Change of beat !

Thursday saw 58,300 plus sheep sold at the Wagga Wagga Livestock selling centre as farmers in South West NSW fast running out of feed realize a cashing out of livestock.
This is the highest number of stock sold in a single day since Sep 26 2002 when 55,600 sheep were auctioned here.

A sad day indeed. These are type of records that rural Australia doesn't need broken.

Here's the artical.
http://www.riverinamediagroup.com.au/Hom...ticletype=Local

The drought is hitting home now.
I hope it rains really soon,for all those who need it for their crops & animals :cheers:

Hi all u straw chewers - hows life ? sad to see u r talking about dry times again over there in the east. In Gods own country here on the south coast i'm embarrised to say again its probably the best Spring we have ever had. Feeds that strong with the low winter rainfall and warm winter its like we had spring all winter!!! wet winters fill dams, but tend to slow feed growth, this year there was little run off to dams, but the feed has grown all year!
75% of last years hay still in the stack, but will soon be transported north to people only 30 kms away who are already short of feed and will be short of water.
i've been missing off WZ (except for getting my footy tips in ewach week)becos our life has been in turmoil for the last 10 months as we have been in the death throws of fighting a losing battle with Govt over compensation for taking a big slice of the farm for a new road system, arguements with Ministers, bureaucrats, planners, valuers ect - our only saving grace is that land prices have skyrocketed while the arguing is going on and valuers will only give 90 day valuations and Govt is incapable of getting paper work together in 90 days - its like a merry go round, but every day we still have deer park open, Growers market and farm work - quite frankly i'm exhausted, but expect some finalisation in November.....who knows, i thought that last year!
thankfully Mrs FE & i r both in good health, our little one & only grandson is due to be over here with Mum & Dad for Christmas - he'll be 10 mths old, it will be my first meeting, Grandma spent a month in Canberra with him in July. so i've got a fishing rod ready, hope he can walk by then to cast it fishing taken back stage over last few months, but i hope to be ready for summer fishing.
well thats my up date - my condolences to those of u facing dry times again - unfortunately from what friends who have come back from overseas tell me it looks like cliomate change is causing trouble all over the world. my nephew went to europe, was in a little village in the Alps somewhere & was surprised to see netting barriers all thru the town & upon asking was told it was to stop rocks hitting houses, apparently a glacier had melted higher up the valley and for the first time the ice in the granite rock had melted and the granite was falling to bits, previously held together by the ice!! seems we r all going to suffer somehow, yet we keep expanding populations, increased living standards need more power = more pollution - i think its gone too far to correct & i cant see big energy using nations really doing anything substancial to turn it around..all just too greedy i guess when it takes so much resources to sustain $million salaries to those with snouts in the trough...
:wave: FE

Hi FE :wave: good to see you back again, you've been missed. Fingers crossed all this government stuff will be over and done with before the year is out. Glad to read that someone is able to grow some feed. For the first time since I moved here all the crops in the valley are below a foot in height. Luckily for us though the valley is still as drought proof as ever and the natural grasses are still holding on to provide enough feed for the 9 horses we have on the place for the time being. If we can score an inch of rain before summer, we should be able to make it through the hottest part of the year with very little hay supplement. Fingers crossed.

Our biggest problem at the moment with the lack of rain is that we're fast running out of water for the house. In another first, the tanks never got full enough to overflow this year. Looks like we'll actually have to cart water in unless a small miracle happens. Fortunately our neighbour has a property on which town water is connected, so if we get to that desperate point, we can fill up a tank and just pay her excess water rates for what we use, rather than outsource and pay through the nose for someone to bring it in.

Surprisingly the aquifer is flowing quite freely and has even risen over the last few months, unfortunately it's a tad too hard to put through the house system without a filtration system of sorts. Reverse osmosis is what we've been looking at, but a high iron content in the water could see a system costing up to $8000 to put in. Way too much for our meagre budget.

Okay, enough grumping from me. We're all real well here (well, I have the flu, but the rest of my health is good) and my son at 25 years old is finally moving out to be independant, giving me an extra room and cutting our food bill in half, not to mention saving us on water. Loves his long showers, that boy. He'll be right in Clare, they're on town water there, LOL. I've also been blessed with seeing my eldest daughter more often with her living only just down the road after coming back from NSW after the split with her ex-boyfriend.

Anyway, glad to read that you and Mrs. FE are both well and that you'll have your grandson home for Christmas. What a thrill that will be and I bet Grandad will just spoil him rotten.

Hope to see you again here soon.

Cheers, Helen :cheers:

Ah Mr FE, that little line above is a pure gold 1 liner quote of what runs our world.
I hear ya passion mate as do most of the real world people. But governemnts pander to corporate mindsets not people so I see no real change until like you say its all too late. I deal with these snout in the trough people all day and their conviction that our technology will save us all and keep the economy of growth sustained is oh so very strong. Too strong I am afraid. Their view of the small person is as a resource to be drained and at times their treatment of me and others in the store is second rate. If only they knew how stupid they look at times.. lol..

Well mate I must go to work I suppose, take care over there and fight hard!
Cheers,
Tim

Silly weather today it seems for NSW....nothing more than a few spots here despite the green mass moving through on radar mid morning with strong winds beginning at 5am.
Sydney has 34 degrees with bushfires raging & snow falling in the High Country.
Atm the Southern Cross is twinkling brightly over a very light breeze.

Point of no return has been reached here now with Canola crops too far gone so many are turning stock in or making hay from these crops. Another week & the same will happen with cereals as they are folding up very quickly. We may see these crops "freeze dried" by applying Roundup to kill the crop thus preserving nutrients for whichever way farmers go ...Make hay or go with a stock enterprise
Recent conversations with farmers have seen a common statement made "It's enough to make you cry ! ".

Yeah goody I am going off to windrow frosted wheat tomorrow. By the sounds of it is would have gone the tonne/acre but over 80% frosted so they are going to bale. At leaset they have enough to bale. ATM we don't have enough to stop wind erosion. Worse than 2002 now IMO. No way will we put stock on as they powder the soil even more. Just leave it till next year and re-sow.

Had another interview today went well hope I get it. With a cropping research group so still farming just getting paid to do it!

Yeah when drove up to Mildura from MElb never seen so many Bare or just green paddocks for late septmber normaly full of wheat not this year

Also noticed many paddocks with a wheat crop that had sheep eating there foot high crop never seen that before shows how bad things are and when drove home with the gusty winds there was blowing dust and think wednesday will be even worst

Yeah when drove up to Mildura from MElb never seen so many Bare or just green paddocks for late septmber normaly full of wheat not this year

Also noticed many paddocks with a wheat crop that had sheep eating there foot high crop never seen that before shows how bad things are and when drove home with the gusty winds there was blowing dust and think wednesday will be even worst

On the 15th of last month I posted a report of a record number of sheep 58,300 being sold at Waggg Wagga
That was broken again today with 64,000 out of a booking in of 75,000....I was going just to see this event happen & photograph it, but decided at the last minute it was something I did not want to do.

From all I am hearing from farmers, and what I've seen, this could be the worst drought since 1900 in most areas by the end of the year...if it isn't already!

Yeah it is bad but at least farming practices are mostly better and the dust would not be as bad. These frosts are killing anybody's crops who actually survived so getting pretty bad. Just hope that this is the last bad year for a while now as everybody needs to get back in the black. Holts I have heard things about your forecasts for next year. I will not give your secrets away(I have not actually read a forecast, just heard about what you are saying), but this will really prove one way or the other if you are worth paying for! Good or bad if you are right(and we are still here!) you may well have another client.

G'day Adon. Yer, the forecasts are copyright, but by human nature they seem to go around quite a bit through "pub talk" and "farmer meet on the road by the fence-post chin-wags", " bush telegraph", etc. (I get to hear other long-range forecasters forecasts the same way. I listen to them out of interest, but do not worry what they say, as I go my own way that I have confidence in, and by the computer models that I have put so much effort into). Hope to have you onboard sometime in the future.
Yer, farming practices have improved a lot, and crop varieties also, and most farmers can cope much better in a dry/drought year, but it is still hard to be able to beat a real drought, with well below average rainfall, frosts and heat waves in Spring!
Not many will this year by the look. I don't know where all the crop is coming from on their crop estimates for 2006!
Cheers, Ian (Holts)

Fairyland Holt's, that where the crop is coming from! There are even frosted crops in the western district(Vic) this year. I dunno if they have found out about that yet. Well we won't even start the header this year and many others are in the same boat.

Hi All. Well, got to see the first lot of hay that's being cut and baled around here. What a joke. Most farmers in the district have given up on trying to head their crops and have gone down the "hay" route, if you can call it that! Plenty of green stalks, but no grain in the heads, such a sorry state of affairs in what has been known in the past as a drought-proof valley. No so this year, the rain has avoided a good proportion of people in the Mid North who not only have to suffer the indignation of no or very little feed, but also the lack of water that has kept rainwater tanks very lean. Most farmers in this area have no access to mains water.

Normally by this time of the year we should have had 324mm of rain, but we've received less than half of that and have carted in our first 600 gallons of town water for washing and bathing. Yuck!!! We have however saved 1000 gallons of rainwater for drinking purposes only, so at least we don't have to ingest the stuff. Let's hope the rains start to fall and soon, but that unfortunately is in the lap of the gods.

Cheers, Helen :cheers:

You made me go out and tap my tank....we're okay
Just had a drive up thru Kerang/Koondrook/Deni/Hay and on into the dry country of central NSW and not a successful dryland crop anywhere along the way.
I'll just leave a slab of pics here for anyones amusement
Yellow Blanket
Nice campsite
Daisies
Daisies2
Scrubs dry but holding
Lunch for some
Dry old country but!
We certainly leave a mark
Can\'t help liking it though
Then you finally settle on a nice isolat...to screw it up
'tis a beautiful country...just a bastard of a place to farm. Irrigated crops were the only thing I saw standing....and I was quite surprised as I didn't think many water allocations were allowed this year
...not that any crops were hanging over the fences but they were a far cry from the dryland crops that I watched the hot wind giving curry too....bad state of affairs out there
while the bushland areas do seem to be holding up pretty well.
.......shame emus don't bring a good quid.

Sorry about the pics but I was running a kodacrap special