Spring is in the air

The crops are looking great, the kids and I have been going for walks with the dogs and checking out their progress nearly everyday. We have organised for our Canola to have snail bait applied by aeroplane, but at this stage we are waiting for another rain, to get them off the stalks and moving around.  In the last 2 weeks we have had 16.5mm of rain over five days which was much needed.  Even more needed was a bit of sunshine, which has come at last. The wheat is starting to run up to head and the peas and canola have been flowering for a while. The barley is starting to come to life again as seemed to be so slow growing throughout our colder than normal winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twilight peas flowering

The kids just love playing in the Canola at this time of year, although I am  starting to be a bit wary of snakes starting to come out of hibernation. The amount of noise they make they should be fine though.

 

 

 

The area above is in the same paddock as the shot below. You can really see quite clearly the impact that the weeds have on the wheat early on as far as growth goes. The shot below is a good example of the early vigour the wheat has when it is not competing for moisture and nutrients with the weeds. On this paddock we put a mixture of Crusader, LVE MCPA 570, Lontrel and wetter. As you can see by the weeds dying it did the job on the tares and broad leafs but unfortunately only suppressed the brome grass. There was a mixture of brome grass, bifora, turnip, Tares, bedstraw and volunteer peas in this paddock. Unfortunately though because of the Brome we will not grow our regular barley here next year. Instead we will either grow Canola or look into growing the immi tolerant Scope barley.

 

 

 

 
This weekend Ben was in his element when 14 local dirt bike riding farmers got together and organised a ride over to the Clare Valley, this photo was taken before they all left, they came by and picked him up. All the partners and kids drove over and we met them all in Clare for lunch at the pub. We had about 26 kids the majority of them ranging from 2-6 years.



 

We passed the boys on the way to Clare so we stopped and took some shots of them riding through the side of the road track, the kids were so excited as they have never seen what Dad does for fun, as unfortunately it is not a spectator sport.

 

We may potentially cut some wheaten hay this week, and have masses of yard tidying up to do. We have been tidying up tree's as the Pepper and Pine trees around the yard (of which there are hundreds) look really scrappy unless they are trimmed, so we may have to have a bonfire before the surrounding paddocks get to dry. The Kids and I have been planting more gum trees. We were given 100 last week so it is a slow process when they both want to help plant every one. It will be testament to the hardiness of gums if they survive, as some of them were getting  yanked out their tubes, with half the roots left behind by the kids. 

 

We have our YP-AG crop field day this Wednesday, so hopefully  I can organise someone to take the kids as it is very beneficial if both Ben and I can get along and see whats new and get a few idea's.

 

Anyway here's hoping for a few weeks of sunshine and not to many northerlies