TC's 2009 farm thread

[topcropper]

We haven't done any more sorghum harvesting now for nearly 2 weeks. After a great run with hot dry weather and getting nearly 3000 tonnes off, there was some good rain, 40 mills. Then more rain and drizzle which brought the rain total to over 50 mills. We will possibly get going again tomorrow, as it will start to warm up again.

Took advantage of the break, and we went camping and canoeing on a private 8,000 hectare cattle farm 40 ks from Gloucester. I love that area, big canoeable rivers everywhere with mountains and lush scenery.



The birds aren't real bad this year. There is a sheep feedlot going on a few ks up the creek. A few times I took the 12 guage over and blasted a few times and scared em off, and they seem to have settled over there. Sheep are worth real big money right now. Plus, there is a lot more sunflowers than normal planted about the district which spreads the birds around a bit more, so that's helping too. So I'd expect that I won't lose anywhere near the 10% of the crop I'd planned on.

These sunflowers will soon start to lose their leaves and dry off. They should be ready for harvest in 6 weeks, and especially with a big frost if one happens soon.

Some galahs feeding on my sunnies,....

And some sulfur crested white cockatoos,.....

It's a bit hard to get very close. There's always a few scouts flying about overhead and they warn the rest of danger.



Grain prices are pretty bad now. The price of sorghum has just dropped and dropped. I'm trying to convince myself that it's just the harvest pressure. When harvest is on it's always a bad time to sell, and lots of farmers with little grain storage have no option other than to take the market price. Would be lucky to get $150 per tonne now. If this keeps up, our best return by far will come from the sunflowers, as the price is locked in at $575 per tonne.


See ya's.

 

[Macca]

Hi Tc,

<<Took advantage of the break, and we went camping and canoeing on a private 20,000 hectare cattle farm 40 ks from Gloucester. I love that area, big canoeable rivers everywhere with mountains and lush scenery.>>

That seems a big property so close to town ? I would have thought most of them had been cut up or split through inheritance by now.

I have been through the main roads up past Gloucester to Walcha etc and up the back of Wauchope and Dingo Tops it is all very impressive mountainous stuff (by Aussie standards).

Could be anything living in amongst all of that

 

[Sunfish]

How many years would you expect to get out of your nice new harvester, TC?

It certainly is a beauty.

 

[topcropper]

Hi Tc,

<<Took advantage of the break, and we went camping and canoeing on a private 20,000 hectare cattle farm 40 ks from Gloucester. I love that area, big canoeable rivers everywhere with mountains and lush scenery.>>

That seems a big property so close to town ? I would have thought most of them had been cut up or split through inheritance by now.

Oops, it was 20,000 acres, or 8000 hectares. Running 1,500 breeding cows. Up towards the mountains on the way to Nowendoc. Still big eh? I'm good mates with the manager, who used to be my neighbour out this way. It's owned by wealthy Sydney people.


See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

How many years would how expect to get out of your nice new harvester, TC?

It certainly is a beauty.

You could get decades out of it. You generally get 10 years of very trouble free use from a new one, then it's just a matter of repairing and replacing worn stuff.

We have always changed them over by 10 years of age. The old one, was 9 years, as we couldn't resist Kev's 50% investment allowance rort.



Still on headers, ours is a class 6 machine. All the manufacturers have class 6 to 8 machines in Australia. Overseas they have class 4 and 5 machines too. 15 years ago a class 6 machine would have been as big as you could get in Australia. Now in Australia it would be the smallest machine on the market. It is simply economies of scale. A smaller machine still needs all the same equipment as a bigger one, so costs nearly as much to make.

Caterpillar, and I think Case have class 9 machines out now. This is the caterpillar one,.....

http://www.vincelewis.net/combine.html

Says this machine will do 120 tonnes an hour of corn, so that would be the same for sorghum. Mine will do 60 tonne an hour. John Deere don't have a class 9 machine yet.


See ya's.

 

[Sunfish]

Here's another one from Cat:

Can't complain he had bald tyres.

 

[our obsession]

Great photos, as always, loving the pictures. Thanks.

 

[Mazda]

Whoa so many parrots! They must have been having a wonderful breakfast

Never thought that a sulpher-crested cockatoo could perch on a sunflower, I assumed they were too large and heavy to do so. I am totally wrong!

Lovely photos, TC, thanks so much for sharing.

 

[joanmc]

Hey TC we will be planting our first lot of sunflowers this week! (it's a specific variety that can cope with down to 4 degrees and flowers within 60 days so we will get one crop of flowers for market before it gets too cold here.
I have loved looking at your photos I can't wait to have my little patch of sunnies come up.

 

[topcropper]

Hey TC we will be planting our first lot of sunflowers this week! (it's a specific variety that can cope with down to 4 degrees and flowers within 60 days so we will get one crop of flowers for market before it gets too cold here.
.

I wasn't sure how long my sunnies took to flower? So I went back through this thread, and on the 11th January I was planting them, and the 8th of March they were flowering, so that would have to be about 60 days.

Sunflowers don't mind a bit of cold. That's why we plant them. We prefer growing sorghum, but when things don't go to plan, sunnies are a safer bet when its getting late.

We got a late March frost 2 years ago. ABC news of the event,....

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/200804/s2204297.htm

We only planted sunnies that season too after it was so wet that it got too late for more sorghum. The sunnies were fine and were not effected, but plenty of late planted sorghum crops were wiped out or had greatly reduced yield. It was a great decision to go sunnies instead of sorghum. I'd reckon a big frost would get em though.

My sunnies 2 years ago,....

http://www.somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31887&page=19


See ya's.

 

[joanmc]

for the flower market we have to pick them before they get too open. I might have to let a few go full out though because I love how they look.
I would love to have a huge field of them like you do....sigh....

 

[Sunfish]

A question, TC. Can herbicide kill bird life? I'd be surprised if it could but we lost our flock of nutmeg mannikins (grass finches) at the time the unkempt block next door was sprayed. There is always some long grass in my back yard and they had a wonderful habitat, but now they are gone.

The doves are still as numerous as ever.

 

[topcropper]

A question, TC. Can herbicide kill bird life? .

I couldn't be certain. Nothing we use harms the brown quails living amoungst our stubbles. I suppose you could say they benefit, as without roundup, we'd be ploughing, and they wouldn't live on bare soil, but they like being covered in crop stubbles for protection from eagles and hawkes, and having the seeds and weeds and insects as food.

I'd reckon some chemicals from years ago, like organochlorine pesticides such as DDT would have hammered them, although these were pesticides not herbicides and were banned 30 years ago.

I'd think nasty stuff like sprayseed/paraquat wouldn't do them any good as these things burn the plant like diesel, and they will do bad things to animals too if applied directly. But you'd know if sprayseed/paraquat was used as the plants would be dead in minutes.



We finished sorghum harvest a few days after my last post above. We harvested 3600 tonnes off 500 hectares for an average of 7.2 tonnes per hectare. We will store the lot and hope prices improve, but I don't think that will happen.


See ya's.

 

[pursefattener]

I'm just about to spray half of our farm with herbicide to clean up all the broadleaf weeds in the pastures . We do it every year .

I wonder WW if the person who sprayed your block next door may have had traces of some insecticide ? Perhaps it was enough to effect the birds food source ?

Just now I have more crows and magpies around than I have ever seen . They are attracted to the cockchaefer grubs in the older pastures which we have a lot of trouble with this year ...

 

[Sunfish]

Thanks for you replies guys.

The vegetation died after some days, consistent with roundup. I use that myself so I think my loss will have to remain one of life's mysteries. (Maybe some one sneeked in and trapped them)

PF, a hundred years ago when I knew a little of these things, it was 2-4D which was the "selective" herbicide. It was a plant "growth" hormone which caused plant cells to grow excessively, (broadleaf, not grass) thus "exploding" them. I find it difficult to see how this can effect mammals in "responsible" quantities.

 

[mr-ed]

Sunfish, the answer maybe enclosed in your question.

The grass was sprayed, thus changing the birds habitat.

Their habitat would be their shelter and maybe their food scource, ie grass seed, bugs, grubs etc. All of this would suddenly changed post spraying.

The flock probably got on the wing, spoted a habitat like their old one and took up camp. As the saying goes, free as a bird...

 

[Macca]

Hi,

We live on a hectare, if we mow all of it in a day, the rosellas disappear, if we mow half one week and the other the next, they move from side to side

 

[topcropper]

Everything is going as like normal. It's still autumn, so it's very dry, that's normal. We are still on about average rainfall for the year. As it's dry, we have the cattle on the sorghum stubble, as we normally do in a dry autumn. If there is any decent rain they will get booted off quick smart. Cattle on wet farming soil is a no no. They will pack it down like cement.

We have had a few frosts. That's normal, and it's also welcome, as it's cleaned up a lot of summer growing weeds, and it's wiped out the self sown sorghum in our sorghum stubble paddocks. The regrowth was sucking out some of the soil moisture, but we didn't want to spray it with roundup, as we knew a frost was imminant.



I planted grazing oats in early March. Normally there is a winter feed shortage here, as we get less rain in winter and the frosts also knock the feed around. Planted 12 hectares. It's looking fantastic. The paddocks were fallow over summer, so the 200 plus mills of rain soaked into the soil. That's what they are growing on now.

The oats is looking so good that we bought 18 steers at the Tamworth store sale today. They are angus, angus cross. They averaged $490 per head, they weigh about 250 kilos each and cost about $1.90 per kilo. The oats is lush and thick and is up to their bellys. We should have enough feed for 90 days at least on the 12 hectares, or even more if we get some decent rain. We will sell them when the oats is eaten out.

Photo of some of the steers 10 minutes after they were unloaded off the truck.

The sunflowers are almost ready for harvest. Tried em on Monday, not quite ready, tried Wednesday, same, put the header into them today and they were 9.5% moisture. They need to be 9% or less. Very frustrating. Been doing odd jobs in between and spending way too much time on here.


See ya's.

 

[The Fence]

Wondered when you'd unlock the gate to the oats....looks good considering growing on stored moisture from Summer...
So the hay you bought the other day....to balance this oats with a bit of fibre...?

Now get back on that header....rain tomorrow...

 

[topcropper]

So the hay you bought the other day....to balance this oats with a bit of fibre...?

That was the plan. Scott said that lucerne hay wasn't real good. It didn't have much leaf, so we just got the one bale. Otherwise we'd have got a fair few.

Now get back on that header....rain tomorrow...

Tried the sunnies today and they are still not ready. 9.5% but they need to be less than 9% moisture. We have Noel from up the road doing them. We don't have the front anymore to do sunnies, and we only plant them occasionally.

That rain tomorrow doesn't look real substancial. Something bigger looks like happening Friday or Saturday.


See ya's.