A quick note to wish you all a very Happy New Year.

After a couple of weeks break from deliveries over Christmas and New Year, we will be back delivering hay next week.  We have managed to stack some hay away in the shed while we were having our break, but the weather has made the drying of hay very difficult.  We cut some horse pasture blend and the millet & cow peas on New Year’s Eve – and this hay is still be being raked.  The cloudy and humid days are making drying hay very challenging.  Joys of farming I guess.

Looking forward to a happy and prosperous 2015.

Our first paddock of oats was cut on Monday.  It has been a great growing season and the oats are almost up to chest height and extremely lush.  This caused a few problems for our neighbour (who does our mowing and baling) as the oats choked up the mower and twisted a shaft connecting the mower to the tractor, requiring a quick welding repair during cutting.  Below are some photos of the oats being cut and a short video that Chris (our baler) took from the cab of the tractor.  Our fingers and toes are all crossed for continuing fine weather :)

The rain over the last week was about as close to perfect as you can get for us - 82.5mm at home (Glenrock) and just under 100mm at Mondure where we grow your hay.  Nice steady rain that fell over a few days.  The lucerne paddocks and horse pasture blend in one paddock are now looking fantastic - but it will be several days before we can get on the paddocks to start cutting, and longer if more rain falls.  One of the horse pasture blend paddocks really needed to be cut last week, so the lucerne in it is looking a little old, but the grasses are powering ahead.  The drought is by no means broken, but this rain has certainly lifted everyone's spirits.  We hope that is wasn't too much for those of you on the coast - certainly the falls we have heard were much larger than ours, but we DEFINITELY didn't want that much rain :)

After an early start to the day (2:30am) the first of our summer grass hay is in the shed.  This is mainly urochloa and barnyard millet - great for those with not much feed in the paddocks.  More lucerne hay was also baled.  Now it can rain!