Adopta Sheep Diary

UAMBY NEWS 12 SEPTEMBER 2007

Yea! We got a new camera - Panasonic DMC FZ50 with x12 zoom. Now we can ht some shots of lambs. Though it is still hard because we can't get within 100 metres of a ewe with a just-born lamb. The new mothers can be spooked and walk away from the lamb long enough for a crow to get in ther and peck the little one's eyes.

UAMBY NEWS 5 SEPTEMBER 2007

I will be using my new camera to get some beautiful shots of the new lambs. You see, we can't go too close to the new mothers. They can easily get spooked and abandon their lambs. It is a sensitive time. So I can't rush around. It takes a lot of patience to sit still while the flock slowly grazes up the hill towards you, hoping they'll keep coming even after they have seen you. Bruce Christie from the Catchment Management Authority also teaches Stress-Free Stock Handling (which training Louisa and Daniel have done) told me never to circle around sheep because that is the action of a predator. Instead you walk in straight lines and invade their personal space by small increments.
LAMBS AND EWE

This little fellow is a good example of how a blundering photographer can endanger lambs. He/she was just born and I moved into the area without noticing until I had practically stepped on it. It's mother had moved off with the flock. She camed back and the little one got up and ran off with her.
RECENTLY BORN LAMB:

The whole countryside around Goolma is dotted with new lambs. It is a carnival of woolly wonders. Soon they will form little gangs and race madly together across the paddocks, leaping for joy. The joy of being alive. They are the spirit of Spring.
NEW BABY LAMB

Finally, meet Joe. The Father of both Ravi and Kodie. He's Col's working dog. He is normally muzzled. (Bites.) He's an intelligent dog, but he can sometimes appear to be hard of hearing. Ravi is the Brad Pitt of kelpies and Kodie is the Big Bear (his Mother's name is Bear).
THIS IS JOE.

Kodie is our new Kelpie - didn't need her but Daniel came home with her after a night drinking around a campfire with Col. Many truths were told that night. Kodie is a willing worker - loves chasing after sheep. Still, as a puppy, she is stealing our shoes from the back door and hiding them. The Joy of Childhood. Life. Spring.
KODIE

(Shots of the garden and bird life on http://envriofarming.blogspot.com)

UAMBY NEWS 21 AUGUST, 2007

Spring means shearing and lambing and gardening. We are still feeding out because the sheep needto be robust to take the shock ofthe chill winds on their bare skins after they have been shorn.

This curious little ewe lamb wandered over to asK me if I had any more hay after we had fed out to welcome the lambs to "Shearing 2007" - their first experience of getting their woollen jackets off. The chilly winds will be gone by tomorrow when they start losing their pure new wool underwear.

Here are some of the rams looking longingly towards the ewes who are by now heartily sick of them, with the first lambs already having arrived. The rest look ready to lamb.

Louisa and Lucy the cross kelpie/collie that we bred have become a good team. Lucy would have got a bullet on most other places. But this dysfunctional dog is finally starting to understand. She's got a criminal mindset. Always leading the other dogs astray.

After a hard day's shearing - Louisa is wool classing - we have a couple of drinks with the crew. He we see Col and Louisa chilling out. Col is a brilliant giant of a man. I should be his PR agent.

Len Cooney is roustabouting for us. Daniel is working outside the shed, mustering and feeding out. Len gave me the words to a song - well the first verse - and said 'you can finish it...' What?

This is Chapter 2 of a long catchup blog.

Louisa's brother Chris and his wife Kerry (our photographer) came up for the first 4 days of shearing to shoot a DVD of shearing... Here they are shooting a few seconds of footage in the shed the night before it all began. (Col can be seen ducking out of the way.)

This is the first wool ever sent to market under the label Carbon Credited. We are launching this brand to signify that we have entered into a program to reduce our emissions and to sequester carbon by our land management techniques. We used an old Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) calculator to discover what out emissions are: mainly methane from the sheeps' rumens. And we have applied to join the AGO's Greenhouse Challenge to join more than 700 other Australian companies who have embarked on the journey towards "neutral".

No it's not a new dance. Louisa is demonstrating to the film crew and director of our shearing at Uamby DVD what will happen once the day starts and the wool starts flying. (She'll kill me for this. But I've got some other photos I could have used.)

UAMBY NEWS 4 AUGUST, 2007

WE HAD THE "COSMIC FLU" for most of July. That and the travelling to places like Melbourne, Canberra, Junee, Tamworth, Armidale, and beyond to speak to groups of farmers about Climate Change and carbon trading and soil carbon. We held our second "Soil Science Summit" - a one-day conference for 60 farmers and scientists working together to see farmers paid for the soil carbon they can produce if they change the way they farm the soil to more environmentally-sound practices.

Meanwhile the ewes and lambs continue to thrive on reduced rations - feeding them every second day to supplement the grasses that have regrown since the rains came. Louisa is so proud of the way the lambs come running when she calls them down from the hills. The first to come are the ALpacas Bruno and Raphael. They gallop over like horses. The sheep follow their lead, and groups of them join in as they notice the others rushing off.

We are coming up to shearing in 2 weeks and these lambs have magnificent wool on their backs. They look so healthy, thanks to you. They are stout and proud. We have lost only one or two, far fewer that normal. Lambs often fall prey to worms and infections, but these little fellows are so well fed that they can resist nearly anything.

The alpacas keep them safe from foxes and wild dogs. You have to be careful around the alpacas. They think they own the flock and that we are intruders. When we have to separate them - to drench the lambs or crutch them (give them a haircut around the bottom to stop the dags (poo) forming) - the alpacas stand by making little noises of distress and concern.

And wonder of wonders: we have an early lamb. We think the Poll Ram was able to conceal himself among the ewes for a month while we were looking for him far and wide. (A Poll Ram has no horns and so can pass for a stout ewe if you don't look too closely. Sneaky Polly.)
We'll be shearing soon and shortly afterwards the lambs will start arriving. We hope to have a better lambing this year, with better weather and more grass. Lambing in September is normal.

Here you can see Louisa sneaking up behind one of the lambs to check its wool while it is distracted eating the fine quality hay we get from Victoria. This time they run off before she can get a good look. Most of the time she can see how fine their wool is. We are looking forward to a good shearing and to getting a good price although we face two problems: the high Aussie dollar means we get less for our wool because it is paid for in US dollars and the lower the A$ is, the more A$'s we get. The other problem is the withdrawal of the Chinese mills from the market last week which sent the price plummetting. The Chinese are the biggest processors of wool in the world and when they move, the entire market moves. This puts the famrer in a difficult position becuase we have to accept the price the CHinese will give us. (Prices have been high lately - before the Chinese withdrew from the market - due to the shortage of wool after the drought.) We need to make as much money as possible to pay the overdraft which 'maxed out' during the drought.

Necessity being the Mother of Invention, we have decided to join the 'farmers' market' movement. Instead of simply taking whatever price the Chinese decide they will give us, we at "Uamby" are broadening our income sources to include selling products direct to customers. We will soon have fleeces for spinners. We have sourced people who will scour and prepare the wool for spinning and we have found spinners locally who will make the yarn for those who want to buy wool for knitting. And we have found knitters who will make garments (beanies, scarves, and jumpers).

My sister-in-law Kerry will film shearing and hopefully we'll also get some footage of lambing. We are making a DVD called "Springtime at Uamby: On The Other SIde Of the Drought". It will show our flock being sheared. It will also explain the process of shearing - sort of educational - and what goes on in the shearing shed. This DVD will also be available for sale.

To celebrate springtime and to thank you for your support which helped us get to Spring with the flock inatct, we re planning to put on a THANK YOU BBQ on 13th October at "Uamby" to welcome as many adopting 'parents' as possible to visit. The invitations will be going out this weekend. We'll fire up the Barbies (We have three and we willl borrow some from Col Doherty if we need them) and put on snags and salad and soft drink. (We'll have to get some more chairs. And we'll book the Goolma Hall in case the weather is wet.)

Meanwhile we are organising the world's first Carbon Farming Expo and Conference for mid-November in Mudgee. And thene there's the election. Lots on before Christmas.

UAMBY NEWS Tuesday 19 June, 2007

We had a visit from Glen and Bev Brown from Katoomba who have been on the Wallaby Track travelling around inland Australia. They made a special effort to find us when they saw the story on Sunrise and we're glad they did. The adopted "Cashew". Glen is a handy helper when feeding out of bags. (The reason we were hand feeding from bags lies below.) We enjoyed being able to show them around.

So much rain. While Newcastle was being pounded by vicious storms, we were happy to receive 85 precious mls of rain. Filling the dams. Soaking the rootmass of the pastures. In fact, we have a hydrology problem because low lying areas saturate and become waterlogged (which indicates that we need more deep rooted plants 'ploughing' our soils, making them more sponge-like and capable of holding water).
We have got a lot to learn about Uamby's behaviour under water (not had much experience of too much water in 7 years of drought). We now know not to try taking 1 tonne of feed grain on a 1 tonne truck down to feed ewes on the flatland after rain. WE bogged the Red Landcruiser, Dan's Landcruiser, a quad bike and finally the tractor... each one bogged while trying to pull the other out. (We eventually had to dig the Red Landcruiser out.)

The Cudgegong River did not break its banks, welcoming the flushing out as it had become stagnant and fetid. I hope the platypus family were snug in their home in the river bank. Molly's Creek cut the road for a short while. "What's this stuff?" asked Ravi, the Red Kelpie. "Water," I told him. "What's it doing in the creek?" he asked. "Just reliving old times," I said. He gave me a quizical (?) look.

UAMBY NEWS Sunday 27 May, 2007

The lambs are 'out the back', (in the 700 acres we call "wether country"). The grass is thin on the ground, so we are feeding them every second day. They are fat as fools, as you can see. Ours are the best fed flock in the district.

They are a bit blase, like Paris Hilton. They expect the best service, and they get it.

Also putting in an appearance recently was out Poll Merino Ram who, because he has no horns, manages to disguise himself as a ewe and hang around with them, getting an early styart on joining. This long distance shagging has had its downside. "Working" rams lose a lot of condition while 'on the job', making lambs. Poor old Polly - the Cheeky Devil - looks all fagged out. But he plods on.

UAMBY NEWS Sunday 20 May, 2007

While there has been some general rain across our region - we got 44mls last week - and we have grass, the regrowth is still patchy and uneven. Not enough to satisfy hungry sheep. These mothers need to be fit to carry their lambs. We are "joining" at present.

We paid $12,000 for a load of grain last week. (Every cent contributed by our wonderful adopters goes down the throats of our sheep, except the 2 items we needed to buy to feed out grain - the auger and the feedbin, pictured here.)

The rams look a little thin. That's because they're 'on the job', servicing 80 ewes each, which takes it out of a ram. We keep them together for 8 weeks, or 3 cycles, to make sure we have maximum conception.

(There are other news items from Uamby on http://envirofarming.blogspot.com)

UAMBY NEWS Sunday 6 May, 2007

Another load of grain arrives for our hungry sheep. This is an unusual angle most of us will never see. Daniel climbed to the top of the silo to take this photo. He's been a climber ever since he was young.

We had another 20-odd mls of rain, which was absorbed immediately. The flush of growth we had after the big dump has dried off and the sheep are looking around as if to say, "Well, what's next?" The ewes are healthy and well.

The rams have been fighting, with seveal of them sporting shoulder injuries. We may have a rogue.

We spent Easter planting 2700 trees in a wildlife corridor that is 50m wide and crosses the entire property. Not the best time to plant trees - with the river level falling everyday. Watering 2700 seedlings is a big job. The Grealish family (Stephen, Adrienne, and Connor) put in three days of hard work watering and helping with the garden. It was a pleasure to have them visit.

UAMBY NEWS Tuesday 10 APRIL, 2007

Here we see the rams fuelling up on oats and lupins before 'joining'. And have they been feeling their oats. They are cracking heads, rutting, chasing every wether.... chock full or energy for the party ahead. The ewes are belly deep in pasture, enjoying the flush we are seeing disappear every day as the winter non-growing season approaches and the feed horizon getting shorter.

UAMBY NEWS Tuesday 3 APRIL, 2007

STOPPRESS!!!!! THE ANTS ARE BAAAAACK!

They spent nearly 2 months camped in our house, invading our jams and packets of food, crawling up the legs of our beds during the night and running up and down our bodies - yikes! Those pesky ants are running again. How long will it be this time, little guys?

White sugar is poison to plants

We don't like spraying heavy duty chemicals on the soil or the vegetation because they kill the living things in on which we rely for productivity: microbes, insects, etc.

So we are always open to non-toxic alternatives. The chemicals for spraying on Bathurst burr (my greatest hate) are very toxic and dangerous for humans as well as bugs. So when we heard about sugar as a herbicide, we decided to attack the burr with it.

The amounts specified in the article we read are extreme: 1/2 kilo of sugar per square metre. Buying sugar at the supermarket could be prohibitive. We did it that way for our trial. Mixed up 4 kgs and sprayed a plot of burr 8 sq.m. in a spot that traditionally is our worst infestation.

I also sprayed some individual plants in our back 'lawn' to have something I could watch daily. So far so good. The victims near the back door have started to get a droop which usually follows when chemical is applied.

The food nazis told us white sugar was poison back in the 1980s and campaigned against it like all good lifestyle nazis should. Little did we suspect that they were right on the money.

24 hours after a soaking in sugar water

This looks like one sick Bathurst Burr we've got in our experimental plot just outside the back door. This photo was taken exactly (give or take) 24 hours after a solution of 4kgs sugar and 10lt water was applied.

On the other hand, our lambs are to be drenched with Kelp and minerals, Cod liver oil, and Apple cider vinegar and garlic. Sounds like a recipe for something...

NO CULLS THIS YEAR?

Normally we cull the worst 10% of our flock as a way of improving the genetics, ie. preventing the poorer animals breeding and adding to the gene pool. But this year we can't find even 100 sheep we can sell. Even the "Purple Taggers" (each generation of ewes has a coloured ear tag), who are 5+ years old, will be staying on. They have terrific wool and they are still physically sound (no broken mouths or distended udders, etc). Thanks to our ‘Adopters”…

UAMBY NEWS MONDAY 2 APRIL, 2007

The green flush is all around, and it is so joyful to see the grasses return. Unfortunately it's a bit 'thin on the ground'. We need rain-and guess what!! The ants are back!!!! In their thousands - crawling all through the cupboards, testing every lid and package. They predicted the last rain, but they weren't very accurate about when.

Let's go and have a look at Middle Paddock. It looks good from the air and from outside the gate. But on closer inspection, it is a different story.

Windmill grass and couch grass indicate salination. There are patches of native perennials valiantly trying to re-establish.

But there are also many bare patches which will need more time to recover, and some special treatment. We had pasture cropped this paddock in 2004, which gave us an explosion of perennial grasses.

(Pasture cropping is the direct drilling on something like oats into a dormant pasture instead of ploughing and sowing conventionally.) Heaven knows what the paddock would look like had we not done that.

The sheep don't have a problem with the grass - they're just so happy to see it. They run from paddock to paddock when we are moving them. No need to push them. Just show them the gate.

The impression that we are drowning in feed that the aerial photo might give is wrong. More than half the property is still in drought. Only those areas we were able to take the sheep off, thanks to our supporters. We fed the sheep in 'sacrifice paddocks' which you can see here.One of the sacrifice paddocks was called The Lease.

It is still struggling to come back. ALthough those sections where we spread Nitrohumus a few years ago (treated human biosolids) reveal better results.This treatment aimed to increase biological activity in the soil and kick start the restoration program.

We took advantage of the rest House Paddock was given over the last 3 months to allow some river red gums establish themselves in a paddock in need of trees. There has been one brave little gum tree growing well. So we protected four more seedlings to sede if they would flourish.

(I believe it is best the let Mother Nature decide what to plant and where. The tree is morem likely to survive that way. And we have planted many trees unsuccessfully over the years.) Here is our little master. He'll soon no longer need the protector.

And here is one of the babies - see how he grows in a few months.

UAMBY NEWS SATURDAY 19 MARCH, 2007

When Holistic Resource Management International's Judy Earl visited "Uamby" a month ago, she said it 'stood out like a beacon' because of the way we had conserved the vegetation and protected the soil. Now we know why she said it.

Daniel flew the light aircraft while the pilot took these photographs. This shows what our soil has done witrh the rain compared to the neighbours' (and compared to the 'sacrifice paddocks we used to hand feed our flock).

Amazing!

Look at the difference on the river banks - the erosion and damage on the bare side versus the vegetation on the green side. Stunning! Thank God for all our Adopting "parents" who enabled us to take the flock off most of the paddocks.

UAMBY NEWS MONDAY 12 MARCH

GRASS COMES ROARING BACK (BUT WE'LL HAVE TO KEEP FEEDING FOR A WHILE)

With 20mls followup rain and sunshine everywhere, our native grasses are coming back fast - proving that our pasture protection plan worked. We lost little soil to wind and water erosion in the paddocks we locked up. In the photo above, you can see the difference. Despite invasion by next door's sheep and cattle, and regular visits fromk kanjgaroos, our pasture is still coming back faster than the continuosuly grazed paddock next door. (Thank you for letting us save our native grasses.)

These 'crowns' are found in our best paddock, and at the best end. See how they flourish. These deep-rooted native perennial grasses are as nutritious as clover, but better because the sheep will walk over clover to graze them. They drive their roots far down into the soil, aerating it and causing the growth of soil carbon. They restore soil structure, they turn the top soil horizons into a porous sponge that can hold water longer. They help keep salination in check.

Not every spot in the paddock is as good as others. Sometimes the soil type can change, or a small rise or fall in the ground can attract or repel water flowing across the top. Sometimes there's no telling what's going on.

Catheads and capeweed are flourishing in the bare spaces. The 'weeds' will have a good season due to the drought baring the ssoil. Weeds are 'successional' which means there is a succession - ike the royals have - with bare earth being colonised by mosses and the like at first, then weeds, and finally pasture grasses. Weeds can't compete with grasses, but we need to encourage the grasses by regular animal impact (grazing, stomping and manuring).

You can see the difference the interlopers make when they park themselves on a paddock and graze indefinitely. In this case the cows have come from 2 properties away, pushing through the fences and eating the ground bare. We evicted them 4 or 5 times, but their owner has no grass to feed them, so what can you do?

The riverbank is called a 'riparian zone' and government agencies like the Catchment Management Authority like us to lock them up because animals can do a lot of damage if they stay on them long. This photo shows the difference between out bank and our neighbour's bank across the river. His sheep have continual access to the river bank and he grazes his pasture down severely. He misses out on the tree growth that can consolidate the bank and keep it from eroding. He is a conventional flogging the land farmer who follows the ways of his dear Dad.

This is what can happen when you bare the earth and get a massive dump of rain. The basis of your productivity and wealth disappears down the nearest gully and silts up the river. This is 2 properties away. How to avoid it? Direct drilling or no till farming.

Two new rams arrived after sitting out the worst of the drought on their studs.
They're a couple of wusses. They wouldn't eat for weeks. Just moped around. But 'joining' is on soon. That's the fun side of being a ram.

UAMBY NEWS WEDNESDAY 28 FEBRUARY

78MLS IN 30 MINUTES!

This is Daniel paddling in our sheep yards during a massive dump of water that almost washed us away! Luckily the lambs and the two new rams had been moved to the shearing shed the day before or we would have lost large numbers drowned in the flood. This was the rain we have been waiting for for 12 months. Now we will see the benefit of retaining grass groundcover in the way the grass will regrow. Also we have not lost the tonnes of topsoil that would have been washed into the river had we eaten out the pastures. Now we need a 10ml-20ml follow up fall in a week or so and in a few months the pasture will be reestablished. It's too early to put the stock onto the grass. (We have 3 weeks' hay and grain left in our reserves.) To all of you who have renewed your adoption for another 100 days, THANK YOU. Thank you, everyone. We are truly blessed.

UAMBY NEWS FRIDAY 23 FEBRUARY

RAINBOW BUT NO REAL RAIN

The most beautiful storm clouds surround us each afternoon, and we see where they have disgorged their life-giving contents when we travel into Mudgee or down to Sydney. There are wash-aways and flourishing pastures. Yesterday the big black cloud that loomed up over us left just 3mls, enough to hatch the flies. But before it broke, we saw this rainbow.a

I secretly believe that God is testing my faith, and everytime I lose hope of ever seeing real rain again, I fail the test. (You get a lot of time to think about things out here.)

UAMBY IS UNDER SIEGE:On all sides our neighbours have no feed left in their paddocks and their stock are break down our fences to get at the pasture we are nurturing along to get re-established. Simply putting animals onto the first show of green is madness because it sets the plant's root growth back.

But we have never been faced with such an invasion before. "It's your fault for having so much grass," said a neighbour. We've never had to face this situation before. Our relations have been good and still are. We run their stock up into our yards and call them to come and collect them. We even paid for the trucking of a mob of cattle that has been on our property for 6 weeks, from 2 properties away. What should we do? Their animals are not satisfied with the thin feed available on their side of the fence. Animals will always follow their noses to the best feed.

Kangaroos are also wrecking the comeback of our pastures. You can see the difference between the photos of the perennial 'crowns' that emerged after the rain 3 weeks ago and what is left of them after raids by feral sheep and cattle.

The lack of any substantial rain since Christmas means the grass has been 'hung out to dry' in the hot westerly wind... Australia's climate is harsh and only the tough survive. Merinos and perennial grasses are tough. Roos are tough.And so are the people who live out here. Their toughness amazes me.

You can see the roo dung next to the ravaged grass crowns. But the roos are always there, and they never eat the grass right down. Smart roos leave enough leaf on the plant to allow it to grow its roots back again and in this way grow more blades of grass for the next feed. Sheep aren't that smart. You've got to move them off the pasture before they damage it. "Set stockers" will leave sheep in a big paddock for weeks and even months. The sheep eat the planst they like and come back to them several times until there's nothing left above ground before eating the plants they like less. With 'time controlled grazing', the pasture manager leaves the sheep in a smaller paddock for a shorter period - the population pressure forces the sheep to eat everything equally. We manage our pastures carefully - because it is the source of our wealth. Good soil enriched with plant root activity grows good plants which grow good animals.

UAMBY NEWS SATURDAY 17 FEBRUARY

Storm clouds gather over Uamby to mock us and spit on us then roll away over the hills to unleash their life-giving waters on some lucky farmer's soils. We get a lot of electrical activity, but very little rain. Even the best farmers in the district are getting desperate.

RAIN R A I N RRRR AAAA IIII NNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!

There it is: a whole 9mls! Enough to keep the grass growing and keep our hopes up. Colin Seis, who invented 'apsture cropping', told me he had 100ml in the time we got 9ml. Col's a nice guy and we don't degrudge him the extra 91mls. But there are limits to our charity.

The sound of the tanks overflowing usedd to make me smile. But now I get anxious that we don't have enough water storage capacity. We rely on rainwater for drinking, cooking, and showering and washing clothes.River water for everything else.

This photo cocmes from an earlier rain event (earlier this year - we got a total of 25mls for January and so far have had 19mls in February, usually a 200-to-300ml month.

This is one of my favourite shots - it looks so optimistic. Tank gently overflowing, sunset shining through raindrops.

Sadly, Daniel was the only one to get flowers this Valentine's Day. They travelled out to Goolma with a very helpful neighbour and waited almost 2w days to be collected because we have been 'crutching' the sheep - a big job (See below). The flowers come from 'a secret admirer'.

Sometimes little Xavier gets hold of the camera and we find lots of shots of the floor and bits of wall, etc. Occasionally he takes a good shot, like this one of his "Noni" Louisa trying to get some work done. Lovely Louisa.

This is the roadsign on the Wellington end of Uamby Road. Uamby was the first 'station' out our way when the white settlers pushed the frontier out here. The first significant property would give its name to the road leading to it just like the road leading out of Melbourne towards Sydney is called "Sydney Road". There used to be a similar sign at the other end, where Uamby Road meets Gorries Lane. But someone removed it. Things come and go in the country.

Yours in gratitude and hope for rain for everyone needing it,

Michael

SOMETHING ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT US
Have you heard about carbon credits? These are a type of currency that companies that emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere can buy to "offset" the carbon they are releasing. They buy them from companies or organisations that 'sequester' or soak up CO2 from the atmosphere. Many people believe that trees do this well. And they do. But not as well as the soils that farmers farm.
In 2005, we were chosen as among the 10 most innovative farm families in the Central West of NSW and trained throughout the next 12 months in the POWER of SOILS. And we discovered that agricultural soils are the only way to remove the trillions of tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere and avert a global catastrophe in the short time we have left.

We formed a farmers' movement called the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming to recruit farmers to fight the battle against Climate Change. We were helped by many good people, and the Coalition is now 500 strong and growing. We paid our own way to America to meet the global warming experts there last October. We've met the experts here. The message: Only soils can save us. Forests can't do it in the time. (The world couldn't plant enough trees fast enough. Trees can't grow fast enough to do the job. And the cost of the planting is more than anyone is willing to pay.)

Agricultural soils are ready, willing and able. 60% of the earth's surface is used for grazing animals. Soil is already the biggest carbon "sink" we can control. All it would take is a change in the way farmers farm to start eating into the massive overload of CO2 in the air.

If we were able to increase soils carbon just 1% in only 10% of Australia's agricultural soils, we could 'sequester' or extract from the air 10 years' worth of our emissions. Do it 4 years in a row and that's 40 years' worth of emissions.

HOW CAN AUSSIE FARMERS EARN ADDITIONAL INCOME BY FIGHTING GREENHOUSE?

Australian farmers can combat global warming by changing the way they farm. There is an entirely new way of farming called "CARBON FARMING" which absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. But farmers need to be taught about it and incentivised to change - by being offered carbon credits for the carbon they absorb.

HELP THE CARBON COALITION SPREAD THE WORD TO FARMERS

Speading the word about Carbon Farming: We spend many hours meeting with farmers

We are travelling all over the country teaching farmers about how to become Carbon Farmers - how to change the way they farm so that their soils will absorb more CO2. But they need to be given the carbon credits in the same way forest owners are. We have an order from the Chicago Climate Exchange for the first soil carbon credits. We need your help to get started.

The Carbon Coalition meets with the National Farmers Federation CEO David Crombie who supports our mission
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Adopta Sheep Diary

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

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