Hey HarvestHERs!

So I’m back in Western Australia again. This time around on a more permanent basis having taken a full-time job on the same farm I was seeding on last year!

The seeding and growing season, this year, has posed plenty of challenges from start to finish. A lack of rain early in the year, and in the lead up to starting, made for a dry start. This, coupled with some pretty severe 100+ km (62+ mph) winds, wreaked havoc on seeded paddocks, in particular those that had been in pasture and didn’t have any stubble as ground cover. We even had to seed one paddock on three different occasions, as it kept getting blown.

One of our fields after the wind events and prior to seeding.

We did, eventually, get a wee bit of rain and got all our crop in, though it was pretty late before we finished.

Canola just peeking through the sand after winds.

All in all, it was a pretty terrible season weather-wise – a record number of wind events and the third driest year in 170 years.

The only silver lining to the below average season was it made for a bit of an easier time for me, as I had a bit of a change of scenery this year and was driving the boom spray instead.The shift to the boom spray has been a pretty big learning experience, going from a 12m (39 ft) wide machine to 36m (118 ft), as well as having to learn about all the chemicals and what not.

After seeding finished, the growing season has had its moments, as well, with lack of rain through September and a couple of frosts, to top it all off. We are fortunate, though, that we could have been hit harder with the frosts but having seeded so late put us at an advantage, in this case.

In the meantime, we’ve been keeping busy with all sorts of bits and pieces from fencing and dam cleaning, to mulesing and crutching (this HarvestHER even had a go on a handpiece).

But now we’re flat-out at harvest preparation, gearing up to start harvesting over the next few weeks – and mentally preparing myself for my first ever harvest driving a header!

***I had some questions about some the words Jess used. So I asked. I don’t want her to change the way she writes her stories but sometimes we need to know what she’s talking about…in US words.

“Haha I forget how much slang and farming terms differ!