Not a great start

Tomorrow we were supposed to head north 100km to the block we share farm to get started on our big wheat harvest for 2011. We've cut the Canola and picked up some of it, and yesterday the Header tried 30acres of wheat here at home in the front paddock, our 3 Muddy Girls and Muddy Hubby were pretty excited, even though the wheat was too green and we had to knock off. Anyway it's all over for the minute as it's raining. This does definitely not make for a very happy Muddy Hubby and it makes for a big day of entertaining 3 Muddy Girls inside.

This morning it wasn't too bad, we went and shifted sheep, stopping at the local silos on the way to get a sample of wheat tested, and then on the rain came as we were headed home. VERY unhappy farmers around I can tell you and everyone is a little bit on edge due to last year's big rains and looooong drawn out harvest.

The Graincorp Sample Stand through the rain

On the bright side, being stuck inside this afternoon has meant some productivity in the kitchen, cooking up some harvest meals to send north, and some muffins and cupcakes to stockpile for the duration of harvest. I think Muddy Hubby has also made some headway on reading this week's Land Newspaper (his bible).

Harvest meals are a challenge to cook, Muddy Hubby and the boys head north to a block where they sleep in a caravan, or in Muddy Hubby's case he sleeps in the road train, they use a generator to run a microwave to heat up meals, they have a TINY gas run fridge, so limited cold storage and a couple of hot plates and saucepans. Given they're normally up there a few weeks there's a few meal runs up and back for supplies etc. Today I cooked up rissoles, mashed potato and veggies, so at least some of the time they're getting veggies. Muddy Hubby has put a special request in for lasagna, so that will be this week's cooking task. At least the girls enjoy cooking, and are happy if we're inside cooking for a small part of the day, or in the case of today all afternoon as it rains down on our harvest plans! If I was a church going kind of person I'd be praying right now for the rain to go away!! Not sure that we'd cope with another wet harvest year like last year.

Rissoles and Veggies

Muddy Girl 2, fun with cupcakes

Cupcakes in our oven