By the time you get to read this piece hopefully we will have had some rain – although at the time of writing it does seem unlikely.

Where I live we haven’t had any substantial rain fall since January which has led to an official drought declaration.

The danger is of course that if we don’t get a decent amount of rain soon, while there is still warmth in the soil, winter will be here and the grass will not recover sufficiently for winter feeding of our stock.

Like most of you, my property is completely parched with no grass growth whatsoever. Being lifestyle people we are faced with the same challenges – even if they are on a smaller scale – as our friends and neighbours on large farms. The biggest of course is finding enough to feed hungry animals.

I have been lucky enough to be able to send my horses to be cared for elsewhere for the moment and currently only have three 3 year old steers and a dozen sheep on my block.

They are hungry and they do blame me. I know this because they follow me around the property with lots of mooing and baaing – and I feel terribly guilty even though I know I am doing my best.

To keep their condition on I am feeding out my winter hay to the steers that now wait by the gate for me each morning – ready to remind me I am responsible for their well being.  I have started the sheep on some formulated nutritional pellets each morning. They have only ever been fed grass so they were very wary of this strange new food at first. 

But being sheep, once one had tried them, the others followed and now they’re also waiting by the gate each morning.

In a previous diary I spoke about my grey teal ducks that were born and bred on our pond.  I have always thrown them a handful of laying pellets when I feed the hens but there must be a shortage of natural duck food too thanks to the drought. 

There are now about forty or fifty ducks of all breeds queuing each morning at the pond for breakfast.

Hopefully we will get some rain shortly and get back to the daily routine on our blocks.

One of our readers has taken me to task about how I dispose of the copious amounts of leaves I get from our London Plane trees.

Dear Editor,

Brian Neben wrote an article in the March 2010 edition of Rural Living titled “The good, the bad, and the dry” about his London Plane trees and their leaf drop.

 I do have to question what world Mr Neben is living on. The burning of fallen leaves from deciduous trees went out of practise on environmental grounds years ago. I do understand the problems of having the quantity of leaves he has to deal with but if he is already picking up the leaves to put them in a pile for burning why does he not put them into simple basic bins of wirenetting and shadecloth/windbreak material. 

When the bin(s) are full cover them with cardboard or old carpet and let them rot down to form the most magic leaf mulch ready for use by the next summer.

 To pollute the atmosphere with smoke is not on in this day and age when alternatives to burning are available.

Yours sincerely, Hueline Massey

As you can see from the photos – I do indeed already compost and mulch but I have far more leaves than I can dispose of in this manner. 

Brian in the midst of composting part of the fallen leaves at his block.

Obviously at the moment I certainly wouldn’t attempt to burn my leaves as everything is far too dry but under normal circumstances it seems to be my only solution. 

While I agree we must do everything we can to not cause pollution, most of us still have wood burners and therefore are adding smoke so have never considered my occasional leaf burn to be a big issue.

However if any readers can offer me some suggestions that will help me deal with the sheer volume of leaves I’m dealing with I would be more than happy to try them.  Thanks Hueline for your letter and please rest assured I do try to be as protective of our atmosphere as I can be.