Most weeks blur together for me. Inbetween writing and working on-farm usually I get to friday wishing for a day off, but of course that’s a rare luxury when you literally have two full-time jobs. This week we started weaning the calves. It’s late for us, however our calendar has been out since the floods earlier in the year. Cultivations were delayed being prepped due to flood water, then we had a nasty dry spell which led to a later planting when we finally received rain. When the oats was finally sown, the end result was far from perfect. Most came up. Some germinated in the ground and died due to lack of moisture while another paddock was washed out. Love farming! 

The dodgy start to our crop programme (thanks to the weather) and my father’s fondness for having ‘a lot of lollies in his lolly shop’ has meant we are currently overstocked. So we have cows on the stock-route in tapped off sections, calves waiting for crop to appear out of the ground and steers being agisted off to be fattened on oats over the border. As usual it’s never a dull moment here. Combined with the usual dry cow cull, where older cows who haven’t managed to fall pregnant are trucked off to the saleyards and with the first lot of feedlot steers already mustered and trucked off to sale, it’s been busy. So it always seems a bit weird when I have to ‘change hats’ and put on my writing one. This monday the lovely Nat Fogarty of Vigour Graphics is coming to do an on-property photo shoot in anticipation of the September release of Absolution Creek  With luck I’ll have time to make some vanilla cup-cakes tomorrow for afternoon tea after we’ve wrapped. Down south in Sydney, my charming video producer and friend, Todd is busy at work on a new book trailer for Absolution Creek. Whew, I’m back to the writing desk tomorrow for my next book and then maybe I’ll have some time to smell the roses on sunday afternoon, or in my case, the outback!