Enough feed for December after Victoria’s spring rains

Clydebank Farm’s Jen Ma is hopeful for her next olive harvest, and maintaining sheep feed after she recorded 20mm of rain in one hour on Friday.

Grass is starting to grow along southwest Victoria after “months of no rain”, as Clydebank Farm’s Jen Ma says she will have enough feed for December.

She recorded 20mm of rain within one hour at her Inverleigh property on Friday.

“I was a bit worried I wouldn’t have hay for December but I think we’ll be all right, as long as we can get a bit more rain,” she said.

Jen Ma with a Babydoll Southdown lamb. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Ms Ma manages about 21 Babydoll Southdowns in her registered stud, and finished lambing about one week ago. She also has a small Romney flock.

She has 32 hectares which she uses for rotational grazing, an orchard, and her olive grove.

Ms Ma said they struggled with wind gusts of up to 100km/h this year, but had no tree losses or damage.

“All of autumn was so dry, it felt like we had months of no rain, summer was wet and it started off quite wet, but then we had a late heat,” she said.

“The grass wasn’t growing, there was no rain, and the rain has really only started to come about now.”

Her olive grove had little to no fruit this year, just 12 months from an “absolute bumper year” in 2023.

She said this year, after a dry winter, her olive grove had lots of flowers and seemed promising ahead of next year’s May-June harvest.

“There are a lot of flowers, but roughly only 2pc of those flowers turn into fruit,” she said.

“I’m hopeful, olives can generally be biannual as they are anyway, you can mitigate bumper to bust season by water and pruning.”