Thread: A dusty afternoon

No grass round here!

I don't know the paddock referred to but seed-heads from short grasses can race up to a metre or more high in no time in late spring, as occurs each year on my place in the uncropped areas around trees and rocks.

Provided it rains - last significant rain here was in March, and it was followed immediately by high temperatures and strong winds, so it was all gone in days......

Because most of the "Flat Areas" on my property are nowhere near the horizontal plane and the ground quite shaley/rocky, I have to be careful about blading a bare earth fire break. Several years ago, after a drought and then a downpour of Biblical proportions, my neighbour and I lost a fair bit of fence due to erosion on the firebreaks either side of the fence.
Even in normal times I have to navigate on an angle to the slope as, if I go straight up and down, the wheel tracks act as channels for runoff when it rains. Even the ride on mower tracks suffer. I've learnt to live with it and it keeps the brain active trying to think up different methods to use.

Yes, that can be an issue. Fortunately, my soil is (mostly) not very prone to erosion (the steep slopes are solid rock!) - and most of the firebreaks I have just been touching up are almost level, so little runoff.

Mind you, an academic argument until we actually get rain - and then there is the other point - there was indeed significant erosion; after the last fire. But it was significant not so much because of the local soil removal, but because my next door neighbour was the recipient of relatively minor erosion per square metre, but with sand from 10,000ha denuded by fire it created a sandpit that means the route from here to the nearest village is definitely 4wd only now.

Worth risking a bit of local erosion to stop something like that.

I should point out that most of my place is covered in trees.

Here is Canberra we are in the middle of a dust storm right now - cannot see the 500m across the valley.

Garry

Yes, I heard about that - my son is driving home from Canberra to Yass. Judging from the satellite it should arrive here in about half an hour of so!