Harvest Season = Spontaneous and Suspenseful!

After working long hours and tiring days for a few weeks, we think it will all come to a hold. As predicted, a huge storm is supposed to role in, one that could make or break a farmers perfectly good year. At first I never understood why harvest season could not start on one day, then end on another, year in year out. I always thought if the paddocks stay the same size, and you don't buy more land, how could there be so many variations in timing.

The biggest worry of a farmer is the weather. He can have an outstanding crop all year round to only be hit by one storm to destroy his earnings for the entire year. The day the crop 'gos' is the day we start harvest, when the ground is dry and the last bunch of grain has died off. (This can be different from one end of the paddock to the other as rain doesn't often cover corner to corner every storm.) For instance, one day a down pour was about to hit and we have about an hours worth of work left on Cooleearlee. We knew if we didn't get the grain 'off' it would be ruined. We sped the pace of everything up and had to over flow bins. Literally once the last row was done is when it started to spit, zero minutes to spare. We had the next 4 days off due to another 3 storms hitting causing field flooding.