Back from Parrakie (12.06.11)

To be honest, I liked Parrakie – the house was nicer, yet awfully cold, it was clean because the guys living there take good care of it, the job was easy aswell as the fields were smoothly ploughed and north-south lines were long enough so I didn’t need to make turnarounds constantly. Within 5 days I covered 909ha, out of which about 650ha was seeded and the rest sprayed for general weeds and volunteers (the potatoes which have been left on field and have started growing again). The days were long, about 14-17 hours, but the job was done and it’s still all about the money.The only thing that made working there a bit harder, were the pits that are dug in the fields because occasionally it gets horribly wet there. As the soil is not very deep and below you either find clay or rock, then the water has nowhere to go and it just floods the fields. So the pits were to lookd out for. And ofcourse my beloved centrepoints with watertaps. And ofcourse we did not manage without troubles there either. Monday to Wednesday went allright, we were having a great pace which could have allowed us to return to Nildottie already Friday morning, but just as you start thinking such thoughts, accidents start to happen. Thursday and Friday gave us 5 problems – a blow up airpump on seeder, 2 flat tyres on seeder and tractor, a snapped wheelhandle on sprayer and a snapped aircon belt on the ute. The worst thing was that the tractor tyre broke just after Dermot had finished seeding and was on the way back from the field to the yard. On the other hand we were even lucky to have that puncture – otherwise they would have still needed us in the third farm! Fortunately we got everything going again and after hard weeks work managed to get back to Nildottie safe and sound on Saturday afternoon. As a compliment to our good work we were given the opportunity of a nice meal and couple of drinks at Swan Reach pub, regardless of the utter tiredness it was an enjoyable evening to get away from work and the house and do some socializing.

I’ve added some photos here, but as usual check the albums on picasaweb for more, if you like ofcourse J