Wow, we’ve been farmers for a year now! Yet it is such an integral part of our lives that it is difficult to remember what life was like before the property settled one year ago!

It has been a great experience. I never tire of heading up to the plateau on a Saturday arvo and looking at the view – you can feel the stress of the week melt away. Its a pity at how poorly a small pic on a screen conveys the feeling of actually being there!

When I stop and think about what we’ve learnt and done in this time, its hard to believe it has only been one year. Here’s what comes to mind:

• stripped most of the roof off the shed, and re-sheeted onto new battens. Put a rear wall in, and a swing door, to enclose the uphill section.
• researched and purchased a tractor
• built a stick rake for tractor, from scrap steel from work
• built a no-till seeder
• sown approx. 40 acres of winter crop with said seeder
• built a seed spinner/thrower for back of ute.
• spread two batches of pasture seed with said spinner
• cleared many tons of rock from pasture areas
• built a significant swale, around 300m in length, with tractor
• completely redid overflow for the best dam, filling in the eroded one and moving it out another 5m to a new location.
• put together a 1000L IBC tank and petrol pump sprayer system, on trailer
• sprayed many 1000’s of litres of DP600 (lantana herbicide).
• cleared many acres of lantana, both by spraying (above) and with stick rake. Western ledge mostly clear, aside from around the edges. Bottom of western slope and valley largely cleared. Areas of Eastern paddock cleared. Large areas on plateau cleared.
• research and purchased a quad bike. Also a second old quad bike as new one had multi-month wait. Replaced various components including front suspension bushings, and stripped and rebuilt the carby. Also purchased a used dirt bike, and done some work on that.
• purchased spray tank for back of quad, and mounted with a custom designed and made rotating boom arrangement.
• Made several water diversion channels (water bars) on tracks around the shed.
• Fixed house roof – replaced some sheets and screws and general repairs. Stripped lots of the old lining/guts from the internal frame.
• pumped out the well, and discovered it didn’t refill…
• Chased neighbours cattle out of the property, and fixed fences.
• spent many hours exploring some of the hidden areas of the property. Only last week I discovered another ‘rainforest like’ area I hadn’t been to before!

There’s plenty of other little things that could be mentioned, but you get the idea! Lots more lined up to be done too, with cattle yards to build/install, an electric fence system to install (many parts already purchased), tanks and a watering system, Wifi and a remote monitoring system, and of course cattle to buy!

I certainly didn’t expect that we’d still be without cattle at the end of our first year. However, I’m pleased it is something we didn’t rush. It has given the land time to recover and I think it’ll be better for it in the long term.

I can’t think of many downsides to this. Sure, setting it up has sucked up more money on top of the land purchase, but finances are still very good and it will return money with time. Sometimes the boys spend the weekends at home on their own, for study or events, but they are plenty old enough to manage themselves (like to do so actually…) and they enjoy (and benefit from) heading bush and spending time on the farm with us. Perhaps the main disadvantage for me personally is that I don’t get out on my mountain bike much, and having the weekend occupied does place some restriction on activities with friends.

Its been a great year, full of lots of hard but enjoyable work, and fun. Having leant so much over the last year, I’m looking forward to leaning more this year as we continue to improve the land and soil, and add more biodiversity with some hoofed herbivores!