Fanny Lumsden and her Glorious Band

Emma up in lights

Fanny and her Glorious Band

Fanny and Emma - two farm girls

What a night in Ganmain last night for a fundraiser for farmers affected by the recent floods in our area.  Fanny and her band came from Sydney for the weekend to perform 3 concerts.  I'd never heard of them before but let me tell you their music has you tapping your feet, clapping your hands and wanting to get up and dance it's that good! 

Check out Fanny and her band on our local news - http://au.prime7.yahoo.com/n4/video/-/watch/29106636/rising-star-returns-for-flood-concert

Emma and I had a great time along with hundreds of others at the Ganmain Hall.  Emma opened the show singing 5 songs - Landslide, Sweet Home Alabama, You and I, Cowboy Casanova and Rolling in the Deep.  She received a lot of applause and support which was fabulous.

Country Hall "Flood Raiser" Tour

After ten years of drought and two years of severe flooding, the small communities of the Riverina have suffered a battering. In true rural spirit Fanny Lumsden and her Glorious band have decided to leave the city streets behind and throw a series of old fashioned country hoe-downs in Halls in flood affected towns of the Riverina.

Fanny and her band will be playing at Tallimba Hall on Friday the 27th April, at Ganmain Hall on Saturday the 28th April and at Boree Creek Hall on Sunday the 29th April.

A competition is being run in each area for a local singer-songwriter or band, 25 years and under to play at each of the gigs. All they need to do is send in a recording or a youtube clip and the reason they think they should play in 250 words to fanny.lumsden@gmail.com by 5pm Wednesday the 18th of April.

GUESS WHAT!!

Emma is the local singer who will be performing at the Ganmain Concert on Saturday night!!

All money raised will go to Blaze-Aid which you may remember was set up after the devastating Victorian bushfires a few years ago to help farmers get their fences re-built.  Well, after the recent floods in our area, Blaze-Aid is restoring farm fences washed away.

ANZAC Day

My grandfather amd his brother after returning from WW1

My nephew during his graduation ceremony

Blog Book No. 4!

This is my 5th year of blogging! Each year I have my blog printed into a book as a permanent reminder of what's happened during the year both on the farm and within our family lives. A few weeks ago my 4th blog book arrived in the mail. Go to Blog 2 Print if you want to do the same with your blog - I can guarantee the quality is high, the cost is reasonable and you only have to wait a couple of weeks to receive it.

Getting Ready!

The last few weeks have involved preparation for sowing/seeding time. Farmer Phil and Ryan have sprayed the paddocks to kill any weeds or volunteer wheat and canola from 2011. Lime has been spread where the pH is on the acidic side. And yesterday we spent the day replacing points, liquid tubes and hoses on the air seeder.

We even conned Emma into helping and getting her hands dirty!!

Everything is ready to start sowing today or tomorrow! 6 weeks of tractor work here we come!!!

Easter and Nationals

I've been a bit slack with posting about our Easter week away at the Australian Water Ski National Championship held at Mulwala, NSW. I have no pictures of Ryan competing because the night before the competition was to start his collarbone broke during a training session! He was very disappointed and upset because he'd put a lot of work in during the season to be competitive in his Under 17 Boys division. Obviously the farm accident from the week before had actually cracked the collarbone and the extra pressure put on by skiing broke it. We had paid for our accommodation etc, so we decided to stay and watch the tournament anyway. It was a nice week away with lots of great families.

On a happier note the NSW Water Ski Team won.

The presentation night was held at the beautiful All Saints Winery.

Some family photos in the Cask Room.

Brother and sister.

Farmer Phil and I in a rare photo together!

What a Week!

We've had a rather interesting week here on the farm! Farmer Phil and Ryan have been busy getting ready for cropping time which will start in about 3 weeks. There are bags of wheat (almost 4,000T of the stuff!) still laying in paddocks - the market for wheat is very slow at the moment and selling it will take some time. There is a lot of spraying to be done in preparation for sowing, and we've also got about 250T of lime to spread on some paddocks where the pH level is a bit high.

Over the weekend we had the NSW Waterski Championships in Albury which included a presentation night for the 2011/2012 season. Emma was the entertainment for the evening where she sang while everyone mingled and had dinner. It was rather lovely with her singing quietly in the background - "Sweet Home Alabama", "Landslide", "American Pie" to name a few of the songs.

Ryan came home with a couple of trophies - 1st in jump and 3rd in trick. It's rather surprising that Ryan does so well in trick because it's much easier if you're on the short side whereas Ryan is nudging 6'2"!

Ryan also took home one of the major awards for most improved in the jump event. There are 3 most improved awards given out for slalom, trick and jump and also an overall. Two years ago Ryan won the slalom award, then last year the overall, and now this year the jump.



This year the prizes were Samsung Galaxy Tablets! Ryan was super excited to receive one of these!

1st in Jump

3rd in trick with Brodie and Riley taking the other places

As you can see in the photos, Ryan has his arm in a sling! This is what made the week very interesting!

He was changing a flat tyre on Farmer Phil's ute when an accident happened with Ryan ending up pinned underneath the vehicle! I won't go into detail about how it happened but let's just say inexperience, soft ground and a 17yo boy not thinking played a big part. Farmer Phil pulled out some super-human strength to lift the ute off Ryan with the help of an adrenalin hit!!

I took Ryan to casualty where an x-ray showed no broken ribs or collarbone, but he's got some soft tissue damage and a very sore collarbone. Needless to say he was very lucky that he wasn't injured more or even killed!

The sad part for Ryan was that he missed skiing in the state titles over the weekend. But worst of all is that the Australian National Waterski Championships start on Thursday this week at Mulwala, NSW. Ryan qualified in all three events (slalom, trick and jump) for Under 17 boys.

We're off to the physiotherapist this morning to talk about what strapping and precautions he'll need because he's determined to ski over the weekend! Let's hope it all works out okay in the end!!

I'm not surprised that farming is classed as the most dangerous occupation in the world - accidents can happen so easily when you mix machinery, animals and humans together!