THERE is a saying that the difference between a good farmer and a bad farmer is about one week.
I cannot be in the good farmer category as, very embarrassingly, we still have a couple of paddocks to sow – ouch.
In my defence, I am somewhat new to this irrigated cropping caper.
Last year, in our first season I was lulled into a false sense of security.
It rained the day after we finished sowing (which was obviously planned and is a sure sign you know what you are doing).
Everything grew and yielded pretty well so I just assumed cropping was easy and that was what happened every year.
We pre-irrigated at Kerang in early April – and it just never dried out.
We have had multiple goes at sowing and we keep getting bogged – but we were back there again this week and we seemed to be moving forward.
What I want to know is, why when you stuff something up does it always happen on a major highway, where hundreds of farmers drive past every day and can view your failures?
Is it irony, given everyone is desperate for rain yet I’m unable to sow because it’s too damp?
Or is it injustice or – shock! horror! – our just desserts being served on a very public platter for all the world to see?
On a different major through-road another crop of ours – this time canola – had been watered, sprayed and sowed on time.
Just in time to be decimated by rabbits.
We ripped and dug out burrows on a sandy bulloak hill (that’s a John Williamson reference, in case you missed it), poisoned, shot and cleared the rabbit habitat, and we resowed.
And then it all got eaten again.
Well, all right, not all of it (I do have a tendency to exaggerate a tad under rabbit stress).
But all the bits next to the road that everybody can see (again) is where the damage was mostly done.
Anyhoo, to all you road users out there, keep your eyes firmly on the road please and keep your judgment in the car.
At the back of Lake Boga one of our new paddocks has 40 houses on Lakeside Drive adjoining the boundary fence.
Some of those have tin fences, some have no fences and some have good fences.
And lots of them have access gates into our paddock.
It’s been a bit of project negotiating and clearing the boundary line to install a stock-proof boundary fence as a number of our new neighbours have decided to adopt a bit of paddock to use for the storage of old cars, general junk and many burning piles.
Then there’s my personal favourite: a substantial vegetable garden.
One house has even expanded its fence 20m into my paddock.
It took us more than two weeks – and a little more than $10,000 – just to clear and prepare the 2km in question for the fencing contractors.
But I would say, with only one or two exceptions, the landlords around the lake were gracious, helpful and pleased to see progress – and to see an unused eyesore returned to semi-productive agriculture.
The comic part of the exercise is that the day after we took down the temporary electric fence – thus keeping any stock out of the houses – two different mobs of cattle escaped, a day apart, and walked through about five different paddocks and appeared on the lawns of Lakeside Drive residents.
But again nobody complained about cow prints or cow poo; they took it as an adventure and helped us put them back.
I am looking forward to seeing the back of that project.
With the cropping you never know the result till harvest.
Will my just desserts be a triple-layered Black Frest with chocolate ganache and maraschino cherries on top?
Maybe a slice of stale rock bun?
Or will it become all too much and I’ll sell up, buy one of those little houses, plant a (rabbit-proofed) vegie patch on the new owner’s land and indulge in the occasional bit of cattle duffing for rations – and never worry again about whether the rain comes down and the markets go up?
Stay tuned, but if you hear anything before I do, please let me know.
