Well the last 4 weeks has been ‘interesting’, a scary word!
Shalumar with the July rainfall was quite saturated, with water oozing out everywhere.
Then came 120mm of rain in about 24 hours at the beginning of August! We awoke to no power, it went off at midnight.
A reccie out and about showed a smashed tree on the 11,000 volt powerline that crosses the edge of Shalumar: this time our tree!
A call to Ausgrid alerted them to where the problem was. Fortunately the tree gracefully flopped on the centre of the catenary between the poles, grounding them. Ausgrid were fantastic, deft use of their chainsaw saw the wires bounce back up to normal, power restored after 16 hours.
We had dragged out the generator, got it going after a lot of fiddling: it had decided its oil level was low! We powered the fridge, our satellite receiver, the modem; and it even worked our coffee machine: just! So this meant we had internet, knew what was happening, and were caffeinated.
Our cows are calving which is having its ups and downs. The first birth was twins: but they must have been at least an hour apart. So Mum half licked calf 1, went off to have calf 2, and forgot about calf 1 completely. We found calf 2 full licked and cleaned up, and a few hours later found calf 1 parked on the other side of the paddock. Mum was adamant calf 1 was not hers. In the yard bails we got her to feed calf 1 daily for three days, but she would just not accept the calf in the paddock. So calf 1 has been adopted out for hand-raising. This is not necessarily a bad thing as we were not sure the Mum had enough milk for two.
So onward and upward, as of Wednesday 13 calves on the ground.
On the Extra Virgin Olive Oil front: we have just entered the Australian International Olive Oil Awards. Last time we won a silver award, which was really pleasing. We are also entering the Hunter Olive Show: where in the past we have won Best Oil of Show.
We have high hopes for this year. Shalumar is fairly unique in the Hunter Valley because we have our own processing mill. Everything is done on farm. We can pick the olives when the tree’s fruit is ripe. We hand pick each tree with pneumatic harvesting rakes tree by tree. Almost all other groves use a big tree shaker machine (prone to bogging!) which has to do a whole grove in one go for cost reasons.
So we have plenty of Extra Virgin Olive Oil available, send us an email on shalumar01@gmail.com when you are ready to order/reorder.
Regards
Alan and Jocelyn
0419255949