Sowing in full swing
Here on the farm we are busy. The picture above is of the tractor (with lights on) and air seeder on dusk – the quality of the mobile phone isn’t great in twilight, but gives you an idea of the views we are surrounded with daily.
Our sowing program is progressing well with our Canola sown and we started sowing Barley this week. It has been a bit of a race as we have been blessed with an additional 25 mm of rain over two falls – making the ground very wet and potentially difficult to sow. We have been sowing along the local lane called ‘Pipeclay Road’, so named after the clay mine which was located on the edge of our property. I remember as a child sneaking down the mine shaft and exploring it – I know, all the things you shouldn’t do. Now it has all been filled in.
Anyway, as the name indicates, the soil in this area has a high clay content making it very sticky when wet. We always try and retain our stubbles when we sow as an ongoing mulch for our paddocks. But can you guess what you get when you combine clay, water and straw together? A sturdy building material. In short we could make clay bricks. This material can build up on our machinery blocking between the air seeder tines, sticking to wheels and filling wheel arches on vehicles with a mass that even a knife struggles to cut through – making the whole process quite difficult.
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One solution to this is to burn the stubble – thus eliminating one of the structural elements of our clay bricks and allowing the soil to flow through the machine better. I really don’t like bruning, unless there is an obvious need and we were very fortunate with the design of our air seeder that were were able to sow through the difficult conditions. However, many of our neighbours were not able to – thus leading to a series of impressive fires which we viewed from our farm. |
So what is a sowing day like? Well we have to service the machinery each day while the dew on the ground dries – looking for broken or cracked frames on the airseeder, inspecting shafts for bad bearings, filling the tractor with diesel and ‘AdBlue’ and greasing lubrication points. We have to transport seed and fertilisers (Urea and MAP) to the paddock and then fill the airseeder bin. Each bin full allows us to sow approximately 40 Ha of paddock area. We then have to spray the paddock with chemical prior to commencing sowing. As a result, actually sitting in the tractor and driving is the easy part and it can take half a day of preparation work before we can commence sowing. From here we try and keep the machine moving and will drive through as late as the conditions will allow, refilling with fertiliser as necessary. By 9-10pm the sticky conditions become very bad causing multiple blockages and we call it a day – ready to start again tomorrow.
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This is a photo of us filling the airseeder bin. We keep our fertiliser in silos on the farm and transport it to the paddock using a bin called a grouper which sits on our truck. It has augers which then slowly transfer the material into the airseeder bin. You have to constantly check for blockages in the augers as well as lumps in fertiliser which may block one of the airseeder tubes. The white material on the left is urea (approximately half nitrogen) and the grey material on the right is MAP (21% phosphorus with small amounts of other nutritional elements). The seed goes in the front bin (not shown). |
So by the end of the week, we had managed to complete the sowing of our Malt Barley variety “Gairdner”, thus ensuring the Kingham contribution to national beer production (and other malt products of course 😉 ) for the 2014 year. As I write this next to the fireplace, the rain has come and gone, leaving us with a maximum temperature of 10 degrees C for the day. Yesterday was even colder thus allowing snow to fall in Orange – So we can assume winter is here to stay.
From here, we hope the ground will dry sufficiently to keep sowing by mid next week. The danger at this point is that a large fall of rain will make parts of the farm impassable for winter, thus reducing the area which can be sown. In the meantime the weather forecasters are predicting El-Nino to return in late winter with significantly reduced spring and summer rainfall for 2014. So as we struggle with mud at sowing , we start thinking about in crop fertiliser options for drought type conditions in spring.
Ive said it before and will say it again…
Its a funny old game, this farming business.
Cheers, NeilK