Boomerang clearance sale 22/03/2014

There's dry and there's dry

Our new toys...

Here is our John Deere 6630 with 4 in 1 bucket and our Gator next to it.  Can't wait to get started...

Outline of Lots 191 and 192 - Boomerang

One of the assignments as part of the Dip. Ag. is to create a Whole Farm Plan.  You start off with an aerial image and then create a series of acetate overlays to show the infrastructure and geographical traits on the property.

This particular image shows the creeks and dams on Boomerang, which we will call the more "usable" part of the farm i.e. Uriari being a mountain block, I am not including it as part of the overall exercise, even though 200 acres of the 800 acres could be utilised for grazing.

Scale of operation

It's about 1.5kms from the road to the house and over 7kms from the house to the back paddock.  Can't tell you where the back boundary is 'cos we haven't found it yet!

Uriari Mountain is close to 600m above sea level.

Average rainfall is 611mm (24 inches)

Rainfall chart from Bureau of Meteorology

Dip Ag

Thought I might as well get serious about this farming lark so have enrolled in a Diploma of Agriculture at Tocal Ag College.  This will be a major step in moving on to a Bachelor of Agriculture with the University of New England. 

This will eventually tick an item off my bucket list - a Uni Degree.  Something I have harboured a desire to complete since I left school in 1977 to join the work force

The secondary driver behind this is simply the desire to know that we are doing the right things on the property and not just relying on other people.

For example. just before Christmas we had the 38ha front paddock sprayed for weeds.  Our agronomist assessed the quantity and types of chemicals we required for the different types of weeds and then our spray contractor did the rest.  

Whilst it's difficult to manage from a distance it would have been nice to have had a deeper understanding of just what weeds were growing and which chemicals were used on which weeds.

Still, won't be too long before we are up there and doing it all first hand. 

The general plan...

Boomerang, as far as we can establish, has been in the same family of 80 or 90 years.  The current occupant, an elderly widow in her late eighties, built the farmhouse with her late husband about 67 years ago.

Little has been done over the last decade by way of improvements so the fencing needs some sorting out, we need to look at which paddocks will take pasture and which will need to go under crop.

The plan is to improve the property and get it to a stage where we can carry around 400 steers for fattening.