Crops beat the odds for Craig Stone from Raywood

Farmers have experienced a stop-start harvest at Raywood due to late season storms. Craig Stone shares his story about farming in the challenging weather.

Crop yields have delivered some pleasing results at Raywood despite a stop-start approach to harvest.

Craig and Maree Stone had been harvesting wheat but were held up last Friday afternoon due to rain and storms.

Despite what has been described as “challenging weather,” they count themselves lucky and have recorded some good yields.

“We got 6mm of rain on Friday, but we have two fine days early this week, and that should allow us to finish harvest,” Craig said.

The couple crops 900ha and grows canola, barley, wheat and oats for hay.

The crop of Scepter wheat delivered yields with an average of 3.5 tonnes/ha, which was a handy result considering that they would typically expect to budget for up to 4 tonnes/ha.

“The best crop for us this year was the barley, one load went malt, and the rest was graded BAR 1,” Craig said.

Wheat harvest at Raywood. Picture: Zoe Phillips

The barley achieved yields of 4.5 tonnes/ha to 5 tonnes/ha.

“For the year that we have had, we are very grateful with how things turned out at harvest,” Craig said.

With harvest finishing this week, he said the plan would now be on controlling summer weeds that had germinated following storms.

“We will try and conserve as much soil moisture between now and the next crop,” he said.

The crops are Raywood sown using GPS with the crops sown in between the rows for the planting in the following year.

“We are fortunate to be in a pocket of farming land that has been able to achieve some good results in what was a tough year,” he said.

The region received 350mm of rain from January until the end of November, and an additional 6mm of rain on Friday.

Craig said there hadn’t been any storm damage, and they were grateful that while the rain was heavy, it didn’t bring trees down or create destruction.