Nan Bray
Call the Midwife

It doesn’t often come up in farming conversations, but my title is officially Dr. I’m not the useful sort of doctor, though — just an academic. In retrospect, I should have studied medicine, as I originally intended. Instead, my academic qualifications extend to explaining climate change, but are totally useless in the project that is about to take all of my time and energy for the next few weeks: lambing 33 ewes.

This is the first time in six years that I’ve had lambs of my own. I had lots of good rationalisations for why it was a good idea to buy in lambs, but the truth is I chickened out. Lambing, like ageing, is not for the faint of heart.

Call the Midwife
Nan Bray
When the Grass is Ready to Burn

An early season bush fire on my farm earlier this year led me back to studying the knowledge of indigenous Australians about using fire to shape the landscape and enhance biodiversity.

When the Grass is Ready to Burn
Nan Bray
Shearing Marathon

Note to self: you need to change your mindset well before shearing next year.  Let this be your reminder to practice staying in the present moment almost all the time, rather than just occasionally.  If you don’t, you will, at the very least, leave a critical gate open and lose your sheep into the back country when you really, really don’t want them there, and don’t have the time to gather them back into the fold. There was a lot of swearing, none of it particularly inventive, when I did precisely that two days ago on my fifth straight day, and 7th out of a total of 12 days of shearing. 

Shearing Marathon
Nan Bray
Pure Blind Luck

It was a cross between a flying tackle and a wrestling pin to the mat when I tripped and fell on top of the old ewe I was trying to catch.  She’s a 14-year-old with severe cataracts, and she’d gotten lost in Chicory Hill tree reserve a few days ago. It was pure blind luck I found her when I did.

Pure Blind Luck
Nan Bray
Kangaroo Dogs

As I held on to all four legs of the squirming, hapless young kangaroo, all I could think was. “WTF am I going to do now?!” With my five working dogs swirling around me, I couldn’t let the little bush kangaroo go—they’d already had him up against the fence once, which is how I finally caught him.  Three of the five dogs were intent on finishing the job I’d so rudely interrupted.   

Kangaroo Dogs

Horatio

Itty Bitty Spaceships

Itty Bitty Spaceships

On the steep hillside near the western boundary of my property, and visible from the highway as you travel south from Oatlands, is a village of small plastic domes. When they first went up, I used to think they looked like extra-terrestrial vehicles just the right size for a baby Yoda. In fact, they are part of an international research program looking at the effects of climate change on native pastures in many locations around the world.  The Tasmanian component of the program is run by Prof Mark Hovenden and his team from the University of Tasmania.  

Animal Wifery

Animal Wifery

We've had 3 ½ inches of rain in May (hooray!) and the property is looking better than it has in months.  Admittedly, it looks better from a distance than at worm's-eye level, where there is too much bare ground showing.  However, the lovely spring green look is most welcome, along with the beginnings of run-off.

Come Shepherding

Come Shepherding

Come Shepherding is a new initiative I’ve started, designed to give readers a more personal experience of shepherding, White Gum Wool style. Each time I do a shepherding circuit, I first post the map and plan for the day on the Come Shepherding blog, then provide a few photos via Instagram as I’m shepherding. At the end of the day, I write up my notes and add them and the photos to the Come Shepherding post for the day.

Six Impossible Things

Six Impossible Things

As often happens to me, I mis-remembered this quotation. I thought it was about doing six impossible things before breakfast, thereby revealing my lamentable tendency to jump into things with all four feet without due consideration of the consequences. Believing six impossible things is a lot harder, I think.

You Don't Sing that Note, Either

You Don't Sing that Note, Either

Continuing my jazz and shepherding analogy (new subscribers click here for the previous Yarn), there’s a wonderfully apt line from “Birth of the Blues” (1941), set at the turn of the century. A ridiculously young Mary Martin is quizzing Rochester about how to sing the new jazz and blues. Rochester says, “Well, it’s like this. You listen for a note, and when you find it…you don’t play it. Instead, you listen some more, until you find another note…but you don’t play that note, either. Eventually, you find the right note to fit into the music.”