Days 19 and 20 - Weekend in Athol

After a slightly delayed start to the day Steve and I headed out to have a look around the home farm in Athol.  We started off catching up with some fencing contractors putting deer fence in around one of the paddocks before setting off to have a look at a new pivot irrigator.  It was a remarkably simple to operate with the pump on a variable speed drive, automatically switching on and off depending on the load required.  The pivot was irrigating spring barley.  Soil moisture probes are used to assess the deficit in the soil before deciding when to irrigate and with how much water.  Theses are quite integrated systems with probes located between 100mm and 450mm and a second one between 450mm and 800mm. The barley looked a stunning crop with great yield potential.

The next part of the trip round Steve took me to see the Red Deer side of the business, which is quite diverse.  Deer are kept for a number of reasons, for breeding stags, for velvet and for venison; most of which ends up in Eastern Europe and Germany.  Here Steve has some deer velvet being stored in the freezer.  It is quite valuable but is slow to grow and difficult to harvest.  Only licensed operators are qualified to remove the velvet, after anaesthetic is administered to the deer.  I was fascinated to hear about the production systems and rounding the deer up form the hill using helicopters!

After lunch we headed down to Balfour to have a look at some arable crops, the first couple of fields being a direct comparison of direct drilling and traditionally ploughed and cultivated.  The direct drilling looked a lot thinner but better bigger ear numbers whereas the ploughed looked to have much more biomass in the bottom and smaller ears.  It will be interesting to see what the combine yield monitor says, in February!

We stopped at the main farm yard where Steve and family run another business, processing and selling grain to dairy farmers.  The barley and wheat are rolled, and if necessary minerals are added before being shipped out on one of the farms trucks.  This has turned the Southland area into a net importer of grain.  Before this plant was running wheat traded at a $50 discount to wheat in Canterbury because of the haulage.  Now all the wheat is being used locally, wheat is being pulled down from Canterbury, creating a shortfall in this area resulting in a price increase.

I headed East on Sunday morning after saying goodbye to Steve and Heather, but not before calling in to the Veg Shed to pick up some supplies for the journey, knowing how long it took me to get here!  A huge thanks to Steve and Heather for providing a base to take a breather, just what was needed!  I left Athol and retraced y steps back up towards Queenstown and Cromwell before turning south East towards Alexandra.  The scenery heading over the Knobby Range was stunning.  Large rocky outcrops with clear water lakes and sheep dotted on the escarpments.  Proper Lord of the Rings territory.

I stopped and detoured over a bridge across the river Clutha to show the crystal clear water carving it's way through the steep sided gorges. This was taken at Millers Flat and the colour of the water was almost luminous.

All along the river on the flat alluvial soils where water was available there were fruit farms, irrigating merrily in the hot afternoon sun.  This area of Central Otago is known for its top fruit of cherries, apricots, wines, peaches, pears, plums, nectarines and apples.  There were lovely little market garden stalls open along the roadside selling very local and very fresh produce.

I pushed on through Lawrence and Milton, where I stopped to take a picture of a classic tractor collection, totalling at least 12 vintage tractors, trucks and crawlers.  All were immaculately restored and maintained.  For any passing Ford fans it's definitely worth a visit.  I headed on into Mosgiel, on the outskirts of Dunedin to find a fellow Nuffield Scholar who has kindly offered to put me up for the night ahead of meetings tomorrow morning in Dunedin itself.

Day 8 - Time for a Tour of the District

Our host Alec Wright; Nuffield Scholar, in Methven graciously showed us around the district this morning visiting his sons farm first thing to drop off some lunch made by Jean, Alec's wife. We looked at the silage operation before moving up to some higher and stony ground to look at some direct drilled grass reseed.  This field was coming up beautifully due to the reduced disturbance retaining moisture win the soil.  There is no luxury of irrigation this far up the slopes on Mt Hutt. The swedes were also direct drilled into grass stubble that had been sprayed off and were emerging well on the whole although as temperatures reached 29 degrees today and with a stiff breeze soil moisture was paramount.  This would also go for wheat production.  A single cultivation will reduce the soils water holding capacity by 25mm, which could be important later on in the season.

If cultivated and a North Westerly gale blows, the wind is funnelled down through the mountains and the soil will be eroded by the wind, leaving the field and being caught up by the nearest obstacle, in this case a small hedge.  The depth of this top soil was 2 ' deep and seeing this brought back thoughts of the great dust storms of the 1930's and my time in Oklahoma.

The wind can also do some serious damage to the infrastructure of the farms when really unleashed.  Earlier this year about 800 irrigators were blown over during winds that reached 200Km/hr in places. This is putting huge pressure on the mechanics required to repair all this damage but without water there are no crops or grass.  Production in some areas has fallen away simply because there is no water to keep the crops alive.

We drove passed one terrific looking crop of wheat being irrigated.  The plant population was thinner than our UK target but the plants had tillered out very well.  The stems and upper leaves were clean of disease and the potential of thigh yield was definitely present.  I think  this picture sums up the advantage that New Zealand has over the UK when it comes to wheat production.  It seems that an abundance of water, (for the time being), and lots of sunshine are the key ingredients to very high yields.  But the plants need to be fed correctly and the soil has to have the correct structure to support root development that will enable faster, less restricted uptake of nutrients. 

This is where crops like this fodder radish can help in restructuring the soil.  The tap root, along with the other 30/m2, are all pushing down through the soil profile, finding a way through any compacted layers in search of water and nutrients.  The field had a good population of plants all creating drainage for water infiltration, for when it does rain, and removing any compaction layers.  The obvious next step would be to direct drill the next crop to reduce the erosion risk; as evident above, reduce cost of establishment and increase the amount of water available to the following crop.  By not tilling; the soil will increase it's organic matter content allowing further increases in the water holding capacity.  Seems to me like a good way to progress?