Its been around 3 weeks since planting these fababeans. Some rows were a bit slower coming out of the ground than others due to wheel tracks, but that will even out. 10mm of rain over the last few days will also help. Its the only patch of green in this part of the district, so we can expect some pressure from roos and pigs and even insects (aphids). Stay tuned for more….Subscribe to posts.
Planting fababeans continues through dry and dusty conditions. No rain recorded during April means we have needed to place the seed at 10-12cms deep on the moisture. Planting beans often involves several operations. The previous post covered a knockdown spray by plane. The picture below shows the next three steps – planting on the far right, chain harrowing (middle/dusty) fills all the furrows, breaks up last seasons canola stubble and leaves a flat surface, and finally a residual spray for incrop weed control(left). 
Just finished a glyphosate knockdown spray before planting fababeans over the next week. A little dry on top, it wasn’t worth risking dust trails from the ground rig. Thanks to Toby Hazelton for some cool flying on the long runs and Jock Cameron for the GoPro footage – amazing how the suction mount still works at 300km/hr. Sorry if the clip looks a bit rough – I had to cut a 10GB HD file down to 168MB for Youtube and lost alot of clarity.
The sun sets on another harvest, marking the end of a successful winter cropping season. We have seen excellent results across all crops, even through very dry growing conditions. It comes back to the February floods and the amazing water holding capacity of our soils.
Of course, there were many problems to solve along the way, but thats part of the challenge of farming. For their help over harvest, we would like to thank Jock, Jungle, Casper, Danny, Tom, Rex, Frank, Steggles, Will, Scott and Vincent, and all the crew from TBO Harvesting for a job well done. Jacqui cooked some great harvest meals that kept us working till late. Also thanks Vernon for your help, and to the service guys from Kenway and Clark “A” for effort.
We would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas and New Year. We look forward to doing it all again in 2013.
Regards David and Peter Ricardo
Our red combines have been busy harvesting chickpeas while the green machines were working on wheat. The new shed was christened with a chaser bin of peas. Now with several peaks showing, it kind of reminds me of Katoomba. Its great to see it filling up.
Harvest now stands at 75% complete with fababeans, canola and wheat all finished and only chickpeas left. We will talk more chickpeas next post when the end is in sight. Cheers David Ricardo 
The wheat is very good this year. We won the Lisa McMillan memorial trophy for the best wheat crop in the Collarenebri District(consecutive). This winning crop of Livingston wheat pictured above was planted mid May and averaged 4t/ha off fababeans last year. I need to keep reminding myself we are harvesting this crop after one of the driest growing seasons on record. A total of 70mm of in crop rain recorded, but nothing useful since mid July. These green machines are seen below harvesting Livingston wheat and also Jandaroi durum wheat.
The new shed at Marylands has been the major project of the year. On the drawing board for the last 18 months, a big thankyou to Yeomans Engineering and Robnson Concrete of Walgett for completing the shed in time for harvest. The main section is 25m wide by 45m long with 4m high concrete walls. Two 15m skillions complete the job. Not sure what it will hold yet, but we look forward to filling it with chickpeas at harvest time.
Canola has been a successful crop on Morvenvale this season. Yields average 1.8 t/ha with oil just above 42%. After the previous post Waiting Game, it turned out wind damage was minimal as the swaths were firmly anchored to the stalks of the plants. Harvesting this crop was a big job. We swathed 1600ha with 2 machines over 4 days then picked up that area with 5 combines over 5 days. None of the canola was stored on farm. It was trucked to a local grain depot, Beanbri.
Note – it was very handy having a couple of varieties with different maturity to spread the workload. It would have been very difficult to cover, if the whole crop had come in at once.
Design by Graph Paper Press
Subscribe to entries
Subscribe to comments
All content © 2013 by Morvenvale
