Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
We had to wait a long time for the soil to be ready to plant, this year. It continued very dry well into May. Then it went cold. Chilly. Bleak. Wet. Luckily the actual planting days were clear and sunny, which means morning frost. On the first day, the frost crystals were still visible in... Continue Reading →
When I look at our big remnant eucalypts I have often wondered how old they are. For many of them, they could be anywhere from one hundred to five hundred years old. Some types of trees I know to be much younger, particularly the ones I planted myself, or were planted by someone I know... Continue Reading →
My wonderful farm assistant Dmitry Grishin is doing a study on water in the soil at the Australian National University. To do it, he's setting up sampling points all over both of the farms and measuring the penetration of rainfall. Initially we didn't have any rainfall (horrible dry season), but in the last couple of... Continue Reading →
I was quite annoyed when one of our remnant trees was blown down in a freak storm (see Death of a Giant). I'd hoped we could save it from a slow dieback by fencing and planting around it. Of the three trees we did that for, it was the healthiest. But no, the wind screwed... Continue Reading →
Is the method I’ve been using to plant native trees too slow? Is there a better way? I’ve just had an example of speedy planting, which if it works, will do ten years of my work in two weeks. Impressive. I signed a Forestry contract with the carbon capture company Greenfleet late last year. They... Continue Reading →
This is my year for filling in gaps (not just in my blog, oops), but among my trees. Lots of non-tree things have also been happening, but I’ll fill those gaps in separate posts. First we had to go back and find the trees that didn’t quite make it from last year. I’ve now conclusively... Continue Reading →
It's been some time since I saw new wildflowers. The weather has been mostly lousy for visiting the best areas we have, Luckily, being on the Murrumbateman Landcare committee recently gave me the privilege of a walkabout in Nanima with the people most skilled at identifying all the fabulous things around us. Unlike our place,... Continue Reading →
As the roads have turned to soup, the hills have become treacherously soggy as well. Behind a group of fig trees is a valley I’ve been considering for some time how to protect and improve. It’s tricky because there are power lines overhead nearby, plus two steep hills, with the water source for the grazing... Continue Reading →
Grasses make my head spin. There are so many of them and I can still only identify about a dozen types confidently. About half of those are non-native, and the worst of them is African Lovegrass (eragrostis curvula). It was accidentally planted in the Monaro area, south of us, as a contaminant of the closely... Continue Reading →
I was lucky enough this year to get a small grant to put in thirty paddock trees through Yass Landcare and the Yass Local Land Services. The huge remnant paddock trees we have are both impressive and essential, for wildlife to move around, as well as for sheep to have shelter and shade. Many of... Continue Reading →
In a big rush, in the last month I like to plant (August), we got this year’s trees finished. 1200 in total for 2022. The final big planting day was both horrible and beautiful. Horrible was the weather, which was wet and windy, with everything mud-coated. Rain-catching coreflute discs that I now use instead of... Continue Reading →
Each year I worry I won't get my army of new plants into the ground. Each year it's a huge relief when the main planting begins. This year we were waiting for the new windbreak fences to be completed, so we did individual paddock trees and little triangles first and finally started the main windbreak... Continue Reading →
At the start of the planting season, I'm so excited to see my new young plants. I spend a lot of time sorting them, checking them out, figuring out where exactly I'm going to put them, and admiring them fondly. At the end of the season, I'm equally excited to see my piles of empty... Continue Reading →
A few years ago, I went to a workshop on erosion control, which gave me a number of tools to use against soil erosion. One of them involves using logs and brush to make multiple leaky weirs, which slow water and sediment moving down a slope, allowing the silt to drop out instead of being... Continue Reading →
I know we’ll need all the water we can get for another summer of heatwaves, coming in just a few months. It’s also perfect for this year’s tree planting that the soil moisture is good. However, the flooding is beginning to become just a little tedious – especially the creek. When Mullion Creek goes up... Continue Reading →
I have a love-hate relationship with fences. A good fence is essential for stock management and control. On the other hand, I hate having to get over barbed wire, as I’m not good at the seamless leap over. Barbed wire is particularly important if you have cattle who like to lean on them. Sheep don’t... Continue Reading →
While we were collecting last year's corflute covers and drainage discs down in last year's Big Gully planting, we found the young trees mostly well grown, a few bowled over by wombats, a few being chewed on by insects - those I'm hoping will provide food and attract birds in the future. The thistles were... Continue Reading →
After months of weed control, plus stripping tree covers among the Stinking Roger and Saffron Thistle, we’re finally into the planting season, despite being still surrounded by the post-drought thistles. My mini-forest sits outside our bedroom door reminding me to keep it watered and fed. Mini forest The retrieved covers are stacked high in the... Continue Reading →
After the drought ended in February last year we were so excited to see the green tinge creeping across the landscape. But of course, a lot of that was weeds that had been allowed to germinate in bare ground – left bare by the drought. Because the ground cover was still fragile, it was necessary... Continue Reading →
Since the end of the drought there has been a spate of sheep and cattle thefts ("duffing") particularly by thieves using empty caravans to stuff suddenly valuable animals into. It's suspicious if an apparent grey nomad has a trailer that bleats or moos. That's not the sort of stock-taking I'm doing. With my mother's death,... Continue Reading →
One Bend In The River 