Good, soaking rain has set the Loddon country, around Fernihurst, for the best season in thirty years, according to mixed farmer Adam Wright.
The area had recieved 215mm of rain so far this year.
“It’s reminiscent of the 80s when we had trouble getting our crops in – but it’s as good as season as I have seen, for a long time.”
Mr Wright grows cereals and runs prime lambs on 809 hectares on red clay and black soils, west of the Loddon River and on the Waranga Basin irrigation channel.
An irrigator, he said the enterprise was now about half cropping and half prime lambs. Settled in 1932 by his grandfather, Mr Wright said he had been switching over to cropping, gradually, over the past six to seven years.
“Most of it is barley, about 400ha of barley, 85 of oats and 12ha of faba beans,” Mr Wright said. The crop went in the ground in late April, with sowing completed by May 20. Mr Wright said he used a combination of conventional and direct drill, zero till, sowing methods. Hindmarsh barley was the main crop, going for malting grain into GrainCorp at Boort.
He said last season was “pretty well a disaster – we had faba beans on irrigation, which saved our bacon. I am hoping for a tonne to .4hectares on the dry and pushing for double that on the irrigation.”
A spraying program, of Roundup and Treflan, targeted wild vetch, radish and wild oats. “Generally we start harvesting the second week in November, but last year was the first time we’d ever had the header in the crop, in October.”
More recently, he had been using a cheap form of fertiliser – chicken litter – to boost productivity on some of the “harder country,” supplementing the MAP and urea.
“I have got one paddock which has always been a bit of an issue, I could never get legumes to survive on it.” He said his agronomist told him it needed more organic matter, so he spread the chicken litter on it. “Manure is reasonably cheap, it’s the freight cost and spreader costs that add up.”
Mr Wright said he had been allocated 320 megalitres of irrigation water this year.
“We’re hoping for 100 per cent, whether we get it or not, is another thing. But we are starting to get a flow into the catchments and the reservoir.”
He said he ran the property in conjunction with his father, and had taken over the cropping side. “I’ve got a better temperament for cropping, the ‘commander in chief’ (his father, Bill) is more of a sheep man,” Mr Wright said. “The cropping doesn’t tend to push your temper, like sheep do.”
Avenel bloodlines were used for the sheep, which were bred for both wool and prime lambs. Mr Wright said he put a Suffolk ram over the Merino ewes, with the aim of producing between 400-450 fat lambs, each season.
“I am not pushing wool, the fat lambs are where the money is – the last lot we sold reached a top of $182.”
The property had switched from three lambings, as it “got out of hand, especially when it is not the main income.” Rams went into the flock in November, for an autumn drop.
The current crop would be sold at the Bendigo markets, aiming for export, at the 25-kilogram mark, in May or June next year.
