Harvest is getting closer and closer

The excitement is building as we slowly edge closer and closer to harvest for 2010. In this area we generally say the average starting date for harvest is the 20th of November. Well that is only a day or two away, but at the moment the crops are no where near ready for reaping. It's going to be at least another week before we get started. There is a reason for this of course. Because we've had such a good growing season with plenty of timely rain fall, and also a very mild finish to the season. The past few weeks have been quite cool and at time wet and this help the crops hang on longer, and hence the heads get plenty of time to fill out properly.

It is also another well known fact that on this farm, and plenty of others I'd say, that no matter when the crops are ripe and ready for harvest, we wont be ready for another few days after that. This year is going to be different. I'm determined! I'm doing all I can to have all our equipment up and running ready to start right on time.

Yesterday I actually finished, yes that's right, finished.. all the spraying for 2010, with the last paddock of peas dessicated. And my determination to be organised for harvest meant that I flushed and rinsed out the boom spray right away, and it has now been put away in the shed for storage over summer.

I also sorted out the batteries for the Kenworth and got her out of the shed, along with the semi-tipper, ready to get going for harvest.

I've got engine servicing to do now and fitting all the guards and parts to the header before I'll be ready to start. I should have enough to keep me busy for the next week or so leading up to harvest.

Harvest is just aound the corner now

Now that we are a week or so into the month of November... or MOvember as it is affectionately known now, where thousands of men across Australia, including myself, focus their attention on the cultivation of their perfect "Mo" (mostasche) to raise money and awareness for  mens issues such as prostate cancer and depression in males, farmers in our area are turning their attention to the pending harvest.  within a week or two headers (also known as combine harvesters) will be cranking up all over the place to take this years harvest off. It is an exciting time, with all the signs of being a bumper crop, but also means that preparations for harvest need to be thorough.  Nothing worse than having the perfect conditions to reap a bumper crop but having equipment broken down due to poor maintenance.  So the current jobs include servicing and lubricating the header and truck and any other vehicles that we'll be using.  Also getting fire prepared, setting up fire fighting units on utes and making sure all fire extinguishers are operational.  As far as crops go the final preparations are being made to the canola and pea crops.  As we speak our contractor,Joel, is out windrowing the canola.  Windrowing is cutting down the crop, in this case canola, into rows ready for reaping.  The reason for windrowing is to protect the crop from wind which will blow the seeds out onto the ground.  We are also dessicating the peas.  Dessication is the process of spraying out knockdown herbicide to finish off the peas, and also to eliminate any unwanted weeds, particularly rye grass, to prevent them from setting seed.  I'm also finishing off a few sheep jobs, such as sending the ol' ewes off to market, too before we're completely tied up with harvest.

Every now and then a farmer gets crook

It is generally accepted that farmers work every single day of the week, and only stop to eat, sleep or for church on sunday... and alot of the time we don't even stop for those things. As for getting sick.. well there is no time for sickness on the farm, and a farmer would have to be on their deathbed before they took time off because they were crook. Well that was my day on Tuesday. I must have picked up some kind of stomach wog so, as you can imagine, the day was not pleasant. Another unique character trait of a farmer is their amazing ability to bounce back and get back into it. So the next day it was business as usual.

One of the jobs I got out of the way was to finally get my air seeder bar put away in the shed. Also got myself all organised for MOvember... pictures will be posted later.

Busy down on the farm

Spring is well and truly upon us now and so we starting to look down the barrel towards harvest now, and there's plenty of jobs that go along with getting organised for that.

I'm happy to say that all the spraying is out the way now. All the herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers and insecticides have all been sprayed out, including spraytopping all the pastures so that no weeds are able to set viable seed that will germinate next year.

Shearing is all done and dusted, with the shearing shed all cleaned up and the wool bales sent off to be sold.

While I'm on the topic of sheep, today is a very special day for the sheep on the farm, and particularly the rams. Over the past few days I have been sorting out all the ewes into their breeding mobs (we have 4 different mobs of ewes), and culling out the ewes I want to sell. They've been moved into the paddocks that they will stay on over the summer harvest, and the water troughs have been checked to make sure they will have plenty of water to drink. And today was the day that we sorted the rams, which form a little mob of their own for most of the year, and divided them up to go do what they do best. Yep, today they were put in the paddocks with the ewes for mating... see I told you... spring has really sprung!

For the next few weeks harvest preparation will be the main job on the agenda, and I have already organised a few things including some modifications to the TR88 harvester and pea plucker, and also some new equipment including shiny new field bins (bins to store grain in before we can deliver it to our local port).

2 x 360bag Sharman multi-bins (they have a high cone so they can hold grain or fertilizer)

Images from the Shearing Shed

Here's just a little colliection of pictures taken in our shearing shed. The sheep waiting in the pens ready for shearing

The two shearers working at their stands shearing the sheep

Freshly shorn fleeces on the floor ready to be taken away to be skirted (sorted)

wool that's been sorted into different bins

more wool in bins

the wool table before the fleece is thrown onto it

and after the fleece is thrown onto it ready for skirting

the wool press with skirted fleeces in it ready for pressing into bales

finished wool bales straight out of the press, branded and ready to go on the truck to the wool stores

a well worn shearers hand piece connected to the down tube

this is a comb. a comb attatces to the hand piece and combs through the sheeps wool as the cutter moves from side to side across the teeth of the comb to cut the wool off

This is an old cutter, also attaches to the hand piece and cuts the wool off

and here are the sheep after shearing in the counting out pens

Hello ladies, hope you enjoyed getting your hair done

Shearing Again

We've finally had a few good days for spraying. Very little wind, and very little rain, so I have been able to get out there and get stuck into it. So much so that I have actually finished all my broadleaf weed spraying - I'm finally catching up a little bit. I did notice, though, that a few of the late barley crops were a little nitrogen deficient. I did run out of UAN (the nitrogen fertilizer that is in liquid form) a few weeks back, so I haven't been able to keep the fertilizer flowing, and in fact the whole state of South Australia had run out, so we were in a bit of a pickle. It's all good now though, we had a load delivered here on farm yesterday. We have a bulk UAN tank set up and a B-double can just come in and unload into the tank.

Having said that, I haven't been able to start the UAN spraying again because we started our September shearing today. Our shed is a two stand shearing shed - that means it has two shearing plants the drive the shearers hand pieces, so basically we can have two shearers shearing at the same time. The shearers hand piece has a comb and a cutter attached to it. The comb combs through the sheep's wool as the cutter moves across the combs teeth and cuts the wool as it moves backward and forwards. After the fleece has been shorn off, and the sheep is out the door, the wool is thrown up onto the wool table for sorting. From there it goes into a wool press and pressed into bales.

This shearing we have about 700 big sheep to do, that is ewes, wethers and hoggets. Also about 500 lambs and 10 Rams. So I think we'll be looking at about 1 full week of shearing, that's provided the woolly sheep dont get rained on - as sheep cant be shorn if they have wet wool.

Another Inch of rain

Things are looking fantastic on the farm now. As the weather starts to warm up a little the crops are really starting to take off now. The canola is basically out in full flower, so we have two bright yellow paddocks out there, and all of the cereals are really thickening up now with flag leaf emergence just around the corner. At this stage we need to keep an eye on them for fungal diseases that can effect them.

Earlier this week we had another 27mm of rain, that's just over the inch in the old scale, bringing the total for September so far up over 80mm - just the kind of rainfall that steers us towards a bumper crop.

It also means more delays to the spraying program. I'm still trying to get broadleaf weeds sprayed out of the cereal crops. I just have the barley to do (which will take a few good days mind you).

Our September shearing is fast approaching. In the last week of September we shear our main mobs of sheep. Although I don't have time to do this and should be pushing on with spraying, I still need to. So yesterday we spent a day with the sheep in the yards sorting them all out. We had to wien the lambs from the ewes, draught the wethers out of the ewes and move them into holding paddocks until it's time to shear them.

Today the weather is fine so it's back to the spraying for me.

and the rain just keeps coming

Well spring has sprung and the months of September and October are really important for the growing crops. They need plenty of rain during this time because now that it will start warming up they will really do a lot of growing. Fortunately we have had a really good start to spring with about two and a half inches of rain coming down in the first few days of the month. So far this season is looking as good as any I can remember as far as rainfall goes, and if it keeps up we'll certainly be heading towards a bumper crop.

I know I've mentioned before that the spraying program has been interrupted by the inclement weather, well, as you could imagine, two and a half inches of rain had also put a bit of a dampener on the spraying. Any chance I get I will be out there on the spray tractor trying to catch up a little. It's a good thing that once I get going and can get a fair bit of spraying done fairly quickly.

The current spray job is to control the broadleaf weeds in cereal crops. A couple of chemicals that I'm using are - metsulphuron and LVE680 (low volatile ester 680g/l). I'm also throwing in a few trace elements, copper zinc and um... magnesium I think - just keeps the crops nice and healthy.

Took out another 60 points today.

Yep that's right 60 points, or 15mm in the new scale. All up August this year has been a very good one with plenty of wet weather. Unfortunately all the wind and rain has limited the amount of spraying, and other farm jobs, that I've been able to do, to the point that I really am along way behind with the rye grass spraying in some cereal crops.

This is the rain gauge (in autumn before we'd had any rain).

I have been able to keep going with the UAN (nitrogen spraying) even in the "bad" weather, because I have several different nozzles on my boom spray. I use lilac minidrift nozzles for all the herbicide and insecticide spraying and red quintastream nozzles for the fertilizer spraying. The quintastreams, as the name suggests, spray the liquid out in five streams, rather than in a "mist" like other nozzles do. The beauty of this is that they can be used in pretty much all weather conditions... and like I said, tongue in cheek, to one of the old farmers ".. now that I've got front wheel assist on the tractor, any day is a good day to spray!"

In the last coupla days I've also had the opportunity to finish pressing all the wool left over from shearing that we did back in July. I pressed out a few bales and ended up with 29 in total. The truck rolls in on Friday to take them away.

And in case you're wondering, I had the stitches removed from my finger that I tried to chop off today too.

The weather's been a little up and down

It's the spraying season on the farm right now, and with the crops coming along nicely plenty of time needs to be spent spraying for weed control and crop nutrition.

For spraying to be effective though the weather conditions need to be relatively calm (ie not windy) and not raining (or the chemicals wash off the weeds and don't work). This August so far has been wonderful for the crops moisture needs... but as far as spraying goes... not so good. In fact I'm getting a little behind now with the spraying program and am really looking forward to some nice days where I can really get stuck into it.

Although conditions today are both wet and windy, I am able to get out there and spray out some UAN. UAN is a liquid fertilizer that supplies the plants with plenty of nitrogen.

Other hold ups to the spraying program include:

• waiting for a B-double load of UAN to come in.. they deliver it here on farm ya know.
• fixing the fence that the sheep keep knocking down to get onto the lovely green and tasty crop.
• moving the sheep back off the lovely green and tasty crop into the paddock they are actually supposed to be in.
• constantly checking that the sheep haven't knocked down the fence and gotten into the paddock with... ... you get the idea.

Well I'd better put the pen down now and get back into the tractor and continue with the spraying.

And a quick word of advice for young farmers... when making your sandwiches for lunch... do not use the sharpest knife you can find in the house to separate frozen slices of bread... the reason being that when the knife slips (with out even separating the bread mind you) a trip to hospital for 6 stitches in your finger will be the result.

see This is the latest addition to farmerpj's farm a New Holland TM155 - she replaces the old Ford 8401

My Second Home

Now that all the crops are up and growing (except where I had slight mis-haps with the air seeder) it's time to really start thinking about crop nutrition and weed control. Each crop we grow requires a certain amount of different types of nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sodium. Granular fertilizer that is sown in with the seed at seeding time is based on these nutrients, but during the growing season sometimes a "top up" doesn't hurt. Nitrogen is the main nutrient we're concerned about, especially on the higher yielding cereals and high protein crops (such as durham wheat). There's 2 main methods of applying more nitrogen to the crops. 1st involves using a spreader to broadcast Urea. 2nd method is to apply a liquid form using the boom spray. Yes that's right,.. I use the liquid form and boom spray. The last week has been spent spraying out 50litres per hectare of UAN (that's the liquid fertilizer) with 50litres per hectare of water. I can even do this on rainy and/or windy days, unlike general weed spraying. It does, however, get a little difficult if it has been too wet, the paddocks get too boggy, and I'm there to spray fertilizer, not for trench digging in the tractor. Rye grass is a common weed that rears it's ugly head at this time of year in crops as well, so I have a few herbicide plans for some of the paddocks to try to control it. So that will be the next job. So between fertilizer spraying and rye grass spraying I think I'll have enough boom spray work to keep my busy for a few weeks... The old Ford 8401... it's just like My Second Home.

Shearing is over.. let the spraying begin

Earlier this week shearing was completed at farmerpj's shearing shed. Rain had interrupted shearing a few times, but with just half a day to go we were able to get it all out the way on Monday.

I now have quite a lot of white sheep running around and one the jobs I needed to do was to sort out which ewes (female) sheep I was going to hang onto for lambing again next year. Each year we "retire" the old ewes. The correct term is "cast for age", basically it means the old girls are too old and they get to go on a truck ride to... um... the market. We did this on Tuesday and moved the keepers into the paddock where they will spend the rest of the year. Actually they're quite lucky, only a stones throw from the beach.

With rains forecast (and some already been) it's a great chance to spray out some liquid fertilizer. EasyN contains high levels of nitrogen which promoted crop nutrition and growth. A little rain during or after spraying helps to wash the nitrogen into the crops root zone where the plant can easily access it.

So in the rainy breaks during shearing, and since then I've managed to spray a few paddocks of Duram with EasyN, using the Ford 8401 and the Hardi 4228b commander boom spray.

Prioritising is an important part of farm life, and the job that takes top priority today is to catch up with the farm bookwook and do my BAS statement. Yes it should have been lodged yesterday, but jobs that I actually like doing often get done first... and the ones that aren't quite so enthralling seem to get put off til after the last minute.

The rains over night were fantastic and with more forecast over the next few days the young crops will really be coming along nicely.

A cab view from inside the Ford 8401 while driving back from the paddock along the road

Shifting the mob of shorn ewes down to their new paddock at the beach

It's Shearing time

Now that seeding is all over we've started on our July shearing. It takes a little organisation to get underway with shearing. For instance I have to have the right mobs in close proximity to the shearing shed, and sorted into their correct mobs.. cause, you know sheep... they love to get out and join mobs that they don't really belong to.

Once they're sorted we need to leave them in the sheep yards for about a day to "empty out" and also dry off a little if their wool is wet.

The night before shearing the sheep, which by now really need to be dry, are herded into the shed.. they are "shedded". Our shearing shed can hold about enough dry sheep for one days shearing for 2 shearers. I personally don't shear too many of them, but hire 2 shearers. My job in the shearing shed is to sort the wool and press it into wool bales, and to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Keeping sheep dry has been a problem this time round. The rain is wonderful for growing crops, but not for drying sheep. We've had good rains this July so the shearing has been a little on again off again as showers seem to be rolling through quite frequently. Usually this shearing takes just under a week, but at this stage it looks like we're gonna be at it for over a week now.

New Seed Varieties

To keep up to date with the latest crops and varieties on the farm from time to time we need to buy new seed. This year we have actually started 3 new varieties, actually 4 if you include the pasture seed. Generally new seed comes in in 40kg bags and I usually buy a tonne of each new variety.

The four new varieties I have are;

• Garnet - canola (I started seeding planting the canola)
• Mace - wheat
• Commander - malting barley
• Bladder clover - the pasture seed

All but the canola was sown on the same day, which made for quite a tiring, fiddly day. See it's quite a task loading the bags into the air seeder, then calibrating for that particular seed, sowing roughly 10 hectares with the new seed and then doing a full clean out (which isn't real easy with a shearer airseeder). And repeat those steps for each new seed variety.

I have to admit that I was quite pleased when I had finished with all the fiddling around and could get back onto seeding the barley. Maritime barley is the last variety I have to go this seeding, so I am on the home stretch now, with only the 32mm of rain we had a coupla days ago to hold us up. A few more days now should see us out.