A bit of background......

Ben and Katie Thyer

I have decided to record a year on our broad acre cropping farm, through images, stories and facts about living and working on a family run farm. By family I mean my husband Ben and I. We are lucky enough to have my mum Winnie, who comes out from Scotland and looks after our two young kids twice a year for seeding and harvest. This allows me to work full time at these times of year, when often we are working 15+ hours a day.

Indy and Hugo helping check last years lentils

           I came into farming by chance when I was backpacking around Australia, and fell in love with the way of life. If I hadn't  met my husband Ben, I would have been heading down the path of corporate and city life  back in Scotland, where I had finished a degree in Interior Architecture.

In the last four years I have been studying, and in Febuary this year graduated with a Diploma in Agriculture and an Advanced Diploma in Rural Business management through RST. I was lucky enough to have great tutors that were very passionate about farming and also a great bunch of collegues that I studied with. 

Leadership day with our RBM group

The skills that I learnt through studying have given me the confidence to help run our farm more effectively in all aspects including agronomy, business management and grain marketing. I leave all the spanner twisting to Ben.I have been attending as many grain marketing seminars, and crop days as possible and also recently attending a local group called Ping ( Partners in Grain). 

We are very lucky in this industry that we have so much information at our fingertips, if we take the time to do the research.

We Farm 900 Ha  and are purely cropping. We grow Wheat, Barley, Canola, Peas and Lentils.  Our soil here is Alkaline PH 8- 8.5 Sandy loam over clay

Rainfall 400-450mm

     

Front Gate