Putting vintage headers to task: Rochester farmer prepares to harvest wheat

The Pinnacle wheat crop spans about 16 hectares and started a few years ago, when Mr Macague found out about the older variety through word of mouth.

"I got it through a collecting group at Quambatook and they supposedly got it through a bloke, through a bloke, from a seed box," he said.

"The wheat came from a seed bank at Horsham, all the old varieties there, and a guy got a matchbox full of seed and grew it up there."

He said he had previously sold the seeds on to other interested farmers and received $500 a tonne.

"There's interest around it because it's a bit unique," he said.

"It is really interesting to grow, I've been doing it for a few years now on and off and it attracts a bit of interest when you sell the seeds."

He said they hoped to start harvest before Christmas, but recent rain had pushed back their plans to harvest the wheat crop in January.

"It's going to take quite a bit of harvesting with the old headers," he said.

"It's nearly shoulder high in spots and it's been well-fertilised so I don't know how it's going to go.

"It does make me a bit nervous but I'll bugger around there with the old headers."

He said this year's 16-hectare crop was sown in July with a shorter season, and still had green patches despite a dry September.

His family farm currently has canola, faba beans, wheat, barley, field peas, hay oats, and is in the middle of its harvest program.

Mr Macague said he decided to use fertilisers on the vintage wheat this year, dubbing it a "vintage wheat with modern methods".

"We've treated it like any other wheat this time, but in years prior I've tried to go full '50s farming and fallow the paddocks and sow it in but it didn't work too good," he said.

"The first ever harvest - it was pretty cool, it was a big crop that year too, the first time I'd sown it, I'd harvested it with my Connor Shea auto header, which is what you back the tractor into and hook it up."

Mr Macague owned about a dozen Australian vintage headers, after starting collecting headers in his final year of high school.

He said he started collecting older pieces when he was about 13-years-old.

"I was hanging out with my mates who were doing a similar sort of thing, we saw the old stuff lying around the farm and decided we'd drag it out and get it going," he said.

He said this year he would harvest with a 1962 Horewood Bagshaw OH, and he was preparing it to strip the crop.

"This header came from Cowangie up in the far north-western end of the Mallee, it was backed into a shed and was kept very well," Mr Macague said.

"They're hard to find in good condition.

"After the very first one I restored, which had been outside for 20 years, I decided that was the last time and I'd get them in good condition."

He said if "all else failed", he would use his 1969 David Shearer Xp88, a 1963 international a8-3, or his 1974 Connor Shea Auto, with a 1982 Ford 6600 strapped on the back.

He said eventually he hoped to branch out into more vintage seed varieties local to the Rochester region.