Welcome to the January 2019 Farm Diary!
The first monthly blog about what’s been happening on the farm and what we have been up to!
The first month of 2019 was indeed a dry month for the farm, we had no more than 15mm of rain, which makes a difference to the wet months at the end of 2018. The crops on the farm finally got a good dose of sunshine, and the lambs are doing all the better for getting sunshine on their backs too. What a difference a spell of long warm hot days has made.
January overall was a good month, here are some of the things that have happened…
We did a lot of tidying up of “loose ends” in January, odd jobs that don’t seem important but over time add up and are all part of the big picture. The woolshed was organised and tidied ready for shearing lambs, the combine harvester was checked over and greased up ready for action, batteries were tested in trucks and tractors, Murray did a lot of fence maintenance on the farm, and I even managed to get my big tomatoes planted in the greenhouse (they were getting a bit pot bound!). All the Grain silos got cleaned and emptied in January too. This could have been done earlier, but better late than never! There is never much grain left in a silo once we have sold and emptied it’s contents, but grain contaminating insects like to live in leftover grain so each silo needs to be swept out and then cleaned. It’s also a good opportunity to check each silo is in full working order too. It’s no good finding out on the day of harvest that a door needs fixing or moisture has been getting into the silo somewhere.
Roguing crops. It’s not one of my top 5 jobs to do on the farm, but it has to be done. For those of you who haven’t had the experience of roguing, it involves walking up and down a paddock, working your way from one end to the other, seeking and removing (roguing) voluntary, or unwanted plants. It’s a job best done as part of a team (more eyes to seek undesirables), and thankfully Murrays parents are always happy to help out. The “offending plant” can vary depending on the crop, but as far as we are concerned we were on the hunt for wild oats! We walked all of the barley, wheat and pea paddocks and found only one small area of wild oats by the fence line in a paddock of winter wheat. To our surprise, it was in the new red clover paddock where the most wild oats were found, two great big patches found by Murray! Even though we are growing the red clover for growing lambs to eat, we still rogued the wild oats out of the ground so they couldn’t go to seed. For good measure, I made a “wild oat map” so we can inspect the offending areas again next year when roguing in case more have grown.
January was a good month for making Lucerne baleage and ryegrass silage also. We employ contractors to bale and wrap all of our baleage and silage. I always feel better going into winter knowing that we have a robust supply of feed on hand for our livestock too – growing calfs especially enjoy eating Lucerne baleage.
This month we will begin harvest and we have wheat, barley, peas, oats and vegetable seeds to harvest this year. I take little credit for the work that goes into growing the crops, Murray is the brains of this area of the farm, I’m more of a sounding board, financial planner and extra pair of hands and eyes! Last years harvest (2018) was our first harvest together on the farm, and we were pleased with how well it went. Murray had allocated more land into growing combinable crops than what the farm had ever grown, and we had to buy and build two new 160 tonne silos to store the extra grain. Of course, it also meant that we had more harvested crop to transport from the paddocks into our grain silos, and we found the process could have been a lot faster and less stressful with a faster, more “trustworthy” auger. Since the last harvest Murray has done a lot of research into augers, and in January we purchased a new auger which will help a lot this harvest, as again this year we have more crops to harvest. The new auger can move 2 tonnes per minute at optimum speed, which should speed the process of unloading trucks of grain a lot quicker.
All the stock are happy and have plenty of pasture to graze, and because we have so many trees on the farm there had been more than enough shaded areas for the animals on the hot days. The steers are content and growing well and the rams are enjoying their summer holiday before beginning their job of mating in the autumn. All of our lambs have now been weaned from the breeding ewes, with half being weaned on New Years Eve and the remaining half during the week after. We weighed every single lamb on their day of weaning and sold 200 lambs that were already “fat” at the start of January, with the remaining lambs being split into two groups. One group is grazing red clover and the other group is grazing a variety of leaf turnip called Pasja. Although this is only our second year farming together, Murray has been farming for 10 years and this is the first he has grown red clover (our farm advisers idea) and leaf turnip for growing lambs to graze. It’s going well so far, and because we regularly weigh our lambs we are noticing both groups average weight increasing at a pleasing rate (don’t ask me for the daily live weight gains because I haven’t got that far yet!). Our shearer friends came and shore the wool off the lambs at the end of January, finishing on the 31st which I believe was the hottest day, and I was glad when it was over, we were all sweating buckets!
We had our first “antibiotic free inspection” in January too and I’m pleased to say we passed. We are not opposed to using antibiotics when the welfare of an animal requires it, and that’s not what the inspection was about, it was about traceability. Almost all of our animals never require antibiotics in their lifetime, but it it’s important that animals who do receive antibiotics are clearly identifiable and are not sold to a customer who stipulates no antibiotics involved in the animal’s lifetime. It sounds like a lot of paperwork, but it really isn’t.
Murray and I are part of a RMPP Action Group and this month we visited a high performing farm in North Canterbury. It was an excellent day spent off the farm with our group learning about somebody else’s farming preferences and practises. One of the actions I came away with was to research into finishing lambs on legumes, a plant family which clover belongs to. We grow lucerne on the farm only for making baleage for feeding to stock in the winter, but there is the opportunity to graze lambs on it. An area requiring more thought on our part I think.
Socially, January was a quiet month for us. We celebrated milestone birthdays of two of our friends, one turned 30 and the other turned 40. Both had parties to celebrate and we had a great time with everyone at both. I love birthday parties, it’s a good excuse to get all dressed up and spend an evening catching up with friends and also meet new people. Sometimes it feels like we rarely leave the farm except to get groceries and go to meetings, and it’s important to include time off the farm into our life.
That’s all for now until the end of February. I hope you enjoyed our blog and if you have any questions please contact us.