Radio 2BS/BRock have arranged a major raffle prize of two nights including breakfast at Mudgee’s Winning Post Motel while voucher prizes from Annie’s Ice Cream, Target, Vale Creek Wines and Metro 5, to name a few, will ensure lots of interest.

Devro has donated 300 sausages for the barbecue and food and cake stalls are always a feature at this fair.

Your wife or lover will be impressed if you take a drive to the Perthville Village Fair.

ORGANISERS of this year’s Trunkey Creek Wool and Horse Festival have turned every stone to ensure that the event will be a great success.

They are looking forward to many entries in the wool section and this column will detail the sections as soon as the show booklet is available.

Excellent sponsorship in the wool section has been provided by Bryton Wool who are heavily involved in wool brokering services in our district.

Full details will be provided as they come to hand.

Please circle Saturday, October 8 for the Trunkey Creek Show.

CONGRATULATIONS to the Thompson family at Millah Murrah Angus on their outstanding auction result last Thursday.

A total of 109 bulls sold to a top of $85,000 with an average of $16,348.

These results don’t just happen and plenty of genetic research, significant costs and lots of plain hard work go into achieving a great result.

SPRING 2016 could be a once-in-60-year event with full soil profiles, farm water storages full of clear water, 100 per cent ground cover and good stock and wool prices.

Most older farmers are comparing this spring to 1956 when some bogged machines were “tarped” and left in paddocks until summer sun hardened the soil.

We now have the major storage dams at Wyangala, Burrinjuck and Burrendong running over and our own Chifley Dam providing a great spectacle of water racing down its spillway.

On the downside, market gardeners must have lost some valuable crops and fence damage along creeks and rivers has been costly.

Three moderate floods may be our district’s quota for this spring, but we all realise that catchments are waterlogged as storm season arrives.

THE wet winter of 1956 brought virulent footrot to many flocks across the state and eradication techniques were not much different to today’s methods – ie sell the worst cases and attempt to cure what can be cured, and completely separate the clean mob.

A big heart and lots of guts and determination will be needed if a program is to be successful and costs will escalate into tens of thousands of dollars and many months of constant work.

An alternative is to sell all the sheep and start again, very carefully.

COL Ferguson is researching the history of Limekilns and provides the following:

“6/2/1936. Sofala Cricket. A feature of the batting was a brilliant 119 retired by Jack Seaman.

“Smiting the bowlers hip and thigh, he hit no fewer than 6 sixes and 14 fours.  That’s going for you.

“The other bright efforts were those of F.  Smith, 54 retired and M. Smith 37. Sofala closed with 8 wickets for 294.

“Limekilns could not combat the Sofala attack and faded out for a mere 34.”

Thanks Col for historical news of our dad and grandfather.

OF interest:  A first acceptor for this year’s Melbourne Cup is a gelding from the Czech Republic named Da Big Hoss.

THE wool market had another positive week with rises in all wool categories.

Merino microns were around 15c/kg dearer and the XBs were 25c/kg dearer for the fine wools and 15c/kg up for the 28 microns.

The northern market indicator finished the week on 1344c/kg, up 11c/kg.

The market is now tracking around 100c/kg higher than this time last year and looks like it could hold these levels until October if the forward prices are a true indication.

Sales next week will be in Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle with 42,986 bales on offer