00:00In the first of our weather patterns catch-ups,
00:03I'm talking to Wendy Sheehan at Trinidad Station
00:06between Yarraka and Quilby.
00:08Wendy has a sheep and cattle property.
00:10And I'm also talking to Brad Johnson,
00:12who's based in North Queensland at Ravenshoe.
00:16Brad does a bit of everything, really.
00:18Grows cotton, corn, peanuts, soya beans,
00:21has a feedlot, grows avocados.
00:23Brad, if we start you off,
00:25what were you expecting weather-wise
00:27and how did that pan out?
00:30And how did it actually sort of affect
00:32your management on-farm?
00:34To the start of the year, it's been a dry January,
00:37so we planted all our crops before,
00:40well, yeah, sort of basically before New Year's Eve.
00:44So we planned right up to New Year's Eve
00:45and tried to get all the crops in, which we did.
00:48But it's been a really dry January,
00:50which is, yeah, a bit out of season, I suppose.
00:54Last January, I think we had probably about 270 mil,
00:59I think it was, and this January, 30 mil, 40 mil.
01:03Which crops did you plant and how are they going,
01:06considering you haven't had the rain you expected?
01:08Definitely looking for a drink.
01:10We've been scarifying the corn,
01:12putting urea out as a side dressing,
01:15started spreading fertiliser
01:16and put out 50 tonne yesterday and today.
01:19What crops did you actually plant again?
01:21Yeah, so we just got corn in at the moment,
01:23so we haven't planted any other crops
01:25because of the season we had last year.
01:27The soya beans, it was just too wet to harvest them
01:30and the moisture, we couldn't get the moisture down enough
01:32to harvest them.
01:33Yeah.
01:34So you also have planted a whole lot of avocado trees,
01:39how are they going?
01:40Crops looking average.
01:43Wouldn't say it's anything special,
01:45it's a pretty average crop.
01:46Yeah, we had a frost at the start of the year
01:48and then it got real hot and then we had hail.
01:52Some paddocks are good, some paddocks are real average.
01:54Bulk rain last year and then it's just been
01:58definitely one of the most challenging 12 months
02:00I've had in farming, definitely without a doubt, yeah.
02:03Down in Western Queensland, Southwestern Queensland,
02:06how have you been going?
02:07What was your expectations for the weather
02:10and how's it turned out?
02:13Has it lived up to your expectations
02:15and how's it affected your farm on farm planning and doing?
02:20Our expectation probably was for there to be
02:23a bit more rain around through November and December.
02:26There was some good changes came through,
02:28patchy storm rain of course.
02:30Places that had more than one fall
02:32are still looking pretty good,
02:33but the places that only had one lot of storms come across,
02:35of course that's all burned off again now.
02:37Certainly looking drier than we would normally expect.
02:41A couple of the shallower dams have gone dry,
02:45so we were able to clean out one of those so far.
02:48Had to shift a few cattle out of that paddock.
02:50I booked in to do our cattle work in April.
02:54We'll see what the season looks like by then
02:56and it will make big difference as to what we decide to sell
03:01or wean or keep.
03:04With your livestock, how are they going?
03:07What condition are they in?
03:09They're actually in really good condition
03:10still at the moment.
03:12We're feeding probably between two and three tonne
03:14of lick out to the cattle a week.
03:16There's a lot of leaf.
03:18The mulga looks really good.
03:19There's a lot of leaf on the mulga.
03:20There's still dry grass on the ground.
03:22There's just enough showers through the winter
03:24and into the start of summer last year
03:27to really wreck the nutritional value in a lot of the grass
03:31or in all of the grass now.
03:33A lot of it's gone black.
03:34The mulga leaves are good
03:36and they're nowhere near the stage of falling off
03:39or anything like that.
03:41So the trees are pretty happy.
03:42Our female in the cattle are just starting to carve
03:47in the last month.
03:49So hopefully it comes through and rains
03:51before they start to feel the pressure too much.
03:53Hopefully when I talk to you in a month's time,
03:55you're all smiles.
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