The posts to this blog have been a bit light on during May. Many apologies, but in my defence – it has been a busy time.
We finished sowing on Friday evening, the 30th May 2014, around 8pm. This sowing time has seen the full range of conditions. When we started sowing canola in early April, we were struggling with the wet condition of our paddocks – especially those on the side of the hill. Soakages, muddy ground, blocked seed tubes from mud were all the type of hurdles we were dealing with. As the sowing period went on, conditions improved. We had good moisture, but as it dried the muddy paddocks turned into moist, loamy seed beds, perfect for freshly sown seed.
However by the time we moved to our final paddocks we were back to dry sowing. Yes there was moisture down deep, but these last paddocks are quite light soil types with Sodic (crusting) areas in them. A rain event of unknown strength had been forecast to arrive on Saturday the 31st of May, so I was keen to get sowing completed before it hit. Just to be safe, we sowed as shallow as we could by just laying the seed under the surface. At least that was the plan.
Of course, nothing goes exactly to plan and this last week had a few extra challenges thrown in.
Dan, my trainee and tractor driver, was required to attend a block release for his TAFE course for the first three days of the week in Dubbo. This happened to coincide with me forgetting my age and jumping off the back of the truck to stop the auger from overfilling the fertiliser bin on Monday morning. For those of you who know me, this moment of rashness resulted me putting out my SI joint at the base of my back (again 🙁 ). Normally this event would result in jenny assisting me to the car with a rushed visit to the Physio. My fantastic Physio would then relocate the joint into its correct location while admonishing my stupidity, followed by the application of multilayer strapping over my back. However the Physio was on leave for 3 weeks, so this meant that I spent 3 very sore days in a tractor trying to keep sowing happening. Dan returned for the last 2 days of the week, finishing off the majority of the ground. I then moved the tractor to our last paddock on the Friday afternoon to finish the sowing program that evening.
The next day, the rain arrived. Here are some pictures to show you the result. The first picture is the last paddock I sowed and the second is the tractor stranded in the paddock.
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Yes, a bit more rain than anticipated. 52mm to be exact. Most likely, sowing that last paddock was a waste of time.
But I am definitely not complaining, the rain will be fantastic over the rest of the emerged crop, setting us up for a good winter growing season. In fact it is one of the best Autumn sowing seasons we have had for many years.
Of course, our next job was to tackle unloading those grain bags since the paddocks had dried out so well. If you remember a Another Day in Paradise post which was where we got rained out prior to sowing. I guess we will just have to wait for the next dry period to be able to reach those darn bags again. Seems like Deja Vue – (perhaps they changed something in the Matrix 😉 hee hee…)