We've finally had a few good days for spraying. Very little wind, and very little rain, so I have been able to get out there and get stuck into it. So much so that I have actually finished all my broadleaf weed spraying - I'm finally catching up a little bit. I did notice, though, that a few of the late barley crops were a little nitrogen deficient. I did run out of UAN (the nitrogen fertilizer that is in liquid form) a few weeks back, so I haven't been able to keep the fertilizer flowing, and in fact the whole state of South Australia had run out, so we were in a bit of a pickle. It's all good now though, we had a load delivered here on farm yesterday. We have a bulk UAN tank set up and a B-double can just come in and unload into the tank.
Having said that, I haven't been able to start the UAN spraying again because we started our September shearing today. Our shed is a two stand shearing shed - that means it has two shearing plants the drive the shearers hand pieces, so basically we can have two shearers shearing at the same time. The shearers hand piece has a comb and a cutter attached to it. The comb combs through the sheep's wool as the cutter moves across the combs teeth and cuts the wool as it moves backward and forwards. After the fleece has been shorn off, and the sheep is out the door, the wool is thrown up onto the wool table for sorting. From there it goes into a wool press and pressed into bales.
This shearing we have about 700 big sheep to do, that is ewes, wethers and hoggets. Also about 500 lambs and 10 Rams. So I think we'll be looking at about 1 full week of shearing, that's provided the woolly sheep dont get rained on - as sheep cant be shorn if they have wet wool.
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