State of the farm.

We had to buy more round hay bales this week as we used our last, feeding the main flock of sheep. There's a hint of green in the fields but this, on closer inspection is not clover or grass but weeds. The fields are looking bare but this is not a great problem, the lack of water is beginning to be a worry. We've had a few days recently of light drizzle, it gets things wet but otherwise not of any value. The rains stopped at the beginning of spring and we've been dry since. The dams have got lower or just dried completely so now the sheep have to walk to access water.

The front dam dried out completely over a two week period, while our larger main dam is lower every time I see it. I've been placing a stick at the waters edge and now have a row of eight or nine leading to the latest water level. It hasn't been this dry since the Millennium drought.

 

We have a spring on the farm and so far this is holding out and is the main source of water for the flock. They are hungry and will eat out a round bale of hay in a few days!

 

It's a waiting game now, the weathermen tell us the El Nino is over and we're to have above average rains this Autumn, however we're still waiting. The ground is so dry that when the rain comes it will soak into the soil and not run into the dams. How long it will take before the creeks flow again? So we wait.