Clover Hill Diaries – Join Me and Be the Change
#Strongwomen. "I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful – for all of it." Kristin Armstrong
Yesterday Michael and I went to get the cows in for the midday milking and I captured these touching moments between one of our cows and the next door neighbour’s horses
A little banter over the fence
Com’on girl time to go home for milking – OOh cant she stay
Not listening?
Kiss goodbye
Long forlorn looks
Till next time
It always amuses me when people assume the cows get a day off for Christmas. Do breast feeding mothers get Xmas off? I don’t think so.
After all when you take on the responsibility of caring for other living things whether they be animals or children it is 365 and 24/7.
No-one is complaining at Clover Hill – though Michael is not quite sure how he scored the midday shift at the home farm but then that still leaves 21 hours to celebrate.
On our farm Louise coordinates the Xmas cheer.
Louise is just one of those people everybody loves having on their team. Louise brings the festive spirit to the dairy like no other
For the babies she looks after
and this one just 4 hours old
for Sean
for Martin
There is also rumour Louise has pictures of Michael and Nick with antlers on. They are yet to surface but rest assured I am on working on it. WATCH THIS SPACE
The girls waiting to be milked think all of these hijinks are highly amusing.
Though they are a bit jealous when they find out Louise has Antlers for Eileen but not for all of them!!
But then Eileen’s face is adorable and lends itself to superb photo opps don’t you think?
Its not all play and no work. The babies still get fed and weighed to make sure we are taking just as good care of them as their mums do.
and back at the Chook pen new life has arrived for Christmas
But the girls got off the eggs before they had all hatched. So the farmers took over from nature and bought a few more into world
Which we will give back to their mums in a few days
Craig saved Christmas for our next neighbour by finding and fixing her broken water pipe
Michael said thanks Craig with a few beers.
The grain arrives and gets unloaded and Col is still trying to find out why all the parts haven’t arrived from NZ to install the new 30,000 milk vat. OMG Can you believe someone can put a vat this size on a ship and let it sail it across the ocean and left all the other bits that make it work sitting on the dock which now all have to be put on a plane and flown over. All that CO2
And what do you know? Its dawn and its all happening again.
The girls say “Do we really have to go down that big hill this morning?
and Nick and Sean bring the springers (cows calving in the next 3 weeks) home
And next thing you know the girls are back in the dairy waiting patiently to be milked.
Sean’s on the job
Wouldn’t give it up for quits.
I might not milk cows too often but getting up early has its advantages
Dawn in paradise
and this night sky just blew me away
When we called this cow Mandelyn Fabulous Mary this wasn’t quite what we had in mind as her claim to fame.
At Clover Hill Dairies we milk 500 cows three times daily on two farms.
Milking three times a day is not the norm but we do it for a multitude of reasons which are good for people, cows and the planet.
Milking three times a day means lots and lots of health benefits for our cows but those health benefits rely on good time management.
Good time management is essential because cows need at least 12 hours a day to sleep. ( If you want to read the heavy science you can find it here.)
So as our cows walk backwards and forwards to the dairy three times daily we need to make sure they do that with as much cow comfort as we can provide so they can do it as quickly and efficiently as they can.
Cows travel super highways at Clover Hill (special thanks to Penny Scott who took this gorgeous photo)
To help them do this we have created a series of “supermoo highways” on our farms.
Like this and this – Cars and people like them too. We get lots of the “keep fit” crowd walking up this road
50% of our farm is rainforest and part of our role as land stewards is to make sure our farming practices do not impact on the native vegetation or the wildlife.
So we have supermoo highways through our rainforest as well .
Here is a great example of development of one through the rainforest
This one was fine like this when we milked twice daily but it looked like this when we got a lot of rain and the cows started using it three times daily
So what did we do. We got some advice from rainforest experts and some cow comfort experts and we did this
Picasso Corner
Firstly we separated the cows and the rainforest with a fence.
Then we poured concrete on the laneway. We had happy cows and a happy farm team who found the cows liked the new comfortable road and were very keen to come back to the dairy for milking.
Then we needed to spend some time nurturing the rainforest. So we found some more experts to give us the right advice like Erin and the team at Landcare Illawarra
Erin with Tony Hepworth and Mike Swanson from South East Landcare
The troops came in and did their bush regeneration thing and achieved some great outcomes like this
What about those cows getting their 40 winks!!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday I went for a walk and it gave me great pleasure when I came across the cows in the paddock at the end of the laneway we call Picasso Corner (another story) and saw this paddock full of very happy cows RESTING
Great outcomes all round me thinks
My name is Lynne Strong and I am a woman with many, many hats. Some I wear better than others I readily admit.
The one I wear most proudly though is my farmer hat. I will be the first to admit it isn’t a hat that I saw myself wearing as a little girl.
I grew up on a farm and even though I enjoyed being hands on in the day to day running of the farm and the lifestyle that comes with it the idea of being a farmer was most definitely not on my list of top 10 professions.
I farm today because the people I most care about in the world farm and they are in it for the long haul.
Farming today is no walk in the park. Feeding, clothing and housing the world now and in the next 50 years is going to require an extraordinary effort. This means we need extraordinary people to take up the challenge. My husband Michael, my son Nick and our farm team (and our cows) have put their hands up to take on the challenge and I want to work side by side with these extraordinary people.
So why write a blog. Well my family have been farming in the Jamberoo Valley on the South Coast of New South Wales since 1831 (and in Ireland and Scotland probably for centuries before that). That is 7 generations of farming families and 180 years of blood sweat, tears, passion and commitment that have gone into what is now producing milk for 50,000 Australians everyday
That’s 180 years of great stories waiting to be told. And I knew from my interactions with our friends and neighbours that the community wanted to hear those stories.
They just needed the right vehicle. So Art4Agriculture was conceived and Art4Agriculuture has its own entire wardrobe of hats.
But people keep telling me there was still a gap missing, we need more farmers to share their stories to help provide the community with real farmers they can relate to.
Writing a blog is indeed a great way to open the door to our farms, share our ups and downs, the frustrations and challenges, the passion and commitment but most of all show the community that the faith they have in Australian farm produce is warranted.
I am writing this blog to join other inspiring farmers who are opening thier farmgates and help inspire other farming men and women to share their stories. To help show them the community does love farmers, that they do want to hear our stories but they maybe a bit concerned about modern farming practices and whether the way we farm today fits into their rural idyll.
Lets not forget farmers are people and not all people are perfect but there is a whole nation of Australian farmers who get up everyday and say “today I want to move one step closer to being being a perfect farmer”.
What is the definition of perfect farming? That’s the challenge – that’s the two way conversation I would like to have with my readers.
I will put this one out there as a definition this morning “We believe that responsible farming is not only about ‘doing the right thing’ but makes sense – for our animals, our landscape, our people and our communities”.
So lets start the conversation I invite my readers to write me a mission statement for their “perfect” farm
