Kelvin farms with his wife, Katherine, and parents Terry and Pam Price
Where: “Dudstun”, Quantong (West of Horsham)
Enterprise mix: Wheat, barley, canola, beans, lentil, chickpea, crossbred ewes and lambs.
How has harvest been going? How did you cope with any rainfall interruptions?
Harvest went well with pretty good yields across the board. Early on we had a few teething problems adapting a new chopper that we’d purchased, it turns out a 2nd hand chopper off a 9670 won’t adapt straight up to a 9770! Later on we had a main pole in the finger tyne reel crack in half and we had to finish harvest with a loaned front.
The promise of a big rain in early December lead to a couple of all-nighters but we only ended up with 17mm (lucky!). Latrobe barley all passed the falling numbers test and made malt, most of the Corack wheat made ASW with a little APW. We’re keen to try some Scepter wheat next season.
Drone imagery from the harvest at “Dunstun” can be found here: Kelvin Price harvest 2017-18.
How would you describe the 2017 growing season? What was the biggest lesson learnt from last season?
With a GSR of 320mm, we had a touch of water-logging in our lentil crops, most had recovered only to get hit with frost early November. We had a tricky start with sowing through heavy stubble loads from the 2016 season so we had to (emergency) burn a couple of stubbles and rake the bean stubbles.
We’re planning to burn a couple of stubbles this year mainly for ryegrass issues. With two wet years the grass is getting harder to manage. We had challenges with mice early, we baited everything behind the air-seeder only once we realised we had a major issue. Then followed with another hit on badly damaged areas after that. The control seemed to be worth the money spent on bait.
We generally escaped the frost reasonably well except for some lentil and chickpea crops. Hurricane chickpeas were hit the hardest making number two grade and they are all sold. Jumbo chickpeas are still in the silo needing some cleaning to make 1s and hopefully a better price.
Looking to 2018, what are your rotation and enterprise-mix plans?
Our rotation is predominately wheat, barley, canola and beans. We might possibly back off on lentil.
With sheep prices going so well we picked up an extra 560 store lambs in October to grow out on the extra feed we had at the time. Now, our stubbles and feeders with beans will play a big part in turning them into heavy lambs by late January or early February. Have also bought replacement maiden ewes to replace old ewes. For now, we’re just busy keeping feeders and hay up to our own bred lambs trying to hit the high end market in April.
Hopefully mice won’t be a problem this year however I think we will be more prepared this time around if numbers are still high.
What are your plans and goals for 2018? Do you have a special focus?
We’re looking into resistance testing for ryegrass. We think the benefits of paying for testing would outweigh costs, especially in a good year.
We’re looking to get more soil testing done this year too, especially for assisting our nitrogen (N) management. We want to know our N soil status, particularly after two big production years in 2016 and 2017. It helps having a wife in the soils team at Agriculture Victoria to help with that planning too!
It’s important to get on top of summer weed control so we’ll be moving stock (if possible) to get a more timely treatment!
Where do you get your best information to make on-farm decisions?
BCG! The Technical Bulletin and events in particular.
We also get advice between our agronomist, my sister (De-Anne Ferrier, BCG employee) and my wife (Katherine Dunsford, AgVic Soils Research Scientist) through their ag backgrounds.
I also do a lot of scanning of social media on Twitter and Facebook where I get a lot of ideas and new info.
Will you be taking time off after harvest? Do you think this is important?
Yes, most definitely! We’re finally off on our honeymoon (Katherine and I got married in 2017) for 3 weeks in late Feb. I’m looking forward to switching the phone off!
