Watching you drive that big JD 4WD tractor makes me a bit jealous John! I grew up up on a very small dairy in North Queensland in the 60's and 70's. I learnt to drive on a old McCormick International A414 (all of 41 HP!) with mod cons like "Armstrong Power Steering" (you needed strong arms to steer the thing!) and "Flow through" Air Con! For brakes we just aimed it slightly uphill!! (Not even joking!) 🤣 The first tractor I actually was let loose on to bumper (offset disc) the paddocks for winter feed at the age of 13, was an old Fiat 650, with a monstrous 65HP! It too had that wonderful "Armstrong" power steering, with the added bonus of "Auto Steer" (a piece of #8 wire off the fence to hold the wheel straight! Yes, I think 13 year old me would have loved to have the opportunity to operate that big beastie you have there! Hopefully some rain will come your way soon and you'll get a bumper crop. Keep the content coming, this old dairyman's son is loving it! 👍
I absolutely love watching your videos. I live on the Isle of Wight on the South Coast of England, so I see farming on a daily basis, although nowhere near on your scale. I do have a question, though. What's your plans with the Pine Trees?
At this stage we don't have a plan for the pines, they were something we put in as we knew they grew well in the sand as we have 30ha on the farm that the government leases and has pines on (sandy area) We might try and jump onto the government when they come to harvest their pines and see if they can do ours, but that's still 12-15 years away so plenty of time to make a plan
Hey mate, interesting to see how things are done over there in WA, is your spray man from New Zealand? Looks a bit like a bloke i worked with a few seasons ago contracting up near Methven
curious, as you would have put fert out with seeding, isn't it pretty early to be fertilizing the crop again? Not worried about nutrient burn? I thought you wanted to fert again maybe 6-10 weeks in? Newbie here :D Or is the top dressing more slow release?
It is too early to start spreading as most of the crops like the wheat haven't germinated and non of them have used the fertiliser that we put down at seeding time yet. The reason I am spreading now is to empty the shed of the last of the Fert in order to clean it out and be able to store machinery back in there. After this rain hopefully it germinates all the crop and then we can make a decision on whether or not we are going to get urea out and apply that or hold off and just use Flexi-N
The benefit of the fold down spinners is mainly in lime and gypsum. As we only spread to 12m when doing that the product only has to travel 3m instead of 6m from the centre so means we are able to spread in higher wind conditions which would normally stop and spreader. With fertiliser we area able to spread up to 36m (120 foot) but with the new ones they have a different disk again and are able to get out to 48m (160 feet) but I don't know how confident I would be spreading that distance as it is a long way to fling a small granule
I noticed in your earlier vids you are seeding with an 80 ft Seedhawk. Just wondering what made you switch to Bourgault for your current drill and are you happy with the switch, I'm debating between the 2 for my next drill.
The seed hawk was great in terms of seed placement but not good with stubble trash flow and the bin wasn't VR. The Bourgault when we went and looked at it at other farmers places was able to go through the stubble no worries (turns out that was a lie) and the bin was great and a lot of people around here have just the bin with other bars. I don't mind both (a new seed hawk bin would of fixed the old ones issues) they both have their positives and negatives, its just what works for you, your machines and works with your bank account!
We put them there as that’s where the sand started blowing and we couldn’t stop it. The trees actually grow and stopped the sand spread for a few years but eventually just got to big and had to clay the sand
