The grain shed. This has been a long term project!! So let me explain some of the background……
For winter cropping farms like ourselves, we harvest grain in the months leading up to Christmas. The further north you go in Australia, the earlier the harvest of winter crops begins. In Queensland it can start in early October, in central NSW we start mid November and south eastern NSW/Victorians will often start in late December. Then, harvest takes as long as it takes.
In those harvest months, ‘normally’ there is plenty of grain for sale. Farmers have spent vast amounts of money, mostly borrowed from a bank, to grow the crops and we are all keen to sell and see cash return to meet our loan obligations. As a result ‘normally’ harvest time is a time where we see the lowest grain prices of the year – simply put, people must sell a portion of the crop and there is ‘normally’ plenty to go around. Its ‘normally’ a buyer’s market.
To combat these low harvest prices, some farmers like to take out forward contracts – i.e. you can sell grain which you haven’t grown to buyers who are happy to pay a premium for such a guarantee. ‘Normally’ it works out ok. You grow the grain, deliver it to the buyer and get a premium price.
Comment: You might notice my use of the word ‘Normally’. This is because nothing is ever ‘normal’ in farming. In the event of a production failure, (because of drought/flood/fire/frost/grasshoppers/mice/armyworms/hail/disease – did I leave anything else out?), harvest may have great prices because there isn’t much grain to go around. And if you took out a contract , but can’t deliver the grain you promissed, it can be costly. So who really knows?
For me personally – I just don’t do forward contracts well. Is it wrong to promise to sell something I haven’t grown yet? Then I spend the next few months wondering at 3:00am in the night – did I forward sell too soon? What if there is a drought? What if the dollar goes down, what if, what if…
So I prefer to store the grain we have grown and then sell it throughout the next year.
But how do you store alot of grain? Silobags bags are good for about 2-3 months storage without problems. But longer than that, you can loose grain quality and they become high maintenance. Metal silos are good, but they are be expensive. They can be difficult at harvest and require special augers to reach them. So, we decided to build a sealed grain shed with a local manufacturer.
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So this is the first half of our grain shed. It has concrete walls with a tin roof. Inside it has a 15cm thick slab designed to hold the weight of the grain inside. It has a door at one end and auger access holes along each side. The kids think its the perfect place to go during the Zombie Apocalypse ( what ever that is?) |
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Inside the shed, we simply push our auger through the door and start filling it. We fill each back corner and then move the auger to the middle of the shed and fill it as high as we can -to a level of 3 meters height at the walls. The photos are there to give you an idea of perspective – showing Dan in an empty shed and then the growing mountain of grain. |
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It is really important that the shed is sealed – we must be able to keep the grain pest free as the year progresses so that the grain’s quality is maintained.
So when the rain clears up, we will finish filling the shed and wait for our clients to pick up the grain later in the year.
Hmmm… thats alot of grain on the floor of a shed.
Did I say ‘pick up the grain’? That could be interesting… Shovel anyone?