This hen is teaching her eight new chickens to forage in the leaf litter beneath the cypress tree that shelters the hen house.

The chickens are six days old; they are busy imitating her, scratching about for interesting morsels and have already learned to come when she calls. Our hens are an Australorp / Plymouth Rock cross breed and the rooster is a Barnevelder, so the chickens are quite an interesting mix of colours and patterns. With thunderstorms about we’ve been keeping an eye on the sky ready to muster these little bundles of fluff into their covered pen to protect them from the chilling rain.

We watched this thunderstorm approaching and settled in on the veranda to enjoy the show. On farm, we have to collect our own house and stock water, in tanks and dams, and the land could always use a drink, so a storm is most welcome. We could hear the distinctive roar of hail approaching, with a clap of thunder, the temperature fell and so did the marble sized hail.

The vehicles were undercover and the stock had plenty of timbered areas in the paddocks to shelter so we sat back and watched as it passed in a narrow band across the farm.   On a drive around afterwards to check the farm, we found that the storm hadn’t made it to the boundary gate but had delivered water to all the dams now full or overflowing. The house tanks, too, had been filled to overflowing. Wonderful! A most beneficial 20mls!

The rain late last May really set this Peach Heath (Lissanthe strigose) up to put on a spectacular spring show

Spring is certainly in the air! The scents of sun warmed native Black Cypress (Callitris endlicheri) and the massed blossoms of the Daphne Heath (Brachyloma daphnoides) and Peach Heath (Lissanthe strigose – pictured here) made working in the bush, yesterday, a real treat. One of our regular jobs is to inspect fences and our bush tracks on the property for fallen branches and trees. It’s always great to be out in the bush, and, as the seasons unfold, there is always something new to catch the eye.

The most magical things can be right at your feet. In a moist, sheltered spot in the paddock, these blue/grey lichens with 5 - 8mm high, red fruiting bodies (Cladonia floerkeana?) were the eye catching feature of a fascinating, diverse community of mosses and lichens on a yellow box log.

Superfine merino lambs frolic in native grass gilded by the morning sun. Responding to climate change, we now lamb in the autumn. The pregnant ewes grow the lamb while feed is plentiful in the summer and give birth in autumn. The lambs keep toasty with warm milk to full them up and a woolly mum to snuggle against. They grow quickly and so do their natural lambs  wool "doonas". By the time they are ready to wean the spring grasses have appeared.

This Wombat was coming to drink from its watering hole as we came home from clearing our mailbox. They are usually quite shy but this one ignored us as we stood quietly and watched it drink its fill before scampering of into the Black Cypress forest to continue its evening rounds. This enterprising Wombat found a patch of damp clay in the gutter beside our road, dug there and drank from the water that seeped into the hole. Other creatures also use the water hole, benefiting from the wombat’s work of regularly enlarging and cleaning out its water hole.

In dry times, a handy source of water saves this wombat, and its short legs, a long walk to the nearest dam. Wombats are Australian marsupials. They have a pouch for their young, live in a burrow, and have powerful legs and claws for digging. They usually feed at night and can be quite a traffic hazard on the roads.