well we wanted rain!!!!

You cant see the weeds if you go fast enough!!!
 Ben checking for blocked boots/ heads/ missed strips etc

Well since my last blog when we finished seeding we have been fairly quiet on the farm. All the crops are up now and looking good. Last week we sprayed the Canola with Select and verdict ( grass weed sprays) and combined this with Dimeothate ( insecticide ) as it was being munched by lucerne flea. We managed to get away for 5 days and had some R&R  in Adelaide. While we were away the heavens opened, and we ended up having 54mm rain over three days, once again following terrible northerly winds. I was glad we were not at home that day but the sky in adelaide was brown with all the dust in the air.



The burnt patch( about 5 acres) hammered again by the winds, we will not resow as it is coming through slowly.

We are yet to clean the seeder as we had to resow yet another section of Canola, this time it was only a boomspray width that was about 200m long. We learn by our mistakes here all the time. It was due to the grass weed chemicals settling in the tank and lines for a few days in between paddocks. The concentration must have been so strong that when Ben started the next paddock it basically burnt off the first 200m until it diluted again. Of course its right beside the roadway, in a gateway that is prone to drifting so fingers crossed no more Northerlys for a while.



Chemical damage on Canola

Bifora city in wheat !!!!

One new thing we are trying this year is putting Boxer Gold on Post emergent for control of ryegrass in Wheat and Barley, at our new block called Tamar. The timing has to be accurate in the fact the rygrass has to be no more than 1 to 2 leaf and it has to be followed by rain in order for the chemical to be washed into the soil  for root uptake. If this works it will take the pressure of using the group B chemicals as it is a different mode of action. Last year we planted lentils over there and we struggled with all the Bifora that came up as we could not control it. So consequently this year the Wheat paddock is full of the stuff. Luckily we should have 5 years to control it if we use Canola as our next break crop.

Steve round the kichen table doing a planning session

We have had Steve our agronomist out looking at our fertiliser requirements for the year based on our deep soil test nitrogen results and target yields. The target yields will be adjusted throughout the year depending on rain fall, but so far looks promising.

We Sold our first wheat swaps yesterday, time will tell if it was a good move or not. The physical price is trending upwards at the moment because of production issues in the US and Russia. This is exciting news for us, and hopefully these prices continue improving through to harvest.

Also some news is we are planning on making  changes to our farm yard, we are looking into building a new american barn workshop in a better position in the yard. We will eventually knock the old one down. It has done the farm proud, it was built in the 1920s originally as stables for Ben grandfathers racehorses and Clydesdales. It was made at the time from reclaimed material from the Moonta coppermine buildings when they were demolished. We will try again and salvage as much as we can for our next project. We have a lovely little orchard smack bang in the middle of the yard with the best orange and apple trees growing in it, that is going nowhere so we will just have to drive around it. Anyway  we are busy for the end of the week spreading more snailbait and eventually putting the seeder away for another year.