Our season got off to a fairly average start with the spring storm killing a heap of ewes, and their lambs with them. Due to life's challenges we have an ageing fleet of ewes, the tail of which were not up to the test of the black weeks' misery.
Things have picked up since then with the promise of good lamb prices for both organic and chemical lambs, which is great for the industry as a whole! The grass is going ballistic and lambs are starting to look the part. Four hundred yearling bulls are here for a few months to help with grass control and I am looking forward to their weights next week, as they appear to be growing well.
This season, we will be more aggressive in managing parasites in our lambs rather than being quite as pure as most of last season, which compromised growth rates for a portion of the lambs. As we get the soil biology stronger and therefore get better nutrition into the sheep, which in turn will enjoy a stronger immune system, the problem will dissipate.
Within the organic rules we can drench once if we need to with limited hassle apart from egg counts, paperwork and putting said sheep through the quarantine paddock afterwards. If we were keeping replacements it would be more problematic, as drenched lambs lose BioGro certification forever.
We ran out of time pre-lambing to get all of our fertiliser on which was a brew of lime, phosphate, boron, selenium and magnesium. All was applied to improve our most serious limiters of lamb health and growth. This went on in a liquid form and in quantities that would make the other 99% of my fellow farmers chuckle a bit.
Interestingly, significantly more clover is visible, as is an apparent reduction in thistles. It is very early days in this process but I am hugely encouraged and looking forward to getting the rest on next week - busy week next week!
Last weekend, I was enjoying lunch when I heard a helicopter flying around in a manner that suggested it was working.
I am a little touchy about choppers and spraying in general these days so I rushed off to see where it was and whether or not my business was being compromised by someone else being careless.
The chopper was spraying what looked like crop for wholecrop silage quite close to me but not on my boundary; however, it was on the boundary of another neighbour and I was astonished to observe the chopper was still spraying fully 10m into his property. I am not talking about drift (which would be bad enough); I am referring to full pressure.
Having spent some time in choppers in my Tb days and seeing first-hand the astonishingly good GPS gear in action, I know there is just no excuse, whether the neighbour is an organic farmer, a children's playground or otherwise.
We have to lift our collective game in myriad ways - this is just one. More amazing to me is that this level of slackness is in evidence after all the media chit-chat pre-Christmas about the vines in the Hawkes Bay being destroyed by spray drift!
May the wool prices continue upwards and the appropriate portions of sun and rain arrive on time for the summer.