Tuesday, November 3

Birds and the Bees




Not hard to miss but had not really noticed them until last week - an emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) living in a paddock almost under the Crookwell wind farm and a large flock of Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) feasting on a field of barley on Middle Arm Road. The reddish brown glossy ibis were much more attractive than those revolting black and white Australian White Ibis that are almost a noxious species in Sydney. They have taken over the Botanic Gardens to the point that it is hard to have a lunch there without being accosted and threatened. I saw one snatch a biscuit from a baby's hand - not nice.

As the weather warms up we are seeing more and more bees and butterflies. The bees look native rather than from any local hives but I am no expert ... yet. Longer term we do plan to have several hives so that we can harvest honey and claim to have over half a million livestock!! We have a few good sites away from stock and thoroughfares and just have to look at what native flowers are available for the bees. We have gums and wattles but not certain there are enough to support the bees.

There are 382 species of butterflies in Australia and we have identified 38 at Daramalan, not a bad total given the majority prefer the northern tropics. The most striking are the Australian Painted Lady (Vanessa kershawi) and the Meadow Argus (Junovia villida calybe) but we also get the Grass Blues and Browns too.

While out and about checking out the Tarlo River banks and overall condition (very good around us and really the typical chain of ponds) we came across the pictured plant. A White Everlasting Daisy (Xerochrysum bracteatum) that is native to New South Wales and normally found in open woodland and sandy soils. Not rare by any means but a welcome surprise at Daramalan. I think that more are cultivated than grow in the wild. We have yet to do a proper flora survey as there is plenty of farm work to be done. Maybe over the course of 2010 we will carry out some paddock plant surveys at various points around the property. Now that we have a Garmin eTrex GPS device we can start paddock mapping in earnest. Just need to work out how to get the data off the handheld device and onto a PC. Help!!

Ciao!


Sunday, October 18

Annual Border Leicester Show & Sale at Dubbo



We are off to Dubbo on Tuesday for the Border Leicester Sale to buy our stud rams. Hoping to buy three or four if the price is right but recently the market has been very firm. Having bought the best ewes though we wont be trying to be too cute on price. A good purchase now will pay off in two years. We could have taken a good ram from Sylvia Vale's last sale in December 2009 but it is vital that we introduce new bloodlines and vigour to our flock and give ourselves the best flock rams possible for the Daramalan inaugural sale in 2010.

We will also have to match the best ram for the best ewe in our flock of 230. We'll be monitoring and measuring number of lambs born, lambs weaned, yearling fleece weight, weaning weight, yearling weight and making regular notes on the 'look' of the animals. Our aim is the best that we can produce for the prime lamb producers. Not sure yet whether we will submit data to Lambplan or Superborders.

This year it seems that first cross ewes are in short supply so we have been fortunate to have held on to our 490 until our sale in December. Recently $195 per head was paid in Temora to the west and $125 in Narromine to the north. We are expecting somewhere in between and will be happy with anything over $150.

Each year Merino farmers buy a selection of flock rams, usually Border Leicesters but sometimes an other breed like the East Friesian. A ram can be used for about four years so each year's client list is slightly different.
We are hoping to have about 80 rams for sale in 2010.

Our first cross ewes are ultimately selected for meat production but their wool is not too bad. We sent our wool to the Sydney auction through Bryton's and expected $4.20 c/kg for 25 micron wool. Hardly Merino standard but we were thrilled to receive $4.92 c/kg.

It is a lucky omen for the business so long may it continue.

The image above is by Yusio Katoh of a wood pigeon...reminded me of the Daramalan wood pigeons and is a calming print!

Tuesday, October 6

188 and counting....


Having shorn the first cross ewes we went straight on to marking (tagging) the Border Leicester lambs that will be the core business activity throughout 2010. We marked 188 lambs, about 100 ewes and 88 rams, and still more to come. Expecting 200 from 170 ewes so that is a lambing percentage (before weaning of course) of 1.18 which is pretty good. They are all in great condition and Sylvia Vale has plenty of feed. We will finish marking in November when we shear the stud ewes. It is certainly the busiest time of the sheep farming year.

All lambs have their tails docked to prevent fly strike at a later date. A few days discomfort rather than being eaten alive from the inside out. All lambs are also vaccinated with Guardian 6 in 1 and Gudair to protect them from some of the serious infectious diseases and to boost their immunity to others. Guardian protects against the clostridial diseases pulpy kidney, tetanus, blackleg, black disease, malignant oedema, swelled ram head and cheesy gland. Gudair protects against Ovine Johne's Disease (OJD) which can cause significant mortality, particularly in fine Merino flocks. Self injection is a serious no no and can cause extreme and prolonged swelling that will require surgery to fix. I left the needle to Butch but did single handedly catch all 188 lambs and lift into the lamb marking cradle and put in the ear tags.



Seemed to me that the ewe lambs were calmer about it all but none of the lambs were in any pain an hour after being in the cradle. I was amused to find that ram lambs get tagged in their left ear and ewe lambs in their right ear. I am told that is because just like in the human world women are always right....


Wind power and dam water

Our nearest major settlement is Crookwell, in the Southern Tablelands. In the 2006 Census, Crookwell had a population of 1,993 people. The town is at a relatively high altitude in Australian terms, over 900 metres, and there are heavy frosts and snowfalls during the winter months. Most employment is based around the local agriculturally based economy. The district is renowned for potato farming so residents are often referred to as 'spud diggers'.

Crookwell is also home to NSW's first wind farm. The wind farm consisting of 8 600 kW wind turbines is located 8 minutes south of Crookwell on the Goulburn road. The "windmill" operates automatically when there is 15 km/h wind and shuts off when wind speed reaches 72 km/h. Locals either love it or hate it. I like it and it is a curious sight with sheep safely grazing beneath the turbines.

It has a capacity of 4.8 MW and was the first grid-connected wind farm in Australia when built by Pacific Power in 1998. It is now owned by Eraring Energy, and currently supplies electricity to Country Energy's "GreenPower" customers of which we are most definitely one. Each year it saves 8,000 MT of CO2 and powers 3,500 homes. Planning approval has been received for phase two of the Crookwell Wind Farm, which will have an installed capacity of 92 MW.

It will be located near to Pejar Dam, constructed to supply water for the city of Goulburn. It is one of three water storage facilities serving the city, and is used to augment the water supply when Sooley Dam is unable to maintain enough water in Rossi Weir, from which Goulburn's water filtration plant is supplied.

The dam can store 9,000 megalitres over 1.55 sq kms collected from a catchment of 142 sq kms. The dam wall is 25 metres high. In theory Pejar Dam represents 60% of Goulburns’ water, because of its size in proportion to the total storage. In practice Pejar Dam does not perform near this level because it is not catching and then delivering that amount of water to Goulburn because Pejar Dam has no engineered link to the City nor to the river. It has become evident that Pejar Dam doesn’t yield as much water as it was originally estimated to yield, particularly in drought years. Pejar Dam was last full in November 2000. Five years later, in May 2006, it was empty.

With some recent rains it is fuller and at Daramalan even the new Archie's dam is filling nicely and the Tarlo River is flowing audibly. Long may it rain!!

Tuesday, September 29

Cycling at work


I saw on television awhile ago an advertisement* stating that the livestock industry (cattle, sheep, goats) is the third largest producer (13% of the total) of global warming gases in Australia. I wont dispute that animals produce methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) so they are inevitably part of the problem. I also wont argue with those that say that animals drink water!

What does irritate me is that the sheep on Daramalan have only the water that falls as rain and eat only grass from the property and are given no supplemental feed nor are they kept in large sheds and factory farmed. Grass fed lamb and wool if you like.

The advertisement made it sound as if farm animals (somehow) produce CH4 and CO2 from nothing. In fact they are doing it from (thin) air!! Farm animals are part of the Carbon cycle as carbon is continually cycled from the atmosphere, through the grass the animal eats, through the animal itself and then back into the atmosphere. What goes in goes back out and I accept that they contribute in some small way to global warming issues.

One might even stretch the truth and say that animals are a short term carbon sink as carbon is locked up in the biomass and as the animals reproduce so the carbon sink’s longevity is increased. Not quite on a (tax free) woodlot investment scale where one thirteen year woodlot sequesters 400mt/ha CO2 equivalent to running a car for 100 years.

Atmospheric methane levels are now indisputably higher than ever before. Ice core data indicates that from year 1000 until 1850, the start of the Industrial Revolution, methane levels were fairly stable at 320-790 parts per billion. Since 1850 however, levels have risen sharply to 1732 ppb in the early 1990s and 1774 ppb in 2005.

There is no question that ruminant animal agribusiness does produce methane but to routinely blame it for the whole problem is misleading. Industry and cars are much more to blame. I will have more comments on the Emission Trading Scheme and the whole debate but will save them for a later date. At least until the politicians have some coherent strategy and policy!!

I have asked all the sheep in our flock to breathe half as often to help reduce their carbon emissions. If only the politicians could do the same....

*The advertisement was based on CSIRO research :http://www.climatechange.gov.au/agriculture/publications/pubs/methane_emissions.pdf

Monday, September 28

Shearing Tales...

Just like with taxation a statesman shears sheep and a politician skins them. Whether it is a bush ballad, Banjo Paterson or Tom Robert’s art, shearing is part of Aussie folklore and psyche.

In mid September we sheared our 490 first cross ewes – 7 bales of Daramalan branded AAA FX, 2 of AAA BKN (broken) and one of dirty bits and pieces – and the 89 Sylvia Vale rams that will be sold in December. The ewes took two shearers (admittedly Boozer and T-Bone were gold medalists at Condobolin Show) ten hours and the rams took Butch (no mean shearer himself) two days.

The artist Tom Roberts described shearing as “noble and worthy enough if I could express its meaning and spirit”. He enjoyed the “quick running..subdued hum of fast working… the rhythmic click..lit warm with the reflection of the Australian sunlight”.

There is an amazing feeling of mateship in the shed and I can identify with the feeling of rhythm as shorn fleeces fly onto the table, are sorted and cleaned, thrown to the bins and then pressed into 180kilogram bales. It’s hard work and high energy but really worthwhile and demands full participation.


My favourite shearing tale (that I can tell here) is of the shearer who bet a city visitor to the shed that he could shear a sheep blindfolded. Bet taken the shearer tied an old cloth around the sheep’s eyes and sheared it. Later, just to prove the point, the shearer did shear a sheep with the blindfold on him.


So, here are some figures from the Daramalan shed this year. At $2.35 a sheep it will take 14 years for our shearers to make their next million. At 3 metres from the catching pen to the stand each shearer will have walked about 1500 kilometres on their trip to a million bucks. That’s near enough the distance from Sydney to Adelaide and half of that is walking backwards with a 60 kilogram sheep in your hands. A shearer will have lifted 26,000 MT and 430,000 sheep, which if put end to end would stretch 400 km or Sydney to Dubbo. Of the 14 years the shearer will have spent about 8 of them bent double with shears in hand. No wonder they do such an amazing and skilled job!!

(The first image is the Tom Robert's Shearing the Rams from the National Gallery of Victoria collection. The second is of Butch shearing a Sylvia Vale ram and the third and last is an oil by Roy Dalgarno - amazing similarities!)

The Butterfly Effect

No, not Pernille Rygg’s disturbing and unconventional detective novel set in modern day Oslo but the equally fascinating effects of chaos theory. The suggestion is that an Amazonian butterfly flapping its wings causes a chain reaction of vibrating molecules that eventuates in the Indian monsoon arriving late. It’s what makes weather forecasting so difficult on a daily basis and long term predictions an arcane and dark art.

Recently, researchers at Purdue University have put forward an interesting new proposition that suggests if it’s already raining then it’s going to pour and if it is dry then it will probably stay that way.

The scientists analysed 30 years of Indian monsoon data showing that levels of ground moisture where the ocean originating storm makes landfall is a major indicator of how the storm will behave and where the rain will fall. If the ground is wet the storm is likely to sustain and if the ground is dry ten the storm will calm and subsequently fizzle (a technical term apparently) out.

Sounds too simple but their model’s predictions were proven when compared to the 125 actual Indian monsoon events over the 33 years studied.

Perhaps we need to flood everything east of the Dividing Ranges to 500 metres above sea level to guarantee rain at Daramalan? Then I could buy that boat I have always wanted to get to the farmhouse.

A nice cup of tea

Recently I have been researching some alternative crops to trial at Daramalan to try and diversify a little. We don’t have enough land or the perfect climate to plant wheat or barley commercially so have been looking in left field as it were. We will plant Lucerne in the River paddock for finishing the sheep and will continue with Graza oats and turnips in the eastern boundary paddocks.

One obvious contender is garlic and more on that later. Others are in the alternative grains – amaranth, buckwheat and quinoa, particularly if they are grown organically. Finally, the drink of many nations - tea. We are perhaps too far south for commercial production yields but at 800 metres above sea level it is possible to grow enough for ourselves and some left over. There are viable producers on the NSW Central coast where conditions are similar to the Shizuoka region in Japan.

Tea, Camellia sinensis, is full of antioxidants, cancer busting polyphenols and metabolism boosting agents. Tea can help to promote health, fight stress, lose weight and prevent ageing.

Daily cups of tea can help you recover more quickly from the stresses of everyday life, according to a study by UCL (University College London) researchers, which found that people who drank tea were able to de-stress more quickly than those who drank a fake tea substitute. The tea drinkers were found to have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood after a stressful event, compared with a control group who drank the fake or placebo tea for the same period of time.

Both groups were subjected to challenging tasks, while their cortisol, blood pressure, blood platelet and self-rated levels of stress were measured. In one task, volunteers were exposed to one of three stressful situations (threat of unemployment, a shop lifting accusation or an incident in a nursing home), where they had to prepare a verbal response and argue their case in front of a camera.

The tasks triggered substantial increases in blood pressure, heart rate and subjective stress ratings in both of the groups. In other words, similar stress levels were induced in both groups. However, 50 minutes after the task, cortisol levels had dropped by an average of 47 per cent in the tea-drinking group compared with 27 per cent in the fake tea group.

UCL researchers also found that blood platelet activation – linked to blood clotting and the risk of heart attacks – was lower in the tea drinkers, and that this group reported a greater degree of relaxation in the recovery period after the task.

Professor Andrew Steptoe, UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, says: “We do not know what ingredients of tea were responsible for these effects on stress recovery and relaxation. Tea is chemically very complex, with many different ingredients. Ingredients such as catechins, polyphenols, flavonoids and amino acids have been found to have effects on neurotransmitters in the brain, but we cannot tell from this research which ones produced the differences.

“Nevertheless, our study suggests that drinking black tea may speed up our recovery from the daily stresses in life. Although it does not appear to reduce the actual levels of stress we experience, tea does seem to have a greater effect in bringing stress hormone levels back to normal. This has important health implications, because slow recovery following acute stress has been associated with a greater risk of chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease.”

Black tea is good, green tea better and white tea best of all. A Chinese herb, jiao gu lau, is also said to promote longevity and help lose weight. Another Chinese brew, kombochu, made from fermented sweetened black and green tea is packed with antioxidants and is a great detox tea. Herbal teas like chamomile, lemon balm, dandelion, peppermint, rosehip, ginseng and rooibos can all help distress and enhance sleep.

Whatever your brew a regular intake will help. I’ll just go and pick some leaves from the house paddock while you put the kettle on..


Saturday, August 22

Banks, Macarthurs and Merinos




Despite their widespread distribution the sheep is not an indigenous animal to Australia. A good guess that they were brought over from England with the First Fleet. Perhaps not so easy to guess or well known is Sir Joseph Banks’ involvement with the Merino sheep industry. It must also be said that his blunt assessment in 1803 of the potential for high quality wool production from Australia was not good. He said that he had “..no reason to believe from any facts that have come to my knowledge, either when I was in that country or since, that the climate and soil of New South Wales is at all better for the production of fine wools, than that of any other temperate climates and am confident that the natural growth of grass in that country is tall, coarse, reedy and very different from the short and sweet mountain grass of Europe upon which sheep thrive to the greatest advantage”. How wrong he was!

The Merino is a very economically influential sheep breed and regarded as having the finest of all wools. Sheep were introduced into North Africa from Asia Minor by the Phoenicians and then into the Iberian Peninsula in the 12th century. Over the next two hundred years genetic material was introduced from other parts of Europe, notably England. Spain built up a fine wool monopoly between the 12th and 16th centuries selling the wool to the Flemish and English wool mills.

Before the 18th century the export of live sheep from Spain was a crime punishable by death so important was the sheep industry. In 1723 some were exported to Sweden and more in 1765 to Saxony to the King of Spain’s cousin. Louis XVI received 366 Merino sheep in 1786 and they founded a stud at Rambouillet. Marie Antoinette used to tie ribbons around their necks and walk them at Versailles believing she was no different to the ordinary French people as she did. This and the cake comment explain why the French people revolted in 1789.

Sir Joseph Banks was President of the Royal Society and a large Lincolnshire landowner producing wool from his Wiltshire sheep. He also campaigned passionately to allow English wool producers to export their wool overseas and not be forced to sell to the domestic woolen mills and worsted makers’ cartels at lower prices. King George III asked Banks to oversee the improvement of the Royal Flock with a cross breeding programme and the overall goal of improving the British wool industry which yielded a staggering profit of £13.9 million in 1782. Banks obtained the first Merinos in 1785 and crossed them with Southdowns, Herefords and Norfolk breeds. By 1791 the King’s Flock stood at over 200 mostly with Merinos that had been smuggled out through Portugal. The Napoleonic Wars (1793-1810) almost completely destroyed the Spanish Merino industry with many flocks killed or dispersed. The first Merinos to arrive in Australia were from the Royal Spanish bloodline via Cape Town in 1797. They were sold to Captain John Macarthur upon their arrival in Sydney.

John and Elizabeth Macarthur arrived in Sydney with the second fleet ships Neptune and Scarborough in 1790. John was granted 100 acres of land near Parramatta and as a reward for improving it (with convict labour) he received another 100 acres. The farm was named Elizabeth Farm. The Macarthurs did not cross breed their Merinos but kept their stock as pure breds. By 1803 they had over 4000 Merinos (about 10% of all sheep in Australia at that time) and a strong bloodline. In 1805 Macarthur establish a new farm, Camden Park, and brought over some Merinos from the King’s Flock that Joseph Banks had been breeding. Macarthur later imported some Saxony Merinos in 1812 and in 1820 it is recorded that he sold 39 rams for £510-16s-5d. In 1830 there were 2 million sheep in Australia.

Elizabeth and John Macarthur were the founders of the Australian sheep industry and there are over 110 million sheep here today. Sir Joseph Banks was very wrong about the future of sheep in New South Wales but thankfully he did establish and improve the King’s Merino Flock. Who knows, some of Daramalan’s Border Leicester rams may mate with Royal Merinos next year!!

Seed saving cents...



Saving your own seed makes great sense. Not only is it effectively free but you are also replanting seed from plants that have, presumably, done well in your garden’s climate and conditions. You can share the seed with neighbours and friends and sow the seed a little more liberally than if it had cost you $3.50 a pack at the local nursery.

We have had great second generation broccoli this year from last year’s crop. Brassicas are rich in glucosinolates that are naturally occurring ant-cancer compounds. The DPI in Victoria have just released a Booster Broccoli variety that has double the amount of antioxidants compared to other varieties. It will retail in supermarkets for a premium price. It is a great initiative but I guess the DPI have researched what a lot of us already knew - the darker the vegetable the better it is for us. We will stick to our home grown broccoli. Who knows, maybe we'll get its antioxidant level tested too?

To collect our seed we let the flower heads and the seedpods dry on the plant and then cut them off and stored in a paper bag in a dark, cool place. After a few weeks we separated the seeds from the dried pods and stored the seed in airtight containers in the fridge until it was time to sow.

The one group who don’t want you to save seeds is the multinational seed company group. The 1987 Plant Varieties Act and the 1994 Plant Breeder’s Rights Act allow the seed companies to hold patents on their (genetically) modified seeds. The seed companies are, surprise, surprise, also the agric-chemical manufacturers. In 2002 the six largest companies sold 70% of globally used agric-chemicals and controlled 30% of the global seed industry. As I said in May this year I am not anti multinational but the serious problem with pesticide-laden seed is that much of the chemical gets leached into our rivers and groundwater.

The other problem with many of the current wheat cultivars is that they are so genetically narrow if they were allowed to self set there would be very little crop in the following year. Modern cultivars are designed to be sown only once, almost a disposable crop. Australian farmers are not meant to save seed from commercially grown crops but there has never been a successful conviction in any case brought against a producer here unlike in Canada.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation passed a genetic resources treaty in 2004 that acknowledged the necessity of preserving genetic diversity and the availability of that diversity to local indigenous producers. Ironic then, isn’t it, that in the country where wheat was first domesticated as a crop, Iraq, it is now illegal for farmers to save seed? Instead they must buy their wheat seed from an American multinational agric-chemical company. Now that is democracy in action….


...of droughts and flooding rains.



We have had some unusually heavy frosts and strong winds recently, which are sucking moisture out of the soil. There is still good pasture so no feed worries as the lambs arrive (165 as at last week from 128 ewes which gives a lambing percentage at birth of a cracking 130%). Not worried about rainfall yet but as most of Australia lies within the globe’s arid belt where rainfall is low and unpredictable the weather is always on our minds. Between 1864 and 2002 Australia suffered from 14 major droughts and in one of the worst in 1895 to 1903 the sheep population halved to 53 million head.

The single most important influence on Australian rainfall is the El Nino Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO). El Nino and its opposite twin La Nina are anomalous warming and cooling, respectively, of the ocean water masses that result in changes in atmospheric circulation patterns with a subsequent effect ion rainfall amounts and distribution. The Southern Oscillation Index, shown to July this year above, is generally negative during El Nino events and positive in La Nina floods.

If an El Nino event is to develop it normally starts between March and May signaled by a falling SOI, usually to about -10. Parts of eastern Australia then begin to experience lower than average seasonal rainfall in autumn and late winter. As high pressure systems build into early spring there are fewer low pressure systems able to deliver rain and late in the calendar year the drought intensifies through summer. The effect normally breaks down in March, the SOI rises sharply and there is heavy rainfall often causing serious flooding.

Because ENSO events persist they can be predicted some months ahead. So we are watching the SOI carefully on the Bureau of Meteorology site and keeping our fingers crossed that we get some spring rains to get us through the summer.

Wednesday, August 12

As ewe are going to be...



We had hinted at this before but now it is a reality. There will be a change in direction at the farm next year and it is going to be a fabulous success. We will be known as Daramalan Border Leicester Stud having bought 170 stud ewes, average age 2 years, and the best 45 flock ewes from the Sylvia Vale stud in Binda. Sadly the owners are retiring after a very successful 35 years as a Border Leicester stud. We will take delivery of the ewes and their lambs, 80 so far and counting, in December and then select two stud rams from probably Ariah Park or New Zealand to complete the operation.

Much more challenging and much more rewarding for all concerned. It also allows a joint venture with a local Poll Dorset stud so that we will be supplying the best rams of each breed that we can for many years to come.

So, why choose the Border Leicester breed? Well, firstly because the opportunity to take over a successful stud’s existing flock does not come around too often and secondly, because it makes better commercial and financial sense. The Border Leicester-Merino first cross ewe progeny is the basis of the Australian prime lamb industry. To date we have been finishing first cross ewes and then selling on to other producers who will use a Poll Dorset, for example, terminal sire to produce lambs for meat. Our aim will be to produce the highest quality Border Leicester rams that other sheep producers, particularly those with Merino flocks, will utilize as sires in production of first cross ewes.

It is essential to start with the best ewes and stud rams, one per one hundred ewes, you can afford. The subsequent lambs of both sexes are obviously important. The rams because they will be the sires of the first cross ewes, the backbone of the prime lamb industry and the ewes because the best will be kept for the stud and the balance held for about nine months and then sent to Southern Meats.

So what makes a good Border Leicester sheep? We still have much to learn but as a starting point they should have a straight, good length back evenly covered with flesh that is firm to touch, wide shoulders with plenty of ‘heart room’, clean cut face with strong jaw and the classic Roman nose, legs and feet set squarely under the body with evenly balanced appearance, full and gentle eyes and a uniform 34-38 micron, long staple fleece. Their carriage should be even and symmetrical with a free and noble appearance and an alert and almost majestic character. Wow!!

Originally a British breed they are now found all over the world. A Leicestershire farmer, Robert Bakewell is credited with the improvement of the Leicester sheep in the 1750s. Today there are three types of Leicesters, the Dishley (Bakewell’s improved breed), the Blueface or Hexham and the Border.

The English is the largest of the Leicester breeds and has a long, heavy fleece. The Blueface and Border Leicester are of similar size and both have the Roman nose and erect ears but fleece on the Blueface typically somewhat finer shorter in length and weight than that of the Border Leicester.
The Border Leicester breed was founded in 1767 by George & Matthew Culley in Northumberland, England. They were friends of Bakewell and had access to his improved Leicesters. The Culley brothers developed the Border Leicester by crossing Bakewell's improved Leicester rams with Teeswater ewes and by introducing some Cheviot bloodlines. The breed was firmly established in England by 1850 and then exported to the rest of the world.
We are in for a very exciting and successful partnership with our Border Leicesters and are really looking forward to the challenges ahead. More news soon.
Ciao!!

The way we were....



The Australian landscape has been irrevocably change, some would say damaged, by over 200 years of agricultural practices. The indigenous Aborigines were not crop or livestock cultivators and lived off the land and with enormous respect for their natural world. Modern Australian agriculture is now closely linked with the fragility of our natural resources and though the Murray Darling may take decades to recover at least we are taking protective and restorative measures. In the past policies were reactive as mainly European farmers tested the limits of the land and their own innovations.

The first settlers cultivated the land by hand, well not their hands so much as the availability of cheap (free) convict labour. This was the case into the 1820s and though ploughs may have been introduced in 1797 they were horse drawn until well into the 1930s. The land was heavily timbered and had to be cleared before heavy ploughs broke the ground. Typically 1.6ha of land could be prepared a week. In 1876 a South Australian, Richard Bruyer Smith, invented the stump jump plough with a hinged mouldboard and share such that they rose over any obstructions in the ground.

Seed was sown by broadcasting and then covered using a harrow until about 1910 which seems extraordinary given Jethro Tull had invented a seed drill in 1701. The first Australian designed and made seed drill dates from 1895 and a Quirindi farmer made a combined seed and fertiliser drill in 1917.

Early farming systems were shifting as trees were cleared, burned and the land cultivated. When yields fell the farmer moved on to repeat the process on virgin forest. Really quite primitive and as late as 1826 in NSW one writer called NSW farmers ‘slothful and negligent’ in comparison to the ‘persevering industry and intelligence’ of their British counterparts. The agricultural practices meant marginal land had to be cropped as ‘good’ land became infertile and that yields fell until about 1900 when superphosphate and new varieties coupled with better fallowing and crop rotation practices kicked in.

In some ways not much has changed in the last 80 years of Australian farming systems and machinery. It has only been in the last 20 years that land resource management and planning have become essential to protect those resources and maintain productivity. Soil erosion and drought have been major mind concentrators. While Daramalan’s 70 acres of Graza oats are not on anyone’s radar we at least direct drilled to protect the soil structure and rotate our crops and sheep regularly. Next step may well be a permaculture/organic approach.

More on sheep, the real story of Goulburn, soon...

Tuesday, July 14

Venus and Mars - July Special




For most of July anyone getting up early in the morning will have seen the two planets, Venus and Mars, flirting with each other and rising before the Sun in the east sky. It’s pretty spectacular with Venus a large bright light and Mars, though much smaller, a gorgeous red. Best time to get up early will be between 18th and 20th of this month when the two will be joined by a silver crescent moon. Worth losing some sleep for the show.

The recent spam activity on the closeness of Mars is all a hoax as Mars has been closer in the past and will be closer again before “no one on Earth will ever see this again”. The hoax seems to be an annual event so no doubt it will hit our inbox again in June 2010.

There will also be two eclipses in July, one (was) a lunar eclipse on the 7th, and the other a solar eclipse at the new moon on the 22nd, the end of Cancer and the start of Leo. It is a good time to let go of old energy and start new dreams and visions. The positive side of Cancer is the good, nurturing mother – Mother Earth, Gaia and so on. The darker side is the Wicked Witch mother who cannot let her children go or stifles her children’s development and potential. We will focus on Gaia!!

It is an interesting astrological time as every eighteen months the moon’s nodal axis shifts backwards through the zodiac and so now we are at the end of the Leo-Aquarius polarity and about to start the Cancer-Capricorn polarity for the next year and a half. Good time for people committed to bringing about real change and putting into action all that has been talked about in the past eighteen months. Think climate change, financial reform and so forth as time is running out.

We are also in winter though days are starting to slowly lengthen since the June 21st winter solstice. Yule comes from an Old Norse word, lul, meaning wheel and represents the turning zodiac wheel as the seasons change. It is certainly colder at the farm and we’re getting plenty of nights below freezing. It is the time for thinking, planning and detoxing before the busy lambing season starts and then shearing, planting and spring maintenance. It is rare to get a day with nothing to do but enjoy the beautiful Daramalan atmosphere.

Happy Yuletide!

(Astrology parts edited from Stella Woods in Living Now)

Wednesday, June 24

The other year of the sheep



The sheep is fortunate to be one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals so it is an auspicious animal away from Daramalan too! Chinese astrology is based on traditional astronomy and calendars and a person’s destiny can be determined by the position of the sun, moon, major planets, comets, zodiac sign and the person’s time and date of birth.

The twelve year cycle of animal signs was built from observations of Jupiter’s orbit and in order they are rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and boar. Daramalan has a dog, two monkeys and a boar (pig) as semi permanent residents.

Sheep signs were born in 1979, 1991, 2003 and so on. Occupying the eighth position in the zodiac the sheep symbolises characteristics such as creativity, dependability, intelligence and calmness. They are comfortable alone and though also sociable they tend to stay on the edges of gatherings to observe. They are excellent caregivers and like the comforts of home where they can express their creativity.

Sheep at work don’t crave power but will work hard for the benefit of others. Next sheep year is 2015 so we will be expecting great things of that years new arrivals.


The Year of the Sheep


We have almost run the full annual cycle with our sheep so here’s what we’ve learnt so far. The lambs are born in early autumn (August) after a 150 day gestation period and weaned and tagged by November before sale. The ewes are shorn in late September after being finished in the best pasture.

We bought 4 month old first cross ewe lambs (Border Leicester sire and Merino dam) in December, culled the wethers (rams) that were drafted in by mistake. They have been grass fed throughout season and will be sold in December after shearing. All the ewes are drenched quarterly and we check for flystrike and weight/wool gain weekly. So far they have only eaten grass and forage crops we have planted, Brassicas last year and oats this. They have also not needed additional water as the dams supply the 5 litres per day they need.

We are looking into buying 200 Border Leicester ewes from a nearby operation and registering Daramalan as a ‘real’ stud so that we will be in the business of lamb production, particularly the rams, rather than only holding the stock for a year. It is a decision based on the long term profitability of the venture and although it means more work, particularly at lambing time, it will be more challenging and interesting. Good opportunity to put my degree specialization, genetics, to good use finally too!

Our aim has always been to produce the best wool and meat that we can using only the resources we have at Daramalan. Hopefully we will get 4kg of wool per ewe and healthy sheep weighing 60-100 kg at two years old. Our aim is also to make a living from farming and so far so good though it’s an income rather than a living. Becoming a stud will be better economics in the long run.

Aboriginal Australian Astronomy



After seeing the falling star and a couple of beautiful clear nights I started to look into what the traditional owners of the land thought about the stars and planets.

The Aboriginal Australians were arguably the world’s first astronomers and their complex knowledge, observations and beliefs about the heavenly bodies have become an integral part of their culture as it has been passed down through songs, dance, ritual and stories for over 40,000 years. It predates the Babylonians, who developed a zodiac in 2,000 BC, the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Indians and Incas.

The Aborigines’ beliefs about the stars were part of a social and value system that accounted for the daily risings of the sun and moon and the passage of the constellations and planets across the night sky. They were not interested in mathematical positioning of the stars but incorporated all natural phenomena into their traditional rituals and everything is interconnected with the Dreaming, an ever-present reality of how the world was created.

Aboriginal creation stories root the creative power deep in the earth itself and not in the heavens. Originally it is believed that the earth was flat and featureless and the sky dark until the Ancestors emerged from the land and sky, taking the form of man and animals and inanimate forces like water and fire. By their presence, actions and journeys they created the landforms, celestial bodies and all living creatures. Aboriginals believe that through their culture and rituals they are part of the natural world and therefore co-creators.

They were not interested in the distance in kilometres between places but that distance was contingent on what happened on the journey, how the travellers felt and the things encountered on the trip. Their ‘astronomy’ is based on parameters of social organization – kinship, marriage systems, gender divisions and social structures.

Most of the Ancestors and their spirits are believed to be living in the land where they last encountered other figures of the Dreaming but there are also mythological figures associated with the sky and specific constellations. The Boorong people of western Victoria believed that Gnowee, the sun, was made by Pupperimbul, one of the Nurrumbunguttias or old spirits, who were removed to the heavens before man was created. The earth was in perpetual darkness until Pupperimbul cast an emu egg into space where it burst into flame and flooded the world with light. Chargee Gnowee, Venus, is seen as the sun’s sister and wife of Ginabongbearp, Jupiter, thus reflecting family relationships. The Needwonee people of southwest Tasmania believe a star, Moinee, the child of the sun and the moon, created their land. Moinee shaped the land and rivers but fought with his brother Dromerdene (Canopus) and the stars fell from the sky to create a tall standing stone and an inlet.

Understanding the sky was conceptual and as such tribal elders passed down knowledge to initiates who were deemed ready to receive it. Some stories were the exclusive secret of men and others, notably those about Pleiades, were the preserve of women. Besides the gender divisions different groups had different stories so coastal tribes have more stories relating to fishing, canoes and storms than inland groups. The Merriam people who live at the eastern end of the Torres Strait place great importance on their constellation of Tagai that incorporates the Western constellations of Sagittarius, Scorpio, the Southern Cross, Lupus, Corvus and part of Hydra. Tagai represents a fisherman standing up in a canoe holding a three pronged spear and incorporates twelve crewmen (the Pleiades and the stars in Orion’s belt). As Tagai proceeds across the sky it represents the Merriam seasons. Myths involving the seven sisters of Pleiades and their pursuer Orion have been recorded in various forms across the Western Desert and as far as South Australia.

The Aborigines’ knowledge of the southern sky was extraordinary for people dependent on naked eye astronomy and they made accurate observations of even inconspicuous fourth order stars. They devised and memorised a complex seasonal calendar based on pattern recognition of the stars. Rather than the Greek ‘join the dot’ pictorial images the Aborigines identified a whole cast of characters in their stories. The Aranda people of Central Australia distinguished star colours (red, blue, yellow and white) and in Eastern NSW the red star, Aldebaran, commemorates the story of a man who stole another man’s wife and hid in a tree. The angry husband set fire to the tree and the flames carried the adulterer into the sky where he still burns red.

Generally across Australia the Aborigines shared a similar cosmology in which the universe had four tiers, similar to the medieval European three level view. The earth is imagined as a flat disc surrounded by water and covered by a solid sky dome. Beyond the dome is a land of beautiful flowers and rivers where the spirits of the dead are carried and we see them as stars shining through holes in the cover. The sky dome is supported by trees guarded by an old man or held from above by the stars and the emu whose nest is in the Coal Sack. Beneath the earth is a lower world through which the sun travels on her nightly journey from west to east.

North of Sydney there are some rock carvings that are thought to represent some of the constellations and even supernova events from 1066 or even 12,000 years ago. These rock carvings are close to the engraved representations of two ancestral sky heroes, Biame and Daramalan.



The Aboriginal Australians noted the correlation between the passage of star patterns with the seasonal supply of food and as a reminder of the moral lessons told in their myths. They typically see the sun as female and the moon as male, which is different to the Greeks and American Indians. She wakes in the east and lights a bark torch that she carries across the sky to the west and spills ochre and red powder as she sets.

The Milky Way is seen as the great sky river in which the bright stars are fish, the smaller stars are lily bulbs and the Coal Sack is a large plum tree or lily pads. The Southern Cross is variously seen as a stingray being pursued by a shark, two brothers at two campfires cooking a giant fish or the footprint of a giant wedge-tailed eagle. Interestingly the Greek and Aboriginal legends about Orion and the Pleiades are very similar with the former seen as a hunter or rapist and the latter as seven sisters or girls fleeing from the unwanted advances. Scorpio is prominent in the Southern sky and is often associated with two lovers who violated tribal law and fled to the sky where they are pursued by tribal elders who are throwing boomerangs and have dislodged the boy’s tribal headdress in the chase.

Comets were seen as sky canoes carrying the spirits of the dead to their permanent homes or the gleaming eyes of the spirit men searching for victims to kill and suck blood from. Meteors are often seen as flaming spears thrown across the sky by the ancestral beings.

So the Aboriginal Australians were concerned with observing the patterns of stars and integrating the stories into their daily life and rich culture. How sad that so much of their 40,000 years of culture has been destroyed or taken away from them. We respectfully renamed the property Daramalan after the spirit sky hero and acknowledge the traditional owners of our land, the Gandangara.

Wildlife and weather



April was an eventful month with plenty of activity. Craig and I saw an amazing falling star at the end of the second day of sowing oats and I had my first close encounter with a reptile, a large Tiger snake that I almost mistook for a piece of polypipe. Quite scary but at the end of the day they will keep away from us if we leave them alone.

We also had our first real frost in April and the temperatures are heading down sharply with sub zero nights in May and most of June and even snow at Crookwell. In early February there were three days over 39 degrees so we certainly get the full range.



Rainfall so far in 2009 has been above average so perhaps we are returning to a more reliable climate at least for Daramalan. We have been lucky so far with none of the eleven dams running dry in living memory. So long may the weather continue and the more Mediterranean the better with warm wet winters and hot dry summers.

Chateau Daramalan?...not yet



One day we will make wine from grapes grown on the property but until then we’ll keep congregating in Orazio’s garage like some arcane alchemical society….This year we bought Mataro (Mourvedre) grapes from Flemington Markets. It will make a light and fruity red (think Beaujolais nouveau…) that is as good to drink as it is for cooking and with our allocation of 55 litres there will be enough for both.



Making wine is easy. Making a good wine is harder. In April we simply crushed and destalked the grapes into large plastic barrels, covered with flyscreen and left for five days to ‘boil’ (ferment) as the grape yeast gets started on the sugar. Then we put everything through the grape press (ours also does apples, pears and, one day, olives) and then poured into scrupulously clean plastic barrels, the ones used for table olive importation. They are covered to keep out fruit fly and a month later the wine is transferred into glass demijohns. We will decant into bottles in mid July and seal to prevent oxidation. Should have about 78 bottles so enough to use as gifts to a few people, particularly those that have been saving all their empty screw top wine bottles.

What we have tasted of the ’09 vintage is very good and has berry flavours while the ’08 vintage was fuller and definitely had cherry and liquorice, like a very young Cahors wine from France. The ’08 Grappa was superb but none from this year as a little goes a long way!

More than anything it is just fun to do something that has been done every year for fifty years and we will continue the tradition.

Cheers!!