A dry looking farm

This morning we had a beautiful rich looking sunrise. It looked like the sky was on fire! Thank goodness it wasn't, as we wouldn't have the water to fight any fires at the moment, being in the middle a drought.

The whole of the North Island has now been declared a drought area, and they are now looking at including the West Coast of the South Island, which has traditionally always been known as a very wet area of the South Island. Murchison isn't far from the West Coast - in fact we are known as Northern Buller/West Coast.

I thought I would go up to the highest peak on our farm, and take an overall photo of the farm. As you can see, we are dry, although the bits that have that wee tinge of green in the paddocks have yet to be grazed.

The good news for us, is that we have a heavy rain watch out for our area. Hopefully this will eventuate on Sunday. It will mean the difference of staying on our existing three milkings every two days, to going onto once a day milking.

Regardless of whether it rains or not, tomorrow we are drying off a further 20 cows from the milking herd. These cows, along with the 20 that we have already dried off, will now be on a permanent holiday until they calve from August onwards.