Just between you and me - I was super brave!
Just between you and me - I was super brave!
Letter from the farm October 2026
Hey there,
How are you? The farm is quickly drying off and showing the signs that summer weather won’t be following the calendar’s organised time frame. Green grass is turning yellow, dams are drying and hot winds are arriving.
October feels like the calm before the storm for our farming operation, the moment to take a breath before busy becomes supercharged. In between all that I stepped outside my comfort zone for a worthy cause.
November is our main joining and shearing, also the ideal time to be making hay and begin harvesting our crops. That means that October has been all about getting our ducks in a row so that when it is ‘go’ time; we are good to go non-stop until the job is done.
To be organised for joining the simple step is to identify our best performing ewes and join them to our best rams. In reality we first need to forward plan our next few years.
What do we want to achieve in the next 5 years? How much revenue do we want to earn? What will the cashflow look like? Then reverse engineer that ideal outcome into how many sheep we will need to sell each year to achieve that.
(Don’t get me started on the brain fry of working out how many ewe lambs to keep to replace aging ewes, how many to keep to naturally grow our stock levels and still have enough lambs to sell to keep the required cashflow!).
Do you do that too? What do you want to achieve in the next 5 years? It is a new skill set that I have had to learn coming from a wage earning career in nursing to running our own business.
While we always had personal goals to work towards, ours are now personal and business in one. A bucket list family holiday needs to be reversed engineered just as much as revenue dreams when you are the owner/operators!
Whilst that planning is done with spreadsheets and a couple of strong coffees, out in the paddock our teaser rams were put with the ewes to prepare them for joining.
Do you remember me telling you about trailing that last year? Teaser rams are not fertile (having had a vasectomy by the vet) but stimulate a powerful hormonal response triggering the ewes to begin cycling. This means that when the fertile rams are introduced, the ewes are in their peek fertility window.
I am happy to say it worked beyond our expectations last year and we are definitely doing it again this year!
Avalon Farmstay has had lots of beautiful visitors and with the heat of summer well on it’s way the kids have tested out the pool. They assure us it is perfect for swimming in!
We had a local photographer come and take photos of The House and The Homestead not long ago. I honestly hate taking photos – it drains the life out of me and I cannot wait to update our website with good quality photos. Look out, they will also be working hard over on social media too!
The vege garden is growing well, we have asparagus coming out our ears and happily sharing bunches with school teachers, family and any friends that will take it!
In wellbeing terms the garden is on the polar end to photography! What I lose in the effort to try and take nice photos is more than returned when I tend to the garden.
We also have a broody chook and I have been sharing daily updates on social media stories of how we are progressing. Do you know what a broody chook is?
Also called a ‘clucky hen’ it means that her maternal instincts have kicked in and she will sit on a clutch of eggs day and night until they hatch. Hot tip: place an X on the fertile eggs, sometimes other chooks add their fresh eggs to the clutch later on!
I will be really honest here – I got a little bit bored with sharing the same thing every day and took a little break. How many different ways can you show a chook sitting on eggs, a poddy lamb drinking his bottle and me emptying the scraps onto the compost pile?
I think you are probably better at content creation and photography than me. Feel free to share your knowledge or ideas that could help me, I will gladly try your suggestions if I can make it work!
Yesterday our family supported our shearer Dane and his partner Steph at the annual Raising Hope with Steph Charity Race Day at Murrumbidgee Turf Club. Dane asked me if I would say a few words and share our story of how breast cancer has touched our family.
Just between you and me – I was super brave! I would much rather sit down quietly and write my letter to you than stand up and speak into a microphone!
When something is important to you, you find a way to do it – regardless of how uncomfortable it is! Just like you, I can do it too!
Wish us luck as the workload of November turns our busy into super charged, and I hope you have a good month ahead.
If you haven’t thought about your dreams for the next 5 years – here is your invitation. I would love to know what those dreams look like for you.
Until my next letter, sending my love from the farm,
Em.
If you're thinking of coming and visiting us, feel free to explore more via our webiste.
Avalon Farmstay 1825 Bullenbong Rd, The Rock NSW, Australia 0438 225 394
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