Seasons on your patch?

[Weedo]

Hi all
After reading through a lot of posts about what you are doing, I am curious about the seasons, weather and what can happen on your patch seasonally.

For me, we are in our last month of spring, summer starts 1 December. Presently, everything is lush and green, day temps are topping out at low to mid 20's C and sunrise to sunset is about 11 hours and increasing. If I had hay crops left (floods wiped them out) it would soon be time for hay making - I will need to buy in hay or buy a standing crop for hay. On the veg garden front, most fruit trees have finished flowering and bees are very active boding a good crop (providing the cockatoos and galahs leave any), winter greens left over will need to be pulled before they bolt, potatoes are up and due for first hilling, peas and beans are up and growing well; most other veg will go in in the next 2 -3 weeks.

A spring pic attached - in a couple of months it wont look anything like this

Steers VH.jpg (43.87 KiB) Viewed 9394 times

[bonniethomas06]

My patch is brown at the moment, on our clay just walking on the grass on a wet day is enough to make it a muddy mess and the soil completely unworkable.

It is pretty green though...where you can see the grass through the blanket of tree leaves, which I shall be raking up for leaf mould as soon as it stops raining here.

[Weedo]

Hi

We have just come through our wet season, glad to have the gum boots off for a while (no sticky clay thankfully) No problems with autumn leaves here, our trees shed leaves, twigs and small branches in summer to conserve moisture. The River Red gums can shed massive branches (tonnes in weight) at any time; the rule is to never park cars, camp or picnic under the big reds. There is usually a death or two each summer when the townies venture out and set up camp in the shade; a few microns of rip-stop is no protection.

The river has gone down so we will be walking the cattle back home - should take 3 -4 days.

[sleepyowl]

My patch is overgrown but have bid plans for it next year with Tetris shaped beds to satisfy our inner geekiness. Our land is quite exposed and relatively high up in our area so seasons start a little late. Just gettining ready for the final mow of the year.

[Flo]

Here on the local north east allotments, it's sodden as we have had a really wet period. It's autumn and people are pulling in the very last of their vegetables (well except the brussel sprouts for Christmas and seasonal brassicas). It's the wind down season, clear debris, get the digging over done where possible, sort out compost heaps, clean out greenhouses, wash posts and seed trays, plant up winter sown onions and garlic, plan for next season time of the year.

[bonniethomas06]

Tetris shaped beds? Brilliant!

[Weedo]

Spring is being brilliant for us so far, warming up nicely but still a shower or two the keep things going. Potatoes hilled, second pea & bean planting done, worm farm reactivated after winter. Time to get the tomatoes, capsicums, lettuces and carrots planted.

Breeding cattle home at last so we can relax a little with only a few left to calve - hay cut and ready to bale: time to mow and plough fire-breaks and to re-stock the woodshed

[Weedo]

still loving this site - great to get a totally different perspective on things.

Reading Odsox posts about storm activity in Scotland etc. at Christmas shows this up - we have increasing storm activity around here too (more each year it seems) but our Christmas storm problems are about lightning and fires rather than flooding. The country is tinder dry and about ready to explode the first time some idiot throws a cigarette butt out the car window.

At present our monthly rainfalls are only 10% to 12 % of the evaporation loss so we are heavily into soil moisture loss control.

[Green Aura]

I think we're getting your rain, Weedo. It seems to be getting wetter each year. Or maybe I'm imagining it.

[Weedo]

Seasons are getting weird here too; this winter was the wettest for 90 years and was followed immediately by +35 degree C days. We are getting a lot more storm activity during summer but they are "mini" storms, often no more that 5-10 km wide, they dance all over the place and don't follow the rules. In reality, we don't really want sporadic summer rains, our natural systems are not adapted for it. Normally we would get less frequent but more general storms over summer, generated by warming seas in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the N.E. but these one sare coming from the West & S.W.

[Green Aura]

And we've been getting summer storms from the NE! Further south from us (higher elevation) got hail in August this year.

[Weedo]

Summer is here with a vengence, doubtful if any green leafies survive the next few days with above 40 c temps predicted along with strong northerly (hot) winds.
Task currently is checking and double checking water reserves and pumps, firefighting equipment working and their tanks full and hooking up equipment to vehicles and tractor. Stock need about 75 litres (35,000 litres total) of water a day under these conditions; lactating cows will take about 30% more than this

For those that viewed my previous pic of cattle on my patch in spring, here is one of the same paddock now - (the cattle aren't being kept on this paddock, just being held here while we shuffle mobs and paddocks)

[Green Aura]

Sitting here in the middle of a hailstorm that looks lovely, Weedo. However, it sounds very scary - like living in a tinder box - I'm not sure I'd survive 40C.
I still wonder whether some Permaculture approaches might help.
You have some beautiful cows there. What are they?

[bonniethomas06]

Crikey, 40 degrees! It is 4 degrees here at the moment. Can't imagine it!

Did I read that right - 75 litres per single cow?

[Weedo]

Hi

Actually it hit 46 C at the peak; coupled with the strong northerly winds it was more like sitting on a bomb with the fuse lit - only a matter of time until the bang. Thankfully temperatures have dropped now but will rise again next week. This is a normal Riverina summer.
The cows in the pic are Beef Shorthorns. Similar to the meat / milk traditional shorthorns from Britain but selected in Australia for beef production and now mostly hornless; we love them. Our place has had purely shorthorn cattle on it since 1906 (4 gens) but we have broken away and introduced black Angus (for a whole suite of reasons) So now our herd is half Shorthorn cows and half ShorthornXAngus cows. This mix gives us growth diversity (syn F1 hybrid vegies), better sustainability with much less animal health issues.

Attached pic is as good as it ever gets for us