farmdoc's blog post number 387

I’ve previously twice mentioned [1,2] Gilbert & Sullivan’s marvellous operetta The Pirates of Penzance. The denouement occurs early in Act II when it’s revealed our hero Frederic was born on 29 February. A most ingenious paradox. Here in Mole Creek we have one too. Mole Creek’s a limestone/karst region [1], limestone’s calcium carbonate which is alkali, yet our soil’s acidic. I’m sure there’s a ready explanation of this paradox. But I don’t know what it is. Anyway in recent years our soil’s become more and more acidic. Increased bracken fern (a native of Tasmania) is the tell. Also the New Zealand native weed bidgees (aka bidgee-widgees) which stick in wool and reduce its price. So last Friday a big truck spread 30.58 tonnes of crushed dolomite lime (named after the northern Italian Dolomite Alps which in turn were named after the 18th Century French mineralogist Deodat Gratet de Dolomieu who was the first to describe the rock dolomite – which is garden lime with a higher percentage of magnesium) on our paddocks. That’s about a tonne to the acre. It’s not cheap. Per tonne the Dolomite cost us A$44 and the spreading A$13.20, making a total of A$1,749. That’s our biggest farm expense. By far. Yesterday it rained to the tune of 4.6mm. That should start to wash the dolomite in nicely.

farmdoc's blog post number 313

Last 30 December I wrote that my first date with Sweetheart Vivienne was in August 1961, when we saw the Pirates of Penzance at Melbourne High School. Ah, the romance of the inlets and coves of far west England. In 1973 I think it was, we rented a cottage in a tiny fishing village called Flushing (pictured), just across from Falmouth, and we drove in our dark ochre Ford Cortina along narrow Cornish country lanes lined with gorse (not a weed there as it is in Tasmania), through tiny villages and past quaint churches, visiting bigger towns including Penzance, travelling over 1-lane bridges, and crossing estuaries on small ferry-barges (King Harry Ferry’s one whose name’s stuck in my memory). My darling Mum, then a youthful 50-year-old, came to stay and travel with us and our then only child Kate. It was a truly joyous time. In 1998, some 25 years later, our epic tandem odyssey began at Lands End in Cornwall, and the same day we lunched in Penzance. We sat on a quay eating Cornish pasties, and a daring seagull snatched some from Sweetheart Vivienne’s hand. Yes, I have fond memories of Cornwall and Penzance. Last week’s ‘Tears on Toast’ opera was Madama Butterfly. This week’s is, you guessed it, the Pirates of Penzance. Oh Joy, Oh, Rapture!