Ah, the lifestyle

Whatever happened to the after-harvest lull? Finish harvest between Christmas and New Year. A few big nights at the local pub catching up with friends and telling harvest stories… yields increasing by the hour.

Maybe get the grain cleaner out, put it under a shady buloke tree and start preparing seed for sowing… in five months’ time. Then off to the beach for two weeks.

February was pretty cruisy – you could even watch a mid-week movie or two. The main task was planning what to buy at the Longy field days. Depending on how good harvest was, there’d usually be one large item. Hadn’t heard of a chattel mortgage or HP, just bought what you could pay for.

At the field days you would go around the tents looking for the best fertiliser deal and behave like an eight-year-old in a lolly shop when you found the big tool marquee. Then, hang out until Thursday afternoon, waiting for the ‘field day specials’.

This year, the dust of harvest was still settling on the paddocks when in pulled the boomspray. We’ve all learnt how critical those few millilitres of preserved moisture can be in a tough spring.

The trucks are rolling their way toward Lake Albacutya and bringing back loads of gypsum. But next week they’ll be going in the opposite direction, off to Geelong with grain to fill delivery slots for that contract.

Second planning meeting scheduled with the agronomist and watching grain markets daily. South American weather, Chicago wheat futures, Russian export tax, shipping availability… all impacting the price we’ll receive for our stored grain.

The work I do with the community bank network has led me to have many meetings with our city cousins during the past 20 years or so. I always introduce myself as a farmer from Rupanyup.

Quite often the response is ‘that must be a nice lifestyle’.

I used to go into a long explanation about how agriculture was evolving, the cool technology we applied every day and our awareness of the impact global events had on our business.

Now I just smile and agree. Anyone who doesn’t now realise farming is a complex, demanding business being run by skilled professionals has no interest in what we do anyway.

There’s not much time left for nostalgia in a modern farming business. But occasionally I do let my mind wander back to the shade of the buloke tree in January. The Wimmera wind whistling gently through it’s branches. The galahs making that distinctive sound as they try to stay cool on a hot summer’s day. The Hannaford seed cleaner doing its thing as we get ready for the next crop.

Yep, that was hard work…