Brace Yourself - Winter Is Coming !

Most people consider Tasmania to be cold, snowy and bleak. Some places can be, most places aren't. Scottsdale, in the northeast, rarely gets below 0 and hasn't had snow in living memory.

Winter is, however a real thing. Whether you're in Brisbane, Melbourne or Oberon, it's a colder time of year and the days are shorter.

In the local farming community the dead of winter is known as "the hungry time". If you've had a good autumn break (the rains have come while the ground is still warm enough for grass to grow) you can graze stock through the early part of winter. Eventually, as the frosts set in and the ground cools off, the grass stops growing and the stock catch up and then eat it down.

This is where the psychic ability of farmers starts to struggle. Is there even going to be an autumn break ? How long or cold will spring be ? Is it going to be a wet and windy winter (stock will need more food to keep warm) and what direction will the winds and rains be coming from (westerly rains come and go, easterly rains set in). No-one knows, not the BoM,your uncle's dicky knee or the confused plum tree in the next paddock over tossing out a couple of speculative leaf buds just in case summer isn't really over yet.

So you count your stock and the hay you have on hand and guess how many weeks you'll need to feed and how many bales you'll need for that time. Then you double what you think you'll need and buy in enough hay to cover that. My husband always comments that he wished I looked at him the way I look at a load of good sweet grass hay being unloaded into my shed.

Here on "Highclere" the plants and animals are getting ready for winter. The cattle are growing a fuzzy coat and the sheep have laid down a layer of blubber. Well, that's not technically true about the sheep as blubber is a marine term... but there's not a visible angle on any of them. The chooks have gone through moult and stopped laying and their new feathers have come in, and the trees have turned yellow ready to throw their leaves to the wind.

And this weekend we do have plenty of wind. The dogs are reveling in it, standing tall and sniffing the air while their ears flap. Maremma don't especially love heat but they do enjoy a good clean, cold wind. Their ancestors did come from the Italian Alps. The cats, however, have staked their winter places in the loungeroom and will probably spend the best part of the cold weather comatose there. They value comfort over wild ancestry.

If you have ever considered moving to Tasmania, midwinter is probably the best time to see if it's the place for you. It's prettier in spring and autumn, downright sigh-worthy in summer, but you'll know in winter whether you can stick those short daylight hours.