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By Jonathan, December 5, 2011 6:06 pm

Had to take this photo and share it. We shift sheep a little differently on our farm.

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By Jonathan, November 1, 2011 10:21 pm

It’s late pre-silly season at the farm at the moment. We’re all busy getting machinery & ourselves ready for windrowing, and then harvest. The theory is to do lots of maintenance and repairs now in a bid to avoid crucial downtime later. A bit like communism, it’s a good theory.

Some of the things happening over the past few days include:

• Spraying chickpeas to suppress fungal diseases.
• Maintenance & testing of our improved spray system for the windrower.
• Full service of header. Oil change, replace and clean filters etc.
• Checking radiators, tyres etc on trucks.
• Prepare yard for new on-farm storage that is being built.

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By Jonathan, October 17, 2011 5:59 pm

Beating the odds.

This is the durum (pronounced deu-ram in Vic. du-rum in SA.) wheat that is growing next to my house. As you can see it is well out in head by now and looking great. The wheat harvested from here will most likely be sent to a wheat mill in Adelaide that turn it into pasta for the Australian domestic market. Buy a packet of San Remo pasta and there’s a chance that you’ll be eating our wheat. Buy one next year, and it could be what you see in this photo. This looks like being a good crop for us. But just how good remains to be seen.

I walked just a few meters into the edge of this crop and found this:

Instant pasta wheat. Just add water.

A crack in the ground wide enough for me to get more than half of my hand into. That means the soil is very dry and these plants either are, or soon will be quite thirsty. Right at the time when they’re trying to flower and produce as many seeds as possible. The weather over the next 2 weeks will be the difference between an ‘average’ yield and a ‘bumper’ yield.

Still, whatever happens it should end up being a remarkable result. I got bored the other day and started doing some statistical analysis on our local historical rainfall records. You can download the figures from your local area and perform similar mathematical exploits from the BOMs climate data site. What I found was both interesting and concerning. The graphs I made show a lot of different things, and I’ll try and explain some of them in the coming days and weeks.

The first one I’ll show you is the graph of our ‘growing season rainfall’. This is probably the most important and telling of the graphs I’ve made as it shows the rain that falls between the ‘growing’ months of April-October*. This is the rain that our crops can use to grow. Summer rainfall is often lost through evaporation & isn’t reliable in any case. It is most telling because it clearly shows what effect the much publicised 10 year drought across south-eastern Australia has had on our area. Our 10 year average is currently around 80mm below the overall average of 328mm. That’s a yearly reduction of 24% or almost a quarter of what used to be taken as normal. 80mm on any given year is the difference between drought and average. Average and bumper. Profit and loss. Another way to look at this: cumulatively over the last 10 years most of SE Australia has missed out on at least 2 years worth of production. How would your business survive such a hit?

This is what makes this current season look like a potentially remarkable one. We’re looking at average or above average yields on what is currently the 8th driest growing season on record. (We still have 2 weeks for this figure to improve.) This because the crops have been able to utilize all the moisture that soaked into the soil during last years wet summer. So the rain may have ruined last years harvest to an extent. But it looks like it’s going to save this current one.

*Our later season crops like chickpeas can make good use of November rainfall, but overall rain becomes less and less useful after the Melbourne Cup.

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By Jonathan, June 16, 2011 10:12 pm

Following hot on the heels of Tuesdays article in ‘The Age’, the 7pm Project ran a story tonight on the dwindling supplies of Australian farmers. The characters were different, but the messages were essentially the same. That is, the average age of Australia’s farmers is 60 but 90% of Australia’s food is grown domestically, so who will be feeding us all in 20 years time.

If you’re interested, check it out. The farm related segment is towards the end of the clip.

It’s fantastic that this complex issue is being looked at and discussed. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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By Jonathan, June 13, 2011 4:15 pm

Update: The article is online: ‘Sowing seeds for a well-fed future’

While planting wheat a couple of weeks ago I was contacted via twitter by a delightful writer named Sarah Robins. Sarah was putting together an article for Melbourne’s ‘The Age’ newspaper based around the premise:

‘The average age of an Australian farmer is 60. Who’s going to be growing our food in 10-15 years time?’

I’m so far under that average as to almost be a statistical outlier. So Sarah interviewed me via phone and twitter about returning to the farm & my take on rural life. She also interviewed several other people involved in agriculture with much more interesting stories than mine. The article is supposed to be published in ‘The Age’ tomorrow (Tuesday June 14). So if you’re interested & can then pick up a copy and have a read. If the article appears online I’ll link to it.

Sarah has a photo blog on foodie related things. Check it out here.

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By Jonathan, February 10, 2011 7:00 pm

When I started this blog I was all too aware that life in rural Australia is often misunderstood by the majority of Australians who’ve never lived it. I started nerdfarmer.com/ in an attempt to show what modern farms are really like. I wanted to show that despite the well publicised negatives there are really good things about country living.

This YouTube clip, put together by some students at my old Uni, seems to do the same thing. It showcases what life in the Wimmera is like and points out that you don’t need $5,000,000 in start-up capital in order to become involved in agriculture.

Our town is also located in the Wimmera, and local engineers always have months, if not years of work backlogged to do. Same with the local builders & electricians. I myself have been approached to do some part time IT support work locally, if I wasn’t trying farming I could easily find enough tech support work locally to keep me busy full time. So check out the clip, as it illustrates better than I can what rural opportunities exist.

Just for the record: I’ve been to the ‘Doozer’ twice. Once for a meal and once for a drink. The meal was delicious and very cheap and I couldn’t even get inside the other occasion I went there the place is so popular.

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By Jonathan, January 30, 2011 6:30 pm

Due to the much publicised rains harvest continues. So while I’ve got a few minutes to wait in the silo queue before unloading, I thought I’d put together a few images that I’ve snapped over the past few weeks. Despite the setbacks, in yield terms it has been a well-above average year. Prices have also been really good, so for fortunate ones like ourselves with stuff to sell it should still end up being a great season.
It’s been a really busy few weeks & I’d love to share something of what’s been going on!

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By Jonathan, December 16, 2010 9:41 pm

There’s been a fair bit happening around the farm lately, which is why not much has happened here on the blog. So I figured I’d give you an update while waiting for the next header box load of canola. We’re in the middle of ‘Silly season’. A reference that has nothing to do with Christmas and everything to do with the period of 6-8 weeks commencing at the start of windrowing and finishing at that glorious moment when the header gets parked in the shed & we all go to the beach. It’s labelled as ‘silly’ because of the hours worked. As an example, I’m into my 13th hour of work for today & will be here for a couple more yet. (By the time I got home it was 16!)
However until this week, it has been silly for another reason. If you live in eastern Australia, or make your money in the grains industry you’ll know we’ve had a lot of rain lately. We had a 2 day on 2 day off routine for the first 2 weeks of harvest, followed by the well publicised rain event a fortnight ago. That event brought our area a minimum of 2.5 inches of rain, making us relatively lucky as there were many regions that had a lot more!
How has this affected us? Well after our 8 day break from harvesting we’ve found, not surprisingly some wet paddocks. We’ve bogged trucks several times & even had near misses with the header.

Grain quality is the question that everyone has been wondering about. Test weights have been down, seemingly across the board. This means that the grain is less heavy/ dense than it was before the rain. Our canola has behaved itself and thankfully hasn’t shot (started sprouting) so it’s still of a good grade. We won’t know how the wheat, (our main crop) has gone until we start harvesting it.

There’s lots more going on that I could write about, it’s an exciting time as we seem to be hitting the rare double of good yields and good prices. Even if quality is down a bit, it should still be a great year for many in our area! But the truck is full so I gotta drive! Till next time…

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By Jonathan, October 28, 2010 10:58 pm

It seems to have been almost a month since I updated you all with anything on my blog. Here’s the latest ‘View from the silo’ to get back on the horse. I’ve included an up close view of the crop, which will hopefully give some perspective on what you are looking at in this first photo.

This view sees our wheat crop now fully out in head and starting to fill with grain. See the photo below for what it looks like up close. This photo doesn’t look too different to the last one, but growth has still been happening. We had 1 good rain earlier in October that really helped this crop and our whole area immensely. We estimated that the 1 rainfall event was worth millions of dollars to our community alone. Let alone the impact over the whole state. Winter rain is needed, but it is spring rainfall that makes or breaks a season.

I’m really pleased with this photo, it really shows what our heads of wheat look like up close. We have paddocks full of these that are nicely filling up with grain as we speak. We started working on our header (Americans: combine) today in readiness for the work it will be doing on this and other crops.

This is the ladder I climb to bring you the view from the silo. Fortunately I’m relatively ok with heights as yes, it is a long way down. Not a climb for the squirmish.

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By Jonathan, October 5, 2010 11:03 pm

It may be late, but it’s here, the September update on our view from the silo. This continues my series that shows the growth of a wheat crop from the top of our farm silos. I took these photos on the weekend, during a stunning clear-blue day.

The rains have receeded and we’ve had a month of mostly cool and fine weather. The sun & warmer weather have meant that this crop has been able to grow alot since the last update. The wheat is now approaching waist-height and the heads of grain are about to show. We’ve spread fertilizer (Urea) on this crop once since it was planted, and if we get more rain in the next few weeks we may spread more. By the time I take the next photo from the silo, this paddock will be fully grown, and almost ready to start maturing/ dying off.