Snow Gum Farm in Yass, New South Wales | Agricultural cooperative

Snow Gum Farm

Locality: Yass, New South Wales

Phone: +61 404 496 074

Address: 401 Black Range Road 2582 Yass, NSW, Australia

Website: https://snowgumfarm.com.au

Likes: 684

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25.01.2022 Snow Gum Farms first ever twins. A set of bull calves. :)

25.01.2022 Another beautiful day outside today. Mixed results with the flock today though, we ended up having to put down the ewe with the pubic tendon failure. We had another lamb born this afternoon that looks to be doing well. The ewe with the prolapse recovered this morning just before the vet was due to come out which was a bit of a relief. She was very cranky with me for locking her in the yard and i think this is because she was ready to lamb. Late this afternoon she had a large... single lamb with no complications. We will have to monitor how she goes as the recommendations is not to keep any ewe that prolapses once, and not to keep their lambs. We didnt get any planting done today as we where too busy looking after livestock. I am a bit worried that the steers are going to be a bit small this year, they dont look very big in the yards. :( Not much we can do about this due to the drought conditions and low quality feed during their growth. :( On the flip side the piggies are looking huge compared to the previous two breeds we used. The Tamworth crosses seem to be fantastic "dooers" on the grasses we have here in the house yard. They also preferred to be sleep out in the open rather than in their nice shelter most of the time. The cows and pigs head off for processing tomorrow so another big day, hopefully every one gets on the trailer properly tomorrow morning.

24.01.2022 Loads of pictures taken yesterday afternoon after the 57mm of rain. (we had another 6mm after the photo's were taken) We all took a very long walk around the front half of the farm and have taken as many pics as possible. I have add captions to the more interesting ones. :) Please feel free to comment or ask questions. :)

24.01.2022 We still have a little bit of pork left for September. :) Carrie will be sending out a brief newsletter and the order form soon. If you havent already signed up please do so via the link in the left hand menu. :)

24.01.2022 Two new additions to the herd.

23.01.2022 Well, today was bit more of an adventure than we had planned for. A broken down cool-room that was thankfully fixed on the spot by Kilbys Heating and Cooling in Cowra. Three thunderstorms, one so severe between Cowra and Canowindra that I had to pull off the road for half an hour, but now safe and sound back on the farm. ... I think its time for a "wine and chill" evening after all that..... Looking forward to catching up with everyone over the weekend. :)

22.01.2022 Lambing for 2020 has officially started. A set of twins that are looking to be going very well. Photos later today. :)

22.01.2022 The Rhode Island Red and Muscovy breeding program is going well. We will start to have some excess over the next month or so, please message us if there is any interest. :) We will also get back into breeding mixed breeds for eggs over the next couple of months as well. As much as we love the RIR girls, it seems there is more interest in slightly cheaper mixed breed layers. :) We had loads of success breeding those in the past, that is, until the fox wiped out the last breeding group. :(

22.01.2022 One of our amazing friends of the farm has given us 20 Lavender cuttings. These will make fantastic bee habitat. :)

22.01.2022 It is trying so hard to snow atm. We have almost made it with the sleet getting pretty large a few times this morning. It was not fun rewiring the pig pen this morning after the little/big guys managed to bust out again looking for breakfast. I kinda slept in a bit seeing as Carrie has taken the boys to their grandparents for a quick visit while things are fairly stable on the Covid front around here.... The boys havent seen their grandparents since Xmas so its great that they get a quick visit. :)

21.01.2022 Two more ducklings have hatched overnight with one more egg looking promising. We are now up to 5 hatched, our best so far. The first three seem to be thriving so hopefully the next two will also do well.

21.01.2022 A bit of a scare this morning. At the 6am check i could not find one of the lambs anywhere. After looking around for 30 mins i gave up and very angrily assumed a fox had taken one of them. Incredibly frustrated as they where near the house, lights on at the shed, Foxlights in place, and a supposed FLERD guardian on duty, i trudged back to the house. ... At around 8am i did another check and fox patrol and saw a ball of white in among the pine tree cuttings that we used to create a hedge. Well.... smart mum must have hidden one of the lambs deep in the hedge where i couldnt see it. The hedge formed a perfect hiding spot and wind break. :)

21.01.2022 Here are some pictures from around the main watershed we are currently working on. Worth noting that this is only after 39.5mm of rain, since them we have had another 60 and rising. The first shot is of an area we still need to work on, but are happy that there has been no further erosion with this rain. We have managed to spread the flow across, and slow the speed here with Carries waddle. The long term plan is to step down the hill with at least another 4 or so waddles. ...This way we can spread the overflow further across the hill to reduce the damage it does coming into the creek. It is a real pain that the previous owners built this overflow the way they did. We are pretty excited that our small leaky weirs have all held, and havent caused more erosion due to the fast flows. We now have some really good evidence on what we might need to do in such high flow rain events like we are having right now. Lots more work to do, but for the most part we are on the right track.

20.01.2022 What do you do when its a crappy wet day and everything is too wet on the farm? You go for a drive and look at land that you wish you can afford. :D We spent the morning out and about having a look at some acreage but mostly just going for a drive on the rural roads we dont get to see very often.

20.01.2022 Some exciting news coming soon. :D

20.01.2022 We have one half, or two quarters of Pork left. This is the last of our meat not already ordered for the year! Orders close off on Friday. :)

19.01.2022 Today didnt go quite to plan. :( We had hope to bring 5 or 6 of the young steers and heifers back to the home farm but two of them just wouldnt get on the trailer. No matter what we did we couldnt get the little buggers to move so with three on and time running out to pick up the boys we decided to let the others back out with the main herd. We did have a very, very happy bull though as he was dropped back with all his girls for the first time in about 6 months. ;)... The stock yard paddock was very boggy on the agistment property so i had to be very careful getting the trailer up to the yards. Unfortunately in my many attempts to line up with the ramp, the bolts for the sliding trailer gate ended up somewhere out in the paddock. :( Massive fail on my behalf as i had taken it out when i thought things where already lined up. Might need a metal detector to find it :( To top things off, we now have a ewe with a pre-pubic tendon rupture, after talking with the vet, it looks like we might have to put her down tomorrow. :( Tomorrow is looking like a stunning day to be out about though, so hopefully a nice start to the morning for Blakes soccer and then the rest of the day outside planting lots of things on the farm.

19.01.2022 Make that 89.5mm now.....

19.01.2022 Carries Diggers Club order arrived today, we have a bunch of different Oak varieties, berries and artichokes all to plant. Could be a very busy weekend coming up. :D

18.01.2022 And that is a wrap for our produce weekends for the year. We ended up with fantastic weather this time around and we love the chance to catch up with everyone. Another huge thank you to everyone that has supported us this year, whether that be by purchasing from us through to visiting the farm and even hitting that like button. :)... We truly love what we do, and we cant continue to grow without everyone's amazing support. Next year promises to be an interesting one, and a challenging one. Hopefully 2021 is a bit nicer to everyone and on the farm front hopefully an exciting year ahead with lots of new friends. Being home with Luka for the year will give us lots of time (i hope) to start planning our next "layers" here on the farm. We will start taking a serious look into how we can make meat chickens, eggs, and possibly even breeding our own pigs work. :)

18.01.2022 It seems like the Ducklings like Linkin Park. They are well and truly loving loud music. :o

18.01.2022 Just the one quarter of pork left. Orders close Friday. :D

18.01.2022 Here is a perfect example of why we love the KiwiTech Electric fence system. Normally this would be a 100 or so meter run (can go out to 600m) of fence but for the next three days we just need it to protect a section of about 20m with newly planted trees. We are giving the FLERD lane-way access to access some really nice feed for the next three days. We want to make sure that the Salt-bush and Tree Lucerne here are well protected. :)

17.01.2022 Most of todays haul from the local nursery. 40 mixed native varieties to add to our bee feed zones. The bee feeders are Wattles and Acacias and we also have 5 River Redgums to go into one of our wet zones. We also grabbed 9 Kurrajong Trees. Probably my favourite tree on the planet. :)

17.01.2022 The exciting news is - I will be taking 12 months leave from work next year to spend more time with Luka before he starts school. This will also mean Blake gets to spend more time at home as he can catch the bus to school each day. I am very excited and very privileged to have such a wonderful partner in Carrie, helping to make this happen. As Luka is the little farm boy, we are also hoping he will want to spend more time outside doing farm stuff. It will be a wonderful chance to spend that bit more time with the boys before they get older.

17.01.2022 We are now completely sold out for the year. Thank you to everyone who has ordered from us and become friends of Snow Gum Farm. :D

17.01.2022 The older duckling seems to have taken on the carer/supervisor role. :) I was a bit worried that he or she was being way too aggressive when we first added the little ones but they have settled really nicely. The older duckling is well and truly attached to Luka.

16.01.2022 Not a fun morning to move the FLERD and Horse into their next rotation paddocks. We usually need the sledge hammer to knock the earthing posts in, either the ground is soft or i am suddenly really strong because it was a simple push in. :D We are sitting in the mid 90s now, with how radar is looking we will easily crack the 100mm mark.

16.01.2022 These little guys are growing fast. We also put two dozen Rhode Island Red eggs into the incubator.

16.01.2022 Always fun getting hailed on when working out in the paddock. :p

15.01.2022 The little quackers had their first trip outside today. Carrie had them out in the garden with her for most of the afternoon. Amusingly enough the minute they heard my voice or saw me they came a running as fast as their little legs could carry them. ... Guess they know who feeds them and cleans them out each day. :D The little dudes are absolutely exhausted. Hardly heard a peep out of them so far this evening.

15.01.2022 DOH! Just got home and the house is so hot the incubators are reading 38.8c instead of the 37.5 and 37.2c they should be. Its so hot outside that the temp gauge is saying its 37.8c in full sun. :o ... Really hoping that the batch that have just started pipping internally (with hatch day tomorrow), make it out ok after being too hot. :(

15.01.2022 Carrie is working on the final Hogget invoices tonight. If you haven't received yours by tomorrow night, please let us know. We are pretty excited that the Hogget weights are our highest ever. ... We are at double the initial estimates for this year. We are seeing a combination of a fantastic growing season, improved pasture qualities through regen ag and improvements in our breeding that have really started to how through with better weights. Thanks to the awesome team at Southern Harvest, we will also be able to use power from their cool-room container at Canberra City Farm. This means no noisy generator running on our mobile cool-room upsetting the peace and quiet at CCF. :) As always, pick and farm tours on the Saturday for customers, and pick up from CCF on Sunday between 10am and 2.00pm :)

14.01.2022 It was all go here on the farm today, even the piggies had lots of fun splashing around in the mud. It ended up being a stunning day and the perfect start to our holidays. We need to get the lane way in the house yard complete by the weekend so we can move the pigs through to the stock yard. Carrie and I got stuck into the pine trees cutting them right back, away from both the fence and the side facing towards the house.... It is amazing how much more light we are getting into the house yard now. The mulberry and pink lady apple trees will especially like having some room to grow again. Eventually the fire hazard pine trees will be cut down and replaced. Carrie has had the great idea of putting some fast growing Oaks on the outside of the house yard so we will have a wind break to replace these horrible pines. I also started cutting down the gum tree suckers in the Olive paddock. They have grown much larger than we wanted but will provide some great firewood in a year or two once they have dried out. I was very excited to do my very first wedge cuts to drop some trees that where leaning towards the fence. I managed to get them to fall perfectly back up the hill instead. :D Hopefully tomorrow we will get the rest of the pine branches cut up and moved out of the house yard so we can complete the lane way.

13.01.2022 Getting ready to head off with the Hoggets this morning. We were a tad worried about sizes coming out of the drought but they are looking really good. We should have weights etc back by mid week, and Carrie will send out the final invoices when these come in. :)... Looking forward to catching up with everyone next week. There might be a slight change in location were we park at CCF next Sunday.

13.01.2022 Thank you to everyone who came out today to pick up their Beef and Pork. Mother Nature put on the perfect spring day for farm visits. :) It was really busy again today and having soccer for Blake this morning didnt help. :D ... Blake even had his best game of soccer so far and really "kick started" a fantastic day!

12.01.2022 A mix of photos we took on a walk around the farm last weekend. :)

12.01.2022 After 104mm of rain there is now a lot more water in the system than there was yesterday. Unfortunately there has been a bit of erosion but we now have a better idea on that we need to do here. Some more waddles will definitely make a difference on the hillside, and building up the existing leaky weirs will help slow the flow. ... Check out photo 4 which is of a new spring that we havent seen before. We are on a bit of a standby with the agistment property as our dopey cows are currently on the wrong side of the creek. We may have to move them tomorrow but hopefully the rain has eased off enough and we can get them back across Wednesday.

12.01.2022 It looks like the heat spike in the incubator hasn't caused too much of a problem. Eight hatched out of twelve so far but one didn't make it. Pretty reasonable hatch success rate for ducks. We managed to get a fair bit done around the place even though it was a hot weekend. ... Carrie was finally able to get our first lot of Oak trees into one of the hill top lane-ways which is another step learned from our Natural Sequence Farming course. She was really surprised how good the soil was given its right on one of the Shale ridges we have been working so had to turn into soil with some depth. The piggles have moved into their next yard which is the one we planted out with a feed cover crop a few months back. They are quite the happy little dudes with loads of fresh feed. I surprised the FLERD a bit today as they are used to going out of their current paddock and across a lane-way to their next paddock but there is so much feed in the lane-way we want to give that a light graze. This meant we can skip a paddock in the rotation to rest it a bit longer. They where not sure what was going on when i didn't open up their next gate. :) We have also started the not so fun job of brush cutting the Saffron Thistle patches. We try and time it right to that we hit them just before they flower. This means they get to pull up all the nutrients from the deeper soil and break down as compost without spreading more seeds. Always a hot and unpleasant job in summer but well worth the effort.

11.01.2022 We had a bit of a disaster yesterday with the smallest duckling going missing. They where out in the garden with Carrie and she ducked down to help unload hay and in the time she was away the little one disappeared. We spent hours trying to find it but can only guess it was taken by a predator. :( This meant todays main project became turning an IBC Tank and its parts into a lightweight duckling pen and shelter. We are pretty happy with how it turned out and it means we can ...have the ducklings outside in this nice sunny weather in a safe pen. :) In keeping with our theme of mobility for any pen we use, this one is super light and slides easily. We also cleaned up the potting area near the house with Blake helping Carrie re-pot a bunch of the trees we just bought. I think they did over 30 with at least another 25 or so to go. We are aiming to grow them out over the summer and plant early Autumn next year.

10.01.2022 Happy ducklings after a fresh clean out. The non slip matting is working a treat. We have two sets of mats, wash and dry one out ready to go the next day. The little pooping machines need cleaning out each day and the rubber matting makes it easy. A quick hose off washes the poop straight off the matting making cleaning a really easy 5 minute job. ... These little guys also love their deeper water tray. :D

10.01.2022 Well the pigs knew this latest blast of hail/rain was coming. They bolted from their nest into their house just before it came down hard.

10.01.2022 Tomorrow is looking very warm for this time of year. For those popping out tomorrow to pick up and have a walk around, please remember to bring your hat and sunscreen. :D

10.01.2022 Happy as pigs in mud :)

09.01.2022 Our first Muscovy's are growing fast. Still not 100% sure, but we think we have 2 hens and 2 drakes. We have another 2 that are supposed to hatch any time now but so far they have been a bad buy from Wagga. We also have another 12 in the incubator from the wonderful Miriam who has been kind enough to give us eggs to incubate. These ones are looking good and due to hatch in another 2 weeks.

09.01.2022 Yay! Two dozen fertile Rhode Island Red eggs on the way. :D Hoping to raise up a batch for here on the farm, and have some to sell. :)

08.01.2022 The new bacon seeds are enjoying long grass for the very first time. And due to popular demand we decided to get four this time. :) Lots of content noises coming from them as they get started pigerating.

07.01.2022 Not the afternoon I had planned. Currently waiting for emergency repairs to the cool room. Looks like a gas leak. So waiting for repairs and re-gassing. Fortunately I found the issue before getting the meat on board......

05.01.2022 A quick video of the creek in full flow.

04.01.2022 Our friends at CCF have seedlings for sale. :)

04.01.2022 I forgot to post these last week. The big project Carrie and i wanted to get done was this internal pig proof lane-way in the house yard. This lane-way will serve a number of purposes. It will allow for free movement of the pigs between each large garden section, it also runs through to the stock yards which will hopefully allow us to get the pigs used to the loading ramp etc next time around. ... We had a lot of trouble getting the pigs loaded up last weekend. Previously we parked the trailer in their paddock and fed them in the trailer, this time around we tried something new which didnt go quite to plan..... The lane-way also gives us another way of getting the FLERD out of the front paddocks straight into the yards bypassing a whole paddock which should wil make it easier to bring them in when we need to. For those of you popping out to pick up in a few weeks we can show how this will all work. :)

03.01.2022 These guys seem to be doing a lot better than the last two tries. Very active and very attentative.

03.01.2022 Carrie, Blake, Luka and I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 2020 has been a tough one, yet it has been a very rewarding one here on the farm. We cant thank everyone of you that supports us enough! We love catching up with everyone throughout the year and we are looking forward to a huge 2021. ... We are really looking forward to 2021 where i get to spend 12 months here on the farm looking after Luka before he starts school in 2022 and being here for Blakey to catch the school bus each day. Looking forward to catching up with everyone throughout next year, may 2021 be a little nicer than 2020. :)

02.01.2022 That feeling when you knock off on a Friday and know you have three weeks of long service leave for Farm Therapy time. We are due to start lambing at any time now and its nice to be taking my usual lambing leave. This time around its even better as Carrie will have a weeks leave at the same time.

01.01.2022 Another crazy busy beef and pork weekend done. :D Again a massive thank you to everyone who supports us here on the farm. Its been a tough few years with the drought and its such a relief to be able to provide farm tours on a farm with lots of green this time. :D... These tour and pick up weekends are so rewarding where we can get the chance to chat and meet with so many friends of the farm in person. Our two ratbag boys love the chance to run around with new friends as well. Blake especially, was sad to see all the kids go home this weekend!