Fortunately for East Gippsland, November finished its run strongly in the rain stakes, while December has begun with snow up at
Mount Hotham.
Near Omeo, at their farm up the Livingstone Valley, Brenda and Bernard Flannagan have had almost 50mm for November and at the weekend went to Everton to stock up on hay.
When they came back across Mount Hotham it was snowing.
“It was a really cold winter,” Brenda said.
“We fed a lot out and we don’t think we’ll be able to make masses of our own hay because it was a
bit dry.
“We’re doing okay, we really can’t complain.
“We’ve been extremely lucky up the Livingstone.”
The Flannagans received 28.5mm over the second last weekend of November which she said “really saved our bacon”.
“The past four years have been ridiculously out of the box with a lot of rain, and this season is
more normal.
“The dams need filling up but the cattle are doing well and the horses are fat.”
Over at the Omeo weather station, the November total stands at 86mm, the year-to-date total at 579mm, with the top 20cm of soil at 35 per cent saturation, ranging to 53pc at the 90cm mark.
At Benambra, where local farmers battled through the year feeding all their stock, the weather station has recorded 514.6mm, with 113.2mm for the month of November.
Down near the coast at Newmeralla the weather station has recorded a year-to-date total of 556.4mm, with 103.2mm falling in November
West of there at Forge Creek near Bairnsdale, Trevor Caithness has had just shy of 40mm for November.
“Basically, all the pastures
have come back to life,” Mr
Caithness said.
“They were on the verge of shutting down but now we’ll have summer feed for a couple
of months.”
He said recently someone had described the weather to him as ‘the tap is either off or it’s on, there’s no halfway mark’.
The Caithness family was also hesitant to plant crops given the dry conditions but will now move forward with their planting program putting in sorghum.
“The rain has held us up a little on our cereal harvest but we’re not too fussed, we’ll be going by the end of the week,” he said.
“We must be about spot-on average rainfall for the year to date.
“We actually decided to open
up our silage bunker in September-October, but now we’ll be able to clean the face up and pull the tarp back over.”
