Picking my oranges

[Riverlander]

I am up for a cook up whenever it can be arranged. ( have to get everyone organized ) Have restocked the bottles of red and port. May need a bonfire as it was a frost here last night but the camp kitchen now has a pot belly heater. Nice and cosy.
Cheers

[Coolabah1au]

Another Taggerty [emoji848] in the middle of winter [emoji3063] tree will make a good weekend [emoji91]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Greynomad]

John,
Save a few decent logs for our visit...
I’ll check them for turning suitability, and if no good, we’ll have a great campfire!

[homeless]

One o the best timbers I turned was Osage Orange. Beautiful to turn right off the tools, very shiny smooth finish easy to cut but as hard as hell once dried. Indians used it for Bow anad Arrows as well as waddies. I have a mallet made from it and I can hit coal chisels without damaging the face.

[BruceS]

I cut down a big old mulberry tree once & a friend grabbed most of the wood. Brian is it coal chisel or cold ch.......

[Greynomad]

Bruce,
It’s a COLD chisel. I think because they are cold-forged for hardness.

[Greynomad]

Just looked it up on Wikipedia.
Cold chisels are tempered steel chisels used to cut cold metals. ie. Not using heat to assist, and where a smooth finish is not required.
Now we all know.

[T1 Terry]

It hurts to see photos like this unfortunately it has been going on for years as farmers are unable to break even on costs. I have seen this happen so many times Fifty years ago I would never have believed that it would/could occur in a once great country of Australia. Just why is it cheaper to import fruit. Bloody Awful. I always look for an Australian grown label but they are getting harder to find.

It's not the cost, it's the lack of water, yet they still grow cotton and rice .... First thing that needs to happen is electing a govt with the guts to ban the water intense farming or ban them getting the water to carry out the water intense farming, then things can return to some sort of normal operation.

T1 Terry

[Riverlander]

I do not think there are any easy answers to the water problem. At least with cotton or rice as they are only annual crops they can not plant them in dry years where almonds or avocados that are very water intensive have to kept alive even in dry years. This year we have probably an opening allocation of 14 per cent and if there is no substantial rains in the catchment area it may only get to 50 or 60 per cent. I think it will be a real problem for the large areas planted that totally rely on purchasing water on the open market as it will not be available at any price. SA has a very modern distribution system and every drop goes through a meter where a lot of areas in other states still rely on open channels and quite often there are no meters or they have been disabled as the ABC program pointed out. I have spare water as I did not jump in and sell it as other people have and I used to grow pumpkins but over the last couple of years I can make more money leasing it out than busting my gut growing pumpkins and hoping to be able to sell them to an agent and then hoping to get paid for them. It is a sad story and I think the story may have a long way to go this year.
Of course a few years ago water rights were attached to the land and any unused water went down the river but the government in there wisdom unbundled the water from the land so they could put a price on it and of course we then had to recoup our costs and lease or sell any unused water.
I made more money out of my property last year (with very little effort or worry) than I have ever made after selling most of my vines and keeping the water rights to lease them out. Just not right is it.
Cheers John

[Greynomad]

Wish I could bring some of our water over (see my post, "Just a Few Drops")... unfortunately most of the first storm ran off to waste... after removing a fair bit of our topsoil.
Consistent gentle showers since have revived some of our plants... too late for others, unfortunately.