasture so we feed out our own hay cut from summer 2011 when we had grass ‘as high as an elephant’s eye.’ Plus barley harvested in 2011 from our own crops. But mainly sheep pellets which are a grain mix and which the girls think is chocolate!
Me dragging a 20kg bag of pellets. Heavvvvvvyy!
OH feeding out. The blue dots on the backs of some of the girls indicate those who carry twins. We had all the ladies scanned last week to see who was pregnant, who carried twins and who was dry (ie those who didn’t conceive!). Those who were dry were drafted off and sold as with the season the way it is, we can’t afford to carry stock who can’t return the investment in feed. It’s very cut and dried on the land.
Me throwing out hay and as usual, leaving the bale twine till the last minute to pull away.
All done! And the same thing to be done tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next… until we get a spring break…
Life on the farm is kinda like that…
*’Down came the jumbuk’ is a line from Waltzing Matilda, an iconic Australian song/poem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHUcRTvdcbM
PS: If you have any creative ideas for used blue and pink baling twine, do say, as we have heaps of it!
Waltzing Matilda…when I was a young lad in school in Detroit MI we had a music class..one of the songs we sang frequently was Waltzing Matilda,,,probably my first exposure to Aussie culture 😉
Amazing that in Detroit you were singing a song so iconically Australian. I can imagine a whole mass of little kids roaring the chorus as loud as they could! Did they explain to you then what all the strange words meant? They’re rather strange!
I do remember learning billabong being like a pond…as to the rest I can’t recall…I think the teacher grew tired of that song as it was among the top two favorites of the class..the other being The Marines Hymn…egads!!!
I’d like to have been a fly on the wall in your classroom!
We used to sing it at Girl Scout camp! I’m interested in knowing why the sheep are shorn prior to winter. I always imagined it was done before the Summer heat!
We used to shear in the dead of winter which I thought was inhumane, but we opted for late autumn so the ewes would have a bit of wooly cover by the cold days. Several theories re shearing before spring lambing but the two with relevance to us are that the ewes don’t get cast (stuck on their sides and can’t get up) when they lay down because they have a heavy fleece. That is potentially life threatening for them and the lambs. And secondly, they are more likely to seek shelter and take the lamb with them if they are not super wooly. Too wooly and they stay out grazing in all weathers and the poor lambkins suffer accordingly. Wool is a natural insulator and can be as cooling in summer as warming in winter. Most farmers we know now shear autumn/winter.
Thanks so much for that info on the sheep shearing. I always wondered if it was true that sheep couldn’t get up again. It is so interesting learning about your culture, and my son has an Aussie mate he had been corresponding with. He asked if you two might know one another, as he was sure Australia was small. He then had a bit of a geography lesson (even though he is on his summer holiday! What a mean mom!) and discovered how wrong he was. I found a great map superimposing a map of Australia over overa map of the US. Shock and awe!
You know the world is a funny place and smaller than we think. Every time I travelled overseas I would always meet someone from Oz who knew someone in Tassie and I would know those someones! Shock and awe indeed. But i have to say sometimes the size of Oz shocks me too – that Western Australia with its stunning beaches and warm ocean is so far away from my own little island. The only part of Australia I haven’t been to is the hot, hot Northern Territory, but I’ve flown over it quite a bit on the way to Asia. A vast expanse of red desert. Once, many years ago, I was invited to sit in the co-pilot’s seat of a Qantas flight to Malaysia (obviously well before the threat of terrorism) and we seemed to fly for hours and hours over nothing but red, red, red.
Multi-colour macramé, for the baling twine? Or you could weave dream-catchers, for the local woo emporium.
WM was a favourite for our junior school choir, but in the UK I suppose that wasn’t too surprising. Our attempts at an authentic accent were, mind you…
:: cringes at the memory::
Love it when people try the Aussie of NZ accent. Must be one of the hardest in the world to pull off satisfactorily. Ah, GisellE, if only I could knot macrame!
Prue, the image in your header has a landscape much like your “sheepscape.”
It does! I hadn’t noticed. Bingo. Something subliminal going on there i think!