We are well-served with weather information, with a few Bureau of Meteorology information pages that are very locally specific. River height data is very accurate for our location, so the upward creep of floodwaters can be watched from the loungeroom without having to trudge through a typhoon to look at the river. Similarly, local rainfall is measured for the Bureau at a farm almost across the road.

On top of that, the local agricultural co-op runs a handful of localized weather stations that do live reporting. There isn't one for Eurobin, but we are halfway between Myrtleford, Bright and Porepunkah. I have found that most the time I can average whatever is happening in Porepunkah and Myrtleford to give a rough guide here. So this morning it was almost minus 4 degrees in Porepunkah, and minus 2 in Myrtleford. Doesn't leave much room for us to not be cold!

At that temperature, and with a clear sky, we are guaranteed a frost. Most the time we get by without sustaining any frost damage, but this morning's will hurt. We had a similar frost 10 days ago, and I was depressed at how much damage occurred.

Our vegetable garden took a beating. Oddly, the lettuce seedlings are fine, but everything else was wilting and dead. And a lot of the trees I have planted and nurtured through summer have been killed. Paulownia are a common tree around here, and I have planted out quite a few that have grown from seed. Some of them are two years old. All dead from 10 days ago, and anything that got through that wouldn't be alive after this morning.

But the real worry is the olives. I am used to seeing heavy damage in the next two valleys from frosts. Out in the Buckland Valley its unusual to land an olive crop....most years it gets blasted by frost. I am not used to it here.

Frost-damaged olives commencing to rot

What I have seen this year is outliers....a tree in a gully, a row of trees facing my neighbor's grazing paddock. some random low-hanging or extra sticking-out branches. If you are going to have a frost its better to have it early. The fruit takes a few days to die and brown off as it rots, which means you can see them and get them off the tree. Its relatively easy to see brown fruit against a background of green. And planty of time to get it done, with harvest in another couple of weeks.

(Rotten olives in the mix contaminate the flavour and can have an impact on shelf life. Its a pain, and tedious to remove them. But it is what it is!)

But now this morning's frost will take the same few days to show up. With the rest of the olives ripening fast, in a few days I'm going to be looking for brown olives against a background of ripening black olives. A much harder task! And less time now.

Hurry up, harvest!

Interestingly, I had previously thought that frosts killed off lacebug. Lacebug are a big issue this season, I am hearing from other olive groves. We have had more lacebug activity that usual., which I have mentioned in previous posts. I have had to spray a couple of times. Its too close to harvest now, and with very little rain predicted, no more spraying. We will have to let the lacebug do their thing for a few weeks. But I was hoping the frosts would slow them down. Maybe it has, but they are certainly still in my trees and alive.