TC's 08 wheat harvest.

[topcropper]

Interesting stuff TC.

I think you mentioned your land holdings are 1400 hectares all up.
How much of that is cropped in any one year?

We own 1000 hectares. Lease 400. Crop 1400 total.

We make more generally from the summer crop. We get more rain in summer, over double the winter rain, and the sorghum is more tolerant of rain at harvest, unlike the wheat. Sorghum is also very drought tolerant [as long as it has soil water], and loves a flood. Wheat hates a flood.

This year has been real typical, wheat destroyed at harvest with rain, that wipes out just about all the profit, but all that rain gives us a great summer harvest. Can't win em all I suppose.

As a result, we grow two thirds of the place summer crop, generally sorghum, and one third winter, generally wheat. So we crop 1400 hectares per year. So roughly [1400 divided by 3] 400 to 500 hectares winter crop, and roughly 900 to 1000 hectares summer.

We have a very small amount of land not cropped. Just the bit around the houses and sheds and silos, and we run a small beef cattle herd. Also, so the kids have somewhere to ride their dirt bikes.

This would be typical of what farmers do on the Liverpool Plains. Only other place with this sort of cropping rotation would be the Darling Downs in Queensland, and then further north into Kingaroy etc.



Liverpool Plains,.....Note the liverpool range, which gives us a natural southern boundary, and gives us our great reliable rainfall.......
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=-31.641691,150.428238&spn=0.204893,0.307617&z=12


Darling Downs,......
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=-27.618752,151.370659&spn=0.213246,0.307617&z=12


These two areas are very similar. The Darling Downs is hotter though, so they grow a lot of cotton, where as we are too cool for cotton. The Darling Downs is also much bigger than the Liverpool Plains.

See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

TC......And a good profile building for the cereals hey....!
...

Yeah, it's not looking too bad.

Cheers mate.

 

[WinstonWolfe]

very insightful info TC.

I had been wondering if you ever considered dedicating uncultivated hilly land to tree plantations- hardwoods like debusia (sp?) and gums, or pharmaceuticals like polonia (sp?).

 

[Sunfish]

I drink with an electrician with some sort of "officer" status with Ergon Energy and he says timber power poles are still the best but getting hard to find. They are now planting spotted gums for their own use and they will be of suitable size in 20 years.

You would never turn cropping land over to timber but there is a lot of marginal country turned over to hobby farms and it could be worth a second thought. They must still be managed and thinned properly. There are properties on the Atherton Tablelands where you can buy "established trees" but if they haven't been managed they have little value.

 

[WinstonWolfe]

You would never turn cropping land over to timber but there is a lot of marginal country turned over to hobby farms and it could be worth a second thought.

yeah that's what we looked at several years ago at Goomeri......along with cattle....tbh's father is off the land and was going to live there......but ended up being better short term returns in Brissy......and near money is dear money....

They must still be managed and thinned properly. There are properties on the Atherton Tablelands where you can buy "established trees" but if they haven't been managed they have little value.

yup, saw similar in the USA.....but not as bad....a lot of the trees grow slower and don't end up as gnarly and branched as ours.

 

[kinga4610]

The only thing that turning farming land into trees ie hardwood, gum, paulownia plantations has done for us in the South Burnett is produce large numbers of dingoes and wild pigs. So any farmers still living near them are selling out due to the carnage caused.

Kinga

 

[kinga4610]

TC

Great picture there. Looks like you took this from the top of a silo. I bet for sure you were wearing a safety harness like all farmers do!!!

Kinga

 

[WinstonWolfe]

The only thing that turning farming land into trees ie hardwood, gum, paulownia plantations has done for us in the South Burnett is produce large numbers of dingoes and wild pigs. So any farmers still living near them are selling out due to the carnage caused.

Kinga

Thanks Kinga, if you can PM me the names of any farmers you know who are selling out for this reason, I'd like to talk to them..... Cheers

 

[kinga4610]

Sure WW. There was a very recent one within the last few months whom I have met. I will check with him first before passing on details. He lived somewhere in the Windera/Proston area.

We also own a farm not far from natural treed forestry (not planted) and we have had several calls from the council to ask if it is alright to set traps for both the pigs and the dogs. Apparantly we have quite a nice dingo track running through a small treed area at our place (about a 2 acre area) which leads up from the river straight across to the neighbours place which is also moderately treed to his piggery. Our neighbour on the other side of the river trapped two big dogs a couple of months ago. We have a fairly good herd which generally can look after themselves, but about 3 years ago we lost a few head at calving time. Most of our neighbours bait for dogs and have for years.

This farm is quite close to Kingaroy and the wild pigs have made their way up to Mt Wooroolin (if you know where that is) which is just outside the Kingaroy township on the western side of town.

Kinga

 

[WinstonWolfe]

This farm is quite close to Kingaroy and the wild pigs have made their way up to Mt Wooroolin (if you know where that is) which is just outside the Kingaroy township on the western side of town.

Kinga

He's not trying to sell one of Mt W. wineries hey Kinga?

TBH reckons her father's current property has always had trouble with pigs and dingoes due to the corridors that cross it connecting State Forests.

Feel free to PM me if the guy is interested.

 

[topcropper]

I had been wondering if you ever considered dedicating uncultivated hilly land to tree plantations- hardwoods like debusia (sp?) and gums, or pharmaceuticals like polonia (sp?).

No, none of our land is hilly. Our place would be 100% arable. I'd doubt our area would be good for tree's anyway. Even the ridges don't grow tree's as good as most areas, they are only sparce. As a general rule, the better the land for crops/pasture/grass, the worse it would grow trees, and once out on the soft deep plains, tree's won't grow at all.

Plus, a lot of the ridge country is worth a lot of money these days as little lifestyle farms. If you have a nice view, and can put down a bore with good water, the land is worth as much as the plains country.

I've just never thought of it at all. To me, you grow tree's, or just leave the trees as is, where the land is not good enough to do anything else.

See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

TC

Great picture there. Looks like you took this from the top of a silo. I bet for sure you were wearing a safety harness like all farmers do!!!

Kinga

Yeah, right.

The OHS blokes called in at some local farms a few years ago and went through things and caused some carnage, but only the bigger farms that employ people. So far they have left us smaller blokes alone.

See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

Today was supposed to be the first day without the rotten south easterly wind, so we might finally get some grain off without drying it. It wasn't supposed to rain, it was predicted to stay further south. Instead, it was cloudy all day, and finally came onto rain an hour ago. So we are washed out, and I'll have the weekend off.

TC, favor to ask - can you get a photo from the captain's seat of your mighty machines?

Cheers,

The Y-man

Here ya go Y-man.

The old man forgot to put his footy tips in, so I got to do a few box fulls while he took a load back, and put his tips in,....Tried to zoom out far enough to get in the controls and stuff, but the lens wouldn't do it,.....

And this is a you tube from the header cab. Poor quality, and no sound. It's pretty quiet in the cab, and all you'd have heard was the ABC radio anyway.
We are doing 8 k's an hour. It's a 9 metre wide header front.
Taking in 12 rows of crop. Rows 75cm wide.
While we are moving, taking in 40 to 50 tonnes an hour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5gkZS0YgMw&feature=channel




This photo, I didn't like at first, with the sun at the back in the late arvo, but it does grow on you though, here it is anyway, from a few days ago.

See ya's.

 

[The Fence]

Pretty much disclosing your true identity right here with this photo TC....carefull...! lol

Yeah...todays rain would just about take the cake after all week wet winds....

Sorghum always seems to drag on at harvest for months it seems.....

Hope it dries up for ya in time to get her off....

Going to Gunnedah tomorrow...?

 

[topcropper]

Going to Gunnedah tomorrow...?

Nah. The kids want to have a look at the dog trials tomorrow at the rec ground after the anzac parade.

Only got 1 mill so far, but then it's still showering now outside.

Cheers mate.

 

[geoffw]

Nah. The kids want to have a look at the dog trials tomorrow

Did the dogs get a good lawyer?

 

[The Fence]

Not sure but they will need one....with names like 'mugsy' 'rip' and 'killer' who would want to defend them....lol

 

[The Y-man]

Here ya go Y-man.

.

Thanks TC!

The Y-man

 

[topcropper]

We finished harvest today. Ended up with a much better than expected average yield of 7.4 tonnes per hectare. So that's a bumper sorghum crop by any measure. Great to get two in a row. Overall, a great crop, and we will do very well.

The last 4000 tonnes all had to be dryed. That adds a lot of extra time and expense to the harvest process. We have been burning a thousand litres per day of diesel through the grain dryers and harvest gear for weeks.



As per usual, the last few acres of crop were full of wild pigs. We had the local pig hunter and his dogs at the ready, and a few guns in the header and tractors. The pigger and his dogs got 8 pigs, and me and dad got 3. A lot of small ones got away.

Normally the pigs would be worth a bit of money, but with the financial crisis, the German wild game market has crashed, so they are worthless. I took a few photos, but they are a bit rank, not really what most would want to see, so no show. The dogs got onto a big sow, but by the time I got there, the head and legs were already cut off and were ready for dog meat.



It's getting really dry here now. We will wean the calves off the cows on Monday, and the weaners will go onto the oats, and the rest will go onto the sorghum stubble until it rains.

There hasn't been a frost yet. Last year we had two frosts in March. The first frost and the last frost of a season are important events. The cropping season has to be timed so as to suit. The summer crop has to be finished filling grain before the first frost, and the winter crop has to start flowering after the last frost.



We all went into the local pub to celebrate the end of a great harvest.


See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

There is an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the mining verses agriculture debate on the Liverpool Plains,......


http://business.smh.com.au/business/miners-reap-ill-winds-20090529-bqa7.html?page=1



As the article says, It's amazing how involved all the farmers wives are getting in this. It's a groundswell being driven by the women.

There is coal under all the Liverpool Plains. However under my place the coal is very very deep, so it's not likely to be mined for a long time. However, where the coal is deep, is the best coal seam gas. So if your not going to be mined for coal, it's gas to worry about. When the gas comes up, so does the water, water full of salt and other contaminants. Out in the middle of the desert somewhere, no one is really much concerned about the polutants, but now that it's on prime farming land its another issue all together.

Apparently the ABC is getting a four corners program ready to show in the near future.


See ya's.