Victoria is renowned for having variable and sometimes extreme weather, and this week we saw just how bad it can get!
Cold, wet and super windy would be an accurate description.
The portable fencing was blown over each night this week, which has meant that I’ve needed to fix the fence each day.
On Tuesday I bought a couple of bags of food for the ducks, but with extremely windy weather on Tuesday night the top of the food bin got blown off (I didn’t think that was possible – but it was very windy in Moorooduc)!
Subsequently the food got wet, and I had to feed the topmost food to the ducks as quickly as I could. Not ideal – but that’s farming life! I’ve since placed a paver on top of the bin and that’s done a good job keeping the lid on.
I’ve got a large outdoor umbrella in the paddock for the ducks, and this got blown over multiple times while I was feeding the ducks. I thought it was a good idea to provide a little bit more cover for the ducks (against predators and the wind). In this weather though, it might cause more harm than good so I’ve removed it.
The ducks are fine in this sort of weather. In fact, part of me suspects that they actually enjoy the appalling weather conditions. With their waterproof feathers and excited quacking, they will happily go about their daily routine in bad weather. The cold and wet doesn’t bother them, but the wind is the only factor that they don’t enjoy. The ducks have access to their coop, so if the weather is abhorrent, they can head inside.
Unfortunately Rach’s plants didn’t fare quite so well. The sunflowers got severely damaged, with the stalks breaking off at the base of the plant. Located at the end of a row, the sunflowers bore the brunt of the wind inside the greenhouse and sadly they didn’t make it. It’s disappointing putting such beautiful flowers in the compost pile.
The corn fared well and will soon be harvested, while Mabel removed the tomato plants. Garlic is being planted at the moment, and they were completely unaffected. Rach might write a blog post on the garlic program and Farmer Incubator in the not too distant future. For now, let’s just hope that this Autumn weather relaxes a little bit – we’re not even in Winter for goodness sake!
