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!
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.
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.
I know, I know, it’s now September. But that’s ok because I managed to take some photos on what seemed like the only clear, sunny day we had all of August. So I give you the final winter ‘View from the Silo’ for this year. You can see the earlier shots taken of this crop here: April , June & July.
The August that finished yesterday was the wettest one around here for a very long time. It has actually been wet enough to have some of the locals thinking ‘we don’t really want any more rain’. They’re thinking it, but no-one is game enough to say it. Apart from all the rain there isn’t anything extra to report on this crop, just the extra months worth of growth that you can see above. Hopefully that rain will set us up for a bumper harvest. But we will see.
This is part 3 of my series – ‘View from the Silo’ showing the dramatic changes our area undergoes throughout a cropping season. The first 2 in the series are: April & June.
A big change from April
Well it’s the end of July and we’re thankfully over halfway through winter. You can see that our wheat crop has started growing and now has almost complete ground cover. Welcome rain has meant that the crops in our area are looking quite good at this early stage. The tire marks you can see running up and down the paddock show that this wheat was sprayed last week in order to kill weeds and the ‘self-sown’ lentils and clover from last year. You can see the complete contrast in colour compared to the April photo just 3 short months ago. Dead, dry and barren then, lush green and growing now. It’s a very welcome change!
This post is the second ‘View from the Silo’. It’s a series I’ve started to document the dramatic landscape changes that happen in our area over a farming season. I did the first one back in April.
The colour transformation is beginning.
Compared to the photo from April, you can see that much has changed. Autumn is now winter, bright sunshine is now grey overcast and cold. By mid June the scene above is a common one around here, as most farmers have finished planting and the crops are in the ground and starting to grow. As of today, this is the case for us too. A good thing, as the long hours in the tractor seat do get repetitive and the risks of weather &/or machinery delays are now past.
This paddock was planted with wheat & fertiliser about 3 weeks ago, and has now germinated quite nicely. Yours truly was driving for most of this paddock, but I unfortunately can’t take credit for the gun-barrel straight lines of new life you see above. As well as making tractor driving less demanding, the GPS guidance also means efficient use of paddocks via the elimination of overlaps or missed sections.These green lives carve a welcome pattern into the dark soil.
I had an interesting idea the other day: I thought that I could show you, my humble readers, just how much our surrounding landscape changes through a year. My idea was to climb 1 of our very high silos and take a photo or 2 of the surrounding countryside every month. I can then post those photos here, along with a short explanation as to why it looks as it does. So today while I was at the top of the silo opening a lid, I whipped out my phone and took this photo. As you can see, the photo quality isn’t great and in future I’ll try and use a better camera.
The farmland surrounding our farmyard.
The first in this series is a bit of a boring one. As you can see, despite all the recent rains everything appears dry and brown, thanks to the worked soil in the foreground and the stubble of last years lentil crop behind that. This is not the case everywhere, as due to much welcomed aforementioned rains, any areas not sprayed for weeds are starting to show a tinge of green.
For half the year, typically from November to about now (April – May) our landscape is predominately a dry and dusty picture similar to the above. This will change dramatically in the next month or two, as the rains and the air-seeders come (I’ll show you what an air seeder looks like in a couple of weeks.) and the area is transformed into a magnificent green. This all happens in a few short weeks, as I hope to document here.
What do you think? Interesting? Or not?
These are some photos I took at my house on the 30th December 2006. (New Years eve eve)
All of them are unedited (Except possibly for size)
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