TC's 2009 farm thread

[bobbiemenzies]

farmers - the backbone of the country

Great posts and videos TC. Thanks for sharing and making us aware how you folks - the backbone one Australia - help prop up the rest of the country through hard work and dedication.

 

[topcropper]

Had a heat wave early in the week. Wasn't too bad here, got to 27 degrees on Monday. It got hotter the further north and west you went though. Got to 31 in Gunnedah and 36 in Moree Now that's incredible for winter..!! Still getting the odd frost. We had a frost yesterday morning.

Still dry. A total of 4 mills for August, so that may as well be zero.



The June planted wheat is well on it's way. This crop should come to something even with no rain, maybe 2 or 3 tonnes per hectare,......

The July planted wheat is struggling a bit. It really hasn't had much rain since planted. Plus it had less soil water to start with. That's why we had to plant it later. The sorghum crop before it was planted later, so it was desicated later, which ment the sorghum used water for an extra month. It all adds up to less water. So it's a punt. Not sure what what will happen if it stays dry. Could be a failed crop. We knew the risks......

We are supplementary feeding the cattle. They are getting a bit of hay. Plus a liquid called anipro. The anipro is in that red plastic container. It gets filled up regularly. Anipro is a molasses based liquid supplement designed to both complement and Improve utilisation of the available feed in a paddock. It's supposed to allow the cattle to better digest the rank dry feed. There is plenty of dry feed. It's the native grass. The cattle have been through and eaten any clover, ryegrass, phalaris etc, anything of good feed value, and all that's left is the dry grass. They need a bit of a hand. The poor old cows must get frustrated looking at the lush wheat through the fence all day.

Thank goodness we sold the steers and heifers when we did. Prices have dropped heaps since and feed has been in short supply.

Check out this old header! It's just lying under a tree on a property we own. I don't know it's history, we have only owned the place for 12 years. I'd guess it's 50 years old.

Most of NSW and Queensland is dry. QLD is looking at a poor winter crop now. The north of NSW is still OK, as long as there was soil water. We could still grow a big crop, but we need rain soon. The south is not so good, as their soil doesn't hold much water anyway, and even if it did there was no wet summer for them to fill it.

Most of Victoria is fine, except for the very far north west. SA is OK, and west Oz is looking at a bumper crop.

Rain is forecast for this weekend. I'm not expecting much. It was looking real good a few days ago but has been downgraded.


See ya's.

 

[steveadl]

Great pics TC, thanks for the update.

Another stupid city slicker question - you say you're hoping for rain especially for the July wheat crop as there hasn't been enough rain since it was planted and there wasn't enough moisture in the soil. Do you guys ever water wheat crops such as this, or is it not feasible? I'm sure I've seen big a$$ water contraptions on fields out north here, though I'm sure it's different stuff being grown, probably potatoes etc.

 

[topcropper]

Do you guys ever water wheat crops such as this, or is it not feasible? .

While we have great underground water for residential/domestic and stockwater purposes, there is not enough for irrigation. Irrigation takes an enormous amount of water.

Further to the north, say 40ks, there is irrigation from the vast underground aquifers, but it was overallocated, and thus overused. The irrigation licences are being cut right back, and rightly so. The water tables were dropping. It's a global problem. Water tables are dropping everywhere as too much water is being taken out everywhere. I think this is a major reason why creeks and rivers don't flow water like they used to.

Then there is also the major dams that hold water in flood times, and it gets released at a later time down a river, so farmers then pump the water onto their fields from the river after the water is released.


See ya's.

 

[yadreamin]

Thats an old Sunshine header TC you know there is collectors of these old machines. Yes even in that condition as they may find a part on yours that they havent got. Do a bit of a search and you may make someone very happy. Plus its a big part of our farming and machinery history.
Nice green crops you have.
cheers
yadreamin

 

[topcropper]

Thats an old Sunshine header TC you know there is collectors of these old machines.

I wonder if it's one of these machines? Horse drawn? That would make it a lot older than 50 years then? I just assumed it would have been pulled by a tractor? That would make it a ground drive. PTO drive is modern.

I must make an effort and find out about this thing. There may be some people still alive who know a bit about it's history.

It might also make a nice display out in front of my house, in as-is condition.

Thanks yadreamin.

See ya's.

 

[battler]

Try this...

http://museumvictoria.com.au/sunshine/mckay.asp

 

[Apocalypse]

Probably from 1920's I reckon. The old weathered timber is fantastic for homemade "rustic" furniture. If it has lasted.

I remember trying to use the spiked drum of an old thresher as a ghetto lawn aerator but I couldn't make it heavy enough...

 

[topcropper]

Thats an old Sunshine header TC

It's weird that I've been planting, spraying and harvesting past and around this old sunshine harvester for 12 years and never even had a close look at it.

Went back this morning. It appears to have a PTO drive on it. Plus there are no paddles on the drive wheel. Without paddles the wheel wouldn't get drive from the ground, but rather would slip. So that's a bit disapointing to me, as I'd prefer it to be an earlier ground drive model.

But, there also appears to be a big cog wheel on inside of the ground drive wheel, and there are holes in the rim where it looks like the paddles were removed. Just below the top red arrow you can see the shaft where there would once have been a cog for the ground drive, but it's been removed.



I'd guess it was originally a ground drive model, possibly pulled by horses, but then at a later date, once a tractor was purchased, a PTO drive has been added, the ground drive disabled and the wheel paddles removed to get a smoother ride.

Whoever did the PTO conversion, didn't quite get the cogs lined up right, and they have worn lopsided.

I've put a red arrow on what I think is the PTO drive, and also what I think is the ground drive cogs on the inside of the drive wheel. You can see the holes in the wheel where the paddles were removed once converted to PTO drive.

I've got no idea how it was possible for horses to pull a header along, and at the same time the ground drive movement was driving the straw walkers shaking, and the sieves shaking, the fan blowing away the charf, the augers and knife in front cutting the crop and a heap of augers moving the grain. Just mind boggleing. Must have been a tough job for the horses.


See ya's.




ps. Funny. I had to get my 9 year old daughter to show me how to put the red arrows on that picture.

 

[Dazz]

Must have been a tough job for the horses.

Agreed - looks like that first horse could do with a feed, the ribs are quite prominent.

They are a far cry from the air conditioned 600 hp tracked versions of today with TV and GPS.

A question if I may TC. When I was a lad on my uncle's farm in the early 80's, he had one of the first air seeders with a 30ft wideline with all of those octopus air blower distributors for the seed and fertiliser towed by a 300hp Versatile.....but, the configuration was tractor / air seeder / wideline.

It appears on your set up and all other nowadays that the airseeder trails the wideline, instead of being in front of it.

Why did the configuration change, and what happens to the rows of seeds that get squished by the wheels of the air seeder ??


P.S. Like your shed work. I bet your sheds are a hell of a lot cheaper to construct than the ones we own. Must be nice to have so much elbow room to just scrape away another pad and just build another, without upsetting neighbours and think of truck flow patterns and turning circles etc.

 

[topcropper]

A question if I may TC. When I was a lad on my uncle's farm in the early 80's, he had one of the first air seeders with a 30ft wideline with all of those octopus air blower distributors for the seed and fertiliser towed by a 300hp Versatile.....but, the configuration was tractor / air seeder / wideline.

It appears on your set up and all other nowadays that the airseeder trails the wideline, instead of being in front of it.

Why did the configuration change, and what happens to the rows of seeds that get squished by the wheels of the air seeder ??

.

I know what your talking about Dazz. We had the same setup too. Back then we weren't even using fertilizer, or if we were it wasn't much. The soil was still rich enough that it was supplying most of the nutrients. Plus the yields were much lower. That means we were mining the soil of nutrients, but that wasn't sustainable.

Today we are puting on nearly all the nutrients that are being removed. This crop, we put on 300 kgs of urea, 50 kgs of starter fert, and 40 kgs of seed. And if the season turns into a cracking good one, we still might have to fly more nutrient on. There is enough fert to yield 4 tonne, but not to yield 6 tonne. That would be 3 or 4 times as much stuff as 30 years ago.

So, back then the airseeder could be much smaller. It would have been just riding on the planter frame, or on the hitch from the tractor. Probably only a few tonnes in total.

Our airseeder is 9000 litre. It would hold 7 or 8 tonnes of product, so it would weigh 10 tonnes in total. It would be too big to carry on the planter frame, so people moved it to the back with it's own wheels.

Being at the back, it would be easier to fill than in the middle. Being at the back, it's easier to see what's happening with the planting. Especially nowdays that we are always planting into stubble.

The wheat seed that gets run over by the wheels still comes up. Sometimes it comes up better than the seed that wasn't run over, as it gets squashed into the soil better. For sorghum planting in 80 cm rows, the airseeder wheels fit between the seed rows.


See ya's.

 

[Dazz]

Being at the back, it would be easier to fill than in the middle. Being at the back, it's easier to see what's happening with the planting. Especially nowdays that we are always planting into stubble.

Yes - those are all good and valid reasons.

I remember the air seeder had its own 2 big wheels but was hitched to the drawbar of the tractor similar to a normal trailer, with the wideline hitched to it. You couldn't see a damn thing what was going on with the seeding cos the air seeder was in the way.

It wasn't one of these huge independent units with 4 wheels. It could carry about 4 tonne, and was a bugger to fill up, with the truck having to squeeze into the gap between the tractor and the wideline.

Great thread BTW. Your photos really make the thread come alive.

Cheers TC.

 

[our obsession]

My great Uncle Bill had an involvement in developing and refining? the Sunshine Harvester, he was living and working in Braybrook, and was part of the team designing it.
He has passed away, but not before we got to hear about (some of), his work in science, at Sunshine and his war recollections from New Guinea...right here at our kitchen table over a cup of tea or two.

I think? they also had a hand in designing (or adapting) the first bread slicer machine. Or one of them...something to do with it...

I got the written documents on the New Guinea part of his life, but neglected to do the same with Sunshine H and bread slicer.

 

[yadreamin]

TC the picture of the Sunshine header looks just like your relic in the paddock. You can even match up the different parts from the before and after pics. These machines are a wonderful part of our history. I think the ABC did a doco on the men who started the Sunshine business. It was well worth watching.
If you move it you will have to be careful as l would imagine its very fragile now
Anyway you enjoy it
cheers
yadreamin

 

[topcropper]

Yeah, I saw a doco a few years ago on the Sunshine Harvestor works. It was a great show. I tried googling up the DVD. I found this,....

http://www.abc.net.au/programsales/s1330141.htm

$88 Landline from 2004. Think I will wait for a repeat.

At its peak the Sunshine Harvester Works employed 3,000 workers, covered 30.7 hectares (76 acres) and was the largest manufacturing plant in Australia.




I was talking to an old farmer last night who drove a ground drive sunshine harvestor 50 years ago as a teenager. Although it was pulled by a tractor and not horses. You had to keep a constant speed to keep everything spinning and shaking at the right speed. This ment that if the crop was very high yielding you could only take less cut at a time. If the header front was 10 foot wide, and the crop was very high yielding you could only a take 3 or 4 feet cut or otherwise everything would choke up and stop.

I still can't believe how this was done using horses.

See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

Check out this tractor pull motor explosion, blows the whole side out of the engine.
Wouldn't want to get hit by a bit of metal if you were a spectator......


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcJslNsgM2c&eurl=http://david.farmnet.com.au/&feature=player_embedded


See ya's.

 

[The Fence]

Needs somebody just near the end to say very loudly...BANG..!

 

[topcropper]

We did very well from the rain overnight. Steady rain all night, for 22 mills on my farm. That's probably as good as anywhere. The southern Liverpool plains was about the highest falls anywhere.

Not much in the cropping areas down south. Not good. Just a few mills in places down there. Must be getting desperate now on those light shallow soils.

This was just what we needed, especially on that later sown wheat that's had bugger all rain on it. It will really take off now for a few weeks.

Hopefully we will get some storms this arvo, and there is possibly more rain to come early next week.

See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

We ended up with 41 mills from that rain change last week. Very nice, and we were very lucky. It is still very dry in the western parts of southern NSW. Also dry in most of Queensland. There should be at least an average wheat harvest in northern NSW.



I've been spraying the earlier June planted wheat for stripe rust with our self propelled boom spray. Puting out a fungicide, folicure, at 290 mills per hectare, with 50 litres per hectare of water. If the rust is let go, it ends up destroying the leaves of the wheat plant. With no leaves, the plant won't produce much grain.

Seems it's a regular part of growing wheat now. A decade ago it was rare to have to do it. The rust keeps mutating. The varieties that used to be resistant then are susceptible. Plant breeders have to keep breeding new varieties to keep ahead. I have 3 different varieties, all supposedly resistant to stripe rust, but it just means I might get away with 1 spray instead of many more. If the crop needs a second spray, I will get in the local ag pilot, as by then I would do too much damage by spraying from the ground.

The crop is about 45 cm high.

I'll probably have to spray the later July planted wheat too. It's improved since the rain.




The flag leaf is just showing now. The flag leaf is the last leaf to show, and is the most important. We must keep the rust off this leaf to protect the grain yield. The tiny head is still down in between the leaves, or 'still in the boot'. The left plant, I pulled the leaves apart to show the tiny unformed wheat head. The plant on right, shows the flag leaf, and the head is still down in between the leaves. The head will emerge from the flag leaf in a week or two. Then it flowers and then fills with grain.

A 30 second youtube from the cab, coming to the end of a run....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qKULDO2dus



Grain prices are terrible. The global soft commodity boom is well and truely over. Record wheat and corn crops in the US and Europe mean grain stockpiles have been rebuilt. Not much we can do about it. Just try and survive till prices improve. Just glad we sold all the sorghum when we did. We have no wheat sold. We won't make much profit from this crop.

Milk prices are terrible. Below 30c per litre for an Australian dairy farmer. All just part of the cycle. I thought the boom might have lasted a bit longer though.


See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

Dust..??

We got 21 mills of rain over night. Beautifull. Then awoke to the dust. For a very brief few seconds I thought it was fog, but it was reddish, and windy..?? That's not normal? Turned on the TV news, and find it's over the entire south east of the continent, and Koshie and Mel are standing in Martin Place Sydney and it looks even worse than here..!! The dust soon turned more greyish, and as I type this now you can now see for a few kilometres. That's from just 500 metres visibility this morning.

Must be coming from a long way west, as most farming areas got at least some rain yesterday, although not as much as here. Must be from the desert?



The later planted wheat that was a bit of a punt, has had 62 mills of rain on it this month. 41 mills a few weeks ago, and 21 mills last night. It's improved from when I said this,....

The July planted wheat is struggling a bit. It really hasn't had much rain since planted. Not sure what what will happen if it stays dry. Could be a failed crop.
.

I took a picture of it a few hours ago. Tried to get in the same spot as I was from post 22, page 2. You can see the grey dust in background, although nothing as bad as this morning,.....

I took a bit of a punt. I flew 100 kilo's per hectare of urea onto it on Monday, hoping we'd get some rain to wash it in. So that's 46 kilo's of extra N, with what was already on. Now, with the extra N, if there is a heap of rain in October, then this crop would now have the potential to be a good yield, say 5 tonnes per hectare. Should hopefully at least go 2.5 to 3 t/h, with no more rain now, so that's definately no failed crop. But if it turns dry, that extra N would not have been needed.

This urea only cost $470 per tonne delivered on farm. It's still getting cheaper.


Got the local ag pilot in. He takes 1.2 tonnes of urea at a time. Takes probably 30 seconds to fill. Maybe 7 or 8 minutes to dump out, including transport. It doesn't take long to do the job.
You tube of the plane coming in to land on a neighbours strip,......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAU4QOi5MyE

It's pretty expensive to hire the airstrip. Costs a carton of beer.



You tube of the loader truck pulling away and plane heading off,.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnGHvEZbzRU


See ya's.