Sometimes even no clouds has a silver lining. Part 2.

2007. A new year. A much anticipated new year. Forget 2006, that's one we will wipe from our memories. Learn what we can from it and move on. This year is our year. We'll pick up where we let off in 2005. Our new feedlot is going gangbusters with the shippers, now all we need is a reasonable season and we'll make some ground back. As some bright spark once told me, it always rains after a drought. What that wonderful piece of wisdom forgets to mention is that it always blows before a rain.

The view from our front veranda. We shovelled wheelbarrow
loads out of the house afterwards.

There is a reason the trees grows sideways here. The same reason a fifty something turbine windfarm is built right next to our place. Also the same reason pilots landing in Geraldton call it running the gauntlet. What some might call a gale we call a sea breeze. From about November to April the wind blows. And blows. Easterlies in the morning and South Westers in the evening. It can be relentless. 

And after 2006 the last thing we needed was a record breaking day of wind. But blow it did. A cyclone was coming down and it was going to be a beauty. Bring it on we said. As I watched everything blow away I consoled myself with the fact at least it was going to rain. Yup, bring on the rain...... anytime now, my neighbour is getting my paddocks. Where's the bloody rain? Two days later the wind stopped and we were left with two farms that can only be described as the Sahara. And not a drop of water had hit the ground.

Sometimes even no clouds has a silver lining. Part 1.

It's funny how we end up where we are in life. If you had told me ten years ago I'd be full time farming, operate a  20 000 head sheep depot, be part of owning a 670 000 acre pastoral station near Yalgoo, have 12000 sheep and decide that big tractors and burning diesel wasn't for me,  I would have politely nodded while speed dialing directory assistance for the nearest looney bin.

 Ten years ago I had just started a real job. Got a trade, as every farmers son was advised to do back then. So I did. I was halfway through a Building Design and Drafting (with a pen, not a gate) TAFE course when I got offered a job with a local crayboat builder as a drafty. Not knowing anything about boats except that they make me feel crook and catch bugger all fish, I spent three enjoyable and educational years there until I got sick of being in an office. So we went back farming.

Hay Paddock, 11th  June. It had been in for nearly 6 weeks.

Gemma had moved up here by then onto her little home block, 540 acres of lovely country. She looked after her damara stud and managed another farm in Chapman Valley, while I worked on another. In 2005 her mother and father decided to get back into farming and the four of us went into partnership and bought our second farm the other side of Walkaway. We settled in June and it was a mad rush to scratch a bit of crop in to tidy the place up and sort out what little fencing was on the joint.

2006. The new farm was coming along nicely. We had been dabbling in contract feeding for stations on our small block over summer, and had just leased the farm Gemma was managing. We were set. Had the plans, had the finance, had the will. We were going to kill the pig this year. Then it forgot to rain.