looking down on our farm and shop from our berry patch. Scamander river is in the distance

Last week say the 5th May we picked the last of the apples. These were mainly ‘granny Smith’ and ‘sundowners’. But our main activity now is cleaning up the paddocks and getting things tidied away before winter overtakes us. We have had a good year but have been rather busy just keeping things ticking along that maintenance has gotten out of hand.

The clean-up team from left to right: Brady Young a new resindent from St. Helens,Guhyun from Korea and our permanent hand Lisa Marland.	Agfest on the 3rd of May, a wet and muddy day but the weather did get better as the day progressed.
The procession of old tractors was a highlight.	motor and motherboard damaged, pictures is psu and fax card
Lightening damage meant a complete rebuild of several computers and some damaged items off to tip	I managed a trip to Sydney to see mum and family. A rather special time as it wasn't that long ago that Ann and I went to Barby's birthday. Pictured seated is Jean Elliot and old familyl friend. Jean was celebrating her 94th birthday. She's amazingly well -well it was a quality day and I think we all enjoyed ourselves.
Glovelly – my old stamping ground. Family live near hear so all enjoyed ourselves inspite of the strong seas and overcast weather.	Guhyen's sister Guseul and her friend Haesun came to visit us from Korea. A very sociable visit.

John and Wendy often take up the job of looking after animals whose parents have been killed in road accidents. Womby is just one such example. Last year they brought up a baby wallaby.

The animal is well at home and often sleeps with them. But gradually as it gets older it spends more time in the bush and we were told eventually it will leave her minders altogether.

ann with baby

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Smiling Customers from a PYO experience

It has been a great year for strawberries. We have had Strawberries almost continuously since Christmas. The extra work we did last year side dressing the rows with Soil First compost have certainly yielded good results. The dry and hot weather undoubtedly contributed to these good results. So good was our production that we did offer PYO strawberries for a couple of weeks. Even then it was touch and go as to whether we would get rid of all of them. I really think everyone got sick of them as they were available everywhere at ever decreasing prices. But that is one of the woes of farming- but obviously a much better alternative than not being in production.

Australia Day on the 26th January. We were invited to the Break O’Day Celebrations for Australia Day. What a nice day it was too. It was great to see members of our community honored. Apparently this is also the Year of the Farmer and the new major Sarah Schmerl wanted to change the nature of the celebrations. Other farmers were invited including my friends Geoff and Jenny Wells from the Sterling Heights vineyard who were at the table next to us.

Geoff and Jenny Wells

We kept our display rather low keyed as I hadn’t expected such a turn out. Tara and Ged Nicholsen from  Pygenana Meats put on a sausage sizzle for which we supplied the chutneys. Actually we only supplied Kausaundi and our Worsestershire Sauce. Most people took the Kausaundi which was better displayed and loved it.

Aimee and Pete came down the night before arriving quite late so my time with them didn’t really start until I got back from the ceremonies. Can’t remember all that we did but one of the highlites was a visit to Picanniny to visit Klaus and Andy and friends.

Aimee , Mac and Klaus

Always fun seeing them. Most of the weekend was spent relaxing and enjoying ‘quality time’. Not so sure of this photo of Pete though – ( he looks exhausted)

Pete

Funny weather continues. The world should wake up that climate change is on our doorstep. Lots of rain and little sun. Very difficult to grow good fruit under these conditions. Brown rot pops it’s head up on apricots and other stonefruit if a strict fungicide program is not maintained.

But that’s not the purpose of this post. What we at Eureka Farm want to say now is

I say seized as there has never been any attempt to get a detailed assessment as to the value of the assets handed over nor as there ever been any detailed discussions as to what compensation would be paid to the council. A very murky story indeed and one which I am sure citizens of this community now are regretting. I try to get an open enquiry at the time but no one seemed particularly interested in what I foresaw as a great injustice. See letter

The sweetener which convinced locals that this wouldn’t be a bad deal was that the mud which often came through the line probably as a result of chlorination gave the locals the jitters. That this body would fix things up seemed like a good thing. Never did they realise that the downside was going to be quick and substantial increases to their water bills and less than no improvement to the water quality in what must be at least two years.

Now that I have attracted your attention lets go to that meeting that the residents of Scamander organised about two weeks ago. Mr. Barry Cash CEO of Ben Lomond Water , his Corporate Secretary Mrs. Carrolyn Pillans, and two engineers one by the name of Mr. Glen Rowlands and the other one who didn’t say a thing anyhow and therefore can remain nameless.

So Mr. Cash comes with a rather flash team to mesmerise us with all the good work that Ben Lomond Water has been doing in this part of the state whilst never really conceding what a hash they have made of creating a reasonable drinking water for local residents.

It seems strange that after taking over the system bequeathed by the local council that we should be on a long term full scale boil water alert. It even seems stranger to me that all residents were not personally notified. After all such a situation only occurred on a few occasions when the water system was run by our council. The catchment area for Scamander water comes from a pristine wilderness about as ‘Green’ as Tasmania can get except for the last kilometre or so where uncontrolled grazing occurs. Water treatment problems generally occur only after heavy rains when turbidity problems made chlorination difficult to control. High e-coli counts and other measures of water pollution are mainly a problem due to the local grazing situation just mentioned and during low flow periods which are generally a feature of the mid-summer dry conditions.

Mr. Case prefaced his presentation about the need to have a good image in the water quality stakes so that tourism would continue to flourish on the East Coast. Sleek wording was very much a feature of his talk-show. But the reality of the situation is that apparently now that we are getting a new membrane filtration system we are very much the guinea pigs of the state and may have to keep the boil water alert going for several months regardless of the water quality delivered until such time as the bureaucrats say that it has passed the necessary evaluation period. This talkfest by Mr. Cash was particularly painful when one remembers that in June 2010 he announced that this plant would be built and commissioned within a couple of months.Scamander Water Treatment Plant

The question of whether slime removal may or may not be removed as chlorination is still a post membrane treatment requirement still hasn’t been addressed. Mr. Case however pointed out that maybe more pretreatment may be required such as alum additions to make the system work.  Mr. Case fobbed off any detailed answers to questions and by time the meeting closed many of the locals were disgusted.

Many people were murmuring that they shouldn’t have to pay for for undrinkable water that continues beyond a very reasonable time. I can only hope that Mr. Case becomes a little less condescending in his approach to customers in the future and us in particular.

Scamander residents don’t take lightly to being treated as dumb to the point that they probably wouldn’t even be eligible to read the new smart meters that Mr. Case reckons will improve the efficiency of their service.

I will probably modify this post but wanted to get something on the net for public viewing. I would appreciate your thoughts on this very important local issue.

Yes we are picking lots of raspberries.

We have 6 pickers now besides our permanent girl Lisa. Two are from France, one from Sweden, one from Taiwan and two from Japan. Everyone seems to be getting along well and that makes a real difference.

The first flush of strawberries has just about been finished but all the good work we put into improving the soil seems to have paid off. The quality of the strawberries has been great this year with little disease. 

Some raspberry rows severely damaged by what we suspect is phythophera but still lots of good looking raspberries still coming on the cains that didn’t die. Also regrowth is good in many place and if we can suppress the phythophera for next year production will go up enormously.

The weather has been atrocious this year with lots of drizzly days and not much sun. Surprisingly though the fruit seems to be at least one week ahead.